by Ron McLarty
“Beautiful, huh? And look at these. Two pairs of Nike trail boots. They’re light as sneakers, but they’re all-terrain. I got your size out of the shoe you had left. I love mine. Oh, and I got some sweat socks and food. Energy bars and bananas and fruit. And bottled water and stress tablets. These are good. They’re special vitamins. I take them, too.”
“This stuff is all for me?” I asked.
Father Benny reached into his pocket and pulled out an old telephone-bill envelope. He sat on the edge of the couch and handed it to me. “I wish it could be more.”
I opened it up, and inside were three ten-dollar bills. “I’ll send it back,” I said.
“Sure. Sometime when you’re not on the road. Sometime when you have a home.”
“I do.”
“Sure. Look, Smithy, Mother Mary teaches us that home is what we carry in our hearts. Be strong. Go on.”
“I will.”
“Don’t give up. I’m going over to the nursing home. Your bike’s all fixed. It’s in the kitchen. If I don’t see you, God bless.”
“God bless you, too.”
Benny Gallo smiled and left the rectory at a jog. I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth, and he was right. I needed a nice mouth feeling. I took a shower, too; then I put on the clothes he bought me and went to the kitchen. The sneaker boots felt wonderful. My legs and kidney still ached, and my face was purple from the fall, but in the kitchen I took a deep breath, and I didn’t remember so much good air getting into me for a long time.
My Raleigh leaned on its kickstand next to the stove. It was oiled and polished, and there were two new tires on it. Also large saddlebags set over the back. Some player and his pop had taken the fat man’s bike home and fixed it up and put on red nylon saddlebags. I drank some of the water Benny had given me and had an orange. I ate standing, because even though I was old and fat, I was excited to try a Raleigh that now seemed like a new Raleigh. I took the things Benny bought me and put them in the expanding saddlebags. Then I walked the bike through the door and up to Main Street.
They had raised the seat a little and the handlebars, too, so when I pedaled, my legs extended all the way in a full, natural circle. The bike whirred, and the smoothness of the braking was exhilarating. My bike was the best bike ever.
“Thank you,” I said out loud to the player and his pop. Good people were there. There were things for them to do together, and I was somehow a part of that. I felt easy, that’s the word. It wasn’t hard to smile. Also I had bananas and apples and boots in my saddlebags.
I rode under the I-95 overpass and, after an hour or so, picked up Route 1 around Potter Hill. I could smell the salt air and the unmistakable heavy, sweet mountain laurel that grew so strong close to the ocean. I broke into a tremendous sweat, and the parts of my bulky body that had throbbed with pain seemed to become new like my bike. It was as if the pain sweated away with each slow pedal, and I mean slow. I glided down hills. I walked up them. I sucked the air out of entire counties.
When the big houses of Westerly came into view, with their peaks and awnings and widow’s walks, I pulled off the road and stopped under a huge elm tree. It was cool this close to the ocean. I took off my blue XXL T-shirt and put on the enormous red Hawaiian shirt. Father Benny knew how to pick clothes. The extra-stretch waist on the shorts had only a moderate amount of gut spillage, and the sneaker boots felt great.
“Thank you, Father Benny,” I said.
I got back onto the Raleigh and went through the town. My pop had known some guys here. He knew a ballplayer named Archie Bissette, who played first base for Socony and also had a bait shop in Westerly where he sold lures and hooks and frozen squid for the tautog, and live eels for the stripers the fishermen would try for off the beaches of Green Hill and Misquamicut and Quonochontaug. I rode around the center of town where their war memorial stood, but I couldn’t remember where Archie Bissette’s store was, and, really, nothing looked familiar, so I picked up scenic Route 1 again and crossed into Connecticut.
A breeze, moist and constant, blew off the Block Island Sound and got me. There were hawks sitting on the high dead branches of ash trees, and they stared, like I did, at the crazy seagulls and the tight, loud circles they made above us.
I stopped at a picnic grove in Pawcatuck and ate some bananas and an apple and, just because he had taken the time to buy them for me, one of Father Benny’s stress tablets.
Now, this is one of those clear things. Where I was. A pretty grove of fir trees. Picnic benches. Bathroom. A pretty place. When you’re a kid, place is everything. And when you leave, you’re so absolutely aware of departure. I haven’t been aware for a while now. Long enough, actually, to not be aware when one place started running into another place, until they were all the same. But on this Saturday, in this cool grove, with kickstand down and my feet feeling wonderful, I had a sense, a real sense, of having left Rhode Island and crossed out of my life. Connecticut felt good, and down the road was Stonington, and past that Mystic, where my pop had taken us to see tall ships and eat clam cakes.
I felt tired and closed my eyes for a while. I must have slept, because I felt good when I opened them. It was getting high afternoon already, and then I remembered my late sleep. I left the grove and rode hard toward Mystic. I had a feeling I would like to see the aquarium there. Then later, in fields near the ocean, I would spend the Connecticut night.
16
The homes in the planned communities that encircle Brickyard Pond and State Park in Barrington, Rhode Island, are really lovely. Big houses, with three and four bedrooms and two-car garages and wonderfully manicured property. The houses on the lake itself, the prime houses, have lawns that slope to the blue-brown water. On the far side of the lake, where the garbage landfill site ruled for almost twenty years, from 1955 on, magnificent white stucco hacienda-type homes spread evenly among new poplars.
I loved to fish the Brickyard. Me and Tony Travanti from across the street would ride down with some night crawlers and clean up. Some trout, bass, pickerel, perch, and—I’m not kidding—bluegill so big we used to think they were a different fish altogether. It was Tony’s theory, and I think it’s a good one, that a lot of garbage and cans and stuff spilled into the lake from the dump and all this leftover food and medicine and aluminum foil just made a different bluegill. The other parts of the pond were pretty much trees and dirt paths, and when you walked away from the official park, following the bank to fish in the weedy, stumpy sections where the big pickerel were, the underbrush was prehistoric.
Sal the Dago told the police how after the Chevy had tried to murder Miss Gomes and himself, it had driven down the beach and disappeared into the reeds.
“Then it just fucking flew out of the reeds and jumped up the bank back onto the road and took off. I’m eaten alive. I’m eaten by fucking bugs.”
“Shut up, greaseball,” the crew-cut Barrington police officer said. “Watch your language around this young lady.”
“Thank you,” Debbie Gomes said, ladylike.
“What did I say?” Sal asked, genuinely confused.
“The officer doesn’t want you to offend me,” Debbie said.
“I can’t offend her, Officer,” Sal said sincerely. “She gives me hand jobs.”
The punch took the wind out of Sal, and he buckled, then fell on his knees. The policeman easily brought Sal’s hands behind his back and handcuffed him, then jerked him to his feet.
“Thank you.” Debbie smiled.
The policeman smiled back, then pulled the gasping Sal to the cruiser and leaned him against it. Then he walked back to Debbie.
“He forced himself on you?”
“Kind of, I guess.”
It was a cool evening, and the slightest breeze off Narragansett Bay put some real chill in the air.
For the next three days and two nights, the Barrington police, joined by the finest of East Providence and, finally, state troopers from the Bristol barracks, launched an all-out three-stat
e search for Bobby Myers and the young prom date he abducted. They crossed, with permission, into Connecticut and as far as Waltham, Massachusetts, looking for the blond mondo and his father’s Chevy Impala. They looked everywhere but the Brickyard, where Bethany’s voice had taken them. Not more than three miles from Barrington Beach. They’d driven crazily to the state park entrance, went onto a small playing field and into the thick overgrowth, as far as the car could possibly go. Then my sister had shut off the engine and gone into a three-day, two-night pose. If it wasn’t for a fisherman looking for a shortcut to the bass and pickerel, they might be there still. He called to her, but she was frozen and swollen from the heavy mosquito hatches. Then he heard the faintest of whimpers and opened the trunk.
In the weeks after the prom, Bethany was returned once again to Bradley Hospital. My pop found a new psychiatrist through Grace Church, and for a while both he and Mom felt they were moving in the right direction. She became Bethany again, and her bug-ravaged skin returned clear and beautiful. We visited her often, and all of our meetings with Dr. Glenn Golden were upbeat and hopeful.
Bobby Myers didn’t make all-state that year. Sal the Dago Ruggeri plea-bargained the sexual-assault charge to simple battery. He was given a one-year suspended sentence. He was also expelled from school.
17
I love penguins. They’re not only the silliest bird, I’ll bet they’re the silliest animal. They walk funny and sound funny and swing their wings like little arms, and then they look right at you with this “what are you looking at?” expression. The penguins were the high point of the Mystic Aquarium, but the porpoise show was pretty amazing, too. And cheap. Oh, and the bathrooms were exceptionally clean and cheerful.
I slept about a mile out of Mystic. It got very black, so I walked into a cornfield and lay down between the rows. I used the sweatshirt for a pillow, and I slept pretty good. In the morning I had more than the usual aches. Complicating the pain of being a fat-ass who hadn’t exercised since the army was a terrific sunburn on my arms and legs and head. I stopped at a gas station and bought some aspirin and used the bathroom; then I pedaled for maybe half an hour until I found a little variety store that sold sun lotion. I hadn’t worn shorts for twenty or thirty years. I lathered myself up good and ate breakfast. Bananas again. And an apple and the biggest bran muffin I have ever seen for a dollar. But bananas, I want to say, bananas you forget. How else can I explain them? I love them. Everything about the texture and the chewability of bananas is me, but I’d just stopped eating them. I’m happy I found bananas again.
The aspirin worked, and the lotion snuffed the burn, but I still moved slow. I stopped in the middle of the Groton–New London Bridge and saw the coast guard’s four-masted training schooner and behind that a nuclear-powered sub as long as a football field. I’d had a tour of the sub base once with the Scouts, but I don’t remember when. I thought it was interesting.
I slept on the beach near Old Saybrook that night, and in the morning I called Norma.
“Yes?” she answered on the first ring.
“Norma? I didn’t wake you up or anything, did I?”
Norma Mulvey’s end of the phone sank into silence.
“Norma? Did I wake you?”
“Smithy? Smithy?” She was crying.
“Don’t cry, Norma.”
“The garage door was open, the house was open, bills on the table—Bea called the police.”
“She called the police?”
“Where are you? Come home. We’re . . . Bea’s worried sick.”
“I’m in Old Saybrook. I’m on my Raleigh. A priest gave me clothes and stress tablets. Norma, I got this letter, one of my pop’s letters, really. . . .”
“Pop?”
“From Los Angeles. They found Bethany.”
“They found her? They found her?”
“Bethany died, Norma.”
Norma’s breathing became faster, and her voice dropped. She sniffled.
“They had to . . . they had to identify her through dental records my pop had sent everywhere. Don’t cry, Norma.”
“I loved her, too.” The defiance again, only this time through chokes and sobs. I started to go, too, but I grabbed myself.
“Norma? Would you call Goddard and tell them I’m sick and I’m not coming in for a while?”
“You’re sick?”
“No. I’m in Old Saybrook. I’m on my bike. I’m . . . I don’t know . . . I think I’m going to Los Angeles.”
We hung together with what I just said, in silence, on the line.
“I’ll call Goddard. I’ll tell them you’re sick.”
“Thanks, Norma.”
“Do you need money?”
“I don’t think so . . . well . . . thanks, Norma.”
She was quiet, then quieter still. It was hard to believe there wasn’t a wild ten-year-old on the other end holding her breath the way she used to when she wanted me to play catch or dolls. Then I remembered her telling me outside the funeral home that she did for herself. That she had these systems for things and important jobs to do.
“Did you hang up, Norma?”
“I’ve never been held,” Norma said like a blow of air over the miles. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t think. “Held as a child, I mean, but that’s different.”
I heard her voice bounce off satellites and flow through the hot wires.
“I . . .”
“I hold myself. I do for myself. I got to go.”
I waited for her to hang up the phone, but she didn’t. We stayed, without speaking, like kids with tin cans and string.
“I would hold you, Norma,” I said after a while, and heard the faintest click. In the east. Near the bay.
18
Frank Malzone was a very good third baseman. He held the spot in the fifties for our Red Sox. I was little when he quit—or, as my pop liked to say, when “they run him out”—but I have fond memories of Pop imitating him in games. Malzone had a big face, and it more or less hung out. He’d take his fielding stance, feet spread, knees bent, forearms balanced on his knees, and his big face actually did just hang out. My pop loved him. “Malzone’s up!” he’d yell. “Big face. Big bat.” When I was seven, we got a puppy, a mutt with a huge face. We called him Malzone.
Malzone—the dog—had the body of a German shepherd, but he had an auburn color and soft, long hair that tended to knot up when it rained or got hot or snowy. He liked to be near Pop, but really he liked us all. He loved it when you would talk to him like a baby and then rub his belly. When Malzone was three, he got “irritated.” That’s the word Mom used. He went dog crazy. He would whine and cry at the door for hours, day and night, until somebody let him out. Then he’d leave for days. I’d get frantic. Who knew what could happen to a nice, happy dog out there alone on the streets of East Providence? I remembered this today. I hadn’t thought of it for a long, long time. How I came home one Saturday and Malzone was gone.
“Where’s Malzone?” I asked Pop in the kitchen.
“Malzone’s at the dog hospital. He’s fine. He’s having a little operation.”
My dog? Operated on?
“Malzone’s in the hospital?”
Bethany walked into the kitchen. I could tell she’d been crying.
“Just a little operation,” Pop said; then he walked out of the room. I looked scared.
“I wanted to hold him. I wanted to comfort him,” Bethany said.
“But what do they do to dogs?”
Bethany looked at me a long minute. “They cut off his balls,” she said.
“They cut off his balls?”
The screen door opened, and Norma squealed in.
“It was all his yakking and whining,” Bethany said.
“Yakking? They cut off his balls for yakking?”
“Don’t cry, Smithy!” yelled Norma.
I stepped away, then turned back to my sister. “You can’t do that because he gets all excited and yaks. People yak. They wouldn’t do it
to people, would they?”
I had started to cry, and Bethany hugged me. Norma tried to hug us both.
“Pop wouldn’t let me go with him, Hook. But I tried. I wouldn’t have been afraid.”
“I hate that I’m ten!” I screamed.
“I hate that you’re ten, too,” Bethany said quietly.
“I’m six!” Norma screamed proudly.
“Just like that,” I cried. “Poor Malzone. My poor dog.”
“Pop said they had to do it because he was going crazy over girl dogs and he was a runner.”
I looked at my sister like she was nutty.
“Of course he’s a runner. Malzone’s a dog. Dogs run.”
“Pop said they have to snip to stop the running.”
“Snip, snip!” screamed Norma.
“But Malzone’s happy when he runs.”
My sister put her hands on her hips. “You are so stupid. You just don’t listen. You have Jell-O for brains. When they brought you home from the hospital, we all thought you were retarded.”
“Did not!”
“I convinced Mom and Pop to keep you.”
“I’d keep you!” Norma screamed.
“They were gonna keep me.”
“Maybe.” Bethany shrugged.
I sat at the table, and my sister sat across from me. Norma grabbed a chair and pushed it next to me and sat. We were quiet for a minute or two. My pop was having a cigarette in the parlor, and we could smell it.
“Do you think Malzone will be all right?” I asked.
“I think he’ll be the same old Malzone.”
“But he won’t run.”
“He’ll run. He won’t run away.”
“I like it when Malzone runs,” I said.