The Planet of Junior Brown (6 page)

Who was it creeping down the stairs from above? In his mind, Junior saw the man's shoes. The shoes were black, the leather so worn it had creased to the softness of kid. The leather had gaping holes slit by a razor to ease the pain of festering bunions. The heels of the shoes had worn away. The man's ankles, covered by filthy silk socks, were swollen and discolored. Behind Junior's eyes, the stench of the man was unspeakable. It was an odor of decay. Junior saw the man's ragged pants cuffs caked with filth before his second sight went blank and the elevator door sliding open wrenched his eyes wide and clear. The elevator went down without stopping, carrying only Junior. The whole time Junior concentrated on cooling off and stopping the sweat that poured out of him.

Junior came tearing out of the building. He swung his legs loosely, his body rolling from side to side. “Man,” he said. He looked up. The sky was evening dark. Not yet night, it was suppertime, the end of a working day. It was a resting, quiet time before the town came to life again as the city of darkness.

Slowly Junior felt himself grow calm. He turned this way and that, looking for Buddy Clark through the crowd of people hurrying home. Buddy appeared from behind a parked car.

“It's late, man,” he said. He looked at Junior, not at all disturbed at having to wait longer than usual. To Junior, it appeared that Buddy had not been waiting so much as he had found himself ready to leave at the same time Junior was ready to go.

“You didn't even freeze yourself,” Junior said, noticing how comfortable Buddy looked.

“I found me this place,” Buddy said. “This some kind of coffee house. Weird, man. I was talking to this soft little thing who don't know where she going and can't remember where she been.”

“Sticks like her going to tie you up one day,” Junior told him.

“Never happen as long as I keep moving,” Buddy said. Already Buddy seemed to be going off from Junior and preparing himself for the time he would have to leave Junior. Junior felt this withdrawal happening as he had before. He accepted it as he did the fact that freedom ended for him once he went home to his mother's house.

“We can take us a bus,” Junior said. “If I get on a subway, I'll might be sick.”

Buddy looked at him curiously. “You want to ride a bus all the way uptown?” he said. It was then he saw that Junior was drenched in perspiration. “Getting yourself a real kind of cold, man,” Buddy told him.

The two of them walked without talking to 79th Street and Broadway. They waited twenty minutes for a bus.

“You going to catch hell from your mother, being so late,” Buddy said. “You sure musta had yourself some long kind of lesson today.”

Junior searched Buddy's face to see if he were teasing. But Buddy was intently watching the street, part of his mind already loose from Junior. Still he and Buddy were talking easy, in a way they had not spoken for a while.

“She don't care if I'm late,” Junior told him. “She only want me to be sure that once I do come home, I don't bring nothing from outside in with me.”

The way Junior spoke touched Buddy. Gently he said, “You had yourself a time today, didn't you, man? What happen up there with you and your teacher?”

Finally Junior said, “You won't have to wait outside next Friday.” He could see the Broadway bus stopping down at 72nd Street. “Miss Peebs say you can come in while I take my lesson.”

Buddy kept quiet. His mind clicked off the pieces of Junior he could put together. Junior had tried to get rid of him every Friday. Now Junior was telling him he could go someplace he never was allowed to go. Junior had been late this Friday. Something had gone on at the lesson. Junior had come out of it not afraid to have Buddy say a little something about his mother.

The bus arrived. After they had found seats together, Junior couldn't make himself tell Buddy what had happened to Miss Peebs' piano.

This relative started messing with Miss Peebs' piano and she had to throw all kinds of stuff at him—how was that going to sound to Buddy? Or, you see, she had this cup of coffee in her hand and she threw it at her cousin and got coffee all over the piano keys. All right. But how do you explain the hammer marks? Did her relative do that just because he hated noise? Or was he vicious?

“How come I can go with you now?” Buddy broke in on him.

