Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories

by Jean Shepherd

  As I gazed at the top, old spike wounds itched vaguely beneath my tapered Italian slacks—old wounds I had sustained in hand-to-hand spikesie combat with antagonists of my dim past Well did I remember Junior Kissel’s economical, slicing sidearm movement, his green top string snapping curtly as he laid his yellow spikesie down right on a dime with a hissing whir. Flick, on the other hand—more erratic, more flamboyant—had a tendency to loft his spikesie, releasing it after a showy, looping overhand motion a good two feet above the surface of the playing field. His top spun with an exhibitionistic, wobbling playfulness and usually bounced hesitantly two or three times before settling into the groove. I myself preferred a sneaky, snakelike, underhand movement, beginning at the hip, swinging down to around the knees, upward slightly, and then the quick release after a fast, whiplike follow-through. Flick was great to watch; Kissel, methodical and clean. I was deadly.

  In my day, there were two types of top spinners: those who merely played with a top—dilettantes, haphazard, sloppy, beneath notice; and those to whom a top was a weapon in the purest sense, an extension of the will, an instrument of talent and aggression. Anything but a toy. I was one of that lonely breed. In combat, the top was used for only one thing: destruction. A top in the sweaty, tense hand of a real artist was capable of splitting his rival’s top down the middle in the flickering of an eyelash.

  I remember all too well the sinking sensation of total defeat when my first top skittered into the gutter, wobbling crazily like a drunken thing, in two distinct and irrevocable halves; and Scut Farkas, pocketing his sleek, ugly, black spikesie, strode away without so much as a backward glance. Then and there, the course of the next few years of my festering life was uncompromisingly set. In the secrecy of the basement, hour after hour, I clandestinely practiced every known motion, ranging from the rarely seen, difficult-to-master whiplash to the effete, delicate sidearm slice. Slowly my own true personal form began to emerge—until one spring day, in five minutes. I had halved the prized possessions of three of my closest friends. I knew then that I was ready for the big time.

  Not quite. True, as a performer I felt fairly confident. It was the top itself that I lacked. To the untutored eye, I suppose, a top is a top—some red, some green, some blue. I find this hard to believe, but no doubt this is so to some. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is also pitiable. To the uninformed, all bats used by ballplayers look alike. This could not be further from the truth. Major-leaguers make annual treks to Louisville, Kentucky, for the sole and express purpose of selecting the seasoned lumber, the delicate taper, the precise finish and exquisitely calculated weight of the one thing that stands between them and anonymity. They guard their personal weapons with a fierce and unremitting jealousy. Long winter evenings are spent by internationally known sluggers resting before the fireside, carefully, endlessly rubbing next seasons lumber with oily pork-chop bones, until finally, by opening day, the cleanup man steps to the plate, whipping through the ambient air a personal and completely assimilated fusion of man and device. Boog Powell’s bat is as different from, say, Tony Conigliaro’s as twilight is from dawn. They may look a little alike, but they don’t feel the same.

  Scut Farkas’ top, known throughout the neighborhood as Mariah, had at least 50 or more confirmed kills to its credit, as well as half a dozen probables and God knows how many disabling gashes and wounds. Rumor held that this top had been owned by Farkas’ father before him, a silent, steely-eyed, blue-jawed man who spoke with a thick, guttural accent He ran a junk yard piled high with rotting hulks of deceased automobiles and rusting railroad-train wheels. Some said that it was not a top at all, but some kind of foreign knife, and not large, as tops go, being of a peculiar squat shape, a kind of small, stunted, pitch-black mushroom, wider above than most and sloping off quickly to a dark-blue, casehardened, glittering saber tip. Not only was the top strange in appearance; it spun with a mean, low humming—a truly distinctive, ominous note, a note that rose and fell, deep and rumbling, like the sound of an approaching squadron of distant Fokkers bent on death and destruction. Farkas, like all true professionals, rarely showed his top unless in anger. Skulking about the playground, his back pocket bulging meaningfully, just the trace of top string showing, Farkas was a continual, walking, living, surly challenge.

