He took his cigarette out of his mouth and put it in an ashtray next to the sink.
“Where are your pliers?” he asked my mother.
She looked at him like he was using profanity. “Pliers?”
He did not bother saying they were the pliers he had left last Christmas after he brought them in case the key broke. He went through the kitchen drawers until he found them and then slowly peeled back the metal until my mother could squeeze a fork in between the edge of the meat and pry out the ham.
“Is it time for a drink?” he asked.
Except for me, my mother was alone with my uncle. She looked at him with eyes that said something. I knew what they said, but he was my uncle so I could not say it.
“Let Mickey make the drinks,” said my mother.
I was as happy as a pigeon who had just found someone giving away a loaf of Wonder Bread.
My uncle took two bottles out of a brown paper bag. One, Canadian Club rye, the other Rossini’s sweet vermouth.
I could barely read the labels, but I knew what to do. I got the large cocktail mixer out of the closet and poured half the bottle of Canadian Club into it, then I opened the vermouth and poured a quarter of the bottle into the mixer container.
I added some bitters from the small bottle with a dried, crinkled label wrapped around it, stirred the mixture with the cocktail stirring spoon my mother kept with the shaker and lifted out a spoonful.
“First today,” said my uncle as he watched me.
I smiled at him. It was like I was a real man. Into my mouth went the liquid.
“Tell me when you have it ready,” he said and went into the other room.
Oh, it burned, oh, it was good. It was cold and it burned. It was good when it got past my throat.
“How is it?” my mother asked.
I tried to talk, but choked. My mother and aunt laughed.
“Needs more bitters,” I said.
I opened the bottle again and shook out a few more drops. I could not count them, they came out too fast.
Then I tilted the container and tasted it right from the cocktail shaker.
It burned even better.
“I’m getting there,” I said.
I put in two more drops and tasted it again. So smooth, so rich.
“Needs more rye,” I said.
I tilted the bottle and poured in a couple of swigs and tasted it again. I was starting to feel very happy.
“A little more rye,” I added.
Another taste.
“Better get out the ice before Mickey finishes it,” said my mother.
“One more taste,” I said.
I took three.
“I think it’s ready,” I think I said.
The rest of the night went by slowly and fast. I remember sneaking a few more Manhattans into my glass when I finished my Coke. Then I think I had a few more. I tried to lift the weights to show my uncle but they were hard to hold straight over my head and I remember him taking them from my hands.
Then came morning.
The Strongest Men on Earth
I loved the mornings after my mother had company. The ashtrays were full and many of the butts were long enough to light again, plus I had my pick of five brands. I didn’t like the ones with lipstick. I sat by the tree smoking and not feeling well. I blew smoke up into the tree but it did not have the same look as the morning before.
Then I looked at the dumbbells and almost got excited. I picked up the box and looked at Joe. In six weeks I would be like him, and Tommy better look out. Rocky too.
The doorbell rang and I stuffed out the cigarette into the overflowing ashtray. I didn’t want to get caught smoking in case it was some grown-up at the door. They might tell my mother and she would be mad and then I would have to listen to her tell me how bad smoking is and promise not to do what she did but to do what she said. And my head was hurting.
I opened the door and Vinnie and Tommy and Joey and Jimmy Lee were there.
“You’ve been smoking in the house?” said Joey.
“How’d you know?”
“Because it’s still coming out of your mouth.”
I shut my lips.
“Gee, you’re lucky,” said Tommy. “You don’t have a father. I have a father and I can’t smoke in the house. If he caught me he’d kill me. But you only have a mother. I bet she doesn’t even hit you.”
Then a voice came from the top of the stairs.
“Would you please close the door? The heat is going out.”
Mrs. Kreuscher.
But I could not let it look like I was being told what to do by a woman, especially one who was the landlord.
“I’ll close it in a minute,” I shouted.
“Please,” she shouted.
“In a minute.”
“I’m sending Mr. Kreuscher down.”
I pushed the boys back and stepped outside.
“You don’t want to fight with him,” I said. “He used to be a weightlifter.”
I closed the door behind me and felt the cold air go through my shirt.
“Darn, it’s cold out here,” I said.
“We know how to get strong,” said Joey. “We figured out who the strongest men are around here.”
I was thinking of Joe Weider.
“The garbage men,” said Vinnie. “They can lift hundred-pound cans with one hand. If we were garbage men we could do the same.”
I knew the cans weren’t a hundred pounds because my mother had weighed herself at the drugstore with one of those scales that you stand on and put a penny in.
“This can’t be right,” she said. “I’m not 110,” she said. “I was never more than a hundred pounds.”
I could not imagine the garbage men picking her up over their heads with one hand even if she left ten pounds on the ground. But still, they were strong.
We were off from school for the rest of the week for Christmas vacation and we worked out a plan. We would have the strength of garbage men, then no one could touch us.
The next morning we waited. The truck came around the corner. We stood by the first can at the end of the street.
“We wanna be garbage men, like you,” we said. But a train was going by overhead.
