by Daniel Picker
“That rain felt good,” Ed said as we descended the steps to the subway.
“You’re right,” I said as I brushed damp hair from my eyes. “It cooled everything off; what a cloudburst!”
“I hope the train comes soon and our car is air conditioned,” Ed said. “It still feels muggy down here.”
“I know; I hope the train arrives soon too! . . . Hey, here it comes now!”
A silver train roared closer with speed and its velocity and wind backed me away from the edge of the platform. It kept moving, but slowed. It had six cars, hours before rush hour with plenty of empty seats.
Once seated on the train, it soon rose and climbed the slow curving, whining steel rails from dark to light, then ascended the rising bridge with its blue-choired cables stretching up to the clearing blue and smoky grey clouded sky. We could see out the grey-tinted, rectangular panes, the sunlight breaking through beyond us. The grey river churned below and a ship with a red stripe slowly moved south. I noticed and tried to count the sleek sailboats docked in the marina below. I counted 16 even as we were moving so fast, with the girders on the bridge rising at angles near the windows blocking my view. The blinding light was broken by the darker steel girders as bright light and dark shadows alternated.
Then we descended again into the city where the train made the first screeching halt. A few people, some black, some white, some brown got up and exited the train out to the grimy, underground platform. Then the train started again, rising into the bright sunlight above the run – down city, past the tan statue of Our Lady of Lourdes above the hospital where we were born. Our Lady stood alone in the sunlight.
The cold on the train caused one black kid sitting across from us to put his arms under his white t-shirt; he pulled the front collar of his shirt over his mouth. At the next stop he ran off the train onto the platform. The orange sun still burned in the grey-blue sky.
After riding past three more stops above the macadam parking lots, the train descended again into our old town; the subterranean station preserved some of the remnants of our historic community. After exiting the train, we ascended the silver shining escalator to the street level station and inserted our plastic tickets, then pushed the silver turnstile, and then we were out on the same sidewalk we walked that morning with our mom.
Ed and I returned, walking under the overarching trees and over the bricks we walked that morning. As we turned down our curving hill we could see Andy, our dog, lying out in the sun in the center of the street one house up from the front of our house. Then we saw a rare car turn down our street then slow. We smiled and picked up our pace and ran toward her calling “Andy! Wake up!”
We imagined the woman in the car saying to her husband, “Is that a dog lying in the street dear? I think you’d better slow down.”
As we ran closer to her, Andy slowly rose and stretched and wagged her black and tan furry self and waddled toward us after her summer nap; she loved slumbering in warm sun. We knew our older brother, who worked the night shift at a newspaper press room must’ve let her out.
“I’m going to put the dinner in,” Ed said with a sing-song lilt as he climbed the front steps, “And see if Harry is home.”
“OK, I’ll wait here with Andy on the steps.”
Soon Ed returned, “Well the chicken with cream of mushroom soup is in the oven,” he said proudly, but Harry’s not around.
“We would’ve heard him playing the piano, playing the blues with that walking bass,” I said. Maybe he played at the Serengeti after work last night.”
Harry had big hands with long fingers and he was just under six feet tall; his hands served him well as a boogie-woogie piano player and his height made him redoubtable on the basketball court.
“He’s probably playing basketball at Mannion’s or listening to music at Deanie’s; let’s go see; I’ll let Andy in the house to drink some water.”
I turned and walked up the two stone steps to the slate-covered porch and reached for the wooden, front screen door, which I held open for her. Then after she was in I pulled the heavy front door shut.
We headed down our street and heard loud voices, and looked over across where our street flowed into Twin Birch Avenue toward McNally’s where on weekends we sometimes played Wiffle ball with Mr. McNally and his son Jimmy in their backyard, or in the evening, in the middle of the two streets where our street curved into Twin Birch, below the telephone wires Mr. McNally sometimes threw towering fly balls which he challenged us to catch.
On weekend afternoons, in Wiffle ball, I pretended I was a big league player. I emulated Willie Stargill’s bat cranking move at the plate, or if I were an actual baserunner, I became Lou Brock, with my white and red “lateral traction” sneakers Dad bought me before he moved away.
