The Planet of Junior Brown by Virginia Hamilton Page B

are you for sweaters and stuff?” Buddy asked the Billy.
    â€œI got nothing left, man, but some long-sleeved polo shirts,” the Billy said. “They not going to keep nobody warm, either. I been thinking about making capes out of the sleeping bags but then I figure the kids would stand out wearing something like that.”
    â€œAll I got is ten bucks,” Buddy told him. “I already give ten tonight to another planet—wait.” Buddy reached inside his jacket, remembering he had concealed the wallet there. For a moment Buddy was afraid he had lost it, but no, he had it. He pulled out the wallet and telling the story about it in one long stream of words, he gave the Tomorrow Billy the whole sixty dollars.
    â€œLet me write the cat a note,” the Billy said.
    â€œYea?” Buddy said. The two stared at one another, their thoughts working over the idea.
    The Billy produced a pen. He took Buddy’s piece of paper and wrote on it:
    We sorry about the bills but we need im ta feed the kittis. So, be cool. You a real dude. We not touch you credit cars. So dig. Thanks .
    A member of the planet.
    Buddy and the Tomorrow Billy studied the note for a long time. It looked fine. There was nothing in it that could give them away. The Billy had an envelope. Buddy addressed it and sealed it, giving it back to the Billy to mail.
    â€œYou got a crowd over where you are?” the Billy asked Buddy. He was a dark-complexioned, tall and thin fellow with soft, happy eyes.
    â€œJust only two,” Buddy told him. “I got finished with a group of them about a week ago but it took them all that time to figure out how I wasn’t coming back. But they cleared out, finally.”
    Buddy spoke softly. This planet thrived in the busy meat-packing area isolated from the huge industry farther downtown. Refrigerated trucks could be heard all around them. They were in a small, dank warehouse room virtually sealed off from the rest of the enormous building by the use of plasterboard, paint and movable wallboards fixed over the door. Still, the planet wasn’t as safe as it could have been. Buddy and the Tomorrow Billy talked of this for a moment.
    â€œI already studied it,” the Billy said. “There’s a place down near the Brooklyn Bridge I found out about. We going to make it over there by late Tuesday night.”
    â€œHow will I find you?” Buddy said. He liked this Billy. He wished he could ask him about the things he did on his planet.
    â€œI can send somebody over about Friday to bring you down,” the Billy said. “I maybe will send you two or three boys besides, if you can take them in.”
    â€œI can take them in,” Buddy told him. “You do that.” But that was all. His nagging notion that he should be doing more on his own planet he kept to himself.
    â€œLater,” Buddy said. He was gone, melting from the dark room into the hall. Outside he skirted the trucks. Staying in shadow, he was a black movement under cover of night. Buddy slipped away. By three o’clock he was uptown.
    Buddy stopped once for a cup of coffee at 102nd Street. The coffee tasted foul and left Buddy moody and jumpy. He had walked the rest of the way to his job, reaching the newsstand long after his legs had begun to ache. The stand was a lean-to built on the side of a corner apartment house. There was a food shop and a men’s wear store on the ground floor of the building facing Broadway. The lean-to took up the space against the building around the corner from Broadway, on the cross street. It had a rectangular opening on the side street, like a peepshow, with magazines, pamphlets and digests hanging on all sides and neat stacks of daily papers on its counter.
    With his last strength Buddy heaved bundles of morning newspapers thrown from delivery trucks onto the sidewalk through the side door of the stand. With cold, stiff fingers he knelt down to unwind the wire which