Gold Dust (15 page)

“Ellis. And no, I have never actually trained.”

“Ever thought about it? No, never mind. Don’t answer that. I’ll be around to all the classes on Monday. We can talk more about it then.” He started shaking again, then backed away quickly, so as not to upset the great performer I guess.

With Mr. Connolly gone, I had no qualms about upsetting the great performer.

“Ar, ar, arrr,” I laughed out loud. “Can you believe that guy? A school? For choir?”

“I think it sounds great,” Beverly said. “You deserve it, Napoleon, you lucky thing. We’re going to miss you, though.”

“What?” I said loudly. We had absently turned and were once again floating down the sidewalk away from church. “What are you talking about, Beverly? You don’t really think Napoleon would be interested in leaving to go to some weenie choir school?”

“Of course he would. He’d be crazy not to.”

By now even I could see that Napoleon Charlie Ellis was not participating in the discussion of the future of Napoleon Charlie Ellis. It seemed that there was now a lot going on in that head, with small flicks of different expressions snapping across his face and then leaving to be replaced by something else. Confusion was in the mix. Then fear. Excitement, then something else again.

“What’s up, Napoleon?” I asked.

“You all right?” Beverly asked.

He looked straight ahead, then at me, then at Beverly, then straight ahead again. Now he looked like he had just woken up from a pleasant dream.

“I never heard of such a thing,” he said. It wasn’t so much a yea or a nay to the choir school idea, but an amazement over the plain fact of its existence.

“I hear you, man. The world’s gone nuts. Come on, let’s go play some baseball.”

“Would you pa-lease,” Beverly scolded me. “Just give it a rest for one day, huh? Anyway, I was thinking you guys might like to go for a little ride today. I know a great Brigham’s in a great square, all old-timey, and clean. My treat.”

“Ya?” I said. “Well. Whatcha think, choir-boy?”

Napoleon scowled at me. Then he looked to Beverly, sort of nervous and embarrassed at the same time. “Ah, well, you mean in your neighborhood? Would that be a good idea?”

“No,” Beverly said boldly, “that would not be a good idea, I’m ashamed to say. But this is not in my neighborhood. It’s in that direction, but not quite. Neutral territory.”

It was amazing to me the way a small statement like that could change Napoleon’s whole face. From closed up and scowling to smooth in seconds. From mean old man to twelve-year-old regular guy. “I would be pleased to go,” he said to her.

By the time we got there it seemed like the day was nearly gone. Wait for the bus, ride the bus. Wait for the other bus, ride the bus. All the while I couldn’t help staring and staring into the blue sky dotted with the occasional bit of a cloud, and all around sprayed with bright sunshine. Napoleon and Beverly were most of the time discussing this or that, but I was like in a trance every time I looked up. The clouds started looking an awful lot like baseballs floating across the sky and I thought, yup, Fred Lynn and Jim Rice were probably at that moment sending moon shots out into orbit right up there.

When we got there though, it was nice. As advertised, this was one of the best Brigham’s I had been in. All brass and marble and fixtures that reminded me of that song John Kiley would pump out on the organ during rain delays,
Daisy, Daisy
...
a bicycle built for two.
Only there were three of us. That was it. There was a nice lazy after-church feel to things, and we were the only people in the place. We got our single-scoop dishes of ice cream and took them to the front window booth to look out at the square.

Which was fine for a while. Palm Sunday. Families walking along together, parents holding their three strands of dried palm respectfully, while their kids whipped each other with theirs. The atmosphere out on the small green patch at the center of the square had that unmistakable look of the true beginning of spring, with guys throwing footballs around with their jackets off, people eating food outdoors as if fresh air was an actual nutritional ingredient, and an explosion of babies all around. Not bad. Very peaceful. I was almost ready to let go of my baseball pang as the three of us sat there for a bit silently, staring out from our ice-cream world.

Until the real world stared back. All of a sudden, one of the ball tossers across the way dropped his hands as he caught sight of us in the window. The football hit him in the chest and fell to the ground in front of him. Jum McDonaugh stood there, staring dumbfounded at us, as if this could simply not be happening. Then, like a great big sewer rat he scurried over to his bike and was gone so quickly we could have imagined the whole thing.

