Sinbad and Me Read online

  “What happened, for Gosh sakes?”

  She let out a quick sigh, looked at me and at the apples I had in my hand.

  “Oh!” she said, “What kind of people! What kind of people!” She shook her head a couple of times. Then she probably saw the look on my face. “You no worry, Stevie. It big mistake. All over nothing.”

  That’s the way she talks. She leaves out words here and there.

  I remembered the men weren’t carrying anything. I went over to the counter. The cash register was open. There was some money there. There never is much because, like I said, she doesn’t have too many customers. As her friend and assistant shopkeeper, I took out the money and counted it. It came to twenty-three dollars and fifty seven cents, about average. “Well, the money’s still there,” I said. “So, what did they want? Directions?”

  “Yes,” she said in a low voice. “Directions. They lost men. Very bad lost.” And she started to rock some more. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Teska be all right. Just everything happen at once.”

  “Well they got some nerve,” I said. “Yelling at you just because they happened to get lost. They could have asked at the gas station.”

  “They not yelling,” old Mrs. Teska said, “They only little excited maybe. They want know something. I not understand good. They go away.”

  It was funny her saying that because I’d sure heard loud yelling as I came up to the store.

  “Maybe you hear radio,” she said. “I go turn off.”

  She got herself off the chair with a heave and a grunt and walked into the little back room. It’s a small room, curtained off, where she goes to sleep sometimes. Her main apartment is upstairs.

  I didn’t hear any radio.

  Then there was a little click and I did. Some string music. It got louder. Another click and there wasn’t any music. I couldn’t see Mrs. Teska behind the curtains, but I thought I heard a drawer shut.

  She has an old chest in there beside the iron cot. Otherwise there’s just a pine table with a lamp on it, a floor lamp, an old beat-up bookcase and some books. Plus a little worn scatter rug on the floor. Older than I was. Like practically everything there.

  When she came out she was dry eyed and calm like nothing even happened. She went over to the icebox. “You hungry, Stevie? I make sandwich.”

  “Gee, no thanks,” I said because now I know she’s poor. I saw she didn’t have the white paper in her hand anymore. Well it could have been a letter or a bill. As long as she didn’t want to tell me it wasn’t any of my business. “I been trying to get some kind of job in town. No luck.”

  She shut the icebox door. “You good boy. You find job all right,” she said.

  “It won’t be easy now,” I said, “I got to take a class in summer school. I flunked science.”

  “You flunk? What means flunk?”

  “No good. Fail,” I said, her way.

  She squinted her bright eyes at me and made a little sound with her mouth.

  “You flunk? You?” She just couldn’t get over it. “What you papa mama say?”

  I told her, so far nothing. She couldn’t believe that, either. Then she took me by the arm and started me toward the door. “You go home study now,” she said. “Flunking for no-good boys. Like Frankie.” All of a sudden she seemed angry.

  I didn’t know any Frankie.

  “You want me to do the sweeping up?” I asked. She shook her head, hobbling along. Mrs. Teska is not one of those delicate-looking old ladies. She’s so broad in the beam there was hardly room for both of us between the counter and her boxes.

  The little bell gave that tinny rattle. I looked down as I went out the door and saw her gray hair was getting thin. But her face was still nice and smooth and round.

  She patted my shoulder as I went past. “You no worry no more,” she said. “Plenty people make mistake like these fool people do. This old lady tired now. Go to sleep.”

  The door closed, the blind came down, and the little blue card that hung there on a string said: CLOSED.

  I got my bike, I’d started to walk it out to the curb when I heard Mrs. Teska’s telephone ring. It rang and rang.

  She must have been very tired, like she said, and gone right to sleep.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sinbad And The Sign Of The Dollar

  “I wonder what those guys wanted.”

  It was a few hours later, Sinbad and me were lying on the floor nose to nose, in our usual fashion, having one of our floorside chats.

