The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  The guard let Willie into the cell, turning him around. “I gotta lock the door, kid, don’t get nervous on me, okay?”

  “Naw, naw, this is a good kid, Mr. Watkins,” his father said. A good kid. He had never said anything like that to or about Willie in his life.

  They were alone, father and son, locked in the death cell.

  “Willie, ya wanna pray with me?”

  “I don’t wanna pray with you. Save that for the priest.”

  His father shrugged and patted a space beside him on the cot. “C’mon, you sit now with your fodder.”

  “No. I don’t wanna sit. I want to stand here and look at you. I wanna watch your face.”

  His father finally caught the hardness in his son’s voice. He squinted, noticed changes in his oldest son. The kid wasn’t much bigger, he would always be a shrimp, but there was something tough about him that hadn’t been there before. He stood up straighter, he didn’t keep looking away. He looked directly at his father, who suddenly felt anxious.

  “So, Willie, how ya doin’? Ya bein’ a good boy for ya mudder, she gonna need you now.”

  “Fuck how I’m doin’, old man.”

  His father’s eyes became slightly frantic. This little bastard was a stranger, standing there, staring at him, his face looking like that. A slow, surging, familiar anger began to rise in Stanley Paycek with a hammering memory of who he was and who this punk kid was.

  “Ya don’t talk to me like that, you.”

  Willie smiled. Good. Finally his father had appeared from under the layers of religious convert, concerned father, worried husband. The bastard was here.

  “I don’t talk to you like that, huh? Well, I’m gonna talk to you, Pop, ’cause I got something to tell you. It’s the last-thing you’ll ever hear from me, so you listen very hard, very good. You listen to what I’m gonna tell you, and every single word is the God’s honest truth.”

  He snatched the missal from his father’s hand.

  “I swear it on your prayer book, old man. The truth.”

  Willie told his father about the death of Walter Stachiew. He described, blow by blow, exactly what had happened that cold winter night. Then he said what he was not sure of, could never be sure of, but he said the words softly and with controlled certainty.

  “And I’m the one that finished him off, Pop. The others, they brought him down, but I brained him. What you done, you stupid sonofabitch, what you done was you picked up that shovel and beat on a dead man’s head and then you told the cops you done it. You are one stupid crazy rotten old bastard and I wanted you to know. It’s me puttin’ you in that chair tonight. That’s what I wanted you to know. When you feel that sizzle, it’s me put you there.”

  Although he should have anticipated it, his father’s attack surprised him. He was no match for this wiry, hard man, but the fury of the attack combined with the man’s hysteria overwhelmed the boy. His father’s strong hands went around Willie’s throat. He managed one quick loud cry, a scream, combined with his father’s howl of fury. The guard, for a split second in shock, fumbled with the lock, then was joined by two others as they rushed the cell. It took all their strength to pry Paycek’s hands from his son’s throat.

  They half-carried, half-dragged the boy from the cell, patting him, massaging him, terrified of what had happened, of the possible consequences and their own responsibility.

  One of the guards punched Stanley Paycek, hard, in the face, knocking him back onto his cot. They quickly locked him in, but he leaped up, came to the bars, hands locked in anger.

  “I didn’t do it,” he screamed. “That little fucker, him, he done it, he killed Walter. Oh, my old friend, Walter, he killed you, not me. He should fry. Oh, God, they gonna kill me, they gonna kill me and he done it, that piece of shit, he done it, not me.”

  Those were the last words Willie Paycek ever heard from his father. The guards hurried him into their own private bathroom, washed the blood from the corner of his mouth, offered him a drink of water, a shot of whiskey, anything to get the kid’s color back, to make sure he was okay.

  Willie blotted his face on the rough paper towels, bunched them up, and dropped them neatly into the waste-basket. After all, he was the janitor’s kid, he knew about being neat and tidy. He took a few deep breaths, as they told him to do; they shook his shoulders once or twice, rubbed his neck, and shrugged. He was okay.

