Me, Johnny, and The Babe

by Mark Wirtshafter

with beauty. Everything outside seemed to be so cold and ugly, hellish and completely devoid of beauty. I figured that alone gave people a reason to want to seek refuge in the church.

  At last, it was over. Everyone bowed their heads for a final prayer and we were on our way home. As we walked out, I stayed right behind Johnny so that we would get to walk home together. Johnny and I walked a bit faster and got a half block lead over our parents. Annie was a few steps behind.

  “I found the greatest place last night,” I started. “It’s a room in the cellar of the building they are tearing down on Tioga Street. It has all kinds of stuff in it and it would make a perfect hideout, the kind of place we always talked about having. It can be the private spot where we can go to play and get away from the rest of the world.”

  Johnny looked at me with no particular sense of excitement, but then broke out a slight smile.

  “After lunch we’ll go have a look at it,” he said.

  Johnny was quiet for the rest of the walk home. He was hard to figure out. Sometimes he’d talk more than anyone I knew and other times he would go long periods without saying a word. His mind seemed to be elsewhere, but he never gave me a hint as to where. When we got home, Johnny walked inside without saying anything. I waited outside as the Garrity family and my parents walked up together. Mrs. Garrity smiled at me as she passed.

  “That was a nice service today, wasn’t it?” she asked.

  I smiled and nodded my head in agreement. My parents then walked by and went into the house asking me, “What are you waiting for?” I stood outside on the front stoop of our house as the Garrity family filed in one by one. The last one in line was Annie; I stole one last glimpse of her as she passed by and went in for lunch. I was always nervous speaking to Annie, but tried to talk to her whenever I could.

  “That was a good service today, wasn’t it?” I asked Annie. Knowing almost immediately how ridiculous the question was as soon as it had left my lips.

  “Yea, it wasn’t too bad today,” she answered, helping to ease me over the awkwardness of my stupid question.

  Annie was always so sweet and kind. Her polite manner extended not only to adults, but also to the other kids in the neighborhood. She seemed so much more mature than any of the kids our age.

  “Maybe me, you and Johnny can play together this afternoon,” she said. “We can go over to the railroad tracks and throw rocks into the junkyard.”

  “Boy that sounds like fun.” I replied.

  We stood on the stoop of her house for another minute or two in an awkward silence. I could never think of anything to say to Annie until after she would walk away.

  “See you later,” she said, opening her front door.

  As always, a rush of all the clever things I should have said to her came to me just as the door closed behind her.

  5

  I rushed through lunch, obsessing on showing the new clubhouse to Johnny. I changed out of my church going clothes and put on my old red shirt and my black pants with holes in both knees. Rushing downstairs I flew out the front door, jumped down the steps leading down from our stoop, and leaped up onto Johnny’s front porch. Before I could knock on the door, I noticed Johnny’s father standing in the entranceway.

  “Is Johnny allowed to come out and play Mr. Garrity?”

  “I don’t rightfully know if he is or isn’t,” he answered with a somewhat grim look on his face. “I guess you’ll just have to find out for yourself.” He just walked away shaking his head from side to side.

  A minute or two passed, as I waited, not sure, if Johnny was coming or not. Then I saw Johnny walking towards the door. He grinned as we both jumped down from his stoop and ran out into the middle of the street.

  “I could not believe how boring church was today,” I started.

  “Yea it seems to get longer every week,” Johnny replied staring off into the distance as he spoke. “Sometimes I wish that I could fall asleep and wake up just as its ending.”

  “Sometimes I daydream that I am visiting an exotic foreign country,

  seeing great castles, and eating fancy foreign food,” I countered.

  “If I were daydreaming, I would daydream that I was in New York City working in one of those fancy skyscrapers they have there. I would be the boss of a big company and everyone would have to listen to what I say,” Johnny replied. “I wouldn’t be one of those mean bosses, but everyone in the company would definitely have to respect me.”

  I almost told him how I sometimes looked at Annie during the sermon, but thought better of it. I figured it would just give Johnny a reason to put me in a headlock again and squeeze my head until my brains felt like they were ready to pop out.

