Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels

by Michael Libling

  “But I’d have to steal them. Mr. Levin won’t let me buy—”

  “Green Chiclets, too.”

  Downside aside, it was a breakthrough. A historic moment. Crates had actually spoken to me. When the congregation jumped up to hymn it up, I slunk out, understanding in full, at last, why Mom and me did not go to church.

  Episode 4

  Okay, so I did give a crap about the movie cards. They were my refuge. Spent hours poring over them. It was me who found them and it would damn well be me who got to the bottom of them.

  My persistence would pay off. Had to.

  Not everyone saw the Big Dipper first try, either.

  Episode 5

  Lifting cigarettes from the Marquee was a breeze. You wouldn’t think so, but big and klutzy kids can get away with shit the agile and coordinated cannot.

  The main shelf was behind the cash and inches from the pop cooler, so when reaching deep for a soda with my right hand, I’d throw my left onto the cigarette shelf for balance, never failing to send a few packs onto the floor. “Ah, jeez. Sorry.” As I stooped to gather them up, I’d press up against the cooler and drop a pack down the front of my pants into my Jockeys, before returning the remainder to the shelf.

  The Chiclets were a nickel. I paid for those.

  Crates was satisfied with one pack of smokes a week. He was generous that way.

  I wasn’t happy paying taxes, though. Wasn’t happy stealing from Bert Levin. Wasn’t happy knuckling under.

  Episode 6

  My shame and bruises were my license for revenge.

  I channelled Randolph Scott in Seven Men from Now. I’d corner the culprits alone, take them down one by one. Double Al and his gang. Crates, if it came to that.

  Screw contingencies. To overthink would be to chicken out.

  I honed my combat skills. Sparred with the mirror on the back of Mom’s bedroom door. Beat up pillows, punched out trees. Scoured my comic books, the pages of TV Guide. Studied with the masters. Chuck Connors. Clint Walker. Gary Cooper. Jimmy Stewart. John Wayne. Alan Ladd.

  A guy who speaks with his fists. I’d be that guy. Songs would be written. Frankie Laine would sing.

  Vigilante! Vigilante! The Vigilante Kid.

  From Trenton he came, dark side of the town,

  Dynamite in his fists, his soul vengeance-bound . . .

  Episode 7

  On July 22, 1963, Sonny Liston kayoed Floyd Patterson in two minutes, ten seconds of the first round of their Las Vegas rematch. The very next Saturday, Movietone delivered the blow-by-blow, direct from ringside to the Odeon screen.

  I ran to Simmons Drugs right after and bought The Ring, Sonny pounding Floyd on the cover, no less. That magazine might as well have been two ten-ounce gloves, the swagger it gave me.

  Episode 8

  You don’t start at the top. You work your way through the fodder, wade into the vengeance. A couple of rounds with Wayne, any Wayne. Take Vito out in the third or fourth. Toy with Lloyd fifth through eighth. Double Al nine, ten. Finish off Crates in the twelfth, if it came to that.

  I was riding my bike to nowhere when I saw Crates tramping out of the west, along the tracks and through the crossing where the locomotive had flattened the school bus. It wasn’t a Friday. Wasn’t a tax day. And it was nothing I’d planned. Least of all stepping into the ring in Bermuda shorts. Canary yellow. (Mom’s idea, not mine.)

  I was fed up and hating myself more than usual is what it was.

  I could have pedalled away, Crates none the wiser. But then I’d never unstreak my cowardly streak. I was ready, two issues of Ring in my head by then. And don’t forget Randy Scott in Seven Men from Now, to whom I’d added Kirk Douglas in Last Train from Gun Hill.

  Vigilante! Vigilante! The Vigilante Kid.

  Bowie knife a-gleaming, Crates blazed a bloody trail,

  Showdown in the offing, Gus leapt onto the rail . . .

  I parked my bike under the Stop On Red Signal and gave chase. I stuck with the grass, arcing towards Crates from around and above. He wouldn’t know what hit him until it hit him.

  I recognized the momentousness. Succeed, and I would never be forced to be me again. I took note of the rolling green hill to my right, the shaded path to the rectory and convent, the red brick of the church and school on high.

