Ghost Years, page 7
“Was it the same kid you said almost died after sticking one of his arms into a bee hive and got stung a hundred times?”
“Earl Weyerholz, yeah.”
“He should stay away from anything that crawls or flies.”
“He drowned last summer, diving into the river. Hit his head on a rock. Earl was crazy, a daredevil. I liked him.”
“Those gangs got lots of members,” said Paddy. “They sell drugs and commit robberies. We play ball and have parties.”
“You want to hold people up?” asked Winky. “Besides, we only have ten, fifteen guys. The Cobras got over a hundred and most of ’em get shot or go to prison.”
“How about Comancheros?” said Roy.
“Who were they?”
“A hundred years ago, maybe more, they were whites and Mexicans who joined up in Texas with the Comanche Indians to steal cattle and raid ranches and do some really bad stuff like kidnap women and sell ’em.”
“How do you know about them?”
“I read about the Apache and Comanche Indians. The Comancheros were outlaws. The Mescalero Apaches used to bury their enemies alive up to their necks in hot sand and leave them there to be bitten by insects and burn to death in the desert sun.”
“Well, we’re not Indians or Mexicans,” said Paddy, “and none of us have been in Texas.”
“The guys in gangs on the South Side aren’t vampires or snakes, either. None of ’em even seen a cobra except in a movie or at the Lincoln Park Zoo.”
“Let’s think about it more,” said Winky.
“The Comancheros and Indians would meet up at Rio de las lenguas, the river of tongues, and in El Valle de las lágrimas, the valley of tears, to divide up what they stole and the kidnapped women.”
“Where’d you learn Spanish?” Paddy asked Roy.
“From the Cuban kids I played with in Key West, Florida, when my mother and I lived there.”
Roy and his friends did not change their club name, but when the movie The Comancheros, starring John Wayne, came to the Nortown Theater, a few of them went with Roy to see it.
Afterwards, Roy said, “They got it all wrong. They made the Comancheros good guys and John Wayne a Texas Ranger rescuing white women, takin’ back stolen goods and burning down Indian villages.”
Jimmy Boyle said, “I saw John Wayne on TV talking about how white men should take over countries everywhere and civilize the world, that Indians and natives in Africa have to be controlled and put to work.”
“John Wayne wouldn’t last long walkin’ alone on a street on the South Side of Chicago,” said Paddy.
Better Than School
“You ever see that old movie on TV where the guy who’s a crooked gambler picks up a pretty girl on a train? She gives him kind of a hard time at first but she likes his looks, too, and gets off the train with him. Later she finds out he murdered two people back in the city they just came from. She’s already agreed to marry the guy but now decides to run away. She gets a girl who lives in the same apartment building she’s been shacked up in with the killer to drive her to another city to catch a train, figuring the guy might look for her at the train station or airport in the city where they’ve been living. The two girls take off when the guy’s not around. When he gets back he notices the other girl’s car is gone from its space in the apartment house garage and asks the parking kid about it. The kid tells him the two girls took off together and his girl put a suitcase in the trunk of the car. The girl who’s driving told the kid to keep the parking space open, that she’d be back before midnight. He asked her if she had enough gas and she said she had enough to get to Oil City and back.”
Roy said to his friend Winky, who was telling him about the movie as they walked to school, “So the killer guesses what’s up and drives his car to Oil City.”
“Yeah, but before he gets there he sees the other girl in her car alone on the road heading in the other direction. He makes a U-turn and catches up to her and forces her to pull over onto the side of the road. He sticks a gun in her face and she tells him she dropped Lola at the train station in Oil City and that Lola bought a ticket to New York that leaves in two hours. The killer gets back in his car, turns it around again, and drives like a demon.”
“He finds her just as she’s boarding the train,” said Roy, “pulls his piece to shoot her because she’s the only one who knows that he committed those murders, but she gets on the train before he can. Then he jumps on the train, finds her, and sits in the seat next to her just as the train begins to move.”
