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away he’d gone to Clem’s room, and his father had immediately
taken him back to the military school. Alex wouldn’t make that mistake
again. They would head toward the ocean and then south toward San Diego.
    He didn’t realize that he’d been
dozing until he woke up, shivering. The sky was lighter in the east. He
touched Sammy’s shoulder, and they left the junkyard, still following the
railroad tracks. Sammy wanted to hitchhike, but Alex knew it was still too
early, and they were still too close to the Valley Home for Boys.
    Hunger drove them to cross a field to the
highway and enter a small cafe, where they spent half their money on pancakes
and milk.
    Beside the cafe was a trailer set on blocks
and settled to rest. It had a dirt yard and a rope swing hanging from a tree.
The yard was cluttered with rusting things, but leaning against the trailer,
near the door, was a shiny red bicycle. The blank wall of the cafe blocked the
people there from seeing it, and the trailer was dark and silent.
    “Look at that!” Alex said,
grabbing Sammy’s arm.
    “It’s sure nice.”
    “Let’s steal it. We can go a lot
faster riding than walking.”
    Sammy stared at the mobile home. “What
if somebody comes out?”
    “If they come out…” He
shrugged. “But they’re still asleep.”
    Sammy said nothing, but his face registered
his fear.
    “I’ll get it,” Alex said.
“You keep walking along the road, and I’ll pick you up.”
Alex’s young voice contained the hint of a sneer.
    Sammy
hesitated, but one fear overcame another and he began trudging along the
highway shoulder. Alex waited until Sammy was about a hundred yards away, then moved quietly across the yard. When he reached the side
of the trailer he froze, listening for signs of someone moving. All was silent.
He took the bicycle by the handlebars and walked it across to the highway,
where he mounted and began to pedal. Up the road Sammy was walking, looking
back over his shoulder. When he saw Alex, Sammy waited. A minute later they
were on their way.

 
    It took all day to cross the city of Los
Angeles. Late in the morning they stole a second bicycle from a park
playground, and thereafter they played follow-the-leader, weaving on sidewalks
and down alleys and around automobiles. The day was warm but bleak and overcast
until early afternoon. They wandered down side streets in both middle-class and
slum neighborhoods. It was an exploration of uncharted land where they might
meet any adventure. They stopped to rest and play in places as diverse as a
huge gravel pit (they were coated with white dust when they left) and a small
park with a public swimming pool. Once they had to walk the bicycles up a long
grade, but they raced wildly down several miles on the other side, laughing at
the wind in their faces. By late afternoon they’d traveled almost fifty
miles from where they started and were in Long Beach. Dinner was milk and sweet
rolls shoplifted from a small market, gulped on the beach in the shadow of the
immense amusement pier. Night arrived, and the gala lights,
smells of hot dogs and onions and candy apples, and carnival sounds beckoned to them. They wandered around the amusement pier, which overflowed
onto a wide boardwalk. They had no money for rides nor for what was giving off
good smells, but they wandered with the crowd and poked their noses wherever
they could, forgetting temporarily that they were still hungry. Movie theaters
were numerous and cheap. One was showing a Boris Karloff double
feature—The Mummy and Frankenstein—and they couldn’t resist
the lure of being frightened. Alex bought one ticket for twenty
cents—leaving them another twenty-five cents—went inside, then
opened an exit door so Sammy could slip in. They stayed through two
shows—until the lights went on as the theater closed.
    The amusement park was going to sleep. Half
the concessions were shut down, and the crowd was reduced to a few clots of
moving people. The