A Bad Idea I'm About to Do (6 page)

“Yeah,” Koozo answered, grinning. “Yeah, I do know that.”

Koozo, or Jack Koozling, grew up around the block from me, on Mississippi Avenue. I spent the better part of my childhood living in the grip of a curious combination of fascination and fear that he inspired.

For the entire time I knew him, no one was sure how old Koozo was. He was either a very burly teenager or an underdeveloped young man—it was hard to tell. Asking Koozo about his age revealed nothing. Like most conversations with Koozo, it only made clear that his plane of reality was a few steps away from ours.

“Koozo, man,” one might nonchalantly say, “how old are you turning this year?”

“Ha,” Koozo would respond. “I'm as old as the hills, man. I've always existed.
And I always will.
”

This mystery was further compounded by Koozo's propensity for showing up to play with us preteen kids driving a car. It meant either that Koozo was at least seventeen—the legal driving age in New Jersey and thus far older than the kids he played with regularly—or that he had stolen a car. Neither option would have surprised anyone who knew him.

While Koozo preferred to keep many things about himself ambiguous, one thing he made absolutely clear was his fondness for another set of wheels more prized than even the car he “owned”: his infamous moped. It's been twenty years since I first met Koozo. I've moved on, physically and emotionally, from that place and time. I haven't lived in the old neighborhood for over a decade. But I guarantee that if I ran into anyone originally from that part of town and brought up Koozo, they could instantly impersonate the sound of his moped. That unmistakable sound, like a lawnmower on steroids, was burned into the brains of anyone who grew up in my pocket of West Orange, New Jersey, during the '80s. The first time I saw the moped was one morning when I looked out my window to see Koozo doing donuts on our front lawn.

A moped is a motorized bike that can be run either by engine or by pedaling, making it the ideal mode of transportation for lunatics.
Pedaling allowed Koozo to silently sneak up on unsuspecting prey. My street was a dead end on a hill. Like all successful predators, Koozo recognized an ideal hunting ground when he saw one. There were countless times when my group of friends would be playing some innocent game in the street as night fell. When darkness settled in around us, the peace of our suburban existence would be thrown into chaos when a lone headlight blinked on at the top of the hill. This would be followed by the unmistakable sound of Koozo's moped roaring to life. Invariably, it would take Koozo a few attempts to get the motor running—it was in these few precious seconds that we learned to act, to run, to hide. It was through the terror of these repeated experiences that I first became familiar with the “fight or flight” mentality. Anyone who played on my street understood that concept from a young age. And each and every one of us chose flight, categorically.

“Koozo!” we'd all shout while fleeing for our lives. Shouting the word “Koozo” was the most any of us ever did to look out for our friends. “Koozo” was like our
shalom
or
aloha
—it had many meanings. The word referred to a man and simultaneously to a mythology surrounding him; it was also synonymous with the word “run.”

Teaming up and fighting back against the maniacal man-child's attack were options never considered. Running was the only priority when Koozo struck. The growls of the engine sliced through the peace of the night as he charged toward us at top speed, around thirty miles per hour. Often, Koozo would brandish a thorn branch, which he would lash out at us as he passed, like a Roman piloting a chariot and swinging a whip. I also once saw him riding his moped with a lawn-pruning tool some eight feet in length, balanced on the handlebars like a medieval lancing joust. Koozo was one of those rare childhood characters who
wasn't merely posturing—we figured that he aimed to hurt us, and if we stood around, he certainly would have.

Just a few years ago I was talking with my mother about how, with age, perspective tends to change.

“Take someone like Koozo,” I said. “To us, he was the most frightening person ever. To you guys, the grown-ups, he was probably just some weird hyperactive kid.”

“Oh no,” my mother answered. “I thought he was a maniac.”

I looked at her in complete shock.

“I mean, just from the little glimpses I got,” she said. “Koozo was scary.”

Koozo's strategy in capturing us was not unlike that of a large game cat as it approaches herd animals—isolate the slow, sick, or weak and allow the others to scatter. For example, Dave Kearns, one of the elder members of the fourteen-child-strong Kearns family, had notoriously bad knees. During one of Koozo's attacks I watched as the deranged crackpot drove straight toward us, sending each kid looking for hiding places of any available sort. Koozo masterfully noticed that Dave's sprint was a half-step slower than most and targeted him instantly. Koozo sped up, popped a wheelie, and slammed into Dave from behind, sending the boy hurtling head-first into a bush. We all watched in horror from our hiding places. Koozo laughed maniacally, circling Dave, who was trapped helplessly inside a piece of shrubbery on the Kostyak family's front lawn. It was clear to us that Koozo wanted others to come forward to help Dave, so he could pick them off one by one. The headlight of the moped scanned other bushes for preteen prey. And though from our hiding places the light blinded us, we could hear him out there, laughing like the maniac that he was.

Needless to say, none of us stepped out to help Dave.

