The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (5 page)

New York City, 9 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 16, 197-:
Dr. Jonas Freibourg is at a particularly delicate point in his experiment with electrolytes, certain plant molds and the man within. Freibourg (who, like many scientists, insists on being called Doctor although he is in fact a Ph.D.) has also been left in charge of Leonard, the Freibourg baby, while Dilys Freibourg attends her regular weekly class in Zen cookery. Dr. Freibourg has driven in from New Jersey with Leonard, and now the baby sits on a pink blanket in a corner of the laboratory. Leonard, aged fourteen months, has been supplied with a box of Mallomars and a plastic rattle; he is supposed to play quietly while Daddy works.

9:20:
Leonard, aged fourteen months, has eaten all the Mallomars and is tired of the rattle; he leaves the blanket, hitching along the laboratory floor. Instead of crawling on all fours, he likes to pull himself along with his arms, putting his weight on his hands and hitching in a semisitting position.

9:30:
Dr. Freibourg scrapes an unsatisfying culture out of the petri dish. He is not aware that part of the mess misses the bin marked for special disposal problems, and lands on the floor.

9:30½:
Leonard finds the mess, and like all good babies investigating foreign matter, puts it in his mouth.

9:31:
On his way back from the autoclave, Dr. Freibourg trips on Leonard. Leonard cries and the doctor picks him up.

“Whussamadda, Lennie, whussamaddda, there, there, what’s that in your mouth? Something crunches. “Ick ick, spit it out, Lennie. Aaaaa, Aaaaaaa,
AAAAAA
.”

At last the baby imitates its father. “Aaaaaaaaa.”

“That’s a good boy, Lenny, spit it into Daddy’s hand, that’s a
good
boy, yeugh.” Dr. Freibourg scrapes the mess off the baby’s tongue. “Oh, yeugh, Mallomar. It’s
OK
, Lennie,
OK
?”

“Ggg.nnn. K.” The baby ingests the brown mess and then grabs for the doctor’s nose and tries to put that in his mouth.

Despairing of his work, Dr. Freibourg throws a cover over his experiment, stashes Leonard in his stroller and heads across the hall to insert his key in the self-service elevator, going down and away from the secret laboratory. Although he is one block from Riverside Park it is a fine day and so Dr. Freibourg walks several blocks east to join the other Saturday parents and their charges on the benches in Central Park.

10:15:
The Freibourgs reach the park. Although he has some difficulty extracting Leonard from the stroller, Dr. Freibourg notices nothing untoward. He sets the baby on the grass. The baby picks up a discarded tennis ball and almost fits it in his mouth.

10:31:
Leonard is definitely swelling. Everything he has on stretches, up to a point: T-shirt, knitted diaper, rubber pants, so that, seen from a distance, he may still deceive the inattentive eye. His father is deep in conversation with a pretty divorcée with twin poodles, and although he checks on Leonard from time to time, Dr. Freibourg is satisfied that the baby is safe.

10:35:
Leonard spots something bright in the bushes on the far side of the clearing. He hitches over to look at it. It is, indeed, the glint of sunlight on the fender of a moving bicycle and as he approaches it recedes, so he has to keep approaching.

10:37:
Leonard is gone. It may be just as well because his father would most certainly be alarmed by the growing expanse of pink flesh to be seen between his shrinking T-shirt and the straining waistband of his rubber pants.

10:50:
Dr. Freibourg looks up from his conversation to discover that Leonard has disappeared. He calls.

“Leonard, Lennie …”

10:51:
Leonard does not come.

10:52:
Dr. Freibourg excuses himself to hunt for Leonard.

11:52:
After an hour of hunting, Dr. Freibourg has to conclude that Leonard hasn’t just wandered away, he is either lost or he’s been stolen.. He summons park police.

1 p.m.:
Leonard is still missing.

In another part of the park, a would-be mugger approaches a favorite glen. He spies something large and pink; it half-fills the tiny clearing. Before he can run, the pink phenomenon pulls itself up, clutching at a pine for support, topples, and accidentally sits on him.

1:45:
Two lovers are frightened by unexplained noises in the woods, sounds of crackling brush and heavy thuddings accompanied by a huge, wordless maundering. They flee as the thing approaches, gasping out their stories to an incredulous cop, who detains them until the ambulance arrives to take them to Bellevue.

At the sound of what they take to be a thunder crack, a picnicking family returns to the picnic site to find their food missing, plates and all. They assume this is the work of a bicycle thief but are puzzled by a pink rag left by the marauder; it is a baby’s shirt, stretched beyond recognition and ripped as if by a giant, angry hand.

2 p.m.:
Extra units join park police to widen the search for missing Leonard Freibourg, aged fourteen months. The baby’s mother arrives and after a pause for recriminations leaves her husband’s side to augment the official description: that was a sailboat on the pink shirt, and those are puppy-dogs printed on the Carter’s dress-up rubber pants. The search is complicated by the fact that police have no way of knowing the baby they are looking for is not the baby they are going to find.

4:45:
Leonard is hungry. Fired by adventure, he has been chirping and happy up until now, playing doggie with a stray Newfoundland which is the same relative size as his favorite stuffed Scottie at home. Now the Newfoundland has used its last remaining strength to steal away, and Leonard remembers he is hungry. What’s more, he’s getting cranky because he has missed his nap. He begins to whimper.

4:45 1/60th:
With preternatural acuity, the distraught mother hears. “It’s Leonard,” she says.

At the sound, park police break out regulation slickers and cap covers, and put them on. One alert patrolman feels the ground for tremors. Another says, “I’d put up my umbrella if I was you, lady, there’s going to be a helluva storm.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Freibourg says. “It’s only Leonard, I’d know him anywhere.” Calls. “Leonard, it’s Mommy.”

