getting in with them . . .
Then a red-headed kid moved in next door to Chuck. He went to some kind
of special school. I was sitting on the curb one day when he came out of his
house. He sat on the curb next to me. "Hi, my name's Red."
"1m Henry."
We sat there and watched the guys play football. I looked at Red.
"How come you got a glove on your left hand?" I asked.
"I've only got one arm," he said.
"That hand looks real."
"It's fake. It's a fake arm. Touch it."
"What?"
"Touch it. It's fake."
I felt it. It was hard, rock hard.
"How'd that happen?"
"I was born that way. The arm's fake all the way up to the elbow. I've
got to strap it on. I've got little fingers at the end of my elbow,
fingernails and all, but the fingers aren't any good."
"You got any friends?" I asked.
"No."
"Me neither."
"Those guys won't play with you?"
"No."
"I got a football."
"Can you catch it?"
"Straight shit," said Red.
"Go get it."
"O.K.. .."
Red went back to his father's garage and came out with a football. He
tossed it to me. Then he backed across his front lawn.
"Go on, throw it . . ."
I let it go. His good arm came around and his bad arm came around and
he caught it. The arm made a slight squeaking sound as he caught the
football.
"Nice catch," I said. "Now wing me one!"
He cocked his arm and let it fly; it came like a bullet and I managed
to hold onto it as it dug into my stomach.
"You're standing too close," I told him. "Step back some more."
At last, I thought, some practice catching and throwing. It felt real
good.
Then I was the quarterback. I rolled back, straight-armed an invisible
tackier, and let go a spiral fly. It fell short. Red ran forward, leaped,
caught the ball, rolled over three or four times and still held onto it.
"You're good, Red. How'd you get so good?"
"My father taught me. We practice a lot."
Then Red walked back and let one sail. It looked to be over my head as
I ran back for it. There was a hedge between Red's house and Chuck's house
and I fell into the hedge going for the ball. The ball hit the top of the
hedge and bounced over. I went around to Chuck's yard to get the ball. Chuck
passed the ball to me. "So you got yourself a freak friend, hey, Heinie?"
It was a couple of days later and Red and I were on his front lawn
passing and kicking the football. Chuck and his friends weren't around. Red
and I were getting better and better. Practice, that's all it took. All a
guy needed was a chance. Somebody was always controlling who got a chance
and who didn't.
I caught one over the shoulder, whirled and winged it back to Red who
leaped high and came down with it. Maybe some day we'd play for U.S.C. Then
I saw five boys walking down the sidewalk toward us. They weren't guys from
my grammar school. They were our age and looked like trouble. Red and I kept
throwing the ball and they stood watching us. Then one of the guys stepped
onto the lawn. The biggest.
"Throw me the ball," he said to Red.
"Why?"
"I wanna see if I can catch it."
"I don't care if you can catch it or not."
"Throw me the ball!"
"He's got one arm," I said. "Leave him alone."
"Stay out of this, monkey-face!" Then he looked at Red.
"Throw me the ball."
"Go to hell!" said Red.
"Get the ball!" the big guy said to the others. They ran at us. Red
turned and threw the ball on the roof of his house. The roof was slanted and
the ball rolled back down but managed to stick behind a drain pipe. Then
they were on us. Five to two, I thought, there's no chance. I caught a fist
on the temple, swung and missed. Somebody kicked me in the ass. It was a
good one and burned all the way up the spine. Then I heard a cracking sound,
it was almost like a rifle shot and one of them was down on the ground
holding his forehead.
"Oh shit," he said, "my skull is crushed!"
I saw Red and he was standing in the center of the lawn. He was holding
the hand of his fake arm with the hand of his good arm. It was like a club.
Then he swung again. There was another loud crack and another of them was
down on the lawn. I began to feel brave and I landed a punch right on a
guy's mouth. I saw the lip split and the blood began to dribble down his
chin. The other two ran off. Then the big guy who had gone down first got up
and the other one got up. They held their heads. The guy with the bloody
mouth stood there. Then they retreated down the street together. When they
got quite a way down the big guy turned around and said, "We'll be back!"
Red began running toward them and I ran behind Red. They started
running and Red and I stopped chasing them after they turned the corner. We
walked back, found a ladder in the garage. We got the football down and
began throwing it back and forth . . .
