Tunes for Bears to Dance To Read online

  NOVELS BY ROBERT CORMIER

  After the First Death

  Beyond the Chocolate War

  The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

  The Chocolate War

  8 Plus 1

  Fade

  Frenchtown Summer

  Heroes

  I Am the Cheese

  In the Middle of the Night

  The Rag and Bone Shop

  Tenderness

  Tunes for Bears to Dance To

  We All Fall Down

  Published by

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers

  a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Text Copyright © 1992 by Robert Cormier

  Cover illustration copyright © by Victor Stabin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording, or by any information

  storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of

  the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information

  address Delacorte Press, New York, New York 10036.

  The trademark Laurel-Leaf Library® is registered in the U.S.

  Patent and Trademark Office.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and

  Trademark Office.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-54844-3

  RL: 6.1

  May 1994

  OPM

  v3.0

  To Fabio Coen

  With my great thanks

  Human language is like a cracked kettle

  on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to,

  when all the time we are longing

  to move the stars to pity.

  —GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  Deliver us from evil

  —OUR FATHER

  The old man came out of the crazy house every morning shortly before eight o’clock and walked down the graveled path to the gate, carrying a small leather bag that swung like a pendulum from his right hand. His moustache was a wedge of frost on his upper lip.

  The boy, whose name was Henry, watched him from the third-floor piazza that overlooked the street. He was curious about where the old man went every day and would have followed him except for the cast on his knee. The cast would be removed in a week or so and he tried to be patient in the meantime, watching the comings and goings of the neighborhood. The most interesting thing he saw was the old man. Why did he live in the crazy house and why did they let him out every day if he was crazy?

  “You shouldn’t call it a crazy house,” his mother said. “It’s an institution for the insane.”

  That was worse than calling it a crazy house, Henry thought. Anyway, the old man did not look either crazy or insane. The boy saw him only for a few moments as he came and went, but he looked normal enough. In the late afternoon when the old man returned from wherever he went, his steps were slower, spiderwebs had appeared around his eyes, and his shoulders drooped although his cheeks were still smooth, like stones worn away by years of rain.

  Henry hobbled up to the gate of the crazy house once in a while and looked at the people strolling the grounds. They looked normal, too, like the people he saw every day in the neighborhood.

  The boy himself did not feel normal. He had never learned to use the crutches properly in the five weeks he had worn the cast. He tripped over them all the time. He was not coordinated or athletic, like his brother, Eddie, and walked awkwardly with the crutches, which is why he seldom left the piazza.

  Eddie would have mastered the crutches in no time at all. He would have swung down the street, calling out to everyone, and everyone would have smiled back. Henry tried not to think about Eddie but that was impossible, of course. Although Eddie had been dead almost a year—eleven months and three days, to be exact—he was still a presence in the lives of Henry and his mother and father. Sometimes Henry felt guilty because he could go, oh, three or four hours without thinking of Eddie, but his mother and father seemed to be thinking him every minute of the day, walking wearily and sorrowfully through the hours, seldom talking except when necessary. His father, in fact, was swallowed up in his sorrow. Sometimes, Henry could not stand the silence in the tenement and went out on the piazza. Once he thought of jumping over the banister and plunging to the pavement below but knew that would only bring more sorrow to his parents.

  He was impatient for the cast to be removed so that he could return to his job as the bender for Mr. Hairston at the Corner Market. Mr. Hairston had a back problem and found it hard to bend over. Henry did the bending for him. Picked up whatever fell on the floor. Reached for merchandise on the lower shelves to fill the customers’ orders. He also had other duties. Helped unload the boxes and crates that arrived from the wholesalers. Stocked the shelves. Put up potatoes, fifteen pounds to a peck, in the cellar, then carried them upstairs to the produce section. Mr. Hairston was proud of his produce. Fresh lettuce and carrots and spinach and such extras as parsnips and mushrooms, all of them in neat display at the rear of the store.

