“Back, back, back, back, back . . . ”
“Nooooo.” Mouthed, thirty-six times.
“Caught by Hodges at the warning track.”
“Phew.” Thirty-six times.
Three o’clock. The bell. We did not move. Two minutes passed. Another windup, another pitch.
“Do you want to wait for the end of the inning?” Miss Johnson asked.
Nods. Thirty-six times.
Twenty after three. “He’s out.”
“Go,” said Miss Johnson. “And pray for the Dodgers.”
We all hit the door at the same time. Some squirming and elbowing, then pop! We came out like peas from a pod, except we never had peas except from a can, but we heard about pods. A few burst through and the rest followed like spaghetti that slipped out of a pot and went down the drain before you could stop it. That we understood. We all had spaghetti.
Miss Flag was standing in the hallway.
“Children, what is going on here?”
“Dodgers, the Dodgers are up next.”
“Stop,” she said. “Tell me why were you all kept in?”
Some stopped. Some slowed but kept walking.
“I said stop.”
“It’s the World Series,” said Dorothy. “It’s going on right now. We got to get to the bar.”
“The bar?! You can’t go to the bar,” said Miss Flag.
“But the game is on,” said Vinnie. “We gotta hurry.”
Miss Flag crossed her arms underneath her large bumps. We did not actually think of her bumps as bumps. They were more like giant lumps that kept her from crossing her arms where you were supposed to cross your arms.
“Don’t anyone move,” she said. “I demand an explanation. What is going on here?”
“The game,” whined Jimmy Lee. “The game. We’re missing it and it’s after three and school is over.”
“It is over when I say it is over,” said Miss Flag, “and my school is not a zoo but you are acting like monkeys. Now, all of you go to the auditorium while I find out what’s going on.”
Miss Johnson looked out of the doorway and we could almost see her swallowing her surprise.
“Why are these children here after three?” asked Miss Flag. She was not gentle when she asked.
“We were . . . ” Miss Johnson said, but then paused. She was not allowed to bring a radio to school. She knew that. We knew that. Miss Flag knew that, but what she did not know was that Miss Johnson did that. At least she did not know it yet.
“We were listening . . . ” said Miss Johnson.
But before she could go on Dorothy said, “We were listening to Vinnie tell us about the time his father played with the Brooklyn Dodgers.”
I was in love, again.
But before I could finish thinking that, everyone was saying, “Yeah, yes, Vinnie’s fadder was a Bum.”
Miss Flag jerked at that last remark, but Miss Johnson said that was a term of endearment. Then she told Miss Flag that we had been extremely quiet and attentive that afternoon and had been so good we did not notice the bell.
“In that case, you may go. But be quiet on your way out,” said Miss Flag.
We walked out, hands by our sides, saying nothing but squeezing our lips together so we would not burst.
Outside: “Did you see her face? Did you hear her? Did you see what happened? Did you hear Dorothy?”
I said that.
Dorothy was surrounded by a group hitting her shoulders and saying she saved our day and she saved Miss Johnson. I tried to get in, but the crowd was too big around her.
Then someone said we better run, and we scattered, kids from each neighbourhood breaking off to run home to the game.
The 132nd Street gang ran under the El and past the steel girders and past another bar that had the game on and no one standing outside. That was probably because it was under the tracks and no one outside could hear anything. But you probably could see it from the door.
Didn’t matter. We wanted our bar. We jumped curbs and raced across Jamaica Avenue, hardly looking for cars. No, that is not true. We could see sideways. We did not need to turn our heads when we were in a hurry.
The bar was filled past the doorway. It did not matter. We were there and Brooklyn was playing, even if this was Queens, it was next to Brooklyn and it was the BMT that ran over our heads and that stood for the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, so we were almost Brooklyn. We had to get to Brooklyn to get to Manhattan, so Brooklyn came first.
“What’s the score?” one of us shouted.
“One nothing.”
“For who?”
“For Brooklyn, you dumbski. Brooklyn! Brooklyn is winning.”
Brooklyn had not won in the last five series they were in. And it had not won the last four times they played the Yankees. They had been ahead a couple of times, but not won.
“We’re winning! We’re winning!” Vinnie shouted.
Then he told me that what Dorothy said in school was true. His father used to be a Brooklyn Dodger, long ago, when he was young.
“Did not,” I said. “She just made that up.”
“He was,” said Vinnie. “I never told anybody, but he was. Then he got hit by a bad pitch.”
Dorothy stood in front of Vinnie with her back to the bar.
“I know, Vinnie. I know,” she said. “That’s why I told Miss Johnson.”
Vinnie said nothing. He looked at her while everyone else was jumping around them and he looked and said nothing. Then he said, “How did you know?”
“I just know.”
Dorothy turned around again and faced the open door and started clapping along with us kids and the men at the door and the men inside and the German couple in the deli across the street who had come out on the sidewalk and Matty who came out of his candy store and we were all clapping and cheering and shouting, “Go, Dodgers, go.”
Vinnie stopped clapping. Then he tapped Dorothy on the shoulder. She turned.
“But really, how’d you know?”
