Favorite Sons (5 page)

“I don't care. I don't want it in my bedroom. I don't want to have to look at it and be reminded of this day.”

Fred Webb, a biology teacher at the high school and the line coach on the football team, drove by in his pickup truck, honked, and waved without taking his hand off the wheel. The bus from
Steubenville went past us going south, blowing exhaust in our faces. It went to the gravel turnaround at the edge of town and came back, pulling up to the sheltered stop in front of the sand quarry to pick up Mrs. Bush, a nearly blind retired schoolteacher who felt her way up the steps with a mahogany cane.

“It's going to be all right,” I said.

Deak nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”

In another minute the Nashes came out of the shop, Pepper dividing the bills between them.

“Twenty-four bucks with the points Deak gave us,” Pepper said. “We'd have gotten a lot more if you hadn't . . .”

“Drop it,” Adrian said.

We walked up Third Street, two by two, the Nash brothers in front. I have heard people describe tragic events as surreal, even dreamlike. They say it was like watching a show through a foggy pane of glass. As the tragedy unfolds before them, often in slow motion, they are sure it is simply a dream from which they will awaken. That was never the case with me and the death of Petey Sanchez. From the time we entered the clearing until Petey dropped couldn't have been much more than sixty seconds. Yet, the event still remains crisp in my memory. It is more than three decades past, yet I can recall with vivid clarity the sound of granite crushing bone and brain.

Surreal, however, is a word I would use to describe walking down Third Street after we left Fats Pennington's antique shop as if nothing in the world had changed. The sun was high and the blue sky stretched from the foothills to our west, across the Ohio River and beyond the hills of West Virginia for as far as we could see. And there we were, walking down Third Street, four of Crystalton's favorite sons—All-American-looking kids, clean-cut athletes— enjoying a beautiful summer day. We strolled down the street as though we didn't have a care in the world, smiling, waving at passing cars, and talking about going to the evening swim at the community pool that night. I have thought about that all these years. Petey was dead in the bushes and we were going swimming. When we got to the bottom of Hudson Hill, Adrian and Pepper turned up Gilchrist Street toward their home.

“See ya later,” Adrian said.

“Later, ‘gator,” Pepper added.

“Yeah, see you around,” Deak said.

“See ya,” I said.

Deak and I walked in silence past the high school and the Big Dipper Ice Cream Shop. He broke the silence. “They're talking about me right now.”

“Who's talking about you?” I asked in a hushed tone.

“Adrian and Pepper.”

“They're worried that you're not going to be able to hold it together.”

“Why do they think that? I've always been a good friend.”

“They're just scared, Deak. Put yourself in Adrian's position.”

“I would never allow myself to get in that position.”

“You don't know that, Deak.” I snapped my fingers. “It happened just that fast. I'm sure Adrian would like to have that instant back, but it's water over the dam.”

We walked in silence for a few minutes. “How long until someone finds his body?” he asked.

“I don't know. Not long. Couple of days at the most, I'd guess. Someone will find him.”

Deak looked at me and frowned, a brow arched in a quizzical manner. “Do you remember seeing his bicycle anywhere?”

“Now that you mention it, no.”

“What do you think he was doing up there?”

When we emerged from the path Petey was just standing in the clearing, like he was waiting on a bus, and I recalled wondering the same thing—what is he doing on Chestnut Ridge and where was his bike? However, the ensuing events had erased the question until that minute. “That's a good question. I have no idea.”

“The clearing is a half-mile up that steep path. He certainly wasn't hunting arrowheads, and when was the last time you saw Petey Sanchez without his bicycle?”

“Never.”

“So, what was he doing up there?”

“It was Petey, Deak. You're asking me to make sense of his actions? Who knows why Petey did the things he did.”

“It just seems strange, is all.”

“Try not to think too much about it, Deak. It'll make you crazy. We need you to hold it together.”

“I will. Don't worry about it.” We walked past the community center and Blackie Mehtal's auto repair garage. When we stopped in front of Deak's house, I asked if he wanted to do something after I finished cutting the grass. “You don't have to hang around with me all day, Hutch. I'm okay. I'm not going to say anything.”

