As we walked away, Philly Clark called out to us once more, or rather, to me.
“Hey, Little Flynn. Tell your uncle I said hello.” He said it without any rancor, and I nodded but knew I’d never do any such thing. I knew there were undercurrents here far beyond my understanding and I would convey no messages from Philly Clark, no matter what they were.
Twice during that last hot month of summer Tom and Helen took me out with them, once for a hot fudge sundae at the Sweet Shop on Roscoe and another time to North Avenue Beach. On these occasions they talked at what seemed to me great length, often of vague things such as The Future and Settling Down, and soon managed to forget I was there. In truth, I paid little attention to most of their talk, coming out of my trance only when a change in tone told me the talk had gotten serious and, therefore, worth listening to.
At the ice-cream parlor, I could not follow the heart of their discussion, but it seemed to concern whether it was time for them to change their relationship somehow. They spoke in euphemisms and abstractions till their talk was a rhetorical maze to me. I heard him say, “We’ve got to get serious about things, it’s time we started doing some thinking,” and she would say, “We’re serious enough, you do enough thinking for the both of us.” A moment later she suggested that we go up to Lincoln and Belmont and look in the stores, and I could see that she’d taken control of the conversation for the moment.
The other time, at the beach, they resumed this discomforting debate that always seemed to make them both unhappy and made me want to be somewhere else. It was dusk and we’d been at North Avenue Beach since the mid-afternoon, and they both seemed tired. I dug a great tunnel in the sand and made endless trips to the bone-numbing shallows to fill a shapeless paper cup with water for my tunnel. They were sitting on a blanket and she was looking out at the water, where a lifeguard was arguing with a group of teenagers attempting to put an innertube in the water.
Tom never took his eyes from her profile. He seemed to be talking about making decisions, said it was about time.
Helen shook her head.
“We got plenty of time,” and he was shaking his head before she’d finished her sentence.
“No, at least I don’t. I spent long enough running around in circles. For God’s sake I spent two years of my life in Korea.”
“That’s why you’re in a hurry for things,” she said. Now she looked at him and smiled.
“No, not for things. I can wait for all that stuff. But sometimes people got to make choices, they got to make decisions.”
Helen looked back at the water. “That’s what my Ma did, she was in a big hurry for everything, and nothing ever turned out good for her.”
He leaned over and put a hand on her bare shoulder. “Nah, she got you. That’s something, isn’t it? She got you out of the deal.”
She smiled and when I came back from my next trip to the water, he was laughing, animated, joking, and it seemed something had been settled. When we headed for the lot where he’d parked his car, I straggled behind them.
“That’s the one thing I don’t follow, is you and him. I can’t see it,” I heard my uncle say.
She shrugged. “He’s not like you think. Just like you’re not the way he thinks. Anyway, I’ve known him a long time.”
Tom made a little snorting nose. “That don’t mean you know what he’s like.”
She gave him an irritated little shake of her head and was about to say something when he said, “All right, I’m outta line. I’ll change the subject. I’m hungry, how about that for something to talk about?”
Now Helen laughed and I saw they were finished with the subject of Philly Clark. I fell farther and farther behind them, stopping to shake sand from my canvas shoes or watch a pair of squirrels fight in the high branches of an old fire-scarred oak, and when I finally reached the car, my uncle was standing with one foot just inside the door and Helen was already sitting in the front.
“Thought you changed your mind about coming home,” he said to me. He gave me a smile to show he wasn’t irritated, then added, “When you get home, you got to shake your whole self out on the back porch or Grandma won’t even let you in. She’ll make you sleep on the porch.”
I told him that sounded like fun, and he laughed.
On the way home I noticed how she looked out the window. In profile she looked sad, and though she talked with Tom and even laughed once at something he said, it was clear that she was distracted by something.
A little over a week later, something happened between them, and no one would speak of it, whether in my hearing or in what passed for privacy in that crowded house. The family spoke in subdued tones as though more trouble might find them.
That Sunday morning we went to Mass, my grandmother and I, and Tom joined us toward the end of the sermon. Grandmother gave him a look of pure worry, then quickly turned away. He was pale, the circles under his eyes gave him a tired look, and for a brief moment I fancied that I knew what he’d look like in middle age. For the rest of the day he was quiet, gave me the briefest answers to my questions, and eventually my grandmother told me to leave him alone.
Later that week, on an impulse, I asked him if he would be seeing Helen soon, and he looked down at the floor for a moment, then said, “No,” and nothing else. At dinner that night, while Tom was working an evening shift at the tavern, Grandma explained in obvious discomfort that Tom and Helen weren’t going to be seeing each other anymore.
“Is he sad?”
“Oh, I’m sure he is, you’re always sad when you break up with a girlfriend. But not for long,” she said as though to convince herself. “There’s lots of girls that would like him.”
For a week or so he was as silent around the house as I’d ever seen him, he looked physically ill, and no one broached the subject of the girl to him. No one with sense, that is, but my Uncle Mike came over one night, took him aside and expressed in a raspy whisper that could have been heard anywhere in the house his intention to “make you see reason and stop acting like a kid.”