When playing the field I was Cookie Rojas, who were glasses just like dad, and I wore glasses too. Or out in the outfield I pretended I was Willie Mays and tried to make basket catches, but Ed could better than I.
Usually when I pitched, I’d say, “It’s Tom Seaver, or Denny McLain in a windup,” since he wore glasses too, as Mr. McNally prepared to hit, with his son on second base, and an invisible runner on third. Mr. McNally smirked when I called him, “‘Hammerin’ Hank Aaron’” and he obliged by swatting the ball over the far backyard fence. Even though we couldn’t hit as well as he, no one could compete with my repartee.
At night, in the summer, lightning bugs lit the neighborhood; we caught them and placed them in empty, glass, peanut butter jars we had punched holes in the metal lids with an ice pick.
Across the street, we heard Mrs. McNally yell from their back porch, “Get out of our yard you cretin!” toward the next door neighbor’s yard and heard her back door slam as we saw Cleaten skulk across the gravel drive which ran between the two houses.
Cleaten Dunwoody was the bad kid who climbed over her fence into her yard.
As we looked over toward Cleaten he said, “She hits her son with the vacuum cleaner hose,” and we believed him.
But Ed and I kept walking down the sidewalk along our street.
When Ed and I turned the corner at the bottom of our street we could see Harry out on the Mannion’s side court running with the two Mannion sons and JP, a neighborhood kid and basketball sharpshooter. Harry sank long, low-arcing jump shots much better than we ever would. He was four years older.
The oldest brother, Mike, everyone called “Tanker” because of his size. He played well, and he wore thick, dark – rimmed glasses and challenged every foul with a quizzical look; then he lapsed into long legal arguments; “I don’t think so; that was not a foul . . .” When he played defense or rebounded he wind-milled his long arms like a mad man. No one ever argued with him.
But JP starred in their two-on-two game, sinking long jump shots with perfect style, reminiscent of Pistol Pete Maravich, clicking his sneakers together as he let go of his jump shot, holding his follow through on the fade away jumper from the top of the key, with his red hair flying.
As their game reached 21, Ed and I could tell by their sweaty gasps that they had finished their game. Now they might let us play, but after, bespectacled Tanker shot another short jumper from the top of the key, and the brick clunked loudly off the backboard and then surprisingly dropped through the net, he demanded indignantly, “Courtesy!”
I rebounded, then dribbled, then heard his loud voice: “Courtesy!”
He, a stickler for the rituals of the game, demanded I dutifully bounce the ball back.
His little brother rolled out another ball from the garage and then I shot a layup after their game ended.
“Hey, why don’t we play ‘Make it, take it’?” Harry suggested.
“These little kids can’t play that,” Tanker insisted.
“Why not Horse, instead?”
“OK, now that’s a possibility.”
We started shooting around, but when three of us reached H – O – R – S, Tanker’s mom appeared in the side doorway and said, “Mike and Evan, it’s time for you boys to come in for dinner.”
“I gotta go too,” JP said, and he took his ball from the grass and started dribbling down the sidewalk toward home, as his white low-top Keds skipped over the sidewalk.
Ed and Harry and I stood there in the silent driveway; we had their court to ourselves as the evening sun moved toward violet dusk. Our sweaty arms glowed in the gloaming. Then we heard the distant ringing of mom’s cowbell from two blocks away and heard her calling “Dinner!”
She rang an old, square, copper cowbell she saved from Uncle Allen’s Vermont dairy farm where she worked as a girl. Harry, Ed, and I smiled to each other. The sky was still lit by summer dusk, now deeper pale purple – blue.
“Time for dinner fellas,” Harry reminded. “Let’s go; the Mannion’s are having dinner. Anyhow, the evening sun’s almost down.”
We began walking back alongside the field where weeds grew tall and wild by the old weeping willow, with its long green willows swaying across the field by the fence below the tracks. We walked past Deanie’s and heard him from his attic room pounding his drums. His tall clapboard house stood beyond the glorious, wild, empty field where milkweed grew tall and sticky and off in the distance fine tall grey hardwoods overarched the back of the lot. His dad had been a jazz musician with Count Basie’s Orchestra. Deanie idolized Gene Krupa, Louie Bellson, and Philly Joe Jones. We reached the cross – street below our hill and Harry, stood above us: “I’ll race both of you home, and I’ll give you a two-house head start.”
