Then they all pulled and the tree came up with its roots holding on to rotting newspapers. It was like they said in the newspapers when they wrote about a body that was being dragged out of the East River after they got the grappling hooks on it.
“That’s terrible,” said Dorothy. “You guys are mean.”
“Girly, watch your mouth,” said the man. “Now all of you, just get out of here and let us do our work.”
We looked at the tree lying on its side. Its branches were now reaching for a tire on the truck. One of the men took a saw and cut the trunk in half, then threw the severed parts of our forest into the back of the truck.
We stood still, saying nothing. They put back the grating and drove away. We looked down in the hole. There were still piles of newspapers and cigarette packs and soda bottles, but no tree.
“That’s what happened to my father,” said Buster. “The police came in the middle of the night and took him away. He did some crime or something, I don’t know what. My mother told me not to tell anyone, but it’s like that tree. It didn’t do nothing. I never saw it do nothing, and then they took it.”
“Sorry, Buster,” said Vanessa. “Maybe someday your father will come back and you can tell him how you tried to protect the tree.”
We walked down to the other end of the block. We did not want to flip cards or toss pennies, or anything. We just sat on the curb and talked about the tree.
“It was a real beauty,” said Buster. “When I grow up, I’m going to plant a whole lot of sumacs and nobody is going to touch them.”
Missing the Train
The weather was getting warm and Tommy was playing box ball with Johnny. It was a close game. The ball was flying back and forth and they were hopping and hitting fast.
They stood way back behind two squares on the sidewalk. It wasn’t gentle hitting. They were about ten feet apart slamming the ball into their opponent’s square.
“Over the line,” shouted Tommy.
“Did not,” said Johnny.
“Did.”
“Did not.”
“Do over,” said Tommy.
They started again. If you were feeling lazy you could have a gentle game of hitting the ball back and forth and back and forth, sort of like passing time by kicking a can down the street, but that would be a stupid thing to do because playing box ball was neat. Half an hour could go by and you were still concentrating on hitting the ball into the other guy’s box. Years later we would see tennis.
“Hey, that’s box ball.” They stole it from us.
“You want to see the new bowling alley?” asked Buster.
He was hanging around with us more now and he was fun because he had new ideas, like hang your legs over the edge of the station on the elevated train line and see if you could pull them back before the train came.
“I’m not scared,” I would say. “If you do it, I’ll do it.”
I was scared like crazy, but you can’t say that. And besides, I was sure I had gotten too big to crawl under the turnstile so I couldn’t get up to the station to play. Buster was much smaller than all of us and he squirmed on the concrete floor of the station and easily slid under the big steel revolving gate. It looked more like a drum with indentations to fit into as you pushed your way around to the other side after you put your dime in the slot.
We waited until no one was around and slid flat as you could. When you got older, or bigger, like me, you had to turn your head sideways and lay your cheek on the ground and then breathe out and pull hard because you were really wedged under the revolving entrance.
That’s where I was when the train came in, except I wasn’t moving. Darn. I tried to go forward, but when you get scared you have to breathe and when I started breathing I got stuck tighter. I tried not to breathe, but the train’s brakes were screeching which they did when it was stopping. I had to take a little breath. The station rocked. The train had stopped. I could hear the doors opening. I could hear the shoes on the metal steps.
I was going to be caught and someone would call the police from the emergency phone right there, right where I could see it if I moved my head even slightly, but I didn’t want to move because my head would get jammed under the steel door the same as my bottom was jammed.
The police would come and arrest me and my mother would be really mad and yell at me. She was still mad at me for missing school and told me not to do anything bad again. “Nothing, do you hear me, nothing.”
Then she added, if I did do something to get her mad again, “I would never know what hit me.”
I didn’t know. But that was a heavy duty threat, and now the thing I didn’t know was going to hit me was actually going to hit me because I was doing something bad again.
“What are you doing there, kid? Get out of the way.”
I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him. He was behind me on the other side of the turnstile.
“I got to make that train.”
“I can’t move,” I said.
“That’s your problem,” he said.
I heard the dime fall into the slot and then the turnstile started moving. He was going to push me right around and I would be a pretzel bent on the bottom. On top of that my mother would still hit me.
I felt his shoes inching ahead alongside my legs and the turnstile moving above me. I was trying to pull with my fingernails and he kept pushing and I was being pushed out like something coming back up your throat when you didn’t chew it enough.
I popped out and he stepped over me just as the doors burst open and a crowd of people who had come off the train were rushing home. They always rushed. Every day they rushed even though they got the same train every day. Sometimes we would sit on the bottom steps and talk and read comics and the people would yell at us for blocking their way. They always said they were in a hurry, even though they came home at the same time every day.
They rushed in as I was getting up on my knees.
“You okay, kid?”
“Nah, I was just tying my shoelaces.”
“You better not be trying to sneak onto the train,” said one man. “The police will get you.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just tying my laces.”
