Free Monkey Island by Paula Fox Page B

see Dimp and his dog last night before those people came,” Clay said. He felt tearful, as though he might at any moment burst into sobs.
    â€œDimp and his dog haven’t been around for a week,” Buddy said. “What’s the matter with you? Losing your memory?”
    Clay said nothing because they had reached what remained of the crate.
    It looked to Clay like the kind of debris he had often seen on the street, a heap of wood and rags in which you could sometimes find something useful. Then he saw a pair of feet sticking out wearing pink rug slippers. Buddy saw them too. “Oh, God!” he exclaimed, and began to pull everything apart, tossing the split and jagged boards aside as he dug. Beneath it all, lying on his back, his mouth open, was Calvin.
    â€œIs he dead?” Clay asked, his voice trembling.
    Buddy was bending over the old man, feeling under his neck. “He’s not dead,” Buddy said after a minute. “He’s out cold.” He held up an empty bottle that had been concealed by Calvin’s arm. “Rye whiskey,” he said. “He got hold of this someplace or took it off another drunk. If they want it bad, they can always find it.”
    Clay heard a moist snort coming out of Calvin’s long nose. His beard fluttered slightly.
    â€œI got to get help,” Buddy muttered. He stood and looked around. A few cars were passing now, but neither Clay nor Buddy looked in their direction.
    â€œWon’t he be all right if he’s breathing?” Clay asked, looking down at Calvin. He willed him to speak, to say anything, even if it was sarcastic. The old man groaned; his legs quivered for a second. He sighed deeply, but he didn’t open his eyes.
    â€œYou stay here. I’ll go see if a phone’s working somewhere,” Buddy was saying as he looked at a handful of change he’d taken out of a pocket. It was mostly pennies.
    Clay sat down next to Calvin and pulled up his knees close to his chest. He was shivering with cold; yet his face felt on fire. “You don’t look so good yourself,” Buddy said worriedly as he turned to go down the path.
    Clay, huddled next to Calvin, didn’t move a muscle until the ambulance arrived and drove into the park to within a few feet of the crate. As doors opened, he raised his head. By then, the light had broadened and deepened, a lake of sooty light that had slowly filled up with Clay in the middle of it as still as a stone.
    The sound of traffic as it banged and clattered down the streets seemed a continuous echo of a noise inside his skull. He watched the movements of the two ambulance men as though they were taking place in a series of photographs. One lifted Calvin’s eyelids with his thumb, took his pulse, felt his slack arms and legs. Both rolled him onto a stretcher, covered him with a blanket, and finally slid him into the ambulance like a coin into a slot.
    Buddy touched his shoulder. “You asleep?” he asked.
    Clay wasn’t sure what he was. Everything else was peculiarly distinct, the worn grainy soles of Buddy’s shoes as he now knelt to pick through the debris around the destroyed crate, the ripped pages of a book on one of which, after two tries, he made out the word Crusoe .
    A new photograph was forming: Gerald stepping from a taxi to the sidewalk, carrying two straw baskets and a large thermos bottle.
    â€œWhat happened here?” he cried out to Buddy as he walked quickly to them. When he was a few feet away, he stopped short and stared at Clay.
    â€œYou’re a little boy,” he said wonderingly, as though it was the first time he’d truly seen him. His mouth widened in his habitual smile that had once reminded Clay of a blind person’s, thanking someone for help in crossing a street or avoiding running into a mailbox. It didn’t remind him of anything now—any more than Gerald himself did.
    â€œThese creeps came last night,”