Roy's World

by Barry Gifford

  “We’ll descend in groups of ten,” she announced. “That means three groups. When you reach the bottom, stay right there with your group until the others arrive. I will be with the third group.”

  Mrs. Rudinsky was not quite five feet tall, she was very skinny and wore thick glasses and a big black wig. She was forty-five years old. The story was that she had lost all of her hair as a teenager due to an attack of scarlet fever. Roy didn’t know what scarlet fever was, so he asked Mary Margaret Grubart, the smartest girl in the class, about it.

  “Fevers come in all colors,” she told Roy. “Scarlet’s one of the worst, it can kill a person. A man wrote a famous novel about it where a girl had to wear a scarlet letter on her dress to warn people not to get near her so they wouldn’t get sick. In historical times, sick people were burned alive.”

  In the coal mine, the kids were shown around by a museum guide wearing a hard hat with a flashlight attached to the front of it, the kind that miners wear. There were blue flames that indicated gas deposits and a miniature railway on which carts carrying coal traveled. The guide explained how the operation worked and presented samples of different types of coal, which the students passed around. The hardest, blackest coal was called bituminous.

  “This is the kind Superman can squeeze and turn into diamonds,” said Roy.

  The other kids laughed but the guide said, “You’re right, son. Bituminous is processed over a period of hundreds if not thousands of years and can become diamonds.”

  “Superman can make a diamond in a few seconds,” Roy said. “But he doesn’t do it too often in order not to destroy the world economy. My grandfather told me that.”

  “Your grandfather knows what he’s talking about, young man,” said the guide.

  After the tour had concluded and they were back above ground, Mrs. Rudinsky lined the students up preparatory to marching them out of the museum to the bus. Two boys were missing: Bobby Kazmeier and Jimmy Portis.

  “Has anyone seen Portis and Kazmeier?” asked Mrs. Rudinsky.

  “They’re still down in the mine,” said Delbert Swaim. “They said they wanted to explore more.”

  “You all wait right here!” Mrs. Rudinsky commanded, before going to find a museum employee.

  While two security guards and the coal mine guide went down in the elevator to find the missing boys, Mrs. Rudinsky loaded the other students onto the school bus, where they were told to wait with the driver, Old Ed Moot. Mrs. Rudinsky went back into the museum.

  “They could suffocate,” said Old Ed Moot, “if they stay down there too long without masks.”

  It was more than an hour before Mrs. Rudinsky returned to the bus. Bobby Kazmeier and Jimmy Portis were not with her.

  “Go!” she said to Old Ed Moot, and sat down in a seat at the front. Old Ed pulled the door closed.

  “Mrs. Rudinsky, some of us have to go to the bathroom,” said Mary Margaret Grubart.

  “You’ll just have to hold it until we get to the school,” Mrs. Rudinsky told her.

  “Where’s Kaz and Jimmy?” asked Roy.

  “They’ll find them,” the teacher said.

  “You mean they’re still down in the mine?” asked Big Art.

  “No talking!” ordered Mrs. Rudinsky.

  Roy noticed that her wig was turned slightly sideways and listing to port. Above her right ear, Mrs. Rudinsky’s scalp was hairless.

  She was the first person off the bus and headed straight for the principal’s office, leaving the students to fend for themselves. The school day was over, everyone was free to go home, but Roy and Big Art stood by the bus with Old Ed Moot, who lit up an unfiltered Chesterfield.

  “Those boys are in big trouble,” said Old Ed, “unless they’re dead. Either way, your teacher’s in deep shit.”

  “Hey, Ed,” said Big Art, “can we have a cigarette?”

  Old Ed shook his head as he inhaled his Chesterfield. “Dirty habit,” he said. “Don’t start.”

  “We already started,” said Art.

  Just then a police car pulled up in front of the school. Two cops got out with Jimmy Portis between them and entered the building.

  “Wow,” Roy said, “where’s Kaz?”

  “Maybe suffocated,” said the bus driver. “This one’s the lucky one.”

  Two minutes later, another police car arrived and parked behind the first one. Two cops got out with Bobby Kazmeier wedged between them and walked into the school.

