All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  “Josephine?”

  “You’re out, man, you’re fucking out,” comes the high-pitched voice of one of the boys in the street.

  Ever since he played St. Joseph in his fifth grade Christmas play, Wally has wanted to be an actor. His lines had been enunciated loudly and clearly, and he’d taken three curtain calls—and afterward, in the cafeteria for punch and cookies, he’d overheard the parents saying to each other, “That Wally Day is going to go far.”

  Go far. It’s a phrase he often repeats to himself, holds close to his heart.

  He likes to believe those parents meant he had great acting ability, that his St. Joseph was the best they’d ever seen, that someday they were certain he’d be one of the greats, the star of The Wally Day Show on CBS on Saturday night. Now he studies his mother’s soap operas whenever his father is away, watching how the actors move, how they deliver their lines, how they dress. They’re all so handsome. They’re what Wally wants to be: sturdy and handsome, a real All American Actor.

  “Josephine?”

  It takes him several minutes to realize that she’s dead.

  He tries to take her pulse but he doesn’t know how to do it. He grips her wrist but feels nothing. He pushes his head in toward her chest to listen for her heart. Her body rolls over onto her back.

  He sits back on his knees in horror.

  She’s dead.

  Josephine is dead.

  “You’re going to go far,” said Sister Angela, the principal of St. John the Baptist elementary school, after St. Joseph had made his last curtain call. “Yes, indeed, Walter Day. You are going to go very far.”

  Josephine is dead.

  “And Dad will find out I wasn’t playing softball,” Wally whispers into the dark.

  He stands, looking down at Josephine’s body. He feels cold and dizzy. He wants to scream but knows he’d better not.

  She’s not dead, he tells himself. She’ll open her eyes. She’ll make a sound. She’ll be all right.

  “Josephine?”

  Her eyes are still halfway open.

  “Josephine, please be alive.”

  He leans down over her, looking closely into her face.

  No, she’s dead. She’s really dead.

  I’ve got to go.

  Go far.

  “Go to second! Go to second!”

  In the bushes, Wally steels himself. The boys in the street had seen him arrive. They’d seen him go into Josephine’s house. They could tell the police that someone had been there just before she died. But he didn’t know these boys. They weren’t in his class. He recognized none of them. Had any of them recognized him?

  He can think of nothing but getting his bike and sneaking out through Josephine’s backyard. He feels no grief, no sadness, no sympathy—just fear. He just wants to get away from the house, away from the body. He wants to get back home before his father can find out he lied about playing softball with Freddie.

  That’s when he spots his cousin Kyle with the boys.

  “No,” Wally whispers to himself.

  Kyle had almost ruined his portrayal of St. Joseph. He had sat there in the audience and hooted, “Hey, look, St. Joseph’s wearing Keds!” Wally’s sneakers had been showing from under his robes. The audience had laughed, and oh, how Wally hates being laughed at it. He almost forgot his next line. But he recovered, as Josephine would say. He recovered and went on.

  My bike, he thinks. Please, just let me get my bike.

  It’s lying in the grass beside the walkway to Josephine’s front porch. If he can make a run for it, grab its handlebars, and dive back into the bushes, there’s a chance he won’t be seen. There’s a possibility even Kyle’s eagle eye will miss him. It’s now or never. He can’t wait any longer. Someone might come by and find Josephine dead inside.

  She’s dead! Josephine is dead!

  Wally runs.

  “He’s safe! He’s safe!”

  He takes hold of his bike and trips, falling face down in the grass.

  “No way, Baronowski, he’s safe! He’s fuckin’ safe!”

  The blood is pounding in Wally’s ears. He gets up and runs with his bike into Josephine’s backyard. He’s skinned his knee and it stings but he hops onto the bike anyway and pedals the hell out of there, all the way across town, barely stopping for traffic, until he’s home.

  “Benjamin Franklin was not only a statesman but also a scientist, coming up with a new theory on the nature of electricity,” John Davidson says, perky and dimpled on the television set.

