Dave at Night (9 page)

Chapter 18

I
WANTED TO
cover the drawing, but he'd already seen it. So I just got back to work. I erased the shaded blackboard where Miss Hillinger's head should really be. That way I could look at the old head that I liked while putting in the new one.

“Courage, Dave.” Mr. Hillinger touched my shoulder and then went on down the aisle. I didn't know what he meant. I didn't need courage here, in the classroom. Then I forgot about it, looking at Miss Hillinger and working on the head. The new one wasn't as good as the old one, but at least it was in the right place. I didn't erase the old head, because I liked it, and started working on her shoulder and left arm.

“You gave her two heads, buddy. Boy, are you lousy at art.”

I turned to see Harvey's drawing. His paper was almost all shaded. In the middle was a tiny figure, leaning on one leg.

“My two heads are in my drawing, buddy,” I said. “Too bad your two heads—”

“Time's up. Stop, everybody.”

My leg ached and itched under the bandage. I looked at what I'd done. Miss Hillinger had two heads and disconnected parts of the rest of her. It looked like she had been chopped in pieces. Even so, the places I
had
done did jump out at you, and the foot leaning on the stool had weight like it was supposed to. You could feel it, pushing down.

Mr. Hillinger walked through the aisles again, inspecting. “This is fine . . . Louise, look . . . I never stop being . . .”

She climbed down from the desk and walked around the edge of the room. I hoped she wouldn't come near me and see herself with two heads.

Mr. Hillinger took Bernie's drawing and Eli's and Harvey's and mine. He tacked the four drawings to the corkboard, where they all looked rotten next to his. Eli's drawing was big, so big that half of Miss Hillinger's head and her left leg below the knee were off the page. Bernie's drawing was the best. Miss Hillinger wasn't as big as she was in mine, but she didn't have two heads, and the pose was right. I wondered if Mr. Hillinger had picked Eli's, Harvey's, and mine to show how much we had to learn.

“What do I always say?” Mr. Hillinger asked, standing next to our drawings.

“You can't do a bad drawing till you're a grown-up,” Mike whispered.

“You can't do a bad drawing till you're a grown-up,” Mr. Hillinger said. He pointed to Bernie's drawing. “What I like best . . . See how Bernie changed the depth in the shadow around . . . See how dark it is here.” He pointed. “And what a soft gray . . . Very good, Bernie.”

I wondered why he didn't say anything about how well Bernie had drawn Miss Hillinger, how she had the right number of arms and legs and heads, all more or less in the right place.

“And Harvey's is wonderful too, boys.”

I didn't have to look at Harvey. I could feel him swelling up.

“It's small, and I told . . . work big, but Harvey is . . . He draws with the directness . . . more like a six-year-old than an eleven . . . Hold on to that, Harvey.”

I turned around, grinning. Harvey didn't think it was wonderful to draw like a six-year-old. His face was bright red.

“These two . . .” Mr. Hillinger touched my drawing and Eli's.

I got ready. My hands clenched, and I felt my face get red too. He was going to tell everybody how bad mine was.

“. . . Have excellent compositions. Your eye moves . . .” He swung his arm in a circle over our drawings. “See? Yes, Harvey?”

Excellent composition. Excellent. I wished I knew what he meant about your eye moving in a circle.

“But Dave's has two heads and the body is in pieces, and Eli's is missing part of the head and part of the leg.”

“Two heads are fine. Not on . . . but in a drawing . . . you're searching, and sometimes two heads—”

“Siggy, excuse me. It's five after ten. You said to tell you when it was—”

Mr. Hillinger dashed to the front of the room. “Go, Louise. Meet me . . . Hurry. Don't tell . . .” She was out the door. “He'll be here any . . .” He lifted the stool off the desk.

Who was coming? Mr. Doom? My bump started throbbing.

Mr. Hillinger whipped the newspaper off the desk and off Mr. Cluck's chair. “Boys, back in your . . . Up off the floor. Put your drawings on your desks.” He handed our drawings back to us and started folding newspapers wildly. “At my other schools I don't have . . . Sorry, boys. You did fine . . . I—”

Mr. Cluck opened the door.

“Good morning, Mr. Cl—Gluck. As usual your boys were excel . . . I don't know how you . . . See you next week, boys. Save your drawings for when you're famous.” He left.