  Old Ed Moot looked at the Timex on his left wrist and said, “Well, fellas, my day’s done.”

  He dropped his cigarette butt on the ground and stepped on it, turning his steel-toed Sears workshoe so that there wouldn’t be anything worth picking up, and walked away.

  “What do you think will happen to them?” asked Big Art.

  “I don’t know,” Roy said, “but if it hadn’t been for Jimmy and Kaz staying in the coal mine, we probably would have got homework.”

  The Trophy

  My dad was not much of an athlete. I don’t recall his ever playing catch with me or doing anything requiring particular athletic dexterity. I knew he was a kind of tough guy because my mother told me about his knocking other guys down now and again, but he wasn’t interested in sports. He did, however, take me to professional baseball and football games and boxing matches but those were, for him, more like social occasions, opportunities to meet and be greeted by business associates and potential customers. At Marigold Arena or the Amphitheater Dad spent most of his time talking to people rather than watching the event. He may have gone bowling on occasion but never in my company.

  When I was nine I joined a winter bowling league. I was among the youngest bowlers in the league and certainly the youngest on my team. The league met on Saturday mornings at Nortown Bowl on Devon Avenue between Maplewood and Campbell Streets. The lanes were on the second floor up a long, decrepit flight of stairs above Crawford’s Department Store. I told my dad about it and invited him to come watch me bowl. I wasn’t very good, of course, but I took it seriously, as I did all competitive sports, and I steadily improved. I practiced after school a couple of times during the week with older guys, who gave me tips on how to improve my bowling skills.

  There were kids who practically lived at the bowling alley. Most of them were sixteen or older and had pretty much given up on formal education. The state law in Illinois held that public education was mandatory until the age of sixteen; after that, a kid could do whatever he wanted until he was eighteen, at which time he was required to register for military service. It was the high school dropouts who got drafted right away; but for two years these guys got to sleep late and spend their afternoons and evenings hanging out at the bowling alley, betting on games, and gorging themselves on Italian beef sandwiches. At night they would go to Uptown Bowl, where the big, often televised professional matches took place.

  The announcer for these events was usually Whispering Ray Rayburn, a small, weaselish man who wore a terrible brown toupee and pencil-line mustache. His ability to speak into a microphone at a consistently low but adequately audible decibel level was his claim to fame. Kids, including myself, often imitated Whispering Ray as they toed the mark preparatory to and as they took their three- or four-step approach before releasing the bowling ball:

  “Zabrofsky casually talcs his right hand,” a kid would whisper to himself as he stood at the ball rack, “slips three digits into the custom-fit Brunswick Black Beauty, hefts the sixteen-pound spheroid”—(one of Whispering Ray’s favorite words for the ball was “spheroid”)—“balances it delicately in the palm of his left hand. Amazing how Zabrofsky handles the ebony orb”—(“orb” was another pet name)—“almost daintily, as if it were an egg. Now Zabrofsky steps to his spot, feet tight together. He needs this spare to keep pace with the leader, Lars Grotwitz. Zabrofsky studies the five-ten split that confronts him with the kind of
concentration Einstein must have mustered to unmuzzle an atom.” (“Muster” was also big in Whispering Ray’s lexicon.) “Zabrofsky’s breathing is all we can hear now. Remember, fans, Big Earl is an asthmatic who depends heavily on the use of an inhaler in order to compete. You can see the impression it makes in the left rear pocket of his Dacron slacks. Despite this serious handicap his intensity is impressive. He begins his approach: one, two, three, the ball swings back and as Big Earl slides forward on the fourth step the powerful form smoothly sets his spheroid on its way. Zabrofsky’s velvet touch has set the ebony orb hurtling toward the kingpin. At the last instant it veers left as if by remote control, brushes the five as it whizzes past and hips it toward the ten. Ticked almost too softly, the ten wobbles like an habitué dismounting a stool at Johnny Fazio’s Tavern”—(Johnny Fazio was a sponsor of the local TV broadcasts)—“then tumbles into the gutter! Zabrofsky makes the tough spare.”