  When we got to the old building, I walked to the side and pointed out the broken window to Johnny. He gave me a funny look, and got down on his belly and peered inside.

  “How are we supposed to get in there?” he asked.

  Johnny was built a bit bigger than I was, but he was still very lean, and I knew he could slide backwards through the window just as I had.

  “Here, I’ll show you,” I said.

  Without hesitating, I got on my stomach and pushed my legs through the window while facing backwards. I dropped down to the floor below.

  “I don’t know if I can do that, but I’ll try,” Johnny said.

  From the floor below, I could see his legs come sticking out from the opening of the window. He got his waist in easily, but I could see that he was having trouble squeezing his shoulders through. He was built broader than I was, and he was very muscular around his arms and shoulders. His body was almost through, except his shoulders seemed to be stuck, and instead of dropping to the ground, he was dangling from the opening. He kicked his legs back and forth trying to wiggle his way out. The top portion of his body seemed to be a perfect fit with the window opening.

  I was sure that he would drop through in a second or two, but his wiggling did not seem to have any effect. He was starting to panic a bit and was began yelling at me.

  “You better get me the hell out of here,” he shouted. “If you don’t I’m gonna kill you.”

  I looked around the room at the debris that was scattered about, looking for something that might be useful. I saw an old wooden table off in the corner and hurriedly pulled it over to the wall under the window. I climbed up on to the table so that I was high enough to reach Johnny’s legs. I wrapped my arms around his legs in an attempt to use all my strength to pull him through. Then one of Johnny flailing legs kicked me right in the mouth.

  “Hey! Could you keep still while I pull you in,” I said.

  “I’m going kick you twice as hard when I get down there.”

  “Well then, I guess there’s not much reason for me to help get you down here is there?”

  “All right, all right.”

  Johnny stopped flailing his legs. I grabbed his waist with a firm grip and pulled. He seemed to move a little, but he was still stuck. I took a deep breath and prepared for the hardest tug that I could muster. Closing my eyes, I used all my weight to pull away from the window as hard as I could. Before I knew what happened I could feel all Johnny’s weight coming through the window. With a loud crack, the old wood frame surrounding the window gave way and Johnny crashed into the room. Time seemed to slow down as I went from a feeling the success of getting Johnny in, to realizing that we were flying off the table and about to smash into the concrete floor below. We seemed to be in mid air for quite a while. I hit the floor hard with Johnny landing right on top of me. I waited for a second to see if I had broken any bones, but everything seemed to be in working order.

  I opened my eyes to see if Johnny was all right, anticipating the fury he was going to unleash upon me. I was halfway hoping that if he broke something he would be in too much pain to worry about giving me a beating. As I looked up, I could see he had come through the window and had taken the window frame with him. The wood frame was still stuck around his shoulders as he stood up.


  “You better help me get this crap off of me,” Johnny said.

  “Sure let me give you a hand.”

  I pulled the frame up over his head, freeing him. I looked at his face and cringing a bit as I waited for the inevitable. Before I could even see his expression, I could hear Johnny begin to laugh. Not a giggle, but a big belly laugh, that echoed around the empty room.

  Obviously, he wasn’t hurt. Why would he be? After all, he landed on top of me and my body broke his fall.

  “Well next time it’ll be much easier getting in. I just added another couple inches to the entrance,” he said.

  Looking up at the window, I could see that without the frame it certainly would be much easier to get in.

  Johnny looked around the room taking inventory of what was there. Four old wood chairs that went with the table we had just used. There was a couch, quite ripped, with the springs sticking out of it, still good enough to sit on. There was a toolbox with handful of old rusty tools. We also found two boxes in the corner that were sealed shut.

  There was a damp feel to the room as water stains were evident all along the outer wall. A musty smell permeated the air mixing with the odor of animal droppings that had collected in the building.

  It was hard to see since there was only a dim light coming through the window where we had entered, and that only illuminated half the room. I had not noticed the boxes when I was down there the night before.

  Johnny pulled the boxes up on the table, which