Shoebag Read Online Free Page A

Dead.
    “Go to a better life. Amen.”

Five
    T HE BIDDLE APARTMENT WAS composed of the first two floors of the old brownstone. For all of their lives, Shoebag’s family had lived on the bottom floor, where the kitchen, dining room, and Mrs. Biddle’s studio was. They stayed mainly in the kitchen, behind things, but Shoebag had often played in the studio, where there were always cans of paint in many colors, and great canvases with paintings of the sea on them.
    Shoebag had never seen a real sea with waves and sand and a beach. But sometimes he would run up and down one of the pictures, trying to imagine his legs getting wet as they left the tan colors and headed for the gray-green of the ocean, trying to feel the wind as he scampered higher into the blue, resting, out of breath, on one of the white clouds. Mrs. Biddle had just finished making herself a salami sandwich on rye and carried it into the studio, where she was watching the ten o’clock news.
    Shoebag had sneaked down the stairs in his new blue-and-white striped pajamas, with the white terrycloth robe. In his hurry to buy Shoebag clothes quickly, before dinner, Mr. Biddle had forgotten bedroom slippers, so Shoebag wore only socks. He could feel the cold of the linoleum floors right through the cotton. Skin was hard to keep warm, Shoebag realized. He missed the protection of his shell, but that was the least of it when it came to missing things.
    He missed the freedom he had had to roam about at night. Mr. Biddle had made a bed for him on the couch, upstairs in the living room. He had told him lights out by ten P.M., which meant Shoebag was expected to go to sleep at that hour!
    Shoebag also missed the old roach thrill at the approach of the nightly hunt for food. He knew that in back of the stove, under the refrigerator, behind the cupboard, and down near the dishwasher, all his family was gathered with their antennae alert, waiting for the house to settle down, their hopes rising as they speculated over what would be waiting for them, starting with the goodies usually found in the kitchen. (Already Shoebag could see all the bread crumbs on the counter, left by Mrs. Biddle, and the salami grease still streaked across the carving knife.)
    Most of all, though, Shoebag missed Drainboard.
    He worried that Under The Toaster would do what he had always done: run out ahead of her and grab all the best food for himself. Shoebag had been faster than his father, and his eyesight had been better, so that when he was still one of the family, he jumped on choice morsels and saved them for his mother.
    Under The Toaster claimed that the father cockroach came first, because after all he had to shoulder all the responsibility for the family. It was he who had to keep track of when the Zap man came, and it was he who had to decide if they should take a chance and move to a new place when a person packed up anything to be sent somewhere. (Never mind that Under The Toaster probably could not bring himself to leave Boston, or even this brownstone on Beacon Hill, because Shoebag’s father, at heart, was very sentimental about both places.)
    Under The Toaster was also supposed to be the lookout for the water bugs, the black jumping spider, and the ones in webs, the Persian cat from the third floor who often got loose, and any other enemies. Still, it was Drainboard who excelled at sensing danger. It was her voice most often calling out, “Get your cerci moving! Trouble is coming!”
    As much as Shoebag honored Under The Toaster, he was his father, after all, he sometimes felt his mother was taken advantage of. Under The Toaster took the warmest sleeping place for himself. And he was always criticizing Drainboard for things like not warning him the dishwasher had not completed its cycle, so it would start up again, just as Under The Toaster had crawled behind it. Or he would shout at Drainboard that she should have told him there was a roast in the oven, and not let him find it out