Harry Kitten and Tucker Mouse Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Begin Reading

  Copyright

  For Pat Saffron

  and I only wish that

  this slender book were as big as

  the bond that binds me

  to her

  G.S.

  “At least I could have a name!” the tiny mouse said to himself.

  He was picking his way, very carefully, along the gutter of Tenth Avenue in New York City. Whssht!—just like that, he’d dart from under one parked car to the dark dirty safety beneath another. For this young little mouse had found that the human beings didn’t like him much. Some of those two-legged creatures, who thought they owned the whole city, called him a rat—which he definitely was not!—when they saw him. And some called him a rodent. And one just said, “Yeck!”—which sounded most unkind of all.

  “But at least I can have a name,” the mouse said, as he paused to nibble the crust of a cheese sandwich that one of the human beings had thrown away. He wished there had been more cheese and less crust. “My own name.” He quickly hid behind a tire, as a threatening leather boot came near.

  “I could be Hamlet. Hamlet Mouse.” The night before, in the theater district, the young mouse had heard two human beings, very well dressed, say that they were going to a show called Hamlet. “But I don’t like ‘Hamlet,’” the mouse said to himself. “It sounds too much like a little pig.”

  There was another possibility. Godzilla Mouse. Two teenage boys were going to a horror movie and the mouse had overheard them talking. “Godzilla Mouse—?”

  “It just isn’t me,” he decided.

  But who was he? If he didn’t have a name, he wouldn’t be anyone. For a name makes a person very special. He is himself—and no one else.

  A group of young girls walked by the car under which the mouse was hiding.

  These laughing young girls—one of them had soft fuzzy hair and a high sweet voice—reminded the mouse of the very first thing that he could remember. That was a nest, made of scraps of cloth, and thrown-away Kleenexes, and other comfortable, cozy odds and ends. And there also was a soft warm furry weight—the word “Mother” rang in his ears—that tried to protect him from pounding shovels, and nasty words, and the threat of death. There were men in uniforms, sanitation workers. And he ran.

  He’d run, the young mouse had, and still was running.

  Since then, there’d been no warmth, no weight, no comforting covering. There had only been darting from one parked car—a temporary refuge—to another.

  “But I have to have a name!” the mouse said. “So even if I do get tromped on—at least I’ll know who’s being squashed!”

  The motor of the car he was under started up with a roar. The mouse jumped aside.

  His jump landed him very near those girls. And in order not to frighten them, because young girls and young mice sometimes do not get along, he hid between two garbage cans. Not a very nice place, to be sure—but the little mouse had been in worse. And also, he was near enough to hear the girls talking, a rippling, happy sound.

  “I’m hungry,” said one.

  “So’m I,” said another.

  “Well, this is the best bakery on Tenth Avenue,” said a third girl. “Merry Tucker’s Home-Baked Goods. Does anyone feel like a glazed doughnut or a raspberry tart? They’re to die over, they’re so good!”

  The girls twittered their excitement. And went into the bakery.

  And oh!—a glazed doughnut! A raspberry tart! The little mouse—whose mouth was now watering—could have died over either one. But something even more interesting echoed in his ears. Merry Tucker’s Home-Baked Goods.

  He felt there was something special in those words. A name!

  “It can’t be Merry,” he said to himself. “Sounds too much like Mary.” And if you were going to grow up and be a “he” mouse—well, a name like Mary would just not do.

  But Tucker—he mused and repeated the name. “Tucker Mouse.” It sounded quite original. Not ordinary like Tom, or Joe, or Bill. “Tucker Mouse!” he shouted. “That’s me.”

  The name tasted more sweet and more strong in his mouth than even a raspberry tart.

  So, armed with his name, the mouse marched—through the gutter, it’s true—but he marched down Tenth Avenue. His name—Tucker Mouse—which he’d looked for so long gave him strength, courage—gave him life!

  Tucker Mouse skittered after the girls, darting close to the buildings that lined the street. He was hoping that one of the girls might drop a little piece of pastry. But, sadly, they all liked tarts and doughnuts as much as he did, and smacking their lips, which made it worse, not one of them dropped a single crumb.

  Then up ahead he saw what he feared most of all in the world: a garbage truck—and all around it, sanitation workers scooping up trash from the sidewalk. Tucker Mouse knew that the uniformed men thought he was trash, too. He felt lonely and afraid again.

  And tired. So tired. He had to find a place to rest. A narrow, dark alley opened between a tenement and a dry cleaner’s. As Tucker was scooting in, he happened to see a small copper coin on the sidewalk. Instinctively, he snatched it up in his two front paws—then vanished into the sheltering dark.

  “A penny!” he exclaimed out loud—quite proud that he’d found it, and saved it.

  “The human beings think pennies are good luck,” said a voice behind him.

  Tucker whirled around. In the dark behind him, nibbling a crust—the remains of a sandwich—he saw a kitten. His first thought was: Poor guy! He’s as starved as I am. But then he remembered: I am a mouse—and this is a kitten, who will very likely become a cat.

  “Ya wanna fight?” he demanded.

  “Why?” The kitten put down his crust, and simply asked, “Why?”