  We’d already had a wrestling match and a tug of war and stretched out on the floor to get our breath and strength back. Sinbad doesn’t move a muscle and just lies there with his chin stuck out between his big white paws, his sad droopy eyes keeping that steady unblinking look that shows he’s concentrating. It doesn’t matter what I tell or ask him, he always hears me through till the end like a gentleman. Then with everything clear and settled he lets out a big snort and closes his eyes.

  This was about Mrs. Teska so I was obliged to tell Sinbad everything. He likes her as much as I do. Maybe even more. Because if it wasn’t for Mrs. Teska old Sinbad might not be living now.

  And with his kind of one-track brain he’ll probably never forget.

  It happened almost three years ago when he was a pup a few months old. Some kind of sick nut left poisoned meat lying around, and Sinbad ate it.

  It was in the dead of winter. The only vet we had was in Florida, my pop was up in Hartford Connecticut, working on an old mid-eighteenth century house, his favorite type, and my mom was stranded by the sudden snowstorm in New York City. Even the telephone wires were down.

  Sinbad was just lying there suffering, not complaining. He’s not a complaining dog. And there was I, his master, watching that filmy look come over his eyes, crying and telling him I did not know what to do to help him out of his misery.

  Finally I got so desperate I ran up the hill through the snowdrifts hoping I could flag down a car. But Steamboat Road was blanketed and no cars were moving.

  Then one came out of the mist from the Point, weaving along, not holding the road too well, but moving. It was so covered with snow I couldn’t tell whose car it was, or who was inside. I whooped and hollered and waved my arms. Then I slipped and fell on my dumb head. The car kept going. I yelled, but by the time I got on my feet again it was turning out of sight at the bend.

  I was so mad I made and threw a fast snowball yelling with all my might what I thought of the driver. Mrs. Teska must have heard me. She opened her store door and saw me running around like a wild man.

  She had me bring Sinbad up to her, bundled in a blanket. When we got there her coal stove was going, and some water boiling to which she kept adding white powder.

  When the paste was ready I opened Sinbad’s stubborn jaws and she got a spoonful down. Then she kissed him right on his hot little head, I swear, and told him he was going to be all right.

  She told me it was a secret family recipe, remembered from when she was a little girl in the old country. Her father had used it to cure his sick cattle.

  Well, it worked on sick bulldogs, too. In two hours Sinbad’s eyes had lost that filmy look and his stump of a tail wagged once or twice before he sighed and fell asleep again.

  The old lady insisted upon staying up. I kept the stove going and we talked the whole night. That is, till I fell asleep myself in the small sidechair.

  When I woke up at daybreak she was still sitting there, her dark red wool shawl over her chunky shoulders. She looked bright and shiny as a button. Sinbad was in her lap. I could see the thin gold wedding ring on her stubby fingers as she spooned different liquid into Sinbad who was opening his big old mouth without any help from me or coaxing either. He liked it. She told me it was raw egg and milk and a little brandy, and it was all he needed now to get his strength back.

  She knew what she was talking about, all right. A few more doses and Sinbad’s tail started to go like a switchman’s flag. Then he let out a kind of delirious moan and gr
abbed the old lady’s wrist, rolling his eyes up to see how she would take it. She just kept stroking him with her other hand and telling him how beautiful he was. He loves to hear that, he’s so conceited. So he kept wagging his old tail like crazy and looking up at her with that love light shining in his eyes.

  So now you know why Sinbad and me would never let anything bad ever happen to old Mrs. Teska.

  Well I had reviewed all the facts of the matter for him and he just lay there, still as a log, staring into my eyes without blinking, his brow all furrowed with the wrinkles he has going across it.

  I was drawing doodles on a piece of paper: the crate of apples, then the counter in the store and apples all over the floor, I like to draw objects but I’m rotten at faces, so I gave up trying to draw the two men’s. Then I printed the word MIMI. I don’t know any Mimi and I wondered why I did that.