Tom pulled him by the shirtfront into a bedroom and the door closed on them, but for a long time we could hear their angry exchange, Uncle Mike telling Tom he was childish, full of silly ideas, wanting what he couldn’t have, and Tom growling his responses so that I heard only one, the one when he said, “A guy that went out with one girl his whole life ain’t exactly the book of knowledge on women.”
A short while later, Mike emerged, looking drained, the two high red points in his cheeks showing the leavings of his anger. Tom emerged a moment later carrying a sweater, announced that he was going to “check on things in the saloon,” and left without making eye contact with any of us.
“Why did they fight?” I asked my grandparents.
“Ah, all brothers fight, now and then,” Grandpa said, trotting out the ancient gloss, but there was a crushed look in his face and I turned to my grandmother.
“Because one of them has…he has things on his mind, and the other one doesn’t know enough to leave him alone.” She looked away, her lips moving, and I think she was calling her elder son “a great half-wit.”
Runaway
For several weeks I did not see my cousin. I played with Rusty but I found myself wondering about Matt, about the troubles in his home. I missed him, and I wondered if things would ever be normal again between us. Several times I went to his house in the projects and called on him, but no one answered.
It was just short of dinnertime one evening toward the end of that summer; I had just come back from Hamlin Park when my grandmother took a panicked call from Aunt Mary Jane and called me into the kitchen.
“Have you seen Matt?” she asked, and there was fear in her eyes.
“No.”
She said something into the phone and then handed it to me. On the other end, my Aunt Mary Jane told me Matt was missing, and I heard her effor
t at self-control. She asked me if I had seen Matt either that day or the previous night, and I felt a small surge of horror that he had disappeared at night. Calmly, as if leading me through a difficult exercise, she asked if I knew any of the places he liked to visit, the boys he roamed the neighborhood with. I told her everything I could and when I was finished, she fell silent for a moment, and then spoke.
“Danny, listen to me carefully. If you should see Matt, or talk to him or anything, it’s very important that you tell your grandma or someone there and…and if you do talk to Matt, tell him that we all love him, and that there’s no reason for him not to come home. Tell him that, Danny, that everybody in his house loves him.”
“I will,” I said, and understood that my aunt had just told me what Matt had run from.
Aunt Mary Jane’s call turned our household inside out, and my grandmother, just home from the knitting mill herself, dropped her dinner preparations and got on the phone to various people in the neighborhood, telling them to watch out for Matt: she called the firehouse and the Certified and the woman who ran the dry goods shop up Clybourn where Matt and I liked to look at the toys. When Aunt Anne and Uncle Tom came home from work, she told them what had happened, and within ten minutes both of them had gone out to help look for my cousin.
For my part, I sat in the living room and tried to watch television and not think of my missing cousin or his tormented mother. It proved impossible.
The world was on the cusp of change just then: the abduction and subsequent murder of a St. Louis child the previous fall had told the nation that the simple times were gone, something new and dark and unforeseen had emerged in the cities, and more and more parents were refusing to allow their children to roam the streets as they once had. It was for this reason that I had never let my grandparents or the other adults in my life know just how far I roamed in my summer explorations with Matt or Rusty. A hundred times over the past year, my nervous adults admonished me to be more careful, never to talk to a stranger, never to accept a ride with one, never to walk anywhere without my playmates. There is no cure for foolhardiness, and their warnings did little to constrain me from my wanderings and “explorations”—especially in the company of my bolder playmates—but they made an impression on me nonetheless.
My family had no misconceptions about what had driven Matt from his own house. I had heard my uncle mutter, “That crazy drunk,” as he went out. At first it seemed clear to me then that Matt had not been kidnapped and was therefore safe, just hiding, but the frantic nature of the search for him began to wear down my composure. I sat staring at the small bluish television screen and fear began to gnaw my stomach, for it suddenly came to me that a child on the street, running from his parents, could still be taken easily by strangers.
I remembered Matt’s angry, injured face that day at the lagoon, and I knew not only what my cousin had decided to run from, but where he might be. I saw that place in my mind’s eye and grew cold, for I did not believe a small boy who spent a night alone in such a place could live out the night. And as I fretted about him the image returned to me of the two of us rolling and clawing in the sandbox, and of my desperate, heart-bursting attempt to hurt him.
I began to cry—quietly, I thought—but my grandmother, bravely attempting to catch up with her dinner routine, heard me and came in.
“Oh, they’ll find him, sweetheart.” She brushed the hair from my eyes and I could almost hear her wishing she believed it.
For a brief moment I was ready to blurt out what I thought I knew, but guilt immediately silenced me: my cousin did not want to be found, to be taken back to the place where his father was waiting, not the handsome, witty Dennis of weddings and family gatherings but the dark-faced drunken man I’d now seen more than once.
“Do you want to play in the yard till dinner’s ready?” she asked, and I grasped eagerly at this straw.
Five minutes later I was headed up Clybourn, no doubt in my mind where I was going. I quickly developed a cover story in case one of my relatives or one of Matt’s came upon me: I was helping in the search, my Uncle Tom was right around the corner. As it happened, they had probably scoured that stretch of the street long before, and so no one saw me.