“It'll get better with every day that passes. We just need to get some time behind us.”

“I'll be fine.”

“What are you going to do for the rest of the afternoon?”

“I'm going up to my room, close the door and pray for the soul of Petey Sanchez and for our forgiveness.”

I thought about that for a moment and said, “Put in an extra word or two for me, will you?”

T
he fire whistle, as it was called in Crystalton, began as a slow, tinny whine, grew to a gurgle deep in the throat, and bloomed into a screaming, air raid siren-like blast that lasted a full ten seconds before dying back down into the throat, recycling for another round.

The whistle blew every night at nine o'clock. It was a daily test, but parents called it the “curfew whistle,” and anyone under the age of twelve and living in the home of Miriam Van Buren had better be home by the time the single blast settled down. When the whistle blew and it wasn't 9 p.m., the hearts of mothers throughout Crystalton palpitated and they all conducted a quick inventory of their children. Those with children not within eyesight—a teenage son out in the car or a daughter at the swimming pool—could not relax until they had been accounted for.

Unlike police or ambulance sirens that blare all hours of the day and night in big cities, the occasional blast of the whistle in a town of sixteen hundred people signified problems for someone you loved, cared about, or at least knew.

On Tuesday, June 15, we were winning three to one with two outs and none on in the top of the fifth inning of a summer league game against Dillonvale when the whistle began its tinny whine. The umpire suspended the game while the siren blew. I took off my catcher's mask, retrieved the bandana I kept in my hip pocket, and mopped up the sweat captured in the peach fuzz on my upper lip before wiping away the thin line of mud that encircled my face
where perspiration and dust from the ball field congealed beneath the pads of my mask. During the second siren blast, I walked to the pitcher's mound. Adrian and Pepper were playing catch just to keep Adrian's arm loose. I held up my catcher's mitt and called for the ball, a tacit sign that I wanted to join their game of catch. Pepper tossed one to me side-arm and it snapped into my mitt. On the fifth blast of the whistle, a Crystalton Police cruiser could be seen climbing New Alexandria Pike, a twisty, two-lane road carved out of the hill just above the water tower, and one that led to Chestnut Ridge. As the tenth and final blast of the whistle began to sound, the rescue squad appeared on the road, its red beacon flashing off the backdrop of foliage.

In centerfield, Deak had his throwing hand and glove on his knees, looking down at the ground so all we could see was the top of his purple cap. “He's going to crack,” Adrian said.

“He'll be fine,” I said, turning my head from the home crowd. “How are you holding up?”

He responded with silence and a glare, as I knew he would before I asked the question. I never knew what was going on in Adrian's head because he would never let me in. He didn't let anyone in. As the final blast died down, I said to Adrian, “You're up oh and two, keep the next pitch down and out. Make him chase it.”

“Shut up and go catch,” he said.

I hunkered down and set up on the outside corner, knee-high. Adrian did not have that focused look in his eyes. Rather, he looked scared, maybe angry. He went into his windup and never once looked at my glove. The ball flew high and tight, hitting the Dillonvale batter in the ribs, just below the armpit. Air rushed from his lungs and he twisted and danced his way to first base, wincing the entire ninety feet.

I picked the ball out of the dirt and smoked it back to him. “Throw to the glove,” I said. He regained his control, but the game was over as soon as he hit that kid in the ribs. No batter would stand in on him the rest of the night. We won five to one.

As we were leaving the ballpark that evening, the four of us walking out together ahead of our parents, Denny Morelli, a kinky-haired classmate who played the saxophone in the marching band,
came pedaling into the parking lot and skidded to a halt, flicking pebbles on our shins. “Hey, did you hear about Petey Sanchez?” he asked.

“No. What?” Pepper asked.

“He's dead. Murdered, maybe. They found him up on Chestnut Ridge. I guess he's got a big hole in his head.”

“No shit, really?” Pepper asked. “A hole? What kind of a hole, like a bullet hole?”