  I wished I could remember the license number of that car. The plate had been orange. Well, that made it from outside New York State. So it figured they could have been lost.

  I doodled two vertical lines. Then two across, like the diagram for ticktacktoe. So I figured I’d play a game, playing both sides.

  As I started to put X in the lower right-hand corner I happened to say out loud: “I still wonder what those guys wanted from Mrs. Teska.”

  Suddenly Sinbad, who had just been lying quietly there minding his own business, reached out with his nose and pushed my pencil. It made the line go across the middle box right up to the upper left-hand corner.

  “Hey, cut it out, you big ape,” I said, “You’re ruining my game.” I made a new diagram, and moved the pencil away from Sinbad’s nose. But his big white paw pushed my pencil again, with the same result.

  “Come on, will you cut it out?”

  He just kept staring at me without blinking, his pink tongue out a little.

  I was running out of paper and guessed I’d have to erase and start another diagram. Then I noticed the way Sinbad had pushed my pencil the lines made a big letter S. The first one he’d ruined looked exactly the same.

  I studied it, “You trying to tell me something?” Sinbad looked bored. “You trying to learn how to write your name?” I asked him. “I got big news for you. Dogs don’t write.”

  He kept looking directly into my eyes. Then his eyes rolled down to the diagram. He started to thump his tail on the floor.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, “You’ll be the first one.”

  Then I noticed that the letter S looked like a dollar sign. A squared–off one.

  I began to get a little excited.

  There was still enough room for one more diagram on my paper. Between some of the apples I had drawn before. Near the cash register on the counter.

  I picked up the pencil again and made believe I wasn’t watching Sinbad. When I sketched in the vertical double lines again he didn’t make a move. With the top cross line in he just lay there watching, the tip of his tongue still sticking out and one of his lower teeth.

  Then I said again, slowly, “I wonder what those guys wanted,” and drew the bottom cross line.

  I waited for Sinbad to make his move, my heart thumping and the hair on the back of my head bristling. Sure enough. That big white paw came over and pushed my pencil, leaning hard this time. No mistake. Sinbad was trying to tell me something!

  There wasn’t any more room on the piece of paper so I turned it over. And right in the center I drew a real big dollar sign.

  “Is this what you mean?” He just stared at me. “That’s a dollar sign,” I told him. “Are you trying to tell me those guys wanted money?”

  His tongue darted out suddenly and he kissed me!

  “But there still was money in the cash register drawer. Twenty-three dollars and fifty-seven cents.”

  He just let out a big sigh and kept staring. Then he started to thump his tail.

  “More money than that?” I asked. His tail thumped a little faster. “I don’t think Mrs. Teska has more money than that.” His tail argued. “She has?” I asked. His tail went like crazy.

  “Are you trying to tell me that Mrs. Teska has more money and those two characters want it?” Sinbad wriggled closer and gave me a big wet slobbering kiss.

  “I love you too,” I said.

  He let out a big sigh and closed his eyes. The meeting was over as far as he was concerned. In a second he was snoring.

  I didn’t have enough problems. I had to have a dog detective, too.

  CHAPTER 8

  Secret Of The Clue In The Ice Cubes

  My folks called on the phone around dinner time to ask how Sinbad and me were getting along. I told them okay, which was true. I didn’t want to say anything about what was going on at Mrs. Teska’s, because (1) all I had was a sneaking suspicion, and (2) a dog who thought he was a detective. And I still wasn’t sure which idea was dopier.

  Mom said they’d be back late Sunday night, and to please try to stay out of trouble until then. She gave me some instructions on how to heat up my dinner, which she’d prepared, and that was that.

  I turned out to be a pretty good cook because I didn’t burn anything. Sinbad had his two cans of meat and a few of the big dog biscuits, which his jaws crunch like they were marshmallows.

