“What about food?”
“They’d hunt,” said Roy, “and they could bring along goats and chickens for milk and eggs.”
“This didn’t happen, though,” the Viper said. “You’re just makin’ it up.”
“I’m sure some kids thought of doin’ it,” said Roy. “The infantry knew they were doomed. Why would they stick around once they saw how the legions used them?”
Magic Frank, Billy Kristelis and an older kid Roy knew only by sight and reputation named Bobby Dorp jaywalked across Winnebago and joined Roy, Jimmy and the Viper.
“Hey, fellas,” Frank said, “this is Bobby Dorp. He’s gonna play with us today.”
Dorp nodded at the other boys and they nodded back. Roy knew that Dorp had dropped out of high school after a girl named Mitzi Mink had accused him of molesting her in a hallway and that he now worked delivering groceries for the A & P on Minnetonka. The Viper had played basketball with him before, so he knew Dorp was good.
“Great,” said the Viper. “Bobby can shoot with either hand, guys.”
“He’s ambidestric,” said Billy Kristelis.
“Which hand are you better with?” asked Roy.
Dorp was at least two or three inches taller than the other boys but he was skinny. His coat was too small for him so his wrists stuck out. Roy noticed how long they were.
“I shoot about the same with either one,” said Dorp. “When I’m off, I miss with both.”
“Bobby’s gonna join the army,” said Magic Frank.
“When I’m seventeen,” Dorp said, “in three months. My brother Dominic’s in already.”
“What happened to him?” asked Jimmy Boyle. “Is he okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Dorp. “He’s in Germany now, but he’s gonna re-up so he can go to Indochina. Bein’ in the army’s the best way to see the world, Dom says. I’m goin’ in the infantry, like he did. They’re the ones who get to do the real fightin’.”
Drifting Down the Old Whangpoo
There was a mysterious old guy Roy saw now and again walking in the neighborhood who would disappear for weeks or months until Roy thought he must have died or gone away and then suddenly there he was, wearing the same baggy brown suit and black slouch hat with a crumpled brim. Roy wondered who the man was and asked around about him but nobody had any information. Most everyone Roy asked had not noticed the guy, not even Don Diego Rosagante, who stood all day and night outside Phil and Leonard’s Restaurant on Bavaria Avenue opening the door for tips. Don Diego Rosagante, whose real name was Emmanuel Snitzer, prided himself on being at the very least on nodding acquaintance with everybody in the neighborhood. He called himself Don Diego because, as he explained, “that was Zorro’s real handle.” He’d adopted Rosagante, which means “splendid” in Spanish, “because it’s a lot classier-sounding than Snitzer.” Don Diego was forty-six years old and lived with his mother over Rube and Ruby’s Laundromat where his mother worked beating dust and dirt out of rugs in a lot out back.
After Roy described the man to him, Don Diego said, “Oh, yeah, I think maybe I seen him goin’ by a few times, always from across the street, though. He looks like that actor got knifed or poisoned by a child prostitute named Little Kiss in a floating cat house driftin’ down the old Whangpoo River in the movie Shanghai After Midnight. That Little Kiss was a real doll.”
Roy figured the guy was in his late sixties or seventies because he was slightly stooped and shuffled his feet. A few months passed between sightings and then, just before Roy’s twelfth birthday, on the first really cold day in October, the man was heading in Roy’s direction on Washtenaw.
“Pardon me, mister,” Roy said to him before the man could pass, “could I ask you a question?”
He stopped and looked at Roy. They were almost the same height. Roy had not noticed before how short the man was. His nose was very long and mottled like an old dill pickle, and his eyes were almost closed so that Roy could not tell what color they were.
“You already have,” the man said.
Roy hesitated for a moment, then smiled and said, “You’re right, I did.”
“What’s your next question?”
“Do you live around here?”
“There’s no price on my head, if that’s what you’re looking for. No reward for turning me in.”
The man spoke with an accent that Roy did not recognize.
“Where are you from?”
The man raised his head slightly and from under his heavy lids studied the boy’s face. He kept smiling.
“Before Chicago, you mean?”
Roy nodded.
“Why do you stop to ask me this?”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen you around and I’m just curious, I guess.”
“Hongkew.”
“I never heard of that place. Where is it?”
“If you’re really curious, you’ll find out,” the man said, and walked away.
The next time Roy was in the library he looked up Hongkew in the encyclopedia. Hongkew, it said, was a ghetto in Shanghai, China, where Jewish refugees from Europe lived after Germany invaded their countries before and during World War II.
Roy told Don Diego Rosagante that he might be right about the old man after all.
“What do you mean?” asked Don Diego.
“I ran into him walkin’ on Washtenaw and he told me before he came to Chicago he lived in Hongkew, which is part of Shanghai. So maybe he was in that movie you saw where the guy gets murdered on a boat in the river.”
“The Old Whangpoo. He said that, huh?”
“He didn’t say the name of the river, or even Shanghai. He just told me Hongkew, so I looked it up in the encyclopedia and it said that’s where Jews went to in China to escape the Nazis during the war.”
“How about that?” said Don Diego. “Hey, next time you see him, ask how well did he know Little Kiss.”
