Cornelius Sky

by Timothy Brandoff

  "Sky, give it up!" Tobin screamed from the sidelines. "Pass the goddamn puck!" his voice hoarse with an alcoholism all his own.

  "Manny!" Connie called.

  "Hey, Con!" Manny said.

  "What's the score?"

  "Tied up!"

  The players on the Jack Flash bench were laughing. (There was no bench, there were no boards or ice, the kids skated over the uneven tar of the park's eastern softball field, using some of the yellow-painted lines as demarcations. The goalies stood between two garbage cans and called them nets.)

  The long hair of the Jack Flash players flowed out from beneath their helmets. They didn't have an adult coach, they all loved to get high, with some already shooting drugs. The team made Arthur captain for his talent, but also because, at twelve, he was their youngest player, star and mascot both.

  "Sky, pass the goddamn puck!" Tobin screamed.

  The kids on the Rangers took their sports seriously. They hung out in what people called the white yard, between 428 and 425, as opposed to the black yard, in front of 427.

  Arthur had had run-ins with Tobin in the past. Tobin had wanted to hitch his wagon to Arthur in a way that felt like molestation, too eager to appoint himself mentor to Arthur, given what Tobin viewed, based on a comment here or there, as Connie's absence in Arthur's life. But Arthur had rebuked Tobin, and ever since, Tobin played the scorned one. Arthur caught a case of the creeps around the guy. There wasn't anything fishy about him, he just tried too hard to insinuate himself into Arthur's life in some funky way—and even though Arthur felt contempt for Connie, he also knew, for better or worse, he was stuck with the father he had. Besides which, he didn't need somebody leeching on him, and was poised to tell everybody to go to hell anyway—his father, his mother, teachers, cops, movie theater ushers, traffic lights, cab drivers, people on the street, everybody and anybody: Go to hell with all your shit about what I should and shouldn't do!

  Moments earlier, on the Jack Flash bench, Arthur had taken a strong hit off a joint that, as he continued to commandeer the puck up and down the ice, he realized was probably sprinkled with angel dust. His legs had that rubbery feeling you get with dust. He remembered a story about some kid who had gotten dusted up and jumped in a pool and couldn't find his way back to the water's surface. The kid kept swimming down to the bottom of the pool until he drowned himself, such was the headstrong intensity of his disorientation. Which had not been Arthur's experience with dust. Which made him doubt and dismiss the story as antidrug propaganda. The first time he smoked dust, a few months ago, was with a handful of kids he didn't know in the hallway of some projects uptown. They showed up for a party on hearsay like you do when you're a kid. They stood around and smoked this dust and started to make noises in the stairwell, a kind of chanting, using their mouths and hands, and it went on for an extended period of time; they entered a collective trance state bonded by the dust, their teenage masks giving way to a kind of age-old religious ceremony which huddled them together with their grunts and growls, a primitive music made of hands and mouths. Arthur loved it, inchoately sensing he had tapped a new freedom of consciousness, but even as a twelve-year-old realized the stuff was probably tough on the noggin, and that maybe you shouldn't smoke dust every day, unlike, say, regular herb.

  His Jack Flash teammates were cracking up over the fact that nobody could take the puck from him, and the score was tied, and what the hell was he doing?

  Dennis Tobin paced the Rangers' bench, but only Arthur and he knew the scornful truth behind Tobin's wrath.

  "Not going to tell you again!" Tobin screamed.

  Arthur was embarrassing the five Rangers players on the ice at the moment, which wasn't hard. They took themselves so seriously. They looked too put together, yet they had neglected to fully develop their skills, unlike Arthur, who spent untold hours out on this softball field, smacking a puck around, living for it, hiding from his life in the game, straight through sundown into the black of night, until somebody got hit in the face with a stick or something, and only then maybe did you skate on home.

  "Don't make me come out there," Tobin called. Arthur rambled from one end of the ice to the other, all five Rangers trying to take the puck. Arthur felt a lock of irritation at his jaw and wondered if the dust was cut with something. He thought of the terror the kid in the pool must have felt, of not being able to find his way to the water's surface, even if the story was propaganda.

  "If I have to come after you," Tobin warned.