  He was more than okay. He was weightless, without solidity, without reality. He was an invisible presence causing things to happen. This was his scene; he was responsible for everything that had just happened and that was about to happen. It was all because of him. He would remember and try to recapture this moment for the rest of his life. It was a moment of absolute perfection.

  Later the guards cautiously discussed what had happened. After the body had been claimed by the hysterical woman, who was in care of a large, unhappy priest, and the small funeral entourage left the prison grounds, they looked at each other and it was unanimous. This kid, this Willie Paycek. Did you see the look on that kid’s face? He was some cold piece of business.

  It was their opinion that they’d see him back in their death-row territory someday.

  They were wrong.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT WAS THE BEGINNING OF HER SECOND week at Quinatree, the upstate New York CYO camp where Megan had spent the last four Julys of her life. She wished she could slow time down; it all went by so fast. She glanced at Kathleen O’Connor, still asleep in the next cot, the pillow held over her face with both of her tanned arms.

  Kathleen was her chief rival. They were evenly matched, but this afternoon Megan was going to win the free-style swimming competition. Kathleen was faster at the start, but Megan had staying power.

  Megan stretched, ignoring the achy feeling in her arms and legs. She must have been sleeping funny. She was all cramped.

  She had tried to talk her mother and father into letting her stay for the whole summer. As a reward, she’d argued, for graduating number one among the girls and only one point off being top eighth-grader, and everyone knew Tommy Quinn was some sort of genius-freak. Her mother shook her head, wondering why Megan couldn’t count her blessings instead of always wanting more. Her father had said, “What the hell. You want to be rewarded for doing what you’re supposed to do, working your best at whatever it is? You think that’s special or something?”

  It was good to know she was finished with the eighth grade and crazy Sister Mary Frances. Megan couldn’t figure her out. She was always watching Megan, leaning over her, insisting she could do better than ninety-six in an exam if she’d only try. Perfection, that was the goal. Megan, she said, you think all life will come easy to you, but I’m here to tell you, life isn’t like that.

  One minute Sister would praise her, the next find fault. Always staring at her, looking for something Megan didn’t understand.

  Patsy said it seemed to her like Sister Mary Frances had the hots for Megan. That, of course, was crazy. Not only was Sister a nun, but she was a woman. How could a woman have the hots for a girl?

  Patsy told her the various ways between girls and girls. Her brother had explained it all to her.

  Megan wondered what the hell went on at the Y camp where Patsy went. All those Protestants, not even caring that they’d all end up in hell. Or whatever. Maybe if they couldn’t get into heaven, they couldn’t even get into hell. Patsy never worried about these things.

  Megan knew, even before Patsy had told her, that this would be the last good summer of her life. Patsy was a year older and she had begun changing, her body still thin but rounder, her waist narrower, her flat hips more in evidence. She was still flat-chested, but there was something different. And Patsy had started that damned bleeding thing.

  Megan’s sister-in-law, her oldest brother’s wife, told her about menstruation and laughed when her first question was “Do boys get anything like that?” Her sister-in-law, twenty-three, with three children, said, “Don’t worr
y about them. They have their own problems.” Megan glanced at the explanatory pamphlet enclosed with the sample Kotex napkin, then ripped it up and tossed it in the garbage pail along with the napkin and the elastic band to hold it on. No. This was not for her. She wanted no part of it.

  At thirteen, Megan was flat-chested, narrow-hipped, concave-bellied, with slim, strong arms and legs. Her hair was close-cropped for the summer and she thought she could probably be mistaken for a boy. She studied her face critically in her bedroom mirror. It was definitely a girl’s face. A certain softness defined it, a fullness in her lips, a delicacy of her slightly tipped-up nose. She hated the damned red freckles that were spattered like paint all over her face and shoulders and arms and probably her back too. Maybe they would fade after she became a real girl. Megan had no idea what she would be like when the mystery happened to her.

  She didn’t want to become a different Megan. She wanted to play ball with the boys, to challenge anyone who bothered her to a test of strength, to make fun of the girls, to wrestle with Patsy, just to be herself. She didn’t know what would be expected of her when she became a real girl. She didn’t want to know.

