“What do you need sticks for?” she asked.
“Making something?” I asked. Why did I ask when I said that? I wasn’t sure. It was the first thing that came out of my mouth and it was true, sort of, but I didn’t say it, I asked it.
“We need them for a school play.”
That was Dorothy saying that. Dorothy was not part of this. I turned and there she was, all smiling and friendly and she was a girl talking to a mother just like girls do, which is different than boys. Mothers listen to girls.
“Johnny helped us make them in your cellar and we need them to practise with.”
I halfway believed her even though I could not believe this was happening.
“Well, okay, you come and get them. But just you,” said Johnny’s mother.
Dorothy passed by Joey and I heard her whisper, “Where are they?”
“Against the wall on the opposite side from the furnace,” he whispered. “And you got to get all the linoleum too.”
She smiled and hopped up the stairs like a little girl. Johnny’s mother let her through the door, then returned to the open space and stood there in case one of us tried to rush the opening.
“Since when are you kids doing a school project?” Johnny’s mother asked.
“Oh, we love school projects,” said Vinnie. “This is an after-school project.”
In three minutes, Dorothy came out with all the guns and the linoleum squares in her hands and stuffed in her pockets.
“What kind of project is that?” asked Johnny’s mother.
“It’s a science project about moving things,” said Dorothy.
“Oh,” said Johnny’s mother. “Well, don’t break anything.”
Then she closed the door.
We could not believe Dorothy did that. She dropped everything on the sidewalk.
“Why didn’t you put the lino in a bag?” she asked.
We started picking up the guns.
“I’m taking one, too,” she said.
“You can’t,” I said. “This is not for girls.”
Dorothy grabbed one of the rifles. “I got them for you. Without me you wouldn’t have them. And besides, this is my street, too.”
Once again we couldn’t believe what she was saying. I know I couldn’t believe it and I know what everyone else was thinking because no one could believe such a thing was happening. We were now six. Six against ten or twelve was not good, but it was better than five.
“I’m going with you, too.”
We looked behind us. Vanessa was standing there looking so sweet.
“You can’t,” said Joey.
“If Dorothy can, so can I.”
“But supposed you get killed?” Jimmy Lee asked. And he asked it in a way that we had not heard him talk, ever. He really meant it.
Then I thought, I didn’t say that to Dorothy, and I wished I could turn back time, again.
“Well then, give me flowers on my grave,” she said.
Seven, which included two girls, but that was not bad.
“We better go now or we won’t have the tracks to keep them away,” said Tommy.
We walked down the street, half-running, half-excited, half-frightened, half-terrified, half-feeling like we were invincible and half-wishing we were doing our homework.
“Where did you come from?” Dorothy asked.
Johnny was standing at the fence that separated us from the tracks.
“I thought you were sick,” Joey said.
Johnny’s face was sick. He looked terrible, like he was in pain.
“I am sick. I don’t think I can hold it, but I can’t let you fight by yourselves.”
“What’d you mean you can’t hold it?” Vinnie said.
Dorothy moved in right next to Johnny like she was his mother. “It means he can’t hold it. Like he’s sick and he can’t hold it. You know what that means, don’t you?”
“Well, what are you going to do if you can’t hold it?” Vinnie asked.
Johnny looked like he did not have the strength to answer.
“Forgetaboutit,” said Joey. “He’ll hold it. He’s a real friend. You too, Dorothy, and you too, Vanessa.”
We all walked to the fence.
“But your mother’s sure going to kill you,” said Vinnie. “That is if you live through this.”
We threw our rifles over the fence and started climbing. A train was coming at the top of the hill. In a moment it was racing by with the big wheels flying. We could see it was mostly empty going to Manhattan to pick up the rush hour crowd going home, which meant we might get this whole fight done without many people watching us.
We climbed the hill and as our heads got to the top, just level with the tracks, zap. A piece of linoleum went flying just over us. Then another, and another.
We took cover, laying flat on the hill. When I looked up, I saw an army. There were more than twelve. I don’t know how many. Maybe fifteen. Oh, God. Zap, zap, zap. The sharp squares were flying overhead. We could not even get up.
I loaded my rifle and tried to poke it up and fire, but I know my shot was very high. I know that because I wasn’t aiming at them. To do that, I would have to point the gun at them and that would mean I would have to get up high enough to see them and if I did that, I would have only one eye.
Zap, bang. Some of their shots were hitting the tracks right in front of us. Joey and Vinnie were getting up on their knees and shooting, then falling back down to reload.
“Owww.”
That was Jimmy Lee. Then I saw him get up and shoot anyway.
I got on my knees and fired again, but this time I saw they were coming across the tracks. They had little need to hide since we were only firing a handful of times.
Bang, zap, bang, “owww.”
This time it was Vinnie. He was holding his face.
Dorothy and Vanessa were together. They both got up, shot, then got down.
“I want to help.” The voice came from behind us. I looked down the hill. It was Buster.
“Get one of the guns,” I said.
