My Sister Ellie—a poem in the mind of George Parks, Grade 5, 1957Little Mongol idiotLocked herself in the bathroom again.Mother—“no business having babies in her forties,”Says our neighbor—Unhinges the door.Sixty-four crayolas litter the floor—On the bathroom wallBlue sky and green grassWith a swath of white tiles between.Pointing to the white space,“That where we live,” she says.little Peter Panshe will never grow upshe-will-never-grow-up(Author’s note: “Mongol idiot” was an offensive slang term used in the 50s to describe persons with Down Syndrome. It’s just one of a multitude of offensive terms that riddled American speech and mindset.)DedicationsTo all the “boomers” who grew up in the fifties laden with the baggage of the times. Some baggage was filled with bullshit, some with tools for the future, some with truth.To Carolyn who makes me keep my baggage in order.To the Ellie in all of us.PrefaceGrowing up in the 50s and 60s, our culture taught me discrimination and prejudice and bigotry. Lessons from childhood that had to be unlearned. This collection of stories, journal entries and verse is drawn from those experiences. Sometimes the verse relates to the stories directly and other times more abstractly. I use the derogatory terms of the day like retard, colored, boogey, Negro, queer. . . to further point to the haphazard license and ease of cruelty that was common.ContentsWinter into SpringEpisode 1: Between the Earth and SkyEpisode 2: The PlaygroundEpisode 3: The StillEpisode 4: Albert Snyder, BullyEpisode 5: Enough is EnoughEpisode 6: Albert’s RevengeEnd of SpringEpisode 7: Ray and PhilEpisode 8: The Haircut and the CIAEpisode 9: Saturday Morning BaseballEpisode 10: See Spot RunEpisode 11: See Arthur Run, TooSummerEpisode 13: Friday Night Fights in Black and WhiteEpisode 14: Uncle John’s LegEpisode 15: My Cousin JesseEpisode 16: The Return of JesseEpisode 17: The Cock FightsEnd of SummerEpisode 18: Mrs. WashingtonEpisode 19: Big BlueAnother SpringEpisode 20: Dust to DustWinter into Spring“As soon as we allow ourselves to think of the world as alive, we recognize that a part of us knew this all along.It is like emerging from winter into spring.”—Robert SheldrakeThe Rebirth of Nature:The Greening of Science and God.Episode 1Between the Earth and SkyThurzday, March 21, 1957—Today was the furst day of spring, but you wouldent know it. 23 inches of snow fell last nite, and skool is closed for the rest of the week. No more fifth grade until who knows when. George’s retardid sister drew me a pikcher on her bathroom wall. It gave me the idea to start a journel.—From the journal of Henry Muller, a boy of the fiftiesMy friend George has a sister Eleanor. We call her Ellie. She was born retarded two years after George. Mama says that it was because George’s mother had no business having kids in her forties. I guess George is lucky that he wasn’t that way, too. Ellie should have started school years ago, but Mama says, “The other kids would just make fun of her. Maybe she will go to a special school.”Dad says that Ellie will always think like a little child even when she grows up. I don’t understand what is wrong with that, that’s what Peter Pan did. But Dad says it in a sad way, like Ellie can do something about it if she just tries harder.Ellie’s body is skinny, but her face is plump and loaded with freckles. She has bright red hair and pale grey eyes that bulge like one of the frogs on grandfather’s farm. My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Warner, calls Ellie’s type of retardation Down syndrome. When George isn’t around, Dad calls people with Down syndrome “Mongol Idiots.” I guess Mongol people look like Ellie. But I wonder what Mongol children with Down syndrome look like. Maybe like us. Maybe the Mongols call their children with Down syndrome “American idiots.”On this snowy afternoon, George and I play monopoly at his kitchen table, and Ellie draws with her crayons across from us. George lives in a small ranch-style house on a lane full of new small ranch-style houses on a piece of land that was a farm a year ago. It is down the highway a bit from where I live in a little house on my grandfather’s farm. George and I had spent the morning building snow forts and having snowball fights with all the kids on George’s street, and we are beat. But not too beat for some high-stakes monopoly—a chance to be real-estate king of Atlantic City.George looks a lot like Ellie, not the retarded part, of course, but the skinny-with-red-hair-and freckles part. After all the snowball fights of the morning, George's face remains red even in the house in the middle of our game. It looks like he is either very mad or very embarrassed about something, but I don’t tease him about it. I really don’t like teasing very much, not like some of the other kids in our class, and I don’t feel good doing it, although sometimes you just have to go along.I roll the dice and get a four. I move my piece, the silver sports car, up to Boardwalk where George has an entire wall of red hotels stacked up. His mother calls it the Ritz Carlton of properties.“Ah, cripes,” I say, “This is going to cost me thousands. I’m broke.”“Maybe we can work out a little deal,” says George, rubbing his hands together like a villain in the Saturday matinee in town. He has spent the last hours building his empire, just like Emperor Ming in the “Flash Gordon” cliff-hanger serials on tv. But, he wants me to stay in the game as long as possible so he can really rub it in.“Alright, alright,” I say. “What do you want?”He replies, “Give me all your properties from Reading Railroad to jail and throw in your silver sports car, and we’ll call it even.”“You miser, you’re trying to kill me here!” I say.“Take it or leave it. I’m being very generous.”“Generous, schmenerous, I don’t have much choice,” and I turn over my deeds and my silver sports car—I call it my Austin Healy. The sports car hurts the most. “Now, what do I use?”“Here’s the thimble,” says George, throwing it to me. “It’s just a marker, you know.”I say, “Just a marker! I fall from an Austin Healy to a thimble, and you say, ‘It’s just a marker.’” Oh, the humiliation.
It gets worse. All the way around the board my thimble stumbles across property after property stacked high with George’s hotels. I run out of things to negotiate with. I am ruined. I slump into total bankruptcy—the poorhouse.
George’s mother, Mrs. Parks, listens to us wheeling and dealing the real estate of nearby Atlantic City while she cooks supper. The smell of her fried chicken fills the kitchen. The radio on the counter plays Pat Boone’s “Tooty Fruity” when an announcer interrupts and proclaims, “The governor of New Jersey just declared that all the schools in the state will remain closed for the rest of the week. This is a necessary precaution. Highways are impassable and there are widespread power outages. Stay tuned for further emergency announcements.” George and I cheer. Ellie cheers, too, just to be part of the celebration. I hope we don’t loose power to Mrs. Parks new electric fry pan—at least not until the fried chicken is done.George’s mother says, “I’m beginning to worry about your father getting back over the bridge with all this snow. He should have been home from work by now.”Ellie says, “Poppa alright, Mommy. Poppa alright.” and she throws her arms around her mother’s aproned waist.George says, “So Henry, what did you do on your report card?” Yesterday we got our spring reports—just one marking period left and then summer vacation. Hard to believe with two feet of snow on the ground. We always talk about how we can’t wait for vacation, but secretly I like school just as much as summer. The kids are fun, well most of them, and some of the stuff is neat to learn about. But a couple of days off for snow is a different story. I love it.“I did OK. Two A’s, three B’s, two C’s, and an F in spelling. Father says that he can’t spell worth a damn either, but that I better bring it up. Otherwise, how am I going to get into college if I can’t spell?” George’s mother looks my way when I say “damn.”“That’s the way my father put it, of course, Mrs. Parks,” I say.George says, “Yeah, me, too, an F in spelling. Everything else was all right, I guess.”Mrs. Parks glances over the top of her rhinestone-framed glasses, the kind that look like little wings are growing out of the corners.“Well, maybe not that great,” continues George. “C’s and Ds. . . and then an F in spelling. I have to bring everything up before the end, or maybe I will have fifth grade to do all over again.”Ellie finishes drawing and puts her crayons back in the box one at a time. She loves to draw with the crayons from her big box of Crayolas. Ellie uses most of the 64 colors in every picture she makes. In the picture she just finished, I could recognize a house and tree among the scribble of many colors.I say, “I like your picture, Ellie.” She laughs and mumbles, and then gets up from the table, grabs her box of crayons, and goes into the bathroom behind the kitchen. She closes the door, and we hear the click as she locks it.George says, “Mom, she’s locked herself in the bathroom again. You better get the screwdriver and hammer ready.”“I’ll talk with her first,” George’s mother says. “Last week she came out for the first time with talking. I’ll try again.”Mrs. Parks stands in front of the bathroom and talks through the door, “Ellie dear, you have to come out now.” We can hear Ellie in there moving around, but she makes no reply. “Ellie, turn the little latch on the doorknob and unlock the door.” Still no reply. “Just like you did so well last week.” Ellie does not answer. George’s mother waits. “Ellie, if you do not open this door, I’m going to be so mad at you.” Ellie still does not answer, and continues to move about inside the bathroom. Finally George’s mother says, “Eleanor, if you make me take this door off again, you are going to be punished.” Again, no answer from the other side.George’s mother knows she has to act. Last summer when Ellie locked herself in the bathroom, she stood on the toilet seat and fell into the bathtub, opening a gash on her head that took a dozen stitches to close up.“Alright, that’s it, I’m coming in.” says George’s mother. She grabs her screwdriver and hammer from the kitchen junk drawer and goes to work like a master handyman. In 30 seconds she taps the pins out of the hinges and the door falls out onto the kitchen floor with a thud.Ellie stands in the bathtub smiling at us with a crayon in each hand and 62 others spread out in the tub. On the tile wall behind her, she has drawn a mural that stretches from the spigot clear around to the foot of the tub. A blue swathe of sky runs across the tiles at Ellie’s eye level with a big yellow sun wedged in the right corner above the hot water valve. Across the lower portion is a horizon of green grass and brown earth. But between the earth and sky is a horizontal band of glistening white tiles. She has left them empty.We all stare at Ellie’s picture until Ellie looks at me and says, “Picture for you Henry.”I say, “What’s this empty space?” I expect her to tell me that it is all the snow she could see out the bathroom window.“That where we live,” she says. It didn’t have anything to do with snow at all. It had to do with Ellie’s view of the world. And somehow her empty band of white tiles seems to make sense.“I get it,” I say. “That space between the earth and sky will be filled with all our experiences.” Experiences was a spelling word from last week’s list. I got it wrong, so I use it again to practice and show off. “I wonder what experiences we will have to fill it up.”Ellie already has some answers. “You like. Henry boyfriend.” she says.“I like it,” I say wondering if I always have to go into the Parks’s bathroom to see my drawing. “And you are my girlfriend,” I say to make her happy. Ellie giggles and mumbles.George shakes his head and says, “Does this mean you’re going to be my brother-in-law? Oh, brother! Oh, brother-in-law!”George’s mother sits on the toilet seat making funny noises that are part crying, part laughing.“Don’t cry, Mommy, Poppa alright,” Ellie says.“She’s not crying for Poppa,” says George. “She’s crying for you.”Just then George’s father comes through the door covered with snow. “Poppa,” Ellie squeals!Episode 2The PlaygroundI kicked Bobby Zebrowski’s ass. He kicked mine. We are eleven.—Wednesday, March 27At 2:45 our class goes out for recess just as it does every afternoon, “weather permitting,” as Mrs. Warner puts it. This is the first day this week that weather has permitted. All of last week’s snow vanished yesterday when the temperature went to 60 degrees. It melted as fast as it had come down.By this point in the afternoon, our class is like a tea kettle when it comes to a rumbling boil and the shrill whistle sounds and will not stop until someone turns off the gas—or all the water boils off and the pot bottom burns out. All 28 of us are shrill little whistles threatening to boil over and burst out with multiplication facts, spelling words, and Revolutionary War battles spewing all over the place. Maybe not so many spelling words for me, but I am trying. But definitely battles. I like them the best, especially the ones that were fought right here in New Jersey like Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth.Yeah, we are ready to bust. We know it, and more importantly, Mrs. Warner knows it. In her wisdom she pulls the kettle off the flame just in the nick of time, opens the doors to the Crosswick Elementary School, and out we pour onto the playground. We fan out. Girls to the blacktop alongside the school building. They play jacks and hopscotch and talk a lot. Boys to the back fence for our favorite game, “kill the man with the ball.”“Smear the queer,” shouts Bobby Zebrowski—that’s what he calls it. I don’t know what that means, but I figure it has something to do with being odd. No one remembers to bring out the ball, so Bobby snatches my new knitted black cap—the kind longshoremen wear—and throws it to Earl Harker who begins to run. Since Earl is colored, maybe that makes him queer.Back in first grade, Earl and I learned to read with the "See Dick run, see Sally run, see Spot run" reading program. I think he learned other things, too.see colored boy colorsee colored boy look confused—see pink crayon labeled “flesh”
We chase Earl down, and I steal my hat back. The mob now chases me. Earl says, “You ought to be a halfback for the Philadelphia ‘Igles’” as I drag him along holding onto my ankle. I am good at this game. Being just a little chubby I am hard to bring down. And I’m not as tall as a lot of the other guys who have started growth spurts during the year—especially Bobby who had been left back a year. Mom says that my time will come. But in this game, my low center of gravity works for me. We learned about that in science. It is what makes a sports car cling to the road. That’s me, a sports car, an Austen Healy. Kids are hanging onto both my ankles and everywhere else they can grab, but I keep running, the hat balled up against my belly. I run hard for the fence. The fence is always base, the safe ground that will halt the chase for the briefest timeout. Everybody knows that rule, there is no reason to repeat it every game. There is no reason to repeat any rules. There are so few. And those that there are, we make up as we need them. I reach the chain-link fence, the safe zone. But just as I touch it, Bobby crashes me from my blind side. I am safe, I am on base, I am furious. I clench my fist into tight little balls, but for some reason I don’t come up swinging. Instead I tackle him around the waist and drive him into the ground.Bobby is the tallest boy in our class and comes down with a thud. I feel the breath rush out of him in one big “whoosh” like a popped balloon. I begin pounding him about the body but not the face. Even with this battering, he manages to roll me over and begins battering me the same way.The other boys huddle around, even some of the girls come over. And, of course, the eighth graders show up. They have been huddled in the farthest corner of the fence, where they secretly smoke cigarettes and play three-card ante for lunch money. The seventh and eighth graders have their own sections of the playground and guard them just like they guard their own little wing of the school.The throng that gathers around Bobby and me is a dead give-away to Mrs. Warner, sitting on a folding chair near the entrance to the school. She blows her whistle over and over which means line up at the front door right now—boys in one line, girls in the other. Straight and silent.We all run to the line. Bobby and I are the last to get there dripping with mud from rolling around the soggy ground. When we are still, Mrs. Warner quietly says, “Boys and girls, you may all go back to play. All except Henry and Bobby. You two may stand against the wall of the school. Henry on the back wall, Bobby around the corner on the side wall. And think about your behavior.”Bobby and I march to our walls. I don’t think very much about my behavior. I think about how I will have to tell Mama about the hole that appeared in my new hat. And soon I begin to plan after-school adventures, around the pond at my grandfather’s farm. But Bobby must be thinking—and brooding—about our behavior. He keeps calling me names and sticking his middle finger around the corner of the brick wall.“You put that finger around here again, and I’ll break it off!” I yell. Mrs. Warner glares from across the yard. I take out a piece of notebook paper from my pocket and scribble with a stubby pencil I found in my jeans: “You still coming over after school, you creep.” I wrap the note around a rock I picked up from under the downspout, and throw it around the corner.A minute later the rock flies back with Bobby’s reply: “Yeah, I’ll be there—prick.”After school Bobby comes over, along with George and Stanley, who lives in the tailer park near George’s house. We ride our bikes on the trails around the pond, cutting each other off and crashing whenever we can. My little dog, Spot, chases us round and round.We meet at the pond on my grandfather's farm almost everyday, weather permitting. “Weather permitting!” is our big joke that we shout at each other as we impersonate Mrs. Warner. Bobby shouts, “Hey Henry, I guess I kicked your ass today, weather permitting.”I shout back, “I guess that’s why you have that big weather-permitting knot on the top of your head.”George chimes, “You both were covered with some nasty weather-permitting dog shit.”“That was mud, not dog shit,” I say.George says, “Well, you both filled the classroom with the loveliest ‘odor de dog shit’ I ever smelled. Weather permitting, of course.” He speeds off on his bike, and we chase after him. We race around the barn and across the little earthen dam that holds the pond in place. On the other side we walk our bikes through the thick mud—not dog shit—before we hit the high ground of a field of soy beans. We are on the other side of the pond from my house now. We connect with a dirt farm road that runs around the pond to the four-lane highway. When we reach the four lane, we skid into right turns, the horns of the diesel trucks bellowing after us, and peddle hard north on the shoulder of the highway back toward the farm. We have made a complete circuit. Back at the barn, we circle three times before we fall into a heap. The landscape spins in my head. The barn and my grandparents’ farmhouse go by, and then my little house and my father’s metal spinning shop off in the corner of my view. And then it all comes around again, a little slower this time. And finally it all stays still.Episode 3The StillMe, George, and Stanley set off to follow the stream to see where it went. But we discovered something else.— Saturday, April 6My grandfather has a handful of cows on his farm, and the pond behind their barn belongs to them. It’s their watering hole, and a cool place to waddle in the hot summer. But it also belongs to me, at least I feel that it does—it is a part of me.The pond teaches me to be patient and not brag so much. It was just last month that I fell through the thin spring ice, and the volunteer firemen had to come and pull me out. I never felt in danger—the pond is my friend, and I was able to tread water until they got there. But I did decide that skating season was over. The very next week George, Stanley, and I began to lash together a raft with all the new knots that we learned at boy scouts. We figured this will also serve as a diving platform when we go swimming in the summer.The pond has three coves that come together like the leg and arms of a Y. In the center where the coves merge, underground springs constantly feed in fresh water. That is where I fell in. I guess the ice is thin there because the water is always moving. In the summer the water is always cold right there, so cold that when you dive from the old tire swing it is a shock when you hit the water no matter how hot a day it is. The earthen dam at the north end really forms the pond. It backs up the water for over a hundred yards. A little stream runs through a conduit in the dam and serves as flood control.Dad has a map of South Jersey over a bench in his workshop, and I find the pond on it. I am surprised that it has a name. I was even more surprised at what it is.“Dad, look at this. The pond has our name on it,” I say as he works at the other end of the bench.“Of course, Muller Pond. Didn’t you know that? What did you think it would be called? Your grandfather named it when he built the dam back when I was your age.”“What was it called before that?’“How could there be a pond before that? Without a dam it was just a swampy meadow spreading out from the spring.” Dad doesn’t like to explore new ideas with me. He wants me to think these things out before asking stupid questions. But I just can’t think that far ahead.Dad’s abrupt answers stop any further questions so I turn back to the map. I trace the thin blue line of the little stream with my finger. It feeds into a bigger stream, which runs into the Delaware River. Then comes the Delaware Bay, and finally the Atlantic Ocean. I dream of an adventure following the water all the way to the sea and decide to do it. It will be just like the pioneers in our school reading book who followed the rivers on their way west. This book, Rolling Wagon Wheels, full of tales and maps, is my favorite part of school. Well, besides lunch, recess, and fighting with Bobby Zebrowski.At school lunch on Monday, I unveil my scheme to George and Stanley over my favorite lunch, tomato soup and peanut butter sandwiches. Tuesday we usually have chicken noodle soup and balogna sandwiches. Wednesday and Thursday, Mrs. Morgan, our school cook, swaps the sandwiches and soups. Friday is fish sticks for the Catholics. Mrs. Morgan is a whiz, I love all her lunches. But back to George and Stanley. I offer to share the glory of my expedition to the sea with them, and they both say, “Count us in.”So on Saturday morning we meet at my house with knapsacks, canteens, and penknives in hand. Stanley says, “This is very cool. In front of your house is the big-ass highway with a million cars a day on it and sometimes a lot of weird people. And behind your house it’s like ‘Ramar of the Jungle.’”We go off into the “jungle” for our quest for the sea. The early part of the trip is familiar territory. We cross the dam and wind snakelike through the pines and then the swamp beyond them. The skunk cabbages of early spring are already in full leaf. Their shiny green heads make the soggy floor of the swamp really look like a cabbage patch.Here the stream is only a narrow ribbon of water, just a couple of feet wide. We easily cross back and forth to reach the firmest ground. In the swamp it almost disappears as it spreads out to soggy bottom like a wet sponge. But beyond the swamp the forest floor is firmer. The stream’s course stays within its banks. It picks up speed, and even begins to tumble over miniature waterfalls.We’ve gone this far before. After school I often run off the school bus and into the woods to play. Of course Mama always makes me change from my school clothes first, if she catches me before I hit the trees. Little dams dot the flow of the stream up to this point. We built them with stones and sticks piled up at narrow spots in the stream’s course. Each dam backs up the flow of water to form a tiny reservoir where minnows can collect.We come across a section of the stream littered with popsicle sticks. George says, “Remember this one?”I say, “That’s where we found out that Elmer’s glue is not waterproof.” We had built a waterwheel from popsicle sticks here. It looked just like the ones in Rolling Wagon Wheels with lots of flaps around the edge of the wheel to catch the moving water. It spun rapidly on a wooden dowel from Dad’s shop. The dowel attached to a hole in a log on the stream bank. It spun great for one weekend, before the glue crapped out.Finally we get into new territory. The stream is wider here, maybe five or six feet across. We can’t jump back and forth anymore, and we have to decide which bank to stay on. We choose the left.George says, “This is almost wide enough for us to raft down.”I say, “When it gets a little wider, let’s build one. One just like back at the pond.”Stanley said, “Yeah, we’ll have to build a new one. There’s no way we could carry that tank back here.”