Now the HHB had two things I liked: the elevens being buddies and Mr. Hillinger's art lessons.

For the rest of the morning I ignored Mr. Cluck's lesson about what was wrong with us. First I drew Alfie, who sat on my right. I did it as a gesture drawing, working on showing the way he hunched his shoulders. Then I tried to draw Mike, but it was like trying to draw a live butterfly. So then I drew Mr. Cluck, with his mouth open—his gesture.

After that I turned to a clean page in my notebook.

 

Dear Papa,

I guess you know where I am and who put me here and who didn't come here with me.

 

My eyes started to prick. I didn't want to cry.

 

So I won't write about that. I just want to tell you about the art teacher here. You were an artist, so I think you'll be interested. Did you ever hear of gesture drawings? Did you ever do one?

 

I described Mr. Hillinger and what he'd taught us and what I'd thought while I was drawing. At the end I wrote,

 

And Papa, I have the beginnings of an eye! I'm going to draw as much as I can, and someday maybe I'll be so good that I have a whole entire eye! Two maybe!

 

Then I wrote, “I miss you.” And I signed it, “Your son, Dave the rascal. Dave the gesture artist.”

 

In the next couple of weeks, while I thought about how to get the carving back and leave the HHB, I drew as often as I could. I had always liked to draw, but Papa had been the artist, not me. Now, though, I thought that I might be an artist too and keep art in the family. I figured Papa would like that.

The next week Mr. Hillinger had us do what he called line drawings of a vase filled with flowers. Line drawings were the opposite of shading. They were a new kind of outlining—I never heard anyone talk about the “sensitivity” of a line before.

One time Mr. Hillinger brought in magazine photographs for us to copy. Another day he gave out crayons, but he only let us use certain color combinations. Every class we did something new, and after every lesson I saw things a little differently.

Two weeks after the rent party, the doctor came and removed my stitches. He said I'd have the scar for a long while, maybe forever, which was good. I wanted a souvenir of the time I got the better of Mr. Doom.

As the days passed, I stopped waking up every morning wondering where I was. And I stopped expecting Mr. Doom to be hiding around every corner, waiting to jump out at me.

I got to like my buddies more and more. I'd had friends before I came, and once I had a brother, but I'd never had anything like this. For example, on Visiting Day (really half a day—Sunday afternoons) the visitors usually brought food. But not one single eleven ever ate his food then and there. They might take a taste to show appreciation, but they always set the rest aside for nighttime. After lights-out, Eli would divvy up the loot equally, no matter who had contributed and who hadn't.

Nobody visited me, but I got to eat as much as anybody else. And on Sunday night, December 5th, which was during Hanukkah, eating as much as anybody else meant eating
a lot
. The visitors brought at least twice as much as usual, and for the first time in the Home, I felt full, so full that I almost passed up a handful of dried dates and figs.

Another example of the buddies' loyalty was the time I drew on the photograph of Mr. Meltzer's family, which was on his table in the corner of our room. I pulled it out of its frame and drew mustaches and beards on the faces of his wife and his two daughters. I made each one different to go with the face. The goatee I put on Mrs. Meltzer was especially good. Papa would have laughed his head off.

Mr. Meltzer was so mad he slammed the picture down on his table and broke the glass. By then, I regretted doing it, because I was scared he'd drag me to Mr. Doom again. Mr. Meltzer yelled at us for ten minutes but nobody would tell who'd done it. In P.S. 42, somebody would have ratted inside of ten seconds.

I confessed. I couldn't let everybody be delivered to Mr. Doom because of me.

He didn't take me to Mr. Doom, but he made me skip breakfast and lunch and he didn't let me out at recess for a week. Plus I had to do stupid things over and over, like making my bed and shining my shoes and writing a thousand times, “I shall never deface a photograph again.”

One more example of being buddies was the pillow fight one night after lights-out. We did it in absolute silence, and we kept it up for half an hour without the prefect outside the door hearing a thing. At the end one of the pillows exploded, and Reuben was covered with feathers. Eli tugged him to the window where it was a little brighter, and we spent a half hour holding in our giggles and plucking feathers one by one.