“OK,” we said.
Ed never backed down from any challenge, even as the youngest and shortest still, but just inches below me, but we stood more than half a foot shorter than our big brother Harry who towered over us.
“Ready boys?” he asked.
We nodded and I remembered why Uncle called him “Six-foot Harry,” and gulped.
“OK,” we both agreed.
A challenge beckoned.
Then Ed and I began running side-by-side up the narrow sidewalk, and as my lungs heaved and legs burned I moved one foot ahead of my little brother; but I looked back and saw him racing just behind; then he moved even, and then just as we raced past a neighbor’s driveway past the Good Humor truck parked in the driveway, I could see ahead three houses toward our walk beyond the crest of the hill where the sidewalk flattened—Ed and I both thought: (“We’ve finally beaten him!”), but then Harry, ran by; a blur past us, his long legs and arms moving like the Olympian, Jim Ryun, above the grey sidewalk.
We ran, Ed and I nearly side-by-side up that sidewalk; sometimes I ahead a step, but he was gaining on me; then as our sweaty arms brushed against each other on the narrow walk, I elbowed out as he ran past, and he faltered; I ran ahead, though I knew he soon would surpass me—and then he pulled even again; we raced on ahead side-by-side, but I sped ahead again, and at our walk finished just half a step in front.
“Geez!” I sighed after finishing out front where Harry stood smiling.
We all caught our breath, our cheeks red and our brows glistening with beaded sweat. Then Harry dashed up the front steps and we followed in through the screen door, wishing for once we didn’t need to wait as he slaked his thirst first in the cold water rushing from curving copper spigot of the powder room dad built just within the big front door. Soon after he jostled past, I enjoyed the ice cold water too, rushing over slurping lips, gurgling down my throat, then Ed enjoyed the cold water last.
“Wash your hands boys,” Mom implored from the kitchen.
As we walked through the dining room toward the kitchen I heard Harry ask, “What are we having?”
“Food,” Mom responded.
“No, really Mom?”
“It’s the baked chicken I prepared and your brother put in the oven for all of us to enjoy. We have peas too. Be grateful.”
“OK, Mom; chicken with mushroom soup is my favorite,” Harry said.
“There’s also leftover homemade apple sauce in the frig,” she said as we all sat down.
“You should open a restaurant called ‘Leftovers’!” Harry joked. “I’ll get the apple sauce.”
“Don’t stand on ceremony, sit down Bean pot,” Mom called him—her nickname for him—as he handed the apple sauce to her and she began serving.
“Apple sauce! Delish!” big Harry smiled as she spooned it out from the pink patterned white willow ware bowl.
In the background the small, plastic green radio played “Somewhere a place for us . . .” as Mom hummed along.
Then Mom served the peas from the saucepan after she took it from the stove behind her.
“I hate peas,” I said.
“Quiet,” Mom said, “Children in India are starving.”
Then little Ed, who sat with his still red cheeks and damp brow chimed in, “Mom, Billy elbowed me in the race home up the sidewalk. I might have beat him. Now my arm hurts.”
“Can’t you play nice?” she asked me. “Can’t you be civil? He’s your little brother?” Mom asked with chagrin. “It’s summer; you’re brothers; you should help each other; be nice to little June bug.”
“That elbow hurt,” Ed continued.
“I’m sorry, but you give me a hard time if I don’t try my hardest and if I do and I win, you give me an even harder time; I’m sorry. At least you didn’t fall down, right? Just forget it, will you?”
“OK.”
We all sat down around the octagon – shaped kitchen table as mom finished serving dinner and then sat down at the head with her back to the oven to join us. Big Harry sat where Dad used to sit as he was the oldest and tallest and couldn’t fit under the cabinets up above the side of the kitchen table. An old gold bust of President Kennedy glowed on a high shelf above us.
We began cutting our pieces of golden, baked chicken. With everyone quiet we enjoyed the chicken, still warm and moist at the center and crisp and golden brown on the edges sweet with the taste of the cream of mushroom soup baked in.
“Delicious,” Harry said quietly.
Even though no one said grace, we all ate with gratefulness.
