Taking Care of Terrific (7 page)

"So, Seth," I said casually, "are you still planning to get me in trouble with my folks? Or am I supposed to pay you off, or what? I might as well warn you that most of my money goes for art supplies."

He looked insulted. "For crying out loud, Enid, I just said that so you'd go over to the
Florian with me. I didn't want to spend the evening watching TV again."

"That's weird, Seth. Why didn't you just
ask
me to go to the Florian with you? I would've said yes." That was a huge lie, of course, but all of a sudden I felt sorry for Seth. That I would have said no was bad enough. But that he
knew
I would have said no was worse.

My sudden feeling of being sorry made me say something else impulsively: "My mother said to ask you if you'd like to come over for dinner some night."

"No," said Seth abruptly, the way I had responded to his suggestion of a baseball game. "I
hate
dinner," he added sarcastically. Then he turned without saying good-by and jogged off down the street, his long arms and legs pale against the darkness until he turned the corner and was gone.

"Mrs. Cameron—" I started to say, but she interrupted and corrected me.

"
Ms.
Cameron," she said pointedly. It sort of confirmed what I had guessed, that she was divorced. I remembered Tom Terrific saying wistfully, "People like to think about their daddies." There was nothing I could do for him on that score. But I thought maybe I could do something in another department.

"Ms. Cameron," I said, "Joshua would really like to ride on the Swan Boats. Do you think—"

"Oh, no, dear," she said. "No, I think not. The Swan Boats are terribly picturesque, of course. But the fact is that it's really only
tourists
who actually ride on them. And they're so crowded. You just never can tell, well, what germs..."

It figured. People who live on West Cedar Street tend to have a negative view of tourists.
You never can tell what sort of germs they may be bringing from Illinois.

Fortunately, Tom hadn't been in the room when I asked her. He came thumping down the stairs a minute later, very cheerful, not aware that another of his little-boy hopes had just been zapped like a fuzzy caterpillar hit by a spray of Raid. He had a box of crayons in his hand.

"Oh, lovely, Joshua!" said his mother. "Are you going to draw pictures today?"

"Yes," said Tom Terrific solemnly. "Of trees."

"What a good idea! Cynthia," she said to me, "why don't you tell him the
names
of the different kinds of trees? They're all labeled, you know. It would be a Learning Experience. I'm sorry you didn't make better use of the
Field Guide to the Birds.
"

She dabbed his face with a dampened paper towel—to
polish
it, I guess, since it was already super clean. Then she patted his hair into the shape that the barber at Trims for Tots had meant it to be. Finally she kissed him on the cheek, then dabbed with the towel at the place where the kiss had been.

We all said "Bye-bye."

"You do the words, right? And I'll do the Popsicles," said Tom Terrific when we were out on the sidewalk. "I have lots of different browns." He trotted along beside me, clutching the Crayolas; it was the Giant box, the one with a hundred crayons.

"Okay." I agreed. Fortunately I'd already finished that week's assignment for art class: a still life, in charcoal. I'd done it at home, in my room, of an eggplant, a pewter pitcher, and a pear. Afterward I'd eaten the pear and returned the pitcher to the dining room cupboard. But I'd forgotten about the eggplant, and now it was brown and squishy, still sitting on my desk.

The remaining pages of a six-dollar sketch pad were going to go for Popsicle posters. I planned to Scotch-tape the posters to sticks, after they were done, so our picket line could carry them.

Hawk and the bag lady were going to be in charge of recruiting the picket line. They didn't know that yet.

But when Tom Terrific and I reached our usual corner of the Public Garden, I discovered that our partners in crime were way ahead of us. I hadn't had a chance the day before to tell Hawk about the bag lady's willingness to join the ranks. But this morning the two of them were sitting
there together on the bench, Hawk's saxophone still in its case at his feet. They were deep in conversation, her straggly gray head nodding up and down close to his big black pillow of hair as they talked.

"We're working out the details of this caper," Hawk announced when we arrived. "Can you guys do the signs?"

I grinned and nodded. So did Tom Terrific. "I have lots of browns," he said happily, holding out his Crayola box. "Not even peeled yet."

