by Cataneo, D.
“I ain’t fooling.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Lester moved to the window to take a good long gaze at the snow, heavy and swirling. Nicky put down his greasy glove and stood next to him. The wind shook the windows in their casements. In a heavy snow like this, the tenements of Groton Avenue actually looked beautiful. It was a winter wonderland.
“I hate this lousy snow,” Lester said. “I sure wish this snow would go away and spring would get here.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Nicky said.
The snow did not let up. The day dragged. The boy had their minds on only one subject. Nothing else would do. The Ringling Bros. circus could burst through the door, and they would not be interested.
They oiled the mitts. They swung the old yellow stickball bat in the living room, careful of the lamps. They gripped the old Spaldeen. All they cared about was stickball.
They watched the snow and longed mightily for tender breezes and baby-blue skies and bright sunshine on asphalt.
“We have to do something,” Nicky said. “I’m jumping out of my skin.”
“Me, too,” Lester said, fidgeting.
Obsession is the mother of invention. Nicky and Lester improvised. They did what restless boys have done since the invention of indoors. They played ball in the house.
“Are we allowed to do this?” Lester said, popping his fist into Roy’s old mitt.
“No,” Nicky said, pushing aside the coffee table. “Let’s get started.”
“Very interesting. Have you ever played catch inside before?”
“Plenty,” Nicky said.
Lester’s first throw sailed past Nicky and knocked the rabbit ears off the television. Nicky threw back and Lester muffed the catch. The ball bounced off Lester’s shoulder and plopped into a flowerpot, spraying black soil onto the floor.
“Kick the dirt under the table,” Nicky advised.
Lester’s second throw hit the ceiling and ricocheted solidly against the windowpane. The boys held their breath, awaiting the sickening crash of heavy glass.
The window did not break.
“Close but no cigar,” Nicky said. “I guess this room is too small.” He dropped onto the plastic slipcover on the couch. “Guess I’ll just oil my mitt some more.”
“What will I do?”
“Go get your mitt and oil it.”
“I don’t wanna get oil on Willie Mays’s autograph.”
Nicky shrugged.
“I have got an idea,” Lester said. “I read about this in a magazine.”
Lester told Nicky the story about a baseball player in the minor leagues. This player prepared for each season by eating the baseball cards of star players.
“He’s nuts,” Nicky said.
“Maybe,” Lester said. “This fellow said if he eats the baseball card of a player, it gives him the skill of that player.”
Nicky shrugged. Snow pelted the window. “Why not?” Nicky said. “We haven’t got anything else to do.”
Nicky toted the worn shopping bag of baseball cards into the living room. Lester wanted to improve his hitting. From the bag he selected a Frank Robinson card, a Willie McCovey card, and a Hank Aaron card. He placed them side by side on the coffee table. Nicky was interested in pitching. He selected a Mel Stottlemyre, a Sam McDowell, and a Jim Palmer. Nicky placed the cards on the coffee table.
The boys looked at the cardboard cards. The faces of Robinson and McCovey and Aaron and Stottlemyre and Palmer and McDowell, smiling in various action poses, stared back.
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to do this,” Lester said with a grimace.
“Me, neither,” Nicky said. He thought for a moment. He snapped his fingers and jumped to his feet. He raced to the kitchen and returned with a jar of Skippy. “Peanut butter. Roy always said anything tastes good with peanut butter on it.”
Nicky applied a layer of Skippy to Jim Palmer. Lester spread a swirly coat onto Hank Aaron. Covered by peanut butter, the baseball cards appeared exactly like crackers.
The boys dug in. They ripped and chewed and giggled. They bit some more and chewed some more. The cards still held a hint of bubblegum, which combined interestingly with the taste of cardboard and peanut butter.
“Water,” Lester croaked.
“Yeah,” Nicky gagged, bolting for the kitchen tap.
The boys gulped their water and licked the peanut butter from their teeth. They smacked their lips and grinned.
“I may be crazy,” Nicky said. “But my right arm. It feels really strong.”
