“White people don’t eat that stuff,” Rusty said.
“As a gang member, if he wants pigs’ feet,” Tim said, “he’s entitled.”
Rusty snorted and dragged his shoes against the curb. The doctor said he had to wear them until they were worn out.
Tim said, “We’re going to need green, brown, and black shoe polish to make ourselves invisible when we get to the island.”
“For camouflage?” asked Wade. He tightened his triceps, peeking at his intermittent reflection in passing car windows.
“If the cops stop us,” said Rusty, “I don’t want incriminating shit all over my face.”
“Nobody’s even going to think of stopping me, because I’ll be disguised as landscape.”
The sidewalks ended and we walked on the grassy shoulder between the street and people’s fences. Joey picked his nose, and each time he saw me notice he snuffled and rubbed his face like a bear and stuffed the hand in his pocket. Then his tics took over again, and the hand returned to its plunder.
We came to where a Spanish bayonet was growing out into the street. We maneuvered around it one at a time, cars swishing past on our left sides with a gritty breeze, thorn-tipped fronds aimed at us on the right. Each time one of us passed, we folded a frond over and pinned it through its own green flesh, as though the plant deserved to suffer for barring our way with its spikes.
I entered the Rexall first, alone, then the others drifted in, paired. I squeezed in behind the comic-book kiosk, and while Tim and Wade faked an argument at the record section, their curses drawing attention away from me, I slipped the shopping bags out of my shirt. Rusty strolled by and took them, grimacing at the designs left by my sweat.
I went to the next aisle and made a performance of reading shampoo labels, situated where I could watch half the store in the convex mirror mounted up in the corner. I saw fun-house versions of Tim and Wade wander over and accept a bag from Rusty. Then Rusty grabbed Joey’s arm and steered him towards the hardware section. They passed a poster taped to the wall in imitation of a stop sign, a red octagon that said SROP! (Shoplifting Rips Off People!). I ducked back to reading labels, tried to decipher “hydrolized animal protein,” wondered which one of these products made Margie’s hair smell so nice.
I focused on the spy mirrors of my sunglasses. Behind me, a middle-aged woman pushed a shopping cart filled with party decorations. A boy my own age ran fingers through his feathered hair. A man, a vagrant, seemed to be staring at me. I got scared. I returned a bottle of shampoo to the shelf, then turned around. The man’s eyes snapped over to a rack of packaged combs, and he pulled one off and meandered away.
Lifting a bottle of hair conditioner, I glanced up at the big fish-eye mirror. The man was staring at it from the next aisle, balloonish face, distant pin body. An all-over sweat squeezed out of me. I carried the conditioner past the man’s aisle (he’d abandoned the comb) and walked by a twitching, grunting Joey and whispered that a man was following me. Joey blinked, shuttled over to Rusty.
I went all the way to the end of the store, into the hospital aroma of the pharmacy, and saw Tim slip a bottle of Calamine lotion into his swollen Rexall sack. He winked and left. I placed the hair conditioner on the nearest shelf. In my sunglasses rearview, I saw Rusty and Joey exit the store, Rusty laughing and flicking Joey’s earlobe. Clerks, bothered by their horseplay, forgot to suspect them of stealing. I pursued Tim.
I heard a rhythmic slapping and turned around. The man was approaching me on noisy flip-flop sandals. I turned to the shelf, reaching for an alibi. Tampons, douche, feminine hygiene sprays. I chose a box of Summer’s Eve, an outrageously flowery thing, and began building an explanation.
The man came at me, pulling from his back pocket a wallet thick as a deck of cards. It dropped open to a badge-and-ID centerfold which, through my shock, clued me he was a detective. He had a semibeard, weedy hair, and eyes so shot with red I thought of a junkie. His T-shirt was about ready for cleaning dipsticks.
“Okay, Bubba,” he said, “how’d you like to take a little trip to the office with me?” His breath was a whiff out of a dumpster, and I stopped inhaling to prevent a gag.
I imagined myself in the juvenile home. I seemed to be momentarily upside down, some kind of terrified adrenaline hallucination. Caught, I remembered that I was technically innocent. I hadn’t even intended to steal anything. I coughed to get my voice working. “I believe you made a mistake.”