She gave him a smile. I wished she was smiling at me. Her hair flopped around on the back of her head. Sometimes she wore a ponytail. Today it just flopped.
“Because your father did everything, I know. So I know he did this.”
She was not making fun of him. I could hear that. She was saying his father did everything like it was one of those things you learn in school or church, like it was true. It did not matter if it sounded crazy. It was true. And Dorothy said it was.
I wanted to be Vinnie. I wanted Dorothy to be my lawfully wedded wife. I wanted to kiss the most wonderful girl in the world.
Vinnie grabbed her and kissed her.
“Phooey.” Dorothy pushed him away.
“Watch the game, silly,” she said.
The bottom of the ninth came and went and the Dodgers became the champions of the world. If there was an atmosphere in the bar it was so thick it was one solid thing. You could not squeeze into it a fingernail or a doubt or any prayer that was not praying for the Dodgers. There are a few things that are remembered in life because they are so overwhelming: the Dodgers winning, a president killed, and a kiss.
Later in life, in another country, I learned how others laughed at the idea of World Champs. No, not the world, just Brooklyn, and Queens, and two or three million people who never really believed this day would happen and there was dancing in the streets. I saw it. I grabbed Dorothy and we went round and round, me holding her hands and looking at her face and swinging around with our arms holding each other from falling backwards and thinking the Dodgers were the best thing that ever happened in the world, but she was better.
And then, and then while her face was in front of mine and the world was spinning and the Dodgers had won, I leaned forward and kissed her. And she smiled.
It went on forever. It is still going on for everyone who believes that the Bums can win against the giant, overpaid, nose in the air, damn Yankees. I don’t remember having dinner that night. But I did remem
ber the kiss.
Last Chapter
“So is your mother or father a spy?” I asked Joey.
We were treading boxes, which meant you had to keep moving your feet because the cardboard would sometimes collapse under your weight when you didn’t expect it and suddenly you would sink up to your neck and then you had to search around for something to push yourself up on.
“No,” he said, then some boxes collapsed under him and he had to scramble and we laughed because that was always funny.
“How do you know?” I asked when he came up. Even though we were laughing I was kind of afraid to ask because if they were spies Joey might be a junior spy and I knew from what I heard that they could stay hidden for years and then suddenly kill, and we were alone in the boxes and no one would ever find me.
“I asked my mother. I said I saw that picture and asked her what it meant.”
He didn’t sound like a spy.
“What did she say?”
Joey pushed down with one foot, rose up like he was rising up with a wave, then he shifted to the other foot and sank.
“She said that’s the way she learned to salute when she came to this country. She said she loved that flag and she didn’t like it when they changed the way you saluted.”
“So she’s not a spy?”
“No. But I was worried too,” he said. “I asked her why she hid it and she said she was afraid they would take it away like the Fascists and the Nazis were doing.”
“Is your father a spy?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? He can hardly read. He just looks at the comics and then tells the stories to Junior . . . ”
Joey had brought Junior with him today, for his last day at the beach. He was down on the sidewalk playing with the boxes that were spilling out of the open end of the enclosure.
“My father spends hours with Junior. He doesn’t have time to be a spy.”
I felt so much better I told him I was going to swim down to the bottom and look for crackers for both of us. But just as I was going to dive down, Vinnie and Dorothy and Buster were coming around the corner.
They said they wanted to make sure they got one more swim in before the factory closed for the year. They had called Vanessa and Jimmy Lee and everyone and they were on their way. It would be one last beach party like we heard they had in places where there were beaches.
In ten minutes, there were nine of us diving and swimming and jumping in and wishing this could go on forever.
Bang, bang. Again, bang. I was under the boxes but I knew it was the sound of a metal pipe or something hitting the fence. I thought I knew who it was.
“We want this.”
I knew the voice. Rocky had come to ruin our day again.
“Come out and fight or we are going in after you.”
I didn’t want to fight. I was tired of fighting. I had lifted the dumbbells, but I didn’t think I was any stronger. I looked in the bathroom mirror and my muscles weren’t any bigger. And the last big fight with Rocky’s gang had hurt. I was bruised and sore for days.
“You’re a bunch of chickens,” said Rocky.
Okay, we can’t let him get away with saying that, so I climbed straight up. That was the hardest way to go. Going up at an angle was easier, but slower. But I had to get to the top fast to see what was going on.
“You’re chickens, cluck, cluck.”
I heard that near the top of the boxes.
We knew that was the way chickens were supposed to sound. But mostly we knew that unless we stood up to the “cluck, cluck,” we would be called chickens for the rest of our lives. But what was worse, the cardboard was ours, it was our vacation, it was our fun, and if Rocky took it over we would never be back here, and there was nowhere else to go.
I pushed aside the top boxes over my head. There was Joey and Tommy to my left looking down. And Vinnie and Dorothy were to my right. I could just see Buster and Vanessa and Jimmy Lee coming to the surface. I knew Johnny was coming up.
I crawled to the fence.
“Uh oh.”
I said that to myself. There were at least fifteen guys down there and it looked like they all had pipes or baseball bats or sticks.
I said nothing. I was scared.