“Very interesting,” Lester said. “I think I know what you mean.” He examined his hands. His eyes bugged behind his thick glasses. “My hands. My wrists. They feel powerful.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
Lester shrugged and said, “You have to have faith. My grammy always said to believe in the power of faith.”
“I believe it when I see it,” Nicky said. He flexed his shoulder. His arm felt rippled, as if mighty steel bands were coiled tightly in his biceps. “I don’t think I can wait for spring to see it.”
“Me neither,” Lester said, examining his wrists.
Nicky and Lester rode the elevator down and tried not to laugh. They wore heavy wool hats, winter coats, galoshes, and scarves. And they carried baseball mitts, the yellow stickball bat, and a Spaldeen.
“They’re going to put us in the nuthouse,” Nicky said.
“We ate baseball cards,” Lester said. “Perhaps we belong in a nuthouse.”
The boys stepped off the elevator in the lobby and waddled in their heavy getups toward the rear door. Professor Smith was passing through the lobby. There was snow on the shoulders of his overcoat and snow in the rim of his derby hat. His cheeks and nose were red. The Professor eyed the Spaldeen and the bat and the gloves.
“That’s the spirit, gentlemen!” he said.
Nicky and Lester slogged through the blizzard, toward the PS 19 playground. Snow stung their faces. The wind took their breath away and their knees ached against the deep drifts.
The boys trekked across the playground. They giggled as they struggled, crunching the snow, marveling at the intimate hush of a raging snowstorm. Lester guessed the location of home plate on the wall and assumed his batting stance. Nicky counted off forty paces. He could barely see Lester through the snow. He took a pitcher’s stance.
Nicky wound up and threw the Spaldeen through the falling snow. His pitch was straight and powerful and true, faster than any pitch he had ever thrown. It was faster in fact than any pitch he had ever seen. It was a pitch worthy of Jim Palmer.
And Lester, with the Hank Aaron baseball card bubbling in his belly amid peanut butter and tap water, locked his eyes on the ball as it sizzled through the snowflakes. He swung the bat with ease and power, a mighty, crisp swipe. He connected, right on the button. He walloped the ball high and deep. The ball took off in the direction of Groton Avenue and disappeared in the gauze of falling snow.
“If I hadn’t seen it, I would not believe it,” Nicky shouted into the wind.
“I saw it and I don’t believe it,” Lester said, making a face at his icy wrists, as if they belonged to someone else.
They searched for the Spaldeen in the snowdrifts near the chain-link fence. There was no sign of it. The Spaldeen had been swallowed up by the swiftly falling snow.
“That was Roy’s ball,” Nicky said, ice on his eyebrows.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find it,” Lester said, eyeglasses fogging. He placed a frigid hand on Nicky’s winter coat. “As soon as the snow melts.”
“Yeah. In the spring,” Nicky said, brightening at the promise.
One Thing Leads to Another 37
Now Nicky could look ahead to the spring and see promise and relief, which is to say he saw stickball and Roy. And because of this he felt a gladness creep into his heart and snuggle there.
He hopped out of bed each morning, rushed to the
refrigerator, and drew a hearty X through another date on the calendar. And for the rest of the day, he lived light and happy. He felt like a traveler, motoring to a favorite place, making good time, heading in the right direction. He walked through his days smiling. People being what they are, they would ask him, “What are you smiling about?” And Nicky could not explain it to them. He didn’t want to explain. Nicky would just shrug, and smile wider.
At school, Nicky suddenly got the hang of algebra. He merely looked at problems involving triangles and intersecting lines and immediately saw the course of action needed to solve them. This mathematical aptitude came out of nowhere.
In gym class, in his first crack ever at volleyball, Nicky scored the winning point. He slapped the ball into the face of Ricky McFarlane, the class tough guy. Nicky saw the red welt rise on Ricky McFarlane’s cheek and marveled at the new strength in his pulsing right arm.
“Thank you, Jim Palmer,” Nicky said.
One day during lunch, Nicky glanced up from his baloney sandwich and gazed without fear or shame at Becky Hubbard. She was seated two tables over, taking dainty nibbles from a sandwich. Her spearmint eyes caught him looking. And when she looked back, she might have smirked, but there was also a chance she had smiled. Nicky guessed that the odds were 70:30 in favor of a smile. Best of all, he didn’t really care, either way. Becky Hubbard didn’t seem so pretty anymore. Ann-Margret was prettier. Margalo was way prettier.