“I have some rope,” says George, “We can lash together logs and float to the sea.”As we envision a very elaborate vessel with a station for each of us, we come upon a second stream feeding into our stream. It makes it even wider and heightens our dreams of raft travel.But just beyond this spot, we come across something else on the stream bank that changes all our plans. It is the strangest contraption I have ever seen. It consists of a platform framed by two-by-fours with several metal barrels on top. Coiled copper tubes connect each of the barrels. A hose runs from the contraption into the stream. There is a pump—the kind you work with a handle—along the stream for bringing water up the bank and into the contraption. Lots of large empty bags scatter the bank.“This is a still!” Stanley says. “Somebody is making moonshine back here.”“But how did they get back here with all this stuff?” I say. “It’s the middle of the woods.”“Maybe not,” George says, “Listen.” We cup our ears, and we can hear cars and trucks going by on the highway not far away. This is not as wild a trek as I imagined. The stream actually parallels the highway not that far away. Or maybe it is the highway that follows the old stream bed.George says, “Moonshine takes a lot of water—this still gets water from the stream. And it’s close to the highway. The moonshiners can get the booze in and out easy.”“And the woods makes good cover,” I say. We begin to sound like expert moonshiners.Stanley says, “It all makes sense, but who do you think it belongs to?”We debate Stanley’s question while we examine the still up close, making up scientific-sounding theories as to how it works.“Maybe it’s left over from prohibition days,” I say. “You know, maybe it belonged to Al Capone.”George says, “Nah, Capone was in Chicago. I think it belongs to mobsters from Philadelphia or Atlantic City.” That makes sense—the highway linking the two cities is within earshot.In the midst of all this bull shittin', Stanley makes a another discovery from under one of the barrels. It’s a girlie magazine. Stanley’s goofy, crooked grin is goofier and more crooked than I have ever seen it as he shows off his find. His blond crew cut is getting too long and sticks straight out in all directions just like he is wearing a Davey Crocket coonskin hat, but he isn’t. The magazine is ripped and many pages stick together, but Stanley leafs through it and we laugh at the outrageous sexy poses the naked women are in.“Hey,” Stanley shouts above all the laughter. “Look at this one. It’s taken right here at the still.” We stare at the details of the blond woman on her back on the still’s platform, her knees in the air. The patch of hair between her legs was dark, not blond. Water drips from the coiled pipes onto her face and naked breasts. The barrels, woods, and stream are behind her. This really is the spot where these pictures were taken. There is no doubt about it. Stanley jumps onto the platform and takes the same pose as the woman. George and I whistle and make cat calls at him.Our search for the sea ends. The priorities of eleven year olds change as quickly as our socks, actually more often, and just as unscheduled. We eat our lunches and spend the rest of the day goofing around the still. We pretend we are hillbillies making corn squeezin’s. We pour imaginary corn mash into the hopper, pump water up from the stream, and distill spirits off through the copper tubes. From the funnel at the other end, the imaginary liquor comes out. We don’t know what it should taste like, ours is just stream water, but we imagine that it must be something sweet and delicious. We have no idea it is more like kerosene. We turn our canteens into corn whiskey jugs, instantly get drunk on the contents, and stumble all over each other. George is a happy drunk and sings and dances. Stanley becomes an angry drunk and wants to fight with imagined demons, like his father does around the trailer park.For the next week we meet at the still each day after school. No longer is the voyage the adventure. The destination is the important thing now, and we want to get there fast. We learn all the shortcuts. Ride our bikes north along the highway for half a mile and cut in at the Burma-Shave signs. Walk our bikes through the field of old stubbled corn stalks and catch the path into the woods. And there it is at the bottom of the ravine along the stream—the still.We bring our bb guns. We all have one—Red Riders, pump-action rifles that hold 50 rounds. We all conspired at Christmas time to ask for them, promising to use them safely and only shoot at cardboard targets. Of course we have battles and shoot at each other. We recruit Bobby and Eugene so we have enough boys for “the great still stand-off.” Some of us are moonshiners and the others are the feds come to bust up the still, like Elliott Ness and his “untouchables.” The moonshiners hide behind the big metal buckets. When the federal agents shoot at them, the little still pellets ping off the barrels and ricochet in all directions. The one rule is never to shoot at a guy’s head on purpose. Accidents are alright.Late one afternoon we are having a terrific battle. The sky is steel-gray like our gun barrels, so dull that it sucks the color out of everything else, too. The woods look like a black-and-white movie. The perfect setting for our gunfight at the “O.K. Still.” Bobby, Stanley, and Eugene attack George and me defending the still. Ping, ping, ping, the pellets ring off the buckets. But George and I pick off the agents one by one as they charge. We hit Bobby dozens of times until he retreats with little red welts appearing on his arms and neck. On the second attack, pellets fly furiously again. Too furiously. There are way too many. George and I get hit from all sides, and so do Bobby, Stanley, and Eugene.“Cease fire!” I shout, “a truce.” And I wave a white handkerchief. We stop firing at them, and they stop firing at us, and still the pellets rain down. And they are hitting our heads. They are coming from everywhere. We cover up, and all five of us jump behind the barrels.Then a booming voice from the edge of the woods says, “Had enough?”“Yeah, yeah!” We shout from behind the still.Out from the trees step six of the eighth graders from our school—the bunch we call the “firehouse gang.” They all are junior volunteer firemen. The fourteen-and-fifteen-year-old boys help out the real volunteer firemen—the ones that rescued me from my ice mishap—and hang out down at the firehouse after school and on weekends. They get to wear the coat and hats, and sometimes even ride on the trucks to the fires if enough of the real firemen don’t show up.Their leader, Albert Snyder, steps ahead of the others. Rumor has it that Albert likes fires so much that he sets some himself in a couple of dry weed-filled lots and even in the old barn on the Johnson farm. Then he answers the alarm just like everyone else and enjoys the flames. I think the adult firemen are getting on to him, since he often shows up at fires before the firetruck, and he always knows where to go.He is almost sixteen years old, wears a leather motorcycle jacket, heavy engineers’s boots, and looks like James Dean in Rebel without a Cause. He has been left back twice, will get his driver’s license next year and probably will quit school then. Albert has the reputation of being just plain mean, and I feel he is about to live up to it.Albert repeats, “I said, ‘Had enough?’”George answers back, “And we said, ‘yeah, we’ve had enough.’ So what’s the big deal.““Oh, I think we have a smart ass here,” says Albert. “And you know what we do to smart asses, boys.”“Right,” say Albert’s flunkies, but they really don’t and just stand there looking mean.“String him up guys,” says Albert after he realizes they are not jumping into action. He grabs the rope from around George’s pack and throws it to Brody, his favorite flunky.“Right,” says Brody, and they all swing into action. Two of the others grab George by the arms, while Brody slips the rope around his neck.“Not his neck, you idiot. Do you want to go to the electric chair? Around his chest and under his arms.”“Oh, yeah,” says Brody. He removes the rope from George’s neck and puts it around his chest. Another flunky throws the other end of the rope over the lowest hanging branch of a sycamore tree, and all five hoist George ten feet off the ground. Brody ties off the rope around the tree truck, and George swings in the breeze.“Now let me tell you boys something,” says Albert. “This is our private little club, and you fifth graders are not welcome. If I ever catch you here again, you’re dead meat. Now, we’re going to take a little stroll out to the highway and get some fresh air. And when we get back, you are not to be here. Not then, not ever.” With that decree, Albert turns and marches off, flunkies in tow. They disappear up the bank and into the woods.It takes us a moment of just plain shaking before we can move. We finally recover enough to cut George down.“We stumbled into the firehouse gang’s own little moonshine-making club,” says Stanley.“Those dopes aren’t smart enough to make moonshine. That takes chemistry,” says George, rubbing the rope burn around his chest. “I think they found it here just like we did.”Bobby says, “I bet I know who this still really belongs to. Follow me.” Bobby leads the way in the same direction as the firehouse gang had taken out toward the highway. We follow our bike tracks back out of the woods and across the field. Before we reach the highway and Burma Shave signs, Bobby turns right on a cross path that I had not noticed before. Five minutes later we are at a little grove of gnarled apple trees staring across a weed-filled lot.“Look,” Bobby says, pointing across the field, “it’s the firehouse. This path leads directly to the back of the firehouse.”I say, “Bobby is a genius. The still belongs to the big firemen. They have their own little liquor store back in the woods. The juniors are just being the flunkies for the big guys just like they always are.”Either way, this is it for me,” says Eugene, spitting out the words through his buck teeth. “You won’t catch me back here again.” For all the Hardy Boys mysteries and science-fiction adventures that Eugene reads, he is giving up on this real one without a fight.But, as it turns out, Eugene actually comes through for us with flying colors. He does return, along with Bobby, George, Stanley, and me. We aren’t going to give up our new find so easily. After two days pass, enough time for the dust to clear, the five of us go back to the stream and sneak up on the still.
From the edge of the still’s little clearing, we peer over the upturned roots of a huge fallen swamp maple. But there wasn’t anything to see. No barrels, no coils, no wooden frame. Nothing!Stanley says, “Maybe this is the wrong spot.”“No way,” says George. “Look there’s the sycamore where they strung me up.”I say, “Yeah, this is the clearing.” There is no doubt that this is the spot. But equally, there is no doubt that it is all gone. Not a trace remains. All the holes are filled in where the frame posts had been, and the entire area is raked smooth. Too smooth. It looks like a forest setting for a play on our little school stage.“They were goofing on us,” George finally says. “They are just as afraid of us.”“I don’t know about that,” says Eugene.“Don’t you see, they’re worried that we are going to give them away to the cops along with the entire volunteer fire department.” says George.“And we’re worried that they are going to kill us for giving them away,” Bobby says.“I guess you’d have to say that we got ourselves a standoff here.” says George.“Just don’t spread it around.” Eugene says.Episode 4Albert Snyder, BullyThe new kid sat in Albert Snyder’s seat and payd the price.—Monday, April 15I already established that Albert is mean. He is mean about everything. There is no reasoning with him when he decides he might enjoy a little meanness with you. One of his favorite things to get mean about is his seat on the school bus. Albert always sits in the last seat and makes maniac faces out the back window to passing cars. When the drivers look stunned or make faces back, he gives them the finger.On Monday we get a new kid in our class, Whitey. We give him that name at recess because he has such light blond hair. When the sun shines through his hair it is as white and bright as a halo. At the end of his first day, we all get on the bus together to go home. Whitey, Stanley, and me. Whitey goes right to the back seat—Albert’s seat. Stanley and I see him, and our mouths drop open.“You better not sit there,” Stanley warns him.“Why not?”“That’s Albert Snyder’s seat. He’ll kill you when he gets here.”“I’d like to see him try,” says Whitey, “It’s a free country, and it’s a big bus. He can sit somewhere else today.”“It’s your life,” says Stanley.Stanley and I watch for Albert through the bus window. He always leaves school by the back door. It is against the rules, but he does it anyway. And there he is. He comes slinking around the school building from the back. Clear of the school, Albert bounds onto the bus and strides straight for the rear seat. Three rows from the back, Albert spots Whitey and pulls up straight as a board, a strange look on his face.He recovers. “Out, that’s my seat!” he demands.Whitey looks him right in the eye. “I got here first.”The logic is lost on Albert. “You heard me. Out, that’s my seat,” he demands again.Whitey sits rigid. “Move me,” he challenges.Albert’s jaw drops open. So does mine and Stanley’s. Albert stares long and hard, trying to grasp what is happening. But his brain can’t quite get itself all the way around this incident, so his body takes over. His right fist shoots out. It is a man’s fist with big, hard knuckles. It catches Whitey across the side of his face and nose. Whitey goes down between the seats. I think that will be the end it it—Albert will throw him into another seat and take control of his own. Instead Whitey pulls himself up above the seat and looks Albert straight in the eye again. A trickle of blood drips from his nose. “Is that the best you got? I’m still here,” he challenges again.I whisper to Stanley, “Oh brother, he’s going to get killed for sure this time.” Stanley nods his head in agreement without taking his eyes from the scene.Albert’s fist shoots out again and catches Whitey on the side of his head a second time. The blow knocks him over to the next seat. This time Whitey stays put and holds his head with both hands. He has no more to say. Albert starts toward him, but Stanley says, “He’s had enough, you got your seat.”I chime in, “Yeah, you got your seat.”Whitey looks up from his hands at us. His eyes speak as to say, “Is that the best you got?”Albert settles into his seat. He glares at us, a glare that turns us around fast to face the front. But I think his glare has lost some of its focus. The meanness seems mixed with a little bewilderment. Or maybe, I am just wishing.Mr. Hicks, the school bus driver, starts his bus and drives off. He hasn’t paid attention. He pulls out the school driveway and, after a short drive on a country road, reaches the highway that I live on. At his first stop, three cars whiz by the bus as kids get off. Mr. Hicks grabs his big black police whistle, leans way out the bus window—the way we kids are not supposed to do—and whistles down the cars. Each car screeches to a stop. You see, Mr. Hicks is a volunteer policeman as well as our school bus driver, and this proves to be a perfect combination for him. Mr. Hicks hops out of the bus, citation pad in hand, and gives out tickets to all the offenders. “It’s the law, you know,” Mr. Hicks says to no one in particular when he returns to the bus.One day last week when a car didn’t stop, Mr. Hicks chased it down with the school bus. He followed it for half a mile blowing his whistle out the window the entire time. The lady driving the car was very flustered when she finally realized she was being pursued by a big yellow school bus turned police cruiser.Mr. Hicks loves both parts of his job—driver and road warrior. But he blows it. You see he also likes to pat the eighth-grade girls on their butts when they get off the bus, sort of his way of escorting them off his vehicle and wishing them a good day. Sometimes he opens the door to the bus really slowly so they can’t skitter off before he has his pat. On Friday afternoon on the run home, Mr. Hicks pats the wrong girl, Roseanne Miller. Unbeknown to Mr. Hicks, Roseanne’s father is the president of the school board.Mr. Hicks’s patting days come to a halt, at least from the school bus, because on Monday morning we have a new bus driver, Mrs. Dougherty. She does not pat, she does not blow whistles, and she does not run down startled motorists. She just drives the school bus. And the ride home just isn’t the same.Episode 5Enough Is EnoughEnuff was enuff! —Wednesday, May 1Stanley and I have after-school detention for shooting spitballs through our milk straws at the girls in the cafeteria. Mrs. Warner thinks we will be more useful packing up old books and materials in the supply closet than just sitting at our desks with our hands folded. So that is what we do. Besides she can’t enforce sitting at our desks very well since she is down the hall talking with Mr. Grady, the only man teacher in our school.Only a month or so remains of school before summer vacation, and the weather is sunny and warm. We really want to be at the pond chasing each other, but this afternoon, having the big windows wide open is as close as we can get to freedom. Mrs. Warner checks in with us once in a while to see if she can nail us for any more trouble, but we are being good. We even cut short our belching and farting contest—we call it felching and barting—before she pops in.From the front window of our classroom on the second floor of the school, we see George’s parents with Ellie drive up to the front of the school and park. Today is the day they are coming to talk with the principal, Mr. James. They decided to try to get Ellie into the special education class at our school for next September. There are lots of slow kids in that class, but none of them have Down Syndrome. She would be the first.“Hey Ellie.” We wave and shout from the window as they get out of their car. Ellie looks right and left, but doesn’t look up to where we are on the second floor.“Ellie, up here,” I yell. Finally she looks up to our window.“Look, Mommy. Henry in the window.” Ellie giggles and her parents wave.Mrs. Parks sits Ellie down on the front step to wait for them, and she and Mr. Parks come into the building. I load another box of books, and when I look back out the window, a small orange cat is brushing by Ellie. She pets it, and when it moves off, she follows it around to the back door at the corner of the school. My classroom is on the corner of the school so I can still see Ellie through our side window as she moves around the back. Ellie is always very curious, especially about animals. She sits down on the step and pets the tabby.Detention hall has just let out for the junior-high kids. Theirs is more formal than ours. Mr. James runs it like a prison lockdown. Albert Snyder and Brody, detention-hall regulars, come bounding out the back door and trip over Ellie and the cat. The cat lets out a screech and runs off, but Ellie just stands up. As soon as Albert sees her, his face lights up in a contorted way. Easy mark is written all over her.“Hey, what are you trying to do, kill us?” Albert says, and then his voice softens in a sappy way. “I haven’t seen you around here before. What’s your name?”“Ellie,” she volunteers innocently.“How old are you?”“Don’t know,” she answers honestly.“Ah com’on, everybody knows how old they are.”“Don’t know,” Ellie repeats.“I guess seven or eight. No, maybe nine.”“Don’t know.”Albert gives up on that line of questioning and tries another. “So, where you goin’?”“Nowhere.”“Where are your father and mother?”“Don’t know.”Albert winks at Brody. “I know who this is. This is the little retard sister of that smart ass George. I think we can have some fun here, and she won’t even know the difference.” Brody nods.Albert says, “So Ellie, your father and mother said we should come and play with you.” He winks at Brody again and says to him, “If you know what I mean.”Ellie stares motionless. She is getting scared.“Yeah, they said we should show you a game.” Ellie continues to stare.“They said you should lift up your dress and pull down your panties.”“No”“It’s O.K. It’s just a game. Even George said we should show you.”And with one swift motion, Albert reaches under her frilly dress and pulls Ellie’s pink underpants down to her white ankle socks.Stanley and I see the whole thing from above and gasp. Even Brody gasps and backs up. But Albert just sneers. A long second goes by while my mind decides there is only one thing to do. It is a matter of life and death. I fly out of the classroom door, through the corridor, and down the stairs, Stanley just behind me. Five steps from the bottom of the stairwell, I leap, become airborne, and sail through the open doorway at the bottom. My head lands squarely in the back of Albert’s ribs like a wrecking ball smashing into a condemned building.Albert lurches forward. His body curls and hits the sidewalk with a thud. By the time his head catches up with the rest of his body, its force hurls it into the concrete so hard it sounds like a cantaloupe cracking open.He manages to roll over and starts to sit up. His face looks like sandpaper, pocked with the pattern of the pavement. His eyes are crossed and big, like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Blood oozes from a gash on his forehead and from a hole in his lip where a broken tooth stuck through.I hit him with my small fist clenched tight and the tooth pops out. Stanley and Brody, strange allies for a moment, together yank me off.