T
he kids in my neighborhood played a game called “Caughtie,” a team-based and slightly more violent version of hide-and-seek. Koozo often joined in wearing an outfit that could have belonged to a covert operative for the CIA being sent deep into the jungle. This typically consisted of an all-black sweat suit, black combat boots, a black wool hat (even in the middle of summer), and, best of all, camouflage face paint.

It was quickly learned that if we wanted the game to be any fun at all, Koozo's team
never hid first
. Because Koozo was
impossible to find
. He hid in trees. In sewers. On rooftops. In places we obviously never even knew about, because, again, we could never find him. If Koozo's team hid first, the game would be reduced to a group of bored kids wandering around looking for him in quiet frustration. And in the rare event someone did manage to catch a fleeting glimpse of Koozo, there was no chance in hell they could get close enough to him to tag him. Not only was he stronger and faster than the rest of us, he seemed mentally unstable in a way that made him willing to go to any lengths to avoid capture.

I once saw Koozo being chased by a few kids who noticed him moving from one hiding spot to another. A crowd quickly grew, roused by the thought that this was their chance to catch the elusive Koozo—an act that, if accomplished, would cement their status as neighborhood legends. Koozo sprinted to a telephone pole and spun around with his back to it. In that moment, the faintest glimmer of fear flashed in the eyes of the Mighty Koozo. As the opposing team gathered, Koozo looked from side to side, but there was no escape. Or so we thought. There were a few hard-and-fast rules in our neighborhood: you didn't go past Colgate Park at night, you never walked down the block of Elm Street where Gay George lives, and under no circumstances did you underestimate Koozo.

“It's over, Koozo!” one of the kids shouted as Koozo frantically looked for an escape.

“I can't believe it,” I said to my brother as we both watched.

“Shut up,” he said. “I want to see this.” His desire to keep the experience unsullied by my talking was justified. We were watching history unfold.

Then, to the surprise of everyone watching, Koozo turned and faced the pole. The rival team continued to approach, ready to claim their glory. But at the last possible moment victory was snatched from their hands when Koozo hugged the telephone pole and shimmied halfway up its length. The kids gathered at its base. Koozo may have found a short-term solution, but he had to come down sometime. All they had to do was wait.

Koozo had other plans. He had no intention of coming down. Climbing with a dexterity seen exclusively in ninjas and chimpanzees, Koozo continued up the pole. What happened next can only be attributed to the wild, gutsy bravado of a kid willing to put his life on the line for a simple game.

From his perch on the pole Koozo slowly stepped out onto the electrical wire that ran from telephone pole to telephone pole and proceeded to walk across it as if on a circus tightrope, gripping the wire above his head for balance. Mouths agape, all the kids stopped chasing him to watch, expecting Koozo to be electrocuted, fall to his death, or suffer some terrible combination of both. When he got to the next pole, he slid back down to the ground and took off into the wild. No one bothered chasing after him.

“God damn Koozo,” Gregg finally said, shaking his head as we walked away.

“God damn Koozo,” I echoed.

The game ended like all Caughtie games with Koozo did: eventually, after the sun had gone down, everyone got bored
and wandered home, leaving Koozo sitting in whatever undetectable hiding spot he had found for himself.

M
y mother's best friend was a special-education teacher in our town. This meant she dealt with the emotionally disturbed—of which some of us may have considered Koozo a prime example. Legend had it Koozo was so bad that before graduating elementary school he had already done turns in every local public school and been banned from entering them. For a while my mother's friend had to travel to Koozo's home at night to tutor him personally. The first time she attempted this, the story went, she arrived on his front porch and rang the doorbell. No one answered. Lights were on and she could clearly make out the sounds of a television coming from inside, so she knew people were home. She figured Koozo was just ignoring her, hiding out in hopes of dodging schoolwork. She had experienced worse situations and kept ringing the bell.

“I mean, I've seen it all, but . . . ,” I overheard her say as she told my mother the story years ago at our kitchen table. “You shouldn't let your kids around him. I mean, I've never seen anything like that, before or since.”

After about ten minutes, the door finally opened. In the background, she could see Koozo's father asleep on a couch. Koozo answered the door himself. He was wearing a T-shirt, but was otherwise nude. In his hand he was holding a roll of paper towels.

It was on fire.

W
e had ample reason to believe Koozo's pyromania didn't stop at setting household cleaning supplies aflame in the buff. One
night, Koozo showed up on my street with a bag of fireworks. Fireworks, though illegal, were a hot commodity in my neighborhood. Rory Kearns was well known for his love of M-80s, which he used to put on public demonstrations that involved blowing up cinder blocks. Andy Connor, a grimy, gap-toothed bully who lived on Calvin Terrace, was known to employ fireworks as one of his many intimidation tactics, threatening to burn kids with their sparks. Fireworks were one of the things that separated the men from the boys, the weapon of choice for true badasses in our corner of the world.