Cardboard Ocean Read online

  That was enough to shut up Tommy. You don’t argue with Joey when it comes to Junior. Joey took care of him. But Junior was heavy. He was heavier than everyone else, except Vinnie. And he was solid. He didn’t do push-ups or anything but he was all muscle.

  But worse than his pounds was that when he grabbed on, he kept grabbing. He swung his legs and his feet and he kept on swinging and grabbing and swinging like he was riding on a bronco in the rodeo, which I had heard of but never saw. And his heels kept banging into whoever was below him and his elbows into whoever was in front of him.

  Tommy looked back and gave the warning.

  “Junior’s coming.”

  Joey was holding his hand and leading his brother to the butt end of Tommy’s pony.

  “Fair is fair. You can’t help him jump up,” said Tommy.

  Joey and Junior stopped behind Buster who was at the end of Tommy’s team. We all knew Tommy was right. He could not help Junior.

  But when it came to Junior, Joey didn’t care about right and besides, Junior had no idea of how to jump.

  “Now, Junior, jump up.”

  Junior just stared at the row of butts and sort of laughed and grunted and swung his arms around.

  “You gotta jump, Junior,” said Joey. “I’m going to help him just a little.”

  “No,” shouted both Johnny and Vanessa. “And hurry up too. This is not fair.”

  I was on top but I could only hold on for another minute because Vinnie kept moving below me trying to make me fall, and I know Vanessa could only last a minute because I felt her slipping off while she was on top of Johnny who was behind me.

  Fifty years later, I remember that moment.

  “I’ll just hold his hand,” said Joey.

  And before anyone could complain anymore he took Junior’s hand, moved him back two steps and then pulled him toward the pile of bodies – just before Johnny’s rear end, he lifted his hand toward the sky and Junior got the idea and jumped, sort of, up and “uffph,” he landed on my back and immediately hit me in the head.

  They were groaning beneath us, but mostly I could hear Junior’s shrieking laugh. He was having so much fun that he swung his hands and feet and punched me in the ribs.

  “I quit,” said Vanessa.

  She fell and their whole side collapsed even before Joey jumped on.

  “Oww,” said Buster. “My neck.”

  “What are you complaining about?” asked Joey. “You won.”

  Then Junior swung out his fist and came back and slugged me in the left cheek. That hurt. But I saw Dorothy on the ground looking at me and I didn’t say anything.

  “Hey you, you dirty, stinking schweinhunds.”

  That was the only German word we knew, but none of us were saying it.

  “We’ve come to settle the score.”

  We knew the voice. It was Rocky’s.

  I turned around and saw him and more than a dozen of his gang. They were standing on the other side of the fence down from the railroad tracks.

  “What’d you want?” asked Joey. He sounded very much like he wasn’t scared at all.

  I was.

  “You were on our street today. We want to settle scores.”

  “So what? It’s a free country,” said Joey.

  “You were in our milk factory. You don’t want us in your boxes and we don’t want you taking our milk.”

  “It’s not your milk.”

  “It’s not your boxes.”

  We both knew the difference. There was plenty of milk, but only one pile of boxes.

  They started climbing the fence. I tried counting. I got to twelve and there were still a few more. I knew there were only ten of us, including Vanessa and Dorothy and Junior, so that was not really ten.

  Then we saw them taking things out of their pockets and slipping them over their hands. They were the steel handles they pried off garbage cans that became brass knuckles when you wrapped your fist around them.

  “Don’t touch my brother,” was all Joey said as he walked straight toward them.

  “Don’t tell us what to do,” said Rocky as he jumped down from the fence and went straight at Joey.

  The two of them grabbed each other, and Joey pushed Rocky down and the brass knuckles weren’t much good as they rolled on the street. Then the others attacked the rest of us. I got hit in the side of my face with a piece of steel and just like I had always heard, I saw stars.

  But I got up and grabbed one kid around the neck and kicked him in the shin. I didn’t feel any pain in my face.

  I saw Vanessa kicking a guy and screaming at him, and Dorothy had one guy backing up as she kept kicking and kicking him. Then some other kid tried to hit her. I saw him winding up behind her.

  I stomped on the foot of the guy I had around the neck and I think I broke some bones because I felt something go crunch under my heel. Then I ran over and tried to grab the kid who was going after Dorothy.

  I was going to grab him around the neck but suddenly there was another bang in my back and it knocked me to the ground. I rolled over and started kicking at the kid who just punched me into the ground. Kicking while on your back was good. He couldn’t get to me. But I saw Dorothy get hit.

  “Junior!” yelled Joey. “Leave Junior alone! I told you that.”

  I heard him yell and looked over. I saw the kid who was trying to hit Junior, who was swinging his arms at the kid.

  “He tried to hit me,” the kid shouted.

  “I said leave him alone.”

  Joey kneed Rocky in the face as he got up and ran across the street to Junior. He grabbed the kid who was fighting with his brother and slammed him down to the ground. Then he kicked the kid in the ribs.

  Two other kids jumped Joey from the back but he grabbed one of them and threw him down and put his knee into the guy’s stomach and he screamed. Then Joey spun around and punched the other guy so hard in the chest that he backed up three steps and went down on his bottom.

