Soon the trip on the green trolley to Mr Schneidermann’s became a regular part of Leo’s routine. As he passed over the bridge he would gaze from the streetcar window down into the river thirty feet below, where Mr Kranze and his crew (Mr Kranze was a foreman on the state bridge-and-highway commission) were working to replace some badly rusted beams in the old king span. The view both exhilarated and repelled Leo. He knew he was safe on the streetcar – the gong went ding-ding, the wheels went rattle-and-clank, and on the overhead wire the little wheel that ran along gave off bright sparks – yet what if the bridge were to give way? Two years before, the thaw-swollen Cataraugus River had overflowed its banks and risen to street level, carrying away entire houses. And though the bridge itself had held, a woman and her child had been drowned in the flood, and Leo imagined that the woman was Emily, he the child, and that the bridge actually did give way and they both drowned in the foaming torrent.
Sometimes, when Rudy was too busy in the shop to miss her, Emily would go upstreet on the trolley car with Leo, to listen to him play. And sometimes, while Leo went upstairs for his lesson, Emily would wait downstairs in Mr Burrough’s office – she could hear perfectly well, she assured Leo – and when the lesson was over, Mr Burroughs, who said to call him John, would offer Leo taffy treats wrapped in colored waxed paper.
For a time Leo – and Emily – had been content in the belief that they were getting away with their subterfuge. Rudy seemingly paid no attention to their comings and goings (he was giving them enough rope to hang themselves, Leo later decided), all he cared about was his butcher shop. Then Leo had exciting news: John Burroughs arranged for Leo to travel by bus to Hartford to play an audition at the music school in that city, and Leo played so well that he was offered a special scholarship to continue his music education.
Emily was ecstatic. Her dream, she said over and over, was to have Leo play for the great conductor, Toscanini, and someday to be accepted into his radio orchestra, so she could tune in the program and hear Leo play. There was no doubt in her mind that she was raising a true musical prodigy, like Mozart or Chopin, and she craved the same sort of fame for her son.
But it was not to be. One day Rudy discovered the box of saltwater taffy John had given Leo, and he forced from him the truth about where the candy had come from. He cursed the name of Burroughs and swore he’d kill the man. He dragged Emily by the hair into the bedroom and berated her. Then he beat her mercilessly, until the terrified Leo ran down the stairs, out through the door, and over to Mrs Kranze. She called the police, who came and took Rudy away in the wagon, and Emily had a mouse in her eye for nearly a week, and an ankle she’d fallen on that had to be taped for her to walk.
When they let Rudy out of jail he came home sullen and unchastened, and snicked his belt out of his loops and bent Leo over his knee. And if the punishment failed to fit the crime, what did Rudy care? Leo was sent to bed without his supper and Emily wasn’t allowed near him. He cried himself to sleep and awoke to cloudy skies: that day the rains came and the river began to swell – the river that would free him from Rudy’s tyranny, but lose Leo his beloved mother as well.
He returned the photograph to his wallet, then rolled over on his stomach, feet crossed in the air, chin propped in his palms, as he regarded what he could see of the Haunted House: its yellow-painted clapboards and mermaid’s scales aged to an unappealing mustard shade, its tall, narrow windows bare of shutters, the glass broken out long ago, so that the empty oblongs stared out with a grim sort of blindness. Not surprising, Leo thought, when they had only a weed lot and a heap of coke cinders to gaze upon. Strange, the feeling the house gave him. What was it? Terrible things had taken place in those empty rooms that reminded him of
– what? What did it remind him of?
He shut his eyes tight, trying to squeeze out the dark thought that was like a slippery fish, an eel, maybe; it came swimming out of the black ooze, to dart past his eyes in a bright flash, then, before he could catch it, to be swallowed up again in the inky blackness. It was like fishing at the bottom of the sea, where stinging, paralyzing creatures lurked, anemones that bloomed like flowers and then shocked you to death.
A piece of the puzzle was missing, something he needed to put it all together, but like the little fish it eluded him. Perhaps it was better this way; sometimes it didn’t do to pry into these matters too much. Lift up a rock and you never knew what might crawl out. Maybe that was why people got amnesia, so they wouldn’t remember what they wanted so badly to forget. Leo knew a thing or two about amnesia. He remembered the doctor’s face, not Dr Percival at the Institute, but the other doctor – Epstein was his name
– who wore the white coat with the row of pens and pencils picketing the edge of his starched pocket. Eagle pencils they were, funny how Leo could remember a minor detail like that when he couldn’t remember – again that little fish of thought swam into his ken, but though he baited a hook he had no luck.
Resettling himself in a more comfortable position, he took his pen and notebook and began writing. Miss Meekum had been right: the notebook would give him a record of his Moonbow summer, one he’d cherish at a later time, and he’d been not only jotting down accounts of his day-to-day activities, and making notes on spiders, but trying his hand at stories, and character sketches of some of the campers he’d met so far – the ones he didn’t care for, bullies like Bullnuts Moriarity, and some of his cronies from High Endeavor, and the ones he did, like the other Jeremians, especially Tiger and the Bomber, and, next door in Ezekiel, Junior Leffingwell and Emerson Bean and Dusty Rhoades, who had been friendly toward him.
His concentration was broken as he heard a Tarzan yell, and, looking up he saw Tiger and Harpo charging across the meadow; with them came Eddie Fiske and the Bomber, venting the throaty cry of the born Berserker, charging at Leo head down, arms spread like airplane wings, palms flattening the tops of the Queen Anne’s lace. He threw himself down beside Leo, narrowly missing the violin case, which Tiger yanked from destruction only at the last moment.
“Cripes, spud, watch where you’re dumping that big can of yours, will ya?”
The Bomber looked around him. “I didn’t do nothin’. Jeez…”
“You would’ve crushed it if you’d sat on it.”
“But I din’t sit on it!”
“Yeah, but you almost did.”
“Nerts.”
The Bomber made himself comfortable, then pulled an Oh Henry! bar from his pocket and began peeling off the wrapper. The three boys had met up at Orcutt’s and made their purchases together. Tiger spilled out between his bare knees the contents of a small paper sack: flat squares of brightly wrapped bubble-gum packets, each one containing a card bearing a portrait of either a befeathered Indian chief or a famous baseball player. He offered Leo his choice of the packets to start his own gum-card collection: Leo got Lefty Gomez.
“Hey, Leo, aren’t you supposed to be at Sandbag College?” the Bomber asked, munching on the Oh Henry! bar.
Tiger darted Leo a look that said he agreed with the Bomber. It wouldn’t do to rile Coach, who was already down on Leo because of his chicken-wing.
“That’s okay,” Leo said, more unwilling than ever to tear himself away from the meadow now that his friends had come. “I’d rather stay here. Besides, there’s time. I can practice with Coach during swim.”
Tiger still looked doubtful – Coach didn’t like changes in his plans, and Leo needed swim practice, too – but the Bomber, having consumed the remains of his candy bar at a bite and licked his sticky fingers, chose that moment to insert them into Harpo’s mouth to finish the job.