The Cricket in Times Square (8 page)

“Ah,” he sighed. “Where but in New York could a mouse have ice in his Coca-Cola?”

“We should have music,” said Harry. He reached over and flicked on the radio.

First they got a news report. But that wouldn't do for a party. Harry twisted the dial and went through a quiz show, an amateur hour, and a play about the Deep South before he got what he wanted. Music is very nice for a party because it gives you time to eat your fill without having to make conversation.

Harry Cat was working on his second piece of Oh! Henry candy bar when he suddenly stopped munching and listened to the tune the radio was playing. His head began to sway from side to side.

“That's my favorite song,” he said, beginning to hum along with it.

“Sing it, Harry,” said Chester Cricket.

“You don't know what you're letting yourself in for,” blurted out Tucker Mouse through a mouthful of bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.

But Harry was in a party mood, so he cleared his throat and began:

“When I'm calling youuuuuuuu

Oooo-oooo-oooo

Oooo-oooo-oooo—”

Harry had a delightful yowl that went very well with the lyrics of the song.

“You see what I told you?” groaned Tucker.

Harry went right on, however:

“Will you answer truuuuuu

Oooo-oooo-oooo

Oooo-oooo-oooo?”

“Maybe we should turn back to the amateur hour,” said Tucker Mouse, helping himself to the Hershey bar.

“I think Harry sings beautifully,” said Chester.

“You sing now, Chester,” said Harry Cat.

Secretly the cricket was very anxious to perform for them, but he had to have some encouragement first. He limbered his wings and said, “It's not really singing, you know—”

“Singing, playing—who cares, as long as it doesn't sound like Harry,” said Tucker Mouse. He slurped up the last of the orange soda and they all fell silent.

It was well along in August by now, and just the time of the year that crickets all over the world like most. Chester hadn't done nearly as much chirping as usual this summer because he was living in New York, but tonight he played to his heart's content. He thought of his meadow and the stump, the brook and the old willow tree. The song swelled up from his wings and filled the newsstand.

When it was over, Tucker and Harry applauded and congratulated Chester. “Now play us something we know,” suggested Harry Cat.

“Well, I don't know if I can,” said Chester. “All my songs are my own compositions.”

“Listen to the radio and play what it does,” said Harry. He turned up the music.

Chester cocked his head to one side. The radio was playing the “Blue Danube” waltz. When he had heard enough to memorize the melody, Chester joined in. And he played it perfectly! The cricket was such a natural musician that he not only chirped the tune—in a few minutes he was making up variations and spinning them out without ever losing the rhythm of the waltz. He found that by tilting his wings he could make the notes go higher or lower, just as he wanted.

Chester got an ovation from his friends. Harry Cat, who had crept into the Metropolitan Opera House a few times and knew how people acted there, shouted, “Bravo, Chester! Bravo!” Of course after such a sample of his talent for imitating songs, his friends insisted that he keep on. And Chester was happy to oblige. There's nothing like a good audience to encourage a performer.

The next selection from the radio was a group of Italian folk songs. Chester picked out the different melodies and chirped them along with the orchestra. After the folk songs came a group of operatic arias. It was easier for Chester to play the ones written for tenors than the ones for sopranos, contraltos, and basses, but he did them all beautifully.

Each time he stopped after singing a new piece, the animals shouted, “More! More! More!” So Chester went right on. Now came a South American rumba. The rhythm was very tricky and it took the cricket a few minutes to catch on to it, but once he had it, he never lost the beat. Chirping away, he sounded like a pair of lively castanets.

“Imagine!” exclaimed Tucker Mouse, “he plays pop as well as classical.”

Tucker was feeling very lively himself because of all the soda water he had swallowed. The South American tempo began to excite him. He jumped up and started to dance around the shelf.

Harry Cat burst out laughing, but that didn't bother Tucker. He was a carefree soul. “Chester can play—I can dance,” he panted. “We should go into vaudeville.”

“If you danced as well as he played, you could,” said Harry.

“So I'm just learning,” said Tucker, and threw himself into a wild twirl next to Papa Bellini's pipe.

He couldn't see where he was going and he toppled over into the box of kitchen matches. The box flipped over. A shower of matches fell around the shelf and onto the cement floor. There were several yellow bursts and the sharp scratch that a match makes when it's lit. Most of them fell far enough away from the wooden walls so they could burn themselves out without danger. But one match, unluckily, struck right next to a pile of that morning's newspapers. The spurt of flames it sent up lit the frayed edge of the papers and quickly spread over the whole bundle.

“Watch out!” shouted Chester. Harry Cat leaped up to the shelf just in time to keep his tail from being burned. The cricket was the first to realize what had happened—and what was likely to happen if they didn't put the fire out. “Get the Coca-Cola,” he said. “Pour it over.”

“I drank it all,” shouted Tucker.

“You would!” said Chester. “Is there any ice?”

Harry and Tucker dumped what was left in the insulated bag down on the flames. But it wasn't enough. The fire sputtered, died down, and then flared up again, larger than ever.

“Maybe we can smother it,” said Harry.

There was a pile of magazines on the very edge of the shelf, just above the fire. Harry strained and pushed and succeeded in toppling them over. They all peered over the edge to see if the fire was out.