“You’re not taking our boxes,” Vinnie shouted down to them.
“Come out and fight,” said Rocky, “or are you chicken?”
“It’s not fair that you have bats.”
“Tell that to your undertaker.”
Some of them started laughing, some banged on the fence with their weapons.
“We got to go fight them,” said Joey. He was talking to me and Tommy and everyone.
“We’re going to lose,” said Buster.
Joey said nothing. There was nothing he could say. He was our leader. He was the strongest. He knew we could not win against that many, especially when they had pipes and bats and we had nothing.
“We are coming down. Don’t hit my brother,” Joey shouted.
Rocky looked up, then he looked over at Junior who was holding a box over his head.
“If he gets in the way, tough luck, unless you want to take him home, then you’d be out of the fight,” said Rocky.
“I’m staying, but you better not hurt Junior,” said Joey.
We all looked at Joey. He was hung between two worlds. We knew he would not leave us, but we knew he would do anything to keep his brother from getting hurt. That is, anything except leave us.
Joey and Tommy and I climbed over the top of the fence and then started going down on the outside. Buster and Dorothy and Vanessa and Jimmy Lee were near the open end of the fence and worked their way out with the boxes falling down behind them. Johnny was near the hole in the bottom of the fence. He dug through the boxes and then pulled himself out onto the sidewalk. You had to crawl out of that and as soon as he did, one of Rocky’s guys kicked him.
We saw Johnny yell and roll over. That was enough to get Joey really mad and he jumped the last six feet off the fence and fell on the kid who kicked Johnny. Then the bats started swinging and the pipes were banging into the fence and the sidewalk and our arms and backs.
Junior shrieked and ran to help his brother but someone hit him in the stomach with a baseball bat and Junior fell screaming. He grabbed his stomach and yelled and yelled and Joey grabbed the kid that hit him by the shirt and threw him into the street.
I had never seen such strength. But then something hit me in the face and I saw blackness, then redness then coloured stripes before I felt the sidewalk under the side of my face. I tried to get up but someone kicked me in the ribs. I tried again, but this time I got kicked on the other side.
I opened my eyes and saw Vanessa being grabbed by two guys who were trying to grab her bumps, while she was screaming and kicking them.
“Stop!”
I heard the word, but I got kicked again.
“STOP!”
I heard it louder this time but then I got kicked in the rear and my head went into the fence.
“STOP! Or I will kill you.”
The voice had an accent, which I knew was Greek. Then I was kicked again.
“STOP! NOW!”
I looked up. There was a giant man wearing a white snow coat with long eyebrows and a moustache that covered his mouth standing near us. He was holding up a rounded ice pick.
“Stop fighting.”
It wasn’t really English. It was guttural, but they were the best words I had ever heard since Dorothy said that Vinnie’s father was a Dodger.
“Stop now I say.”
We all stopped, even the kid who was kicking me. Even the kids who were grabbing Vanessa.
“No fighting,” said the man in the snowsuit.
“But we want this spot,” said Rocky.
“No fighting,” he said.
“We’re going to fight until we get this spot for ourselves,” Rocky shouted at him.
“No.”
“You can’t stop us,” said Rocky.
&
nbsp; Joey was holding Junior who looked like he was in serious pain.
“You will have a race,” said the snowman. “The winner gets to stay.”
“No, we will fight,” said Rocky.
The snowman took two steps toward Rocky and held his ice pick at his face. It was just the curved side that Rocky was staring at, the point was facing back at the snowman, but there must have been something in the snowman’s eyebrows that made Rocky change his mind.
“Okay, we’ll race. From where to where?”
The snowman pointed at the boxes. “From the top to the bottom, and back.”
He told us each to pick one kid to race and he would meet them at the top, then he opened a door into the factory and went inside.
We picked Joey, of course, and they picked Rocky.
“It doesn’t matter what happens, after the race this is ours,” Rocky said to us.
The Greek snowman stood on the roof looking like a white giant against the sky. No, he did not look like a giant, he was a giant. We could just see his chest and his head. The boxes hid the bottom half of him. His hood was pushed back, but he still had a knitted hat on, the same kind of knitted Navy surplus hat that we wore in the winter.
“Come up here,” he said. “You,” he pointed at Rocky, “come up here.” He pointed to the boxes on his left side. “And you,” he pointed at Joey, “you come up here.” He pointed to his right.
Joey and Rocky climbed the fence. When they got to the top the snowman said, “You both go down to the bottom. Then you come up. The first one up stays here. The others, you go.”
Rocky laughed. Joey looked serious. Then Joey looked down at his brother who was sitting on the sidewalk still holding his stomach with one hand. But with the other hand Junior was waving to his big brother.
“Ready, now, go,” said the snowman.
Joey and Rocky pulled themselves over the top of the fence and then fell into the boxes. Both went down head first. Joey was strong, we knew that. He was pulling himself through the cardboard faster than we had ever seen him.
But something was bad at the other end of our ocean. Rocky was going much faster than Joey. We couldn’t see either one, but we could watch the boxes moving and Rocky’s boxes were getting pushed aside much faster than Joey’s.
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