the mouth of the fish. He bent down and put the fish back into the water as we watched it dart away from us. My sense of victory slowly melted away. As I watched, the fish return to its home in the lake I felt my desire to fish swim away with it.
We fished for another half-hour but neither of us caught anything else. When at last we finally ran out of worms we decided it was time to quit.
“I’ll put the fishing equipment away,” Uncle Eddie started, “you boys go ahead and start getting our lunch ready.”
“It’s only nine in the morning, it’s not lunch time yet,” Johnny replied.
“When you start as early as we did today, nine o’clock certainly can be lunch time. Besides, with the thought of those chicken sandwiches and corn on the cob sitting in the basket I can’t think of anything else.”
As Uncle Eddie spoke, he began to carry the fishing gear back to the car.
We each had two sandwiches and were quite full by the time we finished. As Uncle Eddie cleaned up our mess from lunch, Johnny and I wandered off down a dirt trail to do a bit of exploring.
“Don’t go too far away,” Uncle Eddie yelled from the picnic table. “I don’t want you two getting lost.”
“We won’t,” Johnny replied.
We walked for about a quarter mile or so, pointing out all the points of interest along the way.
“Hey, looked at those two squirrels chasing each other,” Johnny said excitedly. “The big one is gonna kill the little one when he catches up to him.”
“The little one’s too fast for ‘em,” I replied, “he ain’t ever gonna catch him.”
“Look he got him! Look at ‘em fighting. Look at how they’re rolling around on the ground,” Johnny screamed. “Ah, the little one got away again.”
We watched as the two squirrels rushed off out of sight and continued their frolicking as they ran. We had gone so far down the trail that we could no longer see Uncle Eddie.
“I think we should turn back,” I said to Johnny. He kept walking as if he didn’t hear me at all.
I was beginning to worry because now we were far out of Uncle Eddie’s sight. I wasn’t going any further.
“I’m going back,” I yelled out to Johnny who was about twenty yards ahead of me. I waited for a moment. When he did not respond I turned and started walking back along the dirt trail. As I glanced back over my shoulder, I noticed that Johnny was not following.
I walked slowly, hoping that he would follow and catch up with me. I was looking back every few seconds waiting for him to run up behind me. As I twisted my body half way around, I noticed something lying off the edge of the trail. I knelt down on my knees to get a better look at it. It was a dull ivory color and very smooth. It looked like something that had been made by a machine, but I could not tell what it was. As I picked it up in my hands, I realized that it was an antler that had fallen off a baby deer.
The antler was only about four inches long and very sharp at the tip. I couldn’t figure out how the deer had lost it, as it looked as though it had fallen off cleanly. It was in perfect condition and was going to be a great souvenir of our trip. I rubbed my fingers across it to feel how smooth it was. Even the part of the antler that had been attached to the deer had a smooth feel to it.
Mesmerized by my great find, I did not notice that Johnny had returned and was peering over my shoulder. As I stood up to show him the antler, he ripped it out of my hand.
“Hey, give that back to me!” I yelled.
He turned away from me and started analyzing it. After a ten-second inspection, he began to put the antler in his pocket. He was trying to steal my trophy. This was more than I could bear.
“What are you doing with that?” I asked. “I found it and it’s mine and you better give it back to me or else!”
“I have it and I’m keeping it,” Johnny said. “I don’t have to give it back to you!”
As he turned to go back on the trail, I ran up to him and tackled him from behind. I locked my arms around his waist and pushed him to the ground. Jumping on top of him, I pinned his stomach to the ground. The antler had flown out of his hands when I hit him, but I did not have time to see where it had gone.
“I found that antler and it’s mine,” I screamed at Johnny as we wrestled. “You can’t take everything away from me just because you want to.”
“You better get off of me or I’m gonna kill you!” Johnny yelled as he squirmed from his stomach and onto his back. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t let go of me.”
We wrestled for a few seconds more until Johnny got to the point where we were facing each other. I wanted to take my fist and punch him right in his mouth, but could not bring myself to do it.
