One patted my head. “Sonny.”
The other winked with both eyes. “Son.”
“He was a good man,” Mom said. “A strong believer in life insurance. I’m fortunate. I just never expected—”
“So where is he?” I looked beyond the open door to the police cruiser and Dad’s car. I’d counted on a body in addition to the suitcase, briefcase, and bag of snacks—Dad’s go-to sunflower seeds and licorice Nibs.
The cops fidgeted with their hats.
“You know Daddy’s not coming back,” Mom said. “Remember, how we talked about it?”
“But you said we were going to bury him.”
“And we will,” she said. “Daddy is at the funeral home. That’s where people who have passed away go to wait before they’re buried. In a few days, you and I and our friends will go there, and we’ll bury Daddy.”
“With shovels?” I said.
“Yes. With shovels.”
“And after he’s buried, he can come home.”
“He can’t. I told you. Not ever.”
“But what if he wants to?” I said. “What if he climbs out? What do we do then?” I wasn’t playing cute. I understood dead meant dead. It was Mom’s reliance on passed away that confused me. Passed away suggested less than fully dead.
Mom found Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels in Dad’s suitcase. There was an inscription inside the front cover:
Xmas 1954
To the best son in the world.
Love you forever and a day,
Daddy
The handwriting was my mother’s. I never did tell her I knew. I mean, what sort of dad would write Love you forever and a day to a son?
In time, I would alter a detail or two about my father’s death, recount how he was blown to smithereens on D-Day alongside the bold and brave Murray Bruce. Never once did anyone ask how I came to be born seven years after D-Day.
Kids don’t get many free passes, but mention a dead parent and you pull an automatic. More dead parents the better.
Twelve
The satisfaction to be found
in simultaneous self-preservation and self-destruction
While I was happy Jack had tried to set things right after my schoolyard meltdown, we did not become anything you’d call friends. We’d nod in passing and not much else. The fact I’d rebuffed him had come with a good deal of satisfaction and, however wonky my logic, I kept to myself with renewed determination.
7:00 5 THE REBEL—Western
The Civil War finally ended, Gus Yuma roams the West to escape his troubled past. Friends do not come easy to this sensitive veteran of the Confederacy, but you can bet trouble does.
That was me. Strong, silent, in need of nothing, nobody, nowhere, no time. A hero’s life is a solitary life. Mine was, too, until Mom went and got her stupid raise at work.
“How would you like to eat out for a change?” she said.
“Like a picnic?”
“A restaurant.”
“I don’t know.”
“Since when don’t you know about burgers and milkshakes and pie?”
“Like at Louie’s?”
“Who’s Louie?”
“Louie Dumbrowski. Where The Bowery Boys hang out.”
Bert and Mollie Levin’s Marquee Café was a cubbyhole diner on Dundas at Division. Four tables, sixteen chairs, and nine seats at the counter. A wall of cigars, cigarettes, and antacids. And bins and racks spilling over with chocolate bars, chewing gum, and penny candy—enough to trip up even Hansel and Gretel.
Every second Thursday, on my mother’s paydays, I’d meet her at the Marquee.
While Jack wasn’t always on the job, he was up to the same old nothing when he was. Tending the cash. Washing dishes. Spinning on a stool. Inevitably, some customer would sidle up and bend his ear. You could see how older people loved talking to Jack. He had a knack for listening, grinning or grim-faced as the drift required. If he was faking it, he had me fooled, his acting chops up there with John Wayne.
As for Jack and me, we kept it cool. Neither of us let on our paths had crossed.
I saw through Mom, too, the Marquee another ploy to round me up a friend. With Jack her prey, I soft-pedalled the pushback.
“I got friends,” I assured her. “I just don’t bring them home.”
“Are you ashamed of me? Our house?”
“I don’t want them breaking my stuff,” I said.
“Then why don’t they invite you to their houses?”
“They don’t want me breaking their stuff.”
“But you wouldn’t.”
“They don’t know that.”
“You have no idea how I worry about you. Some nights, I can’t fall asleep thinking about it. You’re alone too much. It’s unhealthy.”