One Saturday Red and I decided to go swimming at the public pool down
on Bimini Street. Red was a strange guy. He didn't talk much but I didn't
talk much either and we got along. There was nothing to say anyhow. The only
thing I ever really asked him about was his school but he just said it was a
special school and that it cost his father some money.
We arrived at the pool in the early afternoon, got our lockers, and
took our clothes off. We had our swimming trunks on underneath. Then I saw
Red unhitch his arm and put it in his locker. It was the first time since
the fight I had seen him without his fake arm. I tried not to look at his
arm which ended at the elbow. We walked to the place where you had to soak
your feet in a chlorine solution. It stank but it stopped the spread of
athlete's foot or something. Then we walked to the pool and got in. The
water stank too and after I was in I pissed in it. There were people of all
ages in the pool, men and women, boys and girls. Red really liked the water.
He leaped up and down in it. Then he ducked under and came up. He spit water
out of his mouth. I tried to swim. I couldn't help noticing Red's half-arm,
couldn't help looking at it. I always made sure to look at it when I thought
he was occupied with something else. It ended at the elbow, sort of rounded
off, and I saw the little fingers. I didn't want to stare real hard, but it
seemed as if there were only three or four of them, very tiny, curled up
there. They were very red and each of the tiny fingers had a little
fingernail. Nothing was going to grow anymore; it had all stopped. I didn't
want to think about it. I dove under. I was going to scare Red. I was going
to grab his legs from behind. I came up against something soft. My face went
right into it. It was a fat woman's ass. I felt her grab me by the hair and
she pulled me up out of the water. She had on a blue bathing cap and the
strap was tight around her chin, digging into her flesh. Her front teeth
were capped with silver and her breath smelled of garlic.
"You dirty little pervert! Trying for free grabs, are you?"
I pushed away from her and backed off. As I moved backwards she
followed me through the water, her sagging breasts pushing a tidal wave in
front of her.
"You dirty little prick. You wanna suck my titties? You got a dirty
mind, huh? You wanna eat my shit? How about some of my shit, little prick?"
I backed up further into the deeper water. I was now standing on my
toes, moving backwards. I swallowed some water. She kept coming, a steamship
of a woman. I couldn't retreat any further. She moved right up to me. Her
eyes were pale and blank, there wasn't any color in them. I felt her body
touching mine.
'Touch my cunt," she said. "I know you want to touch it, so go ahead,
touch my cunt. Touch it, touch it!"
She waited.
"If you don't, I'm going to tell the lifeguard you molested me and
you'll be put in jail! Now, touch it!"
I couldn't do it. Suddenly she reached under and grabbed my parts and
yanked. She almost tore my dong off. I fell backwards into the deep water,
sank, struggled, and came to the top. I was six feet away from her and began
swimming toward shallow water.
"I'm going to tell the lifeguard you molested me!" she screamed. Then a
man swam between us. "That little son-of-a-bitch!" she pointed at me and
screamed at the man. "He grabbed my cunt!"
"Lady," said the man, "the boy probably thought it was the grate
over the drain."
I swam over to Red.
"Listen," I said, "we've got to get out of here! That fat lady is going
to tell the lifeguard that I touched her cunt!"
"What'd you do that for?" Red asked.
"I wanted to see what it felt like."
"What'd it feel like?"
We got out of the pool, showered. Red put his arm back on and we
dressed. "Did you really do it?" he asked.
"A guy's got to get started sometime."
It was a month or so later that Red's family moved. One day they were
gone. Just like that. Red never said anything in advance to me. He was gone,
the football was gone, and those tiny red fingers with fingernails, they
were gone. He was a good guy.
16
I didn't know exactly why but Chuck, Eddie, Gene and Frank let me join
them in some of their games. I think it started when another guy showed up
and they needed three on a side. I still required more practice to get
really good but I was getting better. Saturday was the best day. That's when
we had our big games, other guys joined in, and we played football in the
street. We played tackle on the lawns but when we played in the street we
played touch. There was more passing then because you couldn't get far with
a run in touch.
