Read Online Monkey Island by Paula Fox - Free Book Online

night.”
    â€œYesterday evening, I was walking down White Street,” Calvin said, “and I got tired and sat down in front of one of those dusty-looking fabric stores they have there. First thing you know, two cops came up and said they were taking me to a shelter. I was too old—they called me a ‘geezer’—to be out in this weather. I went limp and they hauled and pulled and I went limper. They let go for a second, and I got away. I should say—I scuttled. You can usually surprise people.”
    â€œYou were saying,” Buddy said, “about a conference.” Buddy frequently reminded Calvin of what he’d set out to talk about.
    â€œThe conference is about you, Clay,” Calvin said. “Wherever your mother is, she’s not going back to the hotel.”
    Maybe the baby had been born, Clay was thinking. It would be Lucy or Daniel. Those were the two names he’d chosen when he’d first known about the baby.
    â€œClay! Listen to me!”
    Ma might be thinking of him this second. He felt himself shrinking to a pinpoint, to a word: Clay . That was what happened when he thought of her thinking of him.
    â€œWe’re going to have to take you to some authority”—here Calvin paused and repeated “authority” with cold dislike—“people who’ll find a home for you … a home with heat and regular meals and a pillow to lay your head on at night. You know that, Clay. You’re dreadfully thin, you’re cold all the time, you’ve been coughing like a chain-smoker. We can’t help it that the life here is so hard. But we can help you get out of it.”
    Clay felt a sound starting in the pit of his stomach and getting bigger and bigger until it flew out of his mouth.
    â€œNo!” he cried.
    â€œChristmas is coming,” Buddy said quickly. “You could be somewhere where it’ll really be Christmas.”
    â€œThis doghouse is coming apart. It won’t last another week,” Calvin went on severely. “Listen to me. We live in days, not weeks and months. Each day can be a year. We think … at the end of a day … how we made it. Again. Only because we found an old coat, only because some people don’t bother to turn in their cans and bottles, only because somebody gives me change, somebody who doesn’t care if I make a few dollars that way because such a somebody knows what a terrible life it is. Other people say, You like the pavement—you must be making hundreds of dollars a week! Maybe some of us do, but we have to lick the sidewalks for it. Clay! I see how hard you’re trying not to hear me! On Monday, Buddy is going to take you to an agency that looks out for children. You think you know all about agencies. You don’t! Not everyone is like that Miss You-can’t-fool-me you told us about. There are people who worry about children like you, whose hearts burn up each day of their lives and fly away at night like an ash, so they have to find a new heart every morning just to bear it all. How do you know Buddy won’t find someone like that? You hear me, Clay?”
    â€œWhy can’t you both take care of me?” Clay pleaded. “I could even go to school.”
    â€œYes, and I could go with you on Father’s Day,” Calvin said. “I can see it now. Me, sitting at the back of the classroom with all the daddies. I look crazy and I am crazy. But—” The old man suddenly gasped as though he’d run out of breath entirely. Buddy clasped his shoulders.
    â€œMonday, Clay,” Calvin whispered. He crawled inside the crate, drawing all the tatters and rags about himself until nothing showed but a few white hairs gleaming in the shadows like silver threads.
    For the first time, that day, Clay went with Buddy to his “job.”
    He held garbage bags open while Buddy picked through them. They walked into alleys alongside apartment houses and