“Right!” said Winky. “You seen this movie.”
“No, I’m just telling you what I think happens. After the train is rolling, he forces her to go to the ladies room, pushes her in, squeezes himself in with her, and closes the door. He knows if he fires his gun it’ll make too much noise and he’ll get caught so he starts to strangle her, but he didn’t lock the door and a woman passenger opens it.”
“This is better than school! Okay, then what happens?”
“She grabs his gun out of his coat pocket and shoots him.”
“No, the woman who opened the door screams and a conductor comes who fights with the killer. Other men come who drag the killer down, and a train cop puts handcuffs on him. They should have ended it the way you said.”
“What color hair did Lola have?”
“Dark, it was in black and white. Why?”
“She was a blonde in my movie.”
Another Irishman
Roy was on his way to school when he saw a dead man lying on the northwest corner of Desoto and Washtenaw. He was on the southeast corner when he spotted the body so he crossed over to have a closer look. The man was fully dressed, shabby as his coat and trousers were, stretched out flat on his back. His unshaven face was dirt-blackened, his eyes were closed. At first Roy was not certain the man was dead, so he spoke to him.
“Mister, are you dead or sleeping?”
The man did not reply. Roy bent down close to his face and repeated his question. There was still no response. Roy stood up straight and kicked the body lightly with his right foot. The man did not move. Neither was his chest moving, so Roy decided that he wasn’t breathing.
The streets were empty except for a woman walking a dog on Desoto. Roy ran across to her and said, “Excuse me, lady, but there’s a dead guy lying on the sidewalk over there.”
He pointed to the northwest corner and the woman looked over.
“He’s probably passed out drunk,” she said. “Another Irishman who can’t hold his Jameson’s.”
“He’s not breathing,” said Roy. “I’m on my way to school. I’m in the third grade at Torquemada. Maybe you should call the cops.”
“They’re all Irish, too,” said the woman. “Who isn’t in this neighborhood except for the Polacks on Rockwell.”
The dog, a black cocker spaniel, began barking.
“Yes, Clancy, darlin’, we’ll be gettin’ on now. He’s hungry as a beggar in Belfast. I haven’t fed him yet. You hurry, boy, you don’t want to be late.”
A cold wind hit them. Roy saw Clancy shiver.
“Are you going to call the cops?”
“After I feed Clancy, if I’ve a mind to.”
She walked away.
When Roy got to school he told his friend Jimmy Boyle about the dead body.
“Most likely he ain’t dead,” said Jimmy, “just pissed and passed out on patrol last night tryin’ to find his house. Does he look familiar?”
“No.”
“That happened to my uncle Sean a couple times when he lived with us.”
“I kicked him but he didn’t move.”
The school bell rang.
“Do you think I should tell Mrs. McCarthy about him?”
“Nah, don’t bother, she’s Irish, too. When she was still Miss Kelly she used to go around with Sean until she met Frank McCarthy and married him.”
Later that morning, during recess, Wendy Wicklow, Roy’s friend Winky’s sister, who was in the fourth grade, came up to Roy and said, “I heard you saw a dead man lying in the street with a bullet hole in his forehead.”
“I saw a dead body but he didn’t have a bullet hole in his forehead. Who told you that?”
“I don’t know, one of the kids, everybody’s talkin’ about it, that it was a Polish guy. Billy O’Brian says that’s how the Dublin Boy-os, the gang from Bridgeport, executes people. They call a bullet between the eyes an Irish Kiss.”
The Bravest Boy in the World
Roy’s fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Brown, asked his class what person, living or dead, they would like to be other than themselves. Jimmy Boyle raised his hand first.
“General Custer,” he said. “He was a great soldier and Indian fighter who didn’t always follow orders and did things his own way until his Seventh Cavalry was way outnumbered at the Little Big Horn when a bunch of different tribes teamed up and killed Custer and all of his men. Other than that he did okay.”
