by Cataneo, D.
Nicky’s tummy gurgled.
“He went out and did it anyhow,” Mom said. She let the apple peeler fall onto the table. She took a deep, shuddering, tear-choking sigh. She clasped her hands over her eyes.
“Just thank God he’s all right,” Mom said from behind her hands. “I keep thinking of that Joey boy’s mother. I won’t relax until my baby comes home.”
“I’m going out to sit on the steps for a while,” Nicky said.
“Take a jacket. It’ll get chilly. Be careful. Watch out for Mr. Feeley. Please Nicky, I don’t want to have to worry about you, too.”
Nicky rapped on the door to 2-C. He heard footsteps inside the apartment, saw a shadow under the door. But the door did not open.
“Lester, I can hear you,” Nicky said testily. He was not in the mood for Lester’s shenanigans.
“Present,” Lester said from behind the door.
“So open up.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I just got out of the shower.”
Nicky didn’t say anything.
“I’m not wearing any clothes.”
Nicky didn’t want to know that.
“Whatever. I’ll be down on the front steps. Don’t forget your pants.”
Nicky reclined on the front steps and watched the sun set behind the aspirin factory. Mom was right about the chill, as usual. Nicky pulled on his old red baseball jacket. He had not worn the jacket since way back in the spring. He noticed it was short in the sleeves.
“I’m growing?” he wondered.
Lester arrived. Nicky saw that his hair was not wet, and his fingernails were dirty. He did not look like a boy fresh from the shower.
Nicky told him the story of Roy’s letter. He confessed about the letter from Dad, the one he threw down the sewer. As he spoke, Nicky was surprised he was telling anyone about the dirty, horrible deed.
Lester adjusted the glasses on his nose. He squinted and worked his jaw, as if chewing on something.
“This is the way I see it,” Lester announced suddenly. “Because you threw your daddy’s letter down the sewer, your brother volunteered for guard duty and might have been killed because of it.”
“Yes,” Nicky admitted woozily, eyes stinging.
Lester continued, “But because you threw your daddy’s letter down the sewer, Roy volunteered for guard duty. And his life was probably saved because of it. Roy might have been caught between the barracks and the shelter by the rocket, just like his friend. If he had not volunteered for guard duty, which put him in the bunker that night instead. See?”
Nicky nodded. It was a blessing to have a best friend. Nicky was especially grateful to have a regular Encyclopedia Brown for a best friend.
Nicky said, “I guess nothing is simple these days.” He planned to read ahead tonight in his history notebook, in the section on World War II. The section on World War II would be simple.
The boys stood and walked up the steps and into the courtyard of Eggplant Alley. There were orange lights behind some of the windows. Dishes clattered. Faucets rushed. Televisions blathered. Mr. Storch’s xylophone rang out. The sounds surrounded the boys and gathered them in as they walked deeper into the horseshoe, toward Building B.
“Wasn’t that pretty gutsy of Roy to do guard duty?” Nicky said.
“You bet. Say, anybody who is over there has plenty of guts. My daddy says there are a million ways to get killed in a war. He knew a fellow in Korea who was killed by a can of tomatoes thrown out of a passing airplane.”
Nicky made a mental note to write to Roy, to warn against tomatoes and airplanes.
“Feel better?” Lester said.
“Plenty.”
Nicky had an urge to buy a nice gift for this Lester, a present for nothing in particular, a present just because.
Lester shuddered in the brisk air and said, “Fall is coming. Then winter. Then the spring.”
The spring. Nicky felt light-headed, dizzy, sick to his stomach. He thought about the spring, when Lester’s father would come home from the war. He imagined Lester’s father taking one look at Eggplant Alley and packing up his wife and kid and fleeing north, back to Hick-city. Nicky wondered what he would do without Lester. He shivered at the possibility of another good-bye in the spring. Not again, not another one.
“In the spring,” Nicky said. “Know what? In the spring, we really oughta give stickball another shot. This time let’s make it work. We can do it, if we really try. If there’s a will, there’s a way. Whatever it takes. Let’s make a pact.”
“Very interesting,” Lester said. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Promise?”
“Surely. It’s a promise.”