There was trouble at the house, much fighting between my mother and my
father, and as a consequence, they kind of forgot about me. I got to play
football each Saturday. During one game I broke into the open behind the
last pass defender and I saw Chuck wing the ball. It was a long high spiral
and I kept running. I looked back over my shoulder, I saw it coming, it fell
right into my hands and I held it and was in for the touchdown.
Then I heard my father's voice yell "HENRY!" He was standing in front
of his house. I lobbed the ball to one of the guys on my team so they could
kick off and I walked down to where my father stood. He looked angry. I
could almost feel his anger. He always stood with one foot a little bit
forward, his face flushed, and I could see his pot belly going up and down
with his breathing. He was six feet two and like I said, he looked to be all
ears, mouth and nose when angry. I couldn't look at his eyes.
"All right," he said, "you're old enough to mow the lawn now. You're
big enough to mow it, edge it, water it, and water the flowers. It's time
you did something around here. It's time you got off your dead ass!"
"But I'm playing football with the guys. Saturday is the only real
chance I have."
"Are you talking back to me?"
"No."
I could see my mother watching from behind a curtain. Every Saturday
they cleaned the whole house. They vacuumed the rugs and polished the
furniture. They took up the rugs and waxed the hardwood floors and then
covered the floors with the rugs again. You couldn't even see where they had
been waxed.
The lawn mower and edger were in the driveway. He showed them to me.
"Now, you take this mower and go up and down the lawn and don't miss any
places. Dump the grass catcher here whenever it gets full. Now, when you've
mowed the lawn in one direction and finished, take the mower and mow the
lawn in the other direction, get it? First, you mow it north and south, then
you mow it east and west. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"And don't look so god-damned unhappy or I'll really give you something
to be unhappy about! After you've finished mowing, then you take the
edger. You trim the edges of the lawn with the little mower on the edger.
Get under the hedge, get every blade of grass! Then . . . you
take this circular blade on the edger and you cut along the edge of
the lawn. It must be absolutely straight along the edge of the lawn!
Understand?"
"Yes."
"Now when you're done with that, you take these . . ."
My father showed me some shears.
". . . and you get down on your knees and you go around cutting off any
hairs that are still sticking up. Then you take the hose and you
water the hedges and the flower beds. Then you turn on the sprinkler and you
let it run fifteen minutes on each part of the lawn. You do all this on the
front lawn and in the flower garden, and then you repeat it on the rear lawn
and in the flower garden there. Are there any questions?"
"No."
"All right, now I want to tell you this. I am going to come out and
check everything when you're finished, and when you're done I
DON'T WANT TO SEE ONE HAIR STICKING UP IN EITHER THE FRONT OR BACK
LAWN! NOT ONE HAIR! IF THERE IS . . . !"
He turned, walked up the driveway, across his porch, opened the door,
slammed it, and he was gone inside of his house. I took the mower, rolled it
up the drive and began pushing it on its first run, north and south. I could
hear the guys down the street playing football . . .
I finished mowing, edging and clipping the front lawn. I watered the
flower beds, set the sprinkler going and began working my way toward the
backyard. There was a stretch of lawn in the center of the driveway leading
to the back. I got that too. I didn't know if I was unhappy. I felt too
miserable to be unhappy. It was like everything in the world had turned to
lawn and I was just pushing my way through it all. I kept pushing and
working but then suddenly I gave up. It would take hours, all day, and the
game would be over. The guys would go in to eat dinner, Saturday would be
finished, and I'd still be mowing.
As I began mowing the back lawn I noticed my mother and my father
standing on the back porch watching me. They just stood there silently, not
moving. Once as I pushed the mower past I heard my mother say to my father,
"Look, he doesn't sweat like you do when you mow the lawn. Look how
calm he looks."
"CALM? HE'S NOT CALM, HE'S DEAD!"
When I came by again, I heard him:
"PUSH THAT THING FASTER! YOU MOVE LIKE A SNAIL!"
I pushed it faster. It was hard to do but it felt good. I pushed it
faster and faster. I was almost running with the mower. The grass flew back
so hard that much of it flew over the grass catcher. I knew that would anger
him.
"YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!" he screamed. I saw him run off the back porch and
into the garage. He came out with a two-by-four about a foot long. From the
corner of my eye I saw him throw it. I saw it coming but made no attempt to
avoid it. It hit me on the back of my right leg. The pain was terrible. The
leg knotted up and I had to force myself to walk. I kept pushing the mower,
trying not to limp. When I swung around to cut another section of the lawn
the two-by-four was in the way. I picked it up, moved it aside and kept
mowing. The pain was getting worse. Then my father was standing beside me.
"STOP!"
I stopped.
"I want you to go back and mow the lawn over again where you didn't
catch the grass in the catcher! Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
My father walked back into the house. I saw him and my mother standing
on the back porch watching me.
The end of the job was to sweep up all the grass that had fallen on the
sidewalk, and then wash the sidewalk down. I was finally finished except for
sprinkling each section of the lawn in the back yard for fifteen minutes. I
dragged the hose back to set up the sprinkler when my father stepped out of
the house.
"Before you start sprinkling I want to check this lawn for hairs."
My father walked to the center of the lawn, got down on his hands and
knees and placed the side of his head low against the lawn looking for any
blade of grass that might be sticking up. He kept looking, twisting his
neck, peering around. I waited.
"AH HAH!"
He leaped up and ran toward the house.
"MAMA! MAMA!"
He ran into the house.
"What is it?"
"I found a hair!"
"You did?"
"Come, I'll show you!"
He came out of the house quickly with my mother following.
"Here! Here! I'll show you!"
He got down on his hands and knees.
"I can see it! I can see two of them!"
My mother got down with him. I wondered if they were crazy.
"See them?" he asked her. "Two hairs. See them?"
"Yes, Daddy, I see them . . ."
They both got up. My mother walked into the house. My father looked at
me.
"Inside. . ."
I walked to the porch and inside the house. My father followed me.
"Into the bathroom."
My father closed the door.
"Take your pants down."
I heard him get down the razor strop. My right leg still ached. It
didn't help, having felt the strop many times before. The whole world was
out there indifferent to it all, but that didn't help. Millions of people
were out there, dogs and cats and gophers, buildings, streets, but it didn't
matter. There was only father and the razor strop and the bathroom and me.
He used that strop to sharpen his razor, and early in the mornings I used to
hate him with his face white with lather, standing before the mirror
shaving himself. Then the first blow of the strop hit me. The sound of the
strop was flat and loud, the sound itself was almost as bad as the pain. The
strop landed again. It was as if my father was a machine, swinging that
strop. There was the feeling of being in a tomb. The strop landed again and
I thought, that is surely the last one. But it wasn't. It landed again. I
didn't hate him. He was just unbelievable, I just wanted to get away from
him. I couldn't cry. I was too sick to cry, too confused. The strop landed
once again. Then he stopped. I stood and waited. I heard him hanging up the
strop.
"Next time," he said, "I don't want to find any hairs."
I heard him walk out of the bathroom. He closed the bathroom door. The
walls were beautiful, the bathtub was beautiful, the wash basin and the
shower curtain were beautiful, and even the toilet was beautiful. My father
was gone.
17
Of all the guys left in the neighborhood, Frank was the nicest. We
got to be friends, we got to going around together, we didn't need the
other guys much. They had more or less kicked Frank out of the group,
anyway, so he became friends with me. He wasn't like David, who had walked
home from school with me. Frank had a lot more going for him than David had.
I even joined the Catholic church because Frank went there. My parents liked
me going to church. The Sunday masses were very boring. And we had to go to
Catechism classes. We had to study the Catechism book. It was just boring
questions and answers.
One afternoon we were sitting on my front porch and I was reading the
Catechism out loud to Frank. I read the line, "God has bodily eyes and sees
all things."
"Bodily eyes?" Frank asked.
"Yes."
"You mean like this?" he asked.
He clenched his hands into fists and placed them over his eyes.
"He has milk bottles for eyes," Frank said, pushing his fists against
his eyes and turning toward me. Then he began laughing. I began laughing
too. We laughed a long time. Then Frank stopped.
"You think He heard us?"
"I guess so. If He can see everything He can probably hear everything
too."
"I'm scared," said Frank. "He might kill us. Do you think He'll kill
us?"
"I don't know."
"We better sit here and wait. Don't move. Sit still."
We sat on the steps and waited. We waited a long time.
"Maybe He isn't going to do it now," I said.