“Wad you say?” said the first guy who had a big coat over his vest. But they were all open. Underneath was a huge body that did not jiggle when he moved.
“We wanna be garbage men,” shouted Vinnie, but by then the train had passed.
“Why you shouting?” said the man with the open coat.
“We wanna be garbage men,” said Joey, who always looked like he was the one people would listen to.
“We want to do your job so we can be as strong as you,” said Joey.
“You gotta be kiddin,” said the other man who had a cigar squeezed between his teeth. “Youse couldn’t lift dese cans.”
“And besides,” said the one with the open coat, “you don’t got no Teamsters’ cards.”
They were proud members of the union. The Teamsters controlled the waterfront, the airport, the garbage trucks and the pizza industry, which is the reason New York pizza tasted so good. The quality was controlled by Two-Finger Louie who wanted his profits good and his pizza perfect.
“My fadda’s a Teamster,” said Vinnie.
We knew that wasn’t true. But anytime anyone said they were anything, anything at all – Swedish, albino, Catholic, Jew, Army hero, Teamster – Vinnie would say his father was the same thing.
“So your fadda’s a Teamster,” said the guy with the cigar. This made all the difference. This was the son of a union brother. This was someone who could walk in his footsteps.
“Come on, grab a pail.”
Vinnie looked so proud. He put his hands around the handles on a forty-gallon steel pail and lifted.
“Uhg.”
“You gotta take the top off first,” said open-jacket man.
Vinnie knocked the top off and put it down on the ground.
; “Naaah,” said jacket man. “You gotta toss it over there.”
Vinnie watched as jacket man sailed the top like a Frisbee over to the front of the house next door. That was the first time we learned that it was not an accident that the lids got mixed up.
Vinnie struggled to lift the can to the back of the truck. He laid it on the edge of the giant, open mouth waiting to be fed.
“Naaaah,” said jacket man. “You gotta bang it, or you don’t get the garbage out.”
He took the can from Vinnie, lifted it and power slammed it into the heavy steel jaw at the back of the truck. The can dented.
“You do it dat way.”
Joey tried to pick up the next can but it had no handles.
“Dose rotten SOBs,” said jacket man. “Dey steal da handles and we gotta work harder.”
He made a fist with his work glove.
“If I catch one of dem I’ll show them what real knuckles are.”
Joey threw the top off the can, tilted it to put one hand under and the other on the top and almost lifted it. He got the can six inches off the ground then it hammered back down onto the sidewalk. I thought Joey could lift anything.
“Some people trow out a lot of bones,” said cigar man. “Try again.”
The driver blew the horn.
“Hurry up, we don’t got all day,” said cigar man.
Joey took a breath and wrapped his left arm around the can, tilted it and put his right hand under the can and groaned. I thought his cheeks would burst but he got it up and took a step then some glop inside splashed up and hit him in the face.
“Yuck.” He staggered toward the truck.
The men laughed.
“Need some help, kid?”
“I can do it,” said Joey with the slime running off his face.
We stared. We could not help. We could do nothing but watch and think about what was in the next can.
Joey made it to the back of the truck and dropped the side of the can on the lip of the truck and pushed up the back. Out came a garbage-can-sized avalanche of slop and fat and bones.
“Some people butcher a side of pig in their kitchens,” said cigar man. “They make sausages. Tastes good, but you gotta be careful of those pails.”
He whistled and the truck pulled forward ten feet to the next set of steel-wrapped surprises. I picked one that had handles, but I could not get it off the ground. I threw off the cover like he had said and dragged it off the curb and to the truck.
“Can’t lift it,” I said.
Jimmy Lee gave me a hand and the two of us got the household slop and unspeakable goop into the truck.
“Don’t forget to bang the cans,” said the open-coat man.
He picked up one as though it was empty.
“Gotta put a dent in it. It’s like your mark.”
He slammed it onto the steel lip and presto, he had made his mark.
More than anything I wanted to make my mark.
He whistled and the truck moved. Cigar man pointed at Vinnie and then at a can. He said nothing. Vinnie picked it up and got it into the truck.
“Four hundred a day. Can you do that? A Teamster can.”
He whistled again. The truck moved. Tommy grabbed a can and was struggling to get it up to the truck. I didn’t want him to be able to do it, so I helped him. Even with the two of us it was heavy. It was filled with bones. Who cuts meat at home?
By the time we were at the end of the block, the garbage men were whistling and we were picking up the cans. Some were light, some had garbage neatly wrapped inside the cans and some smelled so bad I gagged.
The men told Vinnie he would make a good Teamster. The truck turned around. We still had the other side of the street to do.
“I think youse guys are okay,” said cigar man. “But yzs needs more practice, and we gotta get going. If we get done early we get to drink beer on company time.”
He picked up a can again and made it look light. Bam, slam, onto the lip and he tossed the can back onto the sidewalk. It stayed upright. That was as amazing as picking it up.