In a minute he was laying beside me, loading, then popping up and firing, then dropping down and loading again and jumping up. He looked like some soldier I had seen in a movie once. He didn’t look like he was afraid of anything.
“Owwwwww.” That was me. “Owwwwww.” I grabbed my stomach. “Owwwwww.” I meant it. That hurt. It went right through my shirt and was stinging like crazy.
I put another piece of lino in my gun and this time I took careful aim. The pain in my stomach made me want to hit someone. I eased the rubber up over the nail and watched it go.
“Owwwww.”
I got somebody. Ha. But my stomach still hurt.
And now we had a problem. “Fire faster,” said Joey. They were in the middle ground between the two sets of tracks. They were only about twenty-five feet away and they could crouch down now in the hollow of the ground.
We were firing. They were firing. Then we could hear another train coming from our left and heading for Manhattan.
“Load up,” Joey shouted. “When it passes, everyone shoot at once.”
“What happens if they attack after that?” Jimmy Lee shouted back.
“We hit them with our guns,” Joey shouted, but suddenly it was quiet. The train had gone. We had not loaded up fast enough. Dorothy and Vanessa stood up and shot, but now they were coming.
For the first time, I was really scared. I pulled my rubber band back, hooked it over the nail, and put one more piece of lino into it. This would be my last shot. Then it was hand to hand and we didn’t have a chance.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!”
I heard the screaming from behind us.
“I’ll show them what we do in the real Army.”
It was Stan. Stan, who was rotten and mean and miserable and big and strong and older and crazy, was running up the hill.
At the top, he grabbed some of the rocks by the side of the tracks and started throwing them.
“This is how I threw hand grenades,” he yelled as he scooped up more rocks and threw them so fast he had no time to wind up. He just fired them.
“You can’t use rocks,” we heard Rocky yell. “Rocks are not in zip gun wars.”
Stan heard the voice and his aim was a lot better than most of us who had really good aim.
“Jeeeze, owwww!”
Rocky was hit. Then Stan threw another one. Same target.
“OWWWW!!”
I don’t know where he hit him, but I could hear that it was a hit and that was better than I had done.
It took a moment for us to get over our shock at having Stan with us, but we loaded up and fired, then I grabbed some rocks and I saw Johnny standing up throwing rocks and Buster was throwing them faster than I could believe.
Jimmy Lee was still shooting, but he was standing now and taking careful aim and zap, hit, “owwww.” Zap, “owwww.” Hit. He scored again.
Rocky’s gang was retreating back across the tracks. We could hear a train coming from the other direction, from the city with the first of the rush hour commuters going home. Rocky’s guys either had to stay where they were and get hammered by us, mostly by Stan, or try to get back across the tracks before the train came. They had only a second to move or it would be too late and they would either be killed by us or really be killed by the train.
We kept throwing. They turned away and ran. God. That was close. They all made it before the train came.
Then we saw someone still in the hollow lying on the stones on this side of the tracks.
“Don’t shoot. I give up.”
We could barely hear him. The train had not finished ripping by yet. But we could see his hands up, surrendering.
Rocky? Is that him?
The train passed. Rocky was on his knees with his hands up.
“I give up. Don’t shoot. You won.”
Rocky? Really?
“Don’t,” pleaded Rocky.
Stan was standing ten feet away with a rock cocked back in his arm.
“Don’t,” said Dorothy.
“He’s a prisoner of war,” said Stan.
“Let him go,” said Joey.
Stan lowered his arm.
Another train was coming on our side. We backed up.
“Go back to your own street,” shouted Joey.
Rocky got up and after the train on his side passed, he crossed the tracks in retreat just before the train came from our left in front of us. We stood at the top edge of the hill just three steps back from the giant wheels. The wind was scary and fierce, as always.
We said nothing. We couldn’t say anything because we couldn’t hear anything we might have said if we did say something. But we all wanted to say something.
Then the train was gone. “Did you see that? Did you, huh?”
“We won. They lost.”
All our voices were mixed together.
“Why are you here, Stan? And thanks, Stan. You saved us, Stan.”
We said everything at once. Then we heard from across the tracks, “It’s not over. We’ll get you next time.”
Darn, just when we thought everything would be good.
“You try it,” shouted Joey. “We’re better than you any day.”
Then we sort of climbed, but mostly fell and rolled down the hill and climbed the fence, just in time to hear the sirens.
“Hurry,” someone shouted and we did. “Forget the guns, just leave them,” said Joey. “Go home, and good luck, Johnny.”
Everyone scattered and by the time the first police car got to the end of the street, no one was there.
“Where have you been? What have you been doing? How’d you get so dirty? Where’d you get those cuts? Why are you hanging around with those rotten kids?”
The same questions in every house, except Stan’s. His mother just asked if he had a good day.
He nodded. She was happy.
I looked at my stomach behind the closed bathroom door. I had been cut right through my shirt, which was ripped. I had a big, red welt right above my belt. I put some soap on it so I wouldn’t get polio and it stung even more.
