“That’s an unhappy story, all right. I heard Jimmy Boyle’s mother say once that what the Nazis did to the Jews was the world’s worst crime.”
His grandfather nodded and said, “An Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges, in a story called ‘Death and the Compass,’ has a character named Lönnrot say to the editor of the Yiddishe Zeitung newspaper, ‘Perhaps this crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions.’ To which the editor replies, ‘Like Christianity.’”
“A superstition is something that isn’t really true, right?”
“Correct. It’s a belief that has no basis in fact.”
“So is Christianity a superstition?”
“All religions are, Roy. Sometimes it makes people feel better to believe in one, and that’s all right. It’s when religion makes people mean and provokes or emboldens them to use their religion as an excuse or reason to harm those who don’t believe as they do that it turns bad.”
“Is that why the Nazis tried to kill all the Jews, because they had a different religion?”
“They did, but the Nazis thought the Jews were a tribe of troublemakers and wanted to get rid of them.”
“Earl Borg, the one-armed guy who rents shoes at the bowling alley, says the Jews think they’re better than everybody else.”
It began to rain and Roy’s grandfather said, “Come on, boy, let’s walk a little faster.”
“They’re not better than everybody else, are they?” asked Roy.
“No, the Jews are pretty much the same as everyone. They made a lot of enemies, though, by calling themselves the Chosen People.”
“Who chose them?”
“God, they said.”
“You mean God spoke to them?”
“Anything is possible, Roy. Ruth spoke to Daniel, didn’t she?”
Haircut
Roy overheard his mother telling her friend Kay that Rocco the barber, who lived next door, had molested her on the front steps of her house. Kay and his mother were sitting in the livingroom and Roy, who was nine years old, was standing in the front hallway where the women could not see him.
“He was very nice at first,” said Roy’s mother, “just making conversation, then all of a sudden he tried to kiss me on the mouth. I turned my head away but he kept trying, pushing himself at me and putting his hands on my breasts. I pushed him away and yelled, ‘Rape!’ I called him a whoremaster because his wife, Maria, told me he’d been a pimp in Naples during the war. She was probably one of his girls.”
Kay was an on-and-off girlfriend of Roy’s Uncle Buck, his mother’s brother. She was a glamorous woman, a redhead who looked like Rita Hayworth and wore wonderful perfume. Roy was always glad to see her because Kay would kiss and hug him and he could smell her. She was married to a rich lawyer but she always went out with Buck when he visited Chicago. Once Roy had asked his uncle why he hadn’t married Kay and Buck said, “Well, Roy, there are some girls you marry and some you’re happy to see marry someone else, which doesn’t mean you can’t still see them sometimes.”
“Are you going to tell Rudy?” Kay asked Roy’s mother.
“I’m thinking about it. Rudy would have his legs broken.”
Rudy was Roy’s father. He and Roy’s mother had divorced when Roy was five but they were very friendly and always spoke well of one another around Roy. Often when his mother needed a favor or money in a hurry she called Rudy.
“He deserves it, the pig,” said Kay. “Rudy’s had worse things done to guys.”
Roy left the house quietly, closing the front door without letting the women hear him go. On his way to the park to play baseball, Roy could not help but picture in his mind Rocco the barber attacking his mother. He did not say anything about it to anyone at the park but later that afternoon, after his game had ended, Roy walked up to Ojibway Boulevard to where Rocco’s barber shop was and stood across the street.
It was late August and the air was heavy. As the sky darkened, a few raindrops fell and a weak wind began to blow. Rocco’s dog, a three-legged Doberman pinscher named Smoky, was chained, as usual, to a pole in front of the barber shop. One story was that Smoky had lost his left rear leg in a fight to the death with a wolverine when Rocco had taken the dog with him on a hunting trip to Michigan or Wisconsin. Tommy Cunningham told Roy that Rocco’s son, Amelio, who was six years older than Roy and Tommy, said Smoky had killed the wolverine by biting it in the throat but that the wolverine had attacked Smoky first and torn off the dog’s leg. Another story was that Smoky had been hit by a bus and run over on Ojibway Boulevard while he was chasing a kid and trying to bite him, which is the one Roy believed because Smoky tried to bite any kid who came close to him.
