The Crowd Sounds Happy

by Nicholas Dawidoff

  My mother tried to shield Sally and me from what was happening, yet everywhere you looked there were patrolmen on foot, squad cars with their engines idling, roadblocks, search parties coming door-to-door, and citizen volunteers gathering down by Wilbur Cross High School in brigades of several hundred, ready to conduct sweeps for a missing child. I visited my friend Chris at his house, and standing in the living room as I arrived was a policeman talking to Chris’s younger sister, Jeanie, who was Jennifer Noon’s classmate. I went to the home of another friend where the television was on, and there on the screen were Jennifer Noon’s weeping parents begging her kidnapper to return their daughter. Trooping into my own home came several petrified-looking kids to be taken care of by my mother while their parents joined the search parties that were now dragging the Mill River, scouring East Rock Park as well as the wooded trails that wound out toward Hamden and North Haven. We heard talk of scuba divers and of bloodhounds. Every afternoon when the school day ended, dozens of parents and concerned neighbors stood beside the crossing guard on my corner, a grim, red-eyed line, some blinking rapidly as we all approached.

  The last person to see Jennifer turned out to have been Gordon’s mother, the crossing guard who’d guided Jennifer through the Canner and St. Ronan intersection. Soon enough we all knew that Gordon’s mother told the police that Jennifer had come straggling along alone, many minutes after the big pack of Whitehall-bound kids passed. The story we heard at school was that Jennifer’s big sister had gone home to play at a friend’s house after school and that Jennifer, learning of this, had decided she wanted to go home with a friend too, had hung around Worthington Hooker trying to find one, which delayed her start for home.

  The authorities were said to be looking for a paunchy, middle-aged white man in disheveled clothes who’d been seen with a little girl that Monday in a far-flung perimeter of East Rock Park. On the phone with a friend, my mother lowered her voice as she described a figure seated behind the steering wheel of a gray car who’d recently made some Day Prospect Hill students uneasy by lingering out on Canner Street just beyond school property. “The girls said there was ‘something peculiar’ about that man,” my mother whispered, and the word “peculiar” burned into my brain. There could not have been a kid in my school who was not repeatedly told that week never to accept candy from a strange man, never, ever to get into a strange man’s car, never to have anything at all to do with strange men. Strange man, strange man, strange man—the strange man was all I could think about, and he began keeping me private company wherever I walked.

  After days of searching in sweltering heat, word came that some socks, black shoes, and a white sweater had been found in the woods of Rocky Top, a remote, timbered section of Hamden out toward Sleeping Giant State Park. The clothes were identified as Jennifer’s. But still no Jennifer. She had been missing for over a week now, and the search had moved well beyond the area of Hamden where the clothes had been discovered. Then a professional dog handler, donating his time, decided to double his rottweiler back through for a second pass. In wooded undergrowth six and a half miles from our school, the man and dog turned up a halfburied body. My perceptions, fairly accurate to this point, now derailed. Somehow I got it into my mind that Jennifer had been chopped up into pieces, which were packed into clear plastic bags and then covered with old leaves. When the man and dog swept away the leaves, I believed they were confronted by a disembodied little head with bangs gazing up at them from inside the plastic bag, the face rigid with terror. For the rest of my childhood I carried that image with me. The truth is that by the time they found Jennifer, the corpse had so badly decomposed in the warm weather that her facial features were unrecognizable and my mother said the medical examiner could make no definite findings at all about what had killed her.