  As a marble player, he had long since been barred from civilized games. His persistent use of blue-steel ball bearings, lightly polished with 3-In-One Oil, had reduced our heisty and spitsie games to a shambles, leaving the playground strewn with the wreckage of shattered comsies, precious aggies—and blasted hopes. Farkas played for keeps, in the truest sense of the word. An aggie belted by one of Farkas’ cannonballs ceased to exist, dissolving in a quick puff of pulverized ash.

  Farkas’ secret was not in his choice of weapons alone. He had the evil eye. We all have seen this eye at one time or another in our lives, glimpsed fleetingly, perhaps, for a terrifying, paralyzing moment on the subway, among a jostling throng on the sidewalk in the midst of a riotous Saturday night, peering from the gloom through the bars of a deathhouse cell in a B movie at the Orpheum, or through the steamy, aromatic air of the reptile house. It is not easy to describe the effect that Farkas’ eye had on the playground of the Warren G. Harding School. I know that such a thing is anatomically not possible, but Farkas’ eye seemed to be of the purest silver-gray, totally unblinking and glowing from within with a kind of gemlike hardness. These eyes, set in his narrow, high-cheekboned weasel face above a sharp, runny nose, have scarred forever the tender psyches of countless preadolescents. Many’s the kid who awakened screaming, drenched with cold sweat in the dead of night, dreaming wild nightmares of being chased over fences, under porches, through garages by that remorseless weasel face. The closest thing I have ever seen to the general quality, both physical and spiritual, of Scut Farkas was when, on a sunny afternoon on a Florida dock, I came face to face with a not-quite-deceased, eight-foot mako shark. Scut Farkas, at ten, was a man not to be trifled with.

  He was the only kid I had ever heard of who rarely smoked cigars, cigarettes or corn silk. Farkas chewed apple-cured Red Mule Cut Plug, In class and out. As a spitter, Farkas unquestionably stands among the all-time greats. During class he generally used his inkwell as a target, while on the playground he usually preferred someone else’s hair. Few dared to protest, and those who did lived to regret it. Farkas’ glance boring gun-hard across the classroom carried a message to every male in the class, save one, at one time or another. It read: “I’ll get you after school.” The kid, knowing he was doomed, often wet his pants right there and then.

  He had never been known to refer to any of his classmates by other than their last name only. The use of the first name somehow would have been a sign of camaraderie or weakness, and would have undermined his position as an unbending belligerent. The victim’s last name was always followed by the same phrase: “Ya chicken bastard!”

  His only known rival in pure thuggishness was the equally infamous Grover Dill. The two had formed an unspoken alliance, each recognizing the other as extremely dangerous—an alliance that held the rest of the kids in total subjugation.

  As a competitive top spinner, Farkas was universally recognized as unbeatable. The combination of Mariah and Farkas’ short, whistling three-quarter-lash movement was devastating. He sacrificed accuracy for sheer power, like a fast-ball pitcher with a streak of wildness. When Mariah hit, there was no return.

  Occasionally a challenger, getting wind of Farkas’ overpowering reputation at Warren G. Harding, would show up at recess from some foreign school. A ripple of excitement would move quickly through the motley throng as the two battlers squared off. There was a strong streak of chauvinism among the Warren G. Harding students. It could be said that we felt, “Warren G. Harding, right or wrong”—except when Scut Farkas was facing down a challenger from, say, St. Peter’s parochial school, or George Rogers Clark. Farkas did not carry the colors of Warren G. Harding on his back. Like all true outlaws, the o
nly color he recognized was blood-red. The other guy’s, of course.

  Week after week, month after month, we stood by helplessly as Scut Farkas and Mariah made wreckage of the best tops in Hohman, Indiana. Not only that; we were forced by a single scythelike sweep of his evil eye to applaud his victories. This was the unkindest cut of all. I remember the hated words rattling in my throat as I banged Flick on the back: “Old Farkas sure did it.” Flick hollowly answering: “… Yeah.”

  Pocketing Mariah and hawking fiercely, Farkas would swagger sideways into the gloom of the boys’ bathroom to look for somebody to hit. Another notch was added to his already well-notched belt.

  This was the nature of my enemy as I practiced day after day in the basement next to the furnace, perfecting, honing, polishing my burgeoning technique. Why I did it, I cannot tell. Some men are driven to climb Everest, others to go over Niagara Falls in barrels or beach balls. Some are driven to wrestle crocodiles barehanded. I only knew that in the end there would be just Farkas and me, and our tops.