Roy took out his Davy Crockett pocket knife and opened it. He crossed the street and waited until there were no passersby watching. Just at a moment when Smoky had his big dark brown head turned to lick the stub of his missing leg, Roy darted at the dog and plunged the blade into Smoky’s right eye. The animal howled and whipped his head around, dislodging the knife, which clattered to the sidewalk. Roy quickly picked it up and ran. He did not wait to see Rocco and other men come out of the barber shop to see what Smoky was howling and whimpering about.
When Roy got home, his mother and Kay were not there. He rinsed the blood off his knife at the kitchen sink, wiped it clean with a dish towel, then went into his room and buried it at the bottom of his toy chest. He went back into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of chocolate milk, carried it onto the back porch and sat down on the top step. The rain started coming down harder.
The next time Roy passed Rocco’s barber shop, Smoky was not chained in front. Roy would go to Arturo’s Barber College to get his hair cut, even though it was farther from his house. The guys learning to cut hair there were butchers but they only charged a quarter. Roy hated to go to the barber’s anyway. He wished he never had to get a haircut again.
The Invention of Rock ’n’ Roll
The first record Roy ever bought was a 45 rpm single of Little Richard singing “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” when he was nine years old. Later the same year, 1956, he bought his first LP, the soundtrack album of the movie The Man with the Golden Arm, which featured Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne, Conte and Pete Candoli, and other jazz musicians. Neither of these recordings were examples of the kind of music his mother and grandmother played on the piano and often sang; those tunes were standards and popular songs like “La vie en rose,” “Satan Takes a Holiday” and “It Had to Be You.” Roy liked those songs but as soon as he heard Little Richard banging out on the piano the first few chords of “Lucille” and screeching the lyrics, followed by “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” “Tutti Frutti” and “Slippin’ and Slidin’,” he knew there was another world beyond “Autumn Leaves” or “If I Didn’t Care” and he was crazy to find out about it.
There was a guy named Gin Bottle Sam who showed up now and again on Blackhawk Avenue sitting on a metal milk bottle crate playing his harmonica for change, which appreciative passersby tossed into an upside down short-brimmed hat Sam kept by his feet on the sidewalk in front of him. Roy had stopped to listen to Sam a couple of times and the next time he saw him Roy asked Sam what kind of music it was that he was playing.
“Blues, mostly,” he said. “Might put a little pep into a pop’lar tune peoples knowin’, somethin’ more famil’ar make ’em give up a few extry pennies.”
It was an afternoon in mid-November when Roy asked Gin Bottle Sam about his music. The sky was gray-brown and full of black specks, so Roy knew it was about to snow. Sam warmed himself with a swig from a half-pint bottle he kept in a side pocket of his long blue overcoat. Roy’s friend the Viper, who was two years older, had told him Sam’s name, but Roy noticed that the liquid in the bottle Sam was sipping from on this particular day was dark brown, not clear like gin.
“Fo’ zample, tune I just been playin’s ‘Sportin’ Life,’ wrote by
Brownie McGhee. Fixin’ now to do ‘Long Distance’ by Muddy Waters, real name McKinley Morganfield. Like me, he come up to Chicago from Miss’ippi make his bones. He the man invented rock an’ roll, you best believe.”
Sam slipped the bottle back into his overcoat pocket and began to sing.
“You say you love me, darlin’, please call me on the phone sometime. You say you love me, darlin’, please call me on the phone sometime. Give me a call, ease my worried mind.”
Roy listened closely as Sam breathed in and out on his harmonica. A couple of pedestrians pitched a dime or a quarter into the short brim.
When Sam finished the song, Roy asked him, “Is it called the blues because you blew into the harmonica?”