  Wally’s always thought that John Davidson was very handsome, but of course he’s never told anyone that. Boys weren’t supposed to know who was handsome and who was not. But tonight John Davidson’s dimples aren’t really getting much thought anyway. “Thanks for watching,” the baby-faced actor is saying. “This has been another Bicentennial minute.”

  Drums roll and flags unfurl. Wally’s mother sits knitting on the couch, her eyeglasses having slipped down toward the brim of her nose.

  “I’m going to bed,” Wally tells her.

  “You don’t want to watch Welcome Back, Rotter?”

  “No, I’m tired.”

  His father is stretched out in his La-Z-Boy. “Pooped from the game, huh? Who ended up winning?”

  “We did.”

  “Attaboy.”

  He starts down the hall.

  Josephine is dead.

  And I left her there.

  It’s the only thing he’s been able to think about all day.

  Why didn’t I call an ambulance? I can’t believe I didn’t call an ambulance. What if she needed help? What if she would’ve lived if I hadn’t panicked and run off?

  I killed her. I killed Josephine.

  She’s still there the next day, on the floor in the parlor, in the exact same position he left her. Wally’s not sure what he expected to see, but somehow it surprises him that she’s still there, in the same position.

  Of course she is, he tells himself. She’s dead, and dead people don’t move.

  There’s no smell. He expected there would be a smell, especially with it being so hot outside. Ninety-three today. But there’s no odor. Her house still smells the way it always has, like Lemon Pledge and mothballs.

  No one had seen him come into the house this time. He’d left his bike in the Dairy Queen parking lot on Washington Street and snuck through backyards to get here. He came in through Josephine’s back door. It was unlocked. The whole house is unlocked. Anybody could rob her blind.

  But she’s dead. Josephine is dead.

  “I’m sorry, Josephine,” he says, looking down at her.

  He doesn’t want to have to call anyone. This is what he wants: for someone just to come by and find her, like the mailman. Or some door-to-door salesman. That way Wally will never have to be associated with it. He’ll never have to admit to his father that he wasn’t playing softball with Freddie, that he was over here playing Alice in Wonderland with a crazy old Communist lady.

  But Josephine didn’t get much mail. And no one came to see her except Wally. She could lie here for weeks. Months!

  Maybe I could make an anonymous call to the police. Yeah, I should do that. Just call them and hang up after—

  But the police have ways of tracing phone calls. He’s seen them do it on Kojak.

  “Someone’s got to find her,” Wally wails, looking back down at the corpse. It doesn’t seem like Josephine. It just seems like a body. A mannequin from Grant’s department store.

  “I’m sorry, Josephine,” he whispers. “Really I am.”

  That night he stares out his window in the direction of her house. Next door he can see Mr. and Mrs. Daley fighting in an upstairs room. He can tell they’re fighting by their silhouettes, the way they jerk back and forth. He can hear the sounds of their television lilting through the night, a tinny sitcom.

  And underneath, as ever, he can hear Helen Piatrowski scream.

  He knows this town. He knows the stories they te
ll, the secrets they keep. But they don’t know his. Beyond the houses of his street rise the hills, where the orchards run deep and dark, and somewhere behind them is Josephine’s house. Wally tries to picture the vibrant woman he’d known, the dazzling, all-consuming presence who had filled up all his waking thoughts. But he can’t—he can’t visualize her, as hard as he tries. All he can see is the body on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, in its frayed old housecoat, a final costume for the Red Queen.

  “And leading the way is Brown’s Mill’s All American Boy—Walter Day!”

  The crowd applauds.

  The announcer leans forward into his microphone. “And next to him is his father, Captain Robert Day, one of our local hometown heroes who was wounded in Vietnam and remains a proud leader in our nation’s fighting forces!”

  More applause. Somebody from the crowd shouts out, “Way to go, Robbie!”

  Trumpets sound and a drumroll kicks the parade off under bright blue skies. Wally and his father walk in front of the mayor and the town councilmen, waving to the crowd assembled on both sides of Main Street. An honor guard bearing an American flag and an original thirteen-colonies stars-and-stripes walk alongside of them.