  One thing was sure: To get hold of a top that could even stay in the same ring with Mariah, I would have to do better than the measly assortment that Old Man Pulaski kept in the candy case among the jawbreakers, the JuJu Babies and the wax teeth. Pulaski’s tops were not fighting tops. They were little-kid playing-around tops; weak, defenseless, wobbly, minnowlike, they were even used by girls.

  “Do you have any other tops but them little ones?”

  “D’ya wanna top or don’tcha?” Old Man Pulaski glared down at me from behind his bloody butcher’s apron while the jostling knot of Lithuanian and Polish housewives clamored for soup bones.

  “Yeah, but I got that kind.”

  “Here, how ‘bout a nice red one?” He reached into the case, trying to hurry the sale.

  “Ya got any black ones?”

  “Aw, for Chrissake, black tops! Come on, kid, I ain’t got no time to fool around!”

  “Scut Farkas got one.”

  “I told Scut Farkas if he ever came in again I’d kick his behind. He didn’t get no black top here.”

  “Well, he’s got one.”

  “Ask him where he got it.” He roared off back to the meat counter.

  Obviously, that was out of the question. Asking Farkas where he got Mariah was about like asking King Kong where he got his fangs. So I began methodically to visit candy store, dime store, toy store—any kind of store where they might conceivably have tops. Every day on my paper route I sniffed and hunted. From time to time I even bought what looked like a promising challenger, but I knew deep down in my heart that none of them came close to Mariah. Some were better than Pulaski’s, some worse. I even discovered all sorts of tricky, effete, frilly tops I had never before seen or heard of. This went on well through spring. Then, late one balmy day, slowly pedaling home on my Elgin bicycle—the pride of my life—its foxtails hanging limply in the soft air, my mind a good five light-years away, I came unexpectedly to the end of my search.

  I was at least four miles beyond my usual range, in a run-down, rickety tenement section of town, near the roundhouse. The steady crash and roar of switch engines, the shrieking and booming of Monon freight cars went on 24 hours a day, seven days a week in this country. Even when the sun was out brightly, the skies here were gray. I rarely got over this far. It was foreign territory. I pedaled aimlessly along the dingy, dark street, the curbs lined with elderly, disreputable automobiles, reading signs as I went. For the first few years after you really learn to read, you read everything in sight carefully.

  BEECH-NUT TOBACCO … BULL DURHAM … FISK TIRES … ROOM FOR RENT—RAILROADERS WELCOME … COMMIT NO NUISANCE … CHILI PARLOR, HOT TAMALES … SHOESHINE … BARBERSHOP … SNOOKER TABLES … TOTAL VICTORY NEWSSTAND AND NOTIONS … LUMP COAL …

  Wait a minute. TOTAL VICTORY NEWSSTAND AND NOTIONS. It was a tiny, dark sliver of a shop, wedged in between two gloomy red-brick buildings, about the size of those places where a man sells celluloid combs and hunches over a lathe making keys. I swung over to the curb, squeaked on the brakes and dropped the bike in back of a derelict Hudson Terraplane. In front of the Total Victory, a faded-red-metal slotted newspaper display case leaned against a locked Coca-Cola icebox. The window of the store was impenetrable by human gaze, covered with a rich, dank patina of locomotive smoke, blast-furnace dust and the fine essence of Sinclair Oil from the nearby refineries. Faded posters hawking Copenhagen Snuff, Sweet Orr work gloves and Lava Soap, the mechanic’s friend, completed the job. For a second or two, once inside, I couldn’t see a thing, it was so dark and dingy.

  “What d’ya want, sonny?” I peered around the high glass case containing stacks of snuffboxes and tablets, looking for the speaker.

  “What d’ya want?” An ancient lady wearing a black shawl over her head, the way most Polish ladies did in our neighborhood, stared piercingly at me.

  “Uh …”

  “D’ya want some orange pop, sonny?” She spoke with the slightest trace of a European accent

  “You got any tops?”

  “Why, yes, sonny.”

  She disappeared behind the counter for a long moment. The shop’s air was heavy with the scent of cabbage, garlic, tobacco juice and old clothes. Outside, a diesel engine blatted its horn thunderingly, rumbling off into the middle distance.