It took Junior so long to find an answer Buddy was ready to believe he wouldn't answer at all. But then Junior began to stammer, “You … you know … Miss Peebs is different … you know it better than me … some people are different from all other people …”

Junior didn't know how to describe Miss Peebs in a way that would explain her to Buddy. The place she lived in would seem like a madhouse if he tried to talk about it.

“She is having some trouble,” Junior said. “She's got this somebody, this awful relative who forced himself in on her. She has to let him stay because it turns out he's pretty sickly, even though he can still get around.”

“Well, what was he like?” Buddy asked him.

Softly, Junior began about it. “I was so afraid of him.” His voice, getting louder, “Oh, man, he was dirty. He stank. He was stinking from his filthy socks!”

Junior heaved himself in a rocking motion, the way a caged bear will sway in a summer's stifling heat.

“Junior, stop it,” Buddy said. “You about to knock me out of my seat!” Buddy grew alarmed. People on the bus were turning around. The bus driver kept his eye on them through the mirror.

Abruptly Junior stopped when he realized, like an explosion in his head, that the man he described to Buddy had been someone he had imagined.

“Fool,” Junior said, “why do you have to bother me all the time? I didn't even see him. I wasn't anywhere
near
him.”

“Then how come you have to lie like that?” Buddy said. “I'm through with you!” Disgustedly, Buddy folded his hands on the seat in front of him and rested his head on his outstretched arms.

“I didn't see him because he slipped out of the house,” Junior said. “I didn't want to tell you since she's got to get rid of him. But he ain't just sickly, he's so bad off, he can infect a lot of people.”

Buddy sat up, looking at Junior. “You mean, this cat's got a disease so bad, he supposed not to go outside?”

Junior had not thought about diseases. “I guess so,” he managed to say.

“And you stayed in that house where there's a cat with a disease and you want me to go there too?”

“I didn't even
see
him,” Junior said again, “I wasn't anywhere near the room she makes him stay in.” He lied without knowing what he said was a lie.

“You have to come with me Friday,” Junior told Buddy. “You got to help me … I mean, help her … because he doesn't want me to have my lesson. He maybe even could damage her concert piano… .”

For some time Junior had kept secrets from Buddy. Now everything was coming out in the open. Still Buddy could hardly believe that Junior suddenly wanted to have him come to his music lesson next Friday.

“Maybe sometime next week I can come see you at your own house,” Buddy said. He looked unconcernedly out the window.

In Junior's mind, his mother's fearful presence tried to warn him against bringing Buddy home. By gritting his teeth, Junior was able to hold her back.

“I guess so,” Junior said. “I'll figure out a good time when Mama isn't feeling too sick.”

“Maybe about Wednesday,” Buddy told him.

“And then on Friday, you can come with me to Miss Peebs',” Junior said.

“We straight then,” Buddy said. “Nobody going to keep you from having your lesson.”

On the bus, Junior and Buddy watched people hurrying along windswept Broadway for fifty blocks. Junior felt safe with Buddy and safe hidden in the seat. Except for hunger which had gnawed a numbing hollow inside him, he had a long, nearly peaceful ride all the way uptown.

4

FOR BUDDY, THE CITY
of darkness was deeply familiar and as fine a treasure as any he could have dreamed. He had accepted its mindless indifference to life because he knew it was he, alone, and others, as alone as he was, who gave it what little humanity it had.

There were hundreds of kids like him who had never known what even the poorest home was like. No one worried whether they had a floor to sleep on or food to eat; whether they had got into trouble, or if they were getting along all right. It was not that no one cared about them, Buddy knew. It was simply that no one had any idea they existed.

Rarely did Buddy trouble himself about his mother, whom he hadn't seen since the age of nine. He knew she had abandoned him because his presence reminded her how completely unable she was to care for him. Out of desperation she had walked away from him. Buddy had been glad to never again have to see her suffering. If Buddy longed for anything, it was for a brother. He had known many brothers, but not a single one whom he could run with or just even make angry once in a while.

