I didn’t mind being able to play outside with the kids who lived on Pops’s street, but I couldn’t hide my disappointment in not seeing snow, something we certainly did not get in Key West. The neighborhood boys and girls were friendly enough, though I felt like an outsider, even though I’d known some of them from previous visits for as many as three years.
By New Year’s Eve it still had not snowed and my mother and I were due to leave on the second of January. I complained to her about this and she said, “Baby, sometimes you just can’t win.”
I was invited on New Year’s Day to the birthday party of a boy I didn’t know very well, Jimmy Kelly, a policeman’s son who lived in an apartment in a three-flat at the end of the block. Johnny and Billy Duffy, who lived next door to Pops, persuaded me to come with them. Johnny was my age, Billy one year younger; they were good pals of Kelly’s and assured me Kelly and his parents wouldn’t mind if I came along. Just to make sure, the Duffy brothers’ mother called Jimmy Kelly’s mother and she said they’d be happy to have me.
Since the invitation had come at practically the last minute and all of the toy stores were closed because of the holiday, I didn’t have a proper present to bring for Jimmy Kelly. My mother put some candy in a bag, wrapped Christmas paper around it, tied on a red ribbon and handed it to me.
“This will be okay,” she said. “Just be polite to his parents and thank them for inviting you.”
“They didn’t invite me,” I told her, “Johnny and Billy did. Mrs. Duffy called Kelly’s mother.”
“Thank them anyway. Have a good time.”
At Kelly’s house, kids of all ages were running around, screaming and yelling, playing tag, knocking over lamps and tables, driving the family’s two black cocker spaniels, Mick and Mack, crazy. The dogs were running with and being trampled by the marauding children. Officer Kelly, in uniform with his gunbelt on, sat in a chair by the front door drinking beer out of a brown bottle. He was a large man, overweight, almost bald. He didn’t seem to be at all disturbed by the chaos.
Mrs. Kelly took my gift and the Duffy brothers’ gift for Jimmy, said, “Thanks, boys, go on in,” and disappeared into the kitchen.
Johnny and Billy and I got going with the others and after a while Mrs. Kelly appeared with a birthday cake and ice cream. The cake had twelve candles on it, eleven for Jimmy’s age and one for good luck. Jimmy was a big fat kid and blew all of the candles out in one try with ease. We each ate a piece of chocolate cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, then Jimmy opened his gifts. He immediately swallowed most of the candy my mother had put into the bag.
Mrs. Kelly presided over the playing of several games, following each of which she presented the winner with a prize. I won most of these games, and with each successive victory I became increasingly embarrassed. Since I was essentially a stranger, not really a friend of the birthday boy’s, the other kids, including Johnny and Billy Duffy, grew somewhat hostile toward me. I felt badly about this, and after winning a third or fourth game decided that was enough—even if I could win another game, I would lose on purpose so as not to further antagonize anyone else.
The next contest, however, was to be the last, and the winner was to receive the grand prize, a brand new professional model football autographed by Bobby Layne, quarterback of the champion Detroit Lions. Officer Kelly, Mrs. Kelly told us, had been given this ball personally by Bobby Layne, whom he had met while providing security for him when the Lions came to Chicago to play the Bears.
The final event was not a game but a raffle. Each child picked a small, folded piece of paper out of Officer Kelly’s police hat. A number had been written on every piece of paper by Mrs. Kelly. Officer Kelly had already decided what the winning number would be and himself would announce it following the children’s choices.
I took a number and waited, seated on the floor with the other kids, not even bothering to see what number I had chosen. Officer Kelly stood up, holding the football in one huge hand, and looked at the kids, each of whom, except for me, waited eagerly to hear the magic number which they were desperately hoping would be the one they had plucked out of the policeman’s hat. Even Jimmy had taken a number.
“Sixteen,” said Officer Kelly.