  All these faces. Waving, smiling, laughing. Wally stares into their eyes. Everyone looking at him.

  And across town, Josephine is rotting on her living room floor.

  Yesterday he had finally been struck by the smell. Thick and mangy. Fruity. For the past three days, he’s snuck through the backyards to peek inside her house, just to see if the body was still there. And it always was. In the same place. The same position.

  Josephine is lying dead on her floor. And only he knows. Only he.

  “This way, Wally!” It’s the photographer from the Brown’s Mill Reminder. “Give me a big grin for the front page.”

  Wally waves and smiles. His cheeks are starting to hurt.

  “Hey, Wally!”

  A girl from his class. Her bright smiling face.

  But in her place Wally sees Josephine, rotting on the floor.

  “This is what it’s going to be like, Wally,” his father tells him as they march down Main Street, past St. John the Baptist Church and the Palace Theater. “People applauding, people looking to you to set an example. I’ve known this since the age of five, when my father first came home from the Big War and he took me with him to a victory parade. People need heroes, Wally. And the Days have a long history of providing them.”

  “Hey, Wally!”

  It’s Freddie Piatrowski and Michael Marino. They shout over to him. He waves.

  And neither is it an easy path, my young friend. A life in the theater is not an easy path, nor should it be.

  Josephine’s dead. He can smell her. Even out here on Main Street, blocks away from her house, he knows her corpse is reeking. The day is wicked hot.

  “Walter! Robert!”

  It’s his mother, on the sidelines, jumping up, trying to snap their picture. Wally gives her a little wave but his father is turned the other way, smiling toward the other side of the street. Then they’re past her, and Wally watches out of the corner of his eye as his mother is pushed back by the policeman guarding the route.

  Josephine’s dead.

  Wally’s stomach roils. The hot sun bears down upon them.

  “Hooray!” some kids shout up ahead. “Hooray for the USA!”

  Captain Day beams, giving them the “thumbs-up” sign.

  The land of the free. Hah! I’ve never heard of anything so absurd.

  “This is it, Wally,” his father says, as the photographs keep snapping, the applause keeps sounding. “This is what your life is going to be.”

  Wally looks from side to side, waving, trying hard to keep the smile on his face. Sweat rolls down his face and he has to fight the nausea that’s bubbling up again in his gut.

  Josephine’s dead.

  Josephine’s dead.

  Josephine’s dead.

  He sees her in the faces of the crowd, sees her wherever he looks.

  “Hey, Wally!”

  Josephine’s dead.

  “Hey, Wally!”

  Josephine—

  He can’t hold it any longer.

  He bolts from the parade to the side of the road and pukes into the gutter. Two little girls waving their tiny American flags scream as Wally’s chunky vomit splatters onto their patent-leather shoes. Wally holds his gut as he retches again. The crowd pulls away in disgust.

  His father is mortified. He stands over Wally with his mouth open.

  “What are you doing?” he demands. “What are you doing?”

  Wally retches with a dry heave.

  Captain Day hurries away from him, back into the parade. Wally staggers away from the crowd, wiping his face. The little girls are still screaming.

  And Josephine is dead on her floor, left there by an All American Boy.

  His father ships out the next day. That’s the way it goes. Wally never knows when he’s leaving, and they never say good-bye. He just wakes up to find his father gone.

  “Are you feeling better, Walter?” his mother asks as he stumbles into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “Heatstroke can be awful.”

  Josephine’s dead.

  “Your father left these for you,” his mother tells him, indicating a stack of brochures on the table, promoting the state’s military academy. Even though Wally’s only entering seventh grade in the fall, his father likes to plan ahead.

  Wally says nothing, just shakes some Lucky Charms into a bowl. He looks down at the kitchen table. Beside the brochures for the military academy sits the Brown’s Mill Reminder. There, on the front page, is a photograph of Wally and his father waving in the parade.