“You’ll kill him,” yells Stanley.I breathe heavily and begin to cry and shake.Ellie pulls up her panties and sits beside me, not quite understanding what had happened. Stanley flops down, too, not quite understanding what had happened either. And neither do I. This is not “kill the man with the ball” with my friend Bobby Zebrowski. This is just plain “kill the man” with an enemy.Brody stares at Albert. I think he is gong to help him up—half carry him, drag him home. But he doesn’t. He stares, and stares, then turns and walks away.Albert lays on the sidewalk making little groaning noises and spitting blood. His eyes begin to focus again.I say, “What should we do?”Stanley says, “Nothing,” and we did just that. I start to get up quickly, nervously, and Stanley says, “Not so fast. Take it nice and easy.”As we walk away slowly, Stanley turns for one last look at Albert. I turn, too. Albert’s eyes are focused but still glassy. He also has an expression of not quite understanding what has happened.On Monday morning, the principal comes to Mrs. Warner’s room and tells me to follow him to his office. My Dad is there. Albert’s mother has complained that I had hurt her son, something about a concussion. He will be O.K. in a few days.Mr. James says, “Henry, what do you have to say for yourself?”My mind races. I reason that if I tell them I was standing up for Ellie, it will get out what had happened to Ellie, and the other kids will tease her. I can hear it in sing-song.“Albert Snyder’s girlfriend,Albert Snyder’s girlfriend.Do you show him your rear end?Do you show him your fro-o-o-nt end?”She can’t handle any of that, especially if she is going to start school here. Somehow a fabulous plan comes to me right there on the spot. If it appears instead that I just kicked Albert’s butt just for the hell of it, I will have a whole new respect around the school and save Ellie further humiliation. I will be a king.That’s why I nonchalantly tell Mr. James, “Albert and I just had a misunderstanding, sir,” and then add, “and I had to show him my point of view. That’s all.”Mr. James says, “I have no choice but to suspend you from school for three days.”Of course this is the best thing that could happen. I know that by lunch time it will have gotten completely around the school that I had hurt Mrs. Snyder’s boy—there was no Mr. Snyder, not as far as anyone knew. Albert would be humiliated. The scourge of the eighth grade had been beaten up by a fifth grader.I left school with Dad—this will be my official first day of suspension. Dad beams.“So,” he says. “You took down the school big shot just for the hell of it, huh?’“Yes.”I should be jubilant, but I am already beginning to worry about my decision. Somehow I know this is not the end of it as far as Albert is concerned.Episode 6Albert’s Revenge?My first day back from suspenshon—me and Albert had a showdown. —Monday, May 6George, Stanley, and I are lined up at the urinals in the boys room after lunch when Albert and Brody walk in.“There he is Albert,” says Brody. “There’s the scum that blind-sided you.”“Yeah,” says Albert, but less menacingly than in the old days.“Now’s your chance,” says Brody, “Revenge is sweet.”“Yeah,” says Albert again. And they make their way toward me.“Hey you, Mr. Blindside,” says Brody. “Whada ya gonna do with Mr. Snyder facing you straight on?”“Well, if you notice, he’s not exactly facing me straight on. I’m taking a pee,” I say, surprising myself with my cocky attitude. “Whada ya gonna do, beat me up while I’m taking a pee?”Albert and Brody think about that for a moment. Then Brody shoots back, “If he has to.”George says, “After that he can beat me up taking a pee, too.”The two do not see that coming and stare silently at George, again thinking real hard.Then Stanley chimes in, “Me, too. Taking a pee—after the two of them.” Now Albert and Brody are really stunned. But the best is yet to come.From over the top of the end toilet stall, comes a voice. “After them you’ll have to beat me up—taking a crap.” The words echo through the tile-lined boys room. And then the door to stall number one flies open, straining against its hinges and crashing against the next stall. There stands the new guy Whitey with his pants and boxer shorts down around his ankles. His shirt tail covers his privates. Albert and Brody stare at his skinny legs that are as white as his hair. We all stare.Finally, Brody says, “Alright Albert, let’s get started. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”Up till then “yeah” is the only word Albert has spoken. But then he says something that will change his life, and ours.“You beat them up,” he says to Brody with not much feeling behind it. And then he turns and strides out the door.Brody looks at us, then at the door, half expecting Albert to come bursting back through. Again he glances at us and once more at the door. And then he too strides out the door spitting into the corner on his way out as a last show of his disgust at the situation.George, Stanley, and I zip up, and Whitey pulls up his pants. We leave like the royal knights of King Arthur’s Round Table—or just the royal knights of the boys bathroom. Either way we are free.End of Springthe fern sproutsburst out—it seems nowspring has fully arrived?—Prince Shiki8th century Japanese haikuEpisode 7Ray and PhilRay and Phil picked up the order for their anteek store in Atlantic City. They like each other a lot. —Saturday, May 11On the Saturday after my return to school, I clean Dad’s workshop, sweeping up all the curled shavings of brass that lay in heaps around the lathes. This was part of my at-home punishment for getting suspended, but Dad knows I really like being around all the machinery, so it is a punishment in name only. Dad packs an order for Ray, an antique dealer from Atlantic City. He stops about this same time each month with his friend Phil who makes and repairs fancy clocks.Dad makes brass lamps for Ray. First Dad’s best metal spinner Babe Harper spins brass disks into font-shaped pieces. Then Dad puts them together like old-time oil lamps with wicks and everything. Or he wires them for electricity. Then handsome glass shades go on to complete the look. As he packs up Ray’s work, Dad says, “Ray is very finicky about this work. Each new lamp must match the old style perfectly—every little groove and design, and, of course, the same kind of finish. He even wants some of them made from old lamp parts. I mean parts that are one or two hundred years old. I have to get discarded parts for that and try to redo them. O course, he pays for that kind of work.” Dad uses a put-on whiney voice to tell all this. I don’t know why.Although Dad complains about how demanding Ray and the work is, he takes pride in the finished pieces. The lamps are customized, just like they had been made during the 1800’s. Dad often does one over three or four times if it is not perfect. He likes this precise work and is good at it.About mid-morning, I see Ray through the front window pull his van off the highway and into the drive. He opens the door on his driver’s side, and a tarnished silver candelabra falls out. He sits it back awkwardly on an old captain’s trunk behind his seat.“Careful there, you clumsy old fart,” says Phil, kidding his pal as he climbs out the passenger side. “That piece of hardware is going to pay next month’s rent if you don’t dent it up too much before we get home.”“You mean get it home to that rich, old, widow lady that you’ve been schmoozin’ down the shore,” Ray says.The van is already half-full of more old stuff. Ray and Phil are in the middle of their Saturday buying trip. They visit auctions, house estate sales, and suppliers like Pop. They must have be enjoying their Saturday expedition, they are in good moods. These two middle-aged men seem to enjoy each other’s company.Phil brings a folder from the cab of the van. “Take a look at some of our publicity photos. We had them made around the store,” he says as he enters Father’s shop. “They’re a hoot.”The folder holds a dozen 8x10 glossy photos. Father leafs through and laughs at the black and whites, and I look over his shoulder. They must have been done by a professional photographer, nothing like our snapshots from holidays and picnics with everyone posed and smiling at the camera. They are like the posters of actors in front of the movie theater in Crosswick—closeups of Ray and Phil doing goofy things around their store. One shows Phil holding up a chipped and battered toilet seat, his face beaming through the hole. Another has both their faces beaming through the hole. And still another shows Phil with a tall bronze statue, a lance carrier, almost life size. Phil’s face is twisted, and he is bent over like the spear was stabbing him in the butt.The pictures seem funny, but I have to force a laugh. There is something taboo about them, but I can’t figure out what.I had been to Ray’s antique shop last summer. Ray named it “The Bowsprit”—he likes nautical themes. It is dark and cluttered inside, and all the objects are dark as well. Old sofas, chairs, and cabinets line one wall. They look like they came out of a castle. Bronze and marble statues stand on pedestals all around the main room and in the corners of the smaller rooms. Many of them are naked men and women and chubby children that look like Valentine’s Day cupids. All these scenes are in the photos.Phil puts away the photos, and they all get down to business. Father shows Ray the lamps. They are smooth and copy exactly the samples Ray had left last month. Ray is pleased. “These look very good,” he compliments Dad.Ray looks around the store at more of Dad’s products as well as antiques, both old and reproductions on display. But he keeps coming back to the pine decoys that Father just got in from down south. “I’ll take six of these mallards,” says Ray. “Phil can beat them up with a chain and make them look old.”“A few pokes with the ice pick, too. That will look like worm holes,” adds Phil. Dad looks skeptical, and Phil goes on, “Hey, we don’t tell people they are antiques. They can think what they want. Besides, anybody can tell these are new—they can even tell the “old look” is new. People just like this old look, you know.Ray says, “People don’t care whether it took nature a hundred years to get that look, or it took Phil a few minutes to distress them.”“Right,” Dad says skeptically. ”And I guess you don’t charge enormous prices either for that old look.”“Buyer beware,” says Ray.“You mean buyer be screwed,” says Dad.I understand Father’s antique purity, but Ray and Phil seem to just have fun with the old look. I don’t think they mean to deceive anyone. I think Dad embarrassed them.After all the business and monkey business is conducted, I begin loading the boxes of lamps and decoys into the back of the van. Ray pays his bill and walks out of Father’s shop, and Phil follows. They don’t see me back behind the van. Ray goes around to the driver’s side and climbs into the seat. I see them through the double window of the van’s back door.Then Phil does a very strange thing. He leans through Ray’s open window, touches his shoulder, and kisses him on the lips. Imagine that, two bald men with pot bellies kissing. It is a tender kiss. Not a kiss like I have seen in some movies at the drive-in movies with a lot of grabbing between the man and woman. I have never seen my parents kiss that way either. Their kisses seem more like good-morning pecks, a formality. This is a kiss between two people who are showing that they love each other. They hold it until they see me at the back of the truck staring. Then Phil rushes around to the passenger side, hops in, and slams the van door shut. “All loaded,” I mumble, and they drive off.migrating geese fly onone old and dying stays back—its mate abidesI go back into Pop’s workshop to finish sweeping up. As I come through the door, Pop looks at me with a knowing expression on his face. “Just like three-dollar bills,” he says.“I don’t get it,” I say.“Those two, son. They’re as queer as three-dollar bills,” he repeats that phrase.“Oh,” I reply. There is that word again just like Bobby Zebrowski’s name for our tackle game—“smear the queer.” I want to understand more, but I don’t know how to ask the questions. I go back to my sweeping.Episode 8The Haircut and the CIAGot haircut tonite at Uncle Larry’s. The CIA is after him…—Friday, May 17After supper, Dad, my little brother Howie, and I march over to Uncle Larry’s for our haircuts. Uncle Larry bought a pair of electric clippers about a year ago and has been giving us all haircuts ever since. Well not exactly giving—he charges us each a dollar.Uncle Larry and his family live down the highway about half a mile on the other side. The orchards behind his two-story, frame house run all the way back to the Puerto Rican migrant labor camp that houses the workers who come in the summer to pick crops on the neighboring farms.It is only May, but we are having an early heat wave, and Uncle Larry has his shirt off. He is thin all over—arms, legs, neck—except for his belly. It looks like he has swallowed a whole watermelon. It is odd on his thin frame, especially his belly button. He has the deepest inny I have ever seen. He could keep his spare change in there.I am the first in the chair. It isn’t a real barber chair, of course. Just an old rusted steel and vinyl kitchen chair on the concrete slab behind the back kitchen door. Dad talks quietly with Aunt Maryann at the picnic table across the yard, while Howie and my two cousins play on the tire swing tied to the big oak tree. Between the picnic table and Uncle Larry’s hair-cutting station is a huge hole in the ground, big enough to bury our station wagon in.Uncle Larry starts in on me. I have a crew cut. My hair is an easy job. Zip, zip with the length guard set at half an inch, and it is usually finished in a few minutes. My cousins get crew cuts, too, even if they don’t ask for one. Crew cuts are Uncle Larry’s specialty. Up one side and down the other. Howie is another matter. He always wants something fancier like an inch higher in the front,Normally Uncle Larry isn’t very talkative, but this night he is, and he talks more than he cuts. “Just about finished my bomb shelter, Henry,” he says, gesturing toward the hole a few feet away.“I can see,” I say, but I really can’t tell that this hole is going to be a bomb shelter. It is about eight feet deep and ten feet across. And that is all there is to it except for a ladder and Uncle Larry’s shovel left at the bottom after he had finished squaring up the sides. Uncle Larry wants me to share his vision of an elaborate shelter able to sustain lives for up to three months. But I can only see a big hole in the ground.“We had an air-raid drill in school today,” I say. I know he will be interested in that.“That’s good practice for when the Ruskies drop the big one on us,” says Uncle Larry.“Drop and cover against an interior wall—that’s what Mrs. Warner makes us do.” I say, trying to sound like the official government brochure we read. “Of course, we have the Nike missile base just over on the Waretown road you know to protect us if the Russian missiles get through our ICBMs that are lined up along the Canadian border.”“You know a lot about this nuclear threat,” says Uncle Larry. I am proud that I have impressed him with my knowledge.“Oh, yeah. All the major cities have a ring of Nike bases around them. So the chances of the Reds’ missiles ever getting through is pretty slight.”“Well now there’s the rub, Henry. The commies are wily, and they can count. They know that they only need to get a few missiles through our defenses to take out Washington, New York, maybe Los Angeles and Chicago, just for starters. They’ll throw hundreds at us, maybe thousands, figuring we can’t knock them all down. And that’s why I have this bomb shelter.”Each time Uncle Larry calls this hole in the ground his bomb shelter, I must have a surprised look on my face. He says, “Well there’s some finishing work to be done. The whole thing gets lined with cinder blocks. And then the bunks for the four of us go over there. And the galley goes against the far wall with lots of canned goods. Can’t forget a can opener. That would really leave me up shit creek without a paddle, I mean without a can opener.” He chuckles to himself. “And that reminds me, the head goes over there. Everything has to be vented and plumbed with filters to keep out the nuclear fallout. That stuff’s in the air and can kill ya for weeks after the explosion. And a lead grate will cover the entire roof. Yeah, we’ll be O.K. when it comes.”For the first time, I notice Uncle Larry’s shotgun against the back wall of his house. Spread out on the grass beside it are the products from his morning of hunting. Three rabbits, two squirrels, a barn owl, and a red-tailed hawk.He notices I am looking toward them and changes the subject from the bomb shelter for a moment. “Those rabbits and squirrels will make a tasty stew. And the owl and hawk, I’ll stuff them and make them into lamps.” It doesn’t matter to Uncle Larry that hunting season doesn’t start for five months.I say, “But back to the shelter, will you have any guns in there?”“Of course, you don’t know what this world will be like afterward. I mean the commies will probably invade us after the attack. That is if there are any left after our counter attack. And there will be roving bands of our own people scavenging and pillaging.”I say, “what about the rest of us?”“I don’t know what will happen to you out here exposed. I have to look after my own, you know. Maybe you folks should start your own shelter.”I look bewildered. I think I am his own—him being my uncle and living just down the road.Uncle Larry abruptly changes the subject again, “School just about finished, Henry?”“Yup, fifth grade down the tube.”“Got a girlfriend in that fifth grade, Henry?”“Not really. Oh, George’s sister says she’s my girlfriend. But she’s retarded, she doesn’t know. She’s just my friend.”Just then a dark car on the highway slows down. I imagine the occupants staring at Uncle Larry’s outdoor barber shop.“See that car, Henry,” Uncle Larry says in a hushed tone.“Yup, they’re curious about your open-air barber shop. You might have some new customers, Uncle Larry,” I kid him.“Curious, like hell,” says Uncle Larry. His voice becomes gravelly and his demeanor turns dark. “Those two are CIA looking for me. Or maybe FBI.”I can’t see two people in the car. I can’t see anybody, just the car, because Uncle Larry’s house sits too far down a lane from the highway to tell how many people are in the car. The car drives off. I glance toward where Father and Aunt Maryann sit talking. They don’t even look up from their hushed conversation and certainly had not noticed the car.“Oh yeah, CIA, I think,” Uncle Larry goes on. “They’re still pissed about Korea. It wasn’t my fault. They know that.”Uncle Larry becomes solemn, all the while I wish my normally fast haircut will be even faster. I don’t believe the car is loaded with CIA agents. I wonder if Uncle Larry really believes the CIA is after him? And what happened in Korea that they blame him for?Later at home I ask Father, “What did Uncle Larry do in Korea during the war there?”Dad says, “He never went to Korea. During the war he was in the coast guard right here in New Jersey. What did he tell you?”“When I was getting my haircut, a dark car drove by slowly. He said CIA agents were inside it looking for him. It had to do with something he did in Korea.”“Oh boy, he’s talking that way again. The last time he got this way, he started digging his bomb shelter. Just don’t pay any attention. He’s confused.”That night I overhear Dad talking quietly to Mom in the kitchen—in the same tone he was talking to Aunt Maryann—about Uncle Larry. “He’s even talking to Henry about the CIA. Maryann says he spent all of last weekend hiding from them. She wants me to help her commit him.”
Uncle Larry ends up spending six months at the state hospital for the mentally ill. People say that some patients there are very crazy and others are just a little crazy. I think Uncle Larry is somewhere in the middle, at least right now he is. But, I never find out how serious he is because we speak very little about Uncle Larry’s ailment. I think Dad and Mom are ashamed, or confused, or maybe afraid that the problem could strike them, too, or already has. It seems to me that talk could help all of us, including Uncle Larry.Soon after Uncle Larry goes to the hospital, my Sunday school class makes a field trip there. Each year the fifth graders put on a
concert for the patients on a Saturday afternoon. Before we go, I ask Dad, “What do I do if I see Uncle Larry?He answers, “you probably won’t, there are hundreds of patients.”
“But what if I do?” I say.
“What do you think,” Dad snaps at me, “Just treat him like you always treat him.” That sounds mature and adult, but, of course, I am neither. I need some pointers, but Dad doesn’t offer any. I am on my own. And, of course, I do see Uncle Larry. There he is sitting in the front row of the audience. After the songs he comes up and tells me how much he liked them. “Henry, they were very enlightening.” “Thank you,” I say very formerly like I am talking to a stranger. I look around nervously to see if any of the other kids see us talking. Uncle Larry wears an expression like he wants to tell me something, or just talk some more, but he doesn’t and I don’t. Instead, I rejoin my class. At home I tell Dad that I saw Uncle Larry and talked to him. “How was he?” Dad asks. I say, “He seems O.K.” Later I overhear Dad and Mama again speaking in hushed voices in the kitchen. The kitchen seems to be the place where they have a lot of their quiet conversations, and sometimes not so quiet. Dad says, “The shock treatments must have worked." Mama says, “It all sounds awful. The sterile hard table, and leather straps, and the electrical connections.” I go to our World Book Encyclopedia and look up “shock treatments.” It says that shock treatments are used at mental institutions. They are electrical impulses sent through a person’s body to jolt them back to reality. To me it sounds like the electric chair. I am glad it didn’t kill him.I continue to think about Uncle Larry even during Sunday school the next day. In the opening exercises all the classes meet together before breaking up for lessons. At the opening we singJesus loves me, this I know,For the Bible tells me so.Little ones to him belong.We are weak, but he is strong.Yes, Jesus loves me.Yes, Jesus loves me.Yes, Jesus loves me.The Bible tells me so.That night before getting into bed, the Jesus Loves Me hymn comes back to me, and it reminds me to say my prayers. I kneel beside my bed and pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. If I should live for other days, I pray the Lord to guide my ways. God bless Mama, Father, Howie, and . . . damn Jesus.”“Damn Jesus!” jumps into my mind right in the middle of the “God blesses.” Oh no, that is an awful thought. That is a thought to send me to hell. I say out loud that I am sorry and that I don’t mean it, and I start my prayers all over. I want to do them right, to do them perfectly.The next time is worse. When I get to the “God blesses,” my mind thinks the “f” word of Jesus. I am hearing that word a lot in school. Some of the other boys are using it to show off at lunchtime and recess. But not me. Again, I say I am sorry and start over. Again unsuccessfully. Over and over I try to get it right. If Jesus loves me, why does he try to make me crazy? I don’t get it. Exhausted, I finally fall asleep.In the morning I wake up when the sunlight knifes through the slats in my bedroom window blinds. My first thought races back to the night before when my mind wrestled with itself. But the fight doesn’t start up again. All is calm. It is like an event on the television evening news that Dad watches, an event that I don’t have any control over. It doesn’t make sense. I love Jesus. He will not hold me responsible for those thoughts. I don’t mean those bad thoughts. But why did my mind play a trick on me like that? It must be the devil, not Jesus. Is this what happened to Uncle Larry? Is this how he lost control of his thoughts? I guess he has his own devils.When night comes again, I am scared to say my prayers. I don’t want it to happen again. And it doesn’t. I hope it will never, ever happen again. I include Uncle Larry in my “God blesses.” I think he will need it.
