Chicago (3 page)

I tried to play there every afternoon, if I could, before the sun went down, if I could get home from work on time, and because it never rained that fall I got in hundreds of games with the Kings and Eagles, many of whom fancied themselves terrific ballplayers, and some of whom were. There was a young man called Monster, who was a silent efficient muscular rebounding machine, the kind of teammate you love for his work ethic and lack of running commentary. There was a quiet slip of a boy called Bucket with tattoos and earrings who was as quick as water and could slide through the lane and score any time he wanted to, although he much preferred to pass, and had to be coaxed to score in tense situations. There was a young man called Nemo, and another large youth called Bus, and a tall boy with an electric blue mohawk haircut and so many necklaces they jingled cheerfully when he ran; he could jump to the moon, that boy, and I learned to listen for him jingling behind me on fast breaks, and just flip the ball up over my shoulder for him to catch and dunk.

There was also memorably an Eagle called Not My Fault, so named because whenever he made a mistake, which he did quite often, he would interrupt his usual burble of self-aggrandizing trash talk to shout
“not my fault!”
when it most certainly and inarguably was his fault. Not My Fault, despite being short and round, dearly loved to fly down the middle of the court with the ball, try a wild ridiculous shot in dense traffic, fail to make the slightest effort to claim the inevitable rebound, and then either claim he was making a visionary creative pass, or denigrate a teammate for not being in position to receive the supposed miracle pass. He never claimed he was fouled, though—the usual excuse for a silly shot—which I found fascinating. I suppose he didn't want to put himself in a position where he would be laughed at. He had a most amazing concept of his skills and athletic ability, did Not My Fault, and even all these years later I am not sure if his overweening confidence was theatrical persona of sorts, or a confidence of such inviolable strength that it did not need reality as a foundation. Either way it seems to me that he was an early teacher of the art of fiction for me; he was so completely absorbed and convinced of his version of the world that his tart lectures to teammates who should have
known
he would be throwing a glorious
pass
that sure looked like a terrible selfish shot were believable, almost.

*   *   *

The roar and grumble and seethe of the city buses; the lash of the wind off the lake late in the afternoon when the wind changed compass points; the incredible shining silvery mounds of alewives washing against the beach in their millions, when the fish run was on; the crash of surf every once in a while, product of an unseen storm far out over the lake; the gulls drifting in from the beach and ghosting down Halsted Street and Addison Street; the eternal scent of roast lamb and garlic and olives from the Greek restaurant around the corner; the skulk and slink of cats who for some reason were frightened of our street, and were always looking over their shoulders for trouble; the occasional small brave smiling nun on her way to the fading convent in the next block, which could be accessed through the alley next to our apartment building; the occasional newspaper or umbrella or bus ticket or advertising flyer tumbling headlong down the street from the lake, and one time a tumbling headlong small boy in a yellow rain slicker far too large for him, so that it acted like a jib or topsail, and sent him careening from the bus stop all the way to our building. By happy chance Edward was just coming down the steps for his daily amble and he caught the boy without effort, escorting the child back to the bus stop and waiting there until he was safely aboard. The bus driver, I noticed, said something witty to Edward, who came back to our building amused. Mr Pawlowsky told me later that Edward and the bus driver had known each other for years, and that when Edward wanted to go downtown he generally rode that particular bus, which went along the lake rather than down Broadway through the city; this sort of subtle preference on his part, said Mr Pawlowsky, may well indicate a rural upbringing for Edward, or perhaps early years by water, as for example a river; but no man alive today knows anything about Edward's earliest years, and he himself is not forthcoming about it. And believe me, I have asked.

*   *   *

Along about October I was stargazing on the roof one night with Mr Pawlowsky, while Edward was off on the social ramble, and I asked him how he and Edward had met.