“Right. Where’s that hair conditioner you had a minute ago?” He looked me over for telltale bulges.
I pointed at the bottle on the shelf. The man’s hands slithered into his pockets and he began to bounce on his toes, glaring from side to side. I grabbed a breath.
“Look,” he sneered, “I don’t know what you got this time and what you didn’t get.” A mother and her knock-kneed toddler ambled up and the man crooked his head at a suntan-lotion display and led me over behind it. “I know what you’re up to, okay?”
“Honest to God,” I pleaded, and I actually felt misjudged. “I’m not stealing anything. My mother sent me to buy this—” I held up the douche (crucifix at a vampire) and saw the rush of color to his ears. “I thought I might have enough left over for the conditioner, but I don’t.” I nearly took off the sunglasses, for sincerity’s sake, but didn’t want to sacrifice their insulation. The man looked at the ceiling.
Wade swaggered past and the man’s eyes tracked him. Wade walked out the door, and Tim hurried after him with the bag, yelling, “Wait, Jim, I want to buy some goddamn cigarettes!” Walking in, an elderly woman shook her head sadly.
“You know those boys?” The man wouldn’t look at me. I began to feel sorry for him.
“I’ve seen them around,” I said. “Maybe they were shoplifting while you grilled me.”
He hissed. “I don’t get paid enough for this bullshit. I ain’t slept in three fucking days. Get out of here and don’t let me see you again.”
I figured leaving now was as bad as a full confession. He hadn’t caught me in anything. I wanted to prove my honor, and also to relieve him of the feeling that I was getting away with something.
I flourished the box of douche again. “I have to buy this.”
His ears blazed.
I walked to the checkout line, the detective’s flip-flops slapping tile behind me. With my mirrors I watched him fold his arms over his chest so as to bulge his biceps, then lean against a post, watching me. I held the douche close to my leg near the counter as I waited in line. I tried to calculate the sales tax. The cashier was a pretty woman with sunflower earrings, and as I placed the box on the counter her eyes visited the detective, then settled on me. I blushed with several embarrassments. She smiled and worked the angry sounding cash register.
Twenty-one cents short. Each embarrassment was creating further embarrassment. I held out the money I had, said my mother hadn’t given me enough.
“Well, let’s see,” said the woman. She lifted a nearby cup on which was written “Got a Penny, Give a Penny—Need a Penny, Take a Penny” and emptied it into her hand. She counted nineteen cents. Beside me, a man’s arm turned a wristwatch upright. Another man cleared his throat. Others, inspired, cleared theirs. Summer’s Eve waited on the counter. Sweat trickled down my ribs like a crawling insect. “Hold on,” the woman said and lifted a purse from beneath the counter.
The man behind me said, “Here you go,” and clicked a nickel impatiently onto the counter. The register chimed open, the girl spilled in the money, gave me two cents change, and said, as she stapled the douche into a bag, that she liked my sunglasses. I offered the pennies to the man. “Keep them for next time,” he said. I clinked them into the cup and forced a smile at the woman.
Slain with humiliation, I trudged out, the doors swinging open violently as I stepped on the plastic mat. None of the gang had lingered outside, so I headed roundabout towards Rusty’s, where I knew they’d be. Outside a bakery I passed an empty police car, windows down. I rippe
d the brown paper off of the box and chucked the douche onto the driver’s seat. A voice quacked loudly on the radio, sending needles into my heart. I walked half a block on dissolved knees, then jogged through the lanes.
As usual, the air conditioning in Rusty Scalisi’s house was so extreme you could see your breath. His dad was out surf casting at the beach, and his mother was shopping. Tim, Rusty, and Joey were spreading the loot out on Rusty’s bed. His room was very neat, with sports equipment stacked all along the walls. Over his bed was a big painting of dogs playing poker.
I explained what had happened with the detective, and Joey said he was glad he hadn’t been the lookout after all. “Damn,” he said, “this must be a hundred dollars worth of stuff.”
Rusty said, “I had to threaten him to get him to steal the flashlights, but after he saw how simple it was, he wanted everything in sight. Look at these comics. Richie Rich, Archie, Romance. Who’s gonna read that crap?”
