Birdy (13 page)

That night, after chow, I meet the CO who’s the orderly on Birdy’s floor. We get to talking. He tells me his name is Phil Renaldi; he’s Italian but not Sicilian. His grandparents came from around Napoli. He invites me over to eat some fruitcake he just got from home. I’m still not sure if he’s queer or not but I go. What should I care if he’s queer; I’m not all that sure about myself. Maybe I’ll get a chance to ask him about what it is to be crazy.

He’s got a great place. It’s a little squad room, walled off and independent. It’s like the platoon sergeant’s room at Jackson. He has it all to himself. Renaldi’s got this room fixed up almost like home. He has a record player on a table at the end of his bed and another table in the center of the room. He’s rigged a light with a lampshade hanging from the ceiling over the table. He even has a little hot plate and a tea kettle.

One of the things I’ve never gotten used to in the army is bare light bulbs. At home, my mother has all the lamps covered with colored lampshades. It gives our house a good Italian look; a place to eat fettucini or zeppoli. The army has bare light bulbs high up in the ceilings. They flatten everything out and make it even more depressing than it is.

Renaldi’s made his lampshade out of some orange paper. It gives the place a warm, civilian look. He brings down the fruitcake and it turns out his girlfriend, not his mother, sent it. He comes from a place called Steubenville, Ohio. His girl is there and writes him every day. He shows me bundles of letters, enough
to fill a mail bag. He has them stored in boxes under his bed. He shows me some pictures of her; Italian girl, going to get fat with the first baby.

I don’t know how to bring up the idea of what it is that makes somebody crazy. I’m fishing around and somehow we get sidetracked on the whole CO business. I’m ready to listen. I tell him I joined the State Guard and then enlisted. I can hardly believe it myself, now. He’s curious about why. He’s not being hot-shit or anything, he’s just honest-to-God interested. Like I said, I’m ready to listen but this guy’s a champion listener. He’s really interested.

Not many people are interested in what somebody else is thinking, or what they have to say. The best you can hope for is they’ll listen to you just so you’ll have to listen to them. Everybody’s loading shit on everybody else. Sometimes, somebody’ll act like they’re listening, but they’re only waiting back in their minds for you to say something, something they can jump on or kick off on themselves. For me, conversation’s usually a bore.

Renaldi is truly listening. He wants to hear. You get the feeling you’re doing him a favor by telling him things. He listens as if what you’re saying is interesting to him and he asks the questions you want asked exactly when the right time comes. This Renaldi is some kind of mental enema. I come close to spilling it all. I manage to hold back at the last minute. Maybe he seems this way because I need somebody to talk to.

Renaldi starts by telling me how hard it is for his parents. He’s their only son and the only one in his neighborhood who went CO. His mother doesn’t get to hang a blue star in her window. Some ladies in the neighborhood sent her a blue banner with a yellow star on it. This was yellow, not gold. If you’re lucky enough to have a son or husband or brother killed in the war, you get to hang a gold star in your window and you’re a ‘gold-star mother/sister/father/wife’. These ladies call Renaldi’s mother the ‘yellow-star mother’. She writes Renaldi about things like this or how she found shit on the porch or spread on the doorknob. Renaldi tells how, a couple times he’s almost given in. His girlfriend keeps it
secret that she writes to him and he writes her care of General Delivery.

We agree the only crazy thing is wars. That’s where I should’ve gotten him off onto the crazy business but I missed it. Renaldi turns on the hot plate and pours some water in it from a jerry can. We talk some more.

Renaldi’s twenty-five and was taking his master’s in philosophy at Columbia when they tried to draft him. He has the idea you can only stop things like wars one person at a time. He says, nobody’s going to outlaw them. He asks me if most of the guys in my outfit wanted to fight. I couldn’t think of one who was charging in there for the old war after the first artillery came in. He wants to know how it was back in the States before we went over. To be perfectly honest, the only person I could think of who wanted to get into combat was me.

Then, we get on the atom bomb they’ve just dropped. This is something Renaldi’s all hung up on. To me, it’s what ended the Japanese war; probably one of the best things that ever happened. I couldn’t care less how many Japs got killed, or whether it was one at a time or a couple thousand. The best and easiest way as far as I’m concerned.

