18th Emergency (3 page)

Ezzie had felt the same way about their teacher last fall when he had told them he had to go to the hospital. For the first time, Mr. Stein in his baggy suit had seemed a fine tragic figure, bigger than life. Ezzie would have done anything for Mr. Stein that day. But then, when Mr. Stein came limping back the next week—it turned out he had had some bone spurs removed from his heels—he had been his normal size.

“Benjie, come up now,” his mother called again.

“I’m coming.”

“Did you tell your mom about Hammerman being after you?” Ezzie asked.

“Yeah.”

“What’d she say?”

He tried to think of the most impossible statement his mother had made. “She said I’ll laugh about it in a week or two.”

“Laugh about it?”

“Yeah, through my bandages.”

Ezzie’s face twisted into a little smile. “Hey, remember Al Armsby when he had those broken ribs? Remember how he would beg us not to make him laugh? And I had this one joke about a monkey and I would keep telling it and keep telling it and he was practically on his knees begging for mercy and—”

Mouse got slowly to his feet. “Well, I better go,” he said.

Ezzie stopped smiling. “Hey, wait a minute. Listen, I just remembered something. I know a boy that Hammerman beat up, and he said it wasn’t so bad.”

“Who?”

“A friend of my brother’s. I’ll find out about it and let you know.”

“All right,” Mouse said. He did not allow himself to believe it was true. Sometimes Ezzie lied like this out of sympathy. If you said, “My stomach hurts and I think I’m going to die,” and if Ezzie really liked you, he would say, “I know a boy whose stomach hurt worse than that and
he
didn’t die!” And if you said, “Who?” Ezzie would say, “A friend of my brother’s.” Ezzie’s brother only had one friend that Mouse knew about, and this friend would have had to have daily brushes with death to fulfill all of Ezzie’s statements.

Still, it made Mouse want to cry for a moment that Ezzie would lie to spare him. Or maybe he wanted to cry because Hammerman was going to kill him. He didn’t know. He said, “Thanks, Ez,” in a choked voice. He turned and walked quickly into the apartment building.

M
OUSE WAS JUST STARTING
up the stairs when his mother and Mrs. Casino from across the hall came out of the apartment. “Wait a minute, Benjie,” his mother said. “Mrs. Casino wants to know if you’ll walk up to Margy’s and get Mr. Casino. She’d do it but she’s keeping the baby for Agnes tonight.”

Mrs. Casino’s round face was worried. She was holding her apron up in both hands. She said, “You mind, Benjie?”

He minded and he wanted them to know it. He sighed and looked down at his feet, at the vent hole in the toe of his shoe. Then he glanced up at the wall. There was a long crack in the plaster, and two months ago Mouse had written TO OPEN BUILDING TEAR ALONG THIS LINE and drawn an arrow to the crack. He turned his head away. He thought suddenly that Ezzie was right. He shouldn’t draw those arrows everywhere.

“Well?” his mother said.

“Oh, all right.” Mouse turned and started down the stairs, his shoulders hanging. He knew this gave him a dejected look because his mother was always telling him in such a stern way to hold up his shoulders.

“You’re a good boy, Benjie,” Mrs. Casino called, then she said loudly to his mother. “You got a good boy there. That’s one boy we don’t have to worry about in this world.”

His mother called, “Just go right straight there and back, Benjie.”

“All right.”

“And don’t rush Mr. Casino.”

“He won’t rush him,” Mrs. Casino said confidently.

Mouse went out the door, slamming it behind him, and started up the street. The sun had disappeared in the few minutes he had been inside, and now the street was darker, colder. Pigeons were going to roost over the grocery store, their wings pale against the dark brick. Mouse zipped up his jacket.

A block ahead he could see Ezzie running. Ezzie and his five sisters and brother had to be there when Ezzie’s father got home from work. It didn’t matter what they did during the day as long as all seven of them were there waiting at the day’s end.

Mouse called, “Hey, Ez! Ezzie!” Ezzie turned and Mouse said, “Wait up.”

Ezzie pointed to his arm where a watch would have been if he had had one. Mouse nodded and waved him on and then walked slowly up the street.

He started thinking again about Marv Hammerman. In his mind he could see Hammerman exactly as he had looked after school that afternoon. Mouse hadn’t gotten around to telling Ezzie about that.

Mouse had come out of school so fast he had almost pushed two girls down the steps. He wanted only to get home before Hammerman saw him.

“Way to go, Benjie,” the biggest girl, Rebecca, had said, straightening angrily.