“I told you, I have friends. A ton. I swear.”
“Name one.”
“Annie Barker.”
“A girl? But what about the bo—”
“And Dougie Dunwood.”
“Really? The Boy Scout? I hear he’s very nice. Good at sports.”
“He’s the greatest. We play ball and uh—go to taxidermy club—all the time.”
Ploy or not, Marquee burgers and club sandwiches were pretty tasty, and every wedge of Mollie Levin pie left you craving your next. Only after the Levins anointed us café regulars did Mom’s gloves come off.
“Go. Go, tell him. Tell him, dear. Tell him how much you’ve enjoyed reading about his exploits in the Record.”
“Imagine, the movie theatre right next door. I would not be the least bit surprised to learn he likes movies as much you, sweetheart.”
“Why don’t you invite your friend Dougie Dunwood over and have Jack come along, too?”
“Leo goes to Dufferin School, too, Jack. He says he sees you all the time, don’t you, dear?”
“Leo is a bit of a finder, too. Five dollars once, outside the A&P.”
No kid anywhere out-cringed me. Sweaty face and palms. Doubled-over, arms cradling gut. Forehead pressed to cool of table. My prolonged moaning was audible only to me, dogs, and the Shamballan hordes, the mythical denizens of Hollow Earth I telepathically summoned to destroy all surface dwellers.
Mom rose in the ranks, advanced quickly to Levin Family Friend. People were attracted to my mother same way they were to Annie. Although I didn’t see it then, I struggle with it now. If I could point to one thing, it’d be the smiles. Yeah, how their smiles would fill their eyes and linger there, just short of or all-out joyful-teary, dimples deep in blush of cheek. The look, you had to see, would break you down before their lips clued in, whether the ode was to joy or melancholy or symphonic variations on each. The thought makes me queasy, Annie and my mom having anything in common. A shrink would have a field day, were I so naive as to allow a shrink inside.
The death blow for Jack and me was when Mom convinced Mollie Levin to get in on the act. They could have cuffed us face to face, airdropped us into the Everglades, and we would have served ourselves up as gator feed rather than submit to friendship. As long as it was what our parents wanted, it would not be anything we wanted. Jack and I, we knew what stunk. That much we had in common.
Mom was off gabbing with Mollie when Jack showed his hand. “I hate when my mother tries to make friends for me. Nothing against you, man. You seem all right, it’s just, you know . . .”
“I hate it, too,” I said.
“We’d only be asking for trouble.”
“It’d be the worst.”
“And what’s with the name? I thought you said you were Gus.”
“Leo is what my mom calls me.”
“Like a nickname?”
“She’s got a thing for cats. It means lion.”
“Gus is better.”
“Way better.”
We stopped nodding in passing at school.
He stopped coming by our table at the Marquee.
And, man, did I feel good! To have desired something so badly
for so long and to have turned it down, moment of triumph at hand, and to have accomplished it not once, but twice . . . That was saying something. Simultaneous self-preservation and self-destruction was no easy feat. I should’ve been front page of the Record. As survival instincts go, mine were relentless. Where I fell short was in the realm of human nature.
With all my looking inward, I had missed what was going on with Jack, the downside of his fame.
While I aspired to share in Jack’s adventures, his buddies had a different take. Make the paper once or twice, okay. But turn up so often you’re the Montreal Canadiens on another Stanley Cup chase, and you’re going to get what’s coming to you, and not in a good way.
Schadenfreude is Frankenstein’s cousin, twice removed. In small towns, it’s once removed.
With every Jack the Finder story in the Record, Jack’s circle of friends had grown smaller. Before long, his circle was a noose.
Thirteen
Eleven shades of suckling on a spit
Charles Dahl-Packer was old hat by middle of fourth grade. He’d cornered the market on victimhood, leaving the usual standard bearers of Wienerdom relatively unbroken and grateful, though no less thirsty for their pantywaist champion’s blood. Pecker brought out the bully in the bullied. Good Deed Annie had laid it on the line for the dumb suck. “Don’t talk so much, Charles. Don’t laugh out loud whenever someone gives a wrong answer. Don’t make faces at everything. And your tears, you need to hold them in until you’re home. Only girls can get away with crying.” For all the As on his report card, Pecker was a damn slow learner.
