Taking Care of Terrific (10 page)

A pair of college-age kids, boy and girl, went up to the policeman on his horse. They were arguing with each other.

"Excuse me," the girl said to the policeman. "Is there any way to report a stolen purse?"

"Stolen around here?" the policeman asked them.

"About fifty yards from here," the girl said, pointing toward some benches near a clump of bushes.

"What did you do, put it down and somebody grabbed it?"

The girl nodded in despair. The boy with her
said angrily, "Of all the idiotic things to do, Marcia!"

"Did you see who took it?" the policeman asked. He was looking around the Garden; the horse's ears were suddenly alert. You could tell he was thinking: Wow. Action. The horse, not the policeman.

"No," said the girl. "I was reading a magazine, and when I reached for my purse to get a cigarette, it was gone."

"Of all the idiotic things," the boy began again.

"Well," said the policeman in a resigned voice, and the horse's ears relaxed, "you can go report it at the precinct if you want. But if you didn't see who took it, there's not much they can do. It might turn up in a trash can, but the money'll be gone. Was there much cash in it?"

The girl shook her head. "No. But my address book, and my make-up, and my whole class schedule. Now I won't even know where my classes are, and they start next week."

"Come on, Marcia," the boy said furiously. "He can't do anything." He pulled her by the hand and they walked away, the boy talking loudly.

"Think of it as a learning experience," the policeman called after them cheerfully.

Now the last two boats were empty, and the six were fastened to each other with chains. Together, they formed a hugh flotilla beside the dock.

I wedged my feet protectively around my backpack, which I had placed on the dock, and watched the final closing-up procedures. The ticket man locked his green wooden box and put it on one of the boats.

"Do you think he put the money in that box?" I whispered nervously to Seth. "I don't want to steal any
money
."

"Shhhh. No. He has the money with him, stupid," Seth whispered back.

The six boys who'd been chaining the boats together now jumped over to the dock. With the man, they began to pull a huge, heavy chain from the water.

"What's
that?
" I asked Seth in a low voice.

"Shhh," he said again. "Watch."

They unhooked the big chain and ran it through a fastener on the bow of the middle boat in front. Then the man, with the boy, began to pull slowly on the huge wet chain. The entire group of boats moved. There was no one aboard
any of them, and it was eerie, watching them glide away from the dock empty, linked together in a group, out toward the middle of the pond.

"That's cool," said Seth aloud."I never knew before how they did that."

"I still don't," I said. "How does it work?"

"It's a pulley system," he said, talking in a low voice again. "They've got the cable anchored out there, and they can just haul the boats out and in, all together."

"It may be a cool system," I muttered. "But it sure fouls up our plan. I don't want to—" I glanced around to be certain nobody was listening. Especially the policeman. Even his horse; that horse looked smart. For all I knew, that horse could understand what I was saying. I pictured him opening his lips back over his big yellow teeth and saying in a loud voice to the policeman, "Hey, Ralph, did you hear what the girl on the bench just said?"

But the horse was distracted now by a little boy who was scratching his ears gingerly. Horses do the same thing dogs do when their ears are scratched. They smile.

"I just want to borrow one boat," I whispered to Seth. "I don't want all
six.
And what about all
those chains and padlocks? This is beginning to seem like a dumb idea."

Seth was frowning. His forehead was wrinkled and he was watching the boats, sitting out there now in the center of the pond, the swans staring straight ahead with their blank painted eyes.

"Come on, let's go," he said, getting up from the bench. I put my notepad, with its brilliant, complicated spy notes: "Chained together. Small padlocks. Pulley system," into my backpack and followed Seth down the path. When I caught up with him, he announced, "We can still do it. I just have to figure it out. Either I have to get out there somehow, and get one of the boats loose, or we have to haul them all into the dock, then separate one."

"But Seth," I said in frustration, "what about those chains? And that giant cable?"

"Bolt cutter," he said.

"What?"

"It's a tool," he said impatiently, striding along so quickly that I almost had to jog to keep up. "A bolt cutter. We have one at the TV station. I'll borrow it over the weekend."

"Seth," I said slowly, knowing the answer, "what exactly does a bolt cutter do?"

"It'll cut that cable," he said.

I guess it was then that I knew we were going to be in very big trouble.