  Crates was coming from his job at Annie’s dad’s lumberyard. He’d be tired. But then how tiring could knife-sharpening be? Especially for “the best knife sharpener” Annie’s dad ever saw.

  I frisked him from afar. He was bare from the waist up, shirt slung from shoulder and flapping as he hopped from tie to tie. The guy was skinnier than the steel underfoot and as hard or harder. Biceps. Triceps. Bone. If he was carrying a blade, it’d need to be thinner than thin.

  I welcomed my fears. Nerves were good. Rocky Marciano himself had said so in The Ring. And how many fights had Rocky lost? Not one. In his entire professional career.

  Plus I had the element of surprise working for me. Surprise was worth ten men. Twenty. It was either Elfego Baca or Texas John Slaughter who’d taught me that.

  I padded up behind him, grabbed a fistful of his shirt, my right raised to deck him when he turned. But the fucker did not turn. The fucker spun. And by default, I spun, too, and the shirt rolled up and around my neck as Crates reeled me in. A goddamn Cheerio Champ, the bastard. He yanked, and I spun out the other way, a freaking two-bit human yoyo.

  I bailed. Rapped a knee off a rail. Tore up my hands in the gravel ballast.

  Crates scratched at his stubble. He’d been shaving since kindergarten. “What the hell, Ramses?”

  I rocked on the rail, hugging my knee, applying pressure, thinking fast. “I know what Ramses are.” I’d finally done my homework. “I buy ’em all the time. I just wanted to tell you.”

  “Oh, okay. Sure. I can see that. Sneaking up behind me. Grabbing my shirt. Sure, had to be it.” Crates’s laugh was channel 3 on a busted antenna. “Now what? Just gonna sit there and kill yourself?”

  My knee had swelled up fast. I saw the merit of his proposal. “I’m not paying taxes anymore,” I said.

  He lofted his shirt onto his shoulder. I flinched, forearms protective of my face. But Crates didn’t slug or slash. He nodded back toward the way we’d come. “Train.”

  The hum ran up the rail and buzzed my butt. I heaved backwards off the track, rolled to my belly, chin in grass.

  Red lights flashed. Crossing bells clanged. My bike twitched. My bike rattled. My bike danced away from the Stop On Red Signal, seesawed upright onto the rails, and sacrificed itself before the cowcatcher.

  “Yours?” Crates asked, as the 4:20 freighted the wreck past us.

  “I’m not paying taxes anymore,” I repeated, figuring he’d missed it the first time, which was why I wasn’t bleeding.

  Crates squatted, his knee on my throat. The good humour vacated his face for the bump and grind of his Adam’s apple. “You think I give a fuck about your taxes? I got more taxes than bees got honey.” He flicked his wrist and the sun winked upon a five-inch blade. “But you creep up on me again and I’ll send you home with your ears in your pockets.”

  Vigilante! Vigilante! The Vigilante Kid.

  Danger is his bloodline, vengeance is his biz,

  Came the final battle, the blood was solely his.

  Now off into the sunset, lo his mournful bellow

  Vigilante Kid—Bermuda shorts of yellow.

  Yippie, yip, yo. Yippie, yip, yellow.

  Yippie, yip, yo. Yippie, yip, yellow.

  Episode 9

  Susan Burgess intercepted me on my way out for lunch. “Talk to Annie. Please, Gus.”

  “She appoint you peacemaker or something?”

  “She doesn’t know. Honest.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “She misses you. Life is too short for silly fights. My brother knows better than anyone.”

  “Billy is dead eight years,” I said. “Billy knows diddly-squat.”

&nbs
p; “You’re an idiot. An even bigger idiot than Annie says. I hate you.”

  She walked away and Long-Arm Wayne stepped into my path and I punched him in the gut as hard as the Vigilante Kid could.

  “Sir. Sir,” he retched. “He hit me. Ramses hit me.”

  I deflated. Shit. I had failed to see Mr. Malbasic skulking by the wolverine cabinet. The principal’s tongue darted from Long-Arm to me and back. “You hit yourself, young man,” he said, and crossed the hall to the recently installed turtle exhibit.