  Arthur stickhandled the puck along the Rangers' bench and told Dennis Tobin to "shut the fuck up," which was, granted, disrespectful, but consistent with Jack Flash's mentality, which on the whole found the Chelsea Rangers to be a humorless bunch of squares and full of themselves. Jack Flash had players who sucked, and they wore funny stuff on their uniforms. One Jack Flash kid wore a World War II fighter pilot's leather helmet instead of a regular hockey helmet. He was Filipino, had a harelip, and took zero shit, and he and everybody else on Jack Flash had a ball. Jack Flash brought booze and drugs and music and girls to the games. The Rangers had forgotten, or never knew, how to have a ball.

  The Rangers' goalie brought his stick down onto the ice with a frustrated clack and yelled at his teammates to get the puck already, come on, get it, as Arthur circled back toward the Rangers' bench and said, "Can't play for shit, none of you," and someone, another adult, reached out an arm to stop Tobin, but he shook it off and stepped onto the ice.

  "Artie!" somebody called from Jack Flash's bench to warn of Tobin's approach. Arthur, still in possession of the puck, broke from the group of Rangers and skated toward the goalie on a sudden breakaway, setting him up with the most subtle of moves. Arthur faked left and the goalie went sprawling, hapless, helpless, the sprawling an act of hara-kiri. Arthur, with an easy shot on goal, held onto the puck and skated around the net signified by the garbage cans and headed back the way he came, seeing what he thought he might see: Dennis Tobin moving toward him. Arthur, who had an arsenal of shots at his disposal, nudged the puck up ahead of him and leaned into it, firing a slapshot which caught Tobin in the chest, causing Tobin to embrace himself passionately, doubling over.

  "Oof," Tobin said, and just as Arthur went to skate by, Tobin managed to grab him. "All I tried to do for you!" he yelled.

  "Hell off me." Arthur tried to wrestle away, but Tobin gripped him by the back of the neck.

  The sight of Connie moving toward them induced laughter from both benches, his rumpled uniform fresh off a night in Penn Station. Arthur saw him and blanched with shame, given Connie's stumblebum qualities, the drunken tilt of the cap on his head as he approached center ice making something of a spectacle.

  "Dennis, Dennis," Connie said, just as Dennis hauled back and gave Arthur a genuine punch to his face, which took everybody by surprise, the intensity of it, given Dennis was a grown man and Arthur twelve. Even if Arthur did do something stupid, still, to punch a kid like that.

  "Hand on my kid, motherfucker," Connie said, and they started to fight, Connie and Dennis throwing punches in the most amateurish of ways as Arthur rolled away, bent over, face in hands.

  "Your fault in the first place, how he's like that," Dennis said, and both of them short-winded after a few seconds of fisticuffs.

  Dennis now hurt Connie, bloodying his nose with a wild roundhouse punch, and, sensing vulnerability, moved in to put an end to it, when Connie saw, first, the stick rising, as if sprouting from the top of the other man's head.

  Arthur rolled up behind Dennis and with his approach came the terrible apprehension from the people in Chelsea Park that day, as Arthur let his skates glide him toward Dennis, his stick raised like an ax about to split a log. Artie, no! Artie, Artie, no! the park cried, just as Dennis turned and Arthur brought the stick down with full force onto his shoulder and you heard the sickening snap, an audible pop, and Dennis emitting a groan, dropping to his knees.

  "That's it, you're out of this league."

  "Fuck th
is league," Arthur said. He ripped off his jersey, exposing shoulder pads stolen from Paragon which flapped in the wind. He used the tip of his stick to pluck the jersey off the ice and skated over to the Jack Flash bench. Somebody held fire to it, and Arthur took a gratuitous lap, the smoky flame of his jersey hanging from his stick. He skated along the Rangers' bench. "Fuck this league, fuck all you motherfuckers!"

  The Rangers cursed back, shook their heads in disgust as Arthur skated off the ice, his jersey disintegrating, and kept on going around the park house, out of sight.

  Dennis got up, holding his arm by the elbow, as if already in a sling. "Hell's wrong with that kid. Christ."

  But it was all Connie could do to hide the relief which flooded into him. My son, Connie thought, took my back. Yes, he might have retaliated against Tobin in any case, but he did so as Tobin was kicking my ass, so it could be inferred his actions were motivated by a desire to protect his father, and Connie liked that possibility.

  Better still: Arthur had opted for Tobin's shoulder.

