Pete Hamill - North River

And she was gone. Delaney watched her go, then took cornflakes from the closet and milk from the icebox. Normal. It was Sunday. She was never here on Sunday.

Then the telephone rang. Twice. A third time. He was suddenly rheumy with dread. But then thought: It could be news. From Knocko. Or Danny Shapiro. Or Grace. He went through to the office and lifted the receiver.

“Hello,” he said.

Someone was breathing on the other end. But no words were said.

Carlito dressed warmly, and they went walking east, with church bells ding-donging everywhere. Delaney could not tell Catholic church bells from Protestant church bells. Some were joyful. Some were somber. All were a form of summons, calling the faithful to services, as they had for centuries. He loved the sound but ignored the summons. Delaney felt warmer, holding the boy’s hand.

As they reached Broadway, Delaney squatted down and showed Carlito how to tuck the bear inside his coat, with its head sticking out, leaving the boy’s hands free. He could swing both gloved hands now, Delaney explained, or he could jam them in his pockets. And he could still talk to Osito. When Delaney stood up, a woman was smiling at him. She was about fifty, wearing a Sunday hat bedecked with artificial spring flowers. There was no makeup on her fleshy features. She wasn’t flirting. She didn’t seem amused. She just seemed happy to see a grown man, no longer young, caring for a small boy.

“What a handsome lad,” she said.

“That he is,” said Delaney. “Thank you.”

She nodded and moved on, walking downtown. He noticed that her long dress stopped above large feet. The feet of Connemara, not Agrigento. She merged with the crowd.

They turned west on Eighth Street, heading to Fifth Avenue. As they came closer, the boy stopped again. Up ahead was the Sixth Avenue Elevated, turning into Greenwich Street. For a moment, Delaney froze. Against the window of a saloon, he saw the bartender from Club 65, dressed in a camel’s hair coat and brown fedora. He was watching Delaney and the boy. Then he turned abruptly and walked away.

“Gran’pa, look!” the boy said excitedly, pointing to the distant sight of iron pillars rising from the street. “The El!”

“Yes, that’s the El all right. But it’s not the one we saw before. It’s a different El.”

The boy’s brow furrowed, and he whispered something to the bear. There was no train visible on the El. Delaney looked in the other direction and saw a man in a gray belted coat peering into a store window. The man who was alone in Angela’s that night. Goddamn. I’m being followed. By two different guys!

“Let’s go up onna El, Gran’pa.”

“Not now. Maybe later.”

The boy mumbled to the bear in a disappointed way. Delaney was sure that the bear was disappointed too. When he looked back, the man in the gray coat was gone. A G-man? Watching the same target as the bartender from the gangster joint? Maybe it was just an accident, Delaney thought. Maybe the bartender was out for a Sunday-morning stroll. Just like us. And saw me. Maybe the G-man, if he was a G-man, just needed a rest after sitting through mass. Maybe, but not likely. And who called this morning? Who was breathing into the telephone? Delaney noticed a hot dog shop on the other side of the street and, sensing danger, steered the boy left into a used-book store. From behind the streaky window, he looked back into the street and did not see the man in the gray coat or the bartender. Why would they follow me around? They must know I’m not part of the great communist plot. And Frankie Botts knows I’m not that hard to find. Killing me would be simple.

The boy was gazing around him at walls of books, and at tables piled with larger volumes. At the far end of the room, a man with a thick red beard and heavy horn-rimmed glasses sat at a desk. He wore a bulky gray sweater and a loose red scarf in the chill of the room. He looked up and then went back to reading his own book. Classical music played from a radio. There were a few other men in the store, examining books, locked in solitude. There were no women. Delaney turned to Carlito and gestured at the walls and table.

“Books,” Delaney said. “These are all books.”

“Books.”

They drifted around the store, the boy touching the books as if they were polished shoes. They came to a table of children’s books. Delaney searched them for a book about trains or the great oceans. Nothing. But there were some treasures. A Child’s Garden of Verses. Peter Rabbit. Treasure Island. The Story of Babar. Delaney wondered what the boy could comprehend. It was too soon for Long John Silver. But maybe I could read him the lovely Stevenson verses and put poetry in his head to stay. I could start him up the road to Byron and Whitman and Yeats. He picked up the copy. It was worn, but unmarked by scribblings in pencils or crayons. Then he opened the Babar book. The illustrations were bright with primary colors, as innocent as Matisse, with all those gray elephants in green suits, exploring the world.

“Look at this,” Delaney said to the boy, who took the large book in his small hands. He sat on the floor and peered at the images of elephants and ponds and jungle and a city that was surely Paris. He turned the pages with growing anticipation. He pointed at a bear’s face on one page.

“You like that book?” Delaney said.

“Yes, Gran’pa. I like it.”

“Give me a buck for da two of dem,” the owner said, in the tones of Brooklyn. His fingers and teeth were yellow from tobacco.

“Thanks.”

“Dat Stevenson book, da pomes are pretty nice,” he said, sliding the books into a paper bag. “But y’ know, dat Babar is pure colonialist propaganda.”

Delaney wanted to laugh and didn’t. The man was so serious he didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “Could be,” Delaney said. “But I like the pictures, and so does the boy.”

The owner shrugged. “Just warnin’ you.”

“Thanks.”

They turned into lower Fifth Avenue, with its stately Georgian houses and the Brevoort Hotel, and up ahead was the Washington Arch and the green swath of the park beyond. The boy stopped and gazed up at the arch, as if he’d seen it before somewhere. He pointed and looked up at Delaney with a questioning face.

“The arch,” Delaney said.

“Arch.”

In six or seven years, he would tell the boy about Stanford White, who designed the arch, and how Big Jim was at the opening with all the other boys from Tammany Hall. He would explain Tammany Hall soon enough. After a long while, he would tell the boy how Stanford White died. Shot down by the crazy husband of a discarded young mistress. He could explain the meaning of all this carved stone. For now, it was enough to take the boy’s hand and cross the street. A uniformed cop in a long uniform overcoat stood before the arch, shifting his weight from foot to foot, tapping his club into the bare palm of his left hand.

“Good morning, Officer,” Delaney said.

“Good morning,” the cop said, a bit startled.

“Morning,” the boy said.

They walked under the arch and back around, with Delaney pointing at the bas-reliefs and George Washington and details the boy would learn about later. All the time, he was scanning the square for the man in the gray coat or the bartender from Club 65. No sign of either of them. Then he and the boy faced the six acres of Washington Square. Under the grass and the walkways, the bones of thousands of human beings were buried. For a long time, it was the city’s Potter’s Field, where the bodies of the lonesome poor were dropped in ditches and covered with dirt. Here the victims of smallpox lay wrapped in yellow shrouds. Murderers were dropped after being hung from the gallows on the northwest corner. On foggy nights, the residents always insisted, the ghosts of the unhappy dead rose to walk the world again. That too must wait. The boy was still too young for ghost stories. He was still learning the names of the visible world.