  I didn’t want to get into any further discussion with him about the money. The more I thought of it, the more ridiculous the whole thing was. These two well-dressed guys in their new big Lincoln Continental wanting money from old Mrs. Teska, who just ran a little general store and made hardly enough to live on. She never ate much and the clothes she wore would never see her through an Easter parade. In fact, if I didn’t like her so much I’d think she was a pretty sloppy dresser.

  So after we ate I took Sinbad out for his evening stroll. It was around seven and just turning dark. First I walked him along in the woods next to our house. Then we cut through a little path and circled around and came up the hill to Steamboat Road. I decided to see if Mrs. Teska was okay now.

  Her store was closed. She lives in the floor above, in this little yellow frame house she built, and there was a light up there. Sinbad led the way. I had him on the steel chain leash with the slip choke collar and he was puffing and straining away to see the old lady. When he’s that excited you can say, “Heel!” and he actually does sometimes. For a second. The next thing you know your arm is almost yanked out of its socket and you’re off and running. Or trying to lean back so you don’t have to run. Either way, you move.

  We were careful not to get into Mrs. Teska’s garden, which she takes great pride in and, even with that arthritis, still works in every day.

  When I knocked, she said, through the door, it was okay if I wanted to mop up tonight instead of tomorrow when I intended looking for that job. I know where she hides the key so I got it. Sinbad was disappointed that the old lady didn’t open the door. He made a big stink about it, whining and sniffing like she didn’t love him anymore. To a bulldog, that’s the worst. I finally told him I’d give him a piece of bologna and his ears went straight up and he started to drool. I never know if he’s really smart or just pretends so I won’t find out he’s not too bright. You might say he keeps me in suspense.

  We went down and unlocked the door. I put the light on but kept the shade down and the CLOSED sign in. I didn’t lock the door in case Mrs. Teska decided to come down.

  I was going for the mop and bucket when Sinbad reminded me about my promise. So I went to the icebox where she keeps the bologna, took out a slice and slammed the icebox door. I heard something fall. I opened it up again and sure enough, I’d knocked over a container of milk. Sopping it up I reached inside and saw some of the milk had splashed on the ice cubes in the tray. The tray was frozen fast, I yanked hard. Coming out with it, stuck to the bottom, was a white piece of paper, folded up. I opened it without thinking.

  In black ink it said: I.O.U FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS.

  Underneath was signed: Frank Teska.

  I folded it up again remembering I had see
n a piece of folded paper like that in Mrs. Teska’s hand after those guys left. I had just put it back where I got it and shut the icebox door when those same two men came in. They looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see them.

  The fellow I’d bumped into before was blond, with light blue eyes. The one who drove the car was dark and moon-faced with black eyes and heavy black eyebrows. He had a flattened nose.

  The blond guy said, “Hey, what are you doing there?”

  “I work here,” I said. “For Mrs. Teska.”

  He jerked his thumb toward the door. “You’re closed, sonny. Why don’t you knock off?’

  “I still got work to do,” I told him. “Anyway if the sign says ‘closed’ how come you came in?”

  They looked at each other. The blond one said, “He’s smart,” and the other one didn’t change his expression. Neither of them moved the insides of their faces around like most people. They just looked at you sort of dull and deadlike, the way gangsters on TV act.

  The dark fellow with the nose flattened at the ridge, like a fighter’s, said, “What’s your name kid?”

  I told him. He took out a big cigar and lit it.

  “You live around here?”

  I told him I did. He blew out some smoke.

  “Where around here?” he wanted to know.

  “Not far,” I said.

  “He says ‘not far’,” the dark one said. He chewed his cigar.

  “Yeah, I heard,” the man with the light hair said softly. There was a rustling noise from the back room and he turned his head. “The old lady in?” he asked.

  “She’s not here now,” I said. “If there’s anything—”

  They weren’t listening. Their heads were closed together and they exchanged some whispered words I couldn’t hear. The blond man said, “Yeah. Could be. Let’s have a look.”

  They started walking across the store toward the back room.