Kids flock on schoolyards for two reasons: Free candy or fights. And the latter is what they were streaming to that morning. Early, I thought. Bullying typically got underway first recess, yet here we were, the starting bell yet to ring. And if this wasn’t sufficiently irregular, there was Pecker himself, nowhere near the centre, but giddy with relief to be on the periphery for once, and as merciless in his delight as the most savage of the bunch. The little shit was close to pissing himself, for God’s sake. I gave him a shot to the ribs as I elbowed past to ringside.
Jesus! It was Jack. Jack was the new Pecker. And present and oppressing were Dufferin’s career bullies and a cadre of promising up-and-comers.
There was Crates. (Yeah, plain Crates, as far as I knew. The single name was his brand. Like Scarface, Bluto, or Ipana.) Isolated, introverted, impassive. Wiry. Light-footed. Human head, mosquito body. You could carry him on your back for a mile and he’d bleed you dry before you knew he was there. I feared him, sure. (Who didn’t?) The scuzz was legend. Zen master of havoc, pain, and graffiti. Able to cripple with the twitch of a zit. And while I’d seen the vandalism, pain, and graffiti attributed to him, I’d never actually seen Crates do anything other than look like he might be thinking about doing whatever.
Alan ‘Double Al’ Allen was the anti-Crates. Your more traditionalist thug. Loud. Beefy. A ganger-upper. The fightingest bully. He had no forehead, his hairline an awning for his eyebrows.
Crates intimidated with his presence, Al with his fists, the Double as apropos to his brawn as to his name. But he wasn’t all brawn. He knew to threaten in the schoolyard and save the beating for the street, beyond Principal Malbasic’s jurisdiction. The bugger could make mincemeat of you, use your ribcage for the grinder.
While their styles differed, Crates and Double Al ran neck and neck in visits to Malbasic’s office.
Followers and lesser lights included Wayne Trumpeter and the other Waynes—Long-Arm and Dandruff, Vito from Italy, and Lloyd Gonna-kick-u-in-the-nuts.
But they weren’t the perps, not this go-round. It was Jack’s old pals doling out the justice. Seven of them by my count.
Only Dougie Dunwood stood with Jack and I regretted having judged him unfairly. Unless he had an ulterior motive, saw a chance to earn a Scouting badge for Loyalty. But then Mickey Mental stepped into the box, threw the flats of his hands onto Jack’s chest and heaved full-on. And Jack the Finder, that guy, I am telling you, he did not budge. Did not budge. He was not the biggest kid by any stretch. Dunwood had the edge in every vital stat. But in this den of thugs, Jack was as hard and resolute as the stone heads on Easter Island.
I gave him credit. I knew how tough it was, the effort required, pretending you don’t give two shits when the whole time you surely do.
I also knew what it was like to see friends bail. Unlike Jack, I deserved what I got. Poor Annie, so many times she tried to set me straight. “You’re too sensitive, too unforgiving. No one is perfect. You need to give people a chance.” Besides my mother, Annie was my only constant. She put up with me no matter how undeserving I was.
“You think you’re better than us, Levin.” Dunwood’s swagger was stop-and-start, his leadership iffy without a bat in his hands. If there was a merit badge to be had for ganging-up, Mickey Mental had his work cut out for him. “You’re no better than us, Levin.”
Jack nodded, no argument. His hands hung loose at his sides, his fingers flexed mid-way to fists. “You growing a moustache?” Jack said.
“What? No. Shut up, eh? It’s chocolate milk, okay? From breakfast.”
“If you say so.”
“You think you’re better than us, Levin. You’re no better than us.”
Double Al knuckled Dougie in the small of his back. “Get to it, Dumbwood. Wipe the smile off his face. Clock him!” Al’s clock him confirmed my long-held suspicion he’d earned his stripes under the tutelage of Butch from The Little Rascals.
Dunwood wiped his own face before enjoining Jack. “Yeah, wipe the smile off your face, Levin.”
