The Christmas Kid полностью

So it began. That summer, the boy served a double apprenticeship: to Seamus Grady, who lived two blocks away, and to Milton Caniff, who lived in the distant world of fame and accomplishment. The boy learned that Grady had been a letterer for comic books all through the war and had to quit when his eyes weakened. And one night, he showed the boy his secret treasure, what he called the Collection, stored in an old wooden chest in the back of the store. These were original drawings, twice the size of a published comic book page, in black and white, with light blue pencil lines showing where the drawings had been roughed in. Grady had lettered these pages: some of them had been drawn by a nineteen-year-old named Alex Toth (“He might end up better than Canipp”), some of them by a master of the brush named Joe Kubert, and some by Will Eisner, who drew The Spirit. He also had photostats, and scrapbooks, and his own collection of comic books and newspaper strips. He also owned work by Roy Crane, the greatest master of the Benday grays, made of dots, and by Noel Sickles, who had helped Caniff when he was starting. He owned Alex Raymond’s old Flash Gordon strips, and Tarzan pages drawn by Burne Hogarth. “These guys are the masters,” Grady said. “Nobody ever did anything like these guys did before.”

For three dollars a week, the boy delivered signs, swept the sidewalk, washed brushes, went for soda and sandwiches. He started showing Grady his own cartoons, copied from Caniff and Crane, and Grady fixed the drawings and showed the boy tricks with brushes. He let the boy pore through the Collection now, reading all the Terry strips from their beginnings in the 1930s. Soon the boy’s head was teeming with characters: Connie and Big Stoop, the Dragon Lady and Burma, Tony Sandhurst and April Kane, and a weird character named Sanjak. They became part of the boy’s life, following him to school in the fall, peopling his imagination just before sleep. The Dragon Lady made him feel funny, and he would look for a woman like Burma the rest of his life.

“What kind of a guy do you think he is?” the boy said one snowy Saturday afternoon that winter. Grady was working on a sign for Gutter’s Shoe Store. “Milton Caniff, I mean?”

“I hear he’s a great guy.”

“You think if I write him a letter, he’d answer?”

“All you can do is try,” Grady said. “Nothin’ to lose, right?”

A month later, the boy came running into the store, waving a brown envelope, unable to get the words out of his mouth. Caniff had sent him an original drawing of Steve Canyon.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Grady said softly, holding the drawing up to the light. “Isn’t that something?”

That settled it; the boy would be a cartoonist. Caniff had sent him a little booklet, telling young cartoonists to read Robert Louis Stevenson, and Kipling, and Dumas. Grady told him that he would have to go to art school. “Learn to draw everything!” he said. Through the winter, the boy read his way through the local public library, and by the following spring was making large drawings on newsprint during the hours when Grady left him in charge of the sign shop, while the older man did big window signs in a downtown department store. He always kept the door locked when he was drawing. All the boy’s women looked like the Dragon Lady.

Then one evening in that second summer, while Grady worked at the A&S department store, the boy was drawing in the store. The heat was wilting; great splotches of sweat fell on the newsprint, and the charcoal pencil cut holes in the paper. He opened the door to let a breeze in. About one hour later, two of the Tigers paused at the door. Junior and Cheech. Their faces were bleary, and each was carrying a quart bottle of beer. The boy was suddenly afraid.

“Well, lookit dis,” said Junior. “An ahtist! We got ourself an ahtist, right here in da neighborhood. The boy ahtist!”

“Whyn’t you draw our picture?” Cheech said. They moved into the store, and the boy couldn’t bring himself to move. Then Cheech saw them open the top of the chest, revealing the treasures of the Collection.

“Well, how about this!” he said. “Comics! They got comics in here.”

“Leave them alone,” the boy said. “They’re Mr. Grady’s.”