“I don’t know what it is, lady, but it don’t sound like no baby.”

“Don’t you think I know my own child?” She picks up a bullhorn. “Leonard, it’s me, Mommy. Leonard, Leonard …”

From across the park, Leonard hears.

5 p.m.:
The
WNEW
traffic control helicopter reports a pale, strange shape moving in a remote corner of Central Park. Because of its apparent size, nobody in the helicopter links this with the story of the missing Freibourg baby. As the excited reporter radios the particulars and the men in the control room giggle at what they take to be the first manifestations of an enormous hoax, the mass begins to move.

5:10:
In the main playing area, police check their weapons as the air fills with the sound of crackling brush and the earth begins to tremble as something huge approaches. At the station houses nearest Central Park on both East and West sides, switchboards clog as apartment dwellers living above the tree line call in to report the incredible thing they’ve just seen from their front windows.

5:11:
Police crouch and raise riot guns; the Freibourgs embrace in anticipation: there is a hideous stench and a sound as if of rushing wind, and a huge shape enters the clearing, carrying bits of trees and bushes with it and gurgling with joy.

Police prepare to fire.

Mrs. Freibourg rushes back and forth in front of them, protecting the huge creature with her frantic body. “Stop it, you monsters, it’s my baby.”

Dr. Freibourg says, “My baby. Leonard,” and in the same moment his joy gives way to guilt and despair. “The culture. Dear heaven, the beta culture. And I thought he was eating Mallomars.”

Although Leonard has felled several small trees and damaged innumerable automobiles in his passage to join his parents, he is strangely gentle with them. “M,m,m,m,m,m,” he says, picking up first his mother and then his father. The Freibourg family exchanges hugs as best it can. Leonard fixes his father with an intent, cross-eyed look that his mother recognizes.

“No no,” she says sharply. “Put it down.”

He puts his father down. Then, musing, he picks up a police sergeant, studies him and puts his head in his mouth. Because Leonard has very few teeth, the sergeant emerges physically unharmed, but flushed and jabbering with fear.

“Put it
down
,” says Mrs. Freibourg. Then, to the lieutenant: “You’d better get him something to eat. And you’d better find some way for me to change him,” she adds, referring obliquely to the appalling stench. The sergeant looks puzzled until she points out a soiled mass clinging to the big toe of her child’s left foot. “His diaper is a mess.” She turns to her husband. “You didn’t even change him. And what did you do to him while my back was turned?”

“The beta culture,” Dr. Freibourg says miserably. He is pale and shaken. “It works.”

“Well you’d better find some way to reverse it,” Mrs. Freibourg says. “And you’d better do it soon.”

“Of course my dear,” Dr. Freibourg says, with more confidence than he actually feels. He steps into the police car waiting to rush him to the laboratory. “I’ll stay up all night if I have to.”

The mother looks at Leonard appraisingly. “You may have to stay up all week.”

Meanwhile, the semi filled with unwrapped Wonder Bread and the tank truck have arrived with Leonard’s dinner. His diaper has been arranged by one of the Cherokee crews that helped build the Verrazano Narrows bridge, with preliminary cleansing done by hoses trained on him by the Auxiliary Fire Department. Officials at Madison Square Garden have loaned a tarpaulin to cover Leonard in his hastily constructed crib of hoardings, and graffitists are at work on the outsides. “Paint a duck,” Mrs. Freibourg says to one of the minority groups with spray cans. “I want him to be happy here.” Leonard cuddles the life-sized Steiff rhinoceros loaned by
FAO
Schwarz, and goes to sleep.

His mother stands vigil until almost midnight, in case Leonard cries in the night, and across town in his secret laboratory, Dr. Freibourg has assembled some of the best brains in contemporary science to help him in his search for the antidote.

Meanwhile, all the major television networks have established prime-time coverage, with camera crews remaining on the site to record late developments.

At the mother’s insistence, riot-trained police have been withdrawn to the vicinity of the Plaza. The mood in the park is one of quiet confidence. Despite the lights and the magnified sound of heavy breathing, fatigue seizes Mrs. Freibourg and, some time near dawn, she sleeps.

5 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 17:
Unfortunately, like most babies, Leonard is an early riser. Secure in a mother’s love, he wakes up early and sneaks out of his crib, heading across 79th Street and out of the park, making for the river. Although the people at the site are roused by the creak as he levels the hoardings and the crash of a trailer accidentally toppled and then carefully righted, it is too late to head him off. He has escaped the park in the nick of time, because he has grown in the night, and there is some question as to whether he would have fit between the buildings in another few hours.

5:10 a.m.:
Leonard mashes a portion of the East River Drive on the way into the water. Picking up a taxi, he runs it back and forth on the remaining portion of the road, going, “Rmmmm, Rmmmmm,
RMMMMMM
.”

5:11 a.m.:
Leonard’s mother arrives. She is unable to attract his attention because he has put down the taxi and is splashing his hands in the water, swamping boats for several miles on either side of him.

Across town, Dr. Freibourg has succeeded in shrinking a cat to half size but he can’t find any way to multiply the dosage without emptying laboratories all over the nation to make enough of the salient ingredient. He is frantic because he knows there isn’t time.

5:15:
In the absence of any other way to manage the problem, fire hoses are squirting milk at Leonard, hit-or-miss. He is enraged by the misses and starts throwing his toys.

The National Guard, summoned when Leonard started down 79th Street to the river, attempts to deter the infant with light artillery.

Naturally the baby starts to cry.

5:30 a.m.:
Despite his mother’s best efforts to silence him with bullhorn and Steiff rhinoceros proffered at the end of a giant crane, Leonard is still bellowing.