Episode 9Saturday Morning BaseballPlayed baseball all morning. I am not exactly the best.—Saturday, May 25By 10 a.m., eight or ten boys show up at the field next to my grandfather’s barn with bats, balls, and gloves. In May our Saturday morning baseball games develop out of thin air. They have a life of their own.We choose up sides—Jack and Nick, being in eighth grade, are always the captains. No one challenges their status. They are tough and sinewy. the veins bulge in Jack’s forearms, and Nick even has a little mustache. But they are not part of the firehouse gang. They are athletes.Deciding on who chooses first is an important and complicated ritual. First, Jack throws the bat in the air to Nick who catches it around the neck. Then Jack puts his fist around the bat’s neck above Nick’s fist. They continue up the bat this way, one boy’s fist above the other’s, like squeezing the head off a chicken, until only the nub at the end of the bat remains unclaimed. Nick gets the try at the nub and grasps it with his fingers like he is picking up a quarter. With his slight grip on the bat, Nick attempts to swing it around his head three times but looses his hold on the final rotation, and the bat falls to the dirt. “Damn,” says Nick, and Jack wins the first pick.Jack says, “Bobby, first base,” and Bobby trots off. And then Nick picks. Next, Jack says, “George, Infield,” and then Nick picks. And then Jack says, Stanley, outfield,” and then Nick picks. On his last turn, Jack says, “Henry, outfield, but way over near the line. Let Stanley get most of them.” That hurts, but I breathe a sigh of relief that at least I’m not the very last one picked. A fourth-grader remains, and Nick has to take him on his last pick.With only four or five boys on each team, one side of the field is “blackouts”—the side depends on whether the batter is a righty or lefty. If you hit to the wrong field, you are out. And the up team does the catching for the other team. Of course if a runner is going home from third, you don’t have to make an out against your own team. The pitcher has to cover that.Jack says, “Alright, let’s get this little girls’ game started, I’ve got a real game at the Little League field this afternoon. Nick, your team’s up first.”Like Jack, a lot of the boys have been playing on Little League teams for a couple years and can catch, throw, and hit well. But, I have a problem. I was sick for a lot of those good learning years, out of commission. In first grade I contracted rheumatic fever and then whooping cough on top of it. I was out of school for several months recovering. My teacher wanted to leave me back, but Mama talked her out of it, promising to work every night with me to get me up with the rest of the class—and she did. In other years she helped me catch up through measles, mumps, chicken pox, and scarlet fever. I am glad that I never got polio like some kids. Maggie, a girl in my class has it. She just got the brace off her leg, and it looks funny—the calf muscle disappeared, and she walks with a limp. She can’t run.The rheumatic fever in first grade burned me up for days, and the deep whooping cough that followed made my chest hurt and the top of my head feel like it was exploding. But the real damage was unseen and unfelt. The rheumatic fever left me with a heart murmur. As far as I can tell this was a leak when my heart pumped, like a heart burp, or belch, depending on how bad it is. Mine never got worse than a burp. I took a pink pill every morning for years to make it go away. And during those years when the other boys were developing their baseball skills, my Mama followed Dr. Hopper’s orders to restrict my physical exertion as much as she could with a growing boy. Mama said, “Henry, don’t jump, your heart!” I jumped. “Henry, don’t run, your heart!” I ran. “Henry, don’t fight with your brother, your heart!” I beat up my little brother.Finally, at the beginning of this school year, Dr. Hopper listened with his stethoscope for a long time and finally pronounced, “I can’t hear it any longer“ Most importantly, he lifted the ban, “Go out and play, Henry.” My heart was O.K. but I have lost so much time, and it shows.In the first inning, Nick, a lefty, hits a fly ball down the right-field line, definitely to me. I run in to catch it, and the ball flies over my head. Stanley yells, “Hey, can’t you see?’ He runs behind me, retrieves the ball as it rolls to a stop deep in right field, and throws it back to the infield as Nick strides in safe to third.Later in the inning another is hit my way, and I sight it well this time. But just as I am about to make the catch, Stanley sweeps in from my right and takes it away.“That was mine,” I yell at him.“Just making sure of the out.” he snaps back.We are out of the inning and down by five runs. My team comes in from the field, and I sit on an upturned peach basket, waiting for my bat—last in the lineup. At my first up, Nick pitches a fastball, and I swing behind it. Next he throws his arcing change-up, and I swing way ahead of it. Then he throws his curve ball, and I miss it by a mile. I hate him for that. He knows I can’t hit much. He doesn’t have to show off. I want to tackle him right there on the mound—I am good at that—and wipe that smirk off his face, but I don’t.I get up twice more that inning—pop out to the infield and strike out again. I make all three of our outs. After my last strikeout, George and Stanley hang their heads and won’t look my way. Bobby throws his glove in the dirt. Then he kicks it, picks it up, and walks out to the field in disgust.I need help but don’t know who or how to ask. I swing too late or too early, too high or too low. Maybe the bat is too heavy or I’m not standing right. Maybe I need glasses. I watch all the other guys, trying to imitate them, but it doesn’t work for me. And I can’t ask them for help. I don’t want them to know how bad I am any more than they already do.At the end of the next inning. Ellie shows up at the edge of the field to watch the game. She walks over to me as I wait to bat next, and says, “Hi Henry. Henry good player.”I shoot back, “Ellie that is such a lie, I stink. What do you know, you’re retarded.”Ellie’s face drops. She says, “Henry mad, Henry upset. I sorry. I retard.” She turns and walks home.All through my bat I think about what I said to Ellie. One, two, three strikes in a row. I miss them clean. And I continue to play the rest of the game awful.As the game winds down, my grandfather comes out to hoe in his garden behind the barn. I call him Pop, the same as my father does. Mama never encouraged any other endearing grandparent-type names either for him or grandmother, Mom. Pop’s garden is only a stone’s throw from the ball field. Foul falls often land close to his tomatoes, but Pop never retrieves them. He never says or does anything that will encourage us to play here. I think he worries that the tomatoes will get damaged.We always have a battered ball or two that we play with until grandfather finishes his hoeing. Then we creep into the garden for the good one. Pop quit farming the rest of the fields and leases them to neighboring farms. He keeps this small garden plot of tomatoes, peppers, and the like for himself. Each row is perfect—weeded, tilled, and watered. He picks the bugs off by hand and puts them in a jar of gasoline to kill them or squishes them between his thumb and forefinger if he has forgotten the gas.Pop and Mom live in a neat white farmhouse up the hill from the barn. Everyone in the family calls it “the house.” Once I heard Mama call it “the house” and then under her breath mocked, “as if there are no others.” Dad often tells Mama, “I’m going up to ‘the house.’” But I don’t think she likes hearing about it too much. I think she wants him to stay at our house more. She says, “Stay here with us this evening and listen to some music.” But Dad says, “I have to check in on them.”Pop is 72. He is lean with wavy white hair, fine in texture, and he has a handsome white mustache. He has the mature good looks of a disciplined Bavarian. He wears overalls and a straw hat to protect his aging fair skin. With his teeth clenched around his corncob pipe, his jaw juts out even more than usual. From his garden, Pop has a good view of the baseball game, but his face is expressionless whenever he glances over.Around noon the game dissolves—all the boys ride their bikes home for lunch. Sometimes the game starts up again in the afternoon, but just as often we lose too many boys to real games at the Little League field in town.After the field clears, I shuffle over to Pop’s garden patch. He is stooped over his cucumbers, picking pickle-sized ones and gently placing them in a peck-sized basket. He stands up as I approach—a little crick in his back makes him stop halfway up for a second as he rubs his lower back.“Did you see the game?” I say feeling stupid for asking the obvious and hoping he won’t throw it up to me.
“Yah, I saw it,” Pop replies not friendly, not unfriendly, but rather like he was talking to someone he just met. He retains a slight German accent—the language that his father and mother brought with them with their young family from the old country.
And they spoke German in their home and between themselves until they died a few years ago. Family lore has it that they came here near the end of the last century because of the “Jewish problem” in Germany. Pop is still bitter and felt that, although Hitler was extreme and went too far, something had to be done.Dad always says that Pop had been a pretty good ball player back in his day, so I ask him, “How’d I do?” As soon as I say it, I wish I hadnHe thinks for a moment and then says, “Henry, you’re a nice kid, but you’re a lousy ballplayer.” His words crush me like one of the beetles he pickoff his tomato plants. I want to ask about hitting stance, and looking the ball into the glove, and a million other tips, but he doesn’t welcome any questions or offer any advice. So I slump home.
On the way I meet Dad coming out of his workshop next to the barn. He has been making brass turnings on his lathe and is covered with curly pieces of the metal. Most of his work comes from orders from a supply house in nearby Philadelphia. These orders require making the same shape over and over again for hundreds of pieces. The specialty work like the antique dealer Ray brings him is rare.“How was the game?’ he asks matter-of-fact like. I want to ask him to have a catch. We never do. After lunch he will return to his shop to turn more brass. I want to try that, too. but Mama says it is too dangerous.When she says that, Dad offers, “Maybe when you get older.” I don’t want to wait until I get older to use the lathe, or for anything else for that matter. I feel this is a good time for me to learn, especially since the accident to Dad’s partner.I say, “I can take over some of the work that Peter used to do.”Mama says, “That is all the more reason to keep you away from the machinery.”Dad’s partner in business and old friend Peter shared all the work. That is up until last month when Peter caught his shirt cuff in the rotating cylinder of the polishing wheel. It was on high speed and sucked his left arm into the whirling machine. Dad rushed him to the hospital in town with his mangled arm wrapped tight to his chest and a tourniquet stopping the bleeding. A surgeon put the arm back together with wire, pins, and screws. Maybe it will work again, maybe not. Father says, “Only time will tell.” And the work piles up.Mama says wryly, “Good thing he didn’t catch his tie in the damned lathe or his head could have been sucked in.” Mama always makes fun of Peter wearing a tie everyday in case he waits on customers in the store or has to work on the books.The best metal spinner in the shop is Babe—he’s a master.I love to watch him. At his lathe Babe guides the tool over the surface of the spinning brass disc. Solid steel rod a foot long and an inch thick with a baseball bat-sized handle. The brass fluidly conforms to the shape of a wooden mold. Trading for a second tool, he trims excess from the rim of the brass. Ribbons of metal fireworks fly. Babe opens the lathe, releases the font-shaped sculpture—the base for an oil lamp.Craftsman, artist, gentle hulk. His demeanor and rural tongue belie the dangerous work. Split second of day dreams and the spinning buzzsaw can fly off the lathe and open a man’s arm from wrist to elbow. In over four decades, Babe had one mishap—took 38 stitches to close it up.Another younger metal spinner is Roy Yamagushi. His nickname is “Chink” though he’s not Chinese, but Dad says they all look the same.During the war Roy spent four years of his childhood at Topaz, an internment camp for Japanese-Americans in the Utah desert.dry inland seasmall figures searchseashells in the sunRegardless, later as a young man he enlisted in the U.S. army. After service he moves east, and now he works for my father.tea ceremonypeaceful and forgivingbitter taste of regretThat pretty much raps up my Dad’s work force except for Lee and Walt.—about them later. Others come and go as needed, either by Dad or by the worker—Dad often found a spot for a guy who needed it.Episode 10Mama Loves ElvisWhen Elvis Presley sang “That’s alright Mama,” I didn’t know he meant my Mama. But I guess he did because, after seeing him on the Ed Sullivan Show, she was never the same. At least not for a while. —Monday, May 27
Mama is in love with Elvis. She buys all his forty-fives. “My Happiness,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and the back-to-back “Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel” smash.
And she learns to jitterbug. She learns it at the drive-in movies. As soon as she sees it, she knows how to dance it. We go to the drive-in on Saturday nights a lot in the nice weather. The Saturday after the weather turned warmer, we go to see Blackboard Jungle, and there it is, the jitterbug. Bill Haley and The Comets play “Rock around the Clock” throughout the entire movie and high-school gang kids do the jitterbug. The next day Mama dances about singing.“One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock, rock.Five, six, seven o’clock, eight o’clock rock.Nine, ten, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock, rock.We’re gonna rock . . around. . . the clock tonight.We’re gonna rock, rock, rock to broad daylight.We’re gonna rock, rock, rock around the clock to-n-i-i-i-ght.”
She dances with the kitchen chair, and with the mop. She dances with me and with Howie. She dances with my Dad when he walks through the kitchen, but he doesn’t dance back. Dad says we should get ready for church and Sunday School. He says rock-n-roll music is evil and vulgar, but I like it. Mama calls him “daddy-o” for two days.Mama puts away her Perry Como, Pat Boone, and Patti Page records and buys Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis, along with her beloved Elvis. Her new music is a mixed-marriage—rhythm and blues, country, boogie-woogie, and gospel. It is Black, and it is white. It is rock-n-roll. It is Elvis.When Howie and I get home from school we begin to find Mama dancing in front of Bandstand on the local tv channel from nearby Philly. She imitates the steps of all the new dances being created right there in front of her by the high-school girls in their poodle skirts.About the time Mama is studying rock-n-roll, Arthur Rhoads wanders into our lives. Arthur is the son of one of our neighbors down the highway, and he is out of work. Arthur stops at Dad’s shop and asks him for a job. His timing is spot on—Father’s orders are still falling behind. His partner is down, and now one of his metal spinners Lee is out for a while time. Lee is recovering from lumps and bruises, a missing tooth, and a broken arm incurred when three rowdies followed him home Saturday night.at the church social hall,Lee pulls his 10-year-old Ford pickup off the road,parks at the back of the lot.still in the driver’s seathe slips off his jeans and khaki shirt,throws a green print dress over his headand pulls it down,kicks off his sneaks,and dons a pair of low-heeled pumps.she retrieves a bob-cut black wigfrom the glove box, long out of style, positions it just so.makeup overly done in an adolescent way.alone inside at the piano Lea playsa progression of unrelated notes and chordsnot belonging to any particular time signature—this one evening a weekLea feels at peace —it will do for now.Dad says he doesn’t know when Lee will return if ever and tells Arthur he will give him a try. Arthur says, “Oh, yeah, Mr. Muller, I can spin metal. I learnt in high school metal shop before I dropped out a few years back. And as a bonus, I can sing. I’ll serenade the whole neighborhood while I’m churning turnings for ya.” So Dad hires Arthur to fill-in while Lee recovers. I guess Arthur forgot what he learned in school, because Pop ends up having to teach him most of it anyway—the metal spinning, not the singing. Arthur has the singing down without any help. But Arthur is not very good at the metal spinning, so Dad eventually makes him a metal polisher for the finished spinnings.Arthur usually wears old plaid cowboy shirts with button-down flaps on the pockets and yolks across the shoulders. His hair is long, dark, and wavy, and he combs it into a duck tail in the back just like Elvis. Arthur always has a slight stubble of beard and long sideburns. He brings his guitar to work and plays it at lunchtime. But true to his promise—a promise that father doesn’t care to hold him to—he continues to sing, and hum, and yodel songs all day long as he works. He sings over the whirl of the big polishing wheel, and we can hear him throughout the shop. “Johnny Be Good,” “Blueberry Hill,” “A Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and his playlist goes on.Arthur manhandles the polishing machine at the back of Dad’s shop. A felt disk as wide as a hubcap whines at tremendous rpms. A human should not get anywhere near it. But Arthur does, as his strong hands and hairy arms guide brass lamps, candlesticks and the like against the disk. A glossy finish is coaxed out of the surface of the metal.Arthur glances at his image in the greasy-paned window and shakes loose his shaggy locks of dark hair. He doesn’t see the three-day beard, dangling Camel cigarette, or wragged plaid shirt missing two buttons. He sees the king of rock and roll, Elvis, on the Ed Sullivan Show. He wiles away the polishing hours belting the hits until his fellow workers yell, “Knock off that bellowing.” But for the most part they tolerate his concert, maybe even enjoy it.And Arthur loves the chippies. One Saturday night he calls and tells Pop—the closest he’ll come to having a father—that the band at Lakeview Inn is going to have him sit in with his guitar. By the time Dad gets there, Arthur is no where to be found. At work on Monday, he claims one of the groupie girls got real cozy and took him out to the band truck.Arthur’s tunes pour out the big open window behind Arthur’s polishing wheel and drift over to our little house next door. He sings them pretty well, at least my Mama thinks so.Soon, Mama is no longer satisfied in just listening and dancing to rock-n-roll. She now wants to play and sing it, too. She buys a used guitar and asks Arthur to give her lessons after work. He agrees. She doesn’t ask Dad, she just does it. Through the warm spring evenings after work, Mama and Arthur sit in the backyard until it gets dark practicing songs. One night I see him put his arm around her guitar and Mama’s waist to show her how to finger a new chord. She doesn’t remove it.After her lesson Mama often jumps in the car and dashes into town to pick up a pizza for supper. We start getting a lot of pizza from the new place because Mama is “learning guitar instead of making a proper supper,” as Dad puts it.I like Mama’s playing and singing. She sounds a lot like Patsy Cline, the country singer, but with more of a rock-n-roll beat. But she doesn’t let her singing get out of control with yelling and screaming like some rock-n-rollers are starting to do. Other things get out of control.Episode 11See Spot RunI got Spot hit by a truck today. I don’t know if he will be alright.
—Saturday, June 8
Our dog Spot should be named “Box,” but none of us are that clever, or maybe it just sounds stupid. Spot has a white box on his side, perfectly formed two inches by two inches. It is along his ribs in the middle of a brown splotch that helps set it off. The rest of him is all brown and white. The name Spot always makes me think of my Dick and Jane reader from first grade, the one Mama helped me with when I was sick. “See Spot Run. Run Spot. Run. Run. Run.” Spot’s parents are of unknown breed. He is a true all-American. Dad calls him “Heinz 57.” Beagles must be somewhere in his family tree—he is built low to the ground and is on a rabbit’s trail like white on rice.
On work days at lunchtime, all the workers like to give Spot their leftovers. Often cookies and other sweets, but also spicy ends of sandwiches and the like. Spot sneezes every time he hits the hot peppers in a hoagie. The workmen bet how many sneezes Spot will have in a row. Anytime Arthur tries to offer Spot some of his sandwich, Spot won’t take it. And it isn’t because he is full. Spot has other reasons.
Spot is like a king, and his kingdom ranges up and down the highway for a half mile in each direction. It runs another half mile into grandfather’s farm. He patrols his stake proudly, darting into a briar patch here, and chasing a rabbit out the other end over there. He works hard and runs hard. If he doesn’t he probably would weigh 100 pounds instead of just 30 from his constant supply of snacks.
Sometimes Spot hunts on the other side of the four lane across from the farm. We see him chasing a rabbit through the fields over there, but no one ever sees him cross the highway. We worry about Spot crossing because this road connecting Philadelphia and Atlantic City is packed with commuters, vacationers, and commercial trucks through most of the day and night. It has two lanes in each direction with a weed strewn “island” that runs down the middle separating northbound from southbound lanes. It is so crowded that Dad has a standing joke for any passerby who stops and asks him where they could make a turn to get to the other side. He puts on a hillbilly accent and says, “I don’t rightly know—I’ve never been to the other side.”
But Spot has been to the other side, and on this Saturday morning I am determined to figure out how he does it. As soon as I see him hunting across the highway, I dart across at a lull between the cars and 18-wheelers, and follow at a safe distance. That isn’t easy. Spot is faster than a scatback, dodging left to cut off a rabbit, and then slashing right to pounce. But his path is zigzag—I can keep up if I just cut a straight line. And actually he ignores me completely in the heat of the hunt. Spot makes a couple of runs after rabbits and scares up a covey of quail without even trying. And then he disappears in a briar patch and doesn’t come out. I wait, but he still doesn’t reappear. Can he be that intense on routing out one of his rabbits? After a few minutes I can’t wait any longer and plunge in after him, trying to avoid the briars as much as I can. But just at that moment I hear Spot yelping the way he does when he is very close to catching a rabbit. But the yelping comes from the back-home side of the highway. He does it again.
I run around the briar patch to retrace his route. And there it is—the opening to a drainage pipe. It runs under the highway clear back to the other side. Only a small opening shows through all the weeds and briars. When I pull the tangled vegetation aside, I see the pipe is round and about two feet across. Plenty big enough for a little dog to scamper through. But is it big enough for an 11-year-old boy—a chubby one at that. I think that it is, so I start in on hands and knees to follow after Spot. Staring hard straight ahead through this pitch black tube, I can make out a tiny white dot of light, the other end about a hundred feet away under the highway. I guess this is what people call “the light at the end of the tunnel.” It looks like a long way off.
After a few feet my jeans are soaked and muddy. My hands and knees sink into the mud and come out with a squishing sound that echoes through the tube until it spills out the other end. It sounds as far away as it looks, and I begin to wonder if this is such a good idea. The cobwebs in my hair and across my face make me worry about the spiders that have made them. I think, “What if there are tarantulas in New Jersey?” although I have never seen tarantulas here. “But, what if there are water moccasins?” Those I have seen in the swamps. Heck, I’ve seen them in the pond. “What about rats?” I know they are around the farm everywhere. I shoot them behind the barn with my bb gun. “What if I bang my head on the pipe overhead?—I am already scraping it —and knock myself out?” Nobody knows where I am. I could lay down here for days, maybe even years, before they find my body. And then it might be a team of archaeologists looking for Indian bones and artifacts.
That’s what happened near the Jersey Turnpike when they were building it. It goes through an old Indian burial ground. The Lenni Lenape tribe lived around here in the old days. The highway engineers stopped construction for a week while the archaeologists from the state museum took the bones out of the Indian graves and moved them to the museum for display. A lot of the people around here say that everyone involved—engineers, archaeologists, highway construction workers—are cursed for disturbing the graves, and many bad things will happen to those involved. Bad things did happen. Accidents at the site slowed progress. A bulldozer sank ten feet into the sand over the burial site, and the driver had to leap for his life. A state archaeologist wasn’t as lucky. After the road was finally finished, his car crashed through the guardrail near the burial site and plunged into a ditch. He was killed instantly. Witnesses said he just lost control, like something had taken over his car.
