The Saturdays (13 page)

“And water in the bathtub with Cuffy scrubbing the skin off you,” added Rush. “And water on the brain like I think you've got. Ah, yes, my friends. Water is a wonderful thing.”

“Well, I like milk,” said Oliver.

“Oh, look!” cried Randy excitedly. “A big fish! I swear I saw a big fish.” She stood up, leaning far out.

“Where, where?” demanded Oliver, leaping to his feet. The boat lurched, Isaac barked, and Randy fell overboard with a loud splash.

“Oh, boy!” murmured Rush in an awed voice. “
Now
what will Cuffy say!”

Randy's startled face reappeared almost instantly; her curls plastered flat to her head. “Gee whiz!” she gasped breathlessly, swimming to the boat. “Is it ever cold!”

“Still crazy about water?” asked Rush, reaching out an oar for her to catch.

“I guess so,” replied Randy doubtfully, grabbing it. “But it's not so easy to swim in shoes and two sweaters and all your other clothes besides.”

Rush and Mona pulled her into the boat at the risk of capsizing it. Oliver bounced excitedly up and down on the stern seat, Isaac barked, the picnic basket fell over and disgorged cups, spoons, papers and oranges all over the floor of the boat. It was a scene of the wildest confusion. By the time they had Randy aboard they were all more wet than dry, and she was as drenched as anyone can ever be without being drowned. Rush pulled off his jacket gallantly and wrapped it around her. Mona gave her her top sweater and tried to dry her hair with a paper napkin.

“We'd better beat it,” said Rush, rowing furiously toward the pier.

The odd thing was that the man in charge of the boats seemed more annoyed than sympathetic about the episode, and remarked several times that this here was not no swimmin' pool like some dumb kids seemed to think.

“Now we'll have to take a taxi,” said Mona in resignation. “There goes the surplus.”

“The what?” asked Randy breathlessly. They were all dogtrotting to the nearest exit from the park, with Oliver some yards behind bleating “Wait for
me
!”

“The I.S.A.A.C. money for today she means,” Rush replied jerkily. “But it doesn't matter at all.”

“It can't be helped anyway,” said Mona.

“I'm sorry,” gasped Randy, thudding moistly along. “Maybe it wasn't a fish, even.”

“Don't you worry, Ran. It was sort of an adventure, after all,” Mona comforted her. “I never heard of anyone falling overboard in Central Park before.”

“Wait for me-e-e!” wailed Oliver, far behind.

Finally they reached the gate and found a taxi. The driver was a very nice man named Yasha Minczkotski who roared with laughter when they explained what had happened. He seemed to share Mona's view.

“You fell outa boat in Centra Park? In
Centra
Park? Outa
boat?
Wait'll I tell my kid.”

“How old is your kid?” asked Mona politely.

“Nine year,” replied Mr. Minczkotski.

“B-boy or g-girl?” asked Randy, her teeth chattering.

“Boy. Crazy over boats. Wait'll I tell urn.”

By some miraculous stroke of luck Cuffy was out when they got home. Father was in New Haven, speaking at a banquet, and was not expected back till after midnight.

“Nobody'll ever need to know,” said Randy in relief. “I won't have to take medicine or go to bed with a hotwater bag or anything.”

“You'll have to take your shoes and socks off here in the hall. I'll get a towel. Otherwise you'd leave wet footprints all over the stair carpet and Cuffy'd be bound to find out,” said Mona sensibly.

“What about all these wet clothes though?” Randy trudged barefoot and shivering up the stairs. “The wettest thing in the world to wear is a wet sweater!”

“Take them all off and give them to me. I'll hang them up in the furnace room,” said Mona. “Willy won't tell if we ask him not to. And you'd better take a good hot bath, Ran.”

When Cuffy returned at four o'clock she found the Melendy children up in the Office, peacefully employed. Rush was playing the Golliwog's Cakewalk, Randy was practicing standing on her toes, Mona was reading, and Oliver was painting large pictures of the circus with a great deal of paint, mostly red.

“Did you have a nice time?” inquired Cuffy. “I was afraid it was going to rain. I thought to myself they'll get caught in a shower and come home soaking wet.”

“No, Cuffy,” Randy said. “We didn't get caught in a shower!”

