Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels

by Michael Libling

  February 1961

  To Principal Malbasic

  for his tenacity of spirit.

  Mr. Malbasic thanked us for our prayers and well wishes. “My mishap serves to highlight the need for caution in the most humdrum of daily pursuits . . .” My thoughts wandered to his tongue and its failure to dart, if bumping his head had cured him of the habit. The Unexplained thrived on miracles triggered by blows to the brain. People who could suddenly speak Chinese or predict the future or sing opera or draw like Jon Gnagy, the guy who taught art on TV in fifteen-minute lessons.

  “Would Leo Berry please stand up? Leo Berry? Leo? Leo Berry . . . is he here? Leo?” Mr. Malbasic’s words didn’t click until the kids around me started laughing and pointing and Mrs. Crawford hollered from the aisle for me to stand the hell up. I obeyed, an A-bomb in my belly, Mr. Malbasic’s grin the detonator. “If not for the quick thinking of Mr. Berry’s mother in summoning assistance, it is entirely likely I would not be with you today. What do you say? Three Dufferin cheers for Leo Berry and his mother? Hip hip . . .”

  My ass was back in my seat before the whole goddamn school completed their goddamn first hurrah. And in the midst of the hoopla and applause, the one word I had resisted for so long formally, officially, and everlastingly entered my lexicon.

  Fuck.

  The fucking noun, adjective, adverb, and verb in all its fucking permutations. (Or the nine I was aware of, that is.)

  Fucking.

  Fuck you.

  Fuck me.

  Fucked-up.

  Fucker.

  Fuckers.

  Fucked.

  Fuckface.

  Fuckin’ eh.

  More hand-clapping and cheering followed, and the piano started playing, and the whole school leaped to its collective feet, and everybody sang to God to “save our gracious Queen.” I didn’t care how noble, victorious, and glorious the Queen was, I didn’t have it in me to even hum. Far as I was concerned, God would be better off saving nobody.

  In closing, Mr. Malbasic volunteered volunteers to help Mr. Pennington put away the chairs. “You. You. You. You. You. You. You. And you.”

  Lloyd Gonna-kick-u-in-the-nuts. Dandruff-Wayne. Crates. Wayne Trumpeter. Long-Arm Wayne. Vito From Italy. Double Al. And Leo Fucking-fucked-up-fuck-fuck Berry.

  I rasped to Mr. Pennington: “Sir, I just got over a deadly case of the mumps, sir.” I palpated my glands with delicacy, impressed upon him the fragile nature of my recovery. “Sir?”

  “Start with this row,” he said. “Stack ’em there.”

  I’d never thought of chairs as weapons before. But I didn’t blame my fellow volunteers. The raps to my knees and ankles, I had them coming. On top of all previous transgressions, I was now the dumb fuck who had saved the life of the most hated school principal in the history of Dufferin Fucking School.

  “I want you to know I didn’t cheer when Mr. Malbasic did that to you,” Annie said.

  “I saw. You and Jack were the only ones.”

  “To be a teacher’s pet is hard enough, but principal’s pet . . . Oh, Gus, that was so mean of him. And then, to make you clean up with Alan Allen and the others . . . It must have been awful.”

  “Daniel in the Lion’s Den.”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “At least my mom’s in the clear.”

  “You’ve got to tell her what he did to you today.”

  “And have her go see him again? Uh-uh.”

  “You’re very brave, Gus. You really are.”

  “I wish I was dead.”

  “Why do you always say that? Come to church with me. Just once. You’ll see, there are better ways to handle things.”

  “Like how? Wish harder?”

  The school was a block behind us before Jack commented on the limp I’d made no effort to hide. “Those guys did a number on you, eh?”

  “Folding chairs are the switchblades of furniture,” I said.

  “Malbasic really set you up, eh? Guess he’s still got it in for you for punching out Pecker. That was my fault. I mean, you did it for me and all. I should tell him. . . .”

  “Nothing to do with you.”

  “It’s about your mom, then?”

  “What about my mom?” I’d told Annie and only Annie about Malbasic’s crush.