But back to my predicament. I am in the middle of the pipe by now—the point of no return. It seems to be getting smaller. Can that be? And then just what I fear most happens. I am stuck. The pipe squeezes in around me, and I can’t move forward, and I can’t move backward. Can the pipe really be getting smaller? I panic. Throwing myself flat on my belly, I try slithering like a snake. At first I don’t move at all. the muck just sucks me down like a vacuum. With one great lunge and a great fart, I break its grasp and slither hard. It works. I slither the entire length of remaining pipe as fast as I can go, scraping my head, belly, and elbows raw and bleeding the whole way. When I reach the far end, I burst out the opening, gasping for air and shouting like a maniac. It was a tomb in there complete with worms and bugs with a million legs.I run home to tell Dad and Mama that I discovered Spot’s secret. Mama is the first one I see. She and Arthur are just starting their lesson out back at the picnic table—they decided to have lessons on Saturdays as well as after work. They are talking about starting up a band. I don’t think Dad knows about it. Mama looks at the mud and spider webs that cover me from head to foot.“What happened to you?” she gasps.“I found out Spot’s secret, it’s a drainage pipe under the highway. That’s how he does it, that’s how he gets to the other side without anyone seeing him. I found it. I did it, too.” I can’t get it all out fast enough.“You could have been killed—the highway could have caved in on you.”Arthur adds, “That dog’s smarter than I thought.”Dad comes out, but he isn’t excited about my news either. “Of course, the old water conduit,” he says. “I should have thought of that.” He doesn’t even want to see it. It is all very matter-of-fact. My adventuring spirit is not being encouraged so I slump off to the shower.Late in the afternoon I see Spot again hunting on the other side. I figure I’ll give him a test. I’ll call him to come home and see if he runs down to his secret passage.“Yo, Spot, here boy! Yo Spot.” He glances up for an instant and then carries on the chase pretending not to hear, like he usually does. “Yo, Spot, get on home here!” This time he breaks off his sniffing and makes straight for me. He suspects something urgent from my voice, or something good to eat. He forgets all about his secret route and dashes into the highway. He makes it across the two lanes on the southbound side. But, when he reaches the northbound lanes, I hear a terrible screeching of metal.The entire world shifts into slow motion. A huge tractor trailer truck crosses my vision, smoke pouring from the burning rubble of the tires as the driver stands on the brakes. Spot’s pace slows like he’s running in water. My mind slows, “He’s—going—to—make—it,—that’s—it—boy.” But he doesn’t—the truck’s right bumper clips Spots’s hip just as he is about to be clear.Time speeds up again. I hear Spot’s whimper, and see him flip off the pavement and spin in the air three times. It is like a zany movie with everything happening too fast. Spot lands back on all four paws and bolts across the remaining highway into the nearby woods.Back to regular time, the truck comes to a grinding halt, and the driver throws his arms into the air as to say, “What could I do?”Dad has heard the commotion and runs out from his shop. He waves the driver on, shouting, “Not your fault.”That’s right. It isn’t the truck driver’s fault. Of course not. Then who’s fault is it? Of course—it is mine. I tricked old spot to make that foolish dash. And he trusted me.I run into the woods and search for him, but Spot has vanished, and I finally just lay down in the cool pine needles and cry. Dad finds me and says, “It was bound to happen eventually. That dog is all over the place.“ I don’t think Dad knows that I had called Spot over, and I am too ashamed to tell him. “He’ll be back, unless he’s run off to die. Come home now.” But I will not budge, and Dad returns to his work.After three days Spot hobbles into the yard. Father says, “He’s back from licking his wounds.” I hug Spot, and he licks my face just like nothing has happened, just like I hadn’t tricked him. He forgives me, but I don’t forgive myself. I want to undo the events, but that is impossible. I have to settle for cleaning Spot up and caring for him. He is filthy and covered with huge ticks. Gorged on Spot’s blood, they have swollen to ten times their size. I pull off the marble-sized pellets and throw them to the driveway where they make little blood explosions. Afterward, I give Spot a bath with disinfectant so the tick holes will not get infected. And, of course, a big meal of both canned dog food and table scraps.Spot is back, but he isn’t the same. When the rabbits find out that he is a cripple, they begin to tease him. They wait until he is practically on top of them to jump up. Spot tries to give chase. He will make a fast start at them but soon pulls up in pain. The joint in his hip is not that well-oiled, rabbit-catching machine of the past. It is fowled and pained, and will never be the same again.
Episode 12See Arthur Run, TooDad had to take care of the situation. —Wednesday, June 19During this time Mama is getting pretty good on her guitar. She masters a handful of chords and can sing harmony to Arthur’s melody on some of Elvis’s songs like “Love Me Tender” and “Don’t Be Cruel.”Arthur thinks she is getting real good, too. He wants Mama to hear a band that plays on Friday nights at the Mouse House, a roadhouse down the highway a few miles. On the Friday night after Spot returned, Mama and Arthur talk Dad into going down for some beers after work. As it turns out, Arthur knows the drummer in the band and gets him to allow the two of them—Arthur and Mama— to play and sing a song for the crowd. They borrow guitars from the band and play “Heartbreak Hotel.” Mama tells me that the audience liked it so much that they begged for more, and they stay on for the rest of the set.The week after the Mouse House debut, Mama has her regular guitar lesson with Arthur. They play and sing all Elvis, all session, and laugh a lot, too. Dad and Mama never laugh.After the lesson, Mama asks Dad if it is o.k. to have Arthur stay for supper—no pizza this week—Mama made a pot roast earlier. Dad grunts “maybe once more” with a little look of enlightened apprehension on his face.So Arthur stays over for supper with us, my parents and me and Howie. As well as Spot who whines throughout supper outside the back door.Finally Dad pushes away from the table, strides to his shop next door and gets his German lugar pistol from the back of his desk drawer—he brought it back from the war. He grabs Spot by his collar and drags him around back of the shop.We hear a single pop and a squeal and silence. Arthur lets out a little squeal, too. He gets up from the table, walks out the front door and keeps going—guitar lessons are over.from a 50’s primer—see Spot runsee Arthur run, tooThe day after Dad shot Spot, Arthur stops coming to work. Dad doesn’t fire him, and Arthur doesn’t quit. It just happens in a mutual way. I only see Arthur once more. On the Friday after he stops coming to work, I am sitting on the back step wishing Spot was here. Father had just left for the hardware store in his truck. No sooner than he drives out of the yard than Arthur drives around the corner in his old, yellow Cadillac convertible with the top down. I think it is always down, having stopped going back up years ago.Mama is hanging wash on the line in the backyard and stands perfectly still as Arthur hops over the door of Caddy and walks up to her. Her green cotton dress and big apron blow in the wind. Although they speak very quietly, words break from their conversation and float over to me on a warm breeze.“…Memphis, maybe Nashville…”“…can’t go…”“…come with me…”“…family…”“…good harmony together…”“…home…”“…partners…”“…Howie…Henry…”"...their dad..."
“…band…”“…can’t go…”Arthur touches her hand, but she pulls it back. She shakes her head, and he jumps back in his car and slowly drives off. She turns and climbs the back steps with the clothes basket. She knows I am nearby but stares straight ahead. Arthur’s car turns the corner and is soon out of sight. Mama moves to the kitchen sink and finishes the supper dishes.Episode 13
Friday Night Fights in Black and WhiteStayed with Mom Mom and Pop Pop tonite—Mama’s parents. Mama and Dad went out. Me and Pop Pop watched the fights. And today was the last day of fifth grade! —Friday, June 21On Friday nights Pop Pop and I hunker down in front of his black and white TV for a night of fights—boxing sponsored by Gillette razors. “Pugilism at its best,” Pop Pop says in a put-on, uppity way. He drinks beer, and I drink ginger ale until Mom Mom leaves for the kitchen, then I drink beer, too. My can of Ballantine has to stay behind the sofa between swigs and has to last the whole night.
There are always three fights, two preliminaries and the “main event.” In this first fight, a dark Negro is fighting a medium dark one. Each Friday I learn a new rooting rule from Pop Pop. Negro against Negro, like in this case, and it is “may the best boogie win especially if it’s the lighter one.” After a round or two, Pop Pop has a feel for their styles and actually roots for the slightly darker, scrappy counter-puncher. Two minutes into the fifth round Darkie sidesteps a sloppy roundhouse from the lighter man and steps in with a rapid one-two combination that buckles Lighty’s knees. By the time the referee finishes counting him out, Lighty comes around enough to know that “he isn’t in Kansas anymore, Toto,” as Pop Pop says. A white man and a Negro fight the second bout to a bloody draw, with Pop Pop rooting for the white man with every arm-weary punch. “Like kissing you sister,” Pop Pop pronounces in disgust for the tie.After several weeks of following the fights with Pop Pop, I am sure I have all the rooting rules down. Negro versus Negro: “may the best boogie win.” A white boxer and a Negro: “kill the boogie.” White on white: “root for the Irish.”The Gillette parrot announces the main event, a 15-round championship fight that Pop Pop has been talking about for weeks—and heavyweights at that. The Swede Ingemar Johansson is world champ and the American Negro Floyd Patterson is challenging him. Patterson lost the title to Johansson last year and wants it back in the worst way.I cheer on Ingy, but I hear Pop Pop urging on Patterson under his breath. What’s going on? But the more the fight swings Patterson’s way, the louder Pop Pop gets. Finally in the fourteenth round, Patterson lets loose a tremendous right hook that catches the Swede leaning the wrong way, and Johansson crashes to the canvas in a heap. No one doubts the referee will reach ten.Pop Pop roars with excitement, “We took the crown, we took the crown.”I don’t get it. “But Pop Pop,” I argue. “The white guy lost—why are you rooting for the boogy.”“But, Henry,” he explains with puzzled, hurt eyes, “he’s our boogie.”Now I think I understand. “Kill the boogie,” in this case does not apply. I review the rules in my head. The order is American, white, Negro. Always root for the white over the Negro, unless, of course, the Negro is an American and the white guy is not. Simple as black and white—well, sort of.Episode 14Uncle John’s LegWe missed the main event tonite. Had to bring Uncle John home from the hamrock. —Friday, June 28It is another Friday night at the fights with Pop Pop. Two minutes into the fifth round of the main event the telephone rings. Pop Pop answers into the heavy black receiver, “Crosswick Police Department.” He pauses and listens. “No, it’s just a joke.” He pauses and listens some more. “O.K., I’ll be right down.” Pop Pop hangs up and turns to me. “I have to go down to the Shamrock and bring Uncle John home. He’s had a little too much again.”Uncle John is a made up name. At least the title part. John is his real name, as far as I know, but he isn’t anyone’s uncle, not in our family anyway. He is the third husband of Mom Mom’s mother, Nan Nan. So, officially he is Pop Pop’s step father-in-law. To me, everyone over about 30 is pretty old so I am surprised that all these generations are even alive in the first place, and I can never figure out how we are all related. When I really think about it, I guess Uncle John is about 80 or so.Uncle John often has a little too much, usually at the Shamrock Tavern. It is only three blocks away. He walks there but often can’t walk back. And he doesn’t drive—I don’t know if he ever did, but he is too old now. But, there is another problem. He has a wooden leg, actually I thinks it’s molded plastic. It would be a real problem working the pedals in a car, not to mention being “under the influence.”“Can I come?” I ask. Pop Pop glances toward the kitchen. The coast is clear—no Mom Mom to be seen.“Come along,” he whispers, “I can use some help.” And we make a clean getaway.We slip out the back door and don’t take the car. Mom Mom might hear it. Besides it only takes ten minutes to walk to the Shamrock. The neon sign out front is missing the big “S.” I think that for people passing for the first time, “hamrock” must seem an odd name. We enter the front door of the “hamrock,” and my eyes immediately begin to sting and water from the heavy cloud of cigarette smoke. I can barely see through the dim light, but Pop Pop spots Uncle John right away. He is sitting at the far end of the bar behind the shuffleboard table.Before we reach Uncle John, the bartender sees us and detours us over to his end of the bar. “Look Ben,” he says to Pop Pop. “Everyday this week he’s come in at four o’clock and stays until he can’t stand up. Well, I mean even if he could stand up, he still couldn’t stand up. You see, Ben, lately he’s been taking off his leg. That’s it over in the corner under his jacket. He says it starts to bother him after he’s sitting on the bar stool a couple of hours. A different customer has to take him home each night. Last night my cook had to take him after we closed. It’s just not good for business. People are asking if I’m running some kind of flophouse or something. Ben, you have to do something about him.”“I’ll talk to him,” Pop Pop promises, and we walk to where Uncle John sits slumped at the other end of the bar. He has his money in a little pile beside his glass of beer—three one-dollar bills, a couple of quarters, a dime, and a nickel. The bartender can just take from from the pile what is owed at each refill.“Let’s go home John,” Pop Pop says when we reach him.“Oh, Ben,” slurs Uncle John, and he perks up upon seeing us. “Not yet, Ben, it’s early. I’m about ready to shoot some shuffleboard.”“You’ve had enough shuffleboard for tonight, John. Let’s go.”“Ah, Ben. . . oh, alright.” Just then he notices me. “H-Henry, my boy, would you carry my leg home? I’ve been carrying it all day if you know what I mean.”I hoist it onto my shoulder like a soldier with a rifle, and we set off for home. Pop Pop carrying Uncle John by the arm and me carrying his leg.I always knew Uncle John had a fake leg. When it gets sore he unstraps it and takes it off. I’ve seen him sitting on the sofa at Pop Pop’s house without it on. When he has it off, his pant leg lays flat on the sofa cushion and looks like it is on an ironing board about to be pressed. Or sometimes he tucks the pant leg up under him.Uncle John lost his leg during World War One. Not in a battle, but running to catch a troop train in Newark. As he hoisted himself aboard, he lost his grip. He fell backwards onto the track, and his left leg slipped beneath the steel wheels and was severed above the knee. Doctors worked frantically to save him from bleeding to death. And, of course, the war was over for him.
When we get back outside, the night sky is black velvet with no moon. There is no sidewalk and no streetlights either, but the Milky Way provides a pale dome of light for us to make our way. And there's the neon glare from the "Joey's Barber Shop" sign across the street.
Pop Pop says Joey is Italian, "they make the best barbers." Really amazing considering that Joey has a withered arm. Pop Pop says he was born that way with a little baby arm that never grew like the other one.
I think Pop Pop means best bookies, also. Joey has a little side room behind the shampoo station, and neighborhood folks wander in and out not very secretly to buy some numbers. Every week a shady-looking character appears from the passenger side of a black sedan, speaks softly to Joey, and collects a brown paper bag. Probably not a sandwich.
And every week auxilary policeman/ex-school-bus driver Mr. Hicks appears for a brown paper bag, too. Also probably not a sandwich. Last week volunteer fireman Pop Pop doused a fire in the little side room--Joey had missed a week's paper bag pickup.
Back to Uncle John.
Pop Pop has to put his arm all the way around Uncle John to steady him and make any progress down the middle of the street. They look like contestants in the three-legged race at the Sunday school picnics. But, of course, they don’t have to put their adjoining legs in a potato sack, since Uncle Joe doesn’t have one.
A car approaches from ahead, slows to avoid us, blinks its lights, and creeps by. I cannot make out the driver, but I imagine the person staring in wonder—or pity.Last year Uncle John and Nan Nan returned from living in a trailer near Hollywood, Florida. Pop Pop says that Uncle John has been trouble ever since he got back. Uncle John and Nan Nan live in a small bungalow, just three rooms that Pop Pop rents for them. It is next to Pop Pop and Mom Mom’s bungalow that isn’t much bigger, on a bend in the street, next to the firehouse.They always say they love Florida and hated to come back. Maybe that was why Uncle John is so much trouble—he just doesn’t like it here and the winter is cold. But he and Nan Nan can’t take care of themselves any longer. Pop Pop drives them to the store and the doctor and anywhere else they need to go. And Mom Mom cooks for them and cleans their little house.A year ago, before Uncle John and Nan Nan returned north, I heard Pop Pop and Mom Mom arguing about it in the kitchen. Pop Pop said, “Yeah, we could have them back here, but why do you want to. Let someone else do it. She booted you out, your own mother, remember. You were only fourteen, for Christ’s sake. If it wasn’t for your friend Flora and her family, God knows what would have happened to you or what you would have been doing to get by. And for what—to run off with a shoe salesman. No wonder your father cut out long before that, with all that carrying on.”“Well , he didn’t,” Mom Mom had corrected. “She ran out on him, too. And she would have run out on Jake down in Florida, but that trailer park Don Juan she was seeing on the sly just up and died on her.” I have a hard time picturing all these old men chasing after my great grandmother, who takes out her teeth at night, and during the day sometimes, too.So a year ago Uncle John and Nan Nan moved back with all their baggage, both real and imagined.We finally reach their bungalow. Uncle John is practically passed out, his one leg dragging behind him. I know Uncle John is too drunk to hear us, so I ask Pop Pop the question that has been on my mind. “Pop Pop, why did you have Uncle John and Nan Nan come back here with you? They seem like a lot of trouble.”“I know. . . they are,” he says.“So why did you do it? Why did you let them come back, anyway?”Pop Pop looks at me hard, reconciling it in his own mind first. Then he says, “I had to. I guess they came back to die. I have to let them do that.”“Oh.”Episode 15My Cousin JessieIndependence Day. We went crabbing at Tidewater Dam. A day of family fun, and more! —Thursday, July 4It is only Thursday, but all the adults have off work for the holiday. At eight in the morning, we pile into two cars, our Ford station wagon and Poppy’s Chevy Bellaire—big v-8 road cars. Two cars, four generations, a case of iced beer and soda, and a dozen balogna sandwiches move off to the crab beds.A half hour later we pull beside my Uncle Max’s crab shack. Uncle Max is my Mama’s brother. His sign on the highway reads “Tidewater Dam Boat Rentals…Crabbing…a day of family fun.”My cousin Jessie is waiting for us down at the dock with two wooden rowboats, crab traps, nets, buckets and all the other supplies for the day. Jessie ties the bowline of one boat to the stern of the other, and then the bowline of that one to the stern of his little boat that has a 15-horse-power motor. And we are off like a herd of turtles, Jesse towing us in and out of the horseshoe bends of Tidewater Creek that eventually goes into the Delaware Bay. After 15 minutes Poppy calls a halt. We drop anchors side by side in the shallow murky water, and Jessie sets off promising to check on us every half hour or so.Next we turn our attention to the crab traps. A trap is a one-foot cube, six sides of wire that look like a miniature chain-link fence, a fence the crab cannot escape from once the trap closes up. Uncle Joe ties a chicken neck to the bottom of his trap with a string, drops the trap over the side, and ties the hoist line to a slot along the boat rail. And then he settles back to wait. I know that when the trap hits the bottom, the four sides open outward so an unsuspecting crab can straddle into the bait. Every ten minutes or so he pulls the trap up by its hoist line. The four sides come together again to form the cube and any nibbling crabs are caught.The rest of us go to work preparing our hand lines. Each of us maintains two or three. It is really very simple. I just watch Pop Pop, and then do it the same way. In the other boat, Dad explains it to everyone like it is brain surgery. The line is just heavy twine