“Well, no. It’s all up in the feelin’, though you do got to blow to make it happen. Don’t need to be a reg’lar instrument you got to blow into, though. Can be hands beatin’ on a log, or dogs howlin’ with chains fix roun’ they neck. Men, too, you best believe.”
Roy only had a nickel on him but he put it into Sam’s hat. Sam tooted twice on his harmonica, then chuckled and picked up the change he had earned. He was wearing red and green cotton gloves with the fingertips cut off. Sam rattled the coins in his left hand and grinned at Roy. Several of his teeth were missing and he had blood spots in the whites of his eyes.
“You got to listen, boy,” he said. “You got to study on what it is you hearin’ an’ maybe one time you begin to understand.”
Sam stood up and dropped the coins into the left side pocket of his overcoat. He put the harmonica into the other pocket, then shook Roy’s right hand with his own.
“Thanks for talking to me,” said Roy.
“I was a orphan,” Sam said. “You know what’s a orphan?”
Roy nodded.
“Was no good for me where I been put, so I was about your size I took out for my own self. And here now you askin’ me questions. Ain’t that good news.”
The next morning Roy told the Viper about his conversation with Gin Bottle Sam. They were walking by the canal that cut through the neighborhood and the sky was already darker than it had been the previous afternoon. There had not yet been any precipitation but a heavy snow was predicted to arrive by evening.
“What do you think Sam meant by beating on logs and dogs howling with chains around their necks?” asked Roy.
“Slaves in the South would sing while they picked cotton and chopped wood,” said the Viper. “Makin’ music while they worked made ’em feel better.”
“Do you know who Muddy Waters is?”
“Yeah, he worked on a plantation where he was discovered, then he came to Chicago to make records.”
“Sam says he’s the one who invented rock ’n’ roll.”
The Viper laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Whenever I play a record by Little Richard or Elvis Presley,” said the Viper, “my mother shouts, ‘What’s all that poundin’ and howlin’ about?’”
Infantry
It was in his eighth grade history class that Roy learned the word infantry had originated in ancient Rome to describe the youngest soldiers in the Roman legions. These were infanteria, children no older than Roy and his friends, who were put at the front of the invading army, almost certainly to be sacrificed so that the following troops, comprised of older, veteran soldiers, would be preserved for the most serious, decisive parts of the battles.
After school the day they’d learned about the infantry of ancient Rome, Roy said to the Viper, “I bet it was only the poorest families whose children were forced to fight. The rich people paid to keep their sons out of the army.”
“Probably,” the Viper said, “but at least the kid soldiers didn’t have to go to school.”
Roy thought a lot about the Romans’ use of young boys in their army, and after he read about Hadrian’s Wall he imagined a situation in which the boy infantry revolted and deserted and ran away to an isolated part of the empire and established their own encampment.
“What if the kids built a big wall like Emperor Hadrian did?” Roy said to the Viper and Jimmy Boyle.
The boys were standing together under the awning of Vincenzo’s Shoe Repair near the corner of Dupre and Winnebago early on a Saturday morning. They were waiting for a few other guys to meet up with them before walking over to the fieldhouse at St. Rose of Lima where they were going to play basketball. It was a cold, gray, drizzly day and there weren’t many people on the streets yet.
“Emperor who?” asked Jimmy.
“In 122 A.D., the Roman emperor Hadrian began building these enormous walls, like one-sided forts, to establish boundaries,” Roy explained. “The longest one was about eighty miles and it was so tall and impenetrable that no enemy could get over or through it.”
“They could go around,” said the Viper.
“Yeah, but that would take a very long time and the far ends of the walls were built up against big, rugged rock formations or hills. The kid soldiers could protect themselves by constructing a smaller version of Hadrian’s Wall. They could stockpile weapons, mostly crossbows that they could fire from the parapet at anyone who came to get them.”
“What’s a parapet?” Jimmy asked.
“A narrow platform or walkway at the top that ran the length of the wall.”
“What about food?”