  With the exception of Kathleen O’Connor, none of the girls in her bunk was her kind of kid. All they talked about was boys and periods and bras. Endlessly they described boyfriends, real and imaginary: who was cute, who was fast, who they were in love with, who they wanted to date, to walk with, to talk with, to be seen with. And later, to marry. They had ideas about catching boys with good jobs. They would be the wives of important men. No one wanted to be anything herself. Just a girl who caught a rich boy.

  Fuck that, Megan thought, venomously. How’d they like to hear her say the fuck-word? That’d make them scream and cover their ears, like they’d never heard it before, or seen it painted on a wall somewhere.

  Megan wished, deep in her heart, that she could be spending her summer in a boys’ camp where there would be real competition, hard and challenging. Boys were involved in doing things and building things and taking things apart and putting them back together again.

  She knew that they did talk about girls. Patsy had told her the kinds of things boys said when they were alone: About girls who had developed into “real girls,” and if you hung around with boys after that time, they’d give you a bad reputation whether you deserved it or not. You couldn’t just be with them anymore. Not on the same old terms.

  Boys, she knew from her own observation, were always rubbing, pulling, adjusting their privates. Getting together in the back of the big lot for peeing contests. A few times, when her police lieutenant uncle, Tom O’Brien, had given her a pair of tickets to the Saturday-afternoon hockey game at Madison Square Garden, she and Patsy had witnessed their obsession at first hand.

  They were the only girls present in the free PAL section and they ignored the wise-cracks, catcalls and remarks from boys they didn’t know. When they were pelted with popcorn, the two of them retaliated with pistachio nut shells, which traveled better and stung the target. Finally, in exasperation, a whole line of boys, maybe seven or eight of them, two rows above them, had, on signal, opened up their flies and pulled out their dicks and waved them at the girls. Megan had felt her face grow hot, her mouth go dry. Patsy had grabbed her arm, muttered a quick “Let’s get outta here,” but as they ran past the boys, Megan’s eyes on the steps, Patsy had stopped, turned, made an obscene gesture at the taunting boys and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Ya all got shortchanged, ya jerks. I’ve seen better on puppy dogs!”

  Megan couldn’t talk about it afterwards, or explain to Patsy how she felt. Ashamed, guilty, dirty, as though she had done something to cause all of those boys to expose themselves. Why did they do things like that? What did they mean by it? What did they want from her and Patsy? Why couldn’t they just be guys, and pals, why did they feel they constantly had to taunt and make fun of girls and try to make them feel awful.

  “Screw ’em,” Patsy said. “It’s how they are because they got themselves their little pricks and they think they’re special. Pricks and balls, big fuckeola deal.”

  Patsy said all boys and men were slightly nuts about their whole sex thing—always comparing size and shape. Patsy had told her about a hard-on: that was why the men in the movie seats next to them held what seemed like a club between their desperate hands.

  “They play with it, see,” Patsy explained. “Then, when it’s hard, they shove it into you. You know where.”

  “Even boys get hard?”

  “You better believe it.”

  There was no one with whom Megan could check this information. She kept it all to herself and was angry with herself for thinking about such things. She wondered if she should mention any of this at confession, but she couldn’t figure what her sin was. Dirty thoughts? She felt she’d rather die than sit there in the booth, knowing Father Murphy or Father Kelly was hearing every word, thinking about what a filthy creature was saying these awful things. She took a chance that maybe God wouldn’t consider it all her fault, should she get hit by that inevitable truck that waited around every corner to strike down the sinful, unconfessed Catholic child, doomed outside the state of grace to unbearable realms of torment.

  Kathleen suddenly tossed the pillow from her face for a direct shot at Megan’s head. Megan reached out, caught the pillow, raised it over her head to retaliate. Instead of directing the pillow, it slipped from Megan’s hands, her knees buckled with a fierce cramping pain, she fell back onto her cot, her head hitting the steel frame. Her arms were at her sides, suddenly heavy with muscle spasms.