Nicky pulled open the door to Building B. He took a last sniff of courtyard air. He thought the air smelled of liver and onions, but also of autumn, of change, of promise.
Familiar Faces 27
Nicky could not concentrate on his homework. It was a brilliant, warm autumn afternoon, the kind of afternoon that screamed, “Last chance before a long, gray, cold winter!”
He sat at the kitchen table and twirled his pen and stared at the ceiling and chewed his fingernails. Sheets of undone math problems lay before him. Sister Martine had really loaded them up. But the sun was warm on his back and he heard noises from the schoolyard, the old sounds of stickball games.
“I give up,” he said.
He grabbed the old Spaldeen and Roy’s mitt from the closet and hurried out of the apartment and down the stairs, two at a time. He skidded to a stop at Lester’s door and banged his fist on it. No sound. No movement. No one home, for real.
“Gotta do this alone,” Nicky thought, shrugging.
He zipped down the last two flights and out the back door of Building B.
The schoolyard was empty. Groton Avenue was quiet. Nicky passed through the gate and walked across the concrete diamond toward PS 19. He felt grown up, a boy of action. The open air invigorated him and blew the cramps of math homework from his brain. Nicky watched the faded baselines pass beneath his feet, took a long look at the faded strike zone painted on the wall, and he knew he was saying good-bye to them till the spring. He already looked forward to spring.
“There will be great games next spring,” Nicky thought, hoping and wishing and praying.
Nicky slipped his hand into Roy’s mitt. He tapped the Spaldeen into the glove and positioned himself across from the schoolyard wall, in line with the strike zone box. Bouncing a ball against the wall would do a world of good. Breaking a sweat in the Indian summer sunshine would be just the thing. He planned to return upstairs in fifteen minutes, long before Mom could walk all the way to the A&P on Broadway and hike all the way back with an armload of paper bags.
Nicky wound up with a high leg-kick, just the way Jim Palmer of the Orioles had wound up that afternoon in the World Series against the Reds. Jim Palmer was tall and lean. Nicky was already lean. He wondered if he would ever be tall.
Nicky pitched. The ball hit the wall and bounced back neatly, on one hop. Nicky found this satisfying. He pitched and caught, pitched and caught. He didn’t throw very hard. He didn’t hit the strike zone often. But he held a fantasy about pitching in the spring. That would be something. Nicky on the mound, Roy behind him in center field, barking at him to “put it in there, old kid. No batter, no batter.” Just the way Roy used to chatter at Icky and Mumbles, in the good old days.
Nicky heard the young men before he saw them. They made a racket, howling and shouting, as they climbed the steps from Summit and spilled out onto the schoolyard. Nicky counted five of them, white kids that Nicky did not recognize. They all appeared to be about Roy’s age. One of them had long, greasy hair and an arm swirled with tattoos. The tattooed boy scared Nicky. He didn’t want to mess with anyone who had gone out of his way to be stuck by needles.
“Hey, looky here,” said the tattooed boy, a short stocky kid. “What have we? It’s a baseball player. Looky, looky. H
ey, kid. You. Give it here.”
Nicky did not look at the tattooed boy.
“Hey, mozzarella, can’t you hear? I said lemme see the rock.”
Nicky rolled the ball in his hand, not looking at the boy.
With astonishing quickness, the tattooed boy was in Nicky’s face.
“Hey, mozzarella, what is your problem? I said gimme the ball, can’t you hear good?”
Nicky numbly handed over the ball and the boy said, “Ha HA.” He examined the ball closely. He rolled it up his arm to the elbow and back to his hand.
“Like magic, huh?” he said.
“C’mon man, let’s GO!” said one of the other boys.
Nicky’s heart pounded deeply. His throat was tight, his mouth dry. He was afraid the tattooed boy would ask for the glove next, and that would mean real trouble. This was Roy’s glove. Roy’s glove from the old days, and it was precious on many counts. There was no way Nicky could give it up. “There will be real trouble if he asks for the glove,” Nicky thought. “Please don’t let him try to steal the glove. He will have to kill me to get Roy’s glove away from me.”
The tattooed boy said, “Hey, lemme see the glove.”
