18th Emergency (7 page)

“Come on and let’s play basketball,” Ezzie interrupted.

“I just don’t feel like it.” Mouse wanted to get the conversation around to how unfortunate and unfair his plight was.

“Come
on,
will you? You can’t ruin your whole life just because of Hammerman. Besides, if he shows up, you can just go in the grocery store and pretend to be buying something.” He paused, then added with a little smile, “Band-Aids.”

Mouse got slowly to his feet. “I don’t feel like doing anything.” If he had had a pencil handy he would have drawn an arrow to himself and written the words FRAGILE—DO NOT BEND, FOLD OR MUTILATE.

“Come
on.”

“Oh, all right.” Reluctantly Mouse followed Ezzie out the door, and they went down the stairs together. Once outside Ezzie ran ahead eagerly and turned into the alley by the bakery. “Come on, will you?” He ran to the paved area behind the store where the basketball hoop had been put up on the back of the grocery.

Ezzie ran over to where Dick Fellini was idly dribbling the ball and shouted, “Hey, Fellini!” He begged for the ball with his hands, weaving agilely about the pavement, eluding imaginary guards.

“Fellini!” he cried again. He was open now and could make the perfect lay-up shot.

Ezzie had every move of the basketball player down perfectly. He could execute those high jump shots. He could fake, pivot, and go up for a hook shot. He could make the best-looking free throws of anybody. He could dribble so close to the ground the ball seemed to be rolling. The only thing he couldn’t do was get the ball in the basket.

He ran up to the net. “Hey, Fellini, the ball, gimme the ball!”

Fellini fed him the ball, and Ezzie went up in a graceful arc, threw the ball with one hand and watched it bounce off the rim of the basket. Fellini got the ball from the doorway of the grocery store where it had rolled and began dribbling again.

“Hey, Fellini, the ball!” Ezzie spun around now, leaped into the air and caught the ball. Then in a spectacular move he managed to get the ball off before his feet touched the ground. The ball was about a foot short of the basket, and it bounced to where Mouse was standing. Mouse ignored it and let it roll.

Then Mouse walked over and sat down by the grocery. Garbage Dog was there in the doorway, and when he saw Mouse he came over.

“How you doing, boy?” Mouse rubbed Garbage Dog behind the ears. “How are you today?” Mouse really liked this dog. He had never realized how much he liked him until this moment. He thought that Garbage Dog was the kind of animal that never actually changed in any way, just revealed new aspects of his personality from time to time. Like the event of last summer. Mouse thought about that as he continued to scratch Garbage Dog behind the ears.

Mouse and Ezzie had been patting Garbage Dog that day—this had been in August—and while they were just sitting there, patting him, Ezzie had noticed that the dog’s mouth was slightly open. He had said, “Hey, Mouse, what’s old G. D. got in his mouth?”

Mouse had bent over and looked. Garbage Dog had long hair that hung over his mouth a little. “I can’t see.”

Ezzie had reached out and lifted the dog’s lip by this long hair. “What is it? Can you see now?”

“No.”

“Well, let’s get his mouth open. This is driving me crazy.”

They had struggled to open Garbage Dog’s mouth, while the dog sat looking beyond them at the back of the dry cleaners.

“Help me, Mouse, you think I can do this all by myself?”

“I’m helping. He doesn’t want to open his mouth though. That’s obvious. You can’t just
force—”

“Yes, you can. There’s a spot that you press—it’s back behind the jaw somewhere—and this spot makes the dog’s mouth spring open. I’ve seen a lady in my apartment give her dog worm pills this way. Wait a minute. This might be it.” Ezzie pressed on both sides of Garbage Dog’s face, and abruptly his mouth opened. A small green turtle fell out onto the pavement.

Mouse and Ezzie had looked at it for a moment without speaking. Then Ezzie said in a wondering voice, “Am I going crazy, or is that a turtle?”

“It’s a turtle.”

“But how could that be? Where would you get a turtle around here?”

“Out of somebody’s turtle bowl maybe.”

“Let me see that.” Ezzie had picked up the turtle and looked at it, turning it over in his hand. “This is a real living turtle.”

“I know.”

“But how could it be? How could such a thing as this be?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s like ‘Twilight Zone,’ Mouse. Do you understand what has happened? Garbage Dog has come strolling up with a living breathing turtle in his mouth.”