  “How about these, sonny?”

  She hoisted a cardboard box of tops onto the counter. I might have known it. She must have got these tops from the same place Pulaski got his—weak-kneed trifles that you saw everywhere.

  “Uh … is that all you got?”

  “How ‘bout a red one, sonny?”

  “Uh … you got any other kind?”

  “Other kind? These are good tops, sonny.”

  “Naw, I got one a them. ‘Bye.”

  I started to leave, as I had done so many times in the past, from every dinky candy store in town. Just as I got to the door:

  “Hey, sonny, come back here.”

  Vaguely uneasy, I turned, one foot out on the sidewalk, the other on the greasy floor, my Keds ready to spring for the Elgin. She had disappeared into the back of the store behind a beaded curtain. She re-emerged into the murky gloom, carrying a cardboard Quaker Oats box. She set it down on the counter and began fishing in it with a withered claw. I waited, figuring she was going to spring a yo-yo on me, a toy for boobs and idiots, a sop for the untalented.

  She pulled out a tangled mass of rubber bands, string, a couple of old clothespins and what looked like a dead mouse. A switch engine breathed asthmatically in the ambient air outside—followed by muffled curses from the brakemen.

  “Aha! Here she is!” She fished scratchingly, unable to grab whatever it was.

  “I wouldn’t sell this top to everybody, sonny.”

  “Yeah?” I was ready to jump.

  “But I can tell you need a top, sonny.” She cackled, her faint white beard glinting dully. Her hand snaked out of the can, clutching something round.

  Great Scott! Cradled in her talons lay a malevolent duplicate of Scut Farkas’ evil Mariah. A duplicate in everything—spirit, conformation, size, everything—except color. It was a dull, burnished, scuffed silvery-pewter,“color I had never seen on a top before. But then, except for Mariah, I had never seen a black one, either.

  “It’s been used, so it won’t cost you much, sonny.”

  “How much?” I was almost afraid to ask.

  Id say ten cents, sonny. It’s imported. She’s a Gypsy top.”

  I was In. It was one of those few moments when I was well-heeled, carrying a full 12 cents in my jeans. I forked over my two nickels as calmly as I could and took possession of what was to prove to be a historic find. I had at last come together with the greatest fighting top I had ever seen. It had an oily, heavy, solid feel, a nice comfortable heft like, say, a Colt snub .38 Special feels to the hand. I had already decided to call it Wolf.

  “Good luck, sonny. Careful, she’s a mean one.”

  Outside, the s
witchyard mumbled and muttered as a long, clanking string of flat beds rumbled toward the steel mill. With Wolf safely in my hip pocket, I pedaled furiously through the twilight toward Cleveland Street. The showdown had begun. I knew it. And somewhere in his lair, Scut Farkas must have known it, too.

  That night after supper, under a dim yellow light bulb in the basement, next to the looming furnace that dominated the underworld below our house, I carefully wound my best top string around Wolf for the first time, pulling each loop hard and tight so that it lay flat against the preceding one, until finally Wolf was cocked and ready for action.

  The string itself is highly important to a genuine expert. I preferred the hard, green, twisted cord that knotted “solidly” and got a good bite on the side of the top. This type of string was not easy to use, but once the technique was mastered, nothing could come near it. I had long since outgrown the standard wooden button for the end of the string, using instead a thin, one-inch mother-of-pearl button stolen from my mother’s sewing basket. There were three extras stashed away in my dresser drawer for emergencies.

  As the dim bulb illuminated a faint circle on the gray concrete floor, I scratched out a mark in the exact center of the pool of light for a target and stepped back into almost full darkness. I could smell the moldering old tires that my father kept hanging on the walls just in case someday he might pick up another Hupmobile, and the mildewed Sunday papers of years back that lay piled against the concrete-block walls, and the scent of countless generations of field mice who had lived out their lives in this basement, and the dusty Mason jars filled with grape jelly and strawberry preserves that lined the plank shelves under the steps, and the sharp rubber smell—bitter and strong—of the coiled garden hose under the workbench, and the more subtle but pervasive aroma of a half ton of damp soft coal in the pitchblack bin, all held together with the soapy dankness of the drains, covered with perforated iron lids, that every week carried the family’s used wash water back into Lake Michigan.