Boy O'Boy Read Online Free Page B

Becomes You” to Cheap.
    He wiggles his only ear. He likes Bing Crosby.
    When I talk to Cheap he squeezes his eyes shut. And if he’s on the bed, he pulls on the blanket with his claws — first the right paw, then the left. Just like you see kittens doing when they suck milk from their mother.
    When I stop talking, he opens his eyes and looks at me and stops kneading his claws. His eyes are wide open. He’s saying, “Talk to me some more. I like when you talk to me…”
    My mother told me that when grown-up cats act like that it means they didn’t get enough love when they were babies.
    Soon I’ll get Cheap some catnip. There’s lots of it growing in Lenny Lipshitz’s yard. Lenny’s father told me that if I took any catnip out of the yard I’d have to pay ten cents for a handful but Lenny says never mind paying, just go in the yard at night when the old man’s asleep and steal it.
    Cheap loves catnip. He rolls around in it and wrestles with it. His eyes get a crazy tilt in them and he looks like, if he could, he would sing a big musical number — something like Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis when she sang “The Trolley Song.”
     
     

7
New Shoes
    I T WILL be hot today. I’ll have to go for ice after I get home with the new shoes.
    I walk up Clarence Street past the Lee Kung Laundry. Steam is coming out the door all the time. Smells like boiled potatoes.
    It’s garbage day on Clarence Street. I walk by the garbage wagon. The horses are covered with horse flies and the wagon and the garbage men are covered with garbage flies. The guy throwing the cans up to the guy on top of the wagon is looking at the rubbers tied on with elastics I’m wearing instead of shoes.
    “Great lookin’ pair of special kind of shoes ya have there!” he says. And he laughs a big laugh.
    A large juicy fly flies into his mouth. Good.
    Mr. Lipshitz’s horse clops by pulling Mr. Lipshitz and some bedsprings and bottles and paper and rags and bones. Mr. Lipshitz looks like he’s asleep.
    At the corner of Clarence and Dalhoozie is Lefebvre Shoe Market. From here up Dalhoozie Street I can see the Français theater. Playing is Hold That Ghost starring Abbott and Costello. Its about a haunted castle. Costello is sitting at a table and a candle on the table starts to move. Also, a wall turns around and he disappears.
    In Lefebvre’s Shoe Market there’s a party. Somebody came home from the war. There’s sandwiches and ice cream and Kik cola and beer and whiskey.
    The sign in the window says:
    Cork-Soled Runners—
99 cents!
    A man who is pretty drunk laughs at my rubbers, pulls off the elastics, shoots the elastics at another man and a girl eating sandwiches.
    Across the store in the back part some people are singing a French song that’s something like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and one big woman is choking she’s laughing so much.
    My big toe is sticking through a hole in my right sock.
    “That’s nice and cool, eh, for a hot summer day! Air conditioning! The latest thing! Hey, look at this, everyone! Air conditioning! The latest thing!”
    He gets a pair of the cork-soled runners out of a pile of them in a bin. He puts them both on me and ties them too tight. They seem to be way too long for my feet.
    “Perfect!” he says and stands up, staggering backwards a bit. “A perfect fit!”
    “I think they’re too big,” I say. He bends down and feels for my toes in the shoe. He pulls the shoe hard from the back so that my foot pushes into the front of the shoe. He feels my toes.
    “See! There’s your toes, right there where they should be. A perfect fit!”
    “I think they’re too big,” I say.
    “Tell you what. You go out and take a walk around the block. Try them out. You’ll see. They fit! And look how nice and brand new they look! Go ahead, try them out. And, hey, don’t forget to come back and give me the ninety-nine cents!”
    I leave the store and walk up Dalhoozie Street past the Français theater