wrapped around a block of wood. You tie the bait, either a chicken neck or fish head, at the end of the twine with a small lead weight and lower it down to the bottom. In this case the soft, muddy bottom is only about two feet below us. The tide is starting to come back in. Poppy says that before long it will be four feet deep. He likes this little cove because the crabs get trapped against the mud bank with the incoming tide.Nan Nan carefully sets up a line and is the first to have one in the water. As soon as her chicken neck hits the bottom, she jams the wooden block into the slot along the boat rail and rigs two more. She feeds out each crab line through her eighty-year-old fingers. I notice that Nan Nan’s hands as well as her neck have the same wrinkled texture as the chicken necks she uses for bait.While she waits for some action, Nan Nan pulls her pack of cigarettes from a canvas bag, and taps one out. She lights it with her engraved lighter—I guess a memento from a long-forgotten affair—and puffs with sunken cheeks. It is a Camel, the kind with no filter. She will have nothing to do with something that can block the flavor. Uncle Joe also pulls out his cigarettes, lights one and smokes, and so does Pop Pop, Dad, and Mama.All the grownups smoke except Mom Mom. All are skinny except Mom Mom. She starts in on the bologna sandwiches and finishes one before the first round of cigarettes are snubbed out and thrown overboard. I guess she likes eating better than smoking. She is chubby and always wears loose house dresses, even on a crabbing trip. The dresses look like the muumuus the Hawaiian ladies wear in Dad’s National Geographic magazine. They are big dresses, printed with big flowers. The missionaries made the Hawaiian ladies put them on because before that they were naked. National Geographic also has pictures of Hawaiian ladies before the missionaries made them wear muumuus! Mom Mom must feel guilty about the bologna sandwiches and starts passing them around to everyone else. When she leans over to pass them across from her boat to mine, her boat tips way to one side. Pop Pop says, “Whoa there girlie!”Nan puffs, checks her lines, and puffs again. Her deft fingers look like the chicken bones that Hansel offered to the half-blind witch to make her think that he was not fat enough to be eaten. Just by touching the line, she feels every nudge that a blue crab below makes. Munch, nibble, munch, nibble. Nan’s face crinkles with delight and anticipation as she ever so carefully inches a line toward the surface. And then she beams when spotting a blue-claw crab just a few inches down. Don’t lift it out of the water—it will fall off the bait. Uncle Joe is waiting with the net and scoops down to the crab, and there it is, the first catch of the day.Nan says, “Whew, that made me sweat. This brassiere makes me sweat, too. I can’t stand it any longer.” And with that announcement, she reaches under her shirt, manipulates something, and out comes her bra. The action looks just like a magic trick. She throws it into her bag and puts out her crab line again. I don’t know what this piece of lady’s underwear is supposed to do, but obviously, Nan, whose weight is about the same as her age, has no real use for one any longer. And she says that she will never wear one again after that.As the tide continues to turn and run in, everyone begins catching crabs. Howie even has two fighting over the same old fish head. Dad has to help him bring them up and net them. As the little lagoons throughout the marsh fill with the tide, so do our two baskets. Poppy has picked a good spot!By noon, the beer, sodas, and bologna sandwiches are gone. Cousin Jessie comes by for the third time asking if we are ready for a tow in. This time we are. Jessie reminds me of Huckleberry Finn—Huckleberry Finn of the crab beds. He is adopted. I have always heard that Uncle Max and Aunt Eunice couldn’t have children. They both have blue eyes and blond hair. But Jessie is dark. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark brooding disposition. He is all business. He is small and muscular. Although he is three years older, we are the same height.When we get back to the docks, I tell him, “I wish I lived here beside the marshes and the bay. I would drive around in that boat even when I didn’t have to . . . Can I drive it?”Jessie thinks for a moment and then shoots back, “You can have the motorboat for all I care. It’s just work.”I know I can’t really have it, but I will drive it until Jessie comes back to his senses. “How do you start it?” I ask.“Adjust the choke a little and pull the cord.”I pull and the motor coughs and sputters. I pull again, and it catches. I turn the throttle grip hard and we shoot forward. I cut back just as hard, and we stall dead in the water. Another pull and we start again. This time I keep better control. For a while we go the opposite of how I want to go until I figure out that when you push the steering handle left, you go right.Jessie and I ride through the marshes, just the two of us, while the others steam crabs and drink beer from Uncle Max’s cooler. We have a good time, pretending we are hiding from pirates and picking up pretty girls. Jessie actually becomes friendly.Back at the dock, the crabs steam in a big pot. I can smell the Old Bay seasoning out across the lagoon —hot, spicy, and salty—as Jessie and I motor back to the dock. Poppy says Old Bay makes the cold beer even better because your lips are on fire.When the crabs turn from blue to red in the pot, they are ready. Poppy spreads newspapers over the picnic tables and dumps out the first batch. We rip off legs, open “trap door” bellies, clean out guts, gills and other inedibles, crack claws, and finally suck out the delicate white meat. The thumb-sized piece behind each backfin is the real prize. That sweet, succulent lump of crab. Mom Mom thinks it is a lot of work, but I think it is worth it.Just after the second batch of crabs is dumped on the table, Jessie says, “Come with me, I want to show you something.” We leave the table and set off on narrow trail through the tall marsh grass. It leads to a small clearing. Jessie stops at the clearing, kneels down, and moves away a pile of moldy reeds, revealing a bundle wrapped in a plastic poncho. He looks up at me and says, “You have to promise not to tell.” I promise, I am bursting with curiosity.Jessie unwraps the poncho. In it is a small backpack stuffed full like someone is getting ready for a long hike. Jessie pulls everything out—a change of clothes including socks and underwear, sneakers, a penknife, a Boy Scout cook kit and sewing kit, a box of crackers, a jar of peanut butter, a paperback copy of Treasure Island, a pen and notebook, a roadmap of New Jersey, and $28.“This looks like you are going on a camping trip.” I say.“I’m running away. I’m going to find my mother.”“But Aunt Eustice is your mother.”“She’s my adopted mother. I want to find my real mother.”“But, what for? You’ve never seen her. You live here now.”“Not for long. I hate this place. All we do is work and crab. I want a new life with my real mom. She gave me up when I was a baby because she just couldn’t take care of me then. She was just a kid herself when I was born, but I know things must be different now. She’s probably looking for me.”“Why are you telling me all this stuff? Aren’t you afraid that I’ll blab?”“First of all you promised. But second, I want you to blab. Just not yet. I want you to blab after you get back.”“What do you mean after I get back?”“I want you to go with me. Then you can come back and tell everyone that I found a new life and they should all just forget about me.”“I can’t go with you. I have to go home soon.”“Tell them you want to stay over tonight. Come on. Will you go with me?”Jessie’s begging is convincing—it sounds like a great adventure. I’m not sure about his staying away, but I agree to go with him.He stuffs everything back in the pack, and we return to the crab feast. I ask Mama and Dad if I can stay over for the night. They agree, and to my surprise, even suggest I stay through the entire weekend. They will come back for me Sunday night. I think the beer put them in an agreeable mood. I go off with Jessie to hang out at his boat before they change their minds. And to wait for the sky to darken enough for the fireworks to start, it being the Fourth of July and all.And soon they do. They explode across the water over the little harbor at the village of Tidewater. Jessie and I lay in the bottom of his boat and watch the streaks of silver, red, and blue. The ash, some still glowing, floats down and lands in the water all around us. Each flash reveals Jessie’s dark eyes staring into the sky. He has a lot on his mind.Late that night everyone leaves for home, and we all go to bed at Jessie’s house. He and I wait in the dark for hours to be sure Uncle Max and Aunt Eunice are asleep. I doze off several times, and then Jessie says, “It’s time, let’s go.” We quietly creep out of his room and sneak out the back door. We retrieve his hidden provisions in the marsh and hit the highway.“Jessie,” I say, “I don’t even know where we are going.”“We’re going to Wild—Wild—Wildwood,”—he imitates Bobby Rydell’s rock-n-roll song that Mama likes. “That’s where my mother lives. One night I overheard them talking in the other room about my mother, and they let her name slip—Mary Swainton. I found her name and address in a phone book at the library. I looked in every book in this part of the state until I found her.”I say, “How do you know it is her. Lots of people have the same name, you know.”“Well, we will just have to find out, won’t we. I’ll just ask her.”“You mean you will just walk right up to her door and ask her if she is your mother?”“Yeah, well I mean if she doesn’t turn out to be ninety years old or something.”“Why didn’t you call her up first and tell her you were coming?”“That would give her a chance to get cold feet about meeting me. She might deny the whole thing just because she’s scared.”“Well, doesn’t she have the right to do just that if she wants?”“No, she doesn’t! That’s my call. I found her, I have the right to meet her. And after we get used to each other, she will regret giving me up in the first place. So, I can’t give her a chance to miss all that by blowing me off on the telephone. She’ll have to look right at me, face to face, and know then that her life will be better with me back in it.”The road is abandoned for what seems like a long time, and we walk slowly to the east. Finally, we hear the roar of a truck coming through the dark, and in the next moment its headlights flash around the bend in the road. Jessie sticks out his thumb. This is my first time hitch-hiking, and I like the vagabond feeling of it, like a bum jumping on a freight train to nowhere—or everywhere.It’s a bread truck, and it stops for us. The driver says that he isn’t going all the way to Wildwood but would drop us two towns away. We can get out at the restaurant where he is delivering and catch another ride. He has a load of fresh-baked rolls, the kind you make hoagies with. The smell fills the truck, and he offers us a couple to eat now and a couple to put into Jessie’s pack.The driver asks, “Why are you boys hitching so early in the morning. The sun isn’t even up yet.”I have no answer, but Jessie says, We’re going into Wildwood to look for summer jobs on the boardwalk. We want to get a jump on all the other kids looking.”“It may be early in the morning, but you’re still late for job hunting. You boys should have done that months ago.” The driver pauses. “But, it might work out for you. A lot of the kids who started jobs back when school got out are getting tired of it. They are quitting and going home. Or their families are down for the summer and they decided it’s more fun to goof off till school starts up. Yeah, this may work out for you.” He is pleased that he has made sense out of the situation, if only for himself.As we near the Atlantic Ocean, the salty smell of the sea drifts to our nostrils. A causeway takes us across the grassy marshes and back bay that separates the mainland from the Jersey barrier islands. We turn south, traveling the length of one resort island and then crossing an inlet bridge to the next. At each shore town, the driver makes a delivery to a restaurant or grocery store, and while he’s out, Jesse and I stuff ourselves on more hoagie rolls from the back of the truck. When the driver returns, he shoots us a knowing glance. But, he doesn’t seem to care if each delivery is a little short.As we continue south, each city and town has its own personality. We make a stop at a hoagie joint in Atlantic City—this actually is the only true city. It has its famous boardwalk, but much of the rest of its neighborhoods are in shambles. Next are the neat homes of Ocean City, catering to family vacations. And then tiny Strathmere and Whale Beach where the whale washed up decades ago. And then Sea Isle, the college hangout. Avalon and Stone Harbor, sharing an island, are kind of ritzy. Further on at the very tip of New Jersey is Cape May. Older people like the looks of all the Victorian “gingerbread” houses. We aren’t going as far as Cape May. Just north of it is our destination, Wildwood. It is only a bridge away from Cape May, but could have been a million miles in attitude, a mecca for teens and teenie boppers.True to his promise, the driver drops us off at his last stop, Avalon. Jessie and I jump out and stick out our thumbs. I am getting good at this. The street is packed with people going to the beach. Along comes a yellow Volkswagen Beetle packed with high-school girls.I say to Jessie, “It’s too crowded, we better wait for another ride.”“Are you crazy? You have a lot to learn.” Jessie pulls me into the bug and off we go.“Where you boys headed?” asks the driver. She has a long pony tail fixed with a red ribbon.“Wildwood,” Jessie answers. “How ‘bout you?”“Of course Wildwood. Where else?”One of the girls who is crammed in the backseat with me screams out, “Wildwood, here we come.” Jessie is up front anddoesn’t seem to mind the crunch. He is smiling broadly.Pony tail paid the nickel toll to cross the bridge between the island that Avalon is on and the island that Wildwood is on. We cross and drive right down through the center of town. The ocean on the left calls to us. We park near the boardwalk along the beach and everyone runs for the water. Jessie seems content to put off the quest for his roots at least for a little while. This is the biggest beach I have ever seen. We run two hundred yards across the hot sand before we all flop down beside the waves. The girls take off their shorts and clam diggers to reveal bikinis underneath—red, blue, green, and yellow polka dots. They all plunge into the surf. Jessie and I swim in our shorts. I have never seen Jessie like this before. He is happy.
We get hungry and the two of us go onto the boardwalk to find food. The girls wave from the sand, and we wave back. And that is the last time we see them. Jessie and I stroll down the boardwalk, water dripping from our shorts traces our trail down the boards. Jessie scopes out all the girls in short shorts and bathing suits, and I imitate him.The Wildwood boardwalk is huge, miles long and as wide as the highway in front of my house. Both sides of the boardwalk are lined with food stands and carnival game booths beckoning to us. First food. It is noon and we are starving. We have hotdogs and sodas and frozen bananas covered with frozen chocolate shells. And then on to the amusement-ride piers that jut out perpendicularly from the boardwalk toward the water.
We ride “Mighty Mouse” three times. It is the greatest roller coaster in the world. It has sharp 90-degree turns that shoot you out over the end of the pier 50 feet above the beach before snagging you back in and plunging you down the next hill. After my three trips around “Mighty Mouse,” combined with three hotdogs and as many colas, my stomach begins to flop over on itself. I run to the railing, lean over the beach, and puke. It is hotdog-chunk puke. Some land on the sunbathers below, some is gobbled up by the swooping seagulls, and some is carried off by the wind. I felt much better after that. Then the two of us run.
Jessie’s favorite part of the boardwalk is the carnival games, especially the milk bottle throw. You don’t throw milk bottles—you throw baseballs at six heavy metal bottles stacked up like a pyramid. He wants to win a big stuffed bear to take to his mother. He wins lots of little animals instead. He keeps trying but just can’t get enough points for the big prize. The idea is to knock over the pyramid with three throws. It sounds easy enough when the barker describes it. But, the trick is that the bottles have to be knocked completely off the circular table they are on. Jessie usually knocks the pyramid down with his first throw, and sometimes one or two bottles will fly off the table. Jessie throws well—hard and accurate—just like Jack and Andy back home. With his next two throws he usually knocks one or two more bottles from the table but not all. He hits the bottles hard and they spin around a lot, but one always stays.
Jessie spends a lot of money—tips from towing crabbers around the marches—trying to pick off the bottles. He has very little of his $28 left when he stops playing. With what remains, we buy more hotdogs and sodas and cotton candy. “It’s time to go look up my mother now, anyway,” Jessie says.
We take a ramp down from the boardwalk to the street. Away from the glitz and crowds of the “boards,” the town looks much like any other. The major streets run north and south for the length of the narrow island. Like most of the shore towns, the street closest to the ocean is named Atlantic Ave. And this is Jesse’s mother’s street. We follow the building numbers north for a few blocks and find her address, an apartment above a doughnut shop. An open stairway leads up the side of the building. Jesse walks right up the steps to a small landing and a door. He knocks. No answer. He knocks again. Still no answer. Jesse says, “We’ll wait.' That is as good an idea as any since we are already out of money, and I am very tired since we really didn’t have any sleep last night to speak of. We sit down on the landing. Jesse puts his head in his hands to hold it up, but I lay all the way back and soon I’m asleep.
“Hey, what are you kids doing here? Get out of here!” At first I think I am dreaming the words. Then, remembering where we are, I sit bolt upright, afraid. A man and woman are coming up the stairs.
They look like they have been out for the evening. The woman appears a little older than the man and wears a clingy low-cut dress, and her breasts bounce inside it. She has dark shiny hair and thick eyebrows like Jesse. The man has greasy jet black hair and thick dark hair on his arms and chest. His shirt is unbuttoned for several buttons at the top and a gold cross rests in the dark mat of hair. He has one arm around the woman’s waist, the other free one he uses to wave us out of the way.
Jesse declares, “I am here to see Mary Swainton, my mother.”
The woman responds, “I don’t have any children. What are you talking about?”
“Yes, you do, and I’m proof of it. I’m Jesse.” He speaks with such conviction. How can he be so sure of himself, I wonder. Maybe this isn’t her at all. Jessie always seems so quiet and mysterious, but today I am seeing a different side of him.
The woman says, “Well, years ago when I was just a kid, I had a kid, but that was all taken care of. He’s in a good home now.”
“Yeah, fourteen years ago, to be exact.”
“Oh my God, you better come in.”
And turning to the man, she says, “Marty, you better go. I knew this would happen some day, but not now. I’m not ready for this. You better go.”
The man says, “Look, Mary, let me just get rid of them for you.”
“No, you just better go for now.”
“Yeah, O.K., but I’ll be here in the morning to pick you up, right?”
The man leaves, and we go into Mary Swainton’s small apartment over the doughnut shop. We sit at the kitchen table, and Mary offers us some Cokes. I can tell that Mary is nervous and jittery. She still doesn’t completely believe Jessie is who he says he is. But after he tells about my aunt and uncle and their business at Tidewater Dam, she believes.
“But, what do you want?” Mary says. “If it’s money, you’ve come to the wrong place. Just look around.”
“I don’t want money,” Jessie says. “I want to live with you, my mother.”
Mary says, “that’s impossible. I’m a lone wolf. I’m irresponsible,” she says mocking herself. “And you should know that there are others. You have both an older sister and a younger brother. They don’t live here either, but they’re around.” Jessie sits upright, and my tired eyes open wide.
Jessie says, “ You said you didn’t have children.”
“I lied about that. I just met you, remember, hanging here on my stairway. But back to the three of you. Different fathers. That’s right. I’m not very good with men. Well in some ways I am, I mean I always seem to have one but not for the long haul. And I’m not much of a family person either.”
“But, I want to know more about you.” Jessie says.
“There’s not that much to know.” Mary says. But there must have been more to talk about than Mary thought, because they both start talking a lot and the talk goes way into the night. I curl up on Mary’s couch and fall asleep.
In the morning bright rays of sunshine come through the front window facing the sea, and the aroma of doughnuts is everywhere. Mary has a bag on the kitchen table—glazed, powdered, and cream-filled ones. I am starving and eat three with a big glass of fresh milk. Mary had been out early to get it.
After breakfast, Jessie says that we should get out early to catch a ride with the morning rush going inland. I am confused, I thought Jessie would talk Mary into letting him stay. When we part Jessie kisses Mary Swainton goodbye, and she kisses and hugs him back for a long time.
Out on the street, we get a ride with an elderly couple who tell us about the dangers of hitching. The lecture is a small price to pay for the ride that takes us to the crossroads just down the road from Jessie’s front door. Well his old front door or maybe, new front door—I don’t know which. I don’t know what Mary Swainton said to him back in Wildwood. But Jessie is just as edgy as he has ever been, like he has another big decision to make.