I walked forever. Traveling first on Clybourn and then on Diversey, I stayed on the shaded side of the street and continually looked over my shoulder to see if I was followed—by strangers or relatives. Twice I stopped to rest, and once, having convinced myself that I’d gotten somehow turned around, asked a cheerful-looking older woman if I was headed in the direction of Lincoln Park.
She looked me over and repeated “Lincoln Park?” with alarm. Then she said, “Well, yes, you are,” and I moved on before she could ask the question in her eyes.
It was still light out when I reached Lincoln Park, but the sun had gone behind the taller buildings and the air that close to the lake had a bite to it. I had started out hungry, and now I was thirsty and I thought I could feel a blister forming on my heel. To make matters worse, I had to go to the bathroom, but I had heard enough dark tales from older boys about the shocking things that were known to happen in a public toilet, and so ducked into the dense bushes for a moment, terrified that someone would surprise me in the midst of my urgent business.
It seemed to me that the sky lost its light quickly, and when I reached the lagoon, I was frightened to see several men sitting by themselves on benches, and one noisy group of older boys. There were also several couples in a grassy area just beyond the eastern edge of the pond, and I decided that nothing could happen to me if I stayed in sight of them.
I made a long circuit of the pond, my eyes fixed on the dark little islands, and gradually made my way to the spot where Matt and I had sat and stared out at them. I could see nothing but the trees and the great dark knots of shrubbery that came down to the water’s edge, no movement, no sign of a child. For a moment I peered out at the islands and then I called out to him. There was no answer, and I grew self-conscious, convinced by now that every adult on the North Side was watching me. I called him again and was struck by the absolute certainty that he was not on the island. I began moving off to my right, and then stopped. At the edge of the wide sidewalk was a pool of water, where someone had come out of the pond. I could even see his tracks, at least those closest to the water, a child’s footprints, and they led off behind the benches and to the east, and now I knew where I’d find him.
It seemed important not to let him see me first, and so I climbed the faint little track up the side of the hill, coming out at the top a few feet short of the big granite monument and the green giant on horseback. A few yards down the monument I could see a couple of teenagers wrapped around one another, oblivious to the existence of the rest of the universe. I looked around and realized that if I didn’t find my cousin, I didn’t want to be in this place.
Something moved in one of the tall stone windows and frightened me, and as soon as I’d seen it, it was gone. I moved forward a couple of paces and saw him, squeezing himself up against the wall to avoid detection, mine or anyone else’s, and then I went to him.
“Matt?” He said nothing and I moved closer and repeated his name, and this time he peered out at me with a look that mixed relief and betrayal.
“What do you want?”
“They’re all lookin’ for you.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Nobody.”
“Yeah? So how’d you get here?”
“I walked.”
“You’re full of it.”
“No.”
He tried to stare me down but he was shivering, and I realized that his clothes were soaked.
“You’re all wet.”
“No lie, Sherlock.”
I came forward and sat on the stone bench next to him, and the water from his clothes got the seat of my pants wet. Beside me, he stared straight ahead and shook with cold and God kne
w what else.
“We better go.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere. I’m staying here.” His gaze moved out to the islands. “I was out there, I was on it, that island.” He tried on a sly smile but he was shaking, and his eyes were red with crying.
“What was it like?”
“It’s muddy and there’s garbage out there. I thought maybe there’d be animals but I didn’t see any. I got my clothes all wet.”
“So now what are you gonna do?”
“I’m gonna run away.”
“You can’t. You gotta come home. You’ll catch it.”
“Like I don’t catch it already? I’m not goin’ back, and nobody…”
When he stopped, I looked up and saw him staring at something behind me. I turned and saw Uncle Tom. He was standing only a few feet from us and had the look of an outsider. I felt Matt move beside me and I put my hand on his arm.
“No, don’t. Wait.”
“You didn’t walk here.”
“Yeah, I did, I swear to God.”
My uncle came closer and nodded and said, “Matt.” He shot me a quick irritated look and then faced Matt, wiping his hands on his pants.
“You okay, Matt?”
Matt nodded and looked away and Tom came to within a few feet from us.
“You guys goofy? Don’t you know you could both wind up dead, running around by yourselves down here?” He fixed me with a quick look and said, “You. You’re in trouble.” My heart sank. I decided I had nothing to lose and so asked him how he’d found me.
“Yeah, that’s a good question, ain’t it? I looked all over the goddamn neighborhood for you, and then I thought of that maniac Rusty, I went to his house. He thought you might be here.” He glared at me and spoke slowly, and I expected to see steam coming out of his ears. “He told me you guys came down here to this place. A lot. And you found Matt here once. Like now.”
I sighed and moved closer to Matt. I was fairly certain he’d bolt in a second, and I didn’t know what I’d do then. Matt looked over his shoulder out at the lake. Despite the diminishing light, I could make out boats still out there. A soft wind was coming off the water, and I could smell the fish smells from North Avenue Beach.
In the Castle of the Flynns Page 29