Me, Johnny, and The Babe

by Mark Wirtshafter

together for seven years, I never left without you! If you thought I left you should have knocked on my door to make sure. You have to know that, we’ve been doing this since kindergarten.”

  He kept walking as I spoke and never even turned around to look towards me. There was no point to arguing about it anymore, so I just kept my mouth shut the rest of the way.

  At the pace Johnny was walking, the trip to school only took five minutes.

  “Why did you miss the game yesterday?” I asked. “Your mom said you were sick.”

  He did not say a word and just kept on walking.

  “Are you mad at me?” I asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No you didn’t do anything.”

  “So what happened with the game?”

  “I was sick and didn’t feel like going.”

  “What do you mean you were sick? How sick could you be to miss the biggest day in the history of Kensington?”

  “Well, I was sick and there was no way I could make it.”

  “When I was trying to find you, you weren’t even in your house. Your mom said she didn’t know where you were.”

  He looked at me with a scowl and said nothing.

  “So if you were so sick why weren’t you home in bed?”

  Johnny stopped walking and turned towards me. He reached out with both fists and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt.

  “Look, I don’t have to answer to you. You’re not my boss and I don’t have to tell you shit. I don’t want you asking me any other questions and I never want to hear you talkin’ about that stupid game again.”

  Johnny let go of my collar and shoved me away with a stiff push. He continued his fast pace down the street. I walked behind him, careful to keep a safe distance. As I walked, I could not help but wonder what it was that had Johnny so upset.

  At school, Johnny and I were never in the same classes. I was in advanced classes and Johnny was stuck in classes that moved at a much slower pace. I made friends with the smarter kids that went to our school, and Johnny was in classes with all the troublemakers that populated our childhood. I always thought that he would do much better in school if he were in classes with me. Not only would I be able to help him and tutor him, but also the environment was so much better without all the bad kids in the room.

  As I went through my first day, I could see that this year was probably not going to be much different. I was in an advanced arithmetic class, as well as advanced English and history. Most of the same kids that were in my classes last year were once again my classmates.

  I was somewhat surprised to find out that Michael O’Brien was in my arithmetic and history classes. When I thought about it, I should not have been surprised; he had been in many of my classes in the past. It’s just that I had paid almost no attention to him, barely remembering that he had even been there.

  As much as I fit in and felt comfortable when I was with Johnny, I also fit in very well with the smart kids that were in these advanced classes. It sometimes felt like two different worlds, and I was happy that I could walk comfortably in both. On this first day of school, I was happy to sit next to Michael and relive some of the great moments from “The Game”.

  35

  The only nice thing about the first week of school was that it was only two days long. Thursday and Friday went by very quickly and the weekend arrived just in time. I settled into the routine of my new classes and rekindling past friendships with people that I only encountered while at school.

  “How’s the school year looking?” my dad asked as we sat together in the living room on Saturday morning.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “Do your subjects seem harder than last year?”

  “No, it all seems pretty much the same.”

  “Is Johnny in any of your classes?”

  “No, he’s never in any of my classes. It’s kinda of strange, we go to the same school but once we get there, it’s like we live two different worlds. We have different friends, study different subjects and I hardly even see him. We almost never cross paths in school.”

  “Well you can still eat lunch together, can’t you?”

  “Yea, I guess we can still do that.”

  “Do you boys have plans for today?”

  “No, but we should do something. I don’t want to waste a fine day like this. But, Johnny has been acting real strange lately. Maybe we can spend the day together and he will tell me what’s wrong with him.”

  I thought that Saturday would be the perfect day to get our friendship back on track. We could spend the day at our clubhouse and just talk. Surely if we got together by ourselves in the clubhouse, Johnny would open up about whatever had been bothering him. We would certainly be able to put it in the past and be best friends again.

  A little after noon, I walked over to Johnny’s house and knocked on his front door. Annie answered, wearing a very nice pink dress. It was one that I had not remembered her ever wearing to church. She looked as pretty as any time that I remember her, and I stammered for a moment as I began to speak.

