“It was your idea, Flick,” I mumbled through the sweat.
“What do you mean, my idea! It was Kissel started all of it. Rollin’ around in the dirt like a nut, with your tongue hangin’ out. It was Kissel!”
“I got a right to roll around in the dirt. It’s a free country. I never even knew that spigot was there.” Kissel was the color of a dirty dishrag with fear.
“You started hitting it with the bat, Schwartz,” I said, giving him a shove.
Schwartz, as the guilty always have, took the offensive. “Nobody forced y’ to drink it. I ain’t your boss. You hit it too, Flick, with that board!”
We trudged on through the stifling heat. The first mosquitoes were coming on duty. A ragged sparrow flew by on his way to the city dump. Each of us carried his own private knot of fear that the end had come. We had many such terrors in our lives. For instance, it was well known that if you licked the point of an indelible pencil, thus purpling your tongue, there was no hope. Or, it was fully recognized by the best medical authorities among the kids that a sure way to commit suicide in a particularly nasty manner was to swallow a wad of bubble gum, which would “cause your guts to stick together.” Naturally, it was believed that eating too much candy caused you to “get worms,” which, while not fatal, was certainly serious. There were hundreds of these mortal dangers that we believed in, and I must admit that even today I’m very careful around indelible pencils and bubble gum. We all had heard of the kid who once cut open a golf ball, which had, of course, exploded, blowing up his neighborhood. Then there was the two-aspirins-and-a-swig-of-Coca-Cola, which was guaranteed to make you drunker than a skunk. It goes without saying that drinking a tank full of river water had to be, at the very least, fatal.
We were listlessly shuffling in the general direction of our various houses. Instinctively, the way a herd of Guernsey cows heads for the barn at twilight, kids in the flatlands of Indiana mosey barnward at suppertime.
“Y’know, that water tasted kinda funny.” Schwartz juicily shot a wad of bubble gum at a passing brown-and-white rat terrier that was innocently going about his job of knocking over garbage cans and rooting among the coffee grounds. “Sorta like rusty iron, or something.”
The rat terrier glared indignantly at Schwartz, his feelings clearly hurt. Even rat terriers have some pride.
“Well, stupid, that spigot was rusty iron. You dummies don’t believe that jerk Clarence, do you?”
“Nah.”
“Nah.”
“Nah.”
We all joined in the loud chorus of denial, about as phony as a set of mail order celluloid false teeth.
“Tasted kinda oily, too,” Schwartz said, licking his lips noisily to recapture the rich bouquet of tap water.
“That won’t hurt you, fathead,” Flick snorted, flipping a bottle cap toward a passing Studebaker. “My grandpa drinks kerosene when he gets a cold. Never hurt him, and he’s about two hundred years old. He oughta know something.”
“Kerosene!” Kissel was astounded. “He drinks kerosene? Like the kind you get at the Shell station, and they use in lanterns?”
“Yup. He drinks it right out of our lantern that we keep in the basement in case the lights go out.”
“Boy!” Schwartz was impressed. “I’ll bet he don’t smoke no cigars after he does that. That’d cure his cold!”
“No, smart-ass. He chews tobacco. Chewin’ tobacco is why he’s lived so long, he says. That and drinkin’ kerosene.” Flick concluded the medical seminar by emitting a low, musical burp.
We split up at Ace’s Rack’n Q Poolroom and headed to our various comforting nests. The river water was never mentioned again. Since nobody died, it’s a good bet that Clarence was giving us the business. Ever since, though, I never drink out of free-lance faucets. You never know.
I drifted in through the kitchen door.
“Don’t slam the screen,” my mother said absently, the way you intone something that you’ve said a million times before, until you don’t even know that you’re saying it. My kid brother was under the kitchen table, pushing a small green dump truck around on the linoleum.
“Rrraahhhr, raaaahhhr.” He made a mean, nasty little sound, something like a dentist’s drill digging into a root canal.
“Eeeeeiiinnngggg … raaaahhhhr.”