“He followed me home from work one day, and we became roommates without further ado or even much discussion,” said Mr Pawlowsky. “That was when I was working at Navy Pier, down where the Chicago River enters the lake. I was in the Navy, although my service against savage empires to the east and west was to be a clerk in Chicago. That does not sound very dramatic but you would be surprised how much paper and storage and shipping and training and logistics and transportation and things like that matter in times of war. We had ten thousand Navy men on the Pier during the war, and the ships
Sable
and
Wolverine
. That was a busy time. I was young and strong then and often I would walk all the way home if the evening was clear. It is exactly four miles from the river to here, a little longer if you go along the lake. One summer night, I remember, I walked home along the lake, taking my time and enjoying the way the fading sun shimmered on the water, when Edward fell in alongside me and accompanied me home. I was immediately taken with his calm personality. Other dogs would say rude and vulgar things in passing and Edward did not deign to answer. He seemed above any sort of tart or curt reply. The only timed he veered off from our perambulation was to investigate fish. He is very fond of fish. When the alewife run is in full cry he is gone for days and comes back smelling to high heaven and appears to have something of a silvery sheen about his fur. I have sometimes wondered if this predilection for fish reflects something of his past; was he raised on the shore of the lake, or by a river, or by the sea? Was he perhaps raised by a fishmonger family, or the owners of a fish shop? But this business of trying to piece out clues to his past is chancy. Consider these things about Edward, and you tell me if there is a discernible pattern. He is adamantly opposed to violence on television and will leave the room and sulk if a war movie or a cowboy movie or a gangster movie comes on. He really likes coming up here to look at stars, as you know, and he will come up here on his own sometimes, returning to tell me if something interesting is going on. He loves Django Reinhardt's jazz guitar. He does not howl or bark or whimper, although he does sometimes issue a dark mutter which sounds just like grumbling. Also he makes a sound curiously like quiet laughter when he sees a hockey game or even hears the word ‘hockey,' but if you accuse him directly of being a sports snob, or disrespecting our estimable neighbors to the north, he adopts a look of utter innocence. He adores Abraham Lincoln and loves to have Lincoln's speeches and letters read aloud to him and there are times I suspect he may read Lincoln himself when I am not home; I have found the volumes out of order occasionally, or bookmarks moved from where I was quite sure I had left them last. Also more than once I have found Lincoln's speeches and
The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
open on the floor and I am quite sure I did not leave them there. Also Edward has several times done what you would call heroic things as regards lost children, and pretty much every species of being respects him except cats, who are afraid of him. He likes riding the bus but dislikes cars and trains, and I do not believe he has ever been in a boat, although he likes water and will sometimes swim in the lake, usually chasing fish. He likes stamps, especially pink ones and stamps having to do with Abraham Lincoln, and keeps a large collection in a box near his bed. I believe he once owned a rosary. He has been inebriated once that I know about, although that was not by his own volition. He has the highest esteem and affection for Miss Elminides, and has twice risen roaring to her defense when she was accosted by ruffians.

“So what lessons can we draw from all this? I do not see that we can do much more than speculate. And while speculation can be enjoyable, as a form of fiction, it is also finally frustrating, for there is no end to the arc of the narrative, no end to the book, in a manner of speaking. You know what I mean, as a journalist. In a sense the contemplation of Edward's past is something of a detective story, and piecing out clues and patterns, and trying to draw from them some semblance of narrative, of cause and effect, is an interesting pastime, even riveting; but I find that it must be an occasional pleasure, for there can be no final answers; Edward is not forthcoming that way, and there is no documentation available of his journeys and voyages. Even his particular canine heritage and ancestry is a mystery. When people ask what kind of dog Edward is, meaning his breed, all I can say with confidence is that he is the kind of dog who contemplates the larger issues.”

 

4.

IT WASN'T ALL BEACHES AND DREAM
, of course, those first few months in Chicago. I paid attention, in my ambling and wandering and jaunting, and I saw a lot of broken and sad and ragged and dark. There were rats in the alleys, some of them as big as cats and arrogant as aldermen. There was a beggar with no arms or legs on the corner of Addison and Halsted; one shop owner nearby sneeringly called him Second Base, although he also quietly sent him a blanket on cold mornings. There were prostitutes at night on every other block along Broadway from Belmont to Addison, on alternate sides of the street, and sometimes I could see how their faces were sad and weary until a car slowed down and then they donned a smile like a mask and walked briskly out of the shadows; sometimes they even ran awkwardly to the cars, their high heels clacking like castanets.