  “Hey Annie,” I began, “Is Johnny home?”

  “Yep, he’s upstairs, I’ll go get him for you.”

  I watched her as she went inside the house, and I could still see her as she walked up the stairs. She was as pretty from the back as she was from the front. A few minutes went by before she came back down the stairs, with Johnny trailing a few steps behind her.

  As Johnny approached the door, I could tell that his mood had not improved much. There was no smile to greet me, and he clearly looked annoyed just seeing me. He opened the door and stepped out onto the front steps, and leaned back against the metal railing.

  “Whatcha want?” he asked in a clearly agitated tone.

  “Well, I thought we could go to the clubhouse and spend the afternoon together.”

  “I’m not going to the stupid clubhouse today, or ever.”

  “What’s wrong with the clubhouse?” I asked.

  “The whole clubhouse thing is for little babies and I’m not going there anymore,” Johnny said as he looked away from me.

  “Babies? What the hell are you talking about? I thought we had fun there. We can do whatever we want when we’re there. We can play bottle caps or checkers or cards. If it’s for babies, maybe you should go there and get your damn stuff out and bring it all home,” I said.

  I figured that once we got there Johnny would change his mind.

  “You’re not gonna leave all your stuff there, are you?”

  “I don’t give a crap about my stuff, and I’m not going back there ever again!”

  Clearly, Johnny did not want to go the clubhouse, but trying to figure out the real reason was proving to be very difficult. I was not about to stand there and argue with him anymore.

  “I don’t care if you never go to the clubhouse again. As a matter of fact it would be fine with me if I never talk to you again,” I said in a loud voice.

  I turned away from Johnny and started down the steps.

  “You know what,” I said, “I’ll go to the clubhouse myself, and bring all your shit back here and dump it right outside your door.”

  “What do you mean; you’re going to the clubhouse by yourself?”

  “Are you telling me that I can’t go either,” I said. “You can do whatever the hell you want, but you can’t tell me what I can do, or where I can go.”

  “I don’t want you going to that building ever again,” Johnny said, his face turning redder by the second.

  “I’m going to the clubhouse and you can’t stop me.”

  “I can stop you if you make me stop you,” Johnny said in a very threatening tone.

  I turned and started to walk away from him, wondering if he would follow me or just let me go. I was halfway down the block and certain that he was not following me. As I glanced back towards his house I saw that he was still standing on his steps glaring at me. I looked away and continued down the street towards the corner.
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br />   Just as I reached the corner and started to cross the street, I saw Johnny jump down his front steps, running franticly straight towards me. My initial reaction was to run, but I knew he would catch up to me quickly as he was the faster runner. Anyway, he knew where I was headed, so he would end up catching me at the clubhouse even if I did run.

  So I kept walking, my back turned away from the direction that he was coming. My heart was racing, as I did not know what to expect once he caught up to me. I half expected him to tackle me from behind, and beat me with his fists until I was a bloody mess.

  I heard the footsteps getting closer, but I kept walking at the same deliberate pace. As he got to within ten feet of me I tried to brace myself for the impact that I thought would surely come. I tried to make my body completely rigid, but kept walking at the same time.

  As he caught up to me, I could feel his hand grab the back of my shirt around the neck. He closed his fist and grabbed my shirt collar, twisting it to get a firm hold.

  “Alright, if you want to go to the clubhouse, I’ll take you to the clubhouse,” he said as he dragged me down the street by the neck.

  I tried to pull away, but he was too strong for me, it was easier just to go along.

  I did not know what to say to him, nothing I was going to say was going to calm him down. It was all I could do to stay on my feet, as I almost stumbled to the ground a few times during the forced march. All I wanted to do was get to the clubhouse, get our stuff and go home. At this point, I really wanted to be done with Johnny; he seemed to be losing his mind.

  As we crossed the last street and arrived at the window entrance to