Bitsy DiPena raised her hand and said, “Marilyn Monroe. She’s the most beautiful and popular movie star and I’m blonde, too. She can get any man she wants to marry her.”
Roy raised his hand and said, “Sabu.”
Mr. Brown asked, “Who is Sabu?”
“A kid from India who’s an actor. He can ride elephants and wild horses and fight tigers and leopards with his bare hands and only a knife. He was in The Thief of Baghdad, Elephant Boy, Jungle Boy and Cobra Woman. He’s a little guy, too, who only wears a diaper and a turban and goes barefoot. Sabu’s the bravest boy in the world.”
After class, Valentina Randàgia, whose family had only recently moved to Chicago, stopped Roy in the hallway and said, “Tell me about the cobra girl. I’ve always wanted to be a snake or have the power to change into one.”
Roy had not spoken to Valentina before, nor really looked closely at her. She was a little taller than Roy, had long black hair and small green eyes.
“There’s twin girls on an island, one’s good and one’s bad. The evil twin can turn herself into a cobra when she wants to murder someone. She’s jealous of the good sister who’s engaged to marry a handsome white guy. Sabu plays his sidekick, Kado. The actor who played the Wolfman is in the movie, too. Why do you want to be a snake?”
“To crawl around under people where they can’t see me. That way I can sneak up on boys and bite them.”
“Just boys, or girls, too?”
“Girls don’t interest me, it’s boys I want to bite.”
The bell for the next class rang. Valentina didn’t move. She kept staring into Roy’s eyes.
“Where did you live before coming here?”
“New Jersey.”
“What does your father do?”
“I don’t know him. He ran away before I was born. My mother and my Aunt Eugenia, who lives with us, are fortune-tellers, they’re sisters. Eugenia was a famous burlesque performer in Newark called La Trafitta before she got too old. Trafitta means stab wound in Italian. Would you like to come over to my house?”
“Which sister is the evil one, your mother or your aunt?”
Valentina did not answer Roy’s question. Her eyes were even greener now and tinier.
“Have you bitten many boys?”
“You won’t come to my house, will you?”
The hallway was empty. Valentina turned around and walked away.
When Jimmy and Roy were walking home from school, Jimmy said, “I saw you talkin’ to that new girl. She’s different lookin’, not pretty exactly but she gets me goin’ a little. You like her?”
“I don’t think I’m the right boy for her.”
“Oh, yeah? Who is?”
“Maybe Sabu.”
White Roses
Kitty had a date with Johnny Campo, their third, but she was unsure about keeping it. He would expect more from her, that she knew. Not that he wasn’t attractive, in a heavy-lidded, he-mannish way, and personable, as well as being the owner of a Cadillac dealership on Clark Street, but something was missing for her. Perhaps he’d been too respectful. Kitty didn’t know what to do. When she’d asked him about his name and said she had never before known anyone named Campo, he told her that it originally had been Camposanto, cemetery in Italian.
“My father changed it after his father died. He was superstitious, thought it might be bad luck. I was a little boy then, just beginning grammar school, and didn’t want some other Sicilian immigrant’s kid to call me Graveyard Johnny, to make fun of me. He also changed the spelling of my first name from Gianni to John. ‘Sicily is where mafiosi come from,’ my dad said. ‘We’re Americans now.’ ”
Kitty did not tell him that her ex-husband, Rudy, had many friends and business associates who were immigrants from Sicily and other parts of Italy. After Rudy died, two years before, several of those men and their wives had been very kind and generous to her. She and Rudy’s son, Roy, who was only five at the time, they assured her, would always be part of their families; Kitty could come to them for anything they needed, including money.
Jocko Mosca was especially forthcoming. He was supposedly the boss of the organized crime syndicate in Chicago, but when she had asked Rudy about this he laughed and said, “Lies like that sell newspapers. Jocko is a businessman. He does things in unconventional ways sometimes and he’s well off because of it. It’s his competitors who are envious of his success, so they spread rumors, bad mouth him and try to horn in on his territory.” Kitty remembered that Jocko’s family was from Sicily and that his real first name was Giacomo.