"A
bolt cutter?
" said Hawk. He shook his head back and forth slowly and whistled. "You're talking burglar tools, man."

But he didn't say no. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his head down, his voice low, and began talking to Seth.

It was the next afternoon, Wednesday, Seth's afternoon off, and I met him at the Garden and introduced him to Hawk.

"Hawk, this is General Sethsandroff," I said with a flourish, glancing at Seth out of the corner of my eye to see if he would mind. But Seth grinned. There was something about the whole enterprise that was like a fantasy, and that made the fake names seem okay. Hawk was caught up in it too.

"Of course," he said, holding out his immense brown hand to shake Seth's very ordinary white one. "The fearless and sinister Russian. Honored to make your acquaintance, my man."

Next thing I knew, they were side by side on the bench, their knees practically touching, going
over the plans that Seth had concocted. For a minute I felt a little left out.

But I was, after all, the idea person. The plan had been mine. Hawk and Sethsandroff were only tightening up the logistics; and besides, the less I knew about the bolt cutter, the better I liked it.

I sat in the grass nearby, while they talked in whispers, and played a game with Tom Terrific. Old Tom didn't know anything at all yet about what was going to happen on Saturday night. It wasn't that I didn't trust him not to tell. It was, I guess, that I wanted to surprise him with the biggest adventure of his so-far-not-very-thrill-packed life. He was looking forward with great glee to a tickling contest that night. I treated him to a few tentative tickles as we sat there together in the grass. I like to hear his chiming little giggle. But a tickling contest was peanuts compared to our real plans.

"Let us have your pencil and paper a minute," called Seth.

I took it to them, and Seth and Hawk each wrote something on a slip of paper. They exchanged the slips, folded them, and slipped them into their pockets.

I nudged Seth. "Here she comes," I said.

The bag lady was shuffling down the path toward us.

"Hi!" called Tom Terrific in his sweet, clear, happy voice.

"Good morning," said the bag lady. It was odd. Ever since the Popsicle strike, she'd stopped mumbling. Now she spoke up with great dignity. She still walked as if she had weights in her shoes and couldn't lift her feet; her clothes still billowed around her, too heavy for summer; and her gray hair still flew around her head like spiderwebs wrenched loose from a cellar ceiling. But she talked now. And she smiled.

"I think it's time to consult with my lady," said Hawk to Seth and me. "Her and me'll go buy a couple of Popsicles and have us a chat. We have to start mobilizing the troops again. Looks like we just got three days. And we need to set a time."

We were silent for a minute, the three of us: Seth, Hawk, and me. The bag lady had stopped to visit with Tom Terrific and to admire a bug he had caught.

Then: "Midnight," we said in unison.

"Long as she doan rain?" asked Hawk, laughing.

"Long as she doan rain," Seth and I responded.

Later, Seth went with me when I took Tom Terrific home.

"Right here," I explained when we reached the corner of Chestnut and West Cedar streets, "is where Tom Terrific changes back to Joshua Cameron." I could see that Tom was looking anxiously at Seth to be certain he would understand, to be sure he wouldn't laugh.

But Seth didn't. "Good spot," he said solemnly. "I might as well change here, too, from General Sethsandroff back to Seth Sandroff, ordinary adolescent nudnik."

Tom Terrific giggled. He liked the word "nudnik."

"Presto, Chango!" said Seth in a loud voice, waving his hand in a magician's flamboyant gesture.

"Presto, Chango!" echoed Tom Terrific.

Ms. Cameron looked a little taken aback when she saw the three of us at the door. Her eyes narrowed. You could tell that she was trying to decide how to say, "You are not to entertain
boys
while you are babysitting my son."

But I knew just how to cut her off at the pass.
"Ms. Cameron," I said, "this is my friend Seth Sandroff. We ran into him on the way home. Seth's mother is Wilma Sandroff."

The magic words. "Wilma Sandroff," Ms. Cameron cooed in the voice that adults reserve for church dignitaries. "My goodness, you're Wilma Sandroff's son? I saw her on the Donahue show! I just
happened
to have the TV on—I
rarely
watch television."

It's okay, Ms. Cameron, I wanted to say. You don't have to apologize for watching television. Everybody watches television. Mrs. Kolodny never apologizes.

