The Saturdays (12 page)

“Oliver M-Melendy.”

“Know where you live?”

Oliver told him.

“Okay. You quit crying now,” said the policeman. “You and me will take a little ride to your house. Think ya can hold out?”

“I guess so,” replied Oliver dubiously. His stomach felt awfully unreliable. The policeman got off his horse and hoisted Oliver up on it as if he had been a kitten. Then he got on himself, behind Oliver, clucked at the horse and away they went. Oliver thought gloomily that it was probably the only time in his whole life that he was ever going to ride with a mounted policeman and he felt so sick he couldn't appreciate it.

“I guess I'm going to get a scolding when I go home,” Oliver told the policeman. “Maybe I'll get a spanking too.” All the shine was gone off the day.

“Why, what did you do?”

“Will you promise not to arrest me?” said Oliver cautiously.

“I doubt if it will be necessary,” said the policeman, so Oliver told him.

“Well, I'll let your family take care of the penalty,” the policeman decided. “It's a very serious offense all right, but it seems to me you've been punished almost enough as it is.”

The traffic cop at Fifth Avenue looked at the mounted policeman and Oliver and said, “You've run in another big-time gang leader, I see.”

“You'd be surprised,” replied Oliver's policeman, and gave Oliver a pat on the shoulder.

At the Melendy house all was confusion. Randy was in tears. Father (who had returned from Philadelphia) and Rush were still out searching, and Cuffy was saying into the telephone, “Six years old. He has blue eyes, blond hair, and he weighs—” when the doorbell rang, and she dropped the receiver.

“Oh, Oliver darling, where
were
you?” cried Mona's voice, and Cuffy arrived to see her on her knees beside Oliver, who looked smaller and paler than ever before. Behind him stood the largest, most solid policeman she had ever seen in her life.

Aching with relief, Cuffy hugged Oliver, then she looked up at the policeman and said, “That's the quickest response I ever got from anything. I hadn't no more than just finished describing him to the police this minute—”

“The police force is never at a loss, ma'am,” replied the officer with a wink.

Cuffy held Oliver away from her:

“Where in the world have you been?”

“To the circus,” replied Oliver wanly.

“To the circus! Alone?” Cuffy was horrified.

“I wouldn't be too hard on him, ma'am,” advised the officer.

“Go ahead and spank me if you want to,” Oliver said, and was sick on the doormat.

Long, long afterward, when all the thunder and lightning in his stomach had subsided, and the danger of a spanking was past, Oliver lay in his small bed with his hand in Father's.

“Why did you go without telling us, though?” asked Father. “You could have gone to the circus. Rush or Cuffy would have been glad to take you. I would have taken you myself if I could have stolen the time.”

Oliver sighed. “I did ask Cuffy about it once, but she said oh no there's too much measles around. And everybody else was going out alone on their Saturdays, so I just thought I'd go alone too. I did want to see the circus so badly.”

“Didn't you know we'd worry?”

“I guess I didn't think about it till afterward” Oliver admitted.

“Well, you'll never give us a scare like that again, will you?”

“No, I never will, if I can help it,” promised Oliver.

“All right then. That's that. Now suppose you tell me what you liked best at the circus.”

“Oh, everything was wonderful. I liked the man on the one-wheel bicycle, and the elephants, and that automobile with all the clowns and the donkey in it, and the lady who stood on her head on the swing, and I liked all the things I was eating, while I was eating them. But the thing I liked
best
of all wasn't in the circus.”

“What was that?” said Father.

“It was when the policeman brought me home on the horse,” replied Oliver.

For now, no longer overshadowed by stomachaches or unhappy apprehensions, the memory of that ride had become a radiant thing. He remembered the horse's two pointed ears that could move independently of each other, and its brawny, arching neck with the tidy black mane; and its strong, healthy smell. It was sort of like riding on a boat, only better because it felt alive, and you were higher up. And behind, immense and gorgeous in his uniform, rode the officer of the law who had befriended him. Oliver remembered how he held the reins in white gloved hands the size of baseball mitts. The splendor of that ride would never die.