"He's going to take His time," said Frank. We waited another hour, then
we walked down to Frank's place. He was building a model airplane and I
wanted to take a look at it . . .
The afternoon came when we decided to go to our first confession. We
walked to the church. We knew one of the priests, the main man. We had met
him in an ice cream parlor and he had spoken to us. We had even gone to his
house once. He lived in a place next to the church with an old woman. We
stayed quite a while and asked all sorts of questions about God. Like, how
tall was He? And did He just sit in a chair all day? And did He go to the
bathroom like everybody else? The priest never did answer our questions
directly but still he seemed like a nice guy, he had a nice smile.
We walked to the church thinking about confession, thinking about what
it would be like. As we got near the church a stray dog began walking along
with us. He looked very thin and hungry. We stopped and petted him,
scratched his back.
"It's too bad dogs can't go to heaven," said Frank.
"Why can't they?"
"You gotta be baptized to go to heaven."
"We ought to baptize him."
"Think we should?"
"He deserves a chance to go to heaven."
I picked him up and we walked into the church. We took him to the bowl
of holy water and I held him there as Frank sprinkled the water on his
forehead.
"I hereby baptize you," said Frank.
We took him outside and put him back on the sidewalk again.
"He even looks different," I said.
The dog lost interest and walked off down the sidewalk. We went back
into the church, stopping first at the holy water, dipping our fingers into
it and making the sign of the cross. We both kneeled at a pew near the
confessional booth and waited. A fat woman came out from behind the curtain.
She had body odor. I could smell her strong odor as she walked past. Her
smell was mixed with the smell of the church, which smelled like piss. Every
Sunday people came to mass and smelled that piss-smell and nobody said
anything. I was going to tell the priest about it but I couldn't. Maybe it
was the candles.
"I'm going in," said Frank.
Then he got up, walked behind the curtain and was gone. He was in there
a long time. When he came out he was grinning.
"It was great, just great! You go in there now!"
I got up, pulled the curtain back and walked in. It was dark. I kneeled
down. All I could see in front of me was a screen. Frank said God was back
in there. I kneeled and tried to think of something bad that I had done, but
I couldn't think of anything. I just knelt there and tried and tried to
think of something but I couldn't. I didn't know what to do.
"Go ahead," said a voice. "Say something!"
The voice sounded angry. I didn't think there would be any voice. I
thought God had plenty of time. I was frightened. I decided to lie.
"All right," I said. "I . . . kicked my father. I . . . cursed my
mother . . . I stole money from my mother's purse. I spent it on candy bars.
I let the air out of Chuck's football. I looked up a little girl's dress. I
kicked my mother. I ate some of my snot. That's about all. Except today I
baptized a dog."
"You baptized a dog?"
I was finished. A Mortal Sin. No use going on. I got up to leave. I
didn't know if the voice recommended my saying some Hail Marys or if the
voice didn't say anything at all. I pulled the curtain back and there was
Frank waiting. We walked out of the church and were back on the street.
"I feel cleansed," said Frank, "don't you?"
"No."
I never went to confession again. It was worse than ten o'clock mass.
18
Frank liked airplanes. He lent me all his pulp magazines about World
War 1. The best was Flying Aces. The dog-fights were great, the Spads
and the Fokkers mixing it. I read all the stories. I didn't like the way the
Germans always lost but outside of that it was great.
I liked going over to Frank's place to borrow and return the magazines.
His mother wore high heels and had great legs. She sat in a chair with her
legs crossed and her skirt pulled high. And Frank's father sat in another
chair. His mother and father were always drinking. His father had been a
flyer in World War I and had crashed. He had a wire running down inside one
of his arms instead of a bone. He got a pension. But he was all right. When
we came in he always talked to us.
"How are you doing, boys? How's it going?"
Then we found out about the air show. It was going to be a big one.
Frank got hold of a map and we decided to get there by hitch-hiking. I
thought we'd probably never make it to the air show but Frank said we would.
His father gave us the money.
We went down to the boulevard with our map and we got a ride right
away. It was an old guy and his lips were very wet, he kept licking his lips
with his tongue and he had on an old checkered shirt which he had buttoned
to the throat. He wasn't wearing a necktie. He had strange eyebrows which
curled down into his eyes.