“Just warning you, kid.”
Then he was gone. Buster was waiting for me on the platform at the top of the second set of stairs.
“What took you so long? We already missed a train.”
“I got stuck.”
“That means you’re going to have to start paying.”
It was one of those shocks of reality, something you didn’t think about each time you slipped under the turnstile. Growing up comes with a price.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
He sat down on the concrete platform and hung his legs over the edge.
“You sit like this and see how close the train can get before you pull them back.”
“What happens if you miss?”
“Ahhh, don’t worry. You won’t. It’s just a game.”
So we sat a few feet apart and waited. A couple of people walked by behind us and looked at us, but said nothing.
Buster was sitting to my left, which meant the train would get to him first. That was okay with me because he would be hit first and I would have time to get away. It would only be half a second, but it would be time.
Then Buster got up and walked around behind me and sat down to my right.
“Why you going there?” I asked.
“Because I want to. I like this better.”
We sat for a minute saying nothing when I got up and walked around behind him and sat down.
“Why’d you move?”
“Cause.”
“Why?”
“Cause I want to.”
Then we could hear the train. It always started as a low rumble. You got so used to it that if you were on the street you just automatically started raising your voice. But when you were waiting for it to come so you could get somewhere, you felt
relief at that sound.
I was not feeling relieved. I was thinking that if I don’t pull my legs out in time I will have to go around on crutches for the rest of my life with my stumps dangling below me and I would never be able to play stickball again or walk with Dorothy.
But if I pulled them back Buster would think I was a chicken.
I kept them there. The train was about five seconds away from reaching the end of the station. We were in the middle of the station. I could see the engineer through his window. He was shaking his head. No horn. What’s the point? Just more stupid kids doing stupid things.
The train was at the edge of the station. It would be here in three seconds.
“One, two,” I thought, quickly. I counted faster than I usually counted when trying to count seconds, then pulled my legs back and rolled onto my back.
Buster was already away from the edge.
“Chicken,” I shouted.
“I came off the same time as you,” he said.
“Did not.”
“Did so.”
We stood up and watched the people getting off the train. It was the beginning of rush hour and lots got off. They pushed past us because they were in a hurry.
“Want to do it again?” asked Buster.
“Naaah. That’s boring. Let’s go read comics.”
Delivering the News
School is what school always is, confusing: “All you need to know about Africa is ABC,” said Miss Johnson, “A black continent.” She did not laugh or make any other comment. “As for the Low countries, the people are very clean.”
She held up a picture of a woman scrubbing her front steps. “They clean their steps every day in Holland. And they wear wooden shoes.”
This was mindboggling. Wooden shoes would be impossible to walk in and cleaning every day would be impossible to do. Besides, I’ve never seen Mrs. Kreuscher scrub the front steps.
“And now we are going onto current affairs,” said Miss Johnson. “Do any of you know what’s in the news?”
“The Dodgers are doing well, Miss Johnson,” said a kid in the back.
“Yeah, they might get a pennant,” said another kid.
“Don’t be crazy,” said a girl. “The Dodgers are never going to win.”
Then everyone was talking. It was not like this at other times. No one talked, but now everyone was.
“They are.”
“They can’t.”
“Will.”
“Won’t.”
“Stop!” shouted Miss Johnson.
Miss Johnson raised her voice? She only did that when the Russians were attacking. We stopped.
“That’s better,” she said. “We were talking about current events.”
“The Dodgers are current,” said Dorothy.
We loved the Dodgers, but now I loved them more than you could ever begin to tell. I loved them more than life or stickball or maybe seeing Vanessa naked. Before this I didn’t know Dorothy liked them. She had not sat outside the bar on the sidewalk watching games.
“But the Dodgers are just sports. We should talk about things that are important, like Winston Churchill stepping down.”
There was silence in the classroom. We were back to things from different worlds. We knew what was important in the news. Miss Johnson did not.
“Mickey Mantle hit his one hundredth homer in the summer,” someone said.
“Boooo.” There was an onslaught of boos. Mickey Mantle may be the best hitter in the history of baseball, but he was a Yankee and no one in Brooklyn or Queens would ever say anything good about the Yankees.
We knew about the play, Damn Yankees. None of us had ever seen it, but we heard about it and we knew what they were talking about.
One guy hated the Yankees so much that he sold his soul to the devil so that they would not win the pennant. They always won the pennant and this guy wanted just once to stop them. A soul is nothing compared to seeing the Yankees lose.
The other thing about the play was it was the only time we were allowed to say “Damn” around adults and no one said anything.
“But that is not real news,” Miss Johnson said.
One kid in the back raised his hand. There were kids talking now who had never talked before.
“But it’s in the newspaper, so it must be news,” he said.
A boy on the other side of the classroom stuck up his hand but started talking before he was called on. “There’s a newspaper in Brooklyn that said we shouldn’t call them ‘Bums.’”