“I’m not smiling,” Jack said, though I understood how some could think he was. He had an Audie Murphy sort of presence, like in Destry. Kill ’em with kindness. Let nothing faze you till it fazes you. Then blammo! Me, in his shoes, I would’ve handed in my badge, let the bad guys loot the town.
“Who crowned you King Shit, Levin?” another ex-buddy piped up, and the cheap shots flew fast and shrill in arbitrary editorial.
“King Shit of Turd Island.”
“Too big for your britches.”
“Hate your guts, Levin.”
“Show-off.”
“Stupid jerk.”
“Clock him!”
“Thinks he’s better than us.”
“You’re not better than us.”
“Your mother wears army boots.”
“Wipe the smile off your face, Levin.”
“Hey, jackass, kiss this!”
“Kiss this, jackass.”
“Clock him!”
The bleachers cherry-picked the sweetest bits and the winning barbs duked it out for dominance, rhythmic King Shits and jackasses soon supplanted by a finger-snapping staccato of “Clock him! Clock him! Clock him!”
But no one volunteered to deliver the critical first clock. A low-level grumbling leached from the mob.
Jack met my eyes, despite my conscious effort to avoid him. I dropped my chin to chest, annoyed and ashamed to have been singled out. I was not part of this. We were not friends. We had agreed not to be. If he was asking for help, I wanted none of it. What the hell did he think I could do anyhow? Now Crates had seen it, too, licking his chops in anticipation of my move.
I edged back, relinquished my space at the front, yielding in cowardly retreat.
Okay, I’d go look for a teacher. That much I could do for him. But then, if anybody saw . . . If Crates or Double Al saw it was me who helped rescue Jack . . .
“Teacher’s pet!”
My head snapped up, and there he gloated, mouth wide and wet and chalkboard screechy—Charles Dahl-Packer.
“Teacher’s pet!”
Jeez, of all the namby-pamby efforts to energize the jackals, his slander was the lamest of the lame.
“Teacher’s pet!”
“Jesus H. Christ,” I shouted into his nostrils, and shoved him hard to shut him up. “You think Levin had a say?”
“What?”
/>
I wrenched him toward me just so I could shove him again. “It’s what teachers do, isn’t it?” I said. “Paint targets on the bright and industrious, groom them as scapegoats?”
“What?” Pecker gawked. “Wha-wha-what?”
I gawked, too. What the hell had I said? Talk about stilted. What kid on what planet would say anything like that unscripted? The voice was mine but the words sure weren’t, though I could not say who they belonged to or from where they’d come. It was crazy, I tell you. I was crazy. I never knew I had an industrious or a groom or a scapegoat in me, least of all the intellect to string them together in a coherent sentence. Until this moment I had judiciously confined all outward displays of eloquence and precocity to tête-à-têtes with the bathroom mirror.
I tried to bring it down a notch. “Tell me one time Jack has ever milked it. C’mon, one time, you stupid dork.”
“Yuck,” he said. “Your breath smells like Limburger.”
“Shut up.”
“Let me go.”
“The grief Jack’s getting now . . .”
“Stop. You’re hurting me.”
“He was set up. The teachers. The paper. The whole town . . . Same as if they’d tied him to a powder keg and lit the fuse.” My speechifying continued. Like I’d been handed a script and ordered to read the part of the Lawyer, the idealistic and earnest dandy newly arrived from the East. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see? Same as me. Same as you. It’s what they do, the grown-ups . . .”
“Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Fartbreath—”
Only after the teachers had pulled me off the dweeb, dragged me up and away by the armpits, did I comprehend what I had done, how I’d backhanded the specs from Pecker’s face, kicked his feet out from under him and held him down, pummelled the pussy from gut to scalp and ear to ear, his squeals winning him the allegiance and adulation of the mob, their cheers egging me on, till the tears from Pecker’s eyes and the snot and blood from Pecker’s nose mixed with the slobber and blood from Pecker’s mouth, and Pecker’s head swelled black and blue, eleven shades of suckling on a spit.
Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels Page 5