"My name's Daniel," he said. Frank said, "This is Henry. And I'm
Frank."
Daniel drove along. Then he took out a Lucky Strike and lit it.
"You boys live at home?"
"Yes," said Frank.
"Yes," I said.
Daniel's cigarette was already wet from his mouth. He stopped the car
at a signal.
"I was at the beach yesterday and they caught a couple of guys under
the pier. The cops caught them and threw them in jail. One guy was sucking
the other guy off. Now what business is that of the cops? It made me mad."
The signal changed and Daniel pulled away.
"Don't you guys think that was stupid? The cops stopping those guys
from sucking-off?"
We didn't answer.
"Well," said Daniel, "don't you think a couple of guys have a right to
a good blow job?"
"I guess so," said Frank.
"Yeah," I said.
"Where are you boys going?" asked Daniel,
"The air show," said Frank.
"Ah, the air show! I like air shows! I'll tell you what, you boys let
me go with you and I'll drive you all the way there."
We didn't answer.
"Well, how about it?"
"All right," said Frank.
Frank's father had given us admission and transportation money, but we
had decided to save the transportation money by hitch-hiking.
"Maybe you boys would rather go swimming," said Daniel.
"No," said Frank, "we want to see the air show."
"Swimming's more fun. We can race each other. I know a place where we
can be alone. I'd never go under the pier."
"We want to go to the air show," said Frank.
"All right," said Daniel, "we'll go to the air show."
When we got to the air show parking lot we got out of the car and while
Daniel was locking it Frank said, "RUN!"
We ran toward the admission gate and Daniel saw us running away.
"HEY, YOU LITTLE PERVERTS! COME BACK HERE! COME BACK!"
We kept running.
"Christ," said Frank, "that son-of-a-bitch is crazy!"
We were almost at the admission gate.
"I'LL GET YOU BOYS!"
We paid and ran inside. The show hadn't started yet but a large crowd
was already there.
"Let's hide under the grandstand so he can't find us," said Frank.
The grandstand was built of temporary planks for the people to sit on.
We went underneath. We saw two guys standing under the center of the
grandstand and looking up. They were about 13 or 14 years old, about two or
three years older than we were.
"What are they looking at?" I asked.
"Let's go see," said Frank.
We walked over. One of the guys saw us coming.
"Hey, you punks, get out of here!"
"What are you guys looking at?" Frank asked.
"I told you punks to get out of here!"
"Ah, hell, Marty, let 'em have a look!"
We walked over to where they were standing. We looked up.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Hell, can't you see it?" one of the big guys asked.
"See what?"
"It's a cunt."
"A cunt? Where?"
"Look, right there! See it?"
He pointed.
There was a woman sitting with her skirt bunched back underneath her.
She didn't have any panties on, and looking up between the planks you could
see her cunt.
"See it?"
"Yeah, I see it. It's a cunt," said Frank.
"All right, now you guys get out of here and keep your mouths shut."
"But we want to look at it a little longer," said Frank. "Just let us
look a little longer."
"All right, but not too long."
We stood there looking up at it.
"I can see it," I said.
"It's a cunt," said Frank.
"It's really a cunt," I said.
"Yeah," said one of the big guys, "that's what it is."
"I'll always remember this," I said.
"All right, you guys, it's time to go."
"What for?" asked Frank. "Why can't we keep looking?"
"Because," said one of the big guys, "I'm going to do something.
Now get out of here!"
We walked off.
"I wonder what he's going to do?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Frank, "maybe he's going to throw a rock at
it."
We got out from under the grandstand and looked around for Daniel. We
didn't see him anywhere.
"Maybe he left," I said.
"A guy like that doesn't like airplanes," said Frank. We climbed up
into the grandstand and waited for the show to begin. I looked around at all
the women.
"I wonder which one she was?" I asked.
"I guess you can't tell from the top," said Frank. Then the air show
began. There was a guy in a Fokker doing stunts. He was good, he looped and
circled, stalled, pulled out of it, skimmed the ground, and did an Immelman.
His best trick consisted of a hook on each wing. Two red handkerchiefs were
fastened to poles about six feet above the ground. The Fokker flew down,
dipped a wing, and picked a handkerchief off the pole with the hook on its
wing. Then it came around, dipped the other wing, and got the other
handkerchief.