  And underneath the story, another headline:

  ACTRESS FOUND DEAD AT HOME.

  “Oh,” Wally says, dropping the cereal box to the floor.

  “What is it, Walter?” his mother asks.

  Wally has picked up the newspaper and is reading it.

  Josephine Leopold, 87, retired stage actress, was found dead on her floor yesterday afternoon by a concerned neighbor who had noticed a smell …

  “Oh, yes, the article,” his mother says, beaming. “Don’t you both look so handsome?”

  Her death appeared due to natural causes. The coroner estimated she had been dead for two or three days.

  Five days, Wally thinks. Dead for five days.

  “I’m going to clip it out and send it to your father. He’ll be so proud.”

  Wally sets the paper down on the table and looks over at his mother.

  “Mom,” he says.

  “Yes, Walter?”

  He hesitates for just a second, then says it. “I want to be an actor.”

  She blinks at him, confused.

  “I want to go to acting school.”

  “Oh, Walter.”

  “Could I? Could I take acting classes?”

  She begins to tremble. “Walter, please—”

  “I want to be an actor, Mom. That’s what I’ve decided. Okay?”

  His mother lifts her hands into the air, waving them back and forth as if to ward off some kind of attack. “Walter, those brochures please—your father wants you to go the academy—”

  “I don’t want to! Please! You’ve got to help me! Please, Mom!”

  “Walter, your father—”

  “Like you wanted to be a singer. Please help me, Mom! You went off to the city and became a singer!”

  “No!” She’s close to crying. “That was silly, Walter! Silly and stupid!”

  “It wasn’t!”

  “Yes, it was! Stupid, stupid, stupid!” She’s covering her ears as if she doesn’t want to hear what she’s saying. “It was stupid and so is this!”

  “I want to be an actor! Help me, Mom, please! You could help me if you wanted to! Please, Mother, help me! It’s my dream!”

  His mother breaks down into tears and runs from the room. He hears the door to her bedroom slam shut.<
br />
  He stands there for several minutes looking down at the newspaper.

  Miss Leopold left Brown’s Mill at age 16 to go on the stage with the company of Minnie Maddern Fiske …

  Walter is the son of Captain Robert Day.

  He walks down the hall to his room.

  I left her there to rot, he thinks, staring into his mirror. Behind him his certificate is reflected hanging on the wall in a frame.

  He walks over, removes it from its hook, and slips out the certificate from the back of the frame.

  All American Boy.

  Leaves his teacher to rot on the floor.

  He crumples the certificate in his hand, then flushes it down the toilet.

  From his mother’s room he can hear her sobs. They are deep and guttural, wracking her body, louder and more terrible than he has ever heard them before. He doesn’t go in to try to console her. There’s nothing he can do for her.

  And nothing she can do for him, either.

  Nothing at all.

  8

  SINGING FOR THEIR SUPPER

  In the backseat of the car, the soldier has his hands up Rocky’s blouse. From the front seat, Regina can hear the soft pop of her sister’s bra strap being unhooked. Her eyes dart over to meet those of the fellow sitting next to her. He is coming closer. He actually licks his lips. Regina makes a little sound, her body tensing. She knows he wants to do the same thing to her that his friend is doing to Rocky.

  “No, Buzz,” comes her sister’s voice from the backseat. “Leave Regina alone.”

  The man pauses in his approach.

  “Regina isn’t that kind of girl,” Rocky says.

  It’s as if Rocky can read her mind. It’s always been that way between them.

  “Not that kind of girl, eh?” Buzz says, laughing, cocking an eye at Regina.

  She just twiddles a button on her blouse, not looking at him. It’s not that, she wants to tell him. It’s just … no man would want me. Not now. No man.

  Behind them they can hear Rocky’s sloppy kisses with Buzz’s friend.

  “But you are, huh, Rocky?” Buzz asks. “You are that kind of girl.”

  “Yeah,” Rocky says, and her voice has that sadness to it that only Regina can hear. “But not Regina. So just leave her alone.”