  Henry worked at the store every day after school and on Saturday mornings. Until, that is, he broke his kneecap, tripping, then falling down the bottom steps of the three-decker just as school ended in June. A hairline fracture, the doctor said, nothing serious, but serious enough for a cast that enclosed his calf and knee. Mr. Hairston said he would keep his job open until his knee was healed.

  “How will you bend over?” Henry had asked.

  “I won’t stock the lower shelves until you come back,” Mr. Hairston said.

  “Who’ll sweep the floors and put up the potatoes?”

  Mr. Hairston scowled and did not answer. He scowled most of the time, his expression as sour as the pickles in the wooden barrel near the cash register.

  Henry didn’t want to say what he said next. But had to say it. “Jackie Antonelli would be a good bender for you. He lives on my street. He’s in my class at school.”

  He waited in dread for Mr. Hairston’s answer. He didn’t want Jackie Antonelli to take his job away from him. He had promised Jackie that he would ask, although he did not care particularly for Jackie, who liked to fight. His family was poor, Jackie said, and could use the money. But everybody in that section of Wickburg was poor and could use the money.

  “Jackie would work hard,” Henry said, hating himself for saying that, not knowing whether Jackie would work hard.

  “Jackie Antonelli’s a greaseball,” Mr. Hairston said. “I don’t want a greaseball working for me.”

  Henry was relieved but immediately filled with guilt because of that sense of relief. He was also angry at Mr. Hairston for calling Jackie a greaseball. Yet he was not entirely surprised at Mr. Hairston’s remark about Italians.

  Mr. Hairston’s favorite pastime was standing at the window near the big brass cash register, watching people passing by on the street, and making comments about them.

  “Look at him, Selsky. A kike. Charges too high for his goods. Always running a sale but jacking up the prices before the sale, then coming down a little….”

  Or:

  “There goes Mrs. O’Brien. An Irisher. Nine kids. Spends most of her time in bed. But not sleeping.” Then, a strange grunt, like a pig squealing, which, Henry learned, was the way Mr. Hairston laughed.

  Or:

  “Look at her, Mrs. Karminski….”

  The boy saw Mrs. Karminski huffing and puffing as a small dog that looked like a windup toy pulled her along the sidewalk.

  “Sloppy,” Mr. Hairston said. “Too
much rouge on. Pampers that dog. Pays good money for dog food. Leaves her house and lets her slip show. Dumb. A Polack.”

  “I think she’s lonesome,” Henry said, making an exception, because he usually didn’t talk back to Mr. Hairston. “Her husband died last month.” Just before Henry broke his kneecap. “I saw her crying yesterday when she was walking her dog. Her cheeks all wet …”

  “A disgrace,” Mr. Hairston said, “making a spectacle of herself, crying in public. She should cry at home. And him, her husband. Bad breath. When he came in here, his breath almost knocked me down.”

  They watched Mrs. Karminski being tugged around the corner by the small dog.

  “What a world,” Mr. Hairston said.

  “Sad,” Henry said, thinking of Mrs. Karminski and her husband with bad breath who was dead.

  “Not sad, terrible,” Mr. Hairston said. “The war is over, sure, but now the Bomb. Could kill us all, in a flash. Just as well maybe. Too many people in the world. Too many stupid people.”

  He was interrupted by the arrival of a customer, Mrs. Lumpke, who was never without her red hat, like an upside-down flowerpot, on her head. Henry was glad for her arrival. Most of the time Henry kept busy in the store and avoided Mr. Hairston’s company and his remarks. Yet Henry was grateful to Mr. Hairston for having given him this job.