“They’d hunt,” said Roy, “and they could bring along goats and chickens for milk and eggs.”
“This didn’t happen, though,” the Viper said. “You’re just makin’ it up.”
“I’m sure some kids thought of doin’ it,” said Roy. “The infantry knew they were doomed. Why would they stick around once they saw how the legions used them?”
Magic Frank, Billy Kristelis and an older kid Roy knew only by sight and reputation named Bobby Dorp jaywalked across Winnebago and joined Roy, Jimmy and the Viper.
“Hey, fellas,” Frank said, “this is Bobby Dorp. He’s gonna play with us today.”
Dorp nodded at the other boys and they nodded back. Roy knew that Dorp had dropped out of high school after a girl named Mitzi Mink had accused him of molesting her in a hallway and that he now worked delivering groceries for the A & P on Minnetonka. The Viper had played basketball with him before, so he knew Dorp was good.
“Great,” said the Viper. “Bobby can shoot with either hand, guys.”
“He’s ambidestric,” said Billy Kristelis.
“Which hand are you better with?” asked Roy.
Dorp was at least two or three inches taller than the other boys but he was skinny. His coat was too small for him so his wrists stuck out. Roy noticed how long they were.
“I shoot about the same with either one,” said Dorp. “When I’m off, I miss with both.”
“Bobby’s gonna join the army,” said Magic Frank.
“When I’m seventeen,” Dorp said, “in three months. My brother Dominic’s in already.”
“What happened to him?” asked Jimmy Boyle. “Is he okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Dorp. “He’s in Germany now, but he’s gonna re-up so he can go to Indochina. Bein’ in the army’s the best way to see the world, Dom says. I’m goin’ in the infantry, like he did. They’re the ones who get to do the real fightin’.”
Drifting Down the Old Whangpoo
There was a mysterious old guy Roy saw now and again walking in the neighborhood who would disappear for weeks or months until Roy thought he must have died or gone away and then suddenly there he was, wearing the same baggy brown suit and black slouch hat with a crumpled brim. Roy wondered who the man was and asked around about him but nobody had any information. Most everyone Roy asked had not noticed the guy, not even Don Diego Rosagante, who stood all day and night outside Phil and Leonard’s Restaurant on Bavaria Avenue opening the door for tips. Don Diego Rosagante, whose real name was Emmanuel Sn
itzer, prided himself on being at the very least on nodding acquaintance with everybody in the neighborhood. He called himself Don Diego because, as he explained, “that was Zorro’s real handle.” He’d adopted Rosagante, which means “splendid” in Spanish, “because it’s a lot classier-sounding than Snitzer.” Don Diego was forty-six years old and lived with his mother over Rube and Ruby’s Laundromat where his mother worked beating dust and dirt out of rugs in a lot out back.
After Roy described the man to him, Don Diego said, “Oh, yeah, I think maybe I seen him goin’ by a few times, always from across the street, though. He looks like that actor got knifed or poisoned by a child prostitute named Little Kiss in a floating cat house driftin’ down the old Whangpoo River in the movie Shanghai After Midnight. That Little Kiss was a real doll.”
Roy figured the guy was in his late sixties or seventies because he was slightly stooped and shuffled his feet. A few months passed between sightings and then, just before Roy’s twelfth birthday, on the first really cold day in October, the man was heading in Roy’s direction on Washtenaw.
“Pardon me, mister,” Roy said to him before the man could pass, “could I ask you a question?”
He stopped and looked at Roy. They were almost the same height. Roy had not noticed before how short the man was. His nose was very long and mottled like an old dill pickle, and his eyes were almost closed so that Roy could not tell what color they were.
“You already have,” the man said.
Roy hesitated for a moment, then smiled and said, “You’re right, I did.”
“What’s your next question?”
“Do you live around here?”
“There’s no price on my head, if that’s what you’re looking for. No reward for turning me in.”
The man spoke with an accent that Roy did not recognize.
“Where are you from?”
The Roy Stories Page 4