“Maybe, I don't know for sure. My aunt heard them talking about it on the police scanner and they said he had a big hole in his head. They were calling for the coroner to look at him.”

Denny pedaled off to spread the news like the town crier. When he was out of earshot, Pepper turned to us, a smug little smile on his lips, and said, “That's how it's done, boys. Now we've all been informed that Petey's dead and don't have to act surprised. We just have to act like we don't know a damn thing.”

Adrian looked ready to vomit.

*    *    *

The maple tree that was wedged between the sidewalk and Second Street near our front porch was over a century old when in May of 1970 a windstorm that snapped telephone poles in two and blew tractor-trailers off Ohio Route 7 uprooted the beast and dropped it into our side yard. While it miraculously missed our house, it stretched from the sidewalk and a root ball the size of a Volkswagen minibus to the back of our property where its whippy top branches dangled in the alley. My mother blanched at the idea of paying someone to cut up a tree. She rented a chain saw for eight dollars a day and we spent an entire weekend turning the saw blade blue with heat and stacking maple logs in the garden, which gave me a virtually unlimited supply of firewood for campfires.

Deak came over to my house after the Dillonvale game and we started a fire in a corner of the property that we called the garden, though we never planted so much as a single tomato plant. We snagged some chips, RC Colas, a package of hot dogs, buns, and a plastic squirt bottle of mustard. As the fire began to grow, I sharpened
a pair of sticks with my pocketknife and skewered a hot dog on each, handing one to Deak, who had been quiet most of the evening.

We sat on logs that I had rolled into a rough circle around the fire pit. The flames danced and painted our faces with streaks of flickering orange and yellow light. Deak sat to my right, the bag of chips between us, and we talked in hushed tones. “Are you feeling better now that he's not lying up there in the woods?” I asked.

His head bobbed almost imperceptibly. “A little. At least his family can have a little peace.” Petey's family probably didn't even know he had been missing, but I didn't say that. “What the devil was he doing up there?” Deak asked, repeating his question from the previous day.

“You're going to make yourself crazy if you keep this up. Sometimes, Deak, there are no logical answers.”

“Why'd Adrian have to do it? Why didn't he just run away?”

“It's not always easy to run, Deak. Sometimes you have to fight, especially if someone's a threat and coming at you.”

“Jesus said to turn the other cheek.”

“I'm not sure this is the best situation to relate to scripture. Besides, I'll bet Jesus wasn't getting pummeled with an oak branch when he said that.”

He stared back into the fire and took a sip of his RC Cola. “My stomach feels like it's on fire, Hutch. I feel like I gotta take a crap all the time, but there's nothing left because I've had diarrhea since yesterday afternoon. I didn't sleep hardly at all last night because I couldn't get my brain to shut down.” He wrapped a bun around the hot dog on his stick and slid it off. Holding the stick between his knees, Deak grabbed the mustard with his free hand and squirted a yellow string on the blackened dog. “Do you ever think about the events that led to Petey's death?”

“You mean the constant turmoil he had been causing his entire life?”

“No, I mean what happened yesterday morning, the events that put us and Petey up on Chestnut Ridge at the same time— Petey doing bird calls and Adrian with that chunk of granite in his hand?” I admitted I hadn't. “Think about it. It all started with that storm Sunday afternoon.” He looked at me while he worked over
a mouthful of hot dog. “God, or a high pressure system, whatever, brought a big storm over eastern Ohio. You, me, Adrian, Pepper, we all got on the phones and started lining up our arrowhead hunting trip. At first, we were going down to the old glass plant, but you said you didn't think there were many good arrowheads left there because we've found so many over the years, so we decided to go to the Postalakis farm.” He again looked at me and I nodded, acknowledging my culpability in the decision. “After we were there on the hill for a while, Pepper said he was tired of hunting, but Adrian said he wanted to scout around the field closest to the Little Seneca, and we all said okay.”

I chuckled, remembering Pepper's response to Adrian's declaration that he wanted to search longer. Pepper had said, “Well, if that's what the great Adrian Nash wants to do, then by all means let's all stand out here in the scorching sun and sweat our balls off some more.”