They had sat there with Garbage Dog between them for a long time that afternoon talking about the turtle, about the strangeness of it. Ezzie kept saying over and over, “It’s a living breathing turtle. This turtle is living and breathing!” And Mouse kept saying, “I know.” Finally they had argued a little about which one of them owned the turtle, and then they had agreed that it belonged to Ezzie because he had noticed it first.

Later that evening Ezzie had sold the turtle to a girl in his apartment building for a quarter. For weeks after that Ezzie never passed Garbage Dog without checking his mouth, the way other people check the coin return slots in telephone booths.

Now Ezzie was guarding Dick Fellini, waving his hands in Fellini’s face, trying to knock the ball from his hands. Suddenly Ezzie was successful. He had the ball, bounced it once, whirled out and away from the basket and lifted his arm in a beautiful shot that missed.

Fellini caught the rebound and shot. Then with a forward dart, Ezzie scooped up the ball and dribbled over to Mouse. “Hey, Mousie Boy.” Ezzie threw the ball to Mouse, and Mouse tossed it back without enthusiasm. “Come on,” Ezzie urged.

“In a minute,” Mouse said. He did not feel like any physical activity. All his strength had to be saved. If he wasted his life force frivolously in games, he thought, there might not be enough.

“Mouse!” Ezzie threw him the ball again. This time Mouse was caught off-guard, thinking about Hammerman, and the ball landed hard in his stomach. He got to his feet quickly, holding the ball against him.

“Watch what you’re doing, will you?” he said. He shifted the ball to his hip.

“I’m sorry. I—”

“Yeah, you’re
sorry
all right.”

“Aw, come on, Mouse.”

Mouse stood there with the ball, looking at Ezzie as if he were seeing him for the first time. Dick Fellini, who was waiting beneath the basket, came walking over, shaking his hair out of his eyes. He said, “Hey, what’s with Mouse?”

Ezzie said, “Nothing. Come on, Mouse.”

Mouse hesitated. Ezzie was standing with his arms held out for the ball. He said again, “Come on, Mouse, gimme the ball. Let’s play.”

Mouse pulled the ball back and fired it at Ezzie. He threw hard, aiming at Ezzie’s stomach. He wanted to crumple Ezzie, to drop him to the pavement. “Take the ball!” he said.

Ezzie drew back instinctively. The ball missed his stomach, struck him on the hand and then bounced over to Dick Fellini. Fellini took the ball, dribbled to the basket and threw it in. He caught the rebound and made another basket.

Ezzie said, “You didn’t have to hit my sore finger,” in a flat, angry voice.

“What sore finger?” Mouse asked.

“That one.”

“Boy, that really is a sore finger, Ezzie. That’s some sore finger—a hangnail.”

Ezzie put his finger in his mouth to ease the pain. All the while he was looking at Mouse, and Mouse was waiting. Then Ezzie took his finger out of his mouth and looked at it.

Mouse thought then that Ezzie was going to say something funny about his finger, to try to make him laugh. Instead Ezzie turned and ran quickly to where Dick Fellini was lining up for a free throw. Ezzie leaped agilely into the air, trying to intercept the ball, and then he watched while Fellini made the rebound.

“Hey, Fellini, gimme the ball,” he cried, spinning around. “The ball!”

“Yeah, Fellini, give him the ball so he can miss again,” Mouse shouted. He waited to see if Ezzie was going to answer, to trade insults with him. Ezzie ignored him.

Ezzie said, “Fellini, gimme the ball.”

Mouse turned and walked toward the alley. He glanced back once, saw Ezzie dribbling in the opposite direction and then he kept going.

He walked slowly, kicking a bottle cap ahead of him. To get his mind off how bad he felt, he tried to think of another emergency he could handle. He couldn’t think of anything. He went slowly over a list of the world’s greatest dangers—tornadoes, earthquakes, tsetse flies, the piranha. Behind him he heard Ezzie cry again, “Fellini, the ball, gimme the ball.”

He kept going. Cyclones, the coral snake—Then he came to sharks and he stopped.

Emergency Sixteen—Sudden Appearance in Your Swimming Area of Sharks. Ezzie had once read the way to handle that emergency in a comic book. You simply relax your body and play dead. Sharks are bored by dead bodies.

This solution left Mouse dissatisfied. Ezzie had really read that in some comic book, but it was the most unsatisfactory advice Mouse could think of. Play dead! It was impossible.

