The Saturdays (11 page)

But this particular Saturday was Oliver's, and they had agreed to stay home. Not that he could go out by himself, of course, as they could; but in order to make him feel like a proper member of the I.S.A.A.C., they respected his Saturday and stayed at home. Also, besides giving him back the three dimes he had lent them, each added a dime of his own. “That'll be almost half what we have to spend on our Saturdays, and it will look like a million dollars to him,” Rush said; it was his idea.

The day passed pleasantly enough. There was lemon pie for dessert at lunch, and afterward Rush and Randy gave Isaac a bath in the basement washtub. He was philosophical about this ordeal by now and stood passive, though loathing every minute of it. When he was dry, they took him for a walk to show him off. Mona didn't want to go because she had borrowed some of Cuffy's big steel hairpins and was doing her hair in a pompadour just for an experiment.

The walk was a great success, and so was Isaac. People stopped them frequently to admire and pat him; and every time they asked what kind of dog he was, Rush gave them a different answer in a polite, serious voice. A Bronx beagle, he might say, or a Central Park setter, or an Interborough Rapid Transit retriever. Randy almost died.

When they came back to their own block, they could see Mona hanging out of the second-story window of their house.

“Where's Oliver?” she called, when they drew near.

Rush and Randy looked at her blankly.

“I don't know. Where is he?” shouted Rush.

“Isn't he home?” cried Randy.

“We can't find him
any
place,” answered Mona, withdrawing her head and closing the window with a bang.

They ran up the steps and into the house. Cuffy looked pale and distracted. “Rush, you go down the street to the Potters' and see if by any chance he's gone to play with Petey, though goodness knows he's
never
done such a thing before. Randy, you run round the block. Maybe he's trying out his roller skates again.”

“Maybe he's just hiding,” suggested Randy.

“His coat and cap are gone,” Mona told her. “And anyway I've looked everywhere. In all the closets and underneath the beds. Even in the trunks in the basement.”

“Where's Father?”

“Gone to Philadelphia to lecture. He won't be back till five and we don't know where to get him. Hurry up, Randy, run along.”

At that moment the object of all this concern was seated comfortably at Madison Square Garden. His knees were crossed, he was leaning back with a bottle of pop in one hand, and watching a lady in spangles hanging by her teeth to a rope fifty feet above the ground.

It had all been very simple, but it was also a well-thought-out campaign. Four weeks ago Oliver had received seven dimes which he had prudently concealed in one of his last summer's sandals. Today he had received seven more, which together with the sandal money made fourteen dimes. Untold wealth, but he did not let it go to his head. Everything proceeded according to plan.

Today when he was supposed to be resting he had got up, put on his coat and cap, and walked, faintly jingling, right out of the house. There was no trouble of any kind. When he got to Fifth Avenue he went up to a policeman and said, “Where is the circus, please?”

And the policeman said, “Madison Square Garden. Aren't you kinda young to be out alone?”

Oliver simply said, “No, I don't think so,” and went his way. When he came to another policeman some blocks farther on he went up to him and said, “Where is Madison Square Garden, please?”

“Going to the circus, eh?” said the policeman. “It's at Fiftieth Street and Eighth Avenue. You all alone?”

Oliver simply said, “Yes, I am,” and proceeded on his way, leaving the policeman with his hands full of traffic.

At Fiftieth Street he went up to another policeman and said, “Which way is Eighth Avenue, please?”

“That way,” said the policeman, jerking a white cotton thumb westward. “'Bout three blocks over. Ain't nobody with you?”

Oliver simply said, “No, nobody,” and crossed the street with the red light.

It was easy when he got there too. He just stood in a long line of grownups and children and held tight to his dimes and listened to what the people in front of him said when they got to the window. So when he got there he was able to say, “One, please. The kind that costs one dollar,” and count out ten dimes slowly and carefully. The man behind the window had to peer down in order to see him at all. Then holding his ticket tightly he followed close behind a large family and tried hard to look like one of them.

“Like to hold your own ticket, eh, sonny?” said the ticket man.

“Yes, I do,” replied Oliver, and entered the magic portals. It was wonderful. It smelled of elephants the minute you got in, even before you came to the real circus part. Breathing the smell deeply, Oliver climbed some steps that a uniformed man told him to, and then walked along a corridor that another uniformed man told him to. He thought he heard a lion roar some place, and his feet crunched on peanut shells. It was very exciting. Finally he came to the right door, entered it, and found himself in another world. It was a vast world, carpeted with blue sawdust and walled with thousands of faces. A complicated web of cables and rope ladders and nets rose from the huge arena to misty regions high overhead. On the blue sawdust at the bottom there were three large caged rings, and in each of these rings the most extraordinary things were happening.

“This way, Bud,” said the usher, steering the bedazzled Oliver to a seat. Oliver sat down without knowing that he did so. After a long time he removed his coat and cap blindly, never taking his eyes off the ring nearest him. In it three lions, two bears, and a black leopard were climbing ladders, while on high gold stools seven other lions sat and snarled and batted with their paws at their trainer who was the bravest man in the world and wore a red coat. He could make those animals do anything. Before he was through, one of the bears was pushing the other in a huge baby carriage while all the lions, on a bridge overhead, sat up on their hind legs and begged. Oliver sighed deeply: it was almost too much. His only regret was that he was too busy watching his ring to pay attention to the others. The air rang with the crack of whips and the sharp commands of the trainers.