Then there were some sky-writing acts which were dull and some balloon
races which were silly, and then they had something good -- a race around
four pylons, close to the ground. The airplanes had to circle the pylons
twelve times and the one that finished first got the prize. The pilot was
automatically disqualified if he circled above the pylons. The racing planes
sat on the ground warming up. They were all built differently. One had a
long slim body with hardly any wings. Another was fat and round, it looked
like a football. Another was almost all wings and no body. Each was
different and each was grandly painted. The prize for the winner was $100.
They sat there warming up, and you knew you were really going to see
something exciting. The motors roared like they wanted to tear away from the
airplanes and then the starter dropped the flag and they were off. There
were six planes and there was hardly room for them as they went around the
pylons. Some of the flyers took them low, others high, some in the middle.
Some went faster and lost ground rounding the pylons; others went slower and
made sharper turns. It was wonderful and it was terrible. Then one of them
lost a wing. The plane bounced along the ground, the engine shooting flame
and smoke. It flipped over on its back and the ambulance and the fire truck
came running up. The other planes kept going. Then the engine just exploded
in another plane, came loose, and the remainder of the plane dropped down
like something lost. It hit the ground and everything came apart. But a
strange thing happened. The pilot just slid back the cockpit cowling and
climbed out and waited for the ambulance. He waved to the crowd and they
applauded like mad. It was miraculous.
Suddenly the worst happened. Two planes tangled wings while circling
the pylons. They both spun down and crashed and both caught on fire. The
ambulance and fire engine ran up again. We saw them pull the two guys out
and put them on stretchers. It was sad, those two brave good guys, both
probably crippled for life or dead.
That left only two planes, number 5 and number 2, going for the grand
prize. Number 5 was the slim plane almost without wings and it was much
faster than number 2. Number 2 was the football, he didn't have much speed,
but he made up a lot of ground on the turns. It didn't help much. The 5 kept
lapping the 2.
"Plane number 5," said the announcer, "is now two laps ahead with two
laps to go."
It looked like number 5 was going to get the grand prize. Then he ran
into a pylon. Instead of making the turn he just ran into the pylon and
knocked the whole thing down. He kept going, straight down the field, lower
and lower, the engine at full throttle, and then he hit the ground. The
wheels hit and the plane bounced high into the air, flipped over, skidded
along the ground. The ambulance and fire engine had a long way to go.
Number 2 just kept circling the three pylons that were left and the one
fallen pylon and then he landed. He had won the grand prize. He climbed out.
He was a fat guy, just like his airplane. I had expected a handsome tough
guy. He had been lucky. Hardly anybody applauded.
To close the show they had a parachute contest. There was a circle
painted on the ground, a big bullseye, and the one who landed the closest
won. It seemed dull to me. There wasn't much noise or action. The jumpers
just bailed out and aimed for the circle.
"This isn't very good," I told Frank.
"Naw," he said.
They kept coming down near the circle. More jumpers bailed out of the
planes overhead. Then the crowd started oohing and ahhhing.
"Look!" said Frank.
One chute had only partially opened. There wasn't much air in it. He
was falling faster than the others. You could see him kicking his legs and
working his arms trying to untangle the parachute.
"Jesus Christ," said Frank.
The guy kept dropping, lower and lower, you could see him better and
better. He kept yanking at the cords trying to untangle the chute but
nothing worked. He hit the ground, bounced just a bit, then fell back and
was still. The half-filled chute came down over him.
They cancelled the remainder of the jumps. We walked out with the
people, still watching out for Daniel.
"Let's not hitch-hike back," I said to Frank.
"All right," he said.
Walking out with the people, I didn't know which was more exciting, the
air race, the parachute jump that failed, or the cunt.
19
The 5th grade was a little better. The other students seemed less
hostile and I was growing larger physically. I still wasn't chosen for the
homeroom teams but I was threatened less. David and his violin had gone
away. The family had moved. I walked home alone. I was often trailed by one
or two guys, of whom Juan was the worst, but they didn't start anything.