I even came to like Harvey, once I understood him. He was forever boasting about being a half and saying he was only here temporarily, till his mother came for him. And he kept bragging about her, how she was prettier than anybody else's mother, and smarter. But she didn't come to see him very often. In a month she only showed up once. When she didn't come, Harvey would hardly open his mouth for a few days afterwards.

And when she did come, she brought too much stuff. That may sound crazy when we were starved six days a week, but it was true. The time she came, she brought a honey cake, ten chocolate cupcakes, a whole salami, a thick woolen sweater, and a camera. See? It was too much.

But what really made me like Harvey was that he pretended the sweater was too small and gave it to Alfie.

Even though I liked my buddies and I liked Mr. Hillinger, the things I hated about the Hell Hole for Brats bothered me more and more as time went on.

I couldn't get used to the bells. Ting-a-ling—wake up. Ting-a-ling—go to sleep. Ting-a-ling—talk. Ting-a-ling—shut up.

I couldn't get used to being constantly cold. At home, the front room and the bedroom were cold in the winter, but the kitchen was always warm, especially in front of the coal stove. Gideon and I used to drag the couch cushions in there on freezing nights, and we'd sleep by the stove and be toasty warm.

Gideon! I couldn't get used to getting letters from him. One every week, saying how much he was learning, how kind Uncle Jack was, what a busybody the landlady was. He'd end every letter by telling me to write to him because he missed me. Too bad for him. I wasn't the one who got on a train to Chicago. I flushed every letter down the toilet.

Most of all—more than anything else—I couldn't get used to Papa being dead. I thought about him all the time. He'd be furious that Mr. Cluck never taught us anything. And Moe's food stealing—well, if he was alive, I'd never tell him about that. The food stealing was my problem.

He'd think Harvey was a windbag. But he'd like Mike and Eli, and he'd feel sorry for Alfie with his consumption. But Mr. Doom would make him as mad as he could get. He'd think that a man who would steal from an orphan was lower than a cockroach. He'd think a man who would endanger kids' health by keeping them cold and half starving them was even lower than that. He'd spit in Mr. Doom's face.

When I'd think like that, which was often, I'd get a huge lump in my throat that wouldn't go up and wouldn't go down. It would stay stuck, like I was stuck here, stuck being an orphan. A whole orphan. Harvey was right. Not three-quarters—I was a whole.

Chapter 19

A
S THE DATE
came closer, I grew more and more frantic about getting out for Irma Lee's party. Mr. Meltzer had warned the other prefects to keep an eye on me when they were on hall duty. Most nights the prefect on duty would come to my bed to remind me not to try anything. My buddies said that would stop sooner or later. They said most of the prefects (although not Mr. Meltzer) liked to play poker when they were supposed to be watching us. They said the prefect in our hall would go back to the game eventually. But eventually never seemed to come.

The night before the party Mr. Meltzer was on duty again and I lay awake for a while trying to think of a plan. If I managed to get out, I had to be able to get back in too. I still didn't have the carving, and I wasn't going to leave for good until I did. I needed a ladder. Or a rope.

There might be rope in the supply closet in the basement. I fell asleep thinking about it. I don't know how long I slept, but Alfie's coughing woke me. It sounded like he was choking. I sat up, wondering if I should do something.

The door opened. Mr. Meltzer came in, and I lay back again, quick. He left with Alfie, and I closed my eyes, wishing Alfie would get better.

Then my eyes popped open. Mr. Meltzer had taken Alfie upstairs to the nurse. He wasn't guarding us. I could leave. I stood up. Nobody else seemed to be awake. I tucked my slippers in the waist of my pajamas. I was going on a rope hunt.

It didn't occur to me how dopey I was till I was creeping down the basement stairs. Mr. Meltzer wasn't going to stay upstairs forever. He would return to our room, and he would check my bed. I was done for.

I stood there, one foot up, one foot down. I didn't know if I should rush upstairs and hope I made it before Mr. Meltzer did. But if I went back, I wouldn't get the rope, and who knew when I'd have another chance?

The clock started bonging. I almost fell down the stairs. A lot of bongs—ten, eleven, or midnight.

It wasn't as dark in the basement as it had been on the stairs. There were small windows near the ceiling that let in a little light from the street outside. I could make out the shapes of the tables in the dining hall, and the huge pillars between the tables. Beyond them were the furnace and the coal chute, then Ed the janitor's room, then the laundry, and then, finally, miles from where I stood, the supply closet.