  “Well—well—” Tucker Mouse was flustered. “It’s just that—well—cats and mice fight. That’s all.”

  “But why?” the kitten continued to question. “I was starving to death before I found this pitiful piece of sandwich. Some overfed human being missed that garbage can, so I got to eat. And you don’t look too beefy yourself. So why make life worse for each other by fighting?”

  Tucker Mouse was somewhat taken aback. He hadn’t expected such reasonable talk from a skinny kitten sitting next to a trash can and a decaying pumpkin.

  “But—what do we do if we don’t fight?” asked Tucker.

  “Mmm—” The kitten purred softly, like a philosopher. “We could just be friends—”

  “What—?”

  “Not so loud. The human beings are all around.”

  Tucker nodded ruefully: they were surrounded.

  “I know that it’s unusual,” said the kitten. “At least, I know it’s supposed to be. But this is New York! And all the rules are broken here. For the best, I hope. We might even set a precedent—”

  “What’s a precedent?”

  “It’s a new way of thinking,” said the kitten. “And a new way of feeling, too.”

  “You promise not to eat me?”

  “I will never be that hungry.” The kitten patted the small mouse’s head. “And even if I was—I couldn’t. My teeth aren’t big enough. Yet.”

  “Mmm—” The mouse had to think about that. “For a mouse to trust a cat—”

  “You’ve got to trust somebody—so
oner or later,” the kitten declared. “Why not try me?”

  “Well—okay. For a while. But I’m keeping an eye on those teeth!”

  Tucker sighed and looked down the alley, where some sanitation workers were doing their job. For a moment he even wished them well. They have problems, too, he thought to himself—but I hope that I am not one of them.

  “You want some sandwich?”

  Tucker Mouse said nothing.

  “Come on,” urged the kitten. “It’s ham-and-cheese. Mice like cheese—”

  “Ohhh!” Tucker groaned with delight.

  “Then just you munch on this piece. See? There is ham and also cheese on this crust.”

  “I am sort of hungry—” admitted Tucker. “But it isn’t a raspberry tart.”

  “Well, listen to the mousiekins!” The kitten purred. “Next time I’ll try to supply—”

  “Don’t you dare call me mousiekins!”

  “—beef steak. Or corned beef.”

  “Oh, can I have a bite?” said the mouse. “I’m so hungry! You can’t believe—”

  “It’s all yours,” said the kitten. “I’m full.”

  “Full?” The thought of being full of food had never occurred to the mouse before.

  “Munch out!” said the kitten.

  And Tucker munched.

  Between mouthfuls—for there’s more to a crust than a human being might think—he asked, “What’s your name?”

  And then, before the kitten could answer, he explained, between munches, why his name was Tucker.

  “Why, that’s very much like—it’s exactly what happened to me!” said the kitten. And friendship, like a frail tree, grew between them.

  “I, too,” said the kitten, “was hiding from everybody. I wanted to be invisible—” The kitten sighed. “Although I had always felt I was—well, you know—special.”

  “Me, too,” said Tucker.

  “But then two kids walked by.” The kitten’s voice brightened. “And one had an arm around the other’s shoulders—these two nice guys were just talking like friends.” The kitten purred at the memory. “And then the one with scraggly blond hair said, ‘Harry—you’re a character!’”

  The kitten’s eyes blazed at the memory. “‘Harry—you’re a character!’ the kid said. So I knew that was my name,” said the kitten, “since I’ve always wanted to be a character. And a character’s name is Harry!”

  The kitten fell silent. Except for a purr, which sounded to Tucker’s attentive ears like loyalty and, maybe, trust.

  “So I’m Harry,” said the kitten.

  “And I am Tucker,” said the mouse.

  A thoughtful silence grew long, and then longer, between them. But outside the private silence they shared were taxis honking, huge trucks roaring—the din and danger of New York.

  “So where do we go from here?” asked the mouse, with a tremble in his voice that he tried hard to hide.

  Harry thought a moment and then exclaimed: “Oh, I know where! There’s a great big building—and it must have lots and lots of cellars—where we’d be safe. Follow me.” He began to creep warily down the street. It was evening now, and he and his friend could slip through the failing light like ghosts.

  “Wait! Wait!” shouted Tucker. “I have to hide my penny. When I can, I’m going to come back and get it.” There was a Cadillac nearby, and the mouse thought of shoving it under one wheel. It had been parked there a very long time—the meter said so. But the little mouse reconsidered. If it had been there so long, the police would probably be coming soon to drag it away to the place where cars went to jail until their owners came to claim them.

  “Every mouse should have his Life Savings. And this penny is the beginning of mine.”

  He decided, finally, and after much scuttling back and forth, that it just might be safe wedged between two bricks in the tenement wall that faced the alley. “Now don’t let me forget where I’ve put it.”

  “I have a suspicion you’ll never forget,” said the kitten. By now, he’d begun to form an idea of his friend’s character. It was—no, not “greedy”—but rather, “acquisitive.” Which is much the same thing, but in much nicer terms.

  “I am ready,” Tucker Mouse announced. “Now where?”