  The sirens were at the far end of the block. Joey grabbed one more kid and pow, punched him square in the nose. He screamed.

  I had never seen anyone so strong.

  The sirens were halfway down the block and Rocky got up and ran to the fence. He was up and over it before the first police car stopped. His gang was following him, including three who were limping to the fence just as the doors of the police cars were opening. One of the limping kids was the one I had stomped on.

  “You kids, stop, or I’ll shoot.”

  Two of them stopped, one pulled himself up to the top of the fence and fell over and he must have got cut by the edges of the top of the wires because he was screaming in pain. He ran to the top of the hill with the tracks and I was surprised, the police never did shoot.

  “Alright, what’s going on?” said Tiny.

  He had gotten out of one of the cars. They must have picked him up on the way to our street.

  “Tell me what happened or I’ll wallop each of you in the ass.”

  He pounded his night stick into his hand.

  “Tell me, Johnny.”

  He liked Johnny best because sometimes he would help Johnny’s father get home from the bar.

  “Don’t grow up like your father,” he would tell Johnny. “You can do anything you want if you don’t spend your time in the bar.”

  Tiny was our guardian. He even once took us down to the 102nd Precinct and locked us in a cell. It was so scary we all promised him we would never rob a bank or a store or a car or anything. I thought it was strange that he warned us not to rob a car since none of us had ever really been in a car and we had no idea of how to start the motor.

  “Those are the kids from 130th Street,” Johnny told him. “They didn’t like us drinking their milk.”

  “Whose milk was it?” asked Tiny.

  One of the other cops was bringing back the two who did not make it over the fence.

  “It was the Sealtest milk,” said Johnny. “We went inside and drank it out of their fount
ain.”

  “So you were stealing their milk,” said Tiny.

  “No, we were just drinking it,” said Johnny.

  The other cop was holding onto both boys with one hand. They looked petrified.

  “I found these on the ground,” the other cop said, showing Tiny the garbage can handles.

  “Whose are those? Those are lethal weapons. You could be charged with attempted murder.”

  The other two boys pointed at us.

  “It was theirs,” they said.

  “Was not,” said Vanessa. “We were playing Johnny Ride a Pony when they came, and me and Dorothy didn’t even drink their milk.”

  “I know,” said Tiny. “Put these two punks in the car and we’ll deal with them later. You guys go home and get washed up and don’t steal any more milk, you hear me, or I’ll lock you up along with those two punks.”

  “Thank you,” said Joey.

  Junior waved his arms wildly and let out a scream.

  “You take good care of him, Joey,” said Tiny.

  It didn’t sound like he was telling him to do that. It sounded like Tiny was telling Joey that he knew he was already doing it.

  Then the three cars left and we all sat down on the curb. My head was hurting badly. Can you imagine the police now dealing with that scene? Interrogation, reports, more reports, press releases, enquirers, charges, bans on publication then charges dropped. Tiny knew how to handle kids.

  “Maybe we could finish the game now,” said Vinnie and we all started laughing.

  Real Make-Believe Sex

  “I got a French book,” said Tommy.

  My head jerked. My breathing stopped. You don’t have to breathe when you hear someone has a French book. You can breathe later. First you have to find out if it’s true.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Found it in my father’s fishing box.”

  I took a breath. It might be true.

  “I didn’t know your father went fishing.”

  “He did a long time ago. He even has a picture of a fish taped to the top of the box.”

  I had no thoughts of fish in my mind.

  “Can I see the book?”

  Tommy’s head nodded like the needle on a sewing machine.

  “But it has no pictures,” he said.

  Suddenly the fish I wasn’t thinking about got away.

  “What good is it?”

  “It has things written in it, like real dirty stuff, like it has the F word and they do it right in the back of a carriage while a horse is pulling them.”

  I thought that would be bumpy, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Wanna see it?”

  Of course I wanted to see it, but I hated to admit to him that reading was really hard for me. When we were sitting around reading comics I would mostly look at the pictures. I knew “POW” in Superman and Batman, and I knew “WOW” in Donald Duck. But the rest of the words were too hard to read and the pictures told the story so I didn’t need to know what they meant.

  “Show me and you can read it,” I said.

  He opened the fishing box and took out a tray with rusty hooks and tangled fishing line made of plastic. Then he lifted some sinkers off a piece of sheet metal that made a false bottom and there, plain as can be, was a thin paperback book with a drawing of a woman with a huge pile of hair curled on her head and a dress pulled down in front so you could see almost her whole bumps.

  “They’re called tits,” whispered Tommy.

  “I knew that,” I said.

  “Shhh, if they catch us down here we’re dead.”

  He sat down on the concrete floor and leaned against the wall.

  “How’d you ever find that?” I asked.

  “I can smell a naked woman.”

  “Can not,” I said. “How’d you?”

  “I wanted to know what my father was doing spending so much time down here, so I hid behind the furnace in the dark and waited for him.”

  “Weren’t you scared?”

  “Only when I saw the rat,” he said. “But then the light went on and I had to freeze.”

