to a pile of newspapers directly in front of me, and there perched in unmoving black fur was a thick-chested, oval-bellied cat that sat with olive eyes fixing and piercing. I froze at the size of this cat that was almost as big as a small dog. My heart left my chest and disappeared somewhere down into my thighs.
The black cat, Poe’s Black Cat, I was convinced, began a hissing sound like gas escaping from a jet, and then a mournful, tormented, almost painful bawl, and then the hissing sound, followed again by the tortured cry.
I can’t remember how long I stood there, paralyzed. I just remember being slightly freed of my paralysis when I felt a hand on my shoulder and as I turned around I looked directly into the cracked and wrinkled face of Bessie O’Leary. The Witch. I stared into that face for three thousand years and then my eyes popped, while my whole body shook and trembled into action and I darted past her, tripping over screaming, squatting cats that scattered, frightened, in every direction, toppling over each other in a riot of confusion.
I raced so fast that I ran headlong into the white gown hanging out to dry. It was wet and clammy like a sweating body and I furiously tried to disentangle myself from it. When I finally succeeded, I didn’t know which direction to turn. It was as though Bessie O’Leary was everywhere. She was guarding The Witch’s Wall - her wall. She was at the front of the house. She was behind Margie McIntyre’s barn next door. She was on top of the roof of her own house, watching me, staring at me with powerful witch’s eyes.
A figure appeared at the cellar door and I plummeted off into deep bushes that bordered the path to Joe Cushing’s store. I burrowed down to unfathomed depths, covering and camouflaging myself with branches and leaves like the marines. I lay there, trying not to breathe. I waited for the sound of approaching footsteps but none could be heard. After a while I heard a door slam, and then an upstairs window squeak down the ropes and close. I looked up at Bessie O’Leary’s house. It was in darkness and the night was still.
Suddenly, I felt warm and shivery all over. I had done what nobody else had ever dared to do. I had gone directly into the bottomless pit of Hell, Bessie O’Leary’s cellar, and I saw the cats. I stood in front of the leader, the Big, Black Cat. And, Bessie O’Leary touched my shoulder and I looked right into her face and I would never forget those watery, red eyes of hers staring straight at me out of deep, sunken sockets. I had done something that Stretch or Birdie or Poirier never would have dared to do, and Charles Webber could only guess about. I would have them eating out of my hand at the Park.
I crawled out from under the branches and leaves and sat up in my forest den that kept the outside world away and was hidden by thick vines that were like prison bars—but I did not feel like a prisoner. I felt free in a quiet world that only I knew existed. Only two years before when I was twelve, I would climb a tree high above my house and sometimes I’d sit high on my perch, concealed in leafy shadows while I read James Fenimore Cooper, Albert Payson Terhune or my comic books. My mother would come out and call me, but I wouldn’t answer. After a while, she would give up, thinking I was at The Park and I would continue reading with the same air of feeling I was experiencing right now in the secret hollow of The Witch’s backyard.
I 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