“Didn’t you make your own if you were poor?” Andrew asked.
“Sure. First I had one I made from a forked branch of a sapling I cut down in the Forest of Rambouillet when Tommy’s mother and I were on a walking trip there. I whittled it out and we bought the big rubber bands for it at a stationery store on the Place Saint-Michel and made the leather pouch out of leather from an old glove of Tommy’s mother.”
“What did you shoot in it?”
“Pebbles.”
“How close would you have to get?”
“As close as you could so you could pick them up and get them under the blanket as quick as you could.”
“I remember the time one came alive,” young Tom said. “And I held him quiet and didn’t say anything about it all the way home because I wanted to keep him. He was a very big pigeon, almost purple color with a high neck and a wonderful head and white on his wings, and you let me keep him in the kitchen until we could get a cage for him. You tied him by one leg. But that night the big cat killed him and brought him in to my bed. The big cat was so proud and he carried him just as though he were a tiger carrying a native and he jumped up to the bed with him. That was when I had a square bed after the basket. I can’t remember the basket.
You and mother were gone to the café and the big cat and I were alone and I remember the windows were open and there was a big moon over the sawmill and it was winter and I could smell the sawdust. I remember seeing the big cat coming across the floor with his head high up so the pigeon barely dragged on the floor and then he made one jump and just sailed right up and into the bed with him. I felt awfully that he had killed my pigeon but he was so proud and so happy and he was such a good friend of mine I felt proud and happy, too.
I remember he played with the pigeon and then he would push his paws up and down on my chest and purr and then play with the pigeon again. Finally I remember he and I and the pigeon all went to sleep together. I had one hand on the pigeon and he had one paw on the pigeon and then in the night I woke up and he was eating him and purring loud like a tiger.”
“That’s a lot better than names of streets,” Andrew said. “Were you scared, Tommy, when he was eating him?”
“No. The big cat was the best friend I had then. I mean the closest friend. I think he would have liked me to eat the pigeon too.”
“You ought to have tried it,” Andrew said. “Tel some more about slingshots.”
“Mother gave you the other slingshot for Christmas,” young Tom said. “She saw it in a gun store and she wanted to buy you a shotgun but she never had enough money. She used to look at the shotguns in the window every day when she went past the store to the Epicene and one day she saw the slingshot and she bought it because she was afraid they would sell it to somebody else and she kept it hid until Christmas. She had to falsify the accounts so you wouldn’t know about it. She’s told me about it lots of times. I can remember when you got it for Christmas and you gave me the old one. But I wasn’t strong enough to pull it then.”
“Papa, weren’t we ever poor?” Andrew asked.
“No. I’d gotten over being poor by the time you guys were born. We were broke lots of times but never really poor the way we were with Tom and his mother.”
“Tell us some more about in Paris,” David said. “What else did you and Tommy do?”
“What did we do, Schatz?”
“In the fall? We used to buy roasted chestnuts from a roast chestnut man and I used to keep my hands warm on them too. We went to the circus and saw the crocodiles of Le Capitaine Wahl.”
“Can you remember that?”
“Very well. The Capitaine Wahl wrestled with a crocodile (he pronounced it crowcodeel, the crow as in the bird of that name) and a beautiful girl poked them with a trident. But the biggest crocodiles wouldn’t move. The circus was beautiful and round and red with gold paint and smelled of horses. There was a place in back where you went to drink with Mr. Crosby and the tamer of lions and his wife.”
“Do you remember Mr. Crosby?”
“He never wore a hat nor an overcoat no matter how cold it was and his little girl had hair that hung down her back like Alice in Wonderland. In the illustrations I mean. Mr. Crosby was always very very nervous.”
“Who else do you remember?”
“Mr. Joyce.”
“What was he like?”
“He was tall and thin and he had a moustache and a small beard that grew straight up and down on his chin and he wore thick, thick glasses and walked with his head held very high. I remember him passing us on the street and not speaking and you spoke to him and he stopped and saw us through the glasses like looking out of an aquarium and he said, ‘Ah, Hudson, I was looking for you,’ and we three went to the café and it was cold outside but we sat in a corner with one of those what do you call thems?”
“Braziers.”
“I thought that was what ladies wore,” Andrew said.
“It’s an iron can with holes in it they burn coal or charcoal in to heat any place outside like a café terrace where you sit close to them to keep warm or a race track where you stand around and get warm from them,” young Tom explained. “At this café where papa and I and Mr. Joyce used to go they had them all along the outside and you could be warm and comfortable in the coldest weather.”
“I guess you’ve spent the biggest part of your life in cafés and saloons and hot spots,” the youngest boy said.
“Quite a bit of it,” Tom said. “Haven’t we, papa?”
“And sound asleep in the car outside while papa has just a quick one,” David said. “Boy, I used to hate that word quick one. I guess a quick one is about the slowest thing on earth.”
“What did Mr. Joyce talk about?” Roger asked young Tom.
“Gee, Mr. Davis, I can’t remember much about that time. I think it was about Italian writers and about Mr. Ford. Mr. Joyce couldn’t stand Mr. Ford. Mr. Pound had gotten on his nerves, too. ‘Ezra’s mad, Hudson,’ he said to papa.
I can remember that because I thought mad meant mad like a mad dog and I remember sitting there and watching Mr. Joyce’s face, it was sort of red with awfully smooth skin, cold weather skin, and his glasses that had one lens even thicker than the other, and thinking of Mr. Pound with his red hair and his pointed beard and his nice eyes, with white stuff sort of like lather dripping out of his mouth.
I thought it was terrible Mr. Pound was mad and I hoped we wouldn’t run into him. Then Mr. Joyce said, ‘Of course Ford’s been mad for years,’ and I saw Mr. Ford with his big, pale, funny face and his pale eyes and his mouth with the teeth loose in it and always about half open and that awful lather dripping down his jaws too.”
“Don’t say any more,” Andrew said. “I’ll dream about it.”
“Go on please,” David said. “It’s like werewolves. Mother locked up the werewolf book because Andrew had such bad dreams.”
“Did Mr. Pound ever bite anybody?” Andrew asked.
“No, horseman,” David told him. “It’s just a way of talking. He means mad out of his head mad. Not hydrophobia mad. Why did he think they were mad?”
“I can’t tell you,” young Tom said. “I wasn’t as young then as when we used to shoot pigeons in the gardens. But I was too young to remember everything and the idea of Mr. Pound and Mr. Ford with that dreadful slaver coming out of their mouths all ready to bite, drove everything out of my head. Did you know Mr. Joyce, Mr. Davis?”
“Yes. He and your father and I were very good friends.”
“Papa was much younger than Mr. Joyce.”
“Papa was younger than anybody, then.”
“Not than me,” young Tom said proudly. “I figure I was probably about Mr. Joyce’s youngest friend.”
“I’ll bet he misses you a lot,” Andrew said.
“It certainly is a shame he never could have met you,” David said to Andrew. “If you hadn’t been hanging around Rochester all the time he could have had the privilege.”
“Mr. Joyce was a great man,” young Tom said. “He wouldn’t have wanted to have anything to do with you two punks.”
“That’s your opinion,” Andrew said. “Mr. Joyce and David might have been pals. David writes for the paper at school.”
“Papa, tell us some more about when you and Tommy and Tommy’s mother were poor. How poor did you ever get?”
“They were pretty poor,” Roger said. “I can remember when your father used to make up all young Tom’s bottles in the morning and go to the market to buy the best and the cheapest vegetables. I’d meet him coming back from the market