Cuffy couldn't understand why they all snorted with giggles at that. She didn't see anything funny about it.

At bedtime Cuffy said, “Well, I suppose I'd better go down and put the furnace to bed too.”

Mona looked up, startled. “Why? Where's Willy? Is his laryngitis worse?”

“I told him to stay home in bed a day or two. We could look out for the furnace, I told him.”

“Let me do it, Cuffy,” pleaded Rush. He'd had a sudden vision of all Randy's clothes drying on the basement clothesline. “I'd
like
to do it. Really I would.”

“Well, all right, Rush. I don't know's there's any reason why you shouldn't.”

“And
every
reason why I should,” said Rush significantly, with a wink at Randy. Besides concealing the evidence of her mishap from Cuffy this was an excellent opportunity to get Isaac out of the basement and up to the forbidden haven of his room.

At last all the good nights had been said, all the doors closed, all the teeth brushed. The night wind sucked in the window shades and then blew them out again with a sighing sound. Sometime in the night Rush half awoke to hear a thunderous downpour of rain, and the sound of Cuffy closing windows all over the house. He just had time to get Isaac under the bed and sink into deep simulated slumber himself when Cuffy came into his room and closed the window. He could hear her clicking her tongue and muttering, “Teeming! It's simply teeming.” Why do people always say it
teems
when it rains hard? Rush wondered drowsily, and went to sleep again. It was the deepest darkest sleep he had ever had. For hours there wasn't even a dream in it, and then at last there was a dream.

Far, far away a dog was barking. In his dream Rush could see it: a tiny dog sitting in a lighted doorway at the end of a long passage. Funny how clearly I can see it at this distance, thought Rush in his dream; it must be at least a mile away, and yet I can even see the little freckled places on its muzzle. “Be quiet,” he said to the dog. “Be quiet, let me go in peace: I want to go away without any noise.” But instead of being quiet the tiny dog suddenly expanded and grew enormous, big as a house, towering above Rush; and his barking was terrible, unbearable and overwhelming. Rush opened his eyes wearily. It took him several minutes to realize that it was Isaac who was barking.

“Isaac, Isaac, what's the matter?” Rush's words came out slowly. He felt queer: as though he were still in the dream. Isaac continued to bark. “Oh, do please shut up,” begged Rush. “All I want to do is go back to sleep, and how can I if you make such a racket?” Isaac paid no attention. He ran to the closed door and back again, barking all the time in a shrill nervous way as though he were afraid. It's strange he doesn't seem to have wakened anyone, wondered Rush. I'd have thought Cuffy would be in here long before this, giving us both the dickens. His arm felt heavy as lead as he searched for the light switch. What's that funny smell? His heart began to beat a little faster with an unknown fear, though still heavily, laboriously, as though he were carrying a burden up a hill. His hand found the switch and the room sprang into light. Everything looked the same. The big tin alarm clock ticked loudly like his own heart, and its severe black hands both pointed to three. There was the pile of tattered scores, and the tennis racket, and the nine big airplane models, and the bookcase with all its litter of books. There were his clothes, his empty socks hanging sadly over the chair arm, and his shoes on the floor, one upright and one toppled on its side. Everything just as usual. Yet was it? There was that funny smell, there was that heavy feeling in his chest, and the way he saw everything so clear and yet so distant. There was Isaac's barking.

Rush swung his legs over the edge of the bed. When he sat up straight he felt queerer than ever. “That smell,” Rush said out loud to the frenzied Isaac. “I know that smell but I can't think what it is.” For some reason he began to think of a movie he had seen several years ago. Again he saw the hero fallen forward across the papers on his desk. “What's the matter? Why did he die?” He'd asked Mona, and Mona had said, “Are there any more caramels in that bag? He's dead of coal gas. His wife put too much coal on the fire.”

Like a diver on the ocean floor Rush staggered clumsily to the door and pulled it open. The smell was terrible. Everything looked the same and yet he knew that an evil power was coiling through the house like some invisible, venomous serpent. He hurried past Father's empty room and down the stairs, banging at Cuffy's door, and when there was no answer he hurried in and threw open both the windows.

“Cuffy, Cuffy!” he called urgently, shaking her plump shoulder.