“I can’t,” Nicky said. He tightened his grip in the fingers of the mitt. “It ain’t mine. It’s my brother’s.”
“It ain’t even yours, then. Lemme see it.”
“I have to go,” Nicky said weakly.
The tattooed boy reached for the glove. Nicky jerked the glove away. The boy locked his arm around Nicky’s neck.
“Oh, man,” someone said.
Nicky smelled sweat, beer, and sweet smoke on the boy. Nicky saw a skull tattoo on the forearm pressed against his chin. The boy swung Nicky around, twirling him, flinging him toward the asphalt. Nicky bent his knees and stayed on his feet. The boy leaned his weight onto Nicky. Nicky planted his sneakers and stayed on his feet. Then a leg swept into Nicky’s ankles, knocking his feet from under him in the classic schoolyard takedown. Nicky felt a plummeting in his belly and he braced himself with his hands and landed hard on his rear, chattering his teeth and shaking his eyeballs. His right hand stung sharply.
Nicky sat on the gritty asphalt for a moment, dazed and utterly helpless. The tattooed boy was muttering and walking away, nodding his head as if he had accomplished some great triumph. Nicky’s hand felt sticky and he turned his palm up. A ragged cherry-red gash seeped blood with the rhythm of his heartbeat. He had driven the hand into a lemon-slice-shaped shard of clear glass.
Nicky’s eyes were wide with pain and astonishment. He absently wiped his hand on his T-shirt and left a bright red smear. He watched the boys walk casually toward the gate to Groton Avenue. One of the boys shook his head. He looked disgusted. The tattooed boy strutted. He glanced back and caught Nicky’s eye.
“Hey, piss ant, whatcha looking at?” the tattooed boy shouted, enraged. “You want some more?” Nicky could not help glaring. He was scared, shaken, brimming with tears. He was also filled with an uncontrollable fury.
The tattooed boy stopped at the gate and looked in his hand. He seemed surprised to have the pink ball. He reared back, knuckles nearly touching the ground near his heel, and heaved the ball over Nicky’s head. It bounced once then vaulted down the steps toward Summit Avenue.
Nicky watched the ball disappear. When he stared back toward Groton the boys were gone. Nicky hoped they had not walked into Eggplant Alley. He hoped they were not new tenants.
Nicky popped to his feet. He looked at Eggplant Alley, windows flat and colorless in the dusk. He thought the building looked down at him sadly. He examined his palm. A fresh glop of blood was forming. He wiped his hand on his shirt again. He wanted the hand to stop bleeding. He wanted the pain and fear to disappear. He wanted the terrible episode to just go away, with no lasting effects.
Nicky took stock. He had managed to hold on to Roy’s glove, thank heavens. The hand. It would stop bleeding, any second. The ball. It was Roy’s ball, the one that had been safe and snug at the back of the closet all those years. And now it was lost, rolling somewhere along Summit.
Nicky thought, “I must find that ball. To fix everything.”
He hurried for the stairs and was surprised his right ankle ached. At the top of the stairs a breeze cooled the tears on his cheeks. He hurried down the steps, calculating the path of the ball.
Nicky searched under cars parked on Summit. He looked along the curb, down the sewer, along the chain-link fences in front of the two-story houses. He peered into the postage-stamp front yards.
“The ball has to be somewhere,” Nicky thought, and he was reminded about how deeply he hated to look for lost things.
Summit was sloped and angled in such a way that a ball could bounce against a curb or car and roll toward Mayflower Avenue, the narrow street that plunged steeply all the way to Broadway. Nicky squatted painfully and looked under the cars parked at the top of Mayflower. He kicked at cans and bottles in the gutter. He sidestepped dog droppings and searched the length of hard-packed turf between the sidewalk and curb. He found himself in front of the Only House With Trees.
“This would have to happen,” Nicky said angrily, not knowing that if the tattooed boy hadn’t assaulted him, if the tattooed boy hadn’t thrown the Spaldeen over the fence, Nicky would not be standing on Mayflower Avenue at that moment. And Nicky would have forever missed what happened next.
“Where is that stinking ball?” he whined.