One sunny February morning, when there was a tiny trace of warmth in the air, Nicky passed Mr. Misener in the courtyard and said, “Hey-lo, Mr. Misener. Almost feels like spring, doesn’t it?”
The old grouch grunted and moved on, but not long after that, the first-floor windows in Building B were suddenly repaired. These were the windows broken in the fall of 1963 and left unfixed since, and now the punched out panes were removed and replaced by shiny new glass.
The elevator smelled better, too. The Rosatto brothers moved to New Jersey, without saying good-bye. Right afterward, the elevator assumed the pine scent of cleaning fluid, and retained this new, pleasant odor. A young family from Cuba took the Rosattos’ old apartment. And one day Mom came home from work and said, “I just rode the elevator with that new woman who moved into 3-D. The Cuban. She said she would be happy if I stopped by sometime for Cuban black coffee. She says it’s stronger than espresso, if you can believe it.” Mom thought over this development and concluded, “I think maybe I will. She doesn’t seem so bad.”
On Valentine’s Day, the weatherman on the radio said the temperature was seventy-two degrees in St. Petersburg, Florida, where the New York Yankees huffed and puffed through the early days of spring training. Nicky removed his sweater in the kitchen upon hearing that news. The sports announcer on the radio said the Yankees were expected to field their best team in years, and they had a real crack at the World Series. Nicky daydreamed about taking in a Yankee game with Dad and Roy in the summer. And he wondered if Dad might somehow score World Series tickets from the big shots at Yum-E-Cakes Inc.
Late that afternoon, Mom came through the door from work and Nicky was in the living room, doing homework. In the kitchen, Mom sniffled and stifled a sob. Nicky heard the sounds of sorrow and his stomach turned.
“Nicky,” she gasped. “Please come in here.”
His heart thudded. He was afraid to walk to the kitchen. He had to force his feet to move. He reached the doorway to the kitchen. He held his breath and examined Mom’s face. His eyes darted to her hands. She held an envelope, with a red, white, and blue border, and an unfolded piece of paper. But the handwriting on the envelope was not Roy’s. The paper was the thin, tissue-like stationery used by Roy. But the handwriting on the paper was not Roy’s.
Someone, not Roy, had sent them a letter from Vietnam. That kind of letter never brought good news.
But Mom was smiling. She licked her lips and closed her eyes. She was smiling. Nicky looked carefully. He was not mistaken—she was smiling. Mom blinked through tears and presented the fluttering sheet to Nicky.
“It’s from Roy,” she said.
“Is he all right?”
“He’s great,” Mom sniffed. “Read it. He’s coming home on March twenty-first.”
“Next month?”
“The first day of spring.”
Nicky took a deep breath. Now his hand trembled. He saw Mom stare at the hand. Nicky smiled weakly and said, “You scared me.”
“Why do you always expect the worst?” Mom said.
“I don’t,” he said. “Not anymore.”
Nicky read:
Dear Gang,
I am dictating this letter to my friend Sgt. Manuel Rivers. I will explain that in a moment.
Sorry I have not written for so long. We have been straight out busy. I had to even work on Christmas Eve. (Manny says I should quit whining.) You would not believe the paperwork that goes into fighting a war. But I had a good Christmas. First me and some of the fellows went into Saigon during the truce. The place was really festive. It was my first chance to get to meet real Vietnamese people besides the girls who come in here and do our laundry. Anyway, it was a very busy and noisy place. It reminded me of Chinatown. Then we celebrated Christmas Day here at the base. Someone scrounged up a real tree. We decorated it. Then we opened our presents and someone had a case of Schlitz. Then get this—we played with our toys! Man, it was like the old days when we were kids. Remember them? Some guy got a race car set and we set it up and took turns racing. Another of the fellows from my unit got water balloons. He was running around soaking everyone. Plus get this—Manny (he says to put in he is from Mount Vernon) got a Spaldeen from his mother. We got a broomstick and we played stickball all Christmas afternoon, drinking Schlitz. Hey Nicky, look out, I have developed a pretty good sinker pitch here and if you want to play stickball this spring you had better be ready to be struck out.