  I thought Tommy was like a secret agent in the war, hiding in the dark and watching the Nazis make their plans.

  “What’d you see?”

  “I saw him go to the fishing box and take stuff out and then he got out this book and he stood under the light of the work bench and he read it and then I can’t tell you what I saw.”

  “What’d you see?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  “Come on, tell me.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Can.”

  Tommy looked away, then said, “I saw him rub himself.”

  “I thought just kids rubbed themselves,” I said.

  “No, big people do too. I think because their wives are cooking,” said Tommy.

  “What’d you do then?”

  “Nothin’, I didn’t do nothin’. If he saw me he would’ve killed me. Then he finished and put the book back and he went upstairs.”

  I was jealous. I didn’t have a father to learn this from.

  “Read the book,” I said.

  He began: “‘I was in need of some extra finances and thought I could supplement my meager purse by engaging in a bit of highway sport.’ Madam Toufant was pondering the only solution to her woeful state.”

  “This is boring. When’s the sex stuff come?” I asked.

  “I’ll skip ahead,” said Tommy. “It’s got a lot of stuff that comes before the good stuff.”

  “Did you already read all this?”

  “Twice,” he said.

  He moved ahead half a dozen pages and then read: “We were in the coach moving at a steady trot. I suspected by his glances that my travelling companion would be interested in a transaction, in brief, his gold coins for my pleasure.”

  “What does all that mean?” I asked.

  “It means she’s getting ready.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  Tommy looked annoyed. “Just listen.”

  He read: “We engaged in a brief conversation and then settled on a going rate. I took his coins and put them in my purse and then elevated my dress and he proceeded to plough me. Just at the last moment I told him to remove his manhood and deposit his seeds on my stomach because I did not wish to be inconvenienced by a child.”

  “That’s mean,” I said.

  “What’s mean?”

  I knew Tommy was angry because I interrupted him and said something bad about what he was reading. I knew that was wrong because you do not ever say something bad about something that someone is doing for you, like reading, or anything. I learned that from my Uncle John who said to me when someone does something good for you, don’t ever say anything bad about it or you will hurt him and he might kill you.

  “It’s mean that she didn’t want a baby. Babies are nice,” I said.

  “Babies are not nice if you have to have sex for a living because the lady’s stomach will get in the way.”

  He had a point. Tommy was much smarter than me. Mostly he learned this because he could watch his father rub himself and all I could do was watch my mother smoke.

  I wanted to ask him a question, but I felt stupid so I didn’t. But I thought seeds were little hard things that grew into plants, like Miss Johnson showed us. I knew what came out of my penis, because I had seen it when I rubbed myself, but it was all milky and there were no seeds in it.

  I thought I would check again the next time. I usually rubbed myself while my penis was in a sock so my mother wouldn’t find any of the stuff. Next time I would look inside the sock before I washed it.

  Then we heard walking around above our heads. I could almost see Tommy’s hair stand up on his head. You could really see that if someone was scared more than they’ve ever been scared.

  That was like the time when Johnny had to hide his Party Doll record.

  That was a sin, a real sin. It was not like reading Tommy’s father’s book which
you could just get killed for doing. But Party Doll was different. You could go to hell for that.

  Buddy Knox had just recorded “Party Doll.” It was a cool song. It was number one on the hit parade, but the pope said anyone who listened to it would burn through eternity.

  That was because there was one line in it that was sinful, and if we listened to that line it would corrupt us. So we all wanted to hear it.

  But every mother said if the pope said it was a sin you can’t listen. That applied to the Jewish mothers also who did not want their children going to hell with the Christian kids.

  And we were told we could not listen to just part of the song because we might slip and hear the whole thing.

  Buddy Knox had come from a town in Texas called Happy. It had only 690 people.

  How could anything sinful come from there?

  And he formed a band with two other guys and they paid $60 to record the song he wrote. They had no drums so the drummer used a cardboard box which they stuffed some cotton inside to make it sound like a drum.

  How could anything sinful come from that?

  And they had to record the music at midnight because the traffic in the street outside the recording studio was too noisy to do it in the daytime.

  How could anything sinful come from so much dedication?

  Buddy’s sister sent the record to a music producer in New York who put it on the air and it sold a million copies.

  But we couldn’t hear it.

  So we chipped in together and bought a record. A 45 rpm, which had a fat hole in the middle and one song on each side. And we sneaked into Johnny’s basement and put it on a record player and listened. Then came the sinful line right out there in the open where innocent ears could hear them, the unthinkable words about making L-O-V-E.

  Holy mackerel, we couldn’t believe it. We had sinned, and we were still alive.

  “What are you kids listening to?” Johnny’s mother asked from the top of the stairs.

  “Nothing, nothing, just some cowboy music,” we lied. Now we were in deep trouble, lying about sinning.

  We ripped the record off the player and Johnny stood on it. By the time his mother got to the bottom of the stairs, Party Doll was grinding into the concrete floor.

  “Just make sure you don’t do anything bad,” said his mother. “Don’t turn out like your fathers. And that goes for you too, Mickey, even if you don’t have one.”