  As I lay in bed at night, listening to the creaking sash of my low bedroom window, the suddenly cool gusts of wind seemed as significant to me as the rain that had fallen when we left Washington. No sooner had Jennifer Noon become known to me than she was already a horrifying memory and I was left with only the strange man. The strange man had become my secret habit of dread. He was out there, close, maybe under the window. Weeks passed with no arrest, and night after night I lay there, prostrate in a membrane of fear that felt all too permeable. I wanted to save myself from him. But how would I recognize the strange man when he came for me? I became preoccupied by what he might look like. There wasn’t much to go on. To the flaccid, indeterminate incubus crouching behind the wheel of a gray sedan I added a blunt, menacing brutality to his face, cold and rheumy eyes, a surly gaze. Some days he spoke in a growl; on others he rasped. I didn’t want to die; I wanted someday to become a fourth grader. Had I ever stood next to the strange man buying bread at Cumberland Farms? Down toward the highway on our street was Archie Moore’s, a bar where all summer a waft of stale beer had blown out of the rusted air conditioner over the door. In the late afternoon, through the haze of the tobacco-stained window you could make out shrouded men bent over glasses. I was now afraid of the Archie Moore’s men, was afraid of the pharmacy up on Whitney Avenue where the bald counterman, lean and impatient in his blue coat, had a barking way of speaking. I was afraid of the mailman’s large shoes. My friends’ fathers made me uneasy, and I avoided them during visits, spoke only to the mothers. Threats seemed to oscillate from all directions. Late into the night I monitored the air for suspicious noises, was such an alert sentry that I could not sleep until, exhausted, I collapsed into troubled dreams.

  In class at school, Miss Swainbank seemed tired and more strict, all the light daubed out of her face. After dismissal, I now came straight home, walking outside the fence past the schoolyard where stray papers blew across the empty blacktop that was transformed by our absence, a forest suddenly deprived of birds. The windy days seemed to render me motionless. I had not known that there could be an unresolved mystery; such a thing had never happened to the Hardy Boys. The uncertainty was intolerable. It occurred to me that my life was in the balance and yet I did not know what to do to save myself. At night I pulled the sheets and blankets over my head. During the day I became convinced that my survival was contingent on my acting well. To protect myself from the strange man I believed I had better be very good, that I should not make trouble or demands.

  I couldn’t do it. During lunch at school, everyone liked to swap and trade, dealing a bag of Fritos for a package of Devil Dogs, but nobody ever wanted to exchange anything for my bruised apples and soggy tunafish sandwiches. The complete indifference of others to my lunches was painful to me. I began working my mother hard to get me Space Food Sticks. These were the foil-wrapped chocolate treats the Apollo astronauts were supposed to have eaten aboard their rocket ship. “We are on a budget,” she’d say, “and anyway I’m not going to buy you junk food.”

  “But they’re not junk, Mom,” I would plead. “Scientists made them for the astronauts.” My mother was not interested in astronauts, and had a low regard for “space,” which she spoke of in the tone she used when referring to things inexplicably prized by other people such as Las Vegas and hula hoops.

  “No, Nicky,” she’d pronounce. “And that’s final.”

  “I hate you,” I would say, and go off to my room and whisper my grievances to my cat.

  Another time she told me: “When I was a child I would have given anything for somebody to make me a tunafish sandwich for lunch because my mother made me sandwiches with jam and cold butter that gouged huge holes in the bread. You could be getting sandwiches with holes.”

  We had these conversations over and over and then suddenly one day during dinner I noticed the beleaguered way my mother looked as I described how “sorry” other kids said my lunches were. I was stricken. I decided to punish myself by forcing myself to eat the things I liked least on my plate first, not touching the good parts until all the liver was finished. I was sure that nobody had ever thought of doing this before.

  It was one thing to be a
nuisance at home. My mother seemed somewhat resigned to it. I sensed that far worse, by her calculus, was any misdeed that took place in public. My dim grasp of honor and reputation led me to believe that how I behaved outside the house would influence other people’s view of her. I wanted my mother to feel that the world thought well of her. There was, of course, self-interest in this concern. So often my mother seemed exhausted by the daily expense of effort. I feared that if I created further burdens, she would weaken and then I too would be vulnerable to all the bad things out there, the paunchy apparitions lingering in cars and beneath low windows. My transgressions, I knew, must not leave our dining room. Then two of them did.

  One day that fall, Miss Swainbank announced that the New Haven Board of Education had created a monthlong Read to Succeed competition in which the student in our class who read the most books over the month would be declared the winner and awarded a prize. Each week for the duration of the contest, we were to report to her the titles of all the books we finished. She distributed aquacolored stickers, one for each of us, that said in bold yellow print: “If You Can’t Read You’re Out of Luck.” When I got home I stuck my sticker on the inside of the bedroom door where, from my bed, propped on an elbow with a book, I could see it.