CHAPTER VI

Saturday Six

After Oliver's Saturday the senior members of the I.S.A.A.C. went to Father in a body and Randy (because she was president) was spokesman. Her speech was short and to the point.

“We've decided this business of going off by ourselves isn't such a good idea after all. We've decided to all do something together every Saturday instead, so Oliver can do it too.”

“A sound idea,” Father approved. “I was going to suggest it myself, but I much prefer having it come from you.”

So that was all right. The thing was deciding on something they all wanted to do that could be done within the limits of a dollar and sixty cents.

“How about the Empire State Building?” suggested Rush.

“Heights make my stomach feel queer,” Mona objected. “And besides it costs too much.”

“How about the Statue of Liberty?” said Randy.

“Heights make my stomach feel queer,” repeated Mona patiently.

“Let's go up in an airplane!” cried Oliver excitedly. Rush just looked at him.

“For a dollar and sixty cents?” he said.

“And besides
heights make my stomach feel queer!
” insisted Mona in exasperation.

“Well, they say you don't notice it so much in a plane, but anyway it's out of the question,” Randy said. “I know what. Let's take our lunch in a basket and have a picnic in Central Park. We can plan a what-do-you-call-it for next Saturday and the ones after it.”

“A campaign,” said Rush. He sat down on the piano bench and improvised a march.

“Well, it's rather cold,” murmured Mona doubtfully. “Willy's even got the furnace going.”

“But it's May,” Randy said firmly. “It
ought
to be warm. And anyway who minds a little cold? We can take extra sweaters, and have hot cocoa in the thermos bottle.”

At last it was agreed upon. Cuffy told them just what they could take from the icebox and Rush adroitly managed to smuggle half an apple pie and a jar of pickled onions besides.

“You girls and Oliver will have to carry the things,” he told them blandly. “I'll meet you at the zoo entrance at half past twelve.”

“Why? Why can't you come with us?” asked Mona, a little resentfully.

“They don't allow dogs on the bus,” explained Rush. “And we
can't
go without Isaac.”

Naturally they couldn't. Mona made no further objections.

On their way out they met Willy Sloper wandering forlornly through the kitchen hall.

“Hello, kids,” whispered Willy huskily.

“Why aren't you talking out loud, Willy?” questioned Randy, whispering too. “What's the secret?”

“Laryngitis,” whispered Willy, thumping his collarbone. “Can't talk. Haven't feltsa foolish sincema voice changed.”

“You go see Cuffy,” ordered Mona firmly. “She can fix anything like that. She's wonderful at curing people.”

“Merely a matter of castor oil, old man,” said Rush heartily, or heartlessly, depending on how you looked at it.

“And gargling and gargling and gargling,” said Mona.

“And mustard plasters that burn like bonfires,” contributed Randy.

“Mustard plasters! Gargling! Castor oil!” cried Oliver, squeaking swiftly down the banisters. “I'm certainly glad it's not me,” he said as he banged against the newel post at the bottom and dismounted.

“I wish it wasn't me neither,” croaked Willy gloomily, departing in search of Cuffy. “Well, g'bye, kids. You have yourselves a good time.”

“Oh, Willy, I wish you were coming too,” said Randy sorrowfully. “But it wouldn't be good for your laryngitis.”

“Rush, you hurry and go on ahead with Isaac or we'll be there hours ahead of you,” directed Mona. But as it turned out he was only twenty minutes late, and they had a wonderful time watching the seals until he came.

“Let's find a picnic place right away,” Randy suggested. “I don't know why it is, but whenever I have a picnic basket with me I can hardly wait to begin eating.”

