The H-Bomb and the Jesus Rock (4 page)

And he still wasn’t back.

Neither was my mom but Ralph said he’d be back by the end of
Garfield Goose
, so now he’ll have to pull me in the wagon. That will be his punishment, pulling me all the way to the vacant lot.

Then I’ll get out and we’ll look for empty bottles.

I like looking for bottles, know why? Because it’s not just bottles. You could find
any
thing there. One time I found a hula hoop, just laying there in the weeds. Another time I found a little one-armed plastic doll. I named her Lefty. I still got it somewhere. Ralph once found a quarter.

Today, though? I got a feeling we’re going to find something
really
good, way better than bottles or a broken doll or even a hula hoop. And a lot of times when I feel like something’s going to happen? It does. Like the other day, Sister stopped in the middle of erasing the chalkboard and I thought,
She’s going to sneeze,
and she did, twice. And yesterday when I got home from school I turned on the radio hoping for this song I like, “Twistin’ the Night Away,” and it was just starting!

Toby

Guess what, that’s the last time I ever pray with my mom,
ever.
I don’t care if they blow us up or not. Let ‘em.

Grabbing me like that...hugging me like that...

I was back on the porch where I belonged, with my boxes of cards and my plate of toast and jam. Across the street Mr. Pappas sat up in his reclining lawn chair and yelled some gibberish and laid back down again.

I ate a piece of toast.

Then who should come bicycling by but Mary Jo Conrad, pedaling like mad, leaning over the handlebars, not looking at me, not even a glance.

She must think I still like her.

She sits next to me at school, on my left. She’s skinny like one of those stick insects and her hair looks like somebody sawed it off with a bread knife and she’s got so many braces you can’t even see any teeth, plus all her fingernails are bitten right down to the red—they look like they hurt.

People used to say she had cooties but that was just a rumor.

Know what she likes to do at her desk, though? Smear Elmer’s Glue all over her palm, then wait for it to dry, then peel it off in one piece so you can see all the little lines from her palm, then lay the peeling on a stack of other peelings. She’ll do that for hours, like it was her job, like that’s what she came to school for. Sister caught her one time and made her throw the whole pile away, but the very next day she started another one.

She didn’t care.

She didn’t care about Sister getting mad, or about doing any schoolwork, or what she looked like, or people saying she had cooties, or even about the Russians, what they were up to. Like last Wednesday for instance, we were all down on the floor doing a duck-and-cover drill, then I hear this huffing and puffing, so I sneak a peek and there’s Mary Jo blowing like mad on her palm, helping the glue dry. The whole world could be going up in smoke any moment, and there she was.

You had to admire her.
I
did, anyway.

So then later on I was sitting there with my head on my hand, kind of studying her, you know? Then she noticed me staring.

I smiled.

So you know what she did? Made a little pig-noise at me. Real soft. A soft little pig-noise.

That got to me. That really did.

Pretty soon? By the end of the day? I started kind of
liking
the way her hair looked all chopped off like that, and how sinnny she was, like in that song,
She’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni.
I even started liking her braces, how shiny.

I started liking Mary Jo Conrad!

Me.

Know what I even did? At home in my room? I made like a Valentine’s card. First I drew a picture of a huge fat bumble bee, just the body, with stripes and a pair of funny little wings. Then I cut out a picture of myself, just my big smiley head, and glued it on the bumble bee body—with Elmer’s Glue, by the way—and drew two antennas coming out the top of my head. Underneath I wrote,
Would you BEE my honey?

Next morning I slipped it on her desk during catechism. She took time off from her glue to read it. Then she wrote something on the other side and slipped it back. Here’s what she wrote:
Would you BUZZ off?

That
really
got to me.

So after school I came up to her. She was walking fast, like she does. I caught up and said, “Hi!”

She waited for me to catch my breath and state my business.

I said, “Did you hear about the three holes in the ground?”

She waited.