  Henry had been new in the neighborhood when he was hired. His father had not worked since Eddie died. He had not gambled, either, and seldom left the tenement. His mother had found a job in the Miss Wickburg Diner downtown, but the pay was small and the tips did not amount to much. Henry had roamed the neighborhood, homesick for the people and streets of Frenchtown in Monument. His parents had not been able to stand Frenchtown since Eddie’s death and they had moved here to Wickburg, a bigger city twenty miles away; They were lucky to find the third-floor tenement next to the crazy house, because war veterans were given first priority by landlords, and the new housing projects were strictly for veterans. Henry’s father had not gone to war. Something wrong with his ear, a punctured eardrum, the doctors said. Which made him unable to stand the terrible noises of war. So they moved into the tenement next to the crazy house, which Jackie Antonelli thought was disgraceful although Jackie himself lived only three houses away.

  Henry shrugged away Jackie’s remark, just as he endured Mr. Hairston’s comments. His big disappointment in the new neighborhood was that his parents showed no signs of recovering from Eddie’s death. They had not left Eddie behind in Frenchtown, after all. He lurked everywhere in the tenement even though there were no pictures of him on display, and all his trophies remained in boxes on the closet shelf in Henry’s bedroom. Eddie had won the trophies for his athletic exploits. He could run faster and leap higher than anyone else. He swung a bat with such authority that he thrilled the crowd even when he struck out. He was terrible in school, not like Henry who always made the honor roll and never got into trouble. Eddie wasn’t a good student, hated to do homework, and often skipped. All this was forgiven, however, because everyone knew he was destined for greatness on the ball field. He would someday wear a Red Sox uniform and hit home-run balls over the big wall in left field at Fenway Park. He died instead, sprawled in the gutter of First Street in Frenchtown, his neck broken like a chicken bone snapped apart to make a wish. The car that had struck him sped away and was never seen again.

  The morning after the cast was removed from his leg, Henry followed the old man when he left the crazy house.

  He was pleased that his knee didn’t bother him as he walked along behind the old man. He had winced at the sight of his leg, pale and a bit shriveled, when the cast came off at the doctor’s office. But he walked normally enough as he followed the old man in his erratic progress through the streets.

  If the old man was not crazy, he was certainly strange. His lips moved as if he was carrying on a conversation with an invisible companion. Once in a while he stopped walking and stood silently, staring at nothing in particular, caught in a sudden trance. Then he tipped his black cap, a kind of beret but with a visor, and resumed walking. He tipped his cap several times although there was never anyone to tip his hat to.

  For an old man he walked fast. Henry had to be alert because he took unexpected shortcuts through alleys and backyards. Henry’s leg began to weaken, as if it was hollow inside, and he limped a bit but was able to keep the old man in sight most of the time.

  Finally they arrived at a section of town Henry had never visited before. Old ruined buildings leaned against each other as if for support. Down the street young guys hung out in front of a barroom matching coins they tossed in the air. The old man stopped at a store that appeared to be vacant. The windows were painted black and there was no sign above the big front window where a sign should be. The old man put down his black bag and leaned against the window frame, as if catching his breath. Then he tipped his cap again, picked up the black bag, and knocked at the door. He disappeared inside as the door opened.

  Henry rubbed his chin and kicked at a tin can on the sidewalk. Curiosity itched him, like a mosquito bite. He saw the guys in front of the barroom staring at him, suspending their game with the coins. Noting a narrow alley next to the vacant store, Henry cautiously made his way toward it, then dashed into the alley. He emerged at the far end into a bleak landscape of sagging fire escapes, overflowing rubbish barrels, and abandoned furniture, like debris from a shipwreck. A gray rat squirted between two piles of old wooden crates.

  A newly painted red door drew his attention, no doubt the back door to the store the old man had entered. Stealthily, feeling like an actor in a Saturday-afternoon movie serial, Henry advanced toward the door and tried the handle. Gently but firmly. The door did not open.

  After glancing around to see if he was being observed or if the barroom guys had followed him, Henry leaned over and looked in the keyhole. A foolish action, of course, sensible in a movie but ridiculous in real life. As expected, he saw nothing.

  Suddenly, the door swung open and Henry almost fell on his behind, his jaw dropping in surprise as a huge man, a giant of a man, appeared in the doorway.