‘Yes, but think of it, Al. They bombed women and children who weren’t involved in the war at all!’

‘So what’s the difference, they’re all Japs. If we’re fighting Japs, we kill Japs.’

‘OK, Al, but soldiers choose to fight; these were innocent victims.’

I tell him I can’t buy that. Sure, kill off nuts like me, hostile assholes looking for trouble, but most guys don’t want to fight any war; they’re victims like everybody else. They’re out there carrying guns because of how old they are and the kind of plumbing they have. Women, old men and even kids make wars happen as much as anybody. Everybody isn’t like Renaldi and Birdy; and they even got Birdy. You can’t build a world around them either, they’re too rare.

Renaldi’s still giving me a fishy stare, so I decide to tell about
Birdy and my old man. That’s a story I hope will give some idea what I’m talking about. Probably I could just recite the multiplication tables and Renaldi’d eat it up.

He cuts us each a piece of fruitcake and pours out some more tea. Can you beat it? Tea! Six months ago, nobody could’ve convinced me this guy wasn’t queer.

There was a used car lot on the way up Long Lane to Sixty-ninth Street. Every Friday evening, when we took our books back to the library, Birdy and I used to stop by there to look at the cars. We were both motor freaks. The cars themselves didn’t interest us much – in fact, Birdy swore he’d never drive a car – but the way motors worked did. We’d already played around with small airplane motors, and the motor from a bombed-out motor scooter, and we fixed Mr Harding’s lawn mower.

My old man bought a new car every year and kept it parked in front of our house to show what a big shot he was. I had to wash and simonize the beast once a week; Birdy used to help. We’d read all the manuals that came with these cars. My father bought De Sotos because the mob had an agency in Philly, so with the trade-in, he got them for practically nothing. My mother’s brother is one of the big capos in Philly and he’s the one who arranged it. We were the only ones on the block who had anything like a new car. Birdy’s mother and father didn’t even know how to drive. Birdy’s father rode to school on the school bus.

Anyway, we used to clean the sparks, check the timing, clean the points, adjust the carburetor more than those cars ever needed. We kept that motor looking as if it’d never left the showroom floor.

Birdy and I were always shopping cars. We knew all the horsepowers and gear ratios, length of piston stroke and cylinder dimensions. Either of us could tell almost any car just by listening to the motor, not seeing the car at all.

One Friday evening we were nosing around in the car lot, looking at the new trade-ins, and there was a fantastic car. It was a 1915 Stutz Bearcat. We couldn’t figure how it got there. It didn’t run at all and the tires were flat. Schwartz, that’s the name of the
guy who ran the lot, said he had to tow it in. He gave twenty-five bucks on it to somebody who bought a 1938 Dodge. Birdy and I couldn’t keep our hands or minds off that automobile. It had an eight-cylinder engine and the frame was in perfect condition. We negotiated around for two weeks and got it for thirty dollars; it cost another three dollars having it towed to our garage. The old man said we could use the garage till winter came and it got too cold to leave his car outside.

We worked like fiends on that machine. We tore the motor all the way down. The pistons were frozen in the cylinders. We unfroze them and milled out the cylinders. We put in new rings and rockers. Birdy tooled replacement pieces for ones we couldn’t buy. He did it in the machine shop at school where he made his wings. We took off all the paint, pounded out the dents and cleaned up the chrome. It had solid chrome, not plate. We got new inner tubes and inflated the tires; there were genuine wooden spoked wheels.

After a thousand tries we got the motor to turn over. The clutch, transmission, everything else, were in great condition. We tuned that motor to perfection. We patched up, cleaned, and Neetsfoot-oiled all the upholstery and refurbished the wooden dash with sandpaper and varnish. God, it was beautiful. We sanded it down to the metal, then painted it silver-gray. We worked on it for three months.

When we cranked her up, she made tremendous resonant, deep motor sounds; the whole garage vibrated. We rolled her out and drove her up and down the alley. Neither one of us had a driver’s license. The car wasn’t registered and didn’t have an inspection sticker. It was strictly illegal. We knew we had something valuable but we didn’t want to sell it. We loved that car.