Several of the kids groaned loudly, and they all looked at one another to see who had won the football. None of them had it. Then their heads turned in my direction. There were fifteen other children at the party and all thirty of their eyes burned into mine. Officer and Mrs. Kelly joined them. I imagined Mick and Mack, the cocker spaniels, staring at me, too, their tongues hanging out, waiting to bite me should I admit to holding the precious number sixteen.
I unfolded my piece of paper and there it was: 16. I looked up directly into the empty pale green and yellow eyes of Officer Kelly. I handed him the little piece of paper and he scrutinized it, as if inspecting it for forgery. The kids looked at him, hoping against hope that there had been a mistake, that somehow nobody, especially me, had chosen the winning number.
Officer Kelly raised his eyes from the piece of paper and stared again at me.
“Your father is a Jew, isn’t he?” Officer Kelly said.
I didn’t answer. Officer Kelly turned to his wife and asked, “Didn’t you tell me his old man is a Jew?”
“His mother’s a Catholic,” said Mrs. Kelly. “Her people are from County Kerry.”
“I don’t want the football,” I said, and stood up. “Jimmy should have it, it’s his birthday.”
Jimmy got up and grabbed the ball out of his father’s hand.
“Let’s go play!” he shouted, and ran out the door.
The kids all ran out after him.
I looked at Mrs. Kelly. “Thanks,” I said, and started to walk out of the apartment.
“You’re forgetting your prizes,” said Mrs. Kelly, “the toys you won.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Happy New Year!” Mrs. Kelly shouted after me.
When I got home my mother asked if it had been a good party.
“I guess,” I said.
She could tell there was something wrong but she didn’t push me. That was one good thing about my mother, she knew when to leave me alone. It was getting dark and she went to draw the drapes.
“Oh, baby,” she said, “come look out the window. It’s snowing.”
The God of Birds
While he was waiting to get a haircut at Duke’s Barber Shop, Roy was reading an article in a hunting and fishing magazine about a man in Northern Asia who hunted wolves with only a golden eagle as a weapon. This man rode a horse holding on one arm a four-foot long golden eagle around the shore of a mountain lake in a country next to China from November to March looking for prey. Beginning each day before dawn, the eagle master, called a berkutchi, cloaked in a black velvet robe from neck to ankle to protect him from fierce mountain winds, rode out alone with his huge bird. The berkutchi scoffed at those who practiced falconry, said the article in the magazine, deriding it as a sport for children and cowards.
“Eagles are the most magnificent of hunting beasts,” said the master. “My eagle has killed many large-horned ibex by shoving them off cliffs. He would fight a man if I commanded him to do so.”
The berkutchi’s eagle, who was never given a name, had been with him for more than thirty years. He had students, the article said, whom the berkutchi instructed in the ways to capture and train eagles.
“I can only show them how it is done,” said the master, “but I would never give away the real secrets. These secrets a man must learn by himself, or he will not become a successful hunter. A man is only a man, but the eagle is the god of birds.”
“Roy!” Duke the barber shouted. “Didn’t ya hear me? You’re next!”
Roy closed the magazine and put it back on the card table in the waiting area.
When he was in the chair, Duke asked him, �
�Find somethin’ interestin’ inna magazine, kid?”
“Yes, an article about a guy in the mountains of Asia who hunts wolves on horseback with an eagle.”
“How old are you now, Roy?”
“Almost twelve.”
“Think you could do that?” Duke asked, as he clipped. “Learn how to hunt with a bird?”
Duke was in his mid-forties, mostly bald, with a three day beard. Roy had never seen Duke clean shaven, even though he was a barber. His shop had three chairs but only one other man worked with him, a Puerto Rican named Alfredito. Alfredito was missing the last three fingers of his right hand, the one in which he held the scissors. When Roy asked him how he’d lost them, Alfredito said a donkey had bitten them off when he was a boy back in Bayamon. Roy never allowed Alfredito to cut his hair anymore because Alfredito always nicked him. He got his hair cut on Thursdays now, which was Alfredito’s day off. Duke told Roy that Alfredito worked Thursdays for his brother, Ramon, who had a tailor shop over by Logan Square. Roy wondered if Alfredito could sew better than he could cut hair with only one finger on his right hand.
