Little Fugitive

Seven-year-old Joey Norton lives in an apartment in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of Brooklyn. During the summer, his older brother Lennie has to watch him when their widowed mother is at work, which Lennie resents somewhat. Joey loves horses and likes playing with Lennie and his friends, though they often pick on him. On Lennie's twelfth birthday, he gets a harmonica and some money to spend at Coney Island, where he is excited to go the next day with his friends Harry and Charlie. When he and Joey get home for lunch, however, they learn their grandmother has fallen ill and their mother is leaving for a day to care for her, which means Lennie will have to postpone his trip to Coney Island so he can stay home and babysit Joey. Frustrated, Lennie finds his friends and tells them the news, and they imagine various outlandish and macabre ways of dispatching Joey before deciding to play a prank. When it's Joey's turn, Harry puts a bullet in the chamber, and Joey closes his eyes when he fires, pretending to be dead. Lennie then pretends Joey is shot, and Joey takes the six dollars his mother left for Lennie and heads out. Joey winds up on a train to Coney Island, where he spends the day on rides, playing carnival games, and buying food. He meets a boy collecting empty glass bottles and decides to earn money to buy a pony ride ticket. Joey alternates between collecting bottles and riding ponies until he is spotted by Jay, the pony ride man, and he runs away. Lennie eventually finds Joey, and the brothers head home, arriving minutes before their mother returns, who thinks they've just been sitting inside watching television since she left.