Cardboard Ocean

by Mike McCardell

  “That’s impossible,” said Tommy. “Brooklyn can’t win, they’re Brooklyn. And besides, we can’t see it, we can’t hear it, we can’t nothing.”

  He looked so despairing, but he was right. We could not skip another day from school, even for the seventh game. One more day, just one I was warned, and I would be in the same grade next year and then everyone would be younger than me and they would know I was too dumb to move on. So not even one more day, even for the seventh game.

  “The game will still be going on when we get out,” said Vinnie. “We can make it to the bar if we run real fast.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Joey. “The bar’ll be packed. Even the men will be standing at the door.”

  We knew we had the radio. We didn’t have to say that. But the radio was not fun when you were alone, not for baseball. For The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid and especially The Shadow, the radio was great when you were alone. You could sit and close your eyes and see everything. You didn’t want anyone yelling then.

  But for baseball, you had to have cheering and someone else’s face to look at while waiting for the pitch. The problem was none us could bring all of us home to listen so the bar was the best place, even if we couldn’t see or hear the game. At least outside the door we could hear the men cheering and shouting and they would tell us what was happening and it would be like being at the game with a lot of big guys sitting in front of you.

  We passed the cardboard ocean and walked under the El and tried to talk but the trains were still busy with rush hour. Then we got up to where the Long Island Rail Road trestle went under the tracks of the El. It was like the Stand except there was no stand to buy papers from and so no one ever just stood there. You walked under them but it was neat to be there when trains on both levels were going by at the same time.

  Once, and only once, did we walk under them when four trains went by overhead all at the same time, two Long Island trains and above them, two trains on the El. That was a great moment.

  Four trains at once. We talked about that almost every time we walked under the trestles, because that doesn’t happen every day, or even twice in a lifetime. Amazing things you never forgot, like the seventh game of the World Series when Brooklyn was playing the damn Yankees and we would miss at least half the game, and then we would go home and listen to it alone.

  “It’s not fair. If Brooklyn and the Yankees play next year, I’m going to take off even if I get left behind,” said Jimmy Lee.

  “Me too,” said Joey.

  So I said, “Me too.”

  Then Dorothy said, “I’ll come with you.”

  Did she say that to me, or to us? I didn’t care. She might have said it to me.

  “Yeah, that’d be great,” I said. “We could go and the heck with school. We could see Jackie Robinson in the World Series.”

  “Do you think he’ll still be playing next year?” asked Joey.

  “I don’t know, but he might,” said Dorothy. “But his batting average is slipping, you know.”

  Just like the boys, Dorothy knew his average.

  Then a pair of trains went over our heads and the talk should have stopped. It always did, but this was about the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson so we went on shouting, “I think the Bums will win.”

  “What?”

  “I think the Bums will . . . ” then the trains passed and Vinnie finished the sentence with, “WIN!”

  We laughed. Trains made talking fun. We went on walking but as we got closer to school, we talked less and less. We walked with our heads down into the classroom. It looked the same. It always looked the same, every classroom in every public school in the city looked the same. The same desks with the same initials carved into them bolted into the same floor. We knew it was a different floor in other classrooms, but they all had the same worn-out wood and we knew the initials were different, but with so many initials carved from so many kids, the letters were always getting repeated. If you read any one desk you knew eventually everyone sat there.

  And there were the letters in capital and lower case printed on squares of paper and stuck above the blackboard. The teacher’s desk was always at the front close to the windows.

  Nothing different to distract us.

  “I have an announcement to make,” said Miss Johnson.

  This would be bad.

  There was nothing to distract us. We sat down. Nothing new, like talking about the game or listening to the lineup and listening to the commercials that said, “Hey, getyourcoldbeer.”

  For the first two years I heard that, I did not know what they were saying. I thought it was, “Hey, get your cobia.” And I did not know what a cobia was, but I was too embarrassed to ask. So I said, “Hey, getyourcobia” along with everyone else.

  And we could not listen to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which we did know the words to. Those were drilled into our heads. During the War of 1812, a guy named Francis Scott Key was a prisoner on a British ship and he saw the cannons shooting all night at an American fort and in the morning the flag was still there.

  We had a lot of problems with this. First, it was hard to keep up with the wars: the Revolutionary War, the French and Indian War, the Civil War, the War with Mexico, the Spanish American War, the Indian Wars, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Cold War. We were always at war.

  “Those other countries want to beat us because we are a peaceful nation,” said Miss Johnson.

  And then there was the War of 1812 with Francis Scott Key. We figured they ran out of names when they got to that one.

  But most of all it was Francis Scott Key and his song that confused us. It’s a strange name, we said. Nobody is called by three names, and if he was a prisoner of the British, how come he could stand on the deck and watch the cannons? Prisoners were kept in prison, below decks, and they did not have paper and a pen which he had to dip into an ink bottle.

  Miss Johnson said he was a special prisoner and was treated kindly. We knew this was baloney because we had heard stories of the British prison ships in the Revolutionary War that were anchored in New York’s harbour and they were filled with thousands of American soldiers who were left there to starve and rot and die of thirst.