The Wicked of the Earth
Roy and Jimmy Boyle were shooting pool on a rainy Saturday afternoon in Lucky’s El Paso when Mooney Yost, a Lucky’s regular, came in and sat down on a bench near the boys’ table. Yost was about fifty years old, a fin and a sawbuck hustler who was always kind to Roy and his friends. He liked to tell slightly off-color jokes. “What’s the lightest thing in the world?” he’d ask, then answer himself: “A man’s penis—it only takes a thought to lift it.” He didn’t look happy sitting on the bench, though, and after Roy and Jimmy finished their game they sat down on either side of him.
“What’s wrong, Mooney?” Jimmy asked. “Your dog get run over?”
“Dogs don’t dig me,” Mooney said. “They take one sniff and head for the hills. Must be something in my blood reminds ’em of bein’ beaten in Egypt back in the days of the pharaohs. No, I was just talkin’ to my sister, Rita, in Peoria, and she told me that our mother’s last husband died a bad death. He was her fourth or fifth, not even my mother remembers any more. His name was Reno Mott. He was Rita’s stepfather, she’s twelve years younger than I am, and I was gone by the time our mother married him. Rita’s father was my mother’s third or fourth husband, a cat burglar named Slippery Elmo Daniels.
“Anyways, this last husband had been divorced from our mother for more than twenty years. He wasn’t smart or rich or even very goodlookin’, but my sister says he was always nice to her. I met Reno Mott a few times but I had no use for his ass. Despite his religious dishonesty, constant lies and penny ante swindling, he never made even a modest living and lost every cent my mother had, including whatever I give her or Rita did.
“He remarried, my sister said, and he and his new wife lived in a trailer on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. He worked odd jobs, Rita told me, the final one for a messenger service deliverin’ small packages in his old Buick that didn’t have headlights. His wife worked as a bank teller. Reno kept at it until he was eighty, then his vit
al organs began to go one by one. Rita went to see him in the hospital a few days before he died. Drove all the way from Peoria, Illinois, to Phoenix. She’s a good girl, Rita. He was hooked up to a few machines and he was scared. He told my sister that he’d lived a bad life, cheatin’ people all the time, pretending to be a big shot and failing at everything he tried. Mott lost his messenger job after he drove into a kid on a bicycle and killed him. The police let him off because the kid had darted out from an alley or a side street without lookin’ to see if any cars were comin’. It was typical of his bum luck, Mott told Rita. He’d done everything the wrong way, he said, and now he was about to die without money, love or peace of mind.
“My sister talked to his wife after he died and the woman told her it had been a real ugly deal. She was in the hospital room when the nurses pulled the plugs. He stood up next to the bed and howled, ‘I don’t want to die! I’ve led a mean life, I’ve hurt everyone I’ve ever known. I’ve stolen money from children, I’ve killed people! Now I’m goin’ to hell, I have to go to hell and I’m afraid! Oh, Lord,’ he cried, ‘you know me only as one of the wicked of the earth and my flesh trembleth for fear of thee!’
“Reno carried on like this, his wife said, for more than a minute before he collapsed to the floor and was pronounced dead. His eyes were rolled back in his head and his mouth was open. Almost all of his teeth were gone. His tongue was green and hung out of one side of his mouth. Rita told his wife that Mott had been nice to her when she’d been a young girl. The woman thanked her for saying so, and said once Reno had read about a boy who’d been hit in the head and lost his ability to remember anything after that. The child’s mind was frozen in time. Not only could he not remember anything new but also did not even recognize himself in the mirror as he grew older. Reno thought that would be the perfect way to live, with nothing terrible in your mind to haunt you forever.
“When my sister told our mother that Reno Mott had died, she said, ‘I thought he died years ago.’ Rita said he believed he was going to hell and was afraid to burn. ‘I’m not surprised,’ my mother said. ‘He never did any good in his life.’ ‘He was always nice to me,’ said Rita. Out mother looked at her and said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ ”
Mooney stood up, stretched his lanky frame, and said, “Be thankful, boys, you don’t have a Reno Mott messin’ with you. Guess I’ll see if I can scare up a game of one-pocket.”
“I don’t really feel like playin’ any more,” said Jimmy.
“Neither do I,” said Roy.
They racked their cues, walked to the door and pulled their jackets up over their heads before going out into the rain.
Christmas Is Not For Everyone
When Roy was seventeen years old, his mother got married without telling him. He found out when he came back home to Chicago from college for Christmas. Roy was sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast the morning after he arrived and his mother was standing at the sink washing dishes when she told him that she and his little sister were going to move from Chicago to Ojibway, Illinois, on the Wisconsin border.
“Why?” he asked. “And when?”
“Right after the new year,” she said. “In about ten days. I’ve already sold my half of the apartment building to Uncle Herman.”
“What’s in Ojibway?”
“That’s where Eddie Lund lives. He has a nice house there on Sweden Road. Your sister will have her own room, at least during the months Eddie’s daughter is away at nursing school in Ohio.”
“Who’s Eddie Lund?”
“His family owns a steel company in Rock City, close to Ojibway. Eddie works for Rock City Steel.”