Buddy recalled living in the hallway and in the basement of the building where he and his mother had lived before she left. People knew him and felt sorry for him. They gave him clothes and some food. Once in a while people would take him in to live with them. But people had children of their own. Just when Buddy thought he was going to stay one place, the children there would fall into a fit of jealousy. The next thing Buddy knew, he was back sleeping in the hallway.

Maybe that was why somebody had called the Children's Shelter on him. He'd barely gotten away in time. He'd seen the car pull up about the time he was bedding down for the night. He'd had to lay there and be cool about it, sitting up, rubbing his eyes when they kneeled over him. They asked him his name and if he had any living relatives. He had taken his time. His plan for escape had depended on his sounding truthful. Buddy had told them his name. And then he first made up the story about his mother really being his aunt.

His mother had left him, Buddy told them. So he stayed with his aunt, who lived over on the next block. But she had told him to get out; she wouldn't even let him take his little sister, who he was afraid would starve. That had done it.

“Where does your aunt live again?” they had asked. He explained and when they took him outside, he pretended he thought they were kidnapers and he wouldn't get into the car. He began to cry. “Just walk around the corner with me and I'll show you where she live,” he told them. He threw a fit until finally one said, “We can walk around there, leave the car, we'll get it later. Let's find out about the other child, his sister.”

That was how Buddy had won them over. They all had walked around the corner. Buddy had walked in front, planning which building would be the one where his aunt lived. There were three good buildings which had courtyards connecting with buildings on the next street. If he could get on the next street, two streets over from the street on which they had parked their car, Buddy knew he would be free. He could run in and out of buildings so fast, they never would find out which way he'd gone.

Buddy's plan had worked like the charm he knew it was. He had lost them in the maze of tenements in his neighborhood. Only hours later, when he had stumbled into an incredible, new world, did he wonder why he had run away from the only people in the whole city who might have taken good care of him.

“
Come listen to my sto-ray … Did you ever want a brother?
” Buddy made his way down to Broadway and 42nd Street, singing his song as he walked part of the way, or humming when he had to take a subway to keep warm. He had to get over to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where he kept his things. Close to dawn, Buddy would start making his way back uptown to end up outside Junior Brown's house. But during the night he never once thought of Junior, whom he had seen safely home.

Buddy had to keep his mind on himself and what he was able to do. He avoided walking on Eighth Avenue, where he knew too many people, especially sticks who sometimes followed him around all evening bumming from him what little money he kept for his work. He knew every kind of hustler there was on Eighth Avenue, and his instinct warned him away from those vacant-eyed young sticks walking the streets.

Buddy made his way quickly across Eighth Avenue over to Ninth and then Tenth. He had a place on Tenth Avenue in a boarded-up building that was due to be torn down in some vague future. He had chosen the building with care. The first floor had caved in on the basement. It had been necessary for Buddy to fashion a ladder out of rope, which he used to lower himself into the rubble. He had knotted the rope ends of the ladder tightly around the first-floor cross beam. The ladder hung down into the middle of the basement next to a mountain of debris. Although the upper floors of the building were used occasionally by all kinds of wandering men, never did any of them stumble on the hiding place in the basement.

Buddy entered the building through a window on the first floor, at the side away from the corner. The building next door was quite close and the space between it and the window was pitch black. Buddy felt along the window until he found the loose boards he had crossed in such a way that they could not be pushed in. He uncrossed them and set them on the ground. Then he yanked at the planks covering the window opening. They came out in one piece. Buddy eased himself gingerly through the opening and sat on the ledge inside, replacing the boards and the planks. He could accomplish this feat in about twenty minutes, but there had been a time when getting into the window opening had taken him most of an hour.

Buddy relaxed on the ledge a moment. Beneath his feet was a section of floor extending around a small bedroom for about a foot before it caved in to make a jagged hole seven feet across. Buddy gripped the window frame and stretched his leg straight out. He swung his leg back and forth through the air until he had located the rope ladder. He stretched out his other leg and caught the ladder between his ankles. After a minute he was able to loop the ladder around one foot, bringing it back to where he sat.