I said, “Well, well, well.”

She didn’t laugh.

I said, “Get it? Three holes? Well, well, well?”

She still didn’t laugh.

So I asked her, “What’s the difference between a meatball and a golf ball, do you know?”

“Please?” she said.

I didn’t understand. “What. Please what.”

She said it again, begging me,
“Pleeease?”

I understood.

I watched her walk away.

The rest of the day I didn’t even hardly eat anything. I just laid on my bed looking up at the ceiling, listening to my transistor. I understood a lot of songs I never used to like before:

Can’t get used to losing you

No matter what I try to do...

Then yesterday afternoon Sister told us, “Down, children,
down
,” and we all got down, foreheads on the floor, hands behind our heads. And while we were down there, an airplane went over pretty low, pretty loud.

Mary Jo started screaming.

She sounded like an air raid siren. And she wouldn’t stop. Sister had to yank her to her feet and slap her really hard to shut her up.

Then we all got back in our seats, everyone being very quiet now. Sister started writing out some long-division problems on the board.

I snuck a look at Mary Jo. She wasn’t gluing her palm. She wasn’t doing anything. She was just sitting there, hands in her lap, staring straight ahead. And guess what. She was back to looking like she really was, really ugly. Plus? All of a sudden? I felt like I was starving. For baked ham, smothered in heated-up fruit salad.

I was cured.

So now I just wish I could talk to her, just for a minute, so I could tell her,
I’m sorry, Mary Jo, but it’s over. You can quit playing hard-to-get.

Ralph

Lou was waiting for me.

She wanted to go for bottles, like I promised, but I just wanted to flop on the mattress and that’s what I did. I laid there staring up at the ceiling, at that bunch of cracks that looks like a dog with antlers.

Lou sat on the edge and asked me how I liked it with the blanket on, all smooth and tucked under, and did I notice the wagon out front, all clean and shiny and ready to go?

I didn’t say anything.

She said
Garfield Goose
was over a long time ago.

I just kept staring up at the ceiling.

She asked me what’s the matter.

I told her I didn’t want to talk about it.

She asked me again.

I told her I struck out.

She said that was all right.

I told her no it wasn’t.

She told me about Garfield Goose’s eye coming off and Frazier Thomas looking all embarrassed.

I told her Frazier Thomas was a big sissy.

She said at least he didn’t strike out.

I turned to the wall.

She apologized.

I told her to beat it.

She told me I promised, meaning bottles.

I told her I didn’t care.

“Ra-alph.”

“Go away.”

“You
promised!
”

“I don’t care!”

“That’s a sin!”

“I don’t care!”

Mom opened the door. “What is going
on
in here?”

“He promised! He said we were gonna go look for—”

“Hey. What’d I tell you about that?”

“About what?”

“Whining. What did I say?”

“Not to. But he
promised!
”

“Come and help me put away groceries,” Mom told her, and went back to the kitchen.

“You promised,” Lou whispered, and left.

I kept laying there facing the wall. Meanwhile, probably, back at the park:

—
Do you believe that Cavaletto?

—
Out there smelling his glove?

—
Then striking out?

—
On three pitches!

—
Pathetic.

—
And he wants to be a pro!

—
Are you kidding?

—
I’m not kidding.

—
Ha, ha, ha!

—
Ha, ha, ha!

After a while Lou came back. I was still facing the wall. She told me to turn over. I told her no.

“Please, Ralph? Just do it? Will you? Pleeease?”

“Quit whining.”

“All right but please?”

I turned over. She was kneeling on the mattress with her hands behind her back. “Stick your tongue out, my son,” she told me.

I got up on my elbows. “Vanilla wafer?”

“Communion.”

She was trying to make up with me so we’d go for bottles. Well, I did promise. I held out my tongue.

She mumbled something and set a vanilla wafer there. “Don’t chew. It’s Jesus.”

I chewed it up.