  So we did not trust this story of the guy with three names. But we still learned the words because we had to sing them every week in the auditorium with Miss Flag playing the piano and if anyone wasn’t singing, he was pulled out and brought to Miss Flag’s office and when she came back from the assembly he had to sing them, or stay there until he learned them.

  And we also learned the Pledge of Allegiance, but that we learned in the first grade and said it every morning. Except this year we had to add, “Under God,” in the pledge. President Eisenhower wanted “Under God” so we wanted it too. Because anything Ike wanted, we wanted, especially Eisenhower jackets which only came down to your belt. We got those at the Army Surplus store and our mothers all said they were useless because our bottoms would get cold, but on the other hand, if this was what Ike wore it must be good because Ike saved us from the Nazis.

  But the thing we wanted even more than an Eisenhower jacket was a picture of the salute to the American flag from before the war. The first time Joey saw it cut from the front page of a magazine and hanging in the back of a closet, he couldn’t believe it.

  In ten minutes, he had called every kid on the block in to see it. We walked out of the closet in disbelief.

  “It couldn’t be.”

  But it was.

  They were giving the Nazi salute to the American flag. And this was in an American classroom. We could tell because it looked like ours, with no distractions, except for the salute.

  We asked Miss Johnson.

  “They changed that when I was in school, before any of you were born. In 1942, we were at war with the Nazis and their salute looked like our salute,” she said.

  She told us the pledge back then started with their hands on their hearts, but on the last line everyone ra
ised their hands out to the flag.

  “We weren’t going to look like the Nazis,” she said. “So we stopped doing that and everyone was told to throw out all the pictures that showed it.”

  We looked at Joey.

  “What happened if you still had the picture?” Jimmy Lee asked Miss Johnson.

  “People thought you were a traitor or a spy and you probably were.”

  We looked at Joey again.

  “Do you know where one of those pictures are?” asked Miss Johnson.

  We looked back at her, so guilty she could read the answer.

  “No, Miss Johnson. We just heard about it.”

  We all talked at once.

  “Never saw one, not once.”

  Joey’s father might have been a spy and a traitor, but Joey wasn’t and we knew the Nazis’ kids always turned in their parents when they suspected them. We were not going to do that to Joey. But it made us know how you don’t know anything even when you think you know everything. That was one of those lessons you don’t get in school, and we could talk to Joey later.

  “So long as we are asking questions,” said Miss Johnson, “would you like to tell me, Mickey, how it is you say you go to the Mediterranean in the summer when you clearly have never even been to Manhattan?”

  “Because that’s where we go,” I said, wishing I could say I had been to Manhattan. “And my mother goes to Manhattan, every day.”

  “But not the Mediterranean. And if you don’t tell me the truth, I will have to send you to Miss Flag’s office for the rest of the day again.”

  Might as well, I thought. The Dodgers were going to play the Yankees. I could not hear it. I could not see it. I could not imagine it because this would be the greatest day in history and I would have to tell everyone I spent the first couple of innings, maybe right up to the seventh inning stretch when we could hear the crowd on the radio singing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” in the big chair outside of Miss Flag’s office looking at the wall with the pictures of Washington and Lincoln.

  “But we do swim in the Mediterranean,” I said.

  “Alright, go to the office,” said Miss Johnson.

  “But that’s where we go. You said so,” I said.

  “Me? I never . . . ”

  “Yes, you did. You were teaching geography last year and you said you were going to tell us about Greece. That was when a train went by and we didn’t hear anything you said after that, but we know Greeks, lots of them.”

  I was bubbling. I was telling the truth.

  “They have long mustaches and big eyebrows and they work in the ice cream factory.”

  Miss Johnson was shaking her head. “Those are not the Greeks I was talking about. I was talking about the classical Greeks who gave us the modern world.”

  A train was coming so we both stopped talking. Then we each tried to start ahead of each other as it was passing.

  “The Greeks gave us culture,” said Miss Johnson.

  “The Greeks lived by the Mediterranean, you said,” I said, trying to say it before she said something else.

  “Yes, I did. The Mediterranean Sea is next to Greece.”

  “Well, our ocean is not a sea it’s an ocean and it’s next to the Greeks so it’s the Mediterranean Ocean.”

  “What ocean? The Mediterranean is a sea.” Miss Johnson was so confused she almost looked like I always looked when she said something that I did not understand.

  “The ocean we swim in,” I said.

  “Coney Island?” she asked.

  “No, the cardboard ocean. The boxes next to the ice cream factory. The Greeks put the boxes behind the fence, so that’s the Mediterranean.”

  She said nothing. It was good to be a teacher, I thought, since that was me now.

  “Cardboard boxes?” she asked.

  Teaching was hard. I nodded.

  “Cardboard boxes that you swim in?”

  I smiled and nodded again. Joey put up his hand.

  “We swim in them all summer,” he said. “We have two weeks to go before they close for the winter.”

  The Cardboard Ocean was along this wall. The cardboard was behind a fenced-in area and piled right to the roof. Now the factory makes pipes and there is barbed wire where we used to dive from. The fence is gone, the cardboard is gone—it’s like looking at an ancient dried-up ocean.