“Ma, who is this guy?”
Roy’s mother did not answer right away, then Roy realized that she was crying.
“What’s wrong, Ma?”
“I’m going to marry him, Roy. Actually, we’re already married.”
“When did this happen?”
She turned off the water at the sink and wiped her eyes with her apron, but did not turn around to look at Roy.
“On my birthday, the day after Thanksgiving.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to bother you while you were at the university. I thought it would be better to tell you when you were home.”
Eddie Lund was his mother’s fifth husband. Roy knew she was embarrassed by this and had been afraid to tell him she’d gotten married again, especially after promising Roy, following her divorce two years before from her fourth husband, a drug addict jazz drummer named Spanky Wankovsky, that she was finished with matrimony.
“Eddie’s a good guy, Roy, you’ll see. He’s coming here today, so you’ll meet him.”
Roy’s father had been his mother’s first husband; he died when Roy was five. Each of the husbands who came after him had considered Roy a nuisance, if not a burden. None of them had any interest in assuming responsibility for him. Roy was his mother’s son, and he learned to keep his distance from her husbands. Since these men never lasted very long with his mother, Roy just waited them out, hoping, of course, that there would not be another. He soon realized, however, that the only control he had was over himself, and since the age of nine knew that he was on his own.
The intervals between his mother’s marriages were when Roy and she got along best. Christmas, though, was always difficult because his mother was so often either getting married or divorced around that time. When she threw her third husband, Dion Braz, a sailboat salesman, out of the house for the last time on Christmas Eve, he said to Roy, “Christmas is a trick on kids.”
Finally she turned and faced Roy and said, “Remember when you were little and I would play the piano and you’d sing? You had such a sweet voice. Why don’t we do it now, Roy, while your sister is sleeping and before Eddie gets here? I always loved it when you sang ‘Count Your Blessings.’ Do you remember that song?”
Roy looked at his mother’s face. She was not yet forty years old and she was still very beautiful. Before he could answer her, the doorbell rang.
“That must be Eddie,” she said, taking off her apron. “He’s early.”
The Cuban Club
ROY’S GRANDMOTHER ROSE
“To die is nothing, it’s only going from one room to another.”
—Major-General James Hope Grant, Incidents in the China War
“You may be witched by his sunlight . . . but there is the blackness of darkness beyond.”
—Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses”
“Shortly before his death, [a man] discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
Roy and the River Pirates
Roy had no idea that this would be the last summer of his father’s life. Roy was eleven years old and his father was forty-seven. His dad had always appeared strong and healthy. He smoked cigarettes and cigars and drank Irish whiskey but did not exhibit any obvious respiratory problems, nor did he ever give the slightest indication, in Roy’s presence, of a lack of sobriety. The cancer that took Roy’s father’s life appeared in the fall and by the end of that winter he was dead.
His father and his father’s second wife, Ellie, along with Roy’s younger brother, Matthew, and older female cousin, Sally, were staying in a house his father was considering purchasing on Key Biscayne, Florida. Matthew was six and Sally, the younger daughter of Roy’s father’s sister, Talia, was almost fifteen. All of them lived in Chicago, although Roy, who lived mostly with his mother, frequently resided wherever she decided to spend time, alternating among Chicago, New Orleans and Havana. This summer of 1957, Roy’s mother was with her current boyfriend, Johnny Salvavidas, in Santo Domingo, or travelling with him somewhere in the Caribbean. Roy did not expect to see her again until sometime in September.
Roy had a crush on Sally; he thought she wa
s very pretty, with honey-blonde hair cut short, hazel eyes, unblemished skin and a slim figure. The best thing about her, though, was how naturally kind she was, even-tempered with a good sense of humor, and not at all stuck up. Sally was a straight talker, too, and she could be silly in a good way; she kidded around easily with both Roy and Matthew. Roy’s father said that Sally did not get along very well with her parents, and she had asked him if he would take her to Key Biscayne for the summer if it was all right with her mother and father. Talia told Roy’s father that Sally was “different,” that she had her own way of thinking and doing things, which too often conflicted with Talia and her husband Dominic’s ideas of how Sally should behave. Roy’s dad didn’t know exactly what Talia meant but he and Ellie liked Sally so they agreed to take her with them to Florida.
“What do you think Talia and Dominic don’t understand about Sally?” Roy’s father asked his wife.
“She’s too airy fairy for them,” said Ellie. “Her parents are all about business. If it’s not about money, it’s not worth their time. Sally’s not like that.”
Roy liked looking at his cousin. Sally was the first girl he knew who made him feel a little goofy just by looking at her. Whenever Sally noticed Roy staring, she smiled at him and sometimes brushed the hair off of his forehead with her hand.
The river pirates struck on the third night. Roy, Matthew and Sally had draped their bathing suits to dry over the back fence after they were finished swimming late that afternoon and left them there overnight. When they came out to get them the next morning, the bathing suits were gone. The intracoastal canal flowed right behind the house, making it easy for anyone on a boat to steal items of clothing hung over the back fence.
“We have to find out who took our bathing suits,” Roy told Sally and Matthew. “It had to be river pirates.”
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