“Dos Bums,” shouted kids from all over the classroom and everyone started laughing.
“Dos Bums don’t never win,” said a couple more kids.
We knew the lines. We knew what the men said when they would stand on the corner at nine at night when the first editions of the News and the Mirror would be dropped off and they would flip the papers over so they would see the back page first.
“Lost again, dos Bums,” they would say while standing under the street light with the train going overhead.
“Wad you say? I couldn’t hear you,” another man would say who was drinking a can of beer that he got from the deli. The can was in a small brown paper bag because it was against the law to drink in public, but if you hid the can no one said anything.
We knew he wasn’t a real fan because who would spend time buying beer before finding out if the Dodgers won or not?
“Dey lost, dos Bums,” a guy with the newspaper would repeat.
“Dos Bums,” said the man with the can and then he took another swig to ease his pain.
Sometimes the men would see us hanging out on the corner about seven o’clock and they would ask us to go down to Lefferts Boulevard to get the papers. That was the first place they were dropped off, at the Stand.
“You two kids, you wanna get the papers for us?” said one guy another night. “The News and the Mirror. Here’s a quarter.”
He flipped Vinnie and me the coin.
“Keep the change. But you better get back here before the trucks or I’ll wring your necks and squeeze the quarter out of you.”
That was a good deal. Fifteen cents tip for only an hour of walking.
There was a sign over the paper, and smokes and a beer shack saying meet me at the stand. It was a small building with a Long Island Rail Road trestle going right over its flat roof. There was only about one foot of space between the roof and the trestle so it was very noisy when a big passenger train went overhead. And over that trestle was the El, so you had two trestles passing right over the newsstand with sometimes two, and sometimes four trains going by at once.
“What’d you say?”
“I said you want to get a Coke while we wait for the papers?” I shouted at Vinnie who was standing next to me.
“The papers aren’t here yet,” he shouted back, but then the trains were gone. He didn’t hear the Coke part. Being under the tracks is harder than being on the wrong side of them.
“I said,” I started to shout but then didn’t. Sometimes you felt stupid shouting when there were no trains. The trucks were still noisy, but they were just raise-your-voice noisy, not shouting noisy. “I said, do you want a Coke while we wait?”
“You crazy? Suppose the papers come while we’re drinking and we wait to finish our Cokes before we leave and the truck gets to our street before we do. Suppose that, huh?”
Right. If we didn’t get back before the papers were delivered to our street not only would we be dead, but we would never get this job again and then we wouldn’t get the fifteen cents tip again. Fifteen cents was enough for two small Cokes, even Cherry Cokes, which cost six cents each. Or we might get a Vanilla Coke, but that you only did when you were with a girl. I don’t know why.
But with the mixed drinks, you had to drink them there because you had to sit at the counter and get them in a Coke glass. If we got a bottle to go it was ten cents and then we had to split it, which was okay so long as no one took more than they should.
A truck
pulled up at the curb. It said the News on the side. Right behind it was the Mirror. A couple of large guys riding in the back of each of them started throwing bundles of papers onto the sidewalk and one of the guys from the Stand was out there with a pair of tin snips cutting through the wire around the bundles. There were lineups of people waiting to buy them and they didn’t want to wait until the guy got the wire off. They grabbed papers and pushed the coins at the poor fellow who was trying to move the papers away from the curb.
There was little news on the radio, and no evening news on the tv, even for those who had tvs, except for a guy who would sit behind a desk and smoke Camels and read the newspaper stories. So why wait for that when you had it here in your hand?
We grabbed a paper from each stack and went inside and got a bottle of Coke and left with a nickel change. Then we started walking. It was eighteen blocks back and if we walked really fast we could do it in twenty-five minutes, although that would mean some running and we couldn’t do that and drink our Coke. It was all under the El but we still managed to talk. There were fewer trains at night.
“Where do you think the bottle came from?” Vinnie asked.
“Don’t know. And we can’t tell ’til we finish it.”
“Yeah, but where do you think? I want to save one from every state, but my mother keeps throwing them out.”
Coke bottles were reused over and over until the word Coke, which you could feel even in the dark, was worn out. But on the bottom of each bottle was the name of the state where it came from.
“I got New Jersey,” Jimmy Lee once said when he turned it over to see, but the bottle was open and his Coke ran down on his shoes.
“You goof,” we said. “That wasn’t worth Jersey, everyone gets Jersey.”
“Yeah, well I once got one from Florida,” said Joey. “I don’t know how it got here. I bet it was a truck driver.”
“Where’s Florida?” asked Jimmy Lee.
“It’s in the south somewhere, because it’s warm. You can swim all year round,” said Joey. “My mother said my uncle bought some property there but it was swamp land.”
No one said anything for a moment as we tried to picture what a swamp was.
Cardboard Ocean Page 20