  Any number of the young sociopaths on Jack Flash would have whipped their sticks down onto the crown of Tobin's head without a second thought, and Connie felt tremendous relief Arthur wasn't one of them. Connie secretly feared his failure as a father would demonstrate itself as a rage in his son potent enough, one way or the other, to incur the loss of life, and this fear assuaged itself with Arthur's choice. A broken collarbone's no picnic, but a straight shot to the skull could very well end in homicide, and Connie rested a little easier knowing his son was not a killer at heart.

  * * *

  He made a pit stop at the rooming house to clean himself up before heading to the job. Benjamin said Walter wanted to see him right away and that's when Connie knew for sure.

  "Not easy for me."

  "Don't worry."

  "My job's to tell you I have to let you go from this house. Effective immediately." Walter reached into a drawer. "Couple checks, first and last. I don't know, figure it out, case you got something else coming, vacation, sick days, whatever." He handed them to Connie. "Also," Walter said, handing him another envelope, "letter of termination, what's-his-face."

  "Grimes," Connie said, naming the managing agent.

  "You know I hate it, Con, to fire a man. Last thing, believe me, that I want. Hands are tied," he said, gently touching his wrists together. "Only good thing, I talked to Grimes, got him to let you collect till you find a new spot."

  "Thank you, Walter."

  Walter's wife appeared with sausage-and-peppers sandwiches, a stack of potato chips on the side.

  "Hey, Miss Mezzola," Connie said.

  She turned, ruffled Connie's hair with affection, before she disappeared.

  Connie and Walter began to eat a last meal together.

  "Worried about you, my wife. Straw that broke the back, going on TV like that."

  * * *

  Connie stood before his open locker. He removed the letter of termination from its envelope, the crisp characters of each word snapped out on an IBM Selectric. The management company's stationary stung him, the message containing not one typo: someone had taken obsessive care to make sure he was good and fired. A swelter of loss tried to work its way into him, and he made a quick decision to rip the letter up.

  He went to the bank where they cashed his checks. The teller said she saw him on TV last night and chuckled. He picked up a pint at his spot on Lex for old times' sake. He started downtown and thought he noticed people giving him funny looks. Had they all seen him make an ass of himself on TV last night? Was the city revved up for a laugh on his behalf?

  Every third thought wave crashing onto his mind carried news of his termination. You're fired, the wave said, and a few waves later, You're fired. He toyed with a redemption fantasy, seeking out and finding John's Bianchi, single-handedly bringing the mugger to justice, returning the bicycle to John at a press conference during which Connie's reputation is restored and his position of employment at the house is reinstated, but with quiet pride and dignity he turns the offer down, a case of too little, too late.

  He cracked open a pint of Bacardi 151 and took a pull from it. Months from now Connie would track back to this moment, somewhere right in here, walking down Lexington Avenue on a quiet-for–New York Saturday afternoon, as the point he slipped into a month-long blackout, finally coming to in Xavier's library, in the middle of an AA meeting at which Justin was qualifying. The following day, June 17, 1974, marking Connie's first day sober. Sitting between David and Susan at the room's outer circle, Justin at the head of a large oak table in the middle of the room. The sound of Connie's tears falling onto the planks of the wooden floor. Click, click, went his tears against the floor. The same clothes for a week, his hands filthy, his face unshaven, and no idea why he wept, divorced from himself and still he wept.

  Where did he go, what did he do, prior to Xavier's library? Most of it was lost, but some of it remained, fleeting snapshots from the hinterlands of consciousness.

