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“We have to get back in,” Billy gasped.
“…showing us that we must go to the greater harlot of Babylon, there across the river. There is no turning back.”
Billy sank to the ground, gasping for breath and trying to knead some of the pain from his fingers, while Peter calmly looked back at the ship that had been their home and fortune. Three small figures capered on the high deck and their jeers came faintly through the cold wind from the bay. Billy began to shiver.
“Come,” Peter said gently, and helped him to his feet “There is no place to stay here, no dwelling any more. I know where we can get shelter in Manhattan, I have been there many times before.”
“I don’t want to go there,” Billy said, drawing back, remembering the police.
“We must. We will be safe there.”
Billy walked slowly after him. Why not? he thought; the cops would have forgotten about him a long time ago. It might be all right, specially if Peter knew some place to go. If he stayed here he would have to stay alone; the fear of that was greater than any remembered fear of the police. They would make out as long as they stuck together.
They were halfway across Manhattan Bridge before Billy realized that one of his pockets had been torn away in the fight. “Wait,” he called to Peter, then, more frightened, “wait!” as he searched through his clothing in growing panic. “They’re gone,” he finally said, leaning against the railing. “The Welfare cards. They must have got lost during the fight. Maybe you have them?”
“No, as you recall, you took them to get the water yesterday. They are not important.”
“Not important!” Billy sobbed.
They had the bridge to themselves, an aching winter aloneness. The color of the slate-gray water below was reflected in the lowering clouds above, which were driven along by the icy wind that cut sharply through their clothes. It was too cold to stay and Billy started forward, Peter followed.
“Where are we going?” Billy asked when they came off the bridge and turned down Division Street. It seemed a little warmer here, surrounded by the shuffling crowds. He always felt better with people around.
“To the lots. There are a large number of them near the housing developments,” Peter said.
“You’re nuts, the lots are full, they always have been.”
“Not this time of year,” Peter answered, pointing to the filthy ice that filled the gutter. “Living in the lots is never easy, and this time of year it is particularly hard for the older people and invalids.”
It was only on the television screen that Billy had seen the streets of the city filled with cars. For him it was a historical — and therefore uninteresting — fact, because the lots had been there for as long as he could remember, a permanent and decaying part of the landscape. As traffic had declined and operating automobiles became rarer, there was no longer a need for the hundreds of parking lots scattered about the city. They began to gradually fill up with abandoned cars, some hauled there by the police and others pushed in by hand. Each lot was now a small village with people living in every car because, uncomfortable as the cars were, they were still better than the street. Though each car had long since had its full quota of inhabitants, vacancies occurred in the whiter when the weaker ones died.
They started to work their way through the big lot behind the Seward Park Houses, but were driven off by a gang of teen-agers armed with broken bricks and homemade knives. Walking down Madison Street, they saw that the fence around the small park next to the La Guardia Houses had been pushed down years earlier, and that the park was now filled with the rusting, wheelless remains of cars. There were no aggressive teen-agers here and the few people walking about had a shuffling, hopeless look. Smoke rose from only one of the chimneys that projected from most of the automobiles. Peter and Billy pushed their way between the cars, peering in through windshields and cracked windows, scraping clear patches in the frost when they couldn’t see in. Pale, ghostlike faces turned to look up at them or forms stirred inside as they worked their way through the lot.
“This looks like a good one,” Billy said, pointing to a hulking ancient Buick turbine sedan with its brake drums half sunk into the dirt. The windows were heavily frosted on both sides, and there was only silence from inside when they tried all the locked doors. “I wonder how they get in?” Billy said, then climbed up on the hood. There was a sliding sunroof over the front seat and it moved a little when he pushed at it. “Bring the pipe up here, this might be it,” he called down to Peter.
The cover shifted when they levered at it with the pipe, then slid back. The gray light poured down on the face and staring eyes of an old man. He had an evil-looking club clutched in one band, a bar of some kind bound about with lengths of knotted cord that held shards of broken, pointed glass into place. He was dead.
“He must have been tough to hold on to a big car like this all by himself,” Billy said.
He was a big man and stiff with the cold and they had to work hard to get him up through the opening. They had no need for the filthy rags bound around him, though they did take his Welfare card. Peter dragged him out to the street for the Department of Sanitation to find, while Billy waited inside the car, standing with his head out of the opening, glowering in all directions, the glass-studded club ready if anyone wanted to dispute the occupation of their new home.
6
“My, that does look good,” Mrs. Miles said, waiting at the end of the long counter, watching as the Welfare clerk slid the small package across the counter to Shirl. “Someone sick in your fambly?”
“Where’s the old package, lady?” the clerk complained. “You know you don’t get the new one without turning in the old. And three D’s.”
“I’m sorry,” Shirl said, taking the crumpled plastic envelope from her shopping bag and handing it to him along with the money. He grumbled something and made a check on one of his record boards. “Next,” he called out.
“Yes,” Shirl told Mrs. Miles, who was squinting at the package and shaping the words slowly with her mouth as she spelled out the printing on it. “It’s Sol, he had an accident. He shares the apartment with us and he must be over seventy. He broke his hip and can’t get out of bed! This is for him.”
“Meat flakes, that sure sounds nice,” Mrs. Miles said, handing back the package and following it with her eyes as it vanished into Shirl’s bag. “How do you cook them?”
“You can do whatever you like with them, but I make a thick soup with weedcrumbs, it’s easier to eat that way. Sol can’t sit up at all.”
“A man like that should be in the hospital, specially when he’s so old.”
“He was in the hospital, but there’s no room at all now. As soon as they found out he lived in an apartment they got in touch with Andy and made him take Sol home. Anyone who has a place they can go to has to leave. Bellevue is full up and they have been taking over whole units in Peter Cooper Village and putting in extra beds, but there still isn’t room enough.” Shirl realized that there was something different about Mrs. Miles today: this was the first time she had seen her without the little boy in tow. “How is Tommy — is he worse?”
“No better, no worse. Kwash stays the same all the time, which is okay because I keep drawing the ration.” She pointed to the plastic cup in her bag, into which had been dropped a small dollop of peanut butter. “Tommy gotta stay home while the weather is so cold, there ain’t enough clothes for all the kids to go around, not with Wi