I edged through the dining hall. As soon as I stepped beyond the tables I stopped in surprise. There was no floor. It was just packed dirt. I hadn't noticed before, when I was wearing shoes. I didn't like it. Who knew what was crawling around in it. It was cold too, like everything else in the Heatless House of Bloom. And this was cold earth, like the ground in a graveyard.

Dirt was quieter than concrete, though.

I kept going. I passed the kitchen. The furnace. The coal chute.

The worst part would be going by Ed's room. I prayed for his door to be closed. Standing in the shadow of the furnace, I peeked out. It was open.

I inched forward, holding my breath, till I heard the most beautiful music—Ed was snoring. I walked a little faster.

Big sinks on my right, wringers on my left, clotheslines overhead. Mud squished between my toes—
ick!
—and there was a sucking noise whenever I took a step. I slowed down. There. That was quieter.

Mr. Meltzer had probably returned to our room by now. This minute he could be discovering I wasn't there. I kept on.

Now the ground felt drier. There was the supply closet. I padded to it and turned the doorknob, slowly, slowly. It turned! It wasn't locked! I guess they didn't think anyone would raid it in the middle of the night with Ed only a few feet away.

I eased the door open. Don't squeak! Don't creak! As soon as the opening was wide enough, I slipped in.

It was too dark to see anything. Slowly, I stretched my arms out in front of me. Nothing. Air. I turned to my right and reached out. My hand touched something cold—metal—a bucket. I felt around next to it—something long, heavy—a crowbar.

It would take me weeks to find a rope in the dark, if there was a rope. I waved my arms gently over my head, taking tiny steps farther into the closet. And then I felt what I was hoping for, a light cord. I eased the door shut and pulled the cord.

The click sounded as loud as a cannon. I stopped breathing. I didn't hear anything from outside.

Shelves went all the way up to the ceiling. There was a ladder, a stepladder, a cardboard box full of tools on the lowest shelf, paint and paintbrushes on the shelf above, lightbulbs—lots of stuff. And at my feet, a big coil of rope. Thick rope, strong enough to hold my weight.

I heard something.
Slish. Slish
. Very soft. I reached for the light cord, missed it, got it, clicked out the light.
Slish slish
. Then the sucking noise. Someone was crossing the laundry.

I was trapped.

The sucking sound stopped and the slish slish started again. He was past the laundry. But why slish slish? Shoes wouldn't sound that way, but slippers might. Probably it was Ed, going to the toilet or prowling around because he'd heard a noise. My mind screamed at him, The toilet! The toilet! Go to the toilet!

He did. The slish slish passed the supply closet. A few minutes later, the toilet flushed, and I heard him again, coming close.

He stopped. Why?

 

“Sadie Lou was my first love.

How I loved that Sadie Lou.”

 

He was singing!

There was an echo. It made his voice sound round and full.

The song said he met Sadie Lou when they were seven, and it was love at first sight. But she was rich and he was poor, so her parents sent her to a school far away.

 

“Annabelle was my next love.

How I loved my Annabelle.”

 

War came, and Annabelle wasn't true.

 

“Jeanne Marie was my new love.

How I loved that Jeanne Marie.”

 

But the war ended, and he came home, leaving her behind. I wished he'd stop falling in love. There was Bessie May, who married his best friend, and Rosalie, who married him, but ran away with his brother, and Mary Ann, who died in his arms. And more. Three ladies died in the song.

I was going to get caught because of The Song That Went On Forever.

Finally he found Sadie Lou again. He must have been at least two hundred years old, after all the girlfriends and wives he'd had. Anyway, they were happy together.

 

“Sadie Lou was my first love.

How I love that Sadie Lou.”

 

He stopped singing.

Go back to bed. Go back to sleep.

He started the Hanukkah song, “Rock of Ages.” Was he going to sing till the milkman came? I couldn't do anything. The rope was right here, but I couldn't take it and go. I started counting out minutes to see how much time was going by, but I lost track.

He finished. I heard
slish slish
again, and then sucking noises as he crossed the laundry. Then silence.

How long should I wait for him to fall asleep? I started counting again, and this time I didn't let myself lose count. After ten minutes I pulled the light cord again and stood still to listen.