  “Our mothers are friends, Gus. They talk. I hear stuff.”

  “Well don’t, okay?”

  “And there you go, again. Friends help friends. Friends listen to friends. But you . . . It’s like you’re the only one who’s got stuff going on. You don’t care anything about anyone except yourself. You’re an asshole, man. A real asshole, sometimes.”

  “You been talking to Annie?”

  “Why? Your girlfriend call you an asshole, too?”

  Sure, Jack and Annie had their worries. Every kid did. Only Richie Rich was spared. But for Jack and Annie to put me in the same boat with them . . . Their dads weren’t dead. Their moms hadn’t been jumped by the school principal. Their moms hadn’t been on the fast track to Sing Sing. They didn’t have Mrs. Dahl-Packer gunning for them. I’m not saying I held the exclusive on misery. Not by a long shot. There was this school book we had—Visits in Other Lands. Bunga lived in the jungle, ate melons, and didn’t have a shirt to his name. Netsook, the Eskimo kid, froze his nuts off and chewed blubber. Hell, not having TV was the least of these kids’ worries. I got it. But I had my burdens, too, and they were as valid as any. Bunga. Netsook. Suvan of the Steppe. Simba of the Congo. Pedro of the Andes. Visits in Other Lands could just as easily have had a chapter on Gus of Trenton.

  “Whatever is coming is coming, Gus. It’s like Chicago before Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicks over the lantern. Trenton has a cow, too. Except we don’t know where it is or what damage it’s going to do. So stop with your ‘poor me’ bullshit. It’s ‘poor us,’ man. ‘Poor everybody.’ Something is coming. I feel it. You feel it. More than ever, we need to stick together.”

  “And if we’re wrong?” I said.

  “Disappointing, sure. But we’ll get over it.”

  “We’ll grow up, you mean,” I said accusingly.

  “Like you think you got a choice?”

  Anyone who claims he never once in all his life didn’t wish for disaster is a liar. Jack and me, we did more than wish. The town’s DNA had us banking on it. An uneventful life had no place in our futures.

  I was going for the big mope when Jack shifted gears. “So, are you ready?” he said.

  “For what?”

  “To be a hero.”

  Fourteen

  There goes Marilyn Monroe

  “Tell me, Gus, you ever hear something so crazy you put it out of your head without a second thought? And then, later on, could be days or weeks, something happens that puts the crazy thought right back?”

  With Jack, my fallback face was nothing but attentive, while my brain was often happy to settle for the gist. “Yeah. Sure.” The slack in my jaw would’ve done a Morlock proud.

  “A couple of months ago, Mr. Blackhurst traps me in the Marquee. You never know when he’ll come out with another circus fire, so I’m always sure to listen. And this time, out of the blue, he says he used to be in pictures and his wife was an actress and they made movies—get this, man!—right here in Trenton. A big studio near Hanna Park.”

  “Home movies, more like it.”

  “Yeah, I know. Totally loony. And then he says, they called the town Hollywood North.”

  “Hey! Look! There goes Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Thing is, Mr. Blackhurst might not be so nutty. This thing I told you I found . . .”

  A car passed. Mrs. Proctor, my old first grade teacher, in the passenger seat. She waved. Another car, a station wagon, kids’ noses on the windows. And then Mr. Malbasic and his Buick, his hands at ten and two, observing us as he coasted through the stop sign and rounded the corner.

  Jack prodded me beyond the reach of prying eyes into a small clearing between a thicket of cedars and a leafy hedge
. The watchtower of a rickety Victorian looked down upon us. “The Malbasics live there,” I warned.

  “Don’t worry,” Jack said, and we crouched low at the base of the hedge, branches scratching at our backs.

  Jack took a breath, released it slowly, giving me the once-over, as if my fidelity might be in question. And with a here-goes-nothing shrug, he pulled four cards from his canvas schoolbag. Each was about the size of a shirt cardboard.

  He revealed them one by one.

  “Neat. They’re like what you see in old-time movies,” I said.