Oh, Ma, also, the Christmas cookies were a big hit.
This brings me to the good news and the bad news. I have been hurt. But not too badly. During a stickball game two days ago, my pal Sgt. Rivers stepped on my right hand. He is a big lummox (am not!). I was going for a ball and he was going for a ball, I slipped, he walked on my hand. This is what they call “a non-combat-related injury.” The doc says my tendon is messed up and three fingers are broke. The hand is infected. Ma—I needed you to wash it and put a band-ade on it. The good news is, I can’t type with a busted hand. By the time it heals, it will be time for me to come home. My commo said all I have to do is train my replacement and I can catch the bird home. I feel crummy, like I am not doing my duty. But the big man insists. So Gang, I am coming home early! My DEROS is now March 21. Circle that on your calendar.
I guess I should make plans, huh, Dad? I’m thinking about college for real, which I should have done before. Now I can use the GI Bill for it. I guess I will just be happy to see you all, and eat some of Ma’s eggplant, and yes even to see you, Nicky. I guess your pretty big now, but not too big for your big brother to beat your brains in if I have to.
I have to run. See you all in 40 days.
Love,
Roy
PS—How is Checkers?
A squeaking sound made Nicky look up from the letter. Mom was using a black permanent marker to draw a thick black circle around March 21 on the kitchen calendar.
“It sounds like he had more fun on Christmas than we did,” Nicky said.
“Oh, don’t complain,” Mom said. “Count your blessings.”
Dad came home from work, and Mom met him at the door. She handed him the letter, as if it were a report card with straight A’s. As he read, Dad stood with the door open, pine-scented elevator air puffing in from the hallway, Daily News folded under his arm.
“Where’s the black marker?” Dad said.
“I already did it,” Mom said.
“Okay, someone get me a beer.”
Dad drank his Ballantine in loud happy slurps and stared at the date circled on the calendar. He was beam
ing. “Know what?” he said. He belched happily. “Know what? I’m gonna stop by Orzo’s tomorrow. I’m gonna order up one of those big sheet cakes. Like the one we got him for graduation. I’ll have Orzo write on it. WELCOME HOME ROY. How does that sound?”
Dad gazed at the circle on the calendar. He said, “Seeing that, now it seems real.”
Dad took a seat at the kitchen table.
“It feels warm in here. Hey, Nicky-boy,” he said. “Whaddya say the three of us take in a Yankees game in the spring? Like the good old days?”
“Promise?” Nicky said.
“Sure.”
“Can Lester come?”
“Sure.”
“Promise?”
“I just said so,” Dad said.
Nicky rapped on the door to 2-C. He heard feet shuffle, a brushing against the peephole. Then a clunk, a squeak of a closet door, the jangle of coat hangers, a door click shut.
Lester opened 2-C.
“We just heard from Roy,” Nicky said. “He’s coming home March twenty-first.”
“Very interesting,” Lester said, eyes cloudy behind his thick glasses.
“Isn’t that great? Maybe your dad will be home by then, too.”
Lester shrugged.
“When is your dad coming home?”
Lester shrugged. “He doesn’t write to us as often as your brother does,” he said flatly. “He always said combat is twenty-four-hour work. I don’t know. When we don’t hear from him for a while, I worry that something’s happened to him. Then I hope maybe he isn’t writing because he’s on his way home, and he will just show up at the door. That’s how my daddy is.”
“You’ll hear from him,” said Nicky, resisting the gloom that emanated from Lester like a bad odor.
Lester stood in the doorway to 2-C and shrugged.
Nicky said, “Gotta run. I gotta go to the library. Why don’t you come over after school tomorrow?”
“Surely,” Lester said.
“Bring your mitt. I’m sure it could use a good oiling.”
“I don’t want to ruin the Willie Mays autograph, remember?” Lester said.
“Maybe I can find a spare B-4000 for you to borrow,” Nicky said.