He gazed down Mayflower. He saw a small figure, barely in sight, trudge up the hill. The figure climbed closer, and he saw it was a woman. A young woman, with long straight chestnut-brown hair that bounced and shimmered as she walked. Nicky stood and watched, baseball glove on his hip. The young woman must have seen the glove, because she held her right hand above her head. In her hand was the pink ball. Nicky smiled. She smiled back at him. Even from this distance, in the fading fall light, he could tell that the smile was something special.
Something familiar.
“Hey-lo, there,” the young woman called out.
And slowly her face came into full focus, and Nicky placed the smile as that belonging to Roy’s horrid hippie girlfriend, Margalo.
The Only House With Trees 28
The smile flickered from Margalo’s face. She narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her forehead, like someone working on a math problem. She was trying to place this kid with the baseball mitt. Then she remembered. Her forehead relaxed. Her smile did not return.
“You’re Margalo,” Nicky said stupidly. “Do you remember me? I’m …”
“I know who you are,” Margalo said softly. She took a deep breath. She locked her blue eyes on to Nicky’s face. She held out the Spaldeen. Nicky opened the glove. Margalo dropped the ball into the glove.
Nicky thought Margalo was waiting for him to say something.
So he said, “Nice day, isn’t it?”
She exhaled.
“I am a numbskull,” he thought.
Margalo said, “I better be going.”
Nicky didn’t say anything.
Margalo said, “You should get back to your game.”
“Game?”
Nicky followed her eyes as she lowered them to the baseball mitt, which held the Spaldeen. He said, “Oh, yeah. There’s no game. I was just playing with myself.”
“Numbskull, numbskull, numbskull,” he thought.
“Well, good-bye,” Margalo said. She edged backward, half turned away, all the while locking her blue eyes on to Nicky’s face.
She said, “Do you have any …” She blinked against the strands of hair in her eyes.
She pursed her lips.
“Good-bye,” she said, nodding firmly.
Nicky wiped his right hand across his shirt, adding a bright red smear of blood to the maroon smears, and waved meekly.
“My Goddess, what have you done to your hand?” Margalo gasped. She stepped quickly to Nicky. She looped her hair behind her ears. She cradled his wounded hand.
“It’s really bleeding. What did you do?”
“I fell,” Nicky said. “Making a catch. A diving catch. Think I hit some glass or something. It’s nothing.” He was trying to come across tough and stoic, a regular John Wayne. “I broke my ankle once, you know.”
“Dumb, dumb, dumb,” he thought. Nicky could feel his IQ plummeting in the presence of this girl.
Margalo pressed her fingers to his palm. Nicky winced and sucked in air.
“I think there’s glass in there,” Margalo said gravely. “Come with me. That might need a stitch or two. It surely needs cleaning out.”
Nicky withdrew his hand. “No, really, it’s nothing.”
“Don’t be silly. Come with me.” She moved toward the black iron gate to the Only House With Trees, motioning for Nicky to follow.
“You live here?”
“Yes, I live here. You didn’t know that?”
“Yeah, I knew that,” Nicky lied. He shrugged. He examined his hand. “I think I’ll just go home.”
“Look. My father is a doctor,” Margalo said, as if that settled that.
Nicky didn’t say anything.
“Please come with me,” Margalo said softly, sweetly, with a slight smile that gave a glimpse of perfect white teeth.
And that was that.
Nicky followed Margalo through the gate, past the tall, thick green hedges, onto a gray cobblestone path, into the grounds of the Only House With Trees. Nicky’s head swiveled as he walked toward the sprawling, clapboarded house. He passed a sundial; a gazebo; a wrought-iron black bench; a cement fishpond, drained and collecting orange leaves. There was a statue, right out in the open—a stone cherub playing a small harp near some bushes. Nicky passed under the trees. Tall, old, healthy trees with thick, corrugated trunks. Nicky gawked up at the canopies of lime green and orange and red.
The path led to a magnificent wooden door, high and wide with a brass knocker the size of Nicky’s head. The doorway was guarded on each side by stone lions as tall as Nicky. He looked at the stone lions. The lions looked back with suspicious eyes.