I estimated sixty comics in the garish fan across Rusty’s pillows. Joey had simply pulled three or four random stacks off of the rack, duplicates and all.
“Yeah, you’ve got to be selective, Joey,” said Tim. “All that risk deserves better than Richie Rich.”
“There’s a House of Mystery” I said. “I’ll take that if nobody else wants it.”
We helped Rusty hide the loot in his footlocker, then sat around talking and reading and getting chilly. Richie Rich wasn’t so bad, actually. Tim got Rusty to call the orphan drug pusher he knew, about getting some angel dust, which is actually animal tranquilizer. Rusty said we could get it on Friday.
The doorbell rang and Rusty let Wade in. He was breathing hard, his nostrils pinching and dilating. He had his green canvas bookbag.
“What’ve you got?” I asked. The grins from the others meant they knew.
Wade said, “I stole it during a funeral Mass. I walked into the sacristy like I belonged there and took it.” He turned his bag over on the bed and a bottle of sacramental wine rolled out, followed by a baggie bulging with Eucharist wafers.
Joey said, “Man, y’all are going to burn in Hell.”
“So are you,” said Wade. “But we’ll travel with trail mix from Heaven.”
Rebels of the Blessed Heart
Father Kavanagh had cancelled his weekly hour of Religion with our class. I suspected it was because seeing “the artists” would bring to mind images from Sodom vs. Gomorrah 74, in much the same way as I was afflicted by watching Margie’s brother Donny, sunken into the desk in front of mine, pulling at a scab on his neck.
We’d been ordered to read silently. The Return of Tarzan was open on my desktop, but the pictures in my head were of Margie, Margie and me, Margie and Donny. I squirted a third layer of glue onto my left palm, spread it with my right finger, sucked the finger clean. It tasted vaguely plastic. I’d heard it was made from animal hooves. I blew on the hand and Elmer the Cow glared from the Glue-All label.
Sister Rosaria, twirling a Kleenex-sheathed finger in her nostril, said, “All right, class. Take out your history texts.” She inspected the tissue, then dropped it with the others in the wastebasket.
The classroom rustled and scraped, books slapped. Tim laid 1984 inside his history book and continued to frown into it.
The nun piped, “Who can tell me why there’s a historical marker at St. John’s Episcopal Church?”
Two hands floated. Eric Johnson, the doctor’s boy, and Donny Flynn, his arm in a plaster cast decorated with swastikas and peace symbols. The answer to the question was undoubtedly a war. It was Donny’s only topic of interest.
Eric knew everything. Rosaria called on Donny.
Donny dropped his arm pow! on the desk and said, “It was General Sherman’s headquarters.”
Rosaria bared coffee-stained teeth. “That’s right. Yes. Good.”
To compensate, Donny slouched back again in the juvenile delinquent mode, arms hanging.
Rosaria slipped on her harlequin glasses and then wrote WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN on the green chalkboard behind her. “During the Civil War, Sherman marched his troops here from Atlanta, setting fire to everything along the way until he came to the sea. He spared Savannah because of its beauty and gave it to President Lincoln for Christmas. That’s why we have so many Victorian houses left.” She clapped beige dust from her hands, sat.
We’d studied the Civil War already this year. I believe Rosaria was trying to nurse race relations, because of the purse-snatcher killing, and the duck.
Rosaria asked who’d read Gone With the Wind, or seen it, and a sudden crop of right hands sprang up. I’d sneaked into the movie a couple of years before with Tim and Rusty. I enjoyed Vivien Leigh’s bosomy gowns, but the story wearied me like the soap operas. It was a tourist-shop picture of the South, unreal to me.
I ignored the nun’s whiny praises of Margaret Mitchell. I stared around and imagined various girls out of their clothes. Angie Sipes chewed on her pen, licking at the cap between little bites. My stomach ached to think of the activities you might get a girl to agree to. I was scheduled to spend Friday night with Margie, but I found I couldn’t imagine anything carnal between us, as if she was too pure to be thought about that way. Odd, especially since I couldn’t help but picture her with Donny.
Rosaria droned. Beside me, Tim and Rusty exchanged pellets of paper. Behind us, Wade had his head close to the desktop, sketching a wildcat with muscles so well-cut it looked skinned.