Episode 16The Return of JessieJessie and I became friends. He can play baseball, too.—Saturday, July 6I ask Jessie, “So, what are you going to do?”“I don’t know. When we left here yesterday, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to find my mother and live with her. It was simple. Now I just don’t know. Mary Swainton told me something. She told me who my father is.”“She did,” I say, “Who is it?”“She told me that my father is my father.” Jessie says.“What do you mean, ‘your father is your father?’” I say. “Do you mean Uncle Max?”“Yeah, that’s right.”“But, I thought Uncle Max and Aunt Eunice couldn’t have children.’”“ It looks like that is only half right. My father—you Uncle Max—did just fine making a child fourteen years ago when he met up with Mary Swainton—at the Mason’s convention—in Wildwood.”“No?!“Oh yea. I’m surprised that my mother—Aunt Eunice—stayed with him after that, but she did.”I ask again, “So what are you going to do?”“Well, I set out to find out who my real parents are, and I did. One in Wildwood and one of them is right here. And then there’s Mom—the mom here. Wow, she’s been through a lot.”“Sure,” I confirm.Jessie says, “I guess I have two families. But what do I do now?”I feel good that Jessie is actually asking my advice. I really don’t have any, but I know who will. “Well, for starters, why don’t you come on Friday night and watch the fights with Pop Pop and me. He’s your Pop Pop too, you know. He even lets you have beer.”“O.K., Friday sounds good. But now we have to face the music here. I’m not ready to tell them that I met my mother. We’ll tell them we went on a wild summer spree. I lost my head and just had to get away. I’ll take all the blame. You just be quiet.”Jessie is about to try out his story on Uncle Max and Aunt Eunice, but Mary Swainton has gotten to them first. She has already called by the time we get back, and they know it all. This opens a can of worms that they would just as well have kept closed. Jessie is no calmer knowing the whole story about how he came to be, and they aren’t either. They are having to deal with it all over again. Uncle Max and Aunt Eunice need some time, so Jessie is going to live with Pop Pop for a while until they have sorted it all out. I think that this is pretty lucky on Jessie’s part—getting to live with Pop Pop. But Jessie doesn’t seem all that excited about it.He says, “It’s all getting so complicated. I want it all to be simple. You know, cut and dried. And I hardly even know Pop Pop.”“Oh, you’ll get to know him just like I do. You’ll see.” I say.Pop Pop is sent to pick us up. By the middle of the afternoon he swings by with his truck after making deliveries and we are off. We sit high up in the cab, three across.Pop Pop says, “I’m finishing up early today, being Saturday, so maybe we can throw the ball around some. How’s that sound?”It sounds good to me and I say so. But Jessie is less excited. He says, “O.K. We might as well. There’s nothing else for me anywhere. I may come back to no family at all when this is all settled. I wish I had never searched for Mary Swainton.”Pop Pop says, “Jessie, you should never feel that way. Sometimes finding the truth hurts, but the truth is always the truth. None of this is of your making. It’s up to the adults to sort all this out with you.”Jessie looks at Pop Pop and listens. He doesn’t say anything, but his face gets a shade lighter, like he is starting to understand.On the way home, we pass two little boys standing in the middle of a lawn, pumping their arms furiously at us. Pop Pop reaches up and pumps his air horn three times to salute their efforts. By the third bellow, the boys are jumping up and falling down joyously like a couple of drunks.We arrive back at Pop Pop’s bungalow before supper time. Mom Mom is frying chicken, but we have time for a little baseball hit around at the field by the elementary school down the street. Hit-around rules are simple—catch one fly ball or three grounders and you are up to bat. Pop Pop brings an entire duffel bag of baseball equipment and dumps its contents onto the ground—bats, balls, a fielder’s glove as well as a first-baseman’s mitt, and a catcher’s mitt.“Let’s see your swing.” says Jessie grabbing a mitt.I pick up the biggest bat in the pile and stand up at the plate swinging like a windmill.“Why are you using such a heavy bat?” says Jessie.“I want power.”“Well you’re not going to get it that way. Power comes from bat speed, and you are never going to have any with that log. And no control either. Here, try this one to start and then work up.” Jessie hands me the puniest bat in the pile.I am embarrassed to even stand there at the plate with it. But, when he pitches the ball, I swing the bat easily and smoothly. I miss by a mile but that is mostly because I’m not used to how light it is. Jessie pitches another and I make contact, sending the ball hard back at him. He gloves it cleanly.“Another thing“ says Jessie, “Why do you squint when you go to hit the ball?”“I don’t want it to hit me in the head.”“The ball is going to hit you in the head because you can’t see it squinting like that. Your eyes are practically closed. Just keep your eyes open wide. If you see the ball is going to hit you, duck. Maybe you need glasses, too, but for right now keep your eyes open.”Now I do not become Phillies’ star Richie Ashburn right there and then, but I do start to hit some. Pop Pop snags them around the infield and even a couple flies go into the outfield.As for fielding, I am still awkward and clumsy. Jessie shows me how to get my body in front of grounders to knock them down and then pick them up and throw to a base. Rarely do I make a clean stab with my glove like he does, but not many get past me either. And once in a while I actually get leather on the ball.It is practically dark by the time we get back to Pop Pop’s. Mom Mom’s fried chicken has gotten soggy, and she is not very happy. But, I am.On Monday morning Pop Pop drops me at my house on the way to his truck route. He had called Mama over the weekend to suggest an eye exam, and Mama and I go for an appointment as soon as I get home. Sure enough I am near-sighted like many of my family. Objects beyond two feet get blurrier and blurrier. So, of course, a ball thrown or hit at me is not in focus until it is about to hit me in the head. My new glasses are ready just in time. A marathon baseball game begins on Friday that lasts for two solid days.We have been talking all summer about how cool it would be to keep a game going as long as we can, and finally it happens. We start early Friday morning and go straight through till the middle of the next afternoon. We only stop when it gets too dark to see the ball and start up again at the break of dawn. It is like some kind of code that we have sworn to. Guys leave for meals but get right back to the field. Pop Pop brings Jessie over, and he stays at my house through the marathon.I get up 34 times and hit the ball more often than I strike out—mostly grounders to the infield that I beat out to first because I am fast. But a few find the hole between infielders. And then I hit a fly that goes over the third baseman’s reach. It lands just fair behind him and keeps rolling. I go into second standing up.George, Bobby, and Stanley are all here. They don’t brag on me, but they don’t hide their heads behind their gloves either when I come to bat. They just yell, “Spank it, four eyes,” and sometimes I do.Near the end of the second day, Ellie shows up at the field. She walks right through the infield when Jack is pitching to Nick and out to where I am in right field.“I sorry, I retard, Henry,” she says picking up our conversation from several weeks ago just like it had been this morning.“No, Ellie—I’m the retard, and I’m sorry.”“Hey,” yells Jack. “Can we play ball, if you two are finished your little reunion.”Ellie shouts, “Play Ball.” Jack pitches a curve that Nick hits back hard, a line drive my way that drops right in front of me. I glove it cleanly on the first hop and make a strong throw toward second base where Stanley is covering. My throw sails high over Stanley’s outstretched glove, in fact high over Nick’s outstretched glove who is backing him up and lands in my grandfather’s tomato patch. My team lets out a collective groan. I guess throwing will have to be the next part of my game to work on.At the end of the two days, we all have had enough, and the game just sort of dissolves. Official score: us—103, them—101. Hector, who is going into seventh grade and lives on the other side of Uncle Larry’s house, is at the marathon game both days. He plays second base for the other team and comes over to Jessie and me after the game.“Hey, you guys want to go over to the tomato fields behind your crazy Larry’s house and have some fun?”“Don’t call him that!” I snap.“O.K., hombre. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just trying to be friendly.”“That’s not a good way, so let’s start over,” I say.We do start over, and the three of us start off for the tomato fields.Dad and Mama don’t want me to hang around with Hector. They never actually say that, but anytime I mention him, they discourage it. Once I told Mama that George and I played with Hector over by his house, and she said, “You know he’s different than we are. He’s Puerto Rican. They’re dark and dirty and carry knives.”“Hector doesn’t carry a knife,” I said to her, “Besides, he’s only half Puerto Rican.”Hector lives near the Puerto Rican migrant labor camp, but his parents are not migrants. They are here year-round. His mother is Puerto Rican, but his father is Irish and works at the local canning plant. Hector is a year older than I am and barely passed Mr. Grady’s sixth grade. He is skinny with lots of pimples. During the school year, I saw him smoking cigarettes along the back fence at lunch time. I think I might try cigarettes when I get to sixth grade. And he played three-card ante with the eighth graders. Maybe I will try that, too.Hector is very different from George, Bobby, Stanley, or Eugene. Although I see Hector at school, because he is older we never really hangout. Or maybe it is because he keeps to himself a lot. But after school got out last month, I hang out around the picking fields once in a while, and Hector is there, too. He speaks Spanish with some to the younger pickers and then speaks English to me. I wonder how he keeps each straight, but he does. Sometimes he slips a Spanish word into our conversation, But I think he does it just to emphasize a point, like when he tells me about one of the migrants who drank too much one night—“Hombre, was he loco on tequila!”Hector’s mother does the same thing. She will say, “You boys better get your asses aqui pronto!” Mama doesn’t like the way Hector and his mother talk. She calls it “colorful” language. I like it.Hector, Jessie, and I walk down the highway to Uncle Larry’s lane, up the lane, and into the tomato fields. The fields are full of juicy, over-ripe tomatoes. They are ready for the canning plant to make into sauce. But, we have other plans for them.Whop! A big juicy one hits me in the back of the head. I turn and look at Jessie who has a big grin on his face. “I wasn’t even ready yet.” I yell. “Boy are you asking for it. . .” But before I can finish, another hits me in the ear from Hector’s direction. I grab a handful of tomatoes and start flinging. I rush Jessie amid a hailstorm of near-rotten tomatoes that he and Hector hurl at me. Although I pay dearly, I get in real close. Jessie can’t get away, and I smash a a tomato in his hair and another in Hector’s face when he tries a rescue. I am a wild man, whirling tomatoes like a cartoon character with windmills for arms. After a while I don’t even look to see where they land. Eventually we all collapse in a heap of tomato sauce. We are completely covered with red juice, pulp, and skin.“I guess you fellas didn’t hear how I took down Albert Snyder, or you wouldn’t be messin’ with me.”Hector says, “Seems like I did hear something about you turning him into a jiggling bowl of jello.”“And now that I have a throwing arm, too, watch out.”Jessie says, “Well don’t get too carried away with that idea, just yet. I saw that throw to second.”Suddenly Hector yells, “Follow me. I’ll show you some real action.” He starts off toward the big warehouse at the edge of the field, and we follow.“Look in here,” Hector says, opening the huge door. A box of a room with no windows loomed inside. “This is the cold-storage warehouse where they put all the baskets of peaches and apples before they get sent to the markets.” From the shaft of white sunlight that knifes in through the door, we can tell the room is empty now. We walk in through the patch of bright light and the coolness hits us, even though it is mid-summer hot outside. Once inside we can see the room is not completely empty. In one corner, mattresses and pillows are piled high. These are for the migrant workers’ housing.Hector says, “Here, grab one.” He throws each of us a pillow and then slams the door closed. We are plunged from bright sun into the blackest dark I have ever seen—or not seen. It is like closing your eyes on a moonless night and then putting both hands over them as well. Nothing.And then “whop”—a pillow smacks my head and I go down to my knees. My head hurts and my ears ring. In a couple seconds my head clears, but my eyes never adjust to the dark. There is not a sliver of light to show shadow movement. Or maybe I have gone blind with that last smack. Anyway, I start swinging, wildly at first and miss everything. In the meantime I get cracked a few more times. Then I learn to stand still and listen.I am amazed how one sense takes over when another is deprived. Standing still and listening intently, I can hear what I can’t see. I hear Hector scraping his feet. Swinging in the direction of the scraping, I smack him a good one. After the smack I make one big jump to the side as quietly as I can and hear his retaliating swing swoop by harmlessly. Then I hear Jessie’s asthmatic breathing and smack him, too. And then we each erupt with swinging, smacking, swinging, and smacking. The dark warehouse is alive with yelps of pain as whacks come from unexpected directions out of the darkness.Suddenly a blinding rectangle of white light pierces the blackness as the warehouse door swings open like the gate to heaven, Jessie stumbles out the door and falls into the dust. He lays on his back gasping for air but not getting enough. Hector and I do the same but not as bad as Jessie.Jessie grabs at his throat and says, “My inhaler. . . in my pack at your house.”“O.K. I’ll get it.” I run through the tomato field and down Uncle Larry’s lane. Onto the edge of the highway and back to my house. I burst into the house and find Jessie”s pack in my room. I rummage through and find the capsule that I figured must be the inhaler. My own lungs are bursting, but I can’t stop now. there isn’t even time to tell anyone, and there isn’t anyone home to tell anyway.I sprint back to the warehouse at top speed. The entire trip couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes. When I get back, Jessie is sitting up, looking better. He takes the inhaler and makes a short gasp, just to make me feel that my trip has not been wasted. Then he turns to me and says, “Thanks—I bet you thought I was dying. It’s quite a scene—an asthma fit—isn’t it?”“Yeah, you bet,” I say.“Thanks.”Our clothes and skin are covered not only with tomato sauce but also with tiny white and gray feathers. One pillow had burst during the fight, and feathers are everywhere from our sneakers to our hair. We look like we have been tarred and feathered like in the old days, but in this case, it is tomato puree and duck down. The warehouse is a snowstorm of feathers and dust. No wonder we couldn’t breathe.“Hey,” I say, “we can’t go home like this. We need to jump into the pond.“Let’s go,” says Jessie. We walk slowly back out of the field and down to the pond. I can hardly believe that I just covered the same distance so fast.At the pond we take off our shoes and jump in. We swim around the corner where the big sycamore hangs out over the point. Once around the point, Hector gets out on the bank and takes off his shirt, jeans, and underwear, and washes them out. Jessie and I do the same.My pecker is all shriveled up from the cold spring water. Hector’s pecker isn’t affected as much, and Jessie’s doesn’t look affected at all. They both have hair down there, too. Suddenly I don’t feel as grown up as these two older boys—two guys I had just matched tomato for tomato, pillow for pillow. I quickly wash out my clothes, put them back on, and jump back in the water. Jessie has a farmer’s tan—dark arms and neck, but lighter everywhere else. Hector is the same cocoa color all over. But his pecker is purple from the cold water. He looks down and says, “I better get this thing warmed back up. You know how much Gina loves it.” I had heard this before from some of the other older boys. I’m not sure if Gina knows how much she loves it.“What are you guys doing tonight?” Hector asks.“Just hanging out,” says Jessie“Come with me to the migrant camp. It’s Saturday. They have cock fights on Saturday nights. Afterward we can camp in my back yard.”“Cock fights!?” I say. “How do they do that?”“Not that kind of cock, you dope.” Jessie retorts. “Chickens! They fight to the death. Come camp in my backyard, and we’ll sneak over. No one will know. Everyone will think we’re out back in a tent.”“O.K.”“Sounds good.”Hector says, “I’ll see you at eight tonight,” and he starts home.Jesssie and I walk up to my house. Before we reach the backyard, we see Uncle Max’s pickup truck in the drive. Mama, Father, Uncle Max, and Aunt Eunice are sitting at the picnic table drinking iced tea.As we approach, Aunt Eunice meets us and says to Jessie, “We’ve come to take you home, Jessie.” She puts both arms around him—not even noticing how wet his clothes are—and says she loves him.Then Uncle Max comes and puts his big arms around the two of them and says, “I know I can do better if the two of you can give me a try.”Jessie begins to shake and tears come to his eyes. “I’m ready to come home now, too,” he says. The three of them get in the pickup and wave as they back out the drive. The pickup stops halfway up the drive, and Jessie jumps out and runs back to me. “Here,” he says. “This is for you.” And he hands me his favorite fielder’s glove. “You’ll be an OK ball player.” He runs back to the pickup and gets in, and they drive home. An OK ball player, I think. Wow, that’s all I can wish for. I was glad that Jessie would have a new beginning with his family.Then my mind returns to our planned escapade with Hector. I will have to go by myself. I don’t know if I can. With Jessie I have more courage. He helped me through my baseball crisis, and I know this adventure would be fun with him. But the idea of being alone with Hector scares me a little.Maybe I should just tell Hector that Mama says “no.” It would be a good excuse. But another side of me needs to go—explore this new world.And that’s what I decide to do. I beg Mama to camp behind Hector’s house, and finally she gives in. She will never know about the cock fights.“But, you have to be home here early tomorrow morning for Sunday School.” she says.“I will,” I say. I think I will need the religious experience after tonight.Episode 17The Cock FightsSpent nite at Hector’s house. Camped in backyard. Sneaked over to Porto Rickun migrint camp to watch chicken fights.—Saturday, July 27Hector and I crouch low and trot quietly along the gravel farm road. The road has two grooves worn by the tractor tires and a strip of grass down the middle. It hugs the tree line along the tomato field where we had our battle. Each row abuts the road. During the day the pickers haul their baskets to the edge of the field and heave them onto a flatbed truck. Farther on, the tiny road winds through peach and apple orchards. It branches off at each row of trees so the flatbeds can maneuver down between each row.Hector’s bare feet bring up little puffs of dust as they pound along in front of me. I guess mine do, too. Our flight is well muffled until I trip. “Shit,” I say showing off for Hector.“Shhhhh,” whispers Hector. “We’re almost there.”It is nine o’clock on Saturday evening, but in midsummer here in South Jersey, the sun has barely set. The afterglow lights the woods and mixes with the flickering reflections of a bonfire ahead. The clicking of a thousand cicadas announce the dying breeze and the sultry evening to come.The road goes from the backyard of the small bungalow that Hector’s family rents and leads to a cluster of low, block houses a quarter mile away. As we approach them, the white-washed structures catch the last glow of the sunset. This is the migrant compound where Puerto Rican laborers live during the picking season.By July the labor camps throughout the farm country here are full. The workers arrived early in the month to pick “truck” crops like tomatoes, green peppers, and beans; crops that are taken by truck to local canning houses like the one where Hector’s father works. The workers stay on to harvest peaches around Labor Day when school starts again, and later apples in October. As we near the compound, we can see that the pickers from outlying camps are already arriving. Rusted old pickup trucks, loaded down with four riders across the front seat and another half dozen packed in the truck bed, pull off the highway and down the farm road. The camp quickly swells to over a hundred men.The pickers keep the location of the Saturday night cock fights a secret. Each week it is at a different camp so as to keep any “authorities” always guessing. Hector says that part of the fun of hanging around the fields all summer is waiting for someone to let it slip each week. This always happens by Saturday afternoon—the anticipation gets to be too much.Just outside of the fire’s glow, Hector and I hunker down and peer through the tall grass. We know most of the workers by daylight, but at night their motto is “no gringos allowed.” And that means me and half of Hector. Too many things happen that a worker can get deported for if word was to get out.Hector had snuck to the cock fights before when they were not too far from his house, but not me. This is my first time, and I stare wide-eyed at the encampment just outside the compound. This looks much different than a Sunday school picnic at the Grange hall down the road. Guitars strum a Latin rhythm. Men stomp-dance the ground with heavy work boots, pounding the earthen floor into a surface as hard as concrete. The aroma of sizzling strips of fatty beef and the stickiness of the thick humidity press in on us.The surrounding countryside sleeps, knowing of the fiesta, but convinced that it is innocent enough—“a good chance for the migrants to let off steam.” Soon, however, the scene changes. By eleven o’clock an almost-full moon rises to reveal shadowy figures at the edge of the compound unloading crates from the backs of several of the pickups. The crates contain chickens. Not the kind in the coops that each of the local farmers keep for their family pot on Sunday. No, these are mangey males with tufts of feathers missing and many scars where their bare skin is showing. The moonlight reflects in silvery streaks from the broken razor blades crudely strapped to the cocks’ ankles. Their sparkling spurs will soon be flailing the air, delivering lethal blows.Like Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde, the pounded earth converts to a cock-fight ring. The lighthearted party becomes all business. A tight circle of men crowd in for the action and gore, and a redistribution of the week’s wages.Before the first bout, the first two bird owners banter about the ring holding their chickens high overhead for all to inspect. Bets are laid down. Cash, gold chains, crucifixes, and the rest are divied up among the winning wagerers. No cash registers here, just common-sense arithmetic. And cheaters get cut. Hector said it happened last week.The first fight looks to be a short-lived affair—a mismatch of massive proportions. Betting runs heavy for the red-topped bird that looks to be twice the size of its opponent and a lot meaner. Big odds have to be given for the scrawnier bird to get even a few takers—takers who pray for a miracle and a big payday if the little bird turns out to have the heart of a bull. I doubt that he does.The owners face off with their birds and let them have at it. The heftier bird barely hits the ground before it leaps back up twirling in mid air with its spurs extended. One spur slashes across the smaller bird’s eyes and the other cuts its throat. The match is over in three seconds. There is to be no miracle in this match.The victorious bird’s owner, his shirt soaked in salty sweat, takes his chicken from the ring. Hector whispers, “He will send some extra money home to Puerto Rico next week.” The loosing owner retrieves his dead bird. Hector continues, “But that one will send a letter to the island telling his family how suddenly poor he has become.”The next few bouts are better matched, some last as long as 30 minutes. Round after round birds pair off, flailing at each other with their razor-clad ankles. Feathers and blood fly. One gush splatters our two faces back in the shadows. We gulp back our gasps on that one and hold our breaths. A young migrant Jesus, glances our way, his eyes following the spray. He squints once and then looks away. We slowly begin to breathe again.At the end of each round, one bird lay in the dust heaving its last breath. The other survives to fight another Saturday night.Around two in the morning, dark-brown rum and light-brown women arrive in two long cars. And both circulate freely among the crowd. Betting becomes heavier and wilder.About this time I have to pee and sneak back behind a wall of tomato baskets. But, I stop quickly. A couple lay there in the grass. The woman’s yellow print dress is hiked up, and her round, brown hips glisten in the moonlight. I forget about peeing and scramble back to report my find to Hector. After whispering to him about the couple behind the baskets, other things start happening.Headlights bounce across the tomato field at crazy angles. A township police car makes its way down the rutted farm road toward the camp. Pickers scramble to stuff the cocks under canvas tarps in the back of the pickups. Hector says, “The couple back there are probably trying to hide the cock away, too.”Two men rake over the blood-splattered arena, guitars start in again, and dancers stumble over each other on the fighting-ring-turned-dance floor.The police car drives to the very edge of the dance floor. Up to the last minute, everyone pretends not to see the black and white cruiser with the bubble-gum machine on the roof swirling red and white light. And then everyone fakes great surprise.Two policemen in mismatched uniforms get out, actually volunteer police reserve out here in the farm country. Their palms rest on the butts of their revolvers. The lights from the flickering fire and the police cruiser’s rotating roof lamp combine for an eerie effect across their faces. But I still recognize one of them. It is Mr. Hicks, our old bus driver with the roving hands. I don’t know if Mr. Hicks or the other officer suspect the real doings of the night. I think that this must be a really big put-on act for both the migrants and the officers. Or Mr. Hicks and his partner must be very stupid. The two talk to a group of pickers at the edge of the circle. Snatches of their comments drift over to us, “disturbing the peace. . .warning. . .break it up. . . what can you do for us?”After a few moments, Mr. Hicks and his partner get back in their patrol car. Two of the women who came late get in with them, and they drive off slowly with no swirling lights this time. After that the party disbands quickly. No one wants the police to investigate further. In five minutes the trucks are loaded and clouds of dust rise as they speed out the lane.Hector and I sit in darkness for what seems a long time. Finally, I say,”Let’s go.”But Hector wants to wait longer to be certain we are in the clear. “What if Jesús is waiting just beyond the compound to see if we come out? He carries a knife, they all do,” Hector says, sounding oddly like my mother.“He didn’t see us. He was just looking at the flying blood,” I say. I want to get back to our army surplus pup tent in Hector’s backyard. “Besides, tomorrow is Sunday. I have to get home early for Sunday School.” Hector looks puzzled by that, and we argue for a while. Finally, we creep out of the shadows. No one is around, so we trudge home.Monday morning I meet Hector again at his house, and we wander over to the fields. The excitement of the cock fights makes me want to know more about these people who live parallel to my people but rarely cross paths with us. It is definitely something that Dad would not approve of. By midmorning the migrants have finished picking half of one tomato field and are taking a break. They rest under two great sycamores with leaves limp from the July heat. They drink from their water bottles, pour some over their heads, and soak the red and blue bandanas that they wear around their necks.As luck has it, our first encounter is Jesús. “Hola,” Hector calls in greeting, “¿Que tal?”Jesús’ black eyes glare for a long second, and the space between his dark brows narrows. “I saw you,” he says in a barely audible tone but in English so that I can understand, too. And with that, the conversation is over. All the pickers grab their broad-brimmed hats and scramble back to work. Hector and I have received a south-of-the-border snub. All that is left is a long walk home.gathering cloudsfootprints in the dirtcoming and goingEnd of SummerPerhaps the earth can teach usas when everything seems deadand later proves to be alive.--Pablo Neruda
Episode 18Mrs. WashingtonMrs. Washington is a good fisherlady. And she taught us sanktitty. —Tuesday, July 3Mrs. Washington arrives at Dad’s workshop near the end of July and brings her cane poles, can of nightcrawlers, fishing bucket, bag lunch, and a thermos of iced tea. Ellie and I are there getting ready to go fishing, too.Mrs. Washington approaches Dad and says,”Excuse me, Mr. Muller, I would appreciate it greatly if you would allow me to fish for catfish here at your fine pond. My family always eats what I catch, so there would be nothing wasted at all.”Dad looks at the short, round Negro woman and says, “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Washington, I believe your dinner table would certainly be a good place for my catfish to end up.” Of course, he doesn’t tell her that we white people know that only Negroes eat catfish anyway, so what is the loss.Mrs. Washington often fishes here throughout the summer, but she and Dad have this same polite exchange each time. I practically have it memorized.Gesturing toward Ellie and me, Dad says, “These two are going fishing, too. They can keep you company.” With a broad smile of very white teeth, Mrs. Washington marches down to the pond, and Ellie and I march behind. Along the pond’s edge, she sets up for the day. She has three bamboo poles with 20 feet of fishing line on each. She baits the hook at the end of each line with a nightcrawler. Then she attaches a tiny lead weight just above the bait on each line. They are the kind with a groove down the center that you bite closed around the line with your teeth. Mrs. Washington uses her molars to fasten the soft metal around the nylon string, and her cheek puffs out like a balloon with each one. Then she puts a red and white bobber on the line three feet up from each worm, and the poles are ready.She swings the first pole’s line back and forth in an arc over the water until she is satisfied with its destination and lets the worm drop into the water. She positions the first pole to her right, the next to her left, and the final one directly in front of her. And then she settles her plump body onto a folding stool under a drooping old willow, opens her bag of bologna sandwiches and waits.Ellie and I have our own poles with spinning reels for casting far out into the pond. But, we find easier pickings. In the shadow of the big willow is a shallow pool full of baby sunfish swimming all over each other. We stick our lines in, but the worms are as long as the little fish. There is no way a tiny sunny can get its mouth around one. We improvise. From my tackle box, we take two short pieces of line and tie the tiniest hooks that I can find to them. We cut the worms into bite-sized pieces for the sunnies. No sooner have we dipped the hand lines into the pool than a fish clamps onto the worm morsel on mine, hook and all. I pull it out and throw it onto an old plank on the bank. Ant then Ellie catches her first sunny. I unhook it and throw it onto the bank, too. As fast as we can get our lines back in the water, sunnies are ready to jump on. They battle each other to get to the bait. They are in such a feeding frenzy that we even stop putting bait on the hooks. They don’t need it. The sunnies are bitting on anything, even the tiny bare hook dangling down. Soon dozens of sunnies lay on planks alongside the willow, flapping out their last flaps.In the meantime, Mrs. Washington fishes for catfish. From under the broad brim of her straw hat, her eyes carefully watch each bobber for any sign of a nibbling catfish. When the bobber submerges all the way, she has it. About the time that I think Mrs. Washington has dozed off, she will snap the line to set the hook and pull in a catty. One takes the bait so well that it swallows hook, line and sinker. Mrs. Washington says, “Oh, there he goes, Mr. Caddy has eaten it. These catfish have such an appetite—they do this all the time. Mrs, Washington tries to yank the hook out, but it won’t budge. Finally, she just cuts the line off, leaving everything in the fish’s belly, and puts another hook on her line. She places each of her fish in a bucket half full of water and lets them swim round and round in a tight circle.Mrs. Washington shows us how to pick up a catfish by the back and avoid getting stabbed by the sharp whiskers like a lot of people do. “Don’t ever grab them near the fins along their belly so they can twist around on you. Those whiskers are just like sewing needles.” These hefty, ugly fish “can give you a nasty jab if you don’t respect them.”Once in a while Mrs. Washington will pull in a sunny instead of a catty. From the middle of the pond the sunfish are bigger than those Ellie and I are catching, about as big as Mrs. Washington’s dark brown hand. But she says that they are too bony. Each time she gets one on here line, she carefully removes the hook and puts the fish back in the water. Her sunnies always act stunned to find themselves back in the pond, but it only takes a moment for them to recover and skitter off.When she is finished for the day, her bucket full, Mrs. Washington proclaims, “I’m going to put this entire bucket with water, fish, and all in the trunk of my old car and drive them home. Then, I’m going to batter these catties in corn meal and fry them to a crisp in some tasty lard grease.” Looking at our growing pile of sunnies, she says. “But, I’d like to know what you children are planning to do with that pile of God’s creatures you have baking in the sun there?”“We’re not planning on doing anything with them. We’re just catching them,” I say.“Well, you know there’s catchin’ and there’s catchin’. I’m catchin’ these for my family supper. I like to think these fish are smiling just knowing how happy they are going to make my family. But your catchin’ is just plain cruel. You see, every creature is placed on this earth for a purpose. If we have to kill a creature, it should be for a very good reason. It’s called the sanctity of life. And I don’t see any sanctity at all for the death of those beautiful golden fish just rottin’ in the sun.”I know Mrs. Washington is right, and I feel ashamed. Ellie and I scoop the caddies back into the water hoping they will resurrect. A few actually recover and swim off, but most float to the top belly-up. We pick them off the surface, and with a stick, we dig a hole alongside the willow and place each little body in it. We fill it back with soil and stick up one of the planks as a grave marker. With a pencil from my tackle box, I write at the top of the plank—“sanktitty.”Mrs. Washington says that we did a good thing. “Fish make good fertilizer. From now on when you see the grass and flowers growing in this spot, you will think of sanctity.”