  On the last Saturday in February, the league awarded trophies to be presented personally to each team member by Carmen Salvino, a national champion bowler. My team had won its division despite my low pin total. Each team had on its roster at least one novice bowler, leaving it up to the more experienced members to “carry” him, which my team had managed to do. I was grateful to my older teammates for their guidance, patience, and encouragement, and thanks to them I was to be awarded a trophy. The only guy on the team who had not been particularly generous toward me was Oscar Fomento, who worked part-time as a pinsetter. Fomento, not to my displeasure, had left the team two weeks into the league season, after having beaten up his parents with a bowling pin when they gave him a hard time about ditching school. One of the other guys told me Oscar had been sent to a reformatory in Colorado where they shaved his head and made him milk cows in below-freezing temperatures. “That’s tough,” my teammate said, “but just think how strong Fomento’s fingers’ll be when he gets back.”

  My dad had not made it to any of the Saturday morning matches, so I called him on Friday night before the last day of the league and told him this would be his final chance to see me bowl, and that Carmen Salvino would be there giving out trophies. I didn’t tell Dad that I’d be receiving a trophy because I wanted him to be surprised. “Salvino,” my Dad said. “Yeah, I know the guy. Okay, son.”

  It snowed heavily late Friday night and into Saturday morning. I had to be at Nortown Bowl by nine and flurries were still coming down at five-to when I kicked my way on a shortcut through fresh white drifts in the alley between Rockwell and Maplewood. Dashing up the steep wet steps I worried about Carmen Salvino and my father being able to drive there. I lived a block away, so it was easy for me and most of the other kids to walk over. I hoped the snowplows were out early clearing the roads.

  During the games I kept watching for my dad. Toward the end of the last line there was a lot of shouting: Carmen Salvino had arrived. Our team finished up and went over with the other kids to the counter area, behind which hundreds of pairs of used bowling shoes, sizes two to twenty, were kept in cubbyholes similar to mail slots at hotel desks. Carmen Salvino, a tall, hairy-armed man with thick eyebrows and a head of hair the color and consistency of a major oil slick, stood behind the counter in front of the smelly, worn, multicolored bowling shoes between the Durkee brothers, Dominic and Don, owners of Nortown Bowl.

  Dominic and Don Durkee were both about five foot six and had hair only on the sides of their heads, sparse blue threads around the ears. They were grinning like madmen because the great Carmen Salvino was standing next to them in their establishment. The Durkees’ skulls shone bright pink under the rude fluorescent lights. The reflection from the top of Carmen Salvino’s head blinded anyone foolish enough to stare at it for more than a couple of seconds.

  I was the last kid to be presented a trophy. When Carmen Salvino gave it to me he shook my small, naked hand with his huge, hairy one. I noticed, however, that he had extremely long, slender fingers, like a concert pianist’s. “Congrajalayshuns, son,” he said to me. Then Carmen Salvino turned to Dominic Durkee and asked, “So, we done now?”

  When I walked back home through the alley from Maplewood to Rockwell, the snow was still perfectly white and piled high in front of the garages. At home I put my trophy on the top of my dresser. It was the first one I had ever received. The trophy wasn’t very big but I really liked the golden figure of a man holding a golden bowling ball, his right arm cocked back. He didn’t look at all like Carmen Salvino, or like me, either. He resembled my next-door neighbor Jimmy McLaughlin, an older kid who worked as a dishwasher at Kow Kow’s Chinese restaurant on the corner of Devon and Rockwell. Jimmy worked all day Saturday, I knew. I decided I’d take the trophy over later and show it to him.

  The Aerodynamics of an Irishman

  There was a man who lived on my block when I was a kid whose name was Rooney Sullavan. He would often come walking down the street while the kids were playing ball in front of my house or Johnny McLaughlin’s house. Rooney would always stop and ask if he’d ever shown us how he used to throw the knuckleball back when he pitched for Kankakee in 1930.

  “Plenty of times, Rooney,” Billy Cunningham would say. “No knuckles about it, right?” Tommy Ryan would say. “No knuckles about it, right!” Rooney Sullavan would say. “Give it here and I’ll show you.” One of us would reluctantly toss Rooney the ball and we’d step up so he could demonstrate for the fortieth time how he held the ball by his fingertips only, no knuckles about it.