Napoleon sat rigid as a statue.

We had not imagined it.

“Do you suppose we scared him away?” I asked.

Beverly sighed, a heavy, exhausted sigh.

Any pleasure we might have enjoyed had been choked out of our time now. Amazing that it could turn so quickly, and turn on so little.

“Should we go?” I asked. “I guess we should get going, huh?”

“Much as I hate to say it,” Beverly said sadly, “it’s probably best if we do.”

I assumed we were all in agreement on that. It made you so mad your stomach burned, but there was no denying what we were feeling. And it would only get worse if we waited. Beverly and I put down our spoons and wiped our mouths with our big white Brigham’s napkins.

Napoleon took another, very small, spoonful. He held it in his mouth for what seemed an unnecessarily long time without swallowing, and then swallowed.

He picked up another spoonful. “I am finished when I am finished,” he said calmly. He wouldn’t look at either one of us.

Beverly and I looked at each other.

“You’re right,” Beverly said. “Dead right. And I understand why you don’t want to give in. I respect that. But I’m the one responsible for you being here, and I don’t want to be responsible for what happens next. I don’t want to see it, Napoleon.”

“What if he comes back with twenty guys?” I pointed out.

He took another spoonful. Swallowed. Shrugged. “What if he comes back with twenty thousand? What is the population anyway, of Boston, Massachusetts, USA?” He took another tiny mouthful.

“If it was the whole city, I guess you’d want to fight the whole city,” I said. “But it’s not the whole city, so don’t start that.”

“Why don’t you just fight each other then?” Beverly sounded disgusted.

“If you don’t mind,” Napoleon said, pretending to be oblivious to everything all of a sudden, “I am trying to eat.”

It was the longest, slowest bowl of ice cream in history. The last eight or ten spoonfuls could have easily been done with a straw. I was getting more and more nervous, to the point where I was ready to pull Napoleon right out of the chair for his own stubborn good.

Until it occurred to me. Nothing was happening. Nothing was going to happen. It
was
possible, still, for things to get blown up worse than they were. And that’s what we were doing. I was wrong. We were wrong. I was so pleased, about everyone being wrong.

“I’m getting myself a Coke,” I said. “Anyone else?”

I stood to go to the counter. Confident.

And wrong again.

Jum stood up close to the window, pointing us out to Butchie.

Butchie smiled. Looked like a dog baring his teeth.

The two of them stood there for a long minute, staring at us like we were the impossible three-headed fish in the pet store window. Then they moved on away from the window and across the street.

“This is stupid,” I said. “I’ll go talk to him.”

“Sit
down,
Richard,” Napoleon said.

I sat.

“Please don’t make too big a deal out of it, Napoleon,” Beverly said. Beverly’s face was making a big deal out of it, like she might cry. “He doesn’t matter.”

I looked outside. Jum and Butch were sitting now, in a bench at the park. Facing us. There were two more guys with them that I had never seen before. Older.

Beverly took notice too. “No, no...” her voice trailed away.

Then there were two more. And it looked as if they were all sitting on a wooden sofa, watching a TV that was the Brigham’s window.

“They’re just like dogs,” Beverly said. “Territorial. Brainless.”

“And what,” I said, “they don’t like other dogs in their yard? And anyway, I thought this wasn’t even their yard.”

“Apparently their yard is getting larger,” Napoleon said.

We all stared out for a few seconds, waiting for whatever. But it was waiting for us.

“I am so sorry about this,” Beverly said.

Napoleon stood up, wiped his mouth neatly at the corners with his napkin as he continued staring out across the way. Even now, he still had his manners. I thought of him and his father together in Pier 4, so graceful, so foreign, so many million miles away from here and now.

I could not ever remember actually wanting to fight anybody before. Before this moment.

“You want to go fight?” I asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” Beverly said to me.

Napoleon pulled his lips tight. His eyes went narrow as he looked out there, and he began lightly, rhythmically tapping the table with the meaty part of his fist.

“Yes, I want to fight,” he said.

I thought Beverly was going to scream, or cry, or attack Napoleon herself.

