could hear the shouts in the night and the galloping feet of the Hiders and the Searchers racing back to the Green Box, either to win or lose. And through it all, I was lost to the world, a displaced person, a “D.P.” the newspapers called it. Nobody in the entire world knew where I was. It was one of those most exciting moments of my life. It must have been the way God felt. He could see and hear everything but we couldn’t see him.
I heard Birdie say, “Where’s Sully? Did he go home?”
“Sully wouldn’t go home. My gang knows the rules. If they go home they have to report to me. What the hell, if they didn’t we’d be out lookin’ for them all friggin’ night,” the “captured” Stretch whined. I knew the sound. It meant that Birdie’s gang was victorious again. It killed Stretch to lose.
“O.K.,” Birdie said, standing under the gold halo of the streetlight. “Who’s still out?”
I could see it all and hear it all and I thought I’d blow up, it felt so good.
Stretch looked around. “Webber, Doris, Betty Martin, Little John and Sully.”
“O.K., let’s fan out again. Be ready, Sully’s the type who’s like a rabbit. He’s so skinny he can slip right through you like grease.”
I felt my face burn and tears sting my eyes. I hated the word “skinny”. I used to go to bed at night praying that God would make me fat, so fat that I would waddle when I walked. I could never understand how some of the kids who were poorer than we were, and only drank Kool-Aid and ate Devil Dogs, could have muscles or be fat. We always had good food. Sure, it was great to be fast, to be able to slip through the evening like grease, but nobody in the world wanted to be skinny.
My inner sanctum didn’t seem so great any more and I was beginning to think about letting myself get caught, so I could go home to bed and dream about being fat and kids would call me Chubby or Porky Pig or just plain Fatso. I lay there thinking of names: Whopper, Lumpy, Heap, Jelly Roll, Puffy, The Barrel, Drum, or Cannon Ball. Any one of those was better than Skinny or The Thermometer, or as a guy who came through the Park once in a while used to yell at me, “Hey, Superman.” I was always afraid a name would stick, that’s why I’d stay away from the Park for a while or go up to Rats Alley to see George and Ralph, because they didn’t seem to care about what you looked like. They were young like me, but even then I knew that they were old.
I knew it was getting late and I figured I might as well go home. I’d break the rules for tonight and maybe that would be O.K., too. Maybe they’d wonder why I just took off. Maybe they might even realize that I heard them.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up the path from Joe Cushing’s store. I sat rigid and breathless, letting the air pass through my nose. The footsteps were soft, but they were coming closer. I knelt forward, peering through an opening in the hedges. Now, I could reach out and grab the leg of this prowler if I had the courage. I looked up at the face that was barely visible from a shred of light from the Street lamp and realized it was Betty Martin. She was on my team and she was alone.
“Betty,” I whispered hoarsely. “Betty, are you still out?”
“What? Who is that?” She stopped dead in her tracks.
“Sully. I’m in here.”
“Sully? Are you still out, too?”
“Yeah. Come on in and hide. We’ll make plans.”
“But that’s Bessie O’Leary’s.”
“Don’t worry about her,” I said bravely. “She’s taken care of for the night.” Still, I looked back to the darkened house to be certain. The upstairs window where the light had burned was now a square frame of glass reflecting the full glow of the moon.
“How do I get in there?” Betty said too loudly.
“Sssssh,” I cautioned. “Over here, duck under these vines.”
Betty crawled under the thick growth and sat back on her haunches.
“Hey, this is too much. How’d you find it?”
“I dunno. I just stumbled onto it.” And then I told her about the cats and Bessie O’Leary touching me on the shoulder and how I bolted out of there and practically dove into the hideaway.
She sat in silent awe. “Weren’t you scared? Even for a minute?”
“Naw. Well, sure, let’s face it. It’s not something I would want to do again. But I did it,” I added quickly. “And nobody else ever did.”
“Yeah, boy, Sully, I never knew you were so brave.”
“If you want the truth, Betty, I never knew it either. Something inside kept telling me to go into that cellar.”
“Gee. Gee,” she kept saying. Betty Martin was pretty, with shiny black hair and the whitest teeth in the Park. She went to St. Bart’s, and her oldest brother was in the Air Corps—in supplies. I never thought that sounded very brave. I knew that if I ever had to go—if the war lasted until I grew up—I would join the infantry so I could wade through the water and attack enemy beaches, maybe even use a flame thrower.
Right now as she sat beside me in the dark, I could almost see those white teeth flashing. She was wearing shorts and a peasant blouse, the same kind Jean Peters wore in Captain from Castille.
Neither of us said anything so I broke the silence by offering a plan for getting back to the Green Box. “When they don’t find us in the Park, they’ll come looking for us and as soon as they do, we’ll cut through Jugger’s yard, climb the fence and sit there waiting for them.”
“Gee, I don’t think we should cut through Jugger’s. It’s too dangerous. He might be out.”
I explained how I saw Jugger go into the house for the night. But I didn’t tell her anything else, like the uniform and stuff.
“You mean, you were right there behind a tree and he never saw you?”
“Yeah.”
“But weren’t you scared? Well, I guess not if you could go into Bessie O’Leary’s cellar. Gee, Sully, you really surprise me.”
“Why? What’ya think I was, a pansy or something?”
“Well, no, but you’re different than the other kids.”
“How?” I was on the defensive.
“Well, you never get into trouble, and you read books, and you tell funny stories—and you always go home when you’re ’sposed to. And Miss Feeney always trusted you with the key to The Green Box. She never let anybody else open it.”
“Yeah. I ’spose you’re right. But, you don’t think I’m a pansy, do ya?”
“Of course not. Especially after tonight. Gee.”
Suddenly I touched her arm. “Ssssssh, I heard something. Did you?”
“No,” she whispered.
“There it is again.” The sound of footsteps and muffled voices
