It's like this, cat Part 6

"I get sort of restless myself, with nothing to do," says Tom. "We just figured we'd do a little exploring around in the woods and get some exercise."

"Why, yes, that seems like a good idea." Mom looks at him and nods. She seems to have decided he's reliable, as well as respectable.

I see there's some leftover cold spaghetti in the icebox, and I ask Mom to put it in sandwiches. She thinks I'm cracked, but I did this once before, and it's good, 'specially if there's plenty of meat and sauce on the spaghetti. We take along a bag of cherries, too.

"Thanks, Mom. Bye. I'll be back before supper."

"Take care," she says. "No fights."

"Don't worry. We'll stay out of fights," says Tom quite seriously.

We go down the stairs, and Tom says, "Your mother is really nice."

I'm sort of surprised-kids don't usually say much about each other's parents. "Yeah, Mom's O.K. I guess she worries about me and Pop a lot."

"It must be pretty nice to have your mother at home," he says.

That kind of jolts me, too. I wonder where his mother and father are, whether they're dead or something; but again, I don't quite want to ask.

Tom isn't an easy guy to ask questions. He's sort of like an island, by himself in the ocean.

We walk down to Fourteenth Street and over to Eighth Avenue, about twelve blocks; after all, exercise is what we want. The IND trains are fast, and it only takes about half an hour to get up to Inwood, at 206th Street. The park is right close, and it is real woods, although there are paved walks around through it. We push uphill and get in a gra.s.sy meadow, where you can see out over the Hudson River to the Palisades in Jersey. It's good and hot, and we flop in the sun. There aren't many other people around, which is rare in New York.

"Let's eat lunch," says Tom. "Then we can go hunting arrowheads and not have to carry it."

He agrees the spaghetti sandwich is a great invention.

I wish the weather would stay like this more of the year-good and sweaty hot in the middle of the day, so you feel like going swimming, but cool enough to sleep at night. We lie in the sun awhile after lunch and agree that it's too bad there isn't an ocean within jumping-in distance. But there isn't, and flies are biting the backs of our necks, so we get up and start exploring.

We find a few places that you might conceivably call caves, but they've been well picked over for arrowheads, if there ever were any. That's the trouble in the city: anytime you have an idea, you find out a million other people had the same idea first. Along in mid-afternoon, we drift down toward the subway and get c.o.kes and ice cream before we start back.

I don't really feel like going home yet, so I think a minute and study the subway map inside the car. "Hey, as long as we're on the subway anyway, we could go on down to Cortlandt Street to the Army-Navy surplus store. I got to get a knapsack before summer."

"O.K." Tom shrugs. He's staring out the window and doesn't seem to care where he goes.

"I got a great first-aid survival kit there. Disinfectant and burn ointment and bug dope and bandages, in a khaki metal box that's waterproof, and it was only sixty-five cents."

"Hmm. Just what I need for survival on the sidewalks of New York," says Tom. I guess he's kidding, in a sour sort of way. If you haven't got a family around, though, survival must take more than a sixty-five-cent kit.

The store is a little way from the nearest subway stop, and we walk along not saying much. Tom looks alive when he gets into the store, though, because it really is a great place. They've got arctic explorers' suits and old hand grenades and sh.e.l.ls and all kinds of rifles, as well as some really cheap, useful clothing. They don't mind how long you mosey around.

In the end I buy a belt pack and canteen, and Tom picks up some skivvy s.h.i.+rts and socks that are only ten cents each. They're secondhand, I guess, but they look all right.

We walk over to the East Side subway, which is only a few blocks away down here because the island gets so narrow. Tom says he's never seen Wall Street, where all the tyc.o.o.ns grind their money machines. The place is practically deserted now, being late Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and it's like walking through an empty cathedral. You can make echoes.

We take the subway, and Tom walks along home with me. It seems too bad the day's over. It was a pretty good day, after all.

"So long, kid," Tom says. "I'll send you a card from Beautiful Brooklyn!"

"So long." I wave, and he starts off. I wish he didn't have to go live in Brooklyn.

6

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dave wheeling his bike across Belt Parkway.]

AND BROOKLYN

You can't really stay sore at a guy you've known all your life, especially if he lives right around the corner and goes to the same school. Anyhow, one hot Sat.u.r.day morning Nick turns up at my house as if nothing had ever happened and says do I want to go swimming, because the Twenty-third Street pool's open weekends now.

After that we go back to playing ball on the street in the evenings and swimming sometimes on weekends. One Sat.u.r.day his mother tells me he went to Coney Island. He didn't ask me to go along, which is just as well, because I wouldn't have. I don't hang around his house after school much anymore, either. School lets out, and there's the Fourth of July weekend, when we go up to Connecticut, and pretty soon after that Nick goes off to a camp his church runs. Pop asks me if I want to go to a camp a few weeks, but I don't. Life is pretty slow at home, but I don't feel like all that organization.

I think Tom must have forgotten about me and found a gang his own age when I get a postcard from him: "Dear Dave, The guy I work for is a creep, and all the guys who buy gas from him are creeps, so it's great to be alive in Beautiful Brooklyn! Wish you were here, but you're lucky you're not. Best, Tom."

It's hard to figure what he means when he says a thing. However, I got nothing to do, so I might as well go see. He said he was going to work in a filling station on the Belt Parkway, and there can't be a million of them.

I don't say anything too exact to Mom about where I'm going, because she gets worried about me going too far, and besides I don't really know where I'm going.

Brooklyn, what a layout. It's not like Manhattan, which runs pretty regularly north and south, with decent square blocks. You could lose a million friends in Brooklyn, with the streets all running in circles and angles, and the people all giving you c.o.c.keyed directions. What with no bikes allowed on parkways, and skirting around crumby looking neighborhoods, it takes me at least a week of expeditions to find the right part of the Belt Parkway to start checking the filling stations.

I wheel my bike across the parkway, but even so some cop yells at me.

You'd think a cop could find a crime to get busy with.

On a real sticky day in July I wheel across to a station at Thirty-fourth Street, and n.o.body yells at me, and I go over to the air pump and fiddle with my tires. A car pulls out after it gets gas, and there's Tom.

"Hi!" I say.

Tom half frowns and quick looks over his shoulder to see if his boss is around, I guess, and then comes over to the air pump.

"How'd you get way out here?" he says.

"On the bike. I got your postcard, and I figured I could find the filling station."

He relaxes and grins. I feel better. He says, "You're a crazy kid. How's Cat?"

But just then the boss has to come steaming up. "What d'ya want, kid? No bikes allowed on the parkway."

I start to say I'm just getting air, but Tom speaks up. "It's all right. I know him."

"Yeah? I told you, keep kids out of here!" The guy manages to suggest that kids Tom knows are probably worse than any other kind. He motions me off like a stray dog. I don't want to get Tom in any trouble, so I get going.

At the edge of the parkway I wave. "So long. Write me another postcard."