“If you do,” she said, pointing a finger at him, “if you do...” She stalled, to collect herself. “
They
are animals. What’s
your
excuse?”

Napoleon looked out the window at the faces in the park. They were hardening as we spoke, freezing and whitening, into hateful stony statues. Then he looked at Beverly, then at me, before finally nodding at Beverly.

“I have never struck anyone before,” he said to her.

“I believe you,” she said.

“I could do it now, however.”

“I believe you.”

Napoleon stood then, and with smooth, slow, graceful motions, took his napkin, wiped the corners of his mouth. He refolded the napkin, placed it beside his plate as neatly as he found it. He put on his coat.

“This is a sad place,” he said.

The three of us walked out to the sidewalk, looked at the bunch of them for a minute, then headed toward the bus stop.

“There ya go,” Butch called, to the sound of supporting laughter. “Good boy. Smart boy. Don’t get lost again now. Who knows what could happen to a lost boy in the big city?”

I tipped a glance toward Napoleon. The muscles in his temples were bunching and bunching and bunching.

“They’re all talk,” Beverly said. “They would never really
do
anything.”

“Was that not anything?” he said. He sounded exhausted.

I thought then, I would be exhausted all the time if I was Napoleon Charlie Ellis.

It’s exhausting enough just being with him.

A
S PROMISED, MR. CONNOLLY
was at the school on Monday. He was making the rounds of the classes starting with first grade, listening to every voice in the school in his search for talent. Apparently this was Mr. Connolly’s full-time job, going around to all the schools in the Archdiocese and recruiting for the choir school. We could hear the squeaky little voices of the lower grades, as they sang to the piano in the basement room that was directly below Sister Jacqueline’s homeroom. Sister kept smiling sweetly at every warbling, every screech. But every minute or so she would look back toward Napoleon Charlie Ellis and give a knowing nod. As if it was all just a formality, and we all knew why Connolly was really here. Which, this being a kind of intimate little school, I suppose we did.

Some of us did, anyway. Some of us didn’t particularly care.

“Hey,” Butchie said, apparently to me and Napoleon both. “What’s the deal? The Judge decide all the Brigham’ses in the city need to be desegregated now?”

The two of us wheeled around to face him.

“I will not waste my time on this ignorance of yours,” Napoleon said, then turned right in his seat again.

Which left me facing Butch. “See what I mean,” he said to me, pointing a finger straight at Napoleon’s back. “Thinks he’s too good to waste his time on the likes of me.”

I nodded. Finally, I did see.

“He is,” I said. “So am I.”

“Oooh,” Butchie said with a cheesy fake smile on his face. “I been waitin’ for this. Finally you ain’t white trash anymore?”

“Nope.” I did my best imitation of the Ellis composure I had seen so much of. I looked at the back of my hand. “Still white. Just ain’t
trash.
”

“In your dreams, Riley,” he said, but it didn’t matter. As far as I was concerned the conversation was already over.

Now Napoleon and I were both facing front. For a second.

I tipped a look his way. “All right.”

He didn’t look back. “All right?”

“All right, you were maybe right.”

He looked at me now, just as I looked away.

“About time,” he said, then went back to his book.

He was not about to cut me any slack, give me any credit, or call off his dogs for one single minute. He was determined to be miserable no matter what. There was a lot of tough stuff to admire about Napoleon, but then he could turn around and drive you nuts with that very same stuff. Well, now I wasn’t going to give in all the way, either.

“You were right about
him
.” I said. “
Not
about everybody everywhere.”

He just kept to his book.

At eleven that morning we were all gathered around the piano. All the boys in my class anyway. They divided us by gender as well as age, I guess in an effort to group all voices approximately according to similar sound. They had that wrong.

“Stop, stop, stop, wait a minute,” Mr. Connolly said after grimacing through the first six notes of the C scale with all of us as a group. “You,” he said to me. “Is that you, making that... sound?”

“’Fraid so,” I said. I didn’t mind. Expected it, really.

“I’m sorry, son, but would you mind terribly... not singing?”

“Not terribly,” I said, while most of my classmates laughed.