  Kathleen thought it was a trick and she crept toward Megan, prepared for a counterattack.

  But Megan didn’t move. Her face was frozen into a look of astonishment, disbelief that her body had suddenly betrayed her. She couldn’t move so much as a finger.

  The last thing she saw before passing out completely was Kathleen’s face, looming over her, the usually playful, wise expression changing into a look of sheer terror.

  Megan knew with her last conscious thought that something terrible was happening to her.

  Megan Magee was the first girl at Camp Quinatree to come down with polio. Within two weeks there were four more cases at her camp, and nine other cases at camps that shared the lake.

  Throughout the state, camps, public lakes, and swimming pools closed down and people were advised to avoid crowds and public places. The summer of 1936 was the beginning of the worst infantile paralysis epidemic the country had ever known.

  When it first happened, only her parents could see her and they couldn’t stay very long or do much more than stand and look at her. Her mother would cry, a nurse would lead her away, her father would stand staring, looking very grim. Angry, Megan thought, as though somehow this was all her fault. Like it had been her fault all those times when she had broken something: her ankle, her shinbone, her right arm, left arm, two fingers. You’re careless with yourself, he’d tell her. He was always proud that she played so hard at whatever the game, she knew that. But he also told her she paid too high a price. Learn to take care of yourself.

  But this, of course, was different. Wasn’t it?

  Sister Mary Frances had come to see her one rainy Saturday, grim-faced, pale, her eyes two gray stones. She prayed by Megan’s bedside until Frankie Magee, none too gently, moved her away.

  Jesus, Sister, the kid isn’t dead, you know.

  That’s my dad, Megan had thought, secretly watching the surprised nun pull back from her father’s touch. She finished her prayer and stood motionless, staring, but didn’t pray again. If there was anything at all to be grateful for, it was that this hadn’t happened in the middle of the school term. She’d be back with Sister Mary-the-Nut-Frances.

  Well, small favors.

  Before she left, though, Sister Mary Frances came to her bedside, took Megan’s hand, and pressed a holy medal into it. She leaned close, and in a don’t-think-you-can-fool-me voice, she said to Megan, “God kn
ows every single thing you’ve ever done and will do in your lifetime, Megan. There are rewards and there are punishments. Don’t think you can ever get away with anything. Fortunately, there is God’s grace. You must never forget that.”

  And then she added, “You must offer your pain and suffering to Our Lord. Constantly, no matter how bad it is.”

  That was something her mother had told her during the worst of it, in the beginning, when she was mad with the agony of muscles tightening, twisting, being wrapped in hot wet cloths, being manipulated and pulled and stretched.

  “Offer your pain to Jesus,” her mother had whispered as Megan grimaced with agony. “It mustn’t be wasted, Megan. Dedicate your suffering to Jesus.”

  Finally, in a burst of anger and rationality, Megan had yelled at her mother, “What the hell will He do with it? If that’s so great, fine, he can have the pain, all of it, every goddamn drop of it.” She had thrown her head hard against her pillow and yelled at the ceiling. “Here, Jesus, damn it, take it all, take it all for yourself and leave me the hell alone!”

  Her mother’s hand had jerked Megan’s face into position so that they made eye contact. Megan had never seen that look on her mother’s face. It went beyond anger. It seemed the face of a stranger, hard, frozen, almost cruel.

  “Don’t you ever—ever—dare to speak like that again. Never, no matter what, as long as you live, Megan Magee. You remember what you said just now when the priest comes around to hear your confession, because you’ve just committed the worst sin of your life and I don’t want to know you in this state.”

  It scared the hell out of Megan, and she asked to see a priest as soon as her parents left. The priest, a middle-aged, balding, paunchy, soft-spoken rector of the small Catholic church in the upstate community, listened quietly, calmed Megan down, nodded, and helped her wipe away the sin so that she could get through the rest of her day, at least, in a state of grace. Her penance was so light that Megan wondered if either the priest was a little stupid or maybe hadn’t listened too carefully. It didn’t really matter. He was a priest and he did give her absolution.