  Hand-feeding a seagull pieces of a hot dog on the ferry, the bird hopping toward him on the railing, the spray of salt at Connie's face. Rowing a boat on Staten Island's Clove Lake, a solitary figure, Charlie Chaplin in a doorman's uniform. Taking refuge in a gay bar on West Street called Peter Rabbit, feeling a kinship with the outcast vibe, the gentle barman offering Connie a hug one morning, some tenderness softening Connie's heart amid his jag. Coming to on his hard-tiled patch of Penn Station floor, looking up into Arthur's angry, distraught face. His head in Susan's lap, weeping in the rooming house, Susan rubbing his back, refusing to drink with him, herself already counting days. Second-acting A Moon for the Misbegotten, shaking the hand of Colleen Dewhurst at the Morosco's stage door, her touch soft and firm, her eyes lucid-blue and moist, asking her out for a drink, Miss Dewhurst giving Connie the kindest of rain checks. A drunken ruckus at the unemployment office, only to discover several retroactive payments in his rooming house mailbox. (God watches over drunks and babies.) A woman, Jane, who danced topless at a bar on 24th and Sixth called Billy's, trying to give him a blowjob beneath the tracks of the 7 train on Queens Boulevard, Connie unable to get it up. In Jane's apartment on Morton Street, with Jane and others, nights of self-betrayal, producing dark knots in his character, living against the grain of principle. Susan, David, and Justin shunning him in the rooming house, moving past him in silent prayer. Hiding in movie theaters, the Elgin, the Thalia, hugging his bottle in the dark, watching Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger. Mounting an epic journey uptown to 505 West 132nd. The address of his father's suicide, of Edward's negligent homicide, of beatings administered by Pete Cullen. Two flights up, facing the back. Playing outside as the ambulance pulled up. A man who never gave Connie anything preventing him from going upstairs, giving Connie a quarter to go and buy some Red Hots from the jewboy's on Old Broadway. Connie climbing the back fire escape through the stench of the gas, seeing his father on the kitchen floor in his underwear, against the far wall, as if the oven had expelled him, spit him out, one leg bent behind him in a manner not seen in the living. An unemployed printer at the time of death, having worked in a warehouse down the docks of Chelsea which sixty years later would exhibit the impossible work of Picasso. Maybe when I'm gone they will let you alone, read the suicide note. Connie over the course of his life considering the note's meaning, its paranoia, its hope, its heroic angle, which he came to despise. Maybe through the sacrifice of my noble act, the note begged, your future will now be secure. Thanks to my departure by suicide. Wondering as a child if Pete Cullen had anything to do with his father's death. Wondering if his mother Mary was really his mother. Fearing he was raised by imposters, a man and woman who wore the masks of his parents. The smallness of Edward's coffin, the shaming of the funeral Mass, the shitty pinch of an ill-fitting suit against his skin. Pete Cullen's sign of the cross, his sham piety. How terrible to be the son of a suicide, how awful. Stumbling his way uptown, only to learn 505 West 132nd no longer existed, his horror bu
ried over. One more maze of a housing project in its place, 505 West 132nd having been razed, no such address, and what would he have seen anyway, one more block of slums, one more shitty-ass tenement, what was he hoping to get to the bottom of? The emotionally charged prop that was Pete Cullen's garrison belt. Strapping Connie room to room like nobody's business—or rather, in fairly methodical fashion, Pete Cullen never more steady on his feet than when delivering a beating. His mother's hands around her cup of tea at the kitchen table, the paralyzed sight of her in competition with the violence itself for Connie's pain and suffering. The sweating of the bed back in the rooming house, the stain on the window shade signifying unspeakable horror. Intentionally stumbling into traffic on 23rd Street, getting in people's faces, hoping to arrange his own manslaughter. A ringing telephone from a brownstone's front parlor across the street, thinking the call was for him, letting him know his number was up and it was time now to reconcile every thought, word, and deed perpetrated against the good people of this world. Spic, nigger, faggot, Jew. Sneaking in and out of the rooming house, negotiating backyard fences so they wouldn't catch him. Understanding firsthand the they of his father's suicide note. Shivering and shaking in the sweat-drenched bed, wanting death but they wouldn't let him off the hook, his mind itself the hell on earth they spoke of, and much more never to be uncovered before the click of tears on wooden floor. Susan to his left, David to his right, Justin at the head of the table saying, And frankly, in many respects, I was afforded every advantage, my family having opened every coffer on my behalf, as Connie, feeling the chilly rumbles of its approach, dehydrated, not a bite in four days, let a brief sensation all would be all right wash over him, before his body with a comical flair of its own poured from the chair onto the floor, where it began to lock and sizzle.

  A sober alkie physician, Harold, approached the crowd that circled Connie's possessed form.

  "Looks like a grand mal seizure. He'll be all right." Harold went to one knee, loosened Connie's pants, and removed his shoes, Harold all the while calmly puffing on a pipe. "There's a booth, if you make a left at the end of the hall. Will someone call St. Vincent's for an ambulance, please?"