  “To the deep and mysterious lower levels of the greatest building in all the world,” said the kitten. “The fantastic and fabulous Empire State Building!”

  “Oh,” mumbled Tucker. “I never heard of it.”

  Harry made a face—which looked like pity (or maybe disbelief). “Even the meekest mouse,” he said, “must surely have heard of the Empire State.”

  “Well, I haven’t,” said Tucker. “So show me.”

  An hour’s scurrying, hurrying, worrying—then it rose above them: beautiful and unbelievable.

  “They really do know something,” said Tucker. “The human beings.” He looked up, up. “Just look at that!”

  “Let’s see what’s underground,” said Harry Kitten. “I’ve heard about those cellars ever since I can remember.”

  “And when is that?” asked Tucker, with a hush in his voice.

  “I don’t know,” said Harry. “The first thing—the really very first thing—I remember is shivering, last month, in a pipe made of iron. There was some cat there—little, like me, with black-and-white fur. Then I forget. But maybe I have brothers and sisters somewhere.”

  “Show me the building,” said Tucker Mouse. He coughed, because Harry seemed to be dreaming and sad, and Tucker had to interrupt. “And tell me all about, and show me, all the fantastic, fabulous cellars. Underground. Please? Harry? Even if they’re scary.”

  “Okay,” said Harry. His voice was still dull. “But I don’t know about the lower levels.”

  “Come on,” said Tucker. “Let’s adventure.”

  “We have to go down, and down, and down,” said Harry.

  The kitten and the mouse prowled carefully around the huge building. And in back they found a freight elevator on the street level that hadn’t completely closed. Like two furry, quick blinks—and they almost were invisible—they dashed through.

  It was eight o’clock, and most of the weary human beings had, gratefully, gone home.

  “We’re in luck,” said Harry. “We can prowl at our leisure.”

  They jumped down to the floor below. A dark passageway, barely lit by a series of weak white bulbs, stretched endlessly ahead of them.

  “We may need a hunk of that stuff, luck,” said Tucker, staring into the gloom. “I wish I had my penny.”

  “Oh, we’ll be lucky!” said Harry jauntily. “As you said before: let’s do some exploring. Adventuring!”

  The stairways—some marked EMERGENCY EXIT—the airshafts, the endless, endless corridors—no one can describe the lower levels of the Empire State Building.

  At one point, outside a closed elevator door, Tucker had to stand on Harry’s shoulders—even with the help of a nearby ladder—to push the button with an arrow on it that pointed down.

  “I suppose that’s us,” said the mouse, as he weaved and wobbled dangerously, and finally managed to push that button. “There.”

  The door opened—they entered—nobody there—and the elevator began to descend. And descend. And descend!

  “Harry—we are coming out in China.”

  “No, we’re not. Just wait.” The kitten sounded very sure—for someone who wasn’t all that sure. At last the elevator stopped. The door opened. Out they ran. “You see, mousiekins—”

  “I have asked you not—”

  “—the lowest level. That’s what the elevator button says. We’re here. And get off my shoulders, by the way.”

  “The lowest level,” mused Tucker Mouse. “To think that it should come to this.”

  “Fewer human beings to worry us.” Harry offered his jaunty suggestion as hope. “Anyway—we’re here.”

  Here? Here was a tunnel with white tiles for a floor, and white tiles for a ceiling, and also white tiles for walls
. Here, in fact, was all white tiles—and not even a sanitation inspector in sight.

  “There is absolutely no one around,” the kitten went on.

  “So I’ve noticed,” said Tucker, eyeing the icy-white canyon they were in. “A ghost would make this place feel alive.”

  “Now, now—”

  “Now what?” squeaked Tucker Mouse. “We are on the bottomest level. And it feels—and it looks—like Dead Man’s Gulch.”

  “At the very worst,” said Harry, “there is nobody here—”

  “That’s just it! Nobody.”

  “—who would want to do us harm.”

  “At this point,” said Tucker, “the chance of a little harm might be quite exciting.”

  “Shall we take the elevator back up to level four?” asked Harry. “There may be janitors there.”

  “Let’s try it here for a while,” said Tucker.

  For hours these two—a kitten who wanted to seem very brave and a mouse who was afraid to admit he was scared—roamed through the labyrinth that lies far beneath the Empire State Building.

  Now and then they caught sight of men in uniform, the caretakers of the building, who roamed about doing odd jobs—for a building is like a living thing: it needs to be taken care of. That night, there were only a few lonely men. And they were quite easy to avoid.

  The solitude, however, the silence and the isolation—they were not so easy to avoid. But still—no one even knew the kitten and the mouse were there.

  Food was no problem. The caretakers were very careless. They left little bits of lunches around. A shred of lettuce—a bit of bread—now and then a glob of yogurt in a container.

  But lettuce and bread—and even the dregs of old milk shakes—are really very dull. If you have too much of them.

  “I’d love a hunk of cheese,” said Tucker.

  “Umm,” purred Harry. “Roast beef for me.”

  The next day came up above. Of course, deep down, they couldn’t tell day from night. Tucker looked around, scratched one ear, and said, “Harry, have we been in this particular corridor before?”