Both Hawk and the bag lady acknowledged his statement with solemn nods. It surprised me. It surprised me that the two of them—a black man maybe thirty, maybe forty, years old and an ancient vagrant with her worldly goods jammed into a giant pocketbook—with their different backgrounds, different lives, both knew what Tom meant when he said "not even peeled yet." I knew, of course. But I'm fourteen. I should have outgrown it by now, but I haven't: the feeling that things are A-okay if your crayons still lie in orderly rows, pointed at the ends, arranged by colors, a little rainbow secret in a box, and none of the tips worn flat yet, none of their paper coverings peeled.

Parents don't ever understand that. They
think that when your crayons are broken and peeled and stubby, you can just dump them into a coffee can and they'll still be the same crayons.

I wondered suddenly, for the first time, if Hawk or the bag lady had ever been parents. But it didn't seem the kind of question I could ask.

"You two Rembrandts get to work," said Hawk, getting to his feet, "and we two organizers will go out and give the marching orders to the troops. Tomorrow afternoon be okay? Four o'clock?"

"Sounds good to me," I told him, spreading my sketch pad open on the grass. I had a feeling that we were about to enter battle and that we should be whispering, "Synchronize your watches, men."

Tom Terrific hadn't been paying much attention to the conversation. He'd been removing his browns carefully from the box and lining them up in a row beside the sketch pad. But I noticed that now and then he lifted his eyes and glanced longingly over at the Swan Boats. One was gliding by quite near us, crowded with people: children holding balloons, a fat man aiming his camera (from which he'd forgotten to remove the lens cap; in two weeks he'd be wondering why his film had come back blank) at the ducks and water
birds swimming beside the boat, mothers jiggling babies on their laps, teenage couples holding hands, and an elderly woman sitting primly, wearing an orchid corsage pinned to her blue silk dress.

I saw that for a moment the bag lady, too, looked wistfully at the Swan Boat. Then she and Hawk walked away, her shuffling steps speeded up a bit for his sake; his long, loping steps slowed a little for hers.

Tom Terrific sighed as the Swan Boat glided away under the bridge. Then he picked up a brown crayon, frowned at the blank page, and began to draw a huge Popsicle.

To this day I don't know
exactly
how Hawk and the bag lady managed to convince eighteen female derelicts of all ages, colors, and intelligence to gather at four o'clock the following day. "Powers of persuasion, man," he grinned when I asked him, drawing out the word "persuasion" like a sustained note on a saxophone.

"Come on, Hawk," I said suspiciously. "Tell me for real. Don't put me on."

He chuckled and sank down in the grass beside me, arranging his legs carefully, the way a spider might.

"You got to observe people," he said. "I mean
study
them, man. Scrutinize. You got to figure out what makes them tick."

"How can you figure out what makes bag ladies tick? They all tick differently."

"Riiiggghht. So you approach them all differently. See that one over there? The one with the straw hat and the gloves?"

I looked and nodded.

"I been coming here a long time. I been watching that chick with the straw hat a long time. She's
mad.
"

"You mean crazy?"

"Nope. I mean
mad,
man. She's mad at the whole world. She's got a billion angries inside her head, hiding in that straw hat. You ought to see that mama kick rocks when she really feels the need to let loose."

"No kidding?"

"No kidding. So you approach her where her angries are. I told her, 'Lady, tomorrow we going to organize and we going to do in the sucker with the Popsicle cart. He's been taking advantage. Tomorrow we get him good.' Her eyes lit up like Christmas."

So did mine, listening to him. He went on. "There's another one—I don't see her right
now—she has long hair down her back? Sometimes she has it tied with a string?"

I nodded. I'd seen the long-haired woman wandering around. "Is she mad, too?"

"Nope. She's suffering from a sadness so big inside her it's like a hog with the bloat. Full-blown deee-pression, man."

"What do you say to someone that sad?"

"I said, 'Madam, it won't change the anguished state of the universe any, but I'd like to invite you to a party at four tomorrow afternoon. A little music, a little cheer, a little action, a little celebration.'"

"And that worked?"

"Well, I'm not sure about that one. You can't win 'em all. She started to cry and walked away. But she may show, still. You can't tell."

"And you did that with all the bag ladies? You figured out what makes each one tick?"