  She looked at Joey like he was speaking another language, but I know she understood him because he was speaking English even though he secretly might speak German at home.

  “Don’t you swim in the real ocean?”

  She looked at me, and Jimmy Lee and Vinnie and Dorothy and Tommy and Joey and Vanessa and Johnny and Buster.

  We looked back. We said nothing. She said nothing. This was the showdown in P.S. 54. The moment of truth. The awakening. The moment when we realized we were together and Miss Johnson was from another world that knew nothing about our world.

  “No,” Vinnie said.

  “No,” Dorothy said.

  “Never?” asked Miss Johnson.

  “Never seen the ocean,” said Vinnie.

  “But it’s at the bottom of Brooklyn. It’s not far.”

  “Never been there, Miss Johnson,” said Vanessa. “But we’ve heard of it.”

  “Not even once?”

  We all stared back. If anyone had ever been there they didn’t say so, but we didn’t think anyone had.

  “In cardboard?” asked Miss Johnson, and then a train started coming and at last the showdown was over because the noise had taken away the shootout of disbelief. We swam in cardboard boxes and that was all there was to it and the boxes were our ocean and the ocean was named the Mediterranean because Greeks worked in the factory and Miss Johnson said Greece was next to the Mediterranean. What was hard to understand?

  “Mickey, you will not go to the principal’s office today.”

  Then Miss Johnson said she had a treat for us. We did not get treats except at Halloween, and once I got a whole box of Cracker Jacks from an old man in the lobby of an apartment building and that was the greatest moment of my life, except when I saw Dorothy and Jackie Robinson.

  “I know how much you want to hear the start of the game today,” she said.

  Then she turned her back on us and picked up a bag that was behind her desk.

  “I know I am not supposed to do this, but I thought you deserved it, especially when you all tell the truth.”

  She put down the bag and put her hands into it, pulling out a radio. We sucked in thirty-six breaths. The last thing she brought to show us was the celery and she wanted everyone to know that.

  “I don’t want you to tell anyone,” she said.

  This was impossible. Not impossible to keep a secret, but impossible that she was asking us to keep a secret. She was a teacher. Teachers did not act like real people who told secrets. And teachers did not bring radios into the classroom when they were not supposed to because that was against the rules and teachers did not break the rules.

  “Do you mean we can listen to the game?” Dorothy shouted. Dorothy never shouted.

  Miss Johnson smiled.

  “Really? Honest?” thirty-five other kids shouted.

  “Shhhhhh,” said Miss Johnson.

  She put the radio on the windowsill and plugged in the cord. She started turning the dial until she heard the voice of Red Barber.

  “This will be a game you will never forget,” he said.

  We knew the voice. It was the voice of the Dodgers for years until it became the voice of the Yankees, the damn Yankees.

  The men in the bar said he was a traitor, but it was the same voice and he said, “Back, back, back, that ball is gone,” in the same way.

  We stared at Miss Johnson. The game was almost ready to start.

  “And now our national anthem,” said the Old Redhead.

  “We should all stand,” said Miss Johnson.

  Thirty-six kids got out of their seats and with music from the radio we sang “The Star-Sp
angled Banner.” A train was coming.

  “ . . . the bombs bursting in air.”

  It was hard to hear the bombs bursting in air.

  We got louder.

  “Gave proof through the night . . . ”

  The train got closer. We raised our voices.

  “ . . . that our flag was still there.”

  The train was at the edge of the building.

  “Oh, say does that . . . ”

  The train was right outside the windows, blotting us out.

  “ . . . star-spangled banner . . . ”

  We fought back and yelled the words.

  “ . . . yet wave . . . ”

  The train filled the room.

  “over the land of the free . . . ”

  We could hear us. The train was there, but we could hear us.

  “ . . . and the home of the brave.”

  We won. We could hear ourselves. We beat the train. And then the train was gone which would have left the room quiet except Miss Johnson started clapping and the people on the radio were cheering and we started clapping and cheering.

  “Shhhh, we don’t want Miss Flag to hear us.”

  Miss Johnson held up both hands and for the first time I could remember we got quiet, instantly.

  We sat, we listened, most of us staring at the radio but seeing the batters, hearing Red saying, “Mister Reese, or Mister Hodges was up at bat.” We called every man mister after we heard it from Red.

  Jackie wasn’t playing today. He had played in three games before this, but he was injured, and older. We understood. But we sure wished we could hear, “Mister Robinson is up next.”

  A train passed. We leaned toward the window, pressing against the desks, trying to scoop away a couple of inches of noise, but it didn’t work. The train was loud, louder than the words and when it was gone we heard, “What a play!”

  Groan. Thirty-six times.

  We could hear now. We knew every player, every statistic. We listened and saw the swing and “crack.” We heard it. “Did you hear that?”

  “Did you hear it?”

  The crack of the ball in the seventh game of the World Series with the Dodgers playing the Yankees, the damn Yankees, and we heard it, right there in P.S. 54, a moment never to forget. Except it was a Yankee hit.