“Will you cut that out, Randy. You’re getting on my nerves. Now go get washed up for supper.”
“Eeeeeiiinnnnggg … awwwwrrrrr …”
She clanged open the oven door to inspect her meatloaf. The kitchen was even hotter than the outdoors, if possible. Our white plastic AC/DC radio, with its cracked cabinet and its heavy 60-cycle hum, droned atop the refrigerator.
“When the DEEP purple falls …
Over SLEEpy garden WALLS …”
Life was rich and full.
I headed for the bathroom and sloshed some Mercurochrome on a punctured thumb knuckle, after extracting the malevolent sticker spine with my teeth.
“Your father’s home, your father’s home!”
I heard the distant roar of the family Pontiac out in the driveway. The old man always revved up the engine a couple of times before he switched the key off. “Blows out the carbon,” he always said after the operation. I strolled into the kitchen, licking my aching thumb.
“You cut yourself?” My mother stirred a little salt into the canned peas that were heating on the stove.
“Nah, just a sticker.”
“LOST in a DEEEP purple DREAM …”
“Would you turn that darn radio off? It makes your father mad.” My mother glanced over her shoulder at me, rattling the aluminum rheostats she wore in her hair. I flipped off the little AC/DC beauty in mid-dream. It let out a squawk and expired, after a final blast of phlegmy hum.
The screen door slammed open. The old man lurched into the kitchen, his tie at half-mast, his face bathed in sweat. Without a word he rushed to the refrigerator, wrenched the door open, and rummaged frantically among the wilted lettuce, the horseradish jars, the oleo cartons.
“Aha! I knew there was one little sweetheart left.” His mitt clutched a can of Blatz. Flinging his suit jacket over the back of his chair, he sank down at the kitchen table, popped the can, took a big slug of beer, all in one fluid motion.
“Goddamn traffic.”
He took another quick gulp.
“Whew, boy. Hot as the hinges of hell.”
Over by the stove, my mother stirred the mashed potatoes.
“Was it hot at the office today?”
“Ha! Don’t ask. Those crummy cheapskates. You’d think a five-dollar electric fan would break the bastards. Boy, what a bunch of cheapskates. Zudock brought his own fan from home, but it blew a fuse. Crummy cheapskates.”
He shook the Blatz vigorously to give it a head.
“Mrs. Kissel had to borrow some ice cubes today. Their refrigerator caught on fire.”
“No kidding? Sorry I missed it.” The old man finished off his beer. He flipped the can neatly into the garbage bag next to the stove.
“Hey, dog-collar, how’d the Sox do today?”
“The Indians beat ’em six to three. They got five runs in the ninth.”
I was expected to have the daily ball scores for the old man when he got home from work. It was almost always bad news. He was a lifelong White Sox fan, which, of course, only made him more frustrated than a normal person. Year after year it was not only failure, but also humiliation. I went on:
“Yankees beat the Athletics fifteen to two.”
The old man unbuttoned his shirt while the sweat dripped from his chin.
“Goddamn Yankees.”
“Supper’s ready, supper’s ready, supper’s ready,” my mother sang out gaily, bravely trying to change the subject. She knew from long, mean experience that once the old man got on the subject of the Yankees the whole evening was shot. Her meatloaves were famous even among such notoriously picky meatloaf connoisseurs as my aunt Clara, who had made a life’s work of not
liking anything.
We began supper, as it was always called in the Midwest in those days, since dinner was a meal that was served only on Sunday afternoons, as in “Sunday dinner,” and was somewhat ceremonial. Supper was what you ate at night, after work.
“Pass the catsup.” The old man hammered at the bottom of the Heinz bottle. A great gout of his favorite gourmet treat gushed over the peas.
“Mrs. Kissel threw the dishwater on it.”
I looked up from my plate and asked: “On what?”
“She had to get the hose,” my mother continued as she served the mashed potatoes. “Sit up, Randy. You can’t eat under the table like that.”
“Threw the dishwater on what?” the old man barked. At least he had forgotten the Yankees.
“The refