Cardboard Ocean

by Mike McCardell

  The men in the bar ran outside and grabbed their friend, but he wasn’t moving.

  “He’s dead,” one of them shouted at Gus. “You killed him. You’re gonna fry.”

  The sirens filled the canyon of Jamaica Avenue bouncing off the sides of the stores and echoing down from under the tracks and wooden ties above that let some of the wailing escape to the sky and sent some of it back to the street in a warble.

  Gus was handcuffed and pushed in the back of a squad car. There were no Miranda rights back then.

  “What happened?” the cops asked the guys in the bar.

  “Sounds like second degree,” said a cop. “Twenty to life.”

  They took notes while Gus sat in the back seat and we stood by the window of the cop car shouting through the glass to Gus that everything would be okay.

  Then the cops left and the bartender came out and poured a pitcher of water over the spot where the guy’s blood was and the men went back into the bar and got a round on the house, we heard.

  We walked back down 132nd Street.

  “He killed him, right there, just to protect a worm,” said Joey. “John Wayne would’ve done the same thing.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t know Gus was so strong.”

  “It came from baseball,” said Joey, and we knew the secret. Gus didn’t spend his time in the bar, he played ball so he was strong enough to kill someone.

  We learned something that day. Baseball could make you strong, and we all wanted to be stronger than anyone else.

  “See how crazy your friend is,” said Tommy’s father. “Stay away from crazy people.”

  But when we talked we all knew that Gus was not crazy. He was a strong man who defended something that was weak. Gus was our hero.

  In court, we were told, the judge told him he could not protect a worm. “Worms have no rights.”

  He was convicted of second degree murder and just as the cop said, was sentenced to twenty years to life.

  “Now he’s going to meet a lot of worms,” a guy at the bar told us as we stood around the open door.

  We had no idea what he meant. We did not think there were worms in jail cells.

  A few weeks later, we saw Gus’s sister walking up the street to go to work. We asked if we could walk with her. She nodded.

  “What kind of work do you do?” Vinnie asked.

  “I’m a telephone operator,” she said.

  We could see the guys in the bar moving over to the window to watch her pass. They gave her the strangest faces, like stupid little boy smiles. Then they looked at us and frowned.

  “I’m glad you talked to Gus,” she said. “He used to tell me that you are the best friends he has in the world.”

  “How’s he now?” we asked.

  “He was allowed a phone call a few days ago,” she said while standing on the bottom step of the El stairs, just outside the door of the bar.

  “He said everything was fine. He always says that.”

  Then she turned around and ran up the stairs. We could see she was grabbing in her bag for a tissue. She was crying so loud by the time she got to the top we had to turn away.

  “Oh, my poor Gus,” was all we heard before she went through the door into the station. Then a train came and drowned out all the sound, even though we couldn’t hear her anymore anyway.

  But I was telling you about Stumpy.

  Stumpy was with us for more than a year. He taught us about relationships and obligations, although we didn’t call them relationships and obligations. We just said we got to take care of Stumpy.

  We didn’t know he was a guy. We just called him “him,” but from what I have seen of life, he was probably a she since she’s are generally tougher than he’s.

  Stumpy was tough. Stumpy was a survivor. Stumpy was a pigeon with one foot.

  “That’s so sad,” said Dorothy the first time we saw him. We were coming home from school and he or she was lurching around by the curb, trying to pick up a bit of invisible food. Every time he would limp toward one, some other pigeon would get it.

  “We should feed him,” said Vanessa. We still thought that all the world’s unfairness could be fixed by us. And if unfairness could be fixed with some breadcrumbs, we would fix it immediately, or even quicker.

  Someone had a cookie stuffed in his pocket.

  “Do you think he likes cookies?”

  “Try it,” I said.

  I don’t remember who took the mushed up remains of a cookie out of his jacket pocket and threw it on the ground but suddenly between kids and handicapped bird there was a connection. We tried to shoo the other pigeons away, which was a battle. Pigeons who see cookie crumbs on the ground are not afraid of feet.

  But we managed to give Stumpy a head start and he gobbled them up faster than we could believe. He was hungry.

  Vanessa said she would go home for some bread. She lived closest. She came back with a couple of slices of Wonder Bread.

  “You think it will build his body in eight ways?” Johnny asked. “That’s what the advertisements say.”

  Johnny didn’t often make jokes.

  The bird ate all the bread, except for the bits that were grabbed by the other birds, but at least he got a good stomach full.

  The next day he was in the same fix. He was getting out-manoeuvred by the other pigeons.

  “He looks so strong,” said Johnny. “If I only had one foot I couldn’t walk at all.”

  “He’s got a stump,” said Joey.

  “Well, Stumpy is a brave guy,” said Dorothy.

  We did not know his name was Stumpy until then, but from then on Stumpy was part of our gang. We saved cookies and bread for him and fed him every day after school. He was always in the same spot. We brought enough so that the other birds got some too.

  We wondered how he lost his foot.

  “It must have been awful,” said Vanessa. “It looks like it rotted off.”

  “Probably froze off in the winter,” said Johnny. “And then there was gangrene.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Vanessa, who tried to put her hands over her ears.

  We knew he didn’t have any medicine or even aspirin. He didn’t even have a way to complain. But we could give him cookies and in a few days he became our pet. As soon as we got home from school we would find out if anyone had fed Stumpy, and then someone would run home for bread or cookies and we stood around him dropping crumbs where he would get them before the other birds charged in.

  No parent had to remind us to feed him. We wouldn’t even tell our parents about him. The next thing they would be saying would be, “don’t touch him, he’s got germs.”

  We didn’t want to hear that. We just wanted to take care of our pet. We even chipped in enough money to buy a box of canary seeds and fed him that for a few days. Dorothy kept them at home until a mouse got in the box and ate the whole thing one night.

  But we talked about Stumpy so much at school that some other kids from other streets came to see him. Some of them were from Rocky’s gang. We let them watch, but we wouldn’t let them feed him. He was ours.

  A summer and a winter passed and one day Stumpy was not there. Two days and then a week went by without Stumpy. We all stood on the corner, holding a few cookies just in case.

  “He’s dead,” said Vinnie.

  “I miss him,” said Vanessa.

  “He was my friend,” said Johnny.

  Thirty years later when I lived in Vancouver, I did a story for television about a man who drove twenty miles every morning. He carried a loaf of bread in his car. At the end of the trip was a seagull, waiting for him on the roof of a house. It was standing on just one foot, its only foot.

  “That’s Stumpy,” he told me. He threw some bread on the ground and the bird flew down to get it.

  The man had started feeding Stumpy when he lived in the house. He felt sorry for him because a seagull with just one foot cannot even swim straight, much less outrace other birds on land. When the man
moved to a new house in a new city he did not break Stumpy’s trust. Every morning for three years he drove back to feed him.

  “It may sound stupid,” he said, “but he needs me and I need him.”

  Stumpy is a name pets earn. And it is not forgotten.

  Kick the Can

  “I’ve got to bring Junior if we play,” said Joey.

  “Too bad he can’t walk,” said Dorothy.

  “He can walk,” said Joey, who defended his brother no matter what. “It’s just that he doesn’t walk really good.”

  Dorothy almost looked like she was going to hug him, but we didn’t hug anyone on this street no matter what, not even a girl and boy. But it almost looked that way.

  “But then you wouldn’t have to carry him so much,” she said.

  Joey didn’t say anything. The only time I remember him telling us something about Junior was after his mother and father put him in a home because it was too hard for them to care for him. Then they went to visit one day without telling the people who were supposed to be taking care of him.

  “He was tied up and sitting on the floor like all the kids,” said Joey. “My father just grabbed him and lifted him up and then I took him and we walked out. My father was looking for someone that he could kill, but there wasn’t anyone there, so we left.”

  After that, Junior stayed with his mother and father and brother, sometimes laughing, sometimes screaming and almost always swinging his arms around. That’s why Joey had to duck when he carried him around the street and that’s why Joey was such a good fighter. No one could hit him after he learned how to duck away from Junior’s flying fists.

  “We’re going to play kick the can,” said Buster. “If you carry Junior, you can’t run fast enough.”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” said Joey.

  It was getting dark and it was cold because it was October but that was the best time to play on the street because you could hide in the dark. The best places to hide were behind cars and telephone poles and kids were skinny enough to stand behind a pole and disappear.

  Dorothy brought out a can. Of course it was Dorothy who did that because she was always there with whatever we needed. She was wonderful.

  “This had tomato juice,” she said.

  That was better than perfect because it was two quarts, bigger than the average can of beans and it would last longer.

  But there was a problem. Stan was hanging around.

  I don’t talk much about Stan. He was the mean kid who lived at the end of the block. He didn’t play with us very much, which made us happy because he liked to destroy things. It seemed to be his nature. Give him something and he would break it.

  He was a lot older than us and he had been in the Army, but only for a short time. He didn’t make it through basic training.

  When Patrick, the little kid who lived with his mother next to the El, once got a new plastic six-shooter, which he wanted because he was still younger than the rest of us, Stan wanted to see it.

  “No, you’ll just break it,” said Patrick.

  “No, I won’t. I just want to see it.”

  “Are you sure you won’t break it?”

  “Won’t, I promise.”

  Patrick handed over his new pistol and Stan, who’d had a rifle in the Army, shouldn’t have been playing with a little kid’s plastic gun. He spun Patrick’s six-shooter with his finger in the trigger loop.

  “See, this is the way they did it in the old west.”

  He put it in his pocket.

  “Watch this, quick draw.”

  He pulled it out.

  “Bang, bang.”

  He spun it again.

  “And you know what they did when they ran out of bullets?”

  Patrick shook his head.

  “They turned it around.”

  Stan grabbed it by the barrel.

  “And they pistol whipped the guy they were fighting.”

  He smashed it into a telephone pole. The gun shattered.

  “You broke my gun,” yelled Patrick.

  “That’s because it’s plastic. It’s not my fault,” said Stan.

  “You broke it. You said you wouldn’t.” Patrick was crying. “I just got it. My mother just gave it to me.”

  “You’ll get another one. I gotta go.”

  When we saw Stan hanging around where we wanted to play kick the can we felt rotten. We couldn’t say “no, you can’t play,” because he knows there’s no teams or rules in kick the can. Once you start, anyone who is nearby can play.

  But we knew Stan would run as fast as he could to the can, not because he wanted to free anyone but because he wanted to kick it so hard that he would bend it in half. These were steel cans, and they took a lot of kicking, but once they were bent you couldn’t straighten them out.

  And if it was bent too badly it couldn’t stand up anymore and the game was over. Stan ruined almost every game he showed up at.

  But this night we got together before we started to play. We had a plan.

  Buster drew a large circle in the middle of the street. He used a piece of chalk he stole from school.

  “Everyone who wants to play come in the circle. The last one in is it,” he said.

  We all ran and watched Stan run too. He was running hard. We ran harder. We wanted him to be it.

  Vanessa was just coming out her front door.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted.

  “Kick the can. The last one in is it.”

  She ran down the street. Tommy grabbed her hand and pulled her. Vanessa didn’t know the plan. We couldn’t let her be it.

  They got near the circle.

  “Why are you helping me?” she said while she was being pulled.

  “Stan,” he said. “Stan has to be it.”

  “That’s not fair,” she said with the wind blowing in her face and Tommy still pulling.

  Tommy yanked her into the circle.

  “You always want to be fair and nice,” said Tommy. “But sometimes you can’t be. Stan is rotten.”

  We all made it just a second before Stan.

  “You’re it,” we said to him.

  No one had to explain what to do. He closed his eyes and started counting.

  “One potato, two potato.”

  We ran in the darkness and hid.

  “Nine potato, ten, freeze.”

  We stopped. No one cheated. You can’t cheat and play, because then it was no fun.

  “I see Johnny by the car, and Vinnie by the pole.”

  Johnny and Vinnie came back to the circle. Stan moved slowly further away from the circle looking for more kids. If he got too far someone could run up and kick the can and free anyone inside the circle.

  The only time someone couldn’t kick the can was if Stan was standing in the circle. It was exciting. You had to move away to find people, but you couldn’t move too far away.

  “I see Vanessa by the other pole and Dorothy by the car next to the other pole. And I see Mickey behind the fender.”

  We all came back. In a few minutes Stan had us all caught except Joey and Tommy. Then Stan moved far from the circle. We knew what would happen.

  Out of the night Joey came ripping across the sidewalk, jumping off the curb and heading straight for us and the can. We moved aside so he wouldn’t hit us. And then like a cannonball he almost put his shoe into the side of the can.

  We took off running while Joey shouted, “I kicked the can! I freed you!”

  Stan went running for the tomato juice can, but the rest of us didn’t stop in the dark to hide. We all just kept going. And when we got about half a block away, far enough to hide where Stan couldn’t see us, we started laughing at him.

  “We taught him a lesson. Yeah, we showed him.”

  Now he had no one to play with.

  Stan looked around for a few moments, a little confused, and then maybe he realized what was going on. The street was empty.

  He put the can down and stomped it with h
is heel. Then he stomped it again. He sat down on the curb. We could see when he picked up the can.

  “You think he’s going to flatten it more?” I asked.

  Then he kicked the can off the street and walked away. Usually kick the can was the best game, except for that night.

  Fifty years later, the parents in a school in Vancouver formed a committee to draw up the rules for kick the can. They wanted to organize leagues so that all the kids in the school could play. They worried that their kids needed more physical activity.

  They said that the old-fashioned games were loaded with activity which was good for cardiovascular health. However, they had some concerns that an actual can might be dangerous. They used a rubber cup instead.

  They made the circle to be three metres in circumference, any less and some children might not be able to fit inside. They said the game would be played in the gym both to allow year-round participation in bad weather and to avoid the dangers of the schoolyard.

  The term “It” was said to be derogatory. The designated one who would do the counting would be called the leader. And no child would be chosen as the leader until all other children had the opportunity.

  Finally, kicking the can was thought to be aggressive. The can would have to be pushed out of the circle. The child freeing the others would have to stop, and then with a sideward motion of his or her foot move the cup until it was outside the line. Then the other children could run.

  The parents put the game into their newsletter: “Kick The Can Returns To Southlands Junior Secondary.” The story said that the old-fashioned street game had been revived. However, the kids found it boring and returned to their computer games.

  A committee was formed to investigate what was wrong with the children.

  Save the Celery

  “Today we are going to learn how things live.”

  Miss Johnson stood in front of the classroom. She had a stick of celery in her hand. We were not allowed to bring food into the classroom.

  “Celery is just like us. It gets thirsty and it eats. But it doesn’t have teeth. It only drinks.”

  This was way too much information. We had just come from lunch. In the basement we heard the same announcement every day: “Free lunch kids line up over against the wall.”