Seth grunted. We said good-by to Tom Terrific, alias Joshua, and fled.

"Tom Terrific really liked that when you said you were changing back to Seth Sandroff, nudnick," I said to him, walking home.

Seth chuckled. "He's really cute," he said. "I like little kids."

"I don't mean to sound stupid—even though it practically rhymes with Enid, I know—but what's a nudnik, Seth?"

He looked at me in pretend amazement because I was so—well, so stupid. "It's a nothing," he explained. "A blah. A moron."

"SETH! Don't call yourself that! You're not a
nothing!" At the same time I heard myself saying that—and meaning it—I was remembering the way I had treated Seth Sandroff for years. Like a nudnik.

He just shrugged. I though of something else. "Seth, what was the piece of paper that Hawk gave you?"

"Oh, I meant to show you." He took the folded paper from his pocket. "It's his phone number. And I gave him mine. Just in case we have to get in touch about Saturday night."

I looked at the seven meaningless numbers written in pencil on the slip of paper. They weren't entirely meaningless; I recognized the exchange as Cambridge. So that was where Hawk lived.

It was a little weird, thinking about where he lived. To me he was just a Public Garden person. A friend from the green place. It made me uncomfortable to think, as I did for a minute, about what his house might be like, about whether he had a wife, or children. How on earth did they survive—or, in fact, did he survive—on those few coins that people tossed into his saxophone case?

"It's Cambridge he goes home to," I said. "I
wonder where the bag lady goes.
All
the bag ladies."

"Maybe it's better not to think about that," Seth said as we turned onto Marlborough Street. "Anyway, we know where they'll be going Saturday night at midnight, right?"

"Long as she doan rain," we said together. Then we both laughed, and suddenly Seth reached over abruptly and took my hand. A little awkwardly, we held hands the rest of the way to my house.

I don't think it was for romantic reasons or anything. I think it was because we were both scared.

It rained on Thursday, and it rained on Friday. But Seth told me on the phone that he could absolutely guarantee that it was not going to rain on Saturday.

"Howie Friendly says so," Seth explained.

Ha. Howie Friendly (if you need a description; if that disgusting name isn't enough) is the weatherman on Seth's father's TV station. He wears polyester plaid sport jackets, has dyed hair, and his only claim to fame, as far as I'm concerned, is that he can draw lightning bolts, snowflakes, and smiling suns left-handed while he talks.

Apparently he was drawing smiling suns on Saturday's weather map.

"Trust Howie," said Seth.

Would you trust a man wearing an orange and green sport jacket? I ask you.

I talked a lot to Seth on the phone those two rainy days. Mrs. Kolodny began to make a lot of dumb jokes about "Enid has a boyfriend," and
then my parents took it up too, grinning a lot, my father tousling my hair (my God, do you know of anyone who actually had their hair
tousled
since 1902?), and my mother suggesting that maybe now I'd like to go clothes shopping. "Now" meaning "now that a boy finally likes you."

If they had only known the truth. The only clothes I needed as a result of my new relationship with Seth Sandroff were black cat-burglar clothes, not what you'd find in the Prep Shop at Bloomingdale's. We—Seth, Hawk, and I—had agreed that we would all wear black on Saturday night. The better not to see you with, my dear.

As for the bag ladies: well, we couldn't tell them what to wear. None of them probably had anything beyond what was on their backs anyway.

And Tom Terrific? Once when I'd helped him look for a sweater, I had seen a little black velvet suit with short pants hanging in his closet beside all the corduroys and ginghams. Somehow a black velvet suit didn't seem appropriate for this particular adventure. I'd have to come up with an outfit for him that night after his mother had left.

It was all set. Hawk and the bag lady had somehow organized the others, and Hawk told
Seth on the phone that there would be at least twenty of them at midnight on Saturday. Obviously we'd gotten a few converts since the success of the Popsicle strike.

On Friday evening, after he'd come home from work, Seth told me that he had the bolt cutter hidden away in his closet. One of the best smuggling jobs since the Hope diamond was stolen, he said. It occurred to me that the Hope diamond was probably considerably smaller than a bolt cutter, and he was darn lucky he hadn't been collared at the door to the station as he left, with an unwieldy contraption of metal and wood wedged under his jacket.