After a while they found a place; quite near the lake in a hollow between some rocks where it wasn't so cold. Now and then the sun looked almost as though it were going to come out, but it never did quite. The Melendys didn't mind. The hot cocoa was exactly right and Mona had created some unusual sandwiches composed of peanut butter, mayonnaise, brown sugar, grape jelly, and lettuce all at once between enormous slabs of bread.

“Big as monuments,” Rush commented approvingly. “I like sandwiches to be so thick you have to open your mouth like a yawn to take a bite. Then you know you've really got something.”

“What's in them, anyway?” asked Randy.

Mona's acting look came over her face.

“‘Eye of newt,'” she replied dreamily. “‘And toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting.

Lizard's leg, and—'”

“Mainly peanut butter, I should guess,” said Rush practically. “But good, anyway.”

Isaac kept sitting up on his hind legs and crooning pathetically. They all gave him pieces of this and that. “He's going to be a very fat, unsightly dog if we don't look out,” Rush said, tossing him a pickle, which he ate. He ate anything.

“Thou cream-faced loon!” said Mona. “You'll make him sick.”

“Cream-faced—
what
did you call me?” demanded Rush indignantly.

“It's Shakespeare,” Mona explained hastily. “
Macbeth.
Look it up if you don't believe me. I always sort of liked the way it sounded. I suppose the witch poem must have made me think of it.”

“Oh, well, if it's Shakespeare I suppose it's all right. I thought it was something you made up yourself. You'll have to be a very good actress when you grow up to justify all the Shakespeare we've had to listen to.”

“You'll have to be a very good pianist,” retorted Mona, “to justify the nine hundred and sixty-seven times we've had to listen to you plow through the Revolutionary Etude.”

“And I'll have to be a very good dancer,” Randy said peaceably, “to justify all the pounding and leaping I've done all my life.”

“When I grow up,” Oliver interjected suddenly, “I'm not going to be a train engineer after all.”

“What are you going to be, darling?” Mona asked.

“A policeman on a horse,” replied Oliver raptly, reaching for a piece of pie.

When they had eaten all they could, and the leftovers were put back in the basket till they could find a wastepaper receptacle, they began to wonder what they should do next. Randy wanted to go back to the zoo, but that was out of the question because Isaac was with them and dogs were not allowed. Mona would have liked to feed the leftover crusts to the ducks in the bird sanctuary, but it was Oliver who decided the question. He wanted to go out on the lake in a rowboat; and that seemed a good idea to everyone, even though the day was raw and grey. Rush wasn't sure whether dogs were allowed or not, so they did Isaac up in a sweater just to be on the safe side and Mona carried him under her arm like a bundle. The boat wasn't expensive, thank goodness; forty-five cents for all of them, and they would have something left over for next time. They fitted into the boat neatly: Rush at the oars, Randy and Isaac in the bow, Mona and Oliver in the stern. Rush rowed very well. The water was a dark, thick green that looked almost solid until Rush cut into it with the oars and it broke into curling, wavering patterns of light and dark, speckled with bubbles. There was only one other boat out today. A stout elderly man was rowing at terrific speed. His face was red and he was frowning.

“I bet he does it because he thinks the exercise will make him smaller around the middle,” whispered Mona. “He looks as if it were medicine instead of fun.”

Randy leaned far out over the bow and stared down at her own reflected face: dark lips and eyes, wild, curling hair. It looked different and new like the face of a stranger, but it didn't interest her for long. Deep down through the face she could see things: a trailing weed, something round and white (was it a shell?), glimpsed for a second and then lost; a shimmer of metal that could have been a silver bracelet, or a dagger, or an old tin can. Probably an old tin can.

“I like water,” Randy said.

“I like milk,” said Oliver.

“I don't mean to drink. I mean to look at or play with or get into. Dark-green water in lakes like this, and salt water with big waves and a fishy smell; and water coming loud over a dam, and water in brooks all full of caddis houses and green moss. And water in swamps with cattails growing out of it. And yellow mud-puddle water that you can wade in, with the mud as soft as butter between your toes.”