After about a minute on the ground Johnny finally seemed to get his bearings, and his strength seemed to grow. Feeling my grip on his hands slipping as he pushed me off. He drove me straight back slamming me to the ground with a hard thud that made my body go numb for an instant. Before I knew what had happened he was on top of me holding my arms over my head so that I could not move. Holding both my wrists together with one hand, he reached back with the other and grabbed a large rock. I saw him raise the rock over his head, and I closed my eyes and waited for the impact of the rock to slam into my head and surely kill me.
I waited a few seconds before opening my eyes. I saw Johnny had lowered the rock and was now holding it just inches from my face.
“I could have killed you,” Johnny said, “if you ever do that again I will kill you. You better never raise a hand against me again or it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
Johnny flung the rock into the woods and stood up slowly. He kept a wary eye on me as he dusted himself off. He slowly walked back towards the trail, stopping halfway to bend over and pick up the deer antler. He put it in his pocket and walked back to Uncle Eddie.
I think that Uncle Eddie sensed that something had happened as Johnny and I returned to the Packard. I had blood coming down the side of my lip and Johnny’s shirt was ripped. We sat in the car silently while Uncle Eddie returned the fishing equipment. Johnny and I did not speak a word to each other the whole drive back from the mountains. I was thinking about the fish I caught and did not have, and the deer antler that I found that was now in Johnny’s pocket. I could not help but think about something Uncle Eddie had said on the drive up. When Johnny had complained about how long the ride was, Uncle Eddie told him that in life you had better learn to enjoy the journey because many of the destinations are not as great as you think they are going to be. Uncle Eddie could not have been more right, the only part of this journey that I enjoyed was the drive up, pretending that the Packard was my car and that Uncle Eddie was my chauffeur.
14
No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to stay mad at Johnny. Even though he had gotten close to killing me, by the next day I acted as though nothing had happened. He was my best friend, and I loved him like a brother. If anyone else ever picked on me, Johnny would always step up and put a quick stop to it. Johnny had a streak of craziness and anger that ran through him and all the kids knew that he might explode at any minute. Even the older kids realized that when Johnny lost his temper you did not want to get in his way. When anyone put their hands on me, you could see the rage inside of Johnny rise, so much so that everyone in the neighborhood knew better than to ever mess with me.
“Remember, you promised to go with me downtown and help me with my shopping,” my mom said as I came down for the breakfast the following Saturday morning. “We’re gonna go down to Market Street and I have a big list of things we need to get.”
I had completely forgotten about my promise and had helped organize a baseball game in the cemetery for that afternoon.
“Oh yea, I didn’t forget about the shopping, I got nothing else on my schedule for the day,” I said in a convincing tone.
“Go grab my list sitting on the kitchen table and we can go.”
The list was written on a small scrap of paper. When I retrieved it for
her, she shoved it into her pocket and we were out the door. Taking the trolley car from Erie Avenue, we got off at the corner of 5th and Market streets.
Arriving downtown just in time to hear the local church bells do their noontime ringing. They rang one after another, you could hear them coming from every direction. They were not synchronized; as one would end and thirty seconds later, another would begin. The bells had a quite beautiful sound to them, as each one played a different tune. I knew we were only a few blocks from where they kept the Liberty Bell, but that was one bell I never heard them ring.
It hit me as we walked up Market Street that we had not eaten lunch before we left home. I was starving and we had not brought anything to eat with us. I knew I could wait until we did the shopping and open up something that we bought, but I was hungry now. I knew my mom probably did not have extra money to buy us lunch; she usually calculated how much she would spend at the market and never seemed to have any extra.
I looked at her sheepishly and asked, “Are you hungry?” I was trying to be subtle and send a message without letting her know how hungry I really was. She turned and looked up and down Market Street, and then turned back at me and smiled.
“I know something that you would like,” she said. “You see that building over there, that’s a place called Horn & Hardart. It’s a restaurant and we can get some lunch there. “
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Me, Johnny, and The Babe Page 13