  “What’re you doing here?” the giant bellowed, his voice like the wind of at hurricane.

  Henry could not speak, helpless before the giant.

  “What’re you snooping around for?” the giant demanded, stepping forward. Which made Henry scurry backward, causing him to trip this time and fall to his knees. He winced as pain shot through his healed kneecap and he wondered, Have I broken it again?

  The giant towered above him, suffocatingly, his bare arms bulging with musclesr his legs like tree trunks.

  The pain in Henry’s knee went away, leaving the hollowness. He was dismayed to find his cheeks wet with tears.

  “Hey, I’m not going to hurt you,” the giant said, his voice suddenly gentle. “Did you hurt yourself when you fell down?”

  Henry shook his head as he got to his feet, wiping at the tears on his face.

  “You want to see what’s going on inside?” the giant asked. “Is that it?”

  Henry tried to shake his head but couldn’t move a muscle. He wanted nothing to do with this giant, gentle voice or not. What if he was crazy like the old man?

  “I didn’t mean to scare you, boy,” the giant said, a sad smile revealing big jagged teeth. “But we have trouble here with some of the neighborhood wise guys. …”

  Scrambling to his feet, Henry looked up into the giant’s eyes for a moment—soft brown eyes that were full of regret—then tore himself away, stumbling, the giant’s voice trailing behind him as he ran for the alley:

  “Wait … don’t go….”

  But Henry kept going, grateful that his bad leg was strong and sturdy again as he ran through the alley.

  Later, making his way home, he was sorry that he had not gone into the store. He wondered if he would ever find out what the old man was doing inside the place or what his black bag contained.

  Mr. Hairston merely grunted when H
enry reported to the store without his crutches, ready for work, that afternoon, Henry had scrubbed his face and combed his hair. His leg still felt strong despite his long run home that morning.

  “Potatoes to put up,” Mr. Hairston called over the shoulder of a customer, and Henry made his way down to the cellar, where a bin of potatoes awaited him. He always tried to hurry the job because the cellar was dark and damp and he often heard rats scurrying across the floor. One day, a gray rat squirmed out of a bag of potatoes and Henry had leapt with fright, his heart exploding in his chest. He was afraid of a lot of things—the closet door that never stayed closed in his bedroom, spooky movies about vampires—but most of all, the rats.

  When he came back upstairs, Mr. Hairston was saying good-bye to a customer Henry recognized as Mrs. Pierce, who lived on the first floor of his three-decker. Smiling and nodding, Mr. Hairston led her to the door and closed it softly after her.

  “Disgusting, the wart on her chin, hairs growing out of it,” he said, returning to the register, a sneer replacing the smile. Actually, his smile was not really a smile—just as his laughing was not really laughing—but a mere rearrangement of his lips, his usual sneer turned inside out.

  Henry was amazed at how politely Mr. Hairston treated his customers, smiling and bowing and eager to please when they were in the store, and how insulting he was when they were gone.

  “The customer’s always right,” he proclaimed one day, as if he could read Henry’s mind. “But only in the store. When buying. Otherwise, they’re only people. Stupid, most of them. Don’t even know a bargain when they see one. So, why give them a bargain?” He handed Henry a Baby Ruth bar, which astounded the boy because Mr. Hairston had never before given him a treat. “Eat,” he said. Then: “It was nice with the customers during the war, though. Rationing. People came running if they heard I got butter in. Or cigarettes.”

  Henry listened, his cheeks bulging with the candy while Mr. Hairston looked off, as if he were talking to himself, his voice almost dreamy. “I’d make them line up. Make them wait, acting like the stuff hadn’t arrived yet but was expected any minute. All the time the order was here and they waited in line. I was like a dictator, the way they treated me. I was a dictator, Because I had control over them.” Then looking down as if discovering Henry’s presence after having forgotten him there, he said, ”Go to work. I don’t pay you to hang around doing nothing.”