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We took an early plane out of LaGuardia, heading for Missourimy best friend Rootie, her grandmother Mrs. Bowditch, and me.

The United States marshals were going to meet us in St. Louis. Then we'd drive down to the Ozarks together.

It was a rainy day. We sat on the runway for a while, then we took off into the rain, and the water streamed across my window.

Mrs. Bowditch opened her bag and took out her new Roger Tory Peterson bird book. She already had a bunch of bird books, but she'd bought this one specially for the trip: Birds of the Western States.

Rootie asked the attendant what was for lunch. The attendant told her. "Oh, please," said Rootie, and pulled her baseball cap down over her eyes. "See you in St. Louis, she said to me, and went to sleep. Like that: bam.

I figured we were crossing the Bronx. I tried to go to sleep like Rootie, but it didn't work for me.

My father and I had lived in the Bronx one winter. I remembered the sound of planes flying low.

We were on the run, my father and I. We lived on the fifth floor of a tenement, a couple of blocks from Hunts Point Avenue. The whole time we were there, my father never once left that room.

He watched TV on an old set where everything looked like smoke. But he didn't give a damn. He was doing a quart of vodka a day.

I know, because I had to go get it. The same with food. All take-outChinese. Pizza. Chinese. Pizza. Chinese. . .

The stairs in the tenement had no lights. I guess they burned out, or else people took them, but there were never any lights. The steps were narrow and full of garbage. You had to walk down slowly, touching the wall, using whatever light came fromunder people's doors. Sometimes a person would be standing in a hall, silent, not moving. You wouldn't know he was there till you practically bumped into him.

I hated those stairs.

I got the vodka from one of the raggedy-looking guys who hung out in front of the liquor store. I got to know them. They were okay. In fact, they were the only friends I had. After a while, they'd see me coming and start arguing which of them was going to buy me the vodka. I'd hand the money to one of them, then I'd go around the corner and wait in the hall of a deserted brownstone. The floor was tileI'd look at the patterns and the faded colors while I waited. I thought of long ago, and guys kneeling in the hall, putting each tile exactly in its place. Now half the tiles were cracked or missing, and the house was empty.

Then one of the raggedy guys would bring a paper bag with the vodka, and I'd put it in my book bag and go back up to the room.

Some days I'd take a detour past the neighborhood school. If it was morning, crowds of kids about my age would be swarming around the door, yelling and laughing. If it was noon, they'd be in the yard, shooting baskets and fooling around, shoving one another, joking, pretending to fight.

I'd stand and watch from across the street. I hadn't been to a school in over two years.

Copyright ) 1997 by James Stevenson.