She decided to call Johnny and tell him Roy wasn’t feeling well, that she didn’t feel comfortable leaving him with a babysitter. Before she could call, the doorbell rang. Kitty opened the front door and Johnny Campo was standing there, holding a long, narrow box.
“Hi, doll, I’m early, I know, but I got us a reservation at DeLisa’s for dinner and the first show. Nat ‘King’ Cole is appearing tonight. You know how difficult it is to get in there but a buddy of mine and his wife can’t make it so he gave us his spot. These are for you.”
Campo held the box out toward Kitty.
“They’re roses, white ones. I know how much you like them.”
Kitty took the box.
“Look, Johnny, I can’t go. I was just going to phone you. Roy’s sick. June DeLisa is a good friend of mine, we can go another time.”
She could see behind him snow beginning to fall.
“Well, can I come in?”
“No, Johnny, I don’t want you to catch Roy’s cold. It could be the flu, he’s running a temperature. After calling you I was going to call the doctor.”
“It’s snowing,” said Campo.
“I can see. You’d better get going before the roads get bad. I’m sorry, Johnny, really I am.”
“All right, Kitty. I’ll buzz you later.”
“Don’t. Roy might be asleep and the ringing would wake him up. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Kitty pushed the door closed. She was holding the box. She realized that she hadn’t thanked him for the roses and was about to open the door to do so but she hesitated and waited until she heard Johnny’s car start and be driven away. Kitty opened the door and watched the snow come down in the darkness. Roy was at his friend Tommy Cunningham’s house, he was going to spend the night there.
Crépuscule with Kitty
Kitty loved listening to her mother play “Autumn Leaves” on the piano. Rose sang the lyrics quietly while she played, often so softly that only she could understand the words.
“The autumn leaves/drift by my window/the autumn leaves/of red and gold. . . .”
Kitty was twenty-nine now, her mother was fifty-eight. In less than a year, Rose would die from a heart attack. Kitty would be thirty with an eight-year-old son to raise by herself. Roy’s father had died when their boy was four, after which Rose had come to live with her daughter and grandson. Listening to her mother at the piano in the living room, Kitty felt the same as she had as a child, the age Roy was now, before Rose married her second husband, whom Kitty had never really gotten to know.
Kitty herself had remarried, a marriage that lasted only six months before being annulled. She was beginning to believe that marriage was not a good idea, at least not for her or her mother. Who among her friends was truly satisfied in her marriage?
Kitty sat at her dressing table and examined her face in the mirror. I should have a mask made, she thought, so that not only will people I know be unable to recognize me but I’ll see them differently. Only Roy and Rose—maybe not even my mother—will know who I am. I can change my name, move to Los Angeles.
Kitty stared at herself for a long time, imagining what she could look like and wondering if disguising herself would really make a difference in her behavior, in her ability to make better decisions.
It was time to pick up Roy at his school. Kitty took a closer look at her face. She was still pretty but something that used to be there was missing. Her face was changing by itself. She wouldn’t need a mask.
Kitty and Kay
“Did he try with you?”
“He tries with every girl.”
“And?”
“And what? Oh, no, nothing. I won’t hold it against him.”
“Won’t?”
“I told him he could call me sometime.”
“Quit, Kay. It won’t go anywhere.”
“Well, we’re no angels.”
“I have to hang up, Roy will be home from school any minute. He has a doctor’s appointment.”
“Anything serious?”
“No, they just have to remove the cast on his wrist and check that it’s all right now.”
“How did he hurt it?”
“Punched a kid in the head. It was sprained, not broken.”
“Men.”
“He’s nine years old.”
“Roy’s a handsome boy, Kitty. He’ll have plenty of girls.”
“Forget him, Kay.”
“Who? Roy?”