“Ra-alph.”

I swallowed it. “All right, let’s go.”

Toby

Business was slow and I was thinking about heading down to Morgan’s Drugs for a fresh pack of cards. They’re a nickel and I had fifteen cents from this kid Jim Davenport yesterday. That’s what he paid me for a Jim Davenport card—no relation, just the same name, so he wanted the card.

People are morons.

Anyway, I was in the mood for a new pack but it’s two and a half blocks to Morgan’s and, like I said, it was warm out today, so I didn’t think I could make it there and back without breaking into a sweat and I hate sweating. Makes me feel like I’m losing my protective coating.

In case you’re wondering, yes I have a bike.

It’s not a Schwinn, I admit, it’s a J.C. Higgins, but you should see it. I’ve got these black streamers coming out of the hand grips, a good loud squeeze horn, mud flaps, a reflector on the back fender and a skull-and-crossbone sticker on the front one. Only trouble is, I don’t know how to ride the stupid thing. Nobody to teach me—no father, and my mother’s useless.

She bought it for me three birthdays ago and actually thinks I’ve been using it all this time. She’s always complimenting me on how clean I keep it.

So that’s my little secret, I don’t know how to ride a bike.

I tried teaching myself one day, out of sight on the patio in the backyard. I won’t try
that
again.

Lou

I like it in the wagon.

I sit against the back with my legs out straight and they just fit. I can feel all the little bumps in the sidewalk. Some of them make my teeth hit together. Only thing, I don’t like it if somebody sees us, because then I feel like a baby, being pulled, and my face gets hot. But there wasn’t hardly anyone around.

I was sorry Ralph struck out. He wants to be good at baseball and if you’re good you don’t strike out, so I was sorry, but he didn’t have to call Frazier Thomas a sissy. It wasn’t Frazier Thomas’s fault he struck out.

He was just mad.

But now he wasn’t anymore. We were going for bottles and you don’t have to be good at it, you just have to walk up and down.

It’s three blocks to the viaduct, then another three blocks to the vacant lot, and we were at the viaduct, so that’s halfway. It goes under the railroad tracks. It’s cooler in there and dark and the wagon is louder, echo-y.

“Hey,”
I said, to hear my voice.

Ralph told me hush, we’ll be there soon, then Our Lady will help me walk again.

“Our Lady of Fatima, you mean?”

“Hush, little one, don’t cry.”

“I wasn’t crying.”

“Hush.”

He was bringing me to Fatima. So that’s how come he had to pull me, because I couldn’t walk. I looked at my crippled legs, out straight, my poor little crippled legs.

We saw this movie Thursday at school about Our Lady of Fatima, in the gym. They were showing it because of the Russians and their missiles. That was one of the things Mary warned the three children about, the children of Fatima, long ago. She told them everyone had to pray to get Russia to convert.

Or else.

So now it was coming true, what she warned about.

We were doing duck-and-cover drills all week. Some people were giggling and Sister got mad. She slapped me and Bridget Lewis and Marjorie O’Connor, hard, one at a time. I didn’t cry. I had tears but I didn’t cry. Neither did Bridget. But you should have heard Marjorie, like Sister threw
acid
in her face. It was embarrassing.

That was the best movie, though.

There was this music whenever Mary would appear. You couldn’t see her good, she was all cloudy, but they had this music going that gave me goose bumps, huge ones.

And I liked how nobody believed the children about Mary appearing but then at the end of the movie she did a miracle with the sun and
then
they believed all right, they believed like crazy. Everyone got down on their knees in the mud and a little boy threw away his crutches and stood up and walked, and an old blind lady started screaming she could see, she could see!

That was the best movie I ever saw. Or Ralph either, he said so.

“Hey, Ralph?”

“Yeah?”

“That movie at school?”

“What about it.”

“That was the best movie we ever saw, wasn’t it.”

“Just about.”

“You said it was the best.”

“Did I?”