Twice I saw blood on the street, and once a crime scene, cordoned off with yellow plastic tape and a police cruiser; once I saw a woman mugged, on a Sunday morning, on Broadway, although I also saw that thief get totally clocked, a block away, by an old man who stuck his arm out just as the sprinting thief had turned his head to see who was following him. Once I found jagged shards of human teeth in an alley; once I saw a man slap a boy of ten so hard the boy's eyeglasses flew off into the grass along the lakefront walkway. The man stalked off but the boy knelt down in the grass and felt around, sobbing, for his glasses. I ran to help, knowing all too well the feeling of thrashing around desperately for your lost eyeglasses, but by the time I got there another man walking by had picked them up and handed them to the boy, who put them on and ran away without a word. By then I was close enough to see that his eyeglasses were held together in the center by a gob of duct tape as big as a knuckle, and that the left lens was chipped, and I wondered how many times they had flown off his face.

Even the nuns in the fading convent nearby, sweet and gentle and generous as they were, were infinitesimally shabby around the edges, and maybe even taut with hunger, it seemed to me; the three times I was in their convent that autumn, twice to haul furniture out and once to haul it in (someone had donated six plush reading chairs, and Edward and I went to help), their kitchen was bare of food except for an apple by the toaster; and it seemed like the same apple the third time as the first, as if it was there for show, or as a talisman of some sort.

Most of all, worst of all, were the rattled kids I saw. It took me a while to notice them, but once I knew where to look I saw far too many. I'd see them on buses, especially, or waiting for buses: kids without socks on the coldest days, kids with mismatched shoes, kids with ragged coats that clearly had been donated to churches and shelters, little kids scrounging for bus fare and then not getting on the bus. I started noticing the kids who checked public telephones for forgotten change, and searched alleys behind restaurants for good garbage, and slipped thin packets of meat and cheese into their pants at the grocery store. Everyone sees the kids who do dramatic things like purse-snatching but I grew absorbed by the kids you hardly notice at all at the edges and fringes of stores and bus stops; it was like they were not altogether there, and just drifted around in their battered green parkas and old sneakers, scattering like sparrows as soon as someone stopped to look closely at their strained faces.

*   *   *

By November, when it began to get seriously cold, I had thoroughly explored the ten blocks or so in every direction from our building, ranging all the way west to Lincoln Avenue, north past Addison, south past Belmont, and for miles up and down the lakefront, and I began to make voyages farther afield, taking buses and even trains; and curiously it was in this expeditionary phase that I got to know Miss Elminides better, for she knew the city thoroughly, and dearly loved the many secrets of the South Side.

It was Miss Elminides who taught me how to take the train to Chicago White Sox games, and who whispered the name of an usher who would let me hop the turnstile and get in free after the first half of the first inning. It was Miss Elminides who drew me a secret map of two tiny dark shadowy extraordinary half-lit smoky obscure astounding jazz clubs on the South Side, one of them in a dilapidated garage behind a seedy automobile chop-shop. It was Miss Elminides who wrote a note in Greek and told me to deliver it to a man named Panagiotakis, who would then take me to the greatest Greek cook in the world, who lived on the second floor of a building that supposedly was a hotel but was really a sort of hermitage for Greek mystics, several of whom were unbelievable chefs and cooks.

And it was Miss Elminides who one day asked Edward and me to deliver a message to a
friend of a friend,
as she said, deep on the South Side—a slightly awkward message, she said, which is why she thought Edward should accompany me, in case of misunderstanding. I said I would be happy to do so but with total respect Edward did not seem exactly physically prepossessing, and if a hint of intimidating burl was part of the package maybe I should bring my friend Tommy who had played football for Notre Dame; but Miss Elminides smiled and told me about the two times she had been accosted by ruffians and Edward had appeared out of nowhere to forcibly dissuade them, and the time a huge wolfhound a block away had gone rabid and Edward took care of things, and the time Edward had pursued and downed a purse-snatcher along the lake, and the time a representative of a northside gang called the Gaylords offered what he called a reasonably priced fire insurance policy to Mr Pawlowsky and Edward removed the top half of the man's left pinky finger so swiftly and deftly that there was hardly any blood, as the responding policeman observed, impressed with Edward's skill.