Juan smoked cigarettes. He'd walk behind me smoking a cigarette and he
always had a different buddy with him. He never followed me alone. It scared
me. I wished they'd go away. Yet, in another way, I didn't care. I didn't
like Juan. I didn't like anybody in that school. I think they knew that. I
think that's why they disliked me. I didn't like the way they walked or
looked or talked, but I didn't like my father or mother either. I still had
the feeling of being surrounded by white empty space. There was always a
slight nausea in my stomach. Juan was dark-skinned and he wore a brass chain
instead of a belt. The girls were afraid of him, and the boys too. He and
one of his buddies followed me home almost every day. I'd walk into the
house and they'd stand outside. Juan would smoke his cigarette, looking
tough, and his buddy would stand there. I'd watch them through the curtain.
Finally, they would walk off.
Mrs. Fretag was our English teacher. The first day in class she asked
us each our names.
"I want to get to know all of you," she said. She smiled.
"Now, each of you has a father, I'm sure. I think it would be
interesting if we found out what each of your fathers does for a living.
We'll start with seat number one and we will go around the class. Now,
Marie, what does your father do for a living?"
"He's a gardener."
"Ah, that's nice! Seat number two . . . Andrew, what does your father
do?"
It was terrible. All the fathers in my immediate neighborhood had lost
their jobs. My father had lost his job. Gene's father sat on his front porch
all day. All the fathers were without jobs except Chuck's who worked in a
meat plant. He drove a red car with the meat company's name on the side.
"My father is a fireman," said seat number two.
"Ah, that's interesting," said Mrs. Fretag. "Seat number three."
"My father is a lawyer."
"Seat number four."
"My father is a . . . policeman . . ."
What was I going to say? Maybe only the fathers in my neighborhood were
without jobs. I'd heard of the stock market crash. It meant something bad.
Maybe the stock market had only crashed in our neighborhood.
"Seat number eighteen."
"My father is a movie actor . . ."
"Nineteen..."
"My father is a concert violinist . . ."
"Twenty . . ."
"My father works in the circus . . ."
"Twenty-one.. ."
"My father is a bus driver . . ."
"Twenty-two..."
"My father sings in the opera . . ."
"Twenty-three.. ."
Twenty-three. That was me.
"My father is a dentist," I said.
Mrs. Fretag went right on through the class until she reached number
thirty-three.
"My father doesn't have a job," said number thirty-three. Shit, I
thought, I wish I had thought of that.
One day Mrs. Fretag gave us an assignment.
"Our distinguished President, President Herbert Hoover, is going to
visit Los Angeles this Saturday to speak. I want all of you to go hear our
President. And I want you to write an essay about the experience and about
what you think of President Hoover's speech."
Saturday? There was no way I could go. I had to mow the lawn. I had to
get the hairs. (I could never get all the hairs.) Almost every Saturday I
got a beating with the razor strop because my father found a hair. (I also
got stropped during the week, once or twice, for other things I failed to do
or didn't do right.) There was no way I could tell my father that I had to
go see President Hoover.
So, I didn't go. That Sunday I took some paper and sat down to write
about how I had seen the President. His open car, trailing flowing
streamers, had entered the football stadium. One car, full of secret service
agents went ahead and two cars followed close behind. The agents were brave
men with guns to protect our President. The crowd rose as the President's
car entered the arena. There had never been anything like it before. It was
the President. It was him. He waved. We cheered. A band played. Seagulls
circled overhead as if they too knew it was the President. And there were
skywriting airplanes too. They wrote words in the sky like "Prosperity is
just around the corner." The President stood up in his car, and just as he
did the clouds parted and the light from the sun fell across his face. It
was almost as if God knew too. Then the cars stopped and our great
President, surrounded by secret service agents, walked to the speaker's
platform. As he stood behind the microphone a bird flew down from the sky
and landed on the speaker's platform near him. The President waved to the
bird and laughed and we all laughed with him. Then he began to speak and the
people listened. I couldn't quite hear the speech because I was sitting too
near a popcorn machine which made a lot of noise popping the kernels, but I
think I heard him say that the problems in Manchuria were not serious, and
that at home everything was going to be all right, we shouldn't worry, all
we had to do was to believe in America. There would be enough jobs for
everybody. There would be enough dentists with enough teeth to pull, enough
fires and enough firemen to put them out. Mills and factories would ope