It seemed to him suddenly that what most emergency measures amounted to was doing whatever was most unnatural. If it was natural to start screaming, survival called for keeping perfectly quiet. If it was natural to run, the best thing to do was to stand still. Whatever was the hardest, that was what you had to do sometimes to survive. The hardest thing of all, it seemed to him, was not running.

He tried to imagine him and Ezzie in the ocean playing dead while the curious sharks swam around them.

“It’ll work, it’ll work, I tell you,” Ezzie would be muttering out of the side of his mouth. “It worked for Popeye, didn’t it?”

Mouse thought of it a moment longer. He imagined the sharks moving away and he and Ezzie floating alone in the ocean. “I told you nothing would happen,” Ezzie would say, smiling a little. Somehow this didn’t make Mouse feel any better.

Emergency Seventeen—Visit of a Cobra. When this happens, Ezzie said, you stop whatever you are doing at once and you begin to make smooth rhythmic body movements which will hypnotize the cobra.

He remembered that Ezzie had once shown him exactly how these movements should be done. “Like this, Mouse, like this, see?”

“I don’t think movements like that would hypnotize a cobra.”

“Well, I happen to know a boy who hypnotized a cobra in a zoo like this,” Ezzie had said, stopping the movements abruptly. “And if you don’t believe me, his name was Albert Watts.”

Mouse sighed. He kicked the bottle cap into the gutter. Anyway, he thought, life and death struggles with cobras and sharks and lions seemed less likely every day.

He heard a noise behind him, and he looked around and saw Garbage Dog following on his short legs. “Good boy!” he cried. He had never been so glad to see anyone. “Come on. You want something to eat? Come to my house.”

At the stairs to the apartment Garbage Dog hesitated, and Mouse drew him quickly forward. “Come on, boy, food!” Slowly, with Mouse urging him along, Garbage Dog began to take the steps one at a time.

G
ARBAGE DOG HAD NOT
been inside a house for years. He hesitated at the door, and then when Mouse pushed him, he entered. He walked around the edge of the room, avoiding the carpet, until he came to the kitchen. Then he sat uneasily by the table. There was a little hot air blowing on him from under the refrigerator, and this worried him. He moved over by the sink.

“What do you want to eat?” Mouse asked. “Bologna sandwich all right?”

Garbage Dog’s nose started to run as soon as the refrigerator door was opened. He got up, moved forward and looked into the brightly lit box. He could smell meat loaf and bologna and cheese, and then everything blended into a general food smell which was even better. He waited without moving. His eyes were riveted on the refrigerator.

Mouse gathered up bologna and cheese, shut the refrigerator door with his shoulder and got bread from the counter. “Here,” he said.

Garbage Dog was accustomed to little tidbits—crusts of bread and pieces of broken cookies and the dry ends of ice cream cones. He hardly ever got a whole sandwich. He took it in his mouth and stood for a moment, looking at Mouse. Then he went under the table and began to eat. He finished quickly and came back. He stood looking from Mouse to the refrigerator.

“How about bread with bacon grease on it?” Mouse asked. He broke bread into a small bowl and poured bacon grease over it. He was sprinkling this with grated cheese when his mother came into the apartment.

“Benjie?”

“I’m in here, Mom.” He set the bowl on the floor.

“Well, I hope you aren’t eating because—” She broke off. “What is that dog doing in here?”

“I had to let him come up,” Mouse said. “He followed me.”

“Well, I don’t want dogs in here, you should know that. As soon as he finishes, take him out.”

“If
he’ll go. He follows me every—”

“Out.” She went into the living room and said, “And don’t
you
eat anything, because Mrs. Casino’s giving you supper.”

He followed her quickly into the living room. Behind him came Garbage Dog, sliding a little on his short legs. Garbage Dog stepped on the carpet by accident, and then quickly walked over and stood by the front door, looking worried.

“Where are you going?” Mouse asked his mother.

“I’ve got a cosmetics party,” she said. His mother went to people’s houses and showed cosmetics and people bought them. It occurred to Mouse that he had always wanted to see what went on at one of these parties.

He said quickly, “I could go with you. I could—”

“You know that’s out of the question.”

“I wouldn’t be any trouble. Nobody would even know I was there.”

“No.”

“But I
want
to go.”

“I’ve already told Mrs. Casino you would come. Now, I’ve got about two seconds to get dressed. Where’s my new order book, have you seen it?”

She went into her room, and Mouse walked to the front door where Garbage Dog was waiting. Garbage Dog still looked uneasy.