I used to dream about it; I still do sometimes. I dream we’re touring it through a beautiful warm landscape, maybe in some foreign country like France. There’s no billboards and the road is lined with trees and the fields are full of flowers.

We decide to get it past the Pennsylvania state inspection and get it registered so we can have a license. My old man says he’ll take it down and go through the inspection for us. We’re too
young to own a car. The car gets passed and put in my old man’s name. I remember the license number: QRT 645.

While Birdy is over at his place that spring, taking care of the birds, I’m either in the garage with the car or down in the cellar working out with weights. I can already press over a hundred fifty pounds. I’m working on muscle control, too. I can make a rope with my stomach and twist it from one side to the other. I keep asking Birdy to punch me hard in the stomach so he can test me, but he won’t do it.

About two months after we have it registered and licensed, I go down to the garage after school to put on a new steering wheel cover. The car is gone! I’m sure somebody stole it! I run upstairs and the old man is sitting in the living room reading the paper. He sits there with his legs crossed. They’re so short and thick at the thigh that the leg on top sticks straight out. He’s wearing black low shoes and white silk socks. He has something against colored or woolen socks.

‘Somebody stole the car!’

‘Nobody stole it. I sold it.’

He doesn’t even look up from the newspaper.

‘Aw, come on! Quit kidding! You didn’t sell it! Who’d you sell it to?’

‘Your Uncle Nicky came over with one of his “friends” and the friend wanted the car; he thought it’d be a real gag and offered me a C note. What’d ya think I’m gonna do anyhow; get myself in trouble over some junk heap of a car?’

He looks up at me for the last part, then he turns his paper again, bangs on it to straighten it, and looks away. Uncle Nicky is my mother’s capo brother. I turn to her.

‘Is that really true? Did he actually sell our car to one of Uncle Nicky’s gangster friends?’

My mother’s ironing in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. I don’t know why she always irons there. She couldn’t be more in the way. Come to think of it; I do know why. She wants to keep an eye on the cooking and at the same time be able to talk with the old man.

She starts talking in Italian, actually in Credenzia, the Sicilian dialect. She always does this when she has something to say. It’s stupid because I understand everything she says. I can’t talk the stuff, but I understand. They know that. She tells my father to give me the money.

‘He don’t know what to do with no hundred dollars. He’ll just get in trouble again. I’ll put it in the bank. When he wants money he can ask me for it. I don’t want no more of this running away stuff.’

He crosses his legs the other way at the same time he opens and closes the newspaper again. He reads a newspaper folded in quarters like he’s riding in a subway or something and doesn’t want to take up too much space.

‘Half of it isn’t even my money. Half of that car belongs to Birdy.’

He doesn’t look up at me. My mother comes in from the ironing board.

‘Give him the money, Vittorio. It’s stealing to take somebody else’s money.’

This is in Credenzia again. The old man looks up at my mother. He’s enjoying being the big shit.

‘I don’t have to give him or anybody nothin’. That car is mine; it’s in my name. I can sell it to anybody I want.’

He pauses to let that sink in. Then he shifts his weight and pulls out his roll. He keeps his money like that, in a hard roll in his side pocket, big bills on top. He peels off five tens. He has that hundred dollar bill on the outside, but he pulls the tens off from underneath. He has a piece of elastic, not a rubber band, he keeps it wrapped in. It’s the kind of elastic my mother makes her garters with. He holds out the fifty bucks to me.

‘Here, give this to that wiggle-eyed friend of yours. I’m warnin’ ya, he’s gonna get you in trouble yet. That kid ain’t right in the head.’

I hold back. What a shitty thing to do. He re-rolls his roll, slips the elastic over it, tilts and slides it back in his pocket. He’s holding out those curled bills in his hand. I don’t want to take them. I
stand there. My mother turns away; she’s done all she can and she knows it. My old man’ll bop anybody if he takes a mind to it. He looks at me hard. He’s not really mad yet but he’s annoyed.

‘Ya don’t want it? Well, don’t tell your friend I didn’t try to give him something for his share of that junk heap.’

He’s shifting to reach into his pocket. I know if he puts it back on the roll and in his pocket I’ll never see it again. I reach out and take the fifty bucks. He doesn’t even pay attention, just grunts like I’m robbing him and goes back to reading.