“What's the matter?” said Cuffy at last. “Why in the world are you hollerin' so? Look out, don't knock over my teeth.” She reached down for the tumbler.

“Hurry, hurry!” cried Rush. “It's coal gas! The house is full of it. Get Oliver awake and take him outdoors!”

“What in the world—why is Isaac barking so?
Coal gas?
” Cuffy, awake at last, sprang out of bed in her huge white nightgown. “Where are the girls?”

But Rush was already in their room, opening the windows and calling them. The window shades stood out flat on the draft. Rain streamed in and the city odor of damp and soot and wet cement was like the breath of heaven itself.

“Mona Mona Mona!” shouted Rush. “Get up. Get up. We're being suffocated to death!”

“Oh, I don't care, I want to sleep,” begged Mona and buried her head under her pillow. She wanted to sleep more than she had ever wanted anything in the world; to sink deeper and deeper into this velvety, fathomless, dreamless sleep. “Wake up! Wake up!” bawled Rush in a voice like iron as he pulled the pillow away. “Coal gas, I tell you! It'll kill you! Wake up!”

Mona opened her eyes. Oh, how hard it was. How horrible to come back again.

“My head hurts so terribly,” she wailed. “Coal gas? You mean like in that Paul Muni picture we saw?”

“That's right, that's what made me know what it was. That and Isaac. Hurry up, Mona, put on some shoes and a coat. You'll have to help me with Randy. I can't get her to wake up.”

Mona was ready in an instant. She bundled Randy into a coat and socks; shoes took too long.

“Shake her some more, Rush.” Mona's voice was breathless with fear. “Oh, Rush, do you suppose— Is her heart beating?”

“Of course it is, you idiot.” Rush sounded angry but he sounded scared too. “Here, help me.”

He slung the limp little figure of Randy over his shoulder and began to go downstairs. Cuffy had turned on all the lights and opened all the windows. She had wasted no time. As they came down to the first floor hall they heard the screech of a siren as the emergency van drew up. In the vestibule, with the doors wide open, stood Cuffy in her red flannel wrapper with the grey tail of hair hanging down her back, and Oliver weeping drowsily in her arms.

“We can't wake Randy up!” cried Mona as Rush with a grunt of weariness put Randy on the floor. Very carefully he put her down. She looked so small and pale and seemed so fast asleep that he felt terribly frightened. Cuffy dropped the howling Oliver and bent over Randy.

“She'll be all right once she gets a little air, poor child.”

The emergency men came in in their dark-blue uniforms. There seemed to be dozens of them, hundreds of them, thundering up and down stairs. Two of them worked over Randy. It didn't take long. In about five minutes she opened her eyes. “Rush,” she whispered.

“Yes, Ran.”

“What happened?”

“Coal gas. Something happened to the furnace but everything's okay.”

“I dreamed you and I were going down a long dark tunnel like a subway tunnel only with no cars. Way in back of us, at the end, there was a lighted doorway. You kept saying, ‘We ought to go back, we ought to go back,' but I kept saying, ‘No, no, we ought to go on.'”

This was so extraordinary that Rush could hardly believe it.

“I dreamed about that tunnel myself,” he told Randy. “Only I saw Isaac in the doorway. And he was really there. He's the one who saved us, by barking so loud.”

“Rush,” said Cuffy, “after this you can keep that dog in your room every night if you want to. He can sleep on the foot of your bed, bury his bones under the living-room carpet, leave his muddy paw prints on the woodwork and anything else he likes. He's a wonderful dog and no mistake!”

Out of doors a little knot of curious people had gathered; the light shone on their wet umbrellas. Willy Sloper pushed his way among them, mounted the steps and entered. He had a piece of flannel around his neck, and his spiky hair glistened with rain.

“Where's your rubbers, Willy?” demanded Cuffy. Willy ignored the question.

“What happened?” he whispered strickenly. “Was it the furnace?”

“Coal gas. I don't know how it happened,” replied Rush. “I put coal on the furnace myself before I went to bed. I left the furnace door wide open too.”

“Open!” croaked Willy, almost with his normal voice. “You mean you left it
open?
Did'n I ever tell you you hafta leave that door
shut?
Some furnaces you leave the door open, some furnaces you leave the door shut. This one you hafta leave the door shut. Doggone it, didn't I ever tell you that?”