“Don’t say any more,” Andrew said. “I’ll dream about it.”
“Go on please,” David said. “It’s like werewolves. Mother locked up the werewolf book because Andrew had such bad dreams.”
“Did Mr. Pound ever bite anybody?” Andrew asked.
“No, horseman,” David told him. “It’s just a way of talking. He means mad out of his head mad. Not hydrophobia mad. Why did he think they were mad?”
“I can’t tell you,” young Tom said. “I wasn’t as young then as when we used to shoot pigeons in the gardens. But I was too young to remember everything and the idea of Mr. Pound and Mr. Ford with that dreadful slaver coming out of their mouths all ready to bite, drove everything out of my head. Did you know Mr. Joyce, Mr. Davis?”
“Yes. He and your father and I were very good friends.”
“Papa was much younger than Mr. Joyce.”
“Papa was younger than anybody, then.”
“Not than me,” young Tom said proudly. “I figure I was probably about Mr. Joyce’s youngest friend.”
“I’ll bet he misses you a lot,” Andrew said.
“It certainly is a shame he never could have met you,” David said to Andrew. “If you hadn’t been hanging around Rochester all the time he could have had the privilege.”
“Mr. Joyce was a great man,” young Tom said. “He wouldn’t have wanted to have anything to do with you two punks.”
“That’s your opinion,” Andrew said. “Mr. Joyce and David might have been pals. David writes for the paper at school.”
“Papa, tell us some more about when you and Tommy and Tommy’s mother were poor. How poor did you ever get?”
“They were pretty poor,” Roger said. “I can remember when your father used to make up all young Tom’s bottles in the morning and go to the market to buy the best and the cheapest vegetables. I’d meet him coming back from the market when I would be going out for breakfast.”
“I was the finest judge of poireaux in the sixth arrondissement,” Thomas Hudson told the boys.
“What’s poireaux?”
“Leeks.”
“It looks like long, green, quite big onions,” young Tom said. “Only it’s not bright shiny like onions. It’s dull shiny. The leaves are green and the ends are white. You boil it and eat it cold with olive oil and vinegar mixed with salt and pepper. You eat the whole thing, top and all. It’s delicious. I believe I’ve eaten as much of it as maybe anyone in the world.”
“What’s the sixth whatever it is?” Andrew asked.
“You certainly hold up conversation,” David told him.
“If I don’t know French I have to ask.”
“Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements or city districts. We lived in the sixth.”
“Papa, can we skip the arrondissements and you tell us something else?” Andrew asked.
“You can’t stand to learn anything, you athlete,” David said.
“I want to learn,” Andrew said. “But arrondissements is too old for me. You’re always telling me things are too old for me. I admit that is too old for me. I can’t follow it.”
“What’s Ty Cobb’s lifetime batting average?” David asked him.
“Three sixty-seven.”
“That’s not too old for you.”
“Cut it out, David. Some people like baseball and you like arrondissements.”
“I suppose we don’t have arrondissements in Rochester.”
“Oh cut it out. I just thought papa and Mr. Davis knew things that would be more interesting to everybody than those damn—Oh hell, I can’t even remember the name of them.”
“You’re not supposed to swear when we are around,” Thomas Hudson corrected.
“I’m sorry, papa,” the small boy said. “I can’t help it that I’m so damn young. I’m sorry again. I mean so young.”
He was upset and hurt. David could tease him pretty successfully.
“You’ll get over being young,” Thomas Hudson told him. “I know it’s hard not to swear when your feelings get working. Only don’t swear in front of grown people. I don’t care what you say by yourselves.”
“Please, papa. I said I was sorry.”
“I know,” Thomas Hudson said. “I wasn’t bawling you out. I was just explaining. I see you guys so seldom it makes a lot of explaining.”