  “Second I saw ’em, I thought of Mr. Blackhurst’s story.”

  “It’s true, then?”

  “You tell me. He said the movie studio had been near Hanna Park. That’s where I found them—the swampy stretch by the train tracks.”

  “I’ve been there a zillion times. You and me, we were there together.”

  “That’s how it is with lost crap, man. Once it’s made itself known, you wonder how you ever missed it. This old metal box was sitting under leaves and deadwood, but not like anybody couldn’t see it. And the cards inside—every one as good as these, Gus. Forty-seven of them.”

  “Show me. Show me.”

  “There’s something I’m going to want you to do.”

  “I don’t care. Just show me.”

  My limp had miraculously vanished as we arrived at his garage.

  Jack had wrapped the individual cards in Saran and stored them on his shelves, divided among a half-dozen candy cartons. It felt strange to hold them, the cardboard weightless, yet heavy in hand. I shuffled them endlessly, reading, imagining.

  “Been over them so many times,” Jack said, “I know most by heart.”

  “And that down there—the BPI—what’s that?”

  “Part of the mystery.”

  “You’re gonna be in the paper again, Jack. You gotta be. They’re amazing. This one. Look at this one. What are you waiting for?”

  “Yeah, well, the paper—that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’d like it to be you, Gus.”

  “Me what?”

  “Act like you found them.”

  “You crazy?”

  “You’ll be doing me a favour.”

  “Why? Because you don’t want to lose any more friends. And you figure I don’t have any to lose. Is that it?”

  “Hey, c’mon. You know I’m not like that.”

  “Anybody can be a jerk.”

  “Yeah. Even you.”

  “I’m just saying . . . And she’s not my girlfriend.”

  “What?”

  “Annie. Before. You called her my girlfriend.”

  “Friend. Girlfriend. What’s the diff?”

  “You know darn well what the difference is.”

  “Man, you’re an idiot. Look, if you really want to know, my mom and dad aren’t getting along so well lately, okay? That’s all there is to it.”

  “Your dad shouts a lot.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  “Yeah. Right. I guess you heard him when you were hiding out across the street. When you were on my tail every other second. You think I didn’t see you? You think I didn’t know? And you accuse me of being a jerk. . . .”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I would’ve had to be blind. I thought you’d break the damn scale outside the Marquee you were on it so much.”

  “I was just—”

  “I don’t give a crap what it was. You’re a weirdo. A freak. Think I don’t know? I’m a weirdo, too. And if I’m able to give your stupid spying ass a pass, the least you can do is give me a pass.”

  “Does he hit you?”

  “What?”

  “Your dad.”

  “It’s not like that. Just him and my mom. They’re always fighting or whatever. And, these days, well, it’s . . . I dunno.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have a dad.”

  “Me, right now, making a big deal out of something I found, well . . . I mean, my sisters and all, it wouldn’t be good. Like all I cared about was myself. You’ll be helping me out. You’ll be helping us out—getting to the bottom of these cards—the Hollywood thing.”

  “It’d be lying.”

  “Like you’re not the expert. . . .”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’ll be fun, Gus.”

  “Why not wait till your parents aren’t fighting? Tell everybody about the cards then.”

  “If I had fifty years, maybe. The other night, Mom was talking about divorce.”

  “Like divorce divorce? Like Elizabeth Taylor?”

  “Imagine how your mom will feel, seeing you in the paper and all. Think about it, Gus. How proud she’ll be. And Mr. Malbasic, once you’re in the paper, you’ll see, he’ll be nicer. They’ll treat you special. You’ll be a hero. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Nothing to it. Put on a good show. Act like you found them. And have a good time.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Look, the cards aren’t going anywhere. Think about it, okay?”

  “And if I decide I won’t, you gonna be pissed off?”

  “There’s your biggest problem, Gus. You think everyone thinks like you. I’m not you. I don’t waste time moaning over every stupid thing. We’re friends. I don’t see that changing for anything, even if you do.”