  Episode 10

  On the day President Kennedy was assassinated, they sent us home from school early.

  I wondered if Dallas was like Trenton, in that bad things happened and people forgot them.

  I wondered if Lee Harvey Oswald might have been born in Trenton, like Henry Comstock of Tompkins Street and Comstock Lode fame.

  I wondered how much more Annie hated me after I saw her crying and hurried by pretending I didn’t.

  Episode 11

  Mom gave her life to Avon Beauty Products and Avon gave Mom the good life. “The lipstick life,” she quipped. “I should write a book. It would make a good title, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t read it,” I said.

  “You’re not who I’d be writing for.”

  Mom was home less and less. And when she was home, she was somewhere else. I didn’t complain. Most kids would kill to have a single mom preoccupied with career. The latchkey lifestyle was my good life, easing the return to my loner roots, erasing my wasted time with Jack and Annie.

  Friendship was great, if you were cut out for that sort of thing.

  Episode 12

  The footbridge that ran alongside the railroad bridge fell into the Trent River in February of 1964.

  Confirmed loss of life: a woman and her dog.

  The casualty was Mrs. Roger Campbell of Truro Avenue, mother of the late Jimmy Campbell, the kindergarten kid who was killed years earlier on the Dufferin playground, when the monkey bars crushed his windpipe. Last I’d seen her had been on the morning of the day Kennedy was shot, tying what might have been her farewell bouquet to the new monkey bars.

  Witnesses said Mrs. Campbell often walked her dog on the ice near the footbridge. The dog was a beagle and his leash was frozen to Mrs. Campbell’s hand when they carried her from the ice.

  Two additional victims turned up when they cleared the debris. Both males. Transients from parts unknown. People talked more about them than they did about Dead Jimmy Campbell’s dead mom.

  Jack would have been all over this, too.

  Episode 13

  Four weeks and talk about the old footbridge was done. People wanted only to hear about plans for the new footbridge. Like there had never been an old footbridge.

  How did good news push out the bad? Did bad news have an expiration date, like cottage cheese? Or did bad stuff come with a countdown clock, same as stunts on Beat the Clock? And who decided what and when?

  I put Bert Levin to the test, aimed for subtlety. “Too bad the old footbridge fell down, eh?”

  Bert flipped to page 3 of the Record to show me the illustration. “They say the new bridge will be covered. That’ll be welcome come winter.”

  With Mom, I went for the heart. “I can’t stop thinking about poor Mrs. Campbell and her dog.”

  “Who?”

  “The lady who got killed when the footbridge collapsed.”

  “I thought you meant Evelyn Campbell. Only this morning she God-blessed Avon for the improvement in her complexion.”

  Episode 14

  First day of high school, Annie saw me the second she came into homeroom. She scoped out the classroom and swung into a seat six rows over and six desks up, as far from me as any seat could be.

  We’d made sure to sit near each other in every class since first grade.

  “Like I care,” I said to nobody and loud enough for everybody.

  Episode 15

  The lady in black starred in my dreams with increasing regularity. She did things to me. Strange things. Good things. She was remaking me, I thought. Into what I wasn’t clear. I couldn’t step into Sure Press without looking for her, wishing for her. I was at the cleaners more than ever, too. Mom competed with Doris Day, the frequency of her costume changes.

  One day, spur of the moment, I spoke to Iris. My mouth opened, words spilled out. “Remember a long time ago when I was here with my friend and we were showing Mr. Blackhurst some cards and that lady came out from the back? Was she Mrs. Blackhurst?”

  Mirthless. Disinterested. Dedicated to her craft. That was Iris.

  I talked. She sewed. “You’re neighbours with the lady whose baby got eaten by the dogs, right? Did you ever—”

  “How many sides to a triangle?” she said, without looking up.

  I stopped, swallowed. “Three?”

  “You’d be wise to remember.”

  “I would?”

  She repositioned a hem. “You know what happens in triangles.”

  “I’ve read about pyramids.”