Episode 19Big BlueA PeomMade friends with a heron on the pond—it’s newI like to fish and it does, tooIf I were a bird, I would be a great blue.—Tuesday, August 19A couple of weeks after Hector and I went to the cock fights, an entirely different bird enters my world. I see it at the pond. We are having a heatwave, and it is one of those muggy August mornings that we get along the east coast. The temperature and humidity race each other to the 90 mark, and both are declared winners long before noon. The steamy weather has settled in around me and makes me lazy but thoughtful. I need to get away from my friends for a while and make peace with the last two weeks of summer vacation.August is a funny month. It isn’t quite the end of something, nor quite the beginning of something else. It is like a waiting time. There is a restlessness to it. I wonder if life will always be the same. Or will it change. I already know part of the answer. Things are already changing—at the beginning of the summer, I barely knew Hector and Jessie, and now they are friends. But will any of it stay the same. like, George, Bobby, Stanley, and Eugene? I want to know, and I go searching for the answer along the banks of the pond—the pond I know so well. Surely, it will have an answer. I don’t know exactly what I am searching for, and I don’t know what I will find. I just know that I have to look.For several mornings I comb the shallows, scaring up frogs and bugs, searching for a clue to my restlessness. Sometimes, I am alone, sometimes Ellie tags along. She is my friend, but she is different in lots of ways from my other pals, and not just the retarded part. She is a good companion, always ready with a straightforward and uncomplicated observation. She knows that dragonflies are beautiful and not to be feared. When she finds a dead one on a leaf, she feels sad, while she still admires the lacy transparent wings.One morning when I am scouting the pond alone, I round the bend to the little cove and stumble on something very new. At first I think it is a mirage, like the rippling waves that radiate up from the hot summer highway. Its pale blue body appears ghostlike in the rippling haze hanging over the green water. A great blue heron. It is so still that its reflection on the surface of the pond moves more than the actual heron does. It freezes in mid stride, startled by my arrival. And I freeze, too. Then we both recover and go on about our business. It continues to fish among the water lilies, and I set about to study its technique.
Then I remember this heron was here last summer as well, but I hadn’t paid much attention then. This year there is something different.The heron is three feet tall—the dark water only comes up to the joints in its spindly legs. Every couple of minutes it freezes again, its gaze piercing the murky water. And then it strikes with its long, sword-like beak—like Zorro on tv. It comes up with a shimmering sunfish the size of a silver dollar. I enjoy watching “Big Blue’s” graceful movements. I learn a lot about fishing from its patience and skill, and Mrs. Washington would approve of Blue’s sanctity for the sunfish. It swallows each bite-size sunny with a single gulp. For days I return each morning and find my new friend at the cove. Some days I bring my fishing pole so we can fish together.ever mindful—graceful glide through the shallowsbrings a meal closerA week after I spot Big Blue, I take Ellie fishing again. She has been begging to return after we caught all the sunnies with Mrs. Washington, even though we ended up burying most them. Ellies thinks that Mrs. Washington lives at the pond and that we will see her again. Ellie and I decide that after we catch a sunny, we will immediately release it back into the pond—the way Mrs. Washington does—since we are not going to eat them the way Blue does.I promise Ellies’s parents that I will watch after her. They say, “We are sure of that.” They trust me. Somehow I feel they know the true story of my suspension from school.Ellie and I walk along the bank, making our way past the old spreading willow tree and the sunfish grave. Mrs. Washington is not here today.As we round the last bend before Big Blue’s fishing cove, we hear a trampling in the brush on the opposite bank across the water. And then two figures burst from the reeds with bb guns. They search the bank, looking for frogs to shoot. We all spot Big Blue at the same time, and the boys instantly set their minds on bigger game than frogs. Their eyes get very big and then narrow to slits. Big Blue is the perfect target, so still as it watches for fish beneath the surface.The boys pump their air rifles and begin pummeling the heron. They pump and fire, pump and fire. Big Blue tries to take flight, but one pellet enters its delicate wing, causing it to crash awkwardly among the green lily pads. Another pellet snaps a fragile leg like a straw. Still another pierces its eye, and the blood drips into the pond radiating crimson circles in the water.At first the boys did not seen Ellie and me on the opposite bank, but now, during a pause from shooting, they look our way for the first time. I can’t believe my eyes—it is Albert Snyder and his flunky Brody.I yell across the pond, “What are you doing? Get out of here.”And Ellie echoes, “Yea, get out of here!”Albert says, “Oh, not those two again. Haven’t they been trouble enough?”And Brody adds, “Let’s get outta here!” Albert and Brody vanish into the brambles, and a few seconds later, we see them hiking across the fields from the same way they came.I race to Blue, Ellie close behind. The reeds rip at my face as I wade knee-deep through the shallow water. A mixture of tears and sweat sting my eyes and taste salty on my lips. When we reach Blue, it is in a heap, its head beneath the water, the stem of a water lily entwining its long, graceful neck. I pull its limp head from under the water. My touch sends a bolt through its body and tells me it’s still alive. It hops out of my grasp unsteadily and leaps to take off. But its wounded leg crumbles beneath it, and its crooked wing doesn’t flap right. It tries again, this time getting into the air and wildly flapping across the tops of the short willows along the bank. But it soon crashes on the other side of the trees. A third try gets it air born, and it flies in a crazy, zig-zag pattern across the fields and out of the sight.Ellie and I run back home and tell Dad what had happened. Dad says, “It flew off to die,” the same way he had said that Spot had run off to die. And I believe him. I take Ellie home, neither of us speaking.Blue does not come to fish the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. Each night I dream of the two cruel boys pelting Blue with their pellets. And each night I sit straight up in bed, eyeballs wide. “Stop!” I scream myself awake. On the next night, after screaming awake, I throw on my clothes and start downstairs. Mama asks from her room, “Where are you going, it’s the middle of the night.I mumble, “I left my fishing rod down by the pond. I have to get it before someone else picks it up.” I can’t tell her the truth—it is just too hard to explain. I just have to get to the cove. I don’t know what I expect to find there. Maybe Blue’s lifeless body to bury beside the sunfish.I run all the way to the pond. The reeds again rip at my face and open the old scratches as I make my way to the cove where Blue and I fished. The last full moon of summer hangs low on the western horizon and shimmers off the pond’s surface—the empty pond. No Blue. I will wait. I have to know.The sky’s dome grows brighter in the east, and finally an orange sun brakes over the pine trees across the fields. And there is Ellie standing in the glow along the bank in her pajamas and bare feet. She has come, too. Somehow she left her house without anyone knowing it. They will be worried, but it doesn’t matter. Without speaking we sit on the moss and watch the sky.After what seems like forever, a comma-shaped speck appears coming out of the sun. At first I think it might be my eyes playing tricks, the glare making my eyes water. But no, Ellie sees it too and jumps up. The speck grows bigger, and we can see its long legs stretched out behind—it is Blue. The once-spectacular wings plough the air—those blue wings that are both powerful and delicate at the same time. I begin to cry, and not from the sun, harder and harder, the closer it gets. When Ellie sees me crying, she begins wailing, too, the tears weaving tiny streaks through her freckles. “These are happy tears, Ellie.” And she smiles an awkward smile of understanding.Big Blue flies close over our heads and skitters into the pond with a spray of water that flashes a rainbow. Its comical landing, with one wing not quite as high as the other, is so unlike its normally polished movement. I laugh even with all the tears, and Ellie laughs, too. We laugh with tears running down our cheeks.Our crying and laughing surprises Blue, and it makes a movement to take flight again. But then, realizing there is no danger from us, it settles in among the green pads and creamy-white lilies. With piercing eyes and calculating step, it begins to fish. But, it has a little hitch in each step. And its gaze favors one side, the one with its good eye. When blue spots its first fish of the day, it cocks its head in an odd way to see better. It stabs, misses, stabs again, and comes up with a sunny.On each of the few remaining days before school begins, I see Big Blue return to the pond. And for several weeks into the fall I catch a glimpse of him out there just before the school bus arrives. Then the mornings begin to take on a chill, and finally we have our first real frost. One morning in early November, a paper-thin layer of ice forms across the pond—it melts by noon—and Blue stops coming to fish. This time I know it’s all right. Blue is moving south with the coming winter. That is its nature. It will remember all that it learned here. Blue found its way in the world—it fills the space between the earth and sky.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous,
Episode 20Dust to DustPop Pop died last week. He was 94! I miss him.—Thursday, March 20, 1997It’s the first day of spring and the yellow forsythia burst from the highway median as I drive with my wife back to the south end of our state. It’s a much different landscape here than forty years ago when George, Ellie, and I cheered the blizzard of ’57. I can picture Mr. Parks covered with snow peering at Ellie’s mural through the opening where their bathroom door used to be. It seems that I can remember details of that year better than events of this past week. All but one. You see, Pop Pop’s body finally stopped working this week. His last days were peaceful except for a short period when he jumped up on his hospital bed and fought off the Japanese zeros coming through the window.So I’m home. My school where I am now a teacher will have to do without me for a day.After the memorial ceremony this morning, we return to Pop Pop’s little house. As the rest of the family and friends look on, Mama, Howie, and I scatter Pop Pop’s ashes around the big weeping willow tree in his backyard—a willow that reminds me a lot of the one down by the pond with all the little sunfish buried under it. This is the way Pop Pop wanted it, this is the way he was. He always said, “No box for me, thank you. I don’t want to be part of some graveyard landfill. Send me back to nature where I came from, where I can do some good.” Earlier, the willow tree had been a little droopy but it perks right up when Pop Pop gets to work on it. And then we have lunch.George, Ellie, and Mrs. Parks have come. Ellie still has the puffy look of Down Syndrome, but also the quick innocent smile. Her flowered blouse is freshly ironed and her khaki skirt is crisp as well. Her hair, streaked with touches of gray, is cut close, clean, stylish, and full. Mrs. Parks, thin and a little stooped, helps Ellie make a sandwich. She asks, “Ham or turkey, Ellie?“Both, please.” Ellie enunciates the syllables with care, but they still come out a little garbled.“More milk, dear?” says Mrs. Parks, and Ellie mumbles again.Mr. Parks died last year. Loosing her husband must have been difficult enough for Mrs.Parks, but reconciling the disappearance of “Poppa” to Ellie must have been an added challenge. She meets her daughter’s daily needs now as she has for nearly half a century—with dignity.mother-daughterrelationship never maturesremains frozen in timeEveryone is here. Practically everyone. Of course Mom Mom, Uncle Jake, and Nan all died years ago.Dad? He’s at his condo in Boynton Beach, Florida, with a woman we call Dora. He and Mama separated after Howie went away to college. I guess there wasn’t any point of them staying together after that. They eventually divorced after they realized that Howie and I were all they had in common for most of their marriage anyway—and they still have us.Mama? She bought a music store in the local mall, you know cd’s, tapes, cassettes, and sheet music. She has a special section just for hard-to-find vinyl—45’s, 33’s, and even some 78’s. She put in an espresso cafe and invites struggling musicians—especially folk singers and guitar players—to play in the evenings and develop a following. It attracts a lot of folks from the nearby community college who like to listen and drink coffee, read and talk. Mama’s been known to sit in on a lick or two and sing some of the oldies. Her long white hair flows all the way to her waist and she sounds a little like Emmy Lou Harris these days.Father sold the metal spinning business along with the rest of the farm he inherited from my grandfather to a housing developer. The developer let out the little earthen dam and drained the pond to clean it up. But the spring-fed pond must have gone into shock, because it reduced its running to a trickle and never filled the pond again. A dozen split-level homes now stand on the pond’s site. I suspect someday all their second floors will sink to ground level when the spring comes back to life, and I want to be there to see it. And Walmart looms not far off.little pond on the farmhome of caddies and sunnies—mall parking lot loomsCousin Jessie is here. He took over the Tidewater Dam business after Uncle Max died a few years back. Aunt Eunice lives with him and his wife and their five children. Three are adopted and represent a world of nationalities and colors. When his recreational vehicle pulls in, it looks like a meeting of the United Nations.Bobby Zebrowski is here. He sells real estate and made a killing in the eighties. He bought the strip of land along the stream where the still had been and built a mammoth contemporary house there. He enjoys telling how his small band of fifth graders brought down the mighty firehouse gang. I guess that’s how legends are born—and myths.And of course my pal George. He went into the navy after high school. He qualified for the elite submarine service, but the technology was not wired the way George was. He went over to battleships and spent two tours shooting holes in the Vietnam jungle with 15-inch guns. Since the war he has lived in Missouri, far from the ocean, raising his family. I’ve been to his home and it looks like South Jersey back in the old days.Whitey is here. He went into naval intelligence rising to the rank of commander. After leaving the service, he joined the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. George likes to address him as sir, which drives Whitey nuts.Stanley isn’t here. He just couldn’t make the trip from Alaska. He is a biologist there and develops programs to get the local Eskimo children interested in science, math, and their local heritage instead of succumbing the ever- present alcohol and meth abuse.And Eugene isn’t here. After his father’s car was run over by a train at a poorly marked crossing, he and his mother and sister moved back to Florida near family. Decades later I tried to contact him to apologize for growing apart. Too late, I learned that he attended Stetson University and went on to teach English there becoming their distinguished teacher of the year many times. He married, had children and died from progressive diabetes.hobbling onto his deskno legs to jump nor sight to seepraising good writingUncle Larry isn’t here. He recovered from mental illness—or at least was able to keep his demons at bey—and go back to work at the shipyard in Philadelphia where he was a welder. Two years later he died from a massive heart attack while at work. His foreman found his body slumped beside the hull of a battleship he was refitting.Albert Snyder, the nemesis of the Crosswicks School, isn’t here either. He made it to nineteen but not much further. There were too many bad things about as the fifties faded and the sixties emerged, and Albert wanted all of them. A heroin overdose claimed his life just two months before his son was born to a girl he barely knew.
Before the ceremony I drive by the old migrant labor camp. There are no more pickers. It just costs the farmer too much to maintain decent facilities finally mandated by the state. Local farmers replaced the workers with automatic picking machinery or sold out completely to the rising tide of housing developments. The compound buildings are still there but cracked and overgrown with weeds.The images of the night of the cock fights rush back. I remember that Hector and I stopped by the fields only occasionally during the remaining weeks of our summer vacation. The pickers remained distant—a polite “hola” being the extent of our contact. When school started up the day after Labor Day, summer was over. I sat in Mr. Grady’s class, and Hector moved up to the junior high wing of our school building. He started seeing girls and riding in older guys' cars. And when summer rolled around again, we had lost our passion for the picking fields. We never met there again.Hector and I grew up and went our separate ways. The fifties faded. The nation was at war—for some of us. I joined the Air Force and survived the times. Hector was drafted into the army and did not. His name is inscribed on “The Wall,” the long, shiny black wall—along with the names of fifty-eight thousand others who grew up with us. Hector’s name is eight panels from the left, fourteen names from the top. Each time I visit Washington, I trace each letter with my fingers, and bid “happy trails” to my boyhood pal.A grandson lingers—Snowflakes light on the black sheen,melt and run downI think how we all changed abruptly through those years, just like the small landscape that comprised the limits of our world. The farm fields were replaced by subdivisions and strip malls. George, Bobby, Stanley, and Eugene, the friends of my boyhood, were replaced by girls and decisions and life. I have had other good friends through the years, not a lot, but enough to fill my need for companionship. But none ring as true in my memory as those when I was eleven. Those were the days when childhood was a time to get ready for life, to bounce things off each other and see what stuck. Along with my old pals, I marched through the fifties and into the world. Our shared experiences helped shape who we were and who we would become. For us and the nation it was a time to transition from innocence to not so much. The baggage from those years stays with us to help, hinder, and be dealt with for a lifetime.Back at the gathering, George rouses me from my nostalgia, “Henry, look what I found,” He is holding open an old monopoly game. It is battered and covered with mildew, but all the pieces are there. “It was in your Pop Pop’s pile of games holding up the telephone. Let’s have a couple of tosses of the dice for beers just to stay in practice.”“You’re on,” I say. “But I get the silver sports car.”“Of course,” says George. “You always get the sports car. But, of course, by the end of the game, I always get it and all of your money and all of your properties, so why don’t you just hand over your wallet and credit cards, and the deed to your house right now, and save us both a lot of time and trouble.”Ellie watches, and mumbles, and giggles. She takes out a box of crayons from her purse and spreads them across the kitchen table, all 64.“Henry, paper, please.”
The End(not really)
I have always known that I would take this path through yesterday. I did not know it would be today.
—Ariwari no Narikari(Japan, eleventh century)
About the Author
Robert Baum is a writer, educator, and artist. He has published hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles and was an editor of two national magazines including Scholastic’s Science World—winning two Educational Press awards for excellence. After careers in education and journalism, he retired in order to write, paint, and teach literacy to refugees and immigrants. He lives in Dunedin, Florida, and Ocean City, New Jersey, with his wife Carolyn.