“I don’t know,” Roy answered. “Maybe if I grew up there and had a good berkutchi.”
“Berkutchi? What’s that?”
“An eagle master. The one in the magazine said the eagle is the god of birds.”
The door to the shop opened and an old man wearing a gray fedora came in.
“Mr. Majewski, hello,” said Duke. “Have a seat, I’ll be right with you.”
Mr. Majewski stared at Alfredito’s empty chair and said, “So where is the Puerto Rican boy?”
“It’s Thursday, Mr. Majewski. Alfredito don’t work for me on Thursdays.”
“He works tomorrow?” asked Mr. Majewski.
“Yeah, he’ll be here.”
“I’ll come tomorrow,” Majewski said, and walked out.
“You want it short today, Roy?”
“Leave it long in the back, Duke. I don’t like my neck to feel scratchy.”
“I used to shoot birds when I was a boy,” said Duke, “up in Waukegan.”
As he was walking home from the barber shop, a sudden brisk wind caused Roy to put up the collar of his leather jacket. Then it began to rain. Roy walked faster, imagining how terrible the weather could get during the winter months in the mountains of rural Asia. Even a four-foot long golden eagle must sometimes have a difficult time flying against a cold, hard wind hurtling out of the Caucasus, Roy thought, when he saw a gray hat being blown past him down the middle of Blackhawk Avenue. He did not stop to see if it was Mr. Majewski’s fedora.
Sundays and Tibor
Roy hated Sundays. Sunday was the day his mother usually chose to pick a fight with her husband or boyfriend of the moment, to express in no unquiet way her dissatisfaction and disappointment with her current situation, making certain that the man in question was left in no doubt as to his responsibility for her distress.
Sunday was also the day his mother insisted on the family, such as it was, going out to dinner. Nothing ever pleased her on these occasions: the route her husband or boyfriend chose to drive to their destination; the service and food at the restaurant; everyone else’s bad manners, etc. Roy dreaded these outings. Many times he purposely stayed away from his house, even when he had nobody to play with, there were no games going on at the park, or the weather was particularly foul. He’d walk the streets until he was certain his mother, her husband and his sister had left the house before returning, guaranteeing him two or three hours of solitude. Of course when his mother got home, Roy knew, she would yell at him for missing the family affair, but he had time to prepare an excuse: the game he was playing in went into overtime, or somebody got hurt and Roy had to help him get home.
Holidays were also potential trouble, time bombs set to Roy’s mother’s internal clock. The bigger the occasion, the louder the ticking. Once, Christmas fell on a Sunday. Christmas also happened to be the anniversary of his mother’s marriage to her third husband, the father of Roy’s little sister. This triple-barreled day of disaster resulted in his sister’s father’s belongings being thrown by Roy’s mother down the front steps and scattered over the lawn in front of their house. As Roy’s soon-no-longer-to-be stepfather picked up his soggy undershorts and other personal items from the snow, Roy, who bore the man no particular affection, felt something close to compassion for him. That day, Roy swore to himself that he would never get married.
For a period of time when his mother was between marriages, when Roy was nine years old, she kept company with a Hungarian named Tibor. Tibor worked as a concierge or receptionist at an elegant little hotel on the near north side of Chicago. He was a short, skinny, hawk-nosed man in his mid-thirties with a mane of unruly brown hair. Where and under what circumstances his mother had made Tibor’s acquaintance, Roy never knew. Tibor had fled Budapest at the beginning of the Hungarian revolution. In his home country, apparently, he had been a musician of some kind, although Roy had never heard him play an instrument. Tibor never approached Roy’s mother’s piano.
One rainy Sunday afternoon in late autumn, Roy returned to his house from playing in a particularly bruising tackle football game. He was looking forward to collapsing on his bed, which was really a fold-out couch, but when he arrived, Tibor was stretched out on it with his shoes and socks off, asleep. Roy’s little Admiral portable television set was on. His mother was making something in the kitchen.