  Fifteen

  A bad week

  Tuesday, with Jack at the dentist and me alone, four coworkers from Monday’s assembly showed up to host a celebration of their own. The kid whose mother had saved Mr. Malbasic’s life was the guest of honour. I knew it was coming, just not so soon.

  Double Al and Lloyd blocked the path ahead, Long-Arm Wayne and Vito from Italy behind.

  “I’m just getting over a deadly case of the mumps,” I said.

  “Don’t kiss us, then.” Double Al could be funny, though no Buddy Hackett.

  “Vancouver,” I said, racking my brains for the Italian curse the truck driver had given Jack. I made the L with my arm, chopped my bicep. “Van Johnson.”

  They hustled me through the cedars and into the small clearing where Jack and I had been twenty-fours earlier.

  The bozos didn’t take the precautions Jack had. Should Malbasic look down from his watchtower window, he’d have the best seat in the house. Knowing him, he’d relish every jab, hook, and uppercut. I took some satisfaction in the image; his huffing and puffing up all those stairs to the watchtower. With his barn-door butt and roadhouse gut, he’d be dead before he made it to the top.

  “All set, Charlene,” Double Al called out, and Pecker came stumbling through the bushes he’d been hiding behind. He righted himself, charged, and swung his schoolbag at my head. I ducked, took a glancing blow off an ear, leaving Vito to catch the leather smack in the kisser. The maniac was at Pecker’s throat in a flash and might well have choked the miserable weenie had Double Al not pulled him off.

  “Fists, Charlene, fists. The deal was, we hold him, you punch him. Don’t go swinging that thing, again. You could hurt somebody.”

  Pecker apologized, and Vito spit in his face. “Vaffanculo.”

  Aha, that was it! Vaf-fan-cu-lo. I reined in my smile, knowing it would make it worse for me. Inappropriate smiles were magnets for fists. Jack suffered the same malady, but he had the fighting smarts to back it up.

  “You think it’s funny?” Pecker said. “We’ll see how funny you find it when I’m done with you. We’ll see how you like it.” He punched me in the hip, though I think he was aiming for my gut. Or my nuts, knowing him.

  “Not so fast, bud.” Again, Double Al intervened. “First, you pay up.”

  Pecker unsnapped his bag and shook the contents onto the grass. Candy, chewing gum, peanuts, chocolates, chips.

  Double Al squatted, sifted through the stash. “Where’s our smokes?”

  Pecker dropped to his knees, plucked out two cigars. “I got these.”<
br />
  “Cigarettes, Charlene. Three packs each. That was the deal.”

  “But look, guys, look. See. See. I doubled the candy. Look. Chocolate covered peanuts. Ju jubes. Boston Baked Beans. Bridge Mixture. Charms. Everybody likes Charms.”

  “That wasn’t the deal, Charlene.” Double Al and his cronies closed in.

  “Where my Camels?” Lloyd snarled.

  “My Players,” Wayne added.

  “Wasn’t my fault. My Dad was watching. Next time, though. I promise. I’ll get them for you next time, I swear. I will. You’ll see. But this is good candy. And the cigars, look, see, they’re Muriels. That’s good, right?”

  “No, Charlene. Not good.”

  “Stop. You’re hurting me,” Pecker said.

  I capitalized on the contract dispute, took off like a shot.

  In the back pages of the Wednesday’s Record, there was a small piece about Mom and how “her quick thinking saved the life of beloved, long-time Dufferin School Principal, Harvey Malbasic.” Mom’s refusal to be interviewed for the article was attributed to “the comely widow Berry’s characteristic humility.”

  Mom trashed the paper without checking out the sales.

  Later, talking to Dottie on the phone, Mom said, “Better for him than the truth, I suppose. Yes. You’re right. Better for me, too.” I’d never heard my mother more dejected. I felt sad for her. Wished I could help.

  On Thursday morning, as I waited on the corner for Jack, a shiny black Cadillac pulled to the curb and the window rolled down. I figured the man at the wheel was looking for directions, until I saw the woman in the passenger seat.

  “You just won’t quit, will you?” Mrs. Dahl-Packer said.