Pete Hamill - North River

“Okay,” Delaney said. “Some work to do.”

She looked at him in an apprehensive way, as he moved into the shed that led to the yard. He lifted the old Arrow bicycle and carried it through the kitchen into the hall where patients sat in the mornings. Rose and Carlito followed.

“We’ll need some newspapers, so we don’t dirty the floor,” he said. “And I have to find the oil in the shed…”

Rose produced some old newspapers while Delaney found the oil and then started tearing away tape and covering from the bicycle. Carlito ripped at the wrappings too. Then the naked bicycle stood there, as if shrinking into shyness. For twenty minutes, the three of them wiped away the dust of winter and spots of rust, using sandpaper and oil, and Delaney then oiled the gears.

“What a beauty,” Rose whispered. “Che bello.”

“Can you ride?”

“Of course. I can’t drive a car or a bus, but a bicycle, sì!”

“Hold this steady.”

Delaney lifted Carlito into the wide basket fastened to the front handlebars. It usually held his bag when he went on house calls. The boy looked uncertain and then smiled broadly when he fit perfectly, with his small legs draped over the front.

“He can be the chief!” Rose said. “Like on a fire engine.”

“The navigator,” Delaney said. “He can hold my bag in his lap.”

“Yeah, a navigator like Cristoforo Colombo.”

Delaney thought: Sailing without charts, right into the future.

That night he slept without dreams and awoke before six to a new sound.

Birds.

Unseen, but out there for sure. Their chatter celebrating the coming day with calls and whistles. Some must have worried about the presence of bullying seagulls. But mainly they issued songs of joy. Away off he heard the baritone horn of a liner, coming into the North River to one of the Midtown piers. Delaney felt the way he did every morning when he was twenty.

He shaved and showered and dressed. At Sacred Heart when he was a boy, they celebrated the first Friday of each month. But the central figure was always a dead man on a cross. They should have celebrated Mondays. They should have celebrated birdsong. They should have sung in Latin about foghorns.

Rose still slept, but the boy was up, and Delaney told him to dress.

“We’re going for a ride,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later, Delaney wheeled the bicycle into the areaway at the front of the house, with the bundled-up boy beside him. To the east in Brooklyn, the sun was struggling ro rise. Most snow was gone, and he saw that the yard was carpeted with dead leaves and litter and needed sweeping. That would have to wait. He placed clamps on his trouser bottoms and opened the front gate and wheeled the bicycle to the sidewalk. He lifted Carlito into the seat.

“Hold on, big fella,” he said.

And began to pedal. Slowly at first, with the back of the boy’s head before and below his own. Struggling for balance, finding it, then pedaling harder. He saw some silhouetted men waving as he passed, and he waved back. Then he saw the light burning in Mr. Nobiletti’s shoe repair store. Getting an early start. He pulled over and went in with the boy.

Mr. Nobiletti nodded, his balding head shiny from exertion, his lips clamped upon nails, which he removed one at a time to hammer into the fresh sole of a boot on his steel last.

“Good morning, Mr. N.”

The old man nodded.

“This is my grandson, Carlos.”

Mr. Nobiletti looked down and smiled, still hammering. Then the final nail was driven. He smiled. He had hard white teeth.

“Buon giorno, Dottore.”

“Good morning to you too, Mr. N. Listen, when you have a chance, can you come over? I want to undress the olive tree.”

The shoemaker looked out, and smiled.

“T’morrow, hokay?”

“Tomorrow.”

Back in the street, there was still no automobile traffic, and Delaney felt his blood beginning to move. From his heart, through his legs, making a round-trip back to his heart. He felt young. He could not see the boy’s face, but saw his small hands holding the rim of the basket and his head turning as new things appeared. He could smell the bakery before he saw it. The wonderful bakery of Mr. Ferraro, from Napoli, even older now than Delaney. Delaney remembered walking these streets as an altar boy, heading for the six-thirty mass at Sacred Heart, struggling with the demands of his fast when the odor of fresh bread and rolls filled the dark air and tempted him to sin. On this fresh morning, he turned right and saw the light spilling from the bakery, with Reilly’s newsstand beside it, and he could see Mr. Lanzano’s ice wagon pulled up in front, with nobody on the seat. He was making a delivery to the store. Oil for the boiler. Or ice for the icebox. And almost surely he was buying a fresh roll and a thick coffee at the counter.

“Stay here, Carlito,” he said, pushing down the kickstand. “I’ll be right back.”

Mr. Lanzano smiled as he entered, and said buon giorno, and sipped his tiny cup of the darkest coffee on the West Side. Even darker than the coffee of Rose Verga. Delaney returned the greeting in Italian, and the image of Rose scribbled through him. The dark glossy hair. The fine scar. Mr. Ferraro came from the back room, where the ovens were, sweaty and balding, with a towellike sash across his brow. The scent of fresh bread was like a delirious floury perfume, the best aroma in the city. Delaney held up two fingers, and Ferraro smiled and slid two fresh loaves into a bag and handed them over. Delaney paid and went out, wishing both men a lovely day.

He handed the loaves to Carlito, who laid them across his lap. Then he went next door to the newsstand and took the newspapers off the stand, waved at Reilly in the dark interior so that the delivery boy would be saved a trip. Then he mounted the bicycle and they were off.

All the way back to the house on Horatio Street, Carlito was silent, hugging the warm bread with one hand, holding on with the other, newspapers stuffed against his back. He was looking at the world that was arriving after the long winter. So was Delaney. Winter was the worst time, for patients, for people trapped in the dirty air of tenements, for coughs and colds and worse problems, and for boys. But they were moving into a better place together. To hell with the Depression, and Hitler, and the troubles in Spain. To hell with Frankie Botts and the man in the gray coat. To hell with Grace. To hell with Molly. He would forget about things he could not cure. It was spring.

Delaney lifted Carlito from the basket and leaned the bike against the wall in the waiting area. He handed Carlito the fresh bread. But when they went into the kitchen, Rose was there in her flowered bathrobe, leaning with her back to the sink. She was angry.

“You don’t leave a note!” she said. “You don’t wake me up! I think maybe Carlito is sick and you take him to the hospital. Worse: I think you are kidnapped by some gangster!”

“We wanted to surprise you, Rose.”

“Some surprise!”

He thought: Please don’t be a pain in the ass, Rose. Carlito handed her the bread, looking troubled, and she took the loaves and calmed him by rubbing his head.

“Thank you, Carlito,” she said. “What a good boy.”

“Eat, Rosa!” the boy said. “We all eat!”

The boy smiled, and so did Rose.

“Eat!” Delaney said. He laid the newspapers on the table. “And later, read. ”

The day moved quickly, with fewer patients in the morning and house calls made easier by the bicycle. He used a chain and lock to secure the bicycle to the fences of the tenements, and noticed the odor of garbage rising from the dented metal cans. Patients were more cheerful. From Reilly’s candy store, he called a friend at Bellevue to check the condition of Mr. Cottrell. The doctor came back after a few minutes. “Critical, but stable. He should live.” He called St. Vincent’s too, to check on some patients and to tell Zimmerman that he would start grand rounds again in a few days and they could have lunch when everything was done. Delaney felt as he did when he was an intern himself: filled with endless energy, ready to help anyone feel better.