He whistled and the truck pulled ahead. The two of them were moving faster than the five of us. We sat on the curb. No, we collapsed on the curb with our arms quivering and our jackets and pants soaked with stuff we didn’t want to touch.
“I don’t want to be a garbage man,” said Vinnie.
It is good to get some of life’s lessons early. Vinnie was one of the few kids in that neighbourhood who stayed in school and eventually got a job where he wore a clean shirt. And he was one of the even fewer people who, when the janitor came around to empty his wastebasket, he said thanks.
“Duck and cover!”
Miss Johnson shouted it. She didn’t say, “Duck and cover,” she shouted, “Duck and cover!” louder than anything else she ever said in the classroom. She did not yell it. She demanded that we do it in a way that made us afraid not to duck and cover. It almost sounded like she was afraid.
She was talking about George Washington when she stopped in the middle of a word and shouted, “Duck and cover!”
It was the best time in school. I forgot what I was thinking about and fell off my seat and my knees hit the wooden floor and I pulled myself under my desk, which was bolted to the floor and the front of which was the back of the seat of the kid in front of me.
I put my head down and grabbed the back of my neck with my hands and closed my eyes.
“Duck and cover,” Miss Johnson yelled again, but I knew if it was for real that second time would have been too late for anyone who did not get down and duck and cover the first time.
“You did well,” said Miss Johnson. “You can get up now.”
We did not get many compliments. We climbed out from under our desks, all of us awake now, and sat with folded hands. We would hear the same lesson, but it was good because we would not get a test on it and it would take up the next ten minutes.
“If that had been a real atomic attack,” said Miss Johnson, “there would have been a bright flash out there.”
She pointed to the windows on the left. We figured the atomic attack would come at 168th Street where Goertz’s department store was.
“The windows would be blown in and if you did not have your hands over the backs of your necks, your heads might be cut off. So make sure your hands are there.”
I was thinking that if Tommy did not get his hands up in time I could see his head rolling down the aisle.
“Those Communists want to kill us,” said Miss Johnson. “If they get their way they will drop an atom bomb out there and take over our country. So we must always be ready to duck and cover and remember, the American way of life is good. The Communists are bad. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”
She had told us that Air Force bombers were taking off from bases from across the top of America heading toward Russia, “just in case they decided to do something.” They were taking off every day and night without stopping, even on Christmas.
There were some things she taught that did stick with us, but mostly those things were real and did not come from books.
“Those bombers are flown by brave men who know they will not come back if a war starts,” she said.
I thought that they were the same as the kamikaze pilots who we were told were crazy, but I didn’t say anything because she said the American pilots were brave and you would be unpatriotic if you argued with that.
Richard French raised his hand. Oh, no. We knew he would ask something we had not thought of and we would look dumb and he would look smart, even if he couldn’t walk.
“What’s it like to live in the Communist world?” he asked.
Miss Johnson smiled. Someone did have a real question.
“In Communism they work all day but they get nothing for what they do. If you were a farmer you could not own your farm. If you were a tailor you could not own your tailor shop.”
We looked at her with interest. This was better than George Washington.
“In Communism they have only potatoes and bread to eat. Would you like to eat only potatoes and bread?”
Thirty-four kids shook their heads.
“They get meat only once or twice a year. We eat it three times a day. That’s why we are better.”
I was wondering when I ate meat except for the hot dogs at night. But I was glad I did not live under Communism because I would get hot dogs only once or twice a year.
“And in Communism everyone is poor,” said Miss Johnson. “We have a great deal of wealth and none of us are poor like they are in Russia. Russia is bad.”
I was thinking that at lunch time I was told to line up with the other poor kids against the wall. We would get our peanut butter and jelly sandwich and container of milk. I did not think that was rich.
But luckily we didn’t live in China where kids were starving and because of them we should eat the crust on our bread. “How can you leave that behind when you think about all those kids starving to death?”
So I wasn’t poor, but I was told to line up because my name was on a list and I got the sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper and the milk that had pieces of wax floating inside the container. Plus the milk was warm, or room temperature since it was kept in stacks of crates in the basement from morning when it was delivered until noon when we got it.
But heck, I wasn’t going to complain because of those kids in China and because I was glad I was not living under Communism.
I once asked Miss Johnson why the starving Chinese kids didn’t eat peanut butter, but she said peanut butter was an American food, and we were lucky to have it.
On my way to school a week later I went into Matty’s to check out the candy bars. I had gotten a dollar from my aunt for Christmas and I still had not spent any of it. Matty was in front of the candy counter putting candy bars in and it was hard to squeeze by him. I looked at the comics, but right next to it was a wire rack with paperback books. I never bothered looking at them before because there were no pictures inside.
But there, right in front of my face, was a picture of a boxer in a ring with his arm being held up as the winner. He looked bloodied and sweating, but he was the champion. The title was Somebody Up There Likes Me.
I could read that, and it sounded religious, and the boxer looked strong. I bought the book, twenty-five cents, and a bottle of cream soda and a Three Musketeers.
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