  “Don’t know how it ever got the name knuckler,” Rooney’d say. “I call mine the Rooneyball.” Then he’d tell one of us, usually Billy because he had the catcher’s glove—the old fat-heeled kind that didn’t bend unless somebody stepped on it, a big black mitt that Billy’s dad had handed down to him from his days at Kankakee or Rock Island or someplace—to get sixty feet away so Rooney could see if he could still “make it wrinkle.”

  Billy would pace off twelve squares of sidewalk, each square being approximately five feet long, the length of one nine year old boy’s body stretched head to toe lying flat, squat down, and stick his big black glove out in front of his face. With his right hand he’d cover his crotch in case the pitch got away and short-hopped off the cement where he couldn’t block it with the mitt. The knuckleball was unpredictable, not even Rooney could tell what would happen once he let it go.

  “It’s the air makes it hop,” Rooney claimed. His leather jacket creaked as he bent, wound up, rotated his right arm like nobody’d done since Chief Bender, crossed his runny gray eyes, and released the ball from the tips of his fingers. We watched as it sailed straight up at first, then sort of floated on an invisible wave before plunging the last ten feet like a balloon that had been pierced by a dart.

  Billy always went down on his knees, the back of his right hand stiffened over his crotch, and stuck out his gloved hand at the slowly whirling Rooneyball. Just before it got to Billy’s mitt the ball would give out entirely and sink rapidly, inducing Billy to lean forward in order to catch it, only he couldn’t because at the last instant it would take a final, sneaky hop before bouncing surprisingly hard off of Billy’s unprotected chest.

  “Just like I told you,” Rooney Sullavan would exclaim. “All it takes is plain old air.”

  Billy would come up with the ball in his upturned glove, his right hand rubbing the place on his chest where the pitch had hit. “You all right, son?” Rooney would ask, and Billy would nod. “Tough kid,” Rooney’d say. “I’d like to stay out with you fellas all day, but I got responsibilities.” Rooney would muss up Billy’s hair with the hand that held the secret to the Rooneyball and walk away whistling “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” or “My Wild Irish Rose.” Rooney was about forty-five or fifty years old and lived with his mother in a bungalow at the corner. He worked nights for Wanzer Dairy, washing out returned milk bottles.

  Tommy Ryan would grab the ball out of Billy’s mitt and hold it by the tips of his fingers like Rooney
Sullavan did, and Billy would go sit on the stoop in front of the closest house and rub his chest. “No way,” Tommy would say, considering the prospect of his ever duplicating Rooney’s feat. “There must be something he’s not telling us.”

  A Rainy Day at the Nortown Theater

  When I was about nine or ten years old my dad picked me up from school one day and took me to the movies. I didn’t see him very often since my parents were divorced and I lived with my mother. This day my dad asked me what I wanted to do and since it was raining hard we decided to go see Dragnet starring Jack Webb and an Alan Ladd picture, Shane.

  I had already seen Dragnet twice and since it wasn’t such a great movie I was really interested in seeing Shane, which I’d already seen as well, but only once, and had liked it, especially the end where the kid, Brandon de Wilde, goes running through the bulrushes calling for Shane to come back, “Come back, Shane! Shane, come back!” I had really remembered that scene and was anxious to see it again, so all during Dragnet I kept still because I thought my dad wanted to see it, not having already seen it, and when Shane came on I was happy.

  But it was Wednesday and my dad had promised my mother he’d have me home for dinner at six, so at about a quarter to, like I had dreaded in the back of my head, my dad said we had to go.

  “But Dad,” I said “Shane’s not over till six-thirty and I want to see the end where the kid goes running after him yelling, ‘Come back, Shane!’ That’s the best part!”

  But my dad said no, we had to go, so I got up and went with him but walked slowly backward up the aisle to see as much of the picture as I could even though I knew now I wasn’t going to get to see the end, and we were in the lobby, which was dark and red with gold curtains, and saw it was still pouring outside. My dad made me put on my coat and duck my head down into it when we made a run for the car, which was parked not very far away.