The windows were cranked open and from time to time bees wavered inside, hovered, then streaked down and across the street to where the azalea bushes were exploding lavender, pink, and white, and the bees became specks darting in and out of the blossoms.
“Let’s open our texts to page 161,” Rosaria said, and a general scrape and the faint crack of book spines resulted.
A generic watercolor adorned that page, soldiers in blue conquering soldiers in gray. But the figures on my copy dangled giant penises drawn in black ink, and several had painted lips and long lashes. They exhaled balloons filled with vile dialogue. I flipped the page so Rosaria wouldn’t see. Across the next two pages, in bold Magic Marker, were the words ROSARIA SUX HIPPO DIX. I rested my arms across the words. Rusty and Tim snickered.
Slowly, I tore the pages out with my unglued hand, hoping to finish before Rosaria strolled the aisles. I wadded the pages into my pocket.
The nun said, “Francis Doyle,” and my pulse stopped. I grimaced up at her and she said, “Please read aloud beginning on 161.”
“I can’t, Sister,” I said. “My pages are missing.”
She made me bring my book up. She soured her face over it, ran her finger along the serrations. “It looks as if someone deliberately tore this,” she said. I was reflected mite-like in her glasses.
“I bought it secondhand.”
“All right. Look on with someone else.”
I scraped my desk over beside Tim’s.
Rosaria said, “Not with Tim Sullivan.”
I scraped back against Rusty’s desk. Rosaria stared disgustedly, but allowed it.
The same pages were torn from Rusty’s book, and the next two were psychedelic from squiggly lines he’d used to camouflage what Tim and Wade had drawn there.
“Chuck Spinnett,” Rosaria said, “you have a nice reading voice. You begin.”
Chuck commenced. He had a mild speech defect, due partly to the wires and rubber bands on his teeth. He slurred through Manassas, Antietam, and Shiloh. After, Rosaria said, “Class, this was the bloodiest war ever fought in the Western Hemisphere, ten times as bad as Vietnam. Now why was our country divided against itself in 1861?”
The air boiled with hands. None of them belonged to our gang. It was such a recycled subject that even Joey O’Connor abstained. I noted that the mood rings on the Kelly twins’ fingers had turned different colors.
Rosaria called on Craig Dockery, Negro, breaker of duck wings.
“The Civil War was on account of the people didn’t want to fre
e the slaves like Lincoln say they had to.”
“Said,” corrected Lewis Epps, the darkest boy in the school.
“Very good, Craig,” said the nun.
Donny Flynn stood up, unasked. “The South wanted to succeed from the unions but the Feds wanted to control everything.” Craig cut his eyes at Donny.
“Yes, there was a matter of secession. But slavery is a stain on our past. The Confederacy was a lost cause even before it began.”
Donny Flynn sneered. Craig Dockery elevated his chin at Donny.
Rosaria continued. “God inspired men like Abe Lincoln and U. S. Grant to look into their hearts and do what was best for mankind.”
Tim said, “If God was on the Union side, why’d it take them four years to slaughter an army they outnumbered four to one?”
Rosaria blinked. “God doesn’t interfere with free will.”
“Oh. Maybe you should mention the part where Lincoln offers Robert E. Lee command of the Union Army, but Lee turns it down to defend the South, even though he doesn’t own slaves, or that Grant was an alcoholic and a corrupt president—” Tim had folded his arms across his chest and was speaking rapidly in his Northern preemptive fashion, with Dockery and Flynn both muttering, then Tim raising his volume, “—and Sherman was insane, which made him good at setting fires and exterminating American Indians—”
“Well, I didn’t want to bring all that in at an eighth-grade level,” barked Rosaria, hoisting herself up and scowling like a beacon. “In fact, Lee and Grant were both gentlemen—”
“But weren’t the slaves freed in the North mainly so they could fight?” All the heads swung to Tim, straining forward in his desk. “And Lincoln was willing to let Southerners keep their slaves if they’d give in to the Union—”
“That may be partly true!” All heads swung back to the screeching nun. She raised herself onto her toes and tilted forward, leaning on the desk. “But let’s not stray into conjecture! Everyone’s father isn’t a history professor, Mr. Sullivan! The slaves were freed and—”
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys Page 10