  Each Monday morning at school during the month of Read to Succeed, Miss Swainbank was seated at her desk as we entered the classroom. We gathered around her, reporting what books we’d read that week, and she added them to the list. I liked competition, the way it added thrust to something I would have chosen to do anyway on my own, elevating regular life into an event, and I especially liked that each Monday morning when I told her the name of a book, Miss Swainbank would keep her head down with her pen poised, confident that I had more titles to give her. I began to live for the ability to make that hovering pen descend again to the page. Once I’d turned all the titles in, I’d go to my seat and look happily around me. The great virtue of the contest was that it provided something besides the kidnapping to think about.

  At the beginning, just about everyone in our class had lined up with titles. Soon, for most, interest flagged. One Monday, toward the end of the month, I stood behind Binder as he gave his titles to Miss Swainbank, and it occurred to me that only the two of us were still trying to read the most books. Miss Swainbank never distributed a running total so I had no idea how many books Binder had read. I had no idea how many I’d read either. What I suddenly knew above all things was that I did not want to lose.

  Binder had always been my friend. Now I began to assess him as a rival. Binder’s large, dark eyes and wiry frame seemed formidable, as did his scientist’s unflappable self-possession; I feared that mathematical ability could somehow infuse reading totals, increasing his tally. That he had never really seemed to enjoy reading was intimidating; he was engaged with this in a professional way. Binder finished submitting his titles to Miss Swainbank, and it was my turn. Standing beside her, I named the books I’d read, and Miss Swainbank wrote them down. When I’d listed them all, I looked at her pen, quivering expectant in the air, and I was seized with the wretched feeling that more was expected of me than I could give. “Any others?” she said in that adored voice. Frantically I searched my memory. The memory felt blurred. There must be others. Surely I had missed one. “Peter Pan,” I stammered. But I had read it that summer. “Peter Pan,” she repeated, and pen caressed paper. I waited for something to happen. Nothing happened. “Is that all?” she asked. “That’s all,” I said miserably, and, when she didn’t notice, I went back to my desk and sat down.

  But something had happened to me; my life was ending. I was a cheat, a liar, a fraud. Peter Pan was right there on my shelf. I could see its cover so vividly, the washed blue background, the sea greens of Peter’s broad-collared tunic, Tinker Bell in gauzy pink. I knew I could go straight home and reread the book, put things to right. But a correction after the fact could not erase the reality of the offense. A current of mortification shot through me, and then killing shame descended.

  For the next week I kept to myself, reading books and spending every moment feeling pressed against a rough edge of fear. I half wanted to be found out because, if I wasn’t, anybody could get away with anything. They should know what I had done. They must know. The stylus that once played “strange man” over and over in me came alive again, skipping on a perpetual groove that sang “Peter Pan, Peter Pan, Peter Pan.” I told nobody about what I’d done. That they were not already on to me seemed impossible.

  The following Monday we gave in our last books to Miss Swainbank. Sometime soon after that she announced the results. I had won by six books. Peter Pan would not have made any difference. No sooner was there relief than it was chased by a peculiar regret. Around and around these sensations went, swooping me up and down, unstoppable as horses on a carousel, so that I kept feeling triumphant, then ridiculous, then unworthy, and then triumphant again. I contemplated making a clean breast, reclaiming that once savored feeling of virtue experienced when I’d returned money to the corner store after they’d given me too much change. But I did not want to confess. And why must I? I had read five more books than anyone else. I felt paralyzed by incompatibilities of logic—and the desire for recognition. I had never been singled out for anything public before.

  I was presented my prize by Miss Swainbank. It was a gray T-shirt with “Read to Succeed” stenciled in blue above the image of an open book. “Award Winner” was lettered below it. I pulled the T-shirt on over what I was already dressed in and wore it that way, surplice-like, for the rest of the school day. In spite of myself, I began to feel proud. That afternoon when I got home, I rang the bell, stood at the front door and when it was opened by my mother, I unzipped my coat and displayed my trophy. My mother looked surprised. That pleased me. Then she frowned. “You mean they didn’t even give you a book?” she asked.