  “The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. One-hundred-twenty-three girls burned up. Twenty-three men burned up.”

  “Here? Trenton?” This would be the all-time winner on the list, surpassing Annie and Creighton Farms. A fire to beat all fires.

  “New York City,” she said. “My mother was there. She jumped with me inside her. The curse followed.” She craned to the right, put her neck on full display.

  “Oh,” I said, enthralled by the close-up, disappointed the factory fire had not been local, and failing miserably in my responsibility as an investigator of The Unexplained.

  “Bad things happen in threes.”

  Episode 16

  Mr. Blackhurst idled on the corner stool by the payphone. “Where’s the young lad?” he said to Bert.

  “It’s a long story, Mr. Blackhurst.”

  “He’s a good listener.”

  “Jack is good at a lot of things.”

  “I wish to speak with him.”

  “I can pass your message along, if you like.”

  “Three hot dogs,” Mr. Blackhurst harrumphed. “Mustard.”

  The old man ate his hotdogs in nine bites. Three per dog.

  On his way out, he paused by our table, rested a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “My dear sweet lovely miss, you ought to be in pictures. Has anyone ever told you?”

  “You, sir. Many times.”

  “Where have you been? You don’t visit me.”

  “Busy. Busy. My son has been helping me out.” She gestured toward me. “You see him often enough, I’m sure.”

  Mr. Blackhurst was slow to recognize me, and less than convincing when he did. “Ah, yes. One of the boat children.”

  “What boa—” I began to say, but Mom signalled me to let it go. I let everything go when it came to Blackhurst. I’d been wanting to remind him just about forever how I was the boy who found the intertitles. Hell, it should’ve been me he wanted to talk to, not Jack.

  Episode 17

  McGrath blew into the Marquee with his usual shtick. “What’s cookin’, Bert?” he said, and stopped cold at the sight of Bert sitting with Mom and me. The batteries of his brain ricocheted out his butt and down his pant leg. “Well, isn’t this cozy!” he said, and blew the hell out as abruptly as he blew in.

  It came to me then, exactly how I’d exact my revenge on Jack.

  7:30 4 THE COURTSHIP OF LEO’S MOTHER—Comedy

  A boy conspires to find a suitable spouse for his widowed mother, setting his sights on the father of a former friend.

  Episode 18

  I had stopped paying taxes. I didn’t stop stealing cigarettes. Not a lot. Maybe two packs a month. I restricted my efforts to the red Du Maurier packs.

  Episode 19

  “I like Bert Levin,” I said. “He’s a great guy.”

  “So you keep telling me,” Mom said. “You like him. I get it.”

  “I do. I really do.”

  “I’m glad. I
really am.”

  Episode 20

  A homeowner on Creighton Farms dug up some bones while planting a garden. First reports said the bones were human.

  Second reports said the bones were not human. There were no third reports.

  Episode 21

  Bert was at the grill and out of earshot next time McGrath pulled his shit.

  “Slut,” he coughed into Mom’s ear. “What happened, Emily? Lose your taste for old peckers?”

  Episode 22

  “Jack Levin will be visiting for Thanksgiving,” Mom said.

  “No skin off my chin,” I said.

  “Bert wanted me to warn you, Jack may not have time to see you.”

  “Good.”

  “Bert has a lot planned. Probably best, too, under the circumstances, we don’t go by the Marquee while he’s in town. Bert feels they should spend time alone.”

  “Bert doesn’t want Jack to know you’re his girlfriend. Jack would hate that.”

  “Girlfriend? Where did you get that idea? Bert and I are friends. Nothing more.”

  “Then how come I hear him sneaking into the house at night and sneaking out in the morning?”

  Episode 23

  Jack does not call me on Thanksgiving. He does not come by my house.

  “I like Mr. Levin,” I tell my mother. “He’s nice to me.”

  Episode 24

  My mother could have been a model in a Ford Thunderbird ad, the way she was preening in her new convertible. Wire wheels. Sportster Hump. The whole shebang.

  Her lips were pink. Her dress was pink. Her kerchief was pink. Her T-Bird was red on red. And Mom was a bona fide Avon superstar.