I didn't hear anything, so I started wrapping the rope around my chest, under my pajama top. There was much too much. I had to cut it. I measured out the right length. There was a saw way down in the toolbox, with a hundred things on top of it. One by one, I took out the screwdriver, the hammer, several clamps, a wrench, and put them on the ground.

The chisel slipped out of my clammy fingers and landed in the dirt with a dull thud. I held my breath. Nothing happened.

I lifted out a pair of pliers and a drill, and there was the saw. But sawing the rope was going to make noise. Too much noise.

This was ridiculous. I'd taken the chance of leaving our room. I'd gotten all the way down here. Found the rope. Found the saw to cut the rope. And now I had to go back without it. Mr. Meltzer was going to catch me. He'd take me to Mr. Doom, who'd kill me, and I'd have gotten nothing out of it. I wanted to punch something, but instead I started to unwrap the rope from around my chest.

Bong. Bong
.

The clock. Noise! I picked up the saw, fumbled with the rope. On the fifth bong I started sawing. The rope was tough.
Bong. Bong
. I was halfway through.
Bong
. Let it be midnight.
Bong. Bong
. The saw caught on a matted spot.
Bong. Bong
. It was through! I made it!

I put the saw back in its box and placed everything else on top of it. I wound the rope around my chest again. I was done. The coil on the floor didn't even look much smaller. I clicked off the light, edged the door open, and glided toward the laundry. Between slow, muddy steps, I stopped to listen. Ed was snoring again.

I eased the door to the stairs open. Silence. No Mr. Meltzer pounding up and down, hollering what he'd do when he laid his hands on me. So, since I'd been lucky so far, I decided to go outside and try out the rope. Why not? Mr. Meltzer could catch me now, or later, after I'd had another adventure.

But when I reached the first floor, I heard voices in the lobby. A woman was trying to dump a boy here. A prefect's voice echoed down the hall. “No admissions at night.” The voice became friendlier. “But for a few bucks—”

“I don't have any money.”

“I'm not getting into hot water for nothing. Sorry, lady.”

She started yelling, “I can't go back . . .”

I eased the door open a crack. The kid she was trying to get rid of couldn't have been older than three. He was sitting on the floor, sucking his thumb.

“You can holler . . .”

I let the door close and waited a few minutes, but the argument went on. I started upstairs. On the second floor, I stood in front of the stairway door, too scared to open it. There was no keyhole to look through. I lay down and peered under the door. And there were Mr. Meltzer's feet, outside our room.

Why weren't they running around, looking for me?

Maybe he was waiting for me to come back. He was probably sitting there, grinning over what Mr. Doom was going to do to me.

It wasn't even one o'clock. He'd have to go to the toilet sometime. If I could get back in while he was in there . . . If I was in bed when the wake-up bell rang, he'd be confused. He wouldn't be sure I ever left. It would drive him crazy.

I waited, stretched out on the cold floor, the chill seeping into me. If the other prefect, the one in the lobby, took this staircase, he'd catch me. But there was no other choice.

The three o'clock chimes woke me. I didn't know how I could have been such a moron, to let myself sleep. Mr. Meltzer's feet were still outside our door, but he could have gone to the toilet seven times while I slept.

I tried to think of a way to make him get up, a way to make a noise he'd have to investigate that was nowhere near me. If I was a ventriloquist I could throw my voice to the other end of the hall.

Alfie started coughing. Mr. Meltzer's feet didn't move. Alfie stopped, then started again. Mr. Meltzer's feet went into our room.

Take Alfie to the nurse! Take him!

He came out with Alfie. Good. He started coming my way. Toward this staircase! Toward me!

I raced downstairs. I passed the first floor and went down half a flight more. Mr. Meltzer's footsteps marching upstairs sounded like a one-man army. I didn't hear Alfie at all.
Boom boom boom boom boom
. Then silence. I rushed upstairs and dashed into our room.

Somebody was in my bed! Harvey, fast asleep. He'd saved me! I went to his bed. Somebody was sleeping there too!

Then I looked closer, and the sleeper turned out to be a mound of clothing. I went back to my bed and shoved the rope into my suitcase. Then I ran to Harvey's bed.

Eli was sitting up. “Why didn't you tell us you were going?”

“I thought everybody was asleep.” Which was true, but the real truth was, it never occurred to me to ask for help.

“You could wake us. You know we always help a buddy.”