“Oh fine!” said Tucker. “She's still burning and you blocked the hole to get out!”

They were trapped. Harry and Tucker jumped down and started pulling away the magazines furiously. But the fire crept closer and they had to back away.

“What a way to go,” said Tucker. “I should have stayed on Tenth Avenue.”

For a moment Chester got panicky. But he forced his thoughts back into order and took stock of the situation. And an idea struck him. In one leap he jumped onto the alarm clock, landing right on the button that set off the alarm. The old clock began ringing so wildly it shook itself around the shelf in a mad dance. Chester hopped back to his friends.

“Any alarm in a fire,” he said.

They waited, crouched against the wall. On the opposite side of the stand the flames were lapping against the wood. Already the paint on it had begun to blister.

Chester could hear voices outside the newsstand. Even at this hour there were always a few people in the station. Somebody said, “What's that?”

“I smell smoke,” said another. Chester recognized the voice. It was Paul, the conductor on the shuttle. There was a sound of footsteps running away, then running back again, and a hammering began. The newsstand shook all over.

“Somebody get the other side,” said Paul.

The cover was wrenched off. Clouds of smoke billowed up. The people standing around were astonished to see, through the fumes and glare of the fire, a cat, a mouse, and a cricket, running, jumping, to safety.

ELEVEN

The Jinx

From the drain pipe the animals watched Paul put out the fire. He dragged what papers he could out of the newsstand and got a bucket of water to douse the rest. And he watered down the walls to make sure they wouldn't flare up later. When the danger was over, he called up Papa Bellini on the telephone.

“What a mess,” said Tucker Mouse, looking at the soggy, smoldering piles of papers and magazines.

No one knew what to say.

“What are you going to do, Chester?” said Harry Cat finally.

“I'm going back there,” said Chester. “If the Bellinis find me gone, they'll think I set the fire and ran.”

“What makes you think they won't think you set the fire and stayed?” said Tucker.

“I'll have to take that chance,” said Chester. Before the cat or the mouse could say anything to stop him, he hopped over to the newsstand.

Paul had told the engineer that he would miss a few trips on the shuttle and was waiting for the Bellinis. He didn't want anyone monkeying with the cash register while the cover was off. The conductor thought that the cups and bags from the animals' party had been left by Mario or Papa. While he was taking them over to a trash barrel, Chester jumped up on the shelf. Nothing there had been burned, but there was a smoky smell to everything. The cricket took a downhearted leap into the cage and settled himself for whatever might come.

It didn't take the Bellinis long to arrive. They had taken a taxi. And when the Bellinis took a taxi, you could be sure it was an emergency. Chester could hear them hurrying down the steps from the street. Papa was trying to soothe Mama, who was wheezing heavily from asthma and excitement. When she saw the heaps of scorched magazines and newspapers, she began to moan and shake her head. Papa eased her down onto the stool, but it was still covered with water and she stood up again with a wet spot on her skirt.

“Ruin—we're ruined,” she sobbed. “Everything's burned.”

Papa comforted her as best he could by saying that it was only a few stacks of the
Ladies' Home Journal
that had been lost. But Mama wouldn't believe that anything less than complete destruction had come to them all.

Mario, who brought up the rear of this sad parade, thought first for the safety of his cricket. He saw that Chester was in his cage, though, and decided that it would be best to keep quiet until Mama's outburst of grief had subsided.

Paul told them what had happened: how he smelled smoke and heard the alarm clock ringing. Then he came to the part about the animals who had escaped from the burning newsstand.

“So—!”
said Mama Bellini, all her despair changing into anger. “Animals in the newsstand again! Didn't I tell you?” She lifted her forefinger at Mario. “Didn't I say the cricketer would ask in his pals? He probably set the fire. He's a firebug!”

Mario didn't have a chance to speak. He would open his mouth to defend Chester, but before he could say a thing, the words were drowned in Mama's flood of reproaches. She had found someone on whom she could blame her unhappiness and there was no stopping her.

When a pause came, Mario said meekly, “My cricket would never do anything like burn up our newsstand.”

“The fact remains,” said Mama, “we had a fire!”

“But crickets are good luck—” Mario began.

“Good luck!” said Mama indignantly. “He eats money—he commits arson! He's a jinx, that's what. He's good luck going backwards. And he's got to go.” She folded her arms across her chest. It was an attitude that Mario knew meant the absolute end of everything.

“I could keep him somewhere else,” the boy offered.

“No,” said Mama, shaking her head as firmly as a door being closed. “He's a jinx. He goes.”

Papa put his finger to his lips as a signal that Mario shouldn't say anything more and the two of them began to clean up. They carted away all the hopelessly burned magazines and tried to salvage some that had only been scorched. Mario mopped the floor of the newsstand while Mama spread out papers to dry. By the time they were finished, it was almost the hour for the first wave of commuters.

Chester was lying on the floor of the cricket cage. He felt guilty, because even if he hadn't set it, in a way the fire was his fault. If he hadn't invited everyone into the newsstand, it wouldn't have happened. And it was his playing of the rumba that had made Tucker want to dance, and so tip over the matches. And he did eat the two-dollar bill. He began to believe that he really was a jinx.