“Hey, Ma, Tibor’s on my bed.”
“He had a long night at the hotel,” she said, “it was very busy. He’s tired.”
“So am I. I wanted to lie down. Why can’t Tibor sleep in your room, or on the couch in the living room?”
“He was watching television, Roy. And your room is closer to the kitchen. I’m making him a goulash.”
“What’s a goulash?”
“A ragout of beef with vegetables cooked with lots of paprika. It’s the national dish of Hungary.”
“Why don’t you wake him up now so he can come in here and eat it?”
“The goulash isn’t ready yet. I’ll call him when it’s done. Tibor had a hard time in Hungary, Roy. He had to escape.”
Roy’s mother turned and looked at him for the first time since he’d entered the kitchen.
“Your face is filthy,” she said. “So are your clothes.”
“I was playing football. The field was muddy.”
“Roy’s mother returned her attention to the goulash. Roy walked out the back door and sat down on the porch stairs.
“Close the door when you go out!” said his mother. “It’s cold!”
She closed it.
On another Sunday, Roy was walking behind his mother and Tibor next to Lake Michigan. Tibor was wearing a long, gray overcoat that was too big for him. Roy recognized it as one having belonged to his mother’s second husband, Lucious O’Toole, a handsome drunkard she had divorced after six months. Lucious had a metal plate in his head from being wounded in the war and he couldn’t hold a job. Years later, when Roy was in high school, he saw Lucious staggering along a downtown street, unshaven, wearing a torn and dirty trenchcoat. It was snowing but Lucious was hatless and, Roy noticed, now mostly bald.
Following his mother and Tibor, Roy thought about pushing Tibor into the lake. Roy didn’t hate him, but he wanted Tibor to just disappear and for his mother never to mention Hungary or goulash again.
After Roy saw Lucious O’Toole downtown that day, he told his mother, who showed no emotion.
“He looked like a bum,” said Roy.
“You never know what’s going to happen to a person,” she said. “Sometimes it’s better that way.”
Poor Children of Israel
“They got Harry the Butcher last night,” the Viper told Roy. “Only after he piped a cop, though. I heard it on the radio.”
The city had been terr
orized for days by a gang of six escapees from the Poor Children of Israel Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Roy had read about them in the headlines of the Tribune all week. madmen still at large was one. Others were lunatics on crime spree and terror grips city as crazy killers elude capture!
Roy and the Viper trudged through slush on their way to school. After two days of snow, the temperature had risen suddenly, turning the streets into a sloppy mess.
“Where’d they find him?” Roy asked.
“The Butcher and the other five broke into a room at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. A husband and wife were in there. Swede Wolf strangled the guy. The woman ran out to the balcony and tried to climb down from the fourth floor. She was screamin’ and yellin’ for help. That’s how the cops found ’em.”
“Did she get away?”
“No, they grabbed her and kept her prisoner for a few hours. The radio didn’t say, but I bet those maniacs put it to her. Most of ’em had been locked up for years.”
“How’d a bunch like that get upstairs in a big fancy hotel?”
A bus sped through a puddle and splashed muddy water on the boys’ coats and pants.
“God damn it!” the Viper shouted. “I’ll get that driver with an iceball, you’ll see.”
“They must have snuck in during the night,” said Roy.
“Who was gonna stop ’em? Swede Wolf had murdered all kinds of people. Harry the Butcher, too.”
“Did they have guns?”
“No, just crowbars and tire irons. The cops shot the Mahoney twins, the ones who raped and decapitated their mother.”
“They cut her head off before they had sex with the body,” said Roy. “I remember when it happened.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, those two are dead. The rest of ’em were captured. The cop the Butcher laid out is in the hospital. He might not make it.”
The other big news Roy heard about that day was that the governor of the state of Georgia had forbidden the Georgia Tech football team to play in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day because their opponent, the University of Pittsburgh, had a Negro fullback. Students rioted on the Georgia Tech campus and were hosed down and beaten by Atlanta police.
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