  We were riding in a car driven by my friend John’s mother. In the car, along with John and me were his younger brother and his younger brother’s friend Jimmy. I rarely paid much attention to my friends’ younger siblings. They could never seem to do very much. Then, at some point during the drive, I learned Jimmy’s last name. It was Noon. As I realized that I was in a car with Jennifer’s brother, my head began to whirr and buzz. I wanted to know things from Jimmy. What did I want to know? I wanted to know how it was to be he, to know if everything could somehow be okay with him, if things might possibly even be okay with Jennifer. I began to wonder how he would react to the sound of her name. This was something I knew I should not explore. But the curiosity was too powerful. It pushed and pushed as I tried to resist. Then filters failed, sluices gave way, gates swung open, and without even thinking I turned to Jimmy and out of my mouth came words: “Where is Jennifer?” I asked him. The car went silent. My face contorted into a grotesque half smile, and I felt the armrest on the door pressing hard against my rib. Nobody breathed. Jimmy looked at me. “Jennifer is in heaven,” he said. From the front seat John’s mother’s voice cut through the air: “Nicky! You leave him alone.” The remorse was instantaneous. Why would I do such a thing? What was wrong with me? Once again I returned home feeling an all-fours, face-to-the-ground shame, my premonitions of annihilation revived.

  While browsing the shelves down at the New Haven Public Library, I found an oversized volume by Don Whitehead called The FBI Story. The FBI Story told of notable crimes solved by the heroic “G-men” with chapters detailing how rogues from John Dillinger to Baby Face Nelson to Alvin “Old Creepy” Karpis to assorted atomic bomb traitors were brought to justice. There was also a description of the kidnapping of a boy named Bobby perpetrated by a man and woman named Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady. It seemed amazing how easy it was for Bonnie to enter Bobby’s school, explain that she was a relative, and get Bobby out of his classroom and into Carl’s car. They took him to a remote Kansas field where they beat and strangled and shot him. Then they buried Bobby in a garden and planted flowers on top of him. The story terrified me. Would
a body make flowers grow better? After I returned the book I couldn’t stop thinking about the photographs of the kidnappers. Finally I went back to the library and checked it out again. I could barely stand to turn to the Bobby chapter and there again to behold Carl’s vicious leer and his hideously scarred forehead, Bonnie’s plump, pasty, sullen depravity. But over the next few months I kept looking at them, kept going down to the library stacks where I knew The FBI Story stood towering over the other books on the shelf about police work, withdrawing it over and over to confront again the kidnappers until gradually they didn’t bother me so much.

  Most gratifying of all that dark winter was the discovery of true baseball stories. Words like Great, Hero, Amazing, and Thrillers inevitably figured into titles chosen by writers whose take on the game exuded, above all else, a spectacular admiration, as though these authors saw how much I wanted to love their characters. The ballplayers were all so splendid in their actions that even when they played for teams I disliked, in the reading moment I became faithless, a baseball apostate passionately and promiscuously rooting for whoever was the subject of the chapter.

  My baseball knowledge came almost exclusively from such books, so I knew far more about Edd Roush and the 1919 Cincinnati Reds than Ed Kranepool and the Mets players of my own time. Over and over I read about the Merkle Boner, the Snodgrass Muff, the Ruth Called Shot, the Wambsganss unassisted triple play, the Gashouse Gang, the Homer in the Gloamin’, the Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff, and all this seminal lore convinced me that baseball had an accessible significance. With the game’s system of making a tangible record of every substantive event, there was a stability and an order to baseball; it had never evolved and so all of it could be known. I soon had it within my powers, on command, to repeat the starting nine for the 1927 Pittsburgh Pirates, could discourse on the swinging styles of smooth Bill Terry, corkscrewed Stan Musial, Ty Cobb, who achieved unconventional agency with his bat by holding his hands inches apart on the handle, and both Joe DiMaggio’s huge cudgel swing and Willie Mays’s imitation of DiMaggio, in which the lesson was that Mays only became a superior player himself when he developed his own approach. I could distinguish Wee Willie Keeler from Big Ed Delahanty, Urban Shocker from Country Slaughter, Goose Goslin from Turkey Mike Donlin, Guy Bush from Bob Feller. I had never seen any of them play; they were all long before my time—and I liked it that way.