We would trade stories the next day. Vinnie had a scar on his face for the rest of his life.
But that night there were smiles in every house, even when we were being yelled at. And once our hearts stopped pounding, which was not until long after we lay down, everyone said they had incredible dreams.
Them Wonderful Bums
“The Bums are still winning,” I said to Jimmy Lee.
“Can’t last,” he said.
We were swimming, just the two of us. Fishing had been bad. We hadn’t caught anything worth talking about for a long time and it was getting dangerous arguing with the drivers who wanted to park over our sewers.
“Can’t park here,” I’d say. “We’re fishing.”
One day, a driver got out of his car and said, “I’m not even counting to three. I’m just backing up. If you’re still there, I’ll say I didn’t see you.”
He got in and we heard the gears grind as he put it into reverse. Then he started backing up.
“You think he’s really going to kill us?” Jimmy Lee asked.
“Naaah. He’s just bluffing.”
He wasn’t. The car came back without a brake light and we both jumped, Jimmy Lee onto the sidewalk, and me onto the street. The two bumpers clunked together.
“Hey, you bum, you coulda killed us,” I shouted.
He stuck his head out the window. He had a cigarette in his mouth. “Where’d you come from?” he said in pretend shock.
I hated him even more.
“I didn’t see anyone back there. Were you hiding on the street? Cause that’s what I’d tell the cops, you were hiding and I checked in the mirror and there’s no way I could have seen you.”
Then he laughed.
So we went swimming. No one was going to kill us here in the ocean.
“What do you think the ocean’s really like?” asked Jimmy Lee.
I shrugged. “Like this, with ice cream factories and trains. I think everywhere’s like this.”
We looked down at the snowmen in their parkas having coffee and cigarettes. They were staring at us. We stared at them. We were not going to be out-stared.
“Hey, Jimmy Lee, did you see him?”
“Who?”
“The one staring harder than the others are staring.”
“Yeah,” he said.
One snowman was smoking and staring.
“You think he wants us to come down?”
I looked down. He was still staring, then he stood up, put his Thermos back into his lunch box, flipped his cigarette out into the street and walked back into the factory. He took one last look at us before he walked inside.
“They’re kind of scary, especially him,” said Jimmy Lee.
“I know they’re strong, but they couldn’t catch us in here,” I said. Then I dove down into the hard boxes with edges that jammed into my sides.
“This is great,” I said underwater to Jimmy Lee.
“I can dive better than you,” he said. Then he went down and I went down chasing him.
“Hey, you guys, hey, I want to tell you something.”
It was Vinnie standing outside the boxes. He knew we were here because he could see the boxes moving. We swam over to the fence and grabbed the chain links and stuck our faces up against it. But we were about ten feet up and Vinnie was almost five feet below us.
“What’d you want?” I said.
“Come on down lower so I can talk to you,” he said.
“Naah, you climb up here. I’m tired of swimming,” I said.
The truth was that swimming through the boxes was the most wonderful thing in the world, but it also was the hardest. Pushing the boxes aside to crawl through them was okay when you were trying to escape with chocolate wafers or were following Dorothy
, but it was not worth it just to talk to Vinnie.
“No, you come down here,” he said.
Vinnie had the news, whatever it was, and he did not want to climb the fence to tell us.
“You come up here,” Jimmy Lee said.
“No,” said Vinnie. “If you want to know what I’m going to say, you got to come down here.”
“No,” I said, “If you want to tell us, you got to come up here.”
But I knew I would go down there because news was more important than swimming. And besides, Vinnie was heavier than any of us and so climbing the fence was harder for him. It was because he had pasta every night, and he had pasta for breakfast. That was the leftover pasta from the night before. And then he had pasta for lunch.
“I could eat pasta every day,” he said.
“But you do eat pasta every day,” all of us said.
“Pasta is my favourite.”
“Don’t you like potatoes?” we asked.
“Sure I like potatoes. Sometimes I have them with my pasta, but mostly I like pasta.”
We had no idea that potatoes and pasta could change the way you looked. We only knew that Vinnie was bigger than all of us and he had pasta every day. And because he was bigger, he did not like climbing.
“I have a secret, a super secret and the only way you’re going to hear is down here.”
“Don’t care,” I tried one more time just in case he would climb up. “And what’s the big secret anyway?”
“The Dodgers are moving.”
He shouted it up to us.
“What!”
That was impossible.
“Moving where? When?” I asked while trying to kick my way down. I was now surrounded by boxes, but this was terrible news and I had to know.
Vinnie shouted into the cardboard, “Los Angeles,” he said.
“Where’s that?” I shouted through the boxes.
“California.”
I pushed two boxes aside and suddenly was face to face with Vinnie. That was scary because either I had to swim to the hole in the other end of the fence and then I had to find the hole, or I had to swim all the way up because I was almost at the bottom.
“Where’s California?” I asked.
“It’s as far as you can go. It’s way past all those other states.”
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