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I found my mother and sister sitting on our front stoop to get a breath of cooler air, and I joined them. I told them about the McGivneys, and Mother was surprised to learn that there was a Mr McGivney. A
The next morning, there was a thirdboy outside the A & P, and he had a brand-new cart and a sign with professional-looking lettering that offered to carry groceries for 4c. You could tell from his clothes that he wasn't poor, just a regular kid lucky enough to have a new cart and somebody-probably a father-to help him paint his sign and to advise him about undercutting the competition. I could see right off that offering to carry the groceries for four cents was a smart scam, because most of the women would give him a nickel, and they wouldn't ask for their pe
But he stayed, and I didn't get a single customer that day, bracketed as I was by a bigger competitor and a more attractive one. I stuck it out until the A & P closed that night. But I didn't bother to come back again. What was the use?
That Friday our weekly $7.27 welfare check came, so we were able to buy the tube, although it meant having potato soup every night that week, rather than the usual two. But I liked potato soup and still do, despite the gallons of it I consumed as a boy. That evening I stood in front of the Emerson on one leg in a narcotic state of deep soul-comfort, my head bowed, my eyes half-closed, totally absorbed in the exciting worlds of Jack Armstrong, The Green Hornet,and The Lone Ranger, Masked Rider of the Plains.The world was right again.
After my sister and I did the supper dishes, the three of us sat in the front room, listening to Friday night's run of suspense programs. We always turned off the lights and listened in the dark, with only the faint yellow glow of the radio's dial because it made the stories deliciously spooky on such programs as Suspenseand The I
I awoke one morning to the chilling realization that summer vacation was almost over and, what with trying to earn extra money and spending time up at the McGivneys', I hadn't gotten enough good out of it... sort of like a Popsicle that melts while you're obliged to talk politely to a nun, and you don't get to suck it white before it falls off the stick. Next year I would be ten, and I felt that advancing to a double-digit age was significant... the end of childhood, because once you get into two digits, you're there for the rest of your life. And another thing: all my life it had been nineteen-thirty something, and nineteen-thirty had a solid, comfortable sound, but next year would be nineteen-forty.And that 'forty' looked fu
All right, I accepted that bringing my mother's damned ship into port was my responsibility. But I couldn't take care of Mrs McGivney, too. I intended to play as hard as I could for the next two weeks until school and my burdensome adulthood started, and that meant I needed all my time for myself, for my games, for listening to the radio, for wandering the streets in search of mysteries and adventures, and there just wouldn't be any time to waste sitting around with the McGivneys.
I avoided the back alley for a week, during which I revisited one by one all the story games I had ever played so I would never forget the exhilarating fun of them. That week I fought off Richelieu's swordsmen, ran cattle rustlers off the streets of Albany once and for all, and led an expedition to the Elephant Graveyard, where we almost lost Reggie and Kato. On Sunday, I changed into play clothes right after six o'clock mass and went off to spend the morning playing one of the best games of all: Foreign Legion, which involved not drinking anything after supper the day before so I'd be good and thirsty by the time I had crossed Broadway towards the river, passed through the tangle of still-sleeping all-Negro streets that was called Blacktown, and scrambled over the high wooden wall of an abandoned brickyard that had huge piles of sand and gravel. I staggered through the endless sand, stumbling and slipping as I climbed the pile, blinded by the glaring sun, suffering terribly from thirst made worse by the fact that I was weakened by half a dozen spear wounds inflicted by perfidious Arabs whom I had always treated well, unlike some of my brother Legio