Chapter Two
Saying So Long, Without
Words
by Rene
Copyright December, 2001
Sonny, wearing his winter coat, with a hat and gloves in the pocket in spite of the fairly warm autumn day, and carrying the two laundry bags, crossed the street and went into the alley by the Cerullo's apartment building. He didn't go into the building, and he didn't plan for his friend Louie's parents or the rest of the Cerullo family to know that he had been there at all, but he couldn't leave home without telling Louie. Louie Cerullo had been his best friend since kindergarten. Louie was a great friend, the kind of friend that could be trusted to keep secrets, even from his own family. And Louie had had to do other things too, things his mother would have been very upset about. It started with Louie caring for his friend's injuries, taking salve and aspirin and bandages from his mother's medicine cabinet. One day Sonny told him that Mrs. Cerullo was going to start missing things, and being a bright person, she would soon put two and two together, come up with four, and do something, something that could bring trouble to the Cerullo family in the form of Deke Woods. Louie was going to have to stop taking care of Sonny, that was all there was to it, but Louie disagreed, he had other ideas. He came up with the plan to shoplift items that they needed from the neighborhood drugstore, and then as time went on, they spread their plan to other stores in other neighborhoods. Sonny always said that Louie had larceny in his soul, because Louie was such a good thief, and he seemed to like stealing so much. They would go into a store, and look for a counter that was staffed by a woman, preferably a middle-aged woman who could be charmed by a small boy with curly black hair, huge deep sad eyes with amazing eyelashes, and wonderful dimples. Sonny would do what Louie called the charm thing at the counter, using all the good manners his mother and the nuns had taught him, batting his eyelashes and smiling to show his dimples. Then Louie would shoplift what they needed. They got quite good at this escapade, but it began to be bothersome to Sonny. After all, his friend was doing something that could get him sent to juvie, and he was doing it for him, so the two boys developed rules. It was after Sonny finished Huckleberry Finn, and then read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which led to other books about knights and the way they operated. Knights, the boys discovered had rules for everything they did, a way to live their life, a code of behavior and ethics, so they developed their own code. You never stole anything you didn't need. You never stole toys or candy. You never stole anything but medical supplies, or maybe a present for your mother. The most important rule of all was that all the actual shoplifting had to be done by Louie, because as Louie said, "If I get caught, I'll be in big trouble, but at least I'll still be alive the next day."
Now, Sonny climbed up the fire escape, and peeked in Louie's window. Louie shared the room with his three brothers, and there were two bunk beds in the crowded bedroom. However, his oldest brother was in the Navy, his next brother was working after school and rarely home, and the younger one liked to do his homework in the living room so he could turn on the TV as soon as he finished. As Sonny hoped, Louie was alone in the room. Sonny knocked three times quickly, then one more time on the window, and waited. Louie came to the window, and grimaced as he saw the bruises on his best friend's face. "Come on in," he said. As he had so many times before, Sonny climbed in Louie's window, and sat on Louie's lower bunk. "Louie, I'm Ok, but I fought back this time. Deke is unconscious on the floor at home, and my mother told me to leave, because she is afraid he'll kill me when he wakes up." He figured if he told the story quickly, it would come out easier. "Wha, what do you mean, she told you to leave?" Louie asked, reading from his friend's voice, the coat, hat and gloves in the middle of September and the two laundry bags in his hands, that this wasn't a temporary thing. "She said that this is the only way we won't kill each other, if I leave, and he thinks she chose him over me, so I packed my stuff, and I'm out of there." His words were casual and calm, but Louie knew better. "You can stay here, Sonny, not just tonight, you can live with us. I know my parents will agree, particularly if they know about Deke." Louie saw an end to secrets. "No, no way, if I stayed here, if your parents knew everything, they would be in trouble. Deke would make trouble for them. He could ruin their lives, he could ruin your life. No, your parents can't know I've even been here. I'm just here to tell you what happened and that I won't be at school tomorrow or from now on. I'm here to tell you goodbye." Sonny's voice was firm, but his friend heard the quiver in it. "Well, then you sleep on the roof, and I'll sneak out and sleep there too tonight. We'll talk about your next move then." That settled, Louie moved onto more familiar ground. "Let me get you some aspirin," he said, moving into the closet where he had a secret hiding place filled with his medical supplies among other things. He brought out a canteen; filled it with water from the jug of distilled water he kept there, and handed it and two aspirin to Sonny. Sonny threw the pills into his mouth, and took a swig from the canteen in a quick, practiced movement.
"So how do I score this one?" Louie said, "you knocked him out, so that's one for the kid, but now you're out on the street, so that's one for the cop. I guess I give one point each." Louie went into the closet with his marker, and then came out a few seconds later. "You'll be glad to know that you're still ahead." "Well, I guess I'll stay ahead then, because you aren't going to have anything to score from here on." Sonny smiled, but even though Louie saw the dimples, he knew it wasn't a real smile, not one from the heart, just the kind that Sonny flashed to make people think he was OK. "Talk to you later," Sonny said, and he ducked out the window and headed for the roof. He scooted up the fire escape, and onto the roof just as he had so many times before, day or night didn't matter, it was always safe and familiar. The chimney was at the side of the roof, and the area beyond the chimney, where the two boys had come to sleep outside and watch the stars together so often, was hidden from the fire escape steps and the door from the building to the roof. A knee high wall around the roof for safety, hid the rooftop spot from the street and the nearest building as long as you didn't stand up. Sonny put his pillow and blanket out, and laid down on top of them, covering himself with his coat. The bruising on his shoulders hurt as they touched the ground, but he knew the aspirin would soon lessen the pain. It was still light out, and he took out his book and began to read for the hundredth time about Huck and Jim and their adventures. After a while, he dozed off, and woke to darkness, stars, and his best friend sitting beside him, holding a sleeping bag and a plate with a sandwich and an apple on it. "I want you to take the sleeping bag with you, Sonny. It will make you more comfortable, and you're going to have to get enough sleep so that you can figure out how to stay alive on the streets." Louie had been doing a lot of thinking in the last three or four hours. He handed Sonny the plate, and the canteen, and leaned back against his own pillow, looking up at the stars. Sonny ate without talking or looking at Louie, but as he finished the sandwich, and picked up the apple, he turned and said, "that's your Boy Scout sleeping bag, Louie, I can't take it. You begged for that bag for Christmas when we were ten, and you were thrilled when you actually got it and the canteen. I won't take them both, and the canteen is easier to carry." "I'm not a Boy Scout anymore," Louie said, and he smiled, "I quit, because let's face it, I wasn't going to make Eagle Scout, and take the pledge about honesty with a straight face, and then steal stuff from the drug store the next day." "Just one more way being my best friend and helping me screwed up your life," Sonny said with a wry smile. "Hell, I'd rather have been your best friend, and had the adventures we've had than be an Eagle Scout any day," Louie exclaimed, "there isn't any comparison at all." The two boys were quiet, each thinking his own thoughts as they looked up at the stars as they had so many times before, but this time was different and they both knew it. Things would never be the same. Sonny might hide out on the roof for a day or two, and he might meet Louie after school on the playground or in the alley nearby, but they would never again be the primary players in each other's lives. This was goodbye, although they would not say it in those words, not that night.