He had muttered, “Sorry,” and had run ahead of them a few steps. Then he came to a halt. At the bottom of the steps was Marv Hammerman, waiting.

There was something animal-like about Hammerman with his long limbs and careless grace, his clothes that fit as if they were an extra skin, the shaggy hair that appeared never to have known the pull of a comb. Hammerman had been watching for Mouse, and his eyes got a little brighter when he saw him.

“I thought you were in such a big hurry,” Rebecca said scornfully, nudging him in the back with her books as she passed. Mouse hardly noticed.

Hammerman’s face was already the way it would be when he was a man. When Mouse read of boys having to go to work in the coal mines and cotton mills at age twelve and thirteen in the old days, it did not seem possible until he had seen Marv Hammerman.

Hammerman’s face did not change expression when he saw Mouse, just sharpened a little. Mouse thought his own face might have been made of thin rubber, it was changing expression so rapidly. His face twisted into shock as he saw Hammerman, then into fear. Then, quickly, awkwardly, Mouse pantomimed that he had forgotten something. He turned and ran back into the school. Once inside, he had run through the halls, down the back stairs, out the side exit and twenty-five blocks out of his way to get home.

To take his mind off Hammerman, he tried to think of another of Ezzie’s emergencies. These emergencies were the only things that could make him feel better.

Emergency Seven—Seizure by Gorilla. If this happens, you relax completely and make soothing noises deep in your throat. Ezzie claimed this was foolproof, but Mouse had never been convinced.

“I tell you it’s a sure thing, Mouse,” Ezzie had said. “You make the soothing noises, and he lets you go.”

“I still don’t think it would work.”

“All right,” Ezzie had said, “when a gorilla gets y
ou,
you scream and kick and holler. When one gets
me,
I’m making soothing noises.” Ezzie had been sensitive about the success of his emergency methods.

Emergency Eight—Attack by Killer Whale. This is one of life’s most serious emergencies. When this happens, you swim away from the whale as rapidly as possible. Do not try to get swallowed because, Ezzie said, there isn’t as much air in those whales as you’d think. If you do get swallowed by accident, take small measured breaths and try to get coughed out. Then you start swimming away rapidly again.

Mouse passed Margy’s apartment he was so busy thinking about the killer whale. Then he turned around. He went up the stairs, entered the apartment and knocked at the first door. When Margy, Mrs. Casino’s daughter, opened it, he said, “I came for Mr. Casino.”

“Oh, yes.” She turned. “Papa, the Fawley boy’s here for you.” She went over and said, “Papa, you ready to go home?”

Mr. Casino was staring at the television with eyes that seemed to have pulled back into his head a little. He did not look up. She touched his shoulder.

“Papa, you ready to go?” She got him to his feet. He had once been an enormous man but was bent over now so that she could put his overcoat on and button it with ease. “He’s ready, Benjie.”

Mouse was waiting at the door, and she brought Mr. Casino over. She put his hand on Mouse’s shoulder, and the two of them went outside and down the stairs. Mr. Casino moved slowly, shifting his weight noticeably with each step, favoring his left leg, rocking back and forth.

Mr. Casino had been like this for as long as Mouse could remember, but Mrs. Casino was always talking about the time, before his illness, when he had been the strongest man in the town. He was so strong, she said, that the cry, “Get Mr. Casino!” would bring everyone in the neighborhood running to see what feat of strength he would do this time. His skill as a furniture mover had been such a legend, she said, that people would stand on the sidewalk like it was a parade to watch Mr. Casino lift armchairs over his head as if they were basketballs.

Then came the stroke that would have killed another man. Mr. Casino had lived, but all that was left of his strength was the iron jaw which jutted out from his face. Mouse walked along beside Mr. Casino, keeping his steps in rhythm. He said, “Mr. Casino, some boys are going to kill me.”

There was no reaction. Mr. Casino’s huge hand on Mouse’s shoulder did not even tighten in sympathy. It made Mouse sad because he wanted a great reaction. He wanted Mr. Casino’s old strength to return, Samson-like. He wanted Mr. Casino to roar with rage, to stretch out his long arms and threaten to pull down whole buildings if those boys were not brought before him.

Mouse said, “Did you hear me? Some boys are going to—”

Suddenly he heard a shout behind him. He stopped walking, turned and saw Ezzie running toward him. Ezzie was waving his hands in the air, shouting, “Hammerman! Hammerman!”