As the cages were dismantled and the animals taken away, Oliver began to notice the men who were going up and down the aisles selling things: jeweled canes, clown hats, and things to eat. They called their wares hoarsely like a lot of crows. “Hot dogs, hot dogs!” cried one, and “G
et
cha roasted peanuts here,” cried another, and “
Ice
cole pop,” still another. But the one Oliver was most interested in was the man who kept saying “Cotton candy, Cotton c-a-a-a-n-dy,” as he went by with what looked like a lot of pink birds' nests on sticks. Oliver finally bought one. It was interesting; you bit into a cloud of pink spun sugar and it instantly became nothing in your mouth. He ate it lingeringly, to make it last. All the time fascinating things were going on in the huge arena before him. Clowns came out and did their stunts, a man jumped over three elephants, ladies in spangles rode standing up on the backs of broad white horses, and dozens of tiny taffy-colored ponies, with plumes on their foreheads like the frills on lamb chops, pranced delicately about the rings and performed the most astonishing tricks. Oliver bit into his pink cloud and stared dreamily.

“I want some of that candy,” said a sharp little voice at his side. Oliver turned a startled glance on the occupant of the next seat. He had forgotten there was anyone else in the world besides himself and the circus people.

“Don't bother the little boy, Marleen,” said the little girl's mother in the kind of weak, uncertain way that no self-respecting child pays any attention to.

“I
want
some,” repeated Marleen through her nose. She meant business. She was a very little girl and she had a pointed chin, dark eyes, black curls as stiff as cigars, a blue hair ribbon, a gold ring, and pink stuff on her tiny fingernails. Oliver detested her. He looked coldly away and went on eating his candy.

“Now, Marleen,” said her mother.

“I want some. I
want
some of that boy's candy!”

“I'll get you some when the man comes by. Now you be a good girl and look at the pretty horsies.”

“I want some of his. You give me that candy, boy!”

Oliver swallowed the last of it at a gulp and Marleen uttered a piercing scream of frustration. Heads in the row turned and looked at them. “Now, Marleen, now Marleen,” said her mother helplessly. But Marleen continued to scream like a steam whistle until her mother had consoled her by buying her a cotton-candy stick of her own, and a fancy cane besides. Even then she stared unblinkingly at Oliver. She could not be persuaded to look at the arena, and after a while the consciousness of that baleful scrutiny spoiled even Oliver's enjoyment. He couldn't pay proper attention to the jugglers. A few rows away, on the aisle, he noticed a vacant seat and after some deliberation made his way to it without a backward glance at Marleen.

After this unpleasant episode the performance progressed blissfully without a flaw. The procession was magnificent beyond description; from zebra-drawn coaches to elephants wearing tasseled capes and jeweled howdahs. Oliver watched it raptly while eating a hot dog with mustard. He surveyed the acrobats (whose muscles seemed to stretch like garters) while eating another hot dog, this time with sauerkraut. It was forbidden Paradise. Cuffy didn't believe in hot dogs or mustard or sauerkraut, but Oliver believed in them all. By the time the aerial artists had come along he was quenching a violent thirst with a bottle of pop. (It was at this moment that his entire family was in an uproar about his disappearance.) The act was so exciting that he couldn't finish the pop till it was over, because it made his stomach feel so queer when one of the glittering creatures high overhead leaped from her fragile swing and arched through the air like a bird to the next glittering creature. The climax came when one of the creatures stood on her head on a trapeze without holding on and swung to and fro, shimmering like a dragonfly, far above the arena. It was breathtaking. Oliver felt so weak after watching her that he quickly finished his pop and purchased a bag of peanuts to fortify himself.

What a circus it was! One continual blaze of glory from beginning to end; from the flashing, bounding acrobats to the trained seals clapping their flippers; from the daring tightrope walkers to the fat clown who kept finding live ducklings in his pockets. Oliver did not want to believe it was over and sat for quite a while with people climbing over him and pushing past him, in the hope that they were all mistaken and something new was about to begin in the arena.

“Whatcha waitin' for, Bud?” said the usher, coming up to him. “Don'tcha know you'll get swept up with the trash and fed to the elephants if you wait too long?”

Probably he doesn't mean it, Oliver thought, but he got up hastily. At first he couldn't find his coat or cap, but then he remembered he had left them in the seat from which Marleen had driven him. There they still were luckily, though littered with peanut shells and a piece of chewed chewing gum, doubtless the work of the vindictive Marleen. Oliver cleaned them off as well as he could, put them on, and after quite a lot of blundering about in the wrong direction (owing to the fact that he didn't understand the meaning of the word “exit”) he found himself out on the street. Already it was dusk, and he began to hurry. For the first time the probable consequences of his adventure began to trouble him. It made him especially uncomfortable to think of Cuffy for some reason.

And now the streets kept turning out the wrong way, and he found himself on Tenth Avenue instead of Fifth. The place looked strange; full of high, dark buildings, and big noisy boys who went bowling by him on roller skates, and shouted at him hoarsely to get out of the way. As if that weren't enough, he began to have a terrible stomachache. Though he was a calm and resourceful person, Oliver was only six years old after all. So the next move seemed to be to cry. He stumbled and banged along the street, sobbing quietly and wiping his nose on his sleeve, wishing with all his heart that he was at home with Cuffy, and that he had never heard of hot dogs or cotton candy. Dimly he was aware of a clopping of hoofs on pavement but he was too miserable to look up until he heard a voice say:

“Whatsa matter, sonny?”

Oliver saw a big square policeman seated on a big square horse, magnificent as anything at the circus. All his buttons and two gold teeth glittered richly in the light of the street lamp.

“What's eatin' you?” repeated the policeman kindly.

“I'm lost!” wept Oliver. “And I'm sick at my stomach, and I want to go
home!
”

“What's your name?”