He grinned and shuffled his feet back and forth in the grass. "Sounds good, don't it? Trouble is, it don't always work. That's why social workers throw up their hands, sometimes, and become computer programmers. You wanta know how I really did it?" He looked a little embarrassed.

"Yeah."

He chuckled. "Realism, man. That's the
real
power of persuasion. I offered a buck to each one who shows."

I started to laugh, but then I felt terrible. Most days Hawk went home with no more than a few dollars in his saxophone case. "Hawk," I said, "you shouldn't have. I'll pay, well, half if I can. I've got a little money saved up."

But he shook his head firmly and turned me down. "My treat. It cost me no more than a night on the town: a few beers, maybe a movie thrown in. And I haven't had so much fun in twenty years, man."

He unfolded his legs, stood up, and stretched. "Look," he said with a wide grin.

And there they were. It was four o'clock. Tom Terrific came running from the path, where he'd been playing with a puppy. "They came!" he cried in delight.

They had come: a bizarre crowd of mumbling, shuffling women wearing ragged coats and baggy sweaters, sandals and rain boots and knee socks and Supp-hose, flowered hats and hair ribbons and wigs. One of them was carrying a scroungy cat in a plastic shopping bag; its head poked out, and it surveyed the scene with crafty yellow eyes, but I could hear it purring.

Hawk came over to where Tom and I stood watching.

"Us three," he said, "had better stay here, I think."

"Don't we get to march?" asked Tom Terrific. He'd been practicing marching as we walked to the Public Garden from his house. HUP two three four; HUP two three four.

Hawk knelt so that he was level with Tom's four-year-old height. "We're the organizers, man," he explained. "But it's the bag ladies' war. We're going to stand right here to supervise. Your first job will be to hand out signs. Did you make enough?"

Enough? Tom Terrific and I had worked all the previous afternoon. I had taken them home in my backpack, and today we had taped them all to sticks. We could have outfitted the U.S. Army with signs that said
BRING BACK ROOT BEER POP-SICLES
. I pointed to the stack.

But Tom Terrific's lower lip was beginning to poke out ominously. His feet were moving in place: HUP two three four. Tom Terrific wanted to go to battle.

"Hang on," said the Hawk. "I forgot your badge." Quickly he took a marking pen and tore
a scrap of paper from one of the last pages in my sketch pad.

HEAD HONCHO
, he wrote, and he taped the badge to Tom's chest. Hawk told him what it said, and Tom's lower lip retreated. He smiled proudly and stuck his chest out like a marine's.

"Now," said Hawk, "I'll get them lined up. You hand out the signs. Then you give the marching orders, Head Honcho."

And Tom did. He did it terrifically. When every bag lady was armed with a sign and in a line—a straggly, uneven line, but a line nonetheless—he climbed on a bench and called in a booming voice, "Forward, MARCH!" By then we had already drawn quite a crowd of onlookers.

And they marched. Did they march! Weaving, shuffling, muttering, murmuring, the eighteen bag ladies—with a nineteenth,
our
bag lady, right at the head of the line—headed for the Popsicle cart. The man behind the cart looked up and grinned at first; then he read the signs. His grin disappeared.

On the street, a strange vehicle was passing. It was a replica of an old-fashioned trolley car that was used to take tourists around Boston for a sightseeing tour in the summer. In the front, a young man with a microphone was intoning in a
bored voice, "On your left you will see Boston's famous Public Garden, established by the legislature in 1856, designed by Boston architect George Meachum..." His voice trailed off suddenly. Heads craned from the vehicle, watching the parade of bag ladies carrying their signs. "We'll stop for a minute, ladies and gentlemen," said the tour guide, his voice more interested now, "and see what's going on here."

Standing on his bench, Tom Terrific's feet were keeping time, HUP two three four, and his little chest was still thrust forward.

Behind him, Hawk had taken out his saxophone and was playing "When the Saints Go Marchin' In."

A huge crowd had gathered now. Their faces were amused, interested, enthusiastic, sympathetic, in sharp contrast to the ruddy face of the Popsicle man, which had looked at first amused, then puzzled, next angry, and finally had settled into a mask of despair.