Mouse said, “Wait a minute, Mr. Casino,” in a voice so low it seemed to come from the bottom of a well. He said louder, “Wait! Stop, Mr. Casino.” Mr. Casino walked a few more steps and then stopped. Mouse ran back toward Ezzie, and then Ezzie grabbed his arm and swung them both around with his momentum.

“Hammerman’s coming,” Ezzie gasped.

“What?”

Ezzie pointed behind him. “Hammerman’s coming,” he said. He panted for breath and tried to swallow air into his lungs. “He’s in front of the newsstand, he and the black sweat shirt. I saw them—they were coming this way—and I had to run all the way around to—” He gave up trying to speak, hung his head and gasped.

It seemed to Mouse that while Ezzie was having the most terrible trouble getting breath, he, Mouse, had stopped breathing altogether. Actually, the whole world seemed to have stopped. It had ground down like an enormous, overworked machine. “In front of Hogan’s newsstand?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Ezzie pointed, jabbing his finger in the air. “Right
there.”

Mouse said in a rush, “Look, Ez, could you take Mr. Casino home for me. Just walk with him—that’s all you have to do—because if I run I can probably get home before Hammerman sees me.”

“I can’t, Mouse, I got to get home myself.” Now Ezzie seemed to have stopped breathing too.

“Ezzie, listen—”

“My dad will kill me, Mouse, you know that.” Ezzie was not as afraid of his father as he pretended, but he
was
afraid of Mr. Casino. He had once come upon Mr. Casino unexpectedly on the landing outside Mouse’s apartment. In that dark spot, Mr. Casino had seemed with his huge body and sunken eyes a terrifying figure. Ezzie had gasped and stood there, flattened against the wall, too frightened to raise his voice above a squeak. Even when Mouse had come out and said, “Oh, that’s just Mr. Casino,” Ezzie had still been frightened. “Oh, yeah,” he had said,
“just
Mr. Casino,” and he had done a Frankenstein-like imitation of him to cover up his fear.

Now he said, “I got to go. Hurry, and you’ll get home, Mouse. You can make it.”

Mouse said, “Wait a minute, Ezzie. Look, if you’ll—”

Ezzie was already running, pointing to his imaginary watch. “I got to go.”

“Ezzie—”

“I
got
to.”

Ezzie ran backward for a few steps, and then he turned and crossed the street. He waited for a car to pass, then ran faster. Mouse could see from the way Ezzie was running that he was not going to change his mind.

“Come on, Mr. Casino,” he said quickly. He hesitated for a moment, torn between whether he should try to return to Margy’s or get home. He put one arm around Mr. Casino’s huge waist and pushed him forward. “Let’s go home.” Slowly Mr. Casino began his rocking steps.

Mouse glanced over his shoulder. The sidewalk was empty. “Let’s
go,
Mr. Casino.” He turned and looked back again. “Let’s
go.”

His head was pounding with fear. He could not even swallow. He expected his legs to fold up at any moment like the legs of an old card table.

The street was deserted now. That was another thing that frightened him. There was no one who could help him. He glanced back over his shoulder again. And then abruptly he felt that he could not bear the suspense any longer. He knew that Hammerman would be coming around the corner at any second—it was the instinct that comes to the hunted occasionally. He knew that Marv Hammerman was at this moment ready to round the corner of Fourth Street and catch sight of him and Mr. Casino making their endless way home. Then he would be lost. Mr. Casino, too.

He said, “Come in here, Mr. Casino. Quick!” Mouse went in the first door he came to and found himself in the dark entrance hall of an apartment. He put Mr. Casino back against the wall where the mailboxes were. He said, “Stand there.” Then he opened the door a crack and looked out.

The street was still empty. Mouse waited at the door with his hands in his jacket pockets. He said without looking around, “We’ll go in just a minute, Mr. Casino. This won’t take but a minute.” He opened the door again. There was no one in sight, and he opened the door wider. He stuck his head out this time, and at that moment Marv Hammerman and the boy in the black sweat shirt came around the corner.

Mouse drew back quickly against Mr. Casino, clutching Mr. Casino’s coat. He felt Mr. Casino’s huge body stirring beneath the cloth and he took his hand. “We’ll go in a minute.” He wondered if Hammerman had seen him glance out the door. If so, all was lost.

Mouse reached around Mr. Casino and tried the door that led to the apartments. As he had feared, it was locked. He and Mr. Casino were trapped in this musty smelly entrance hall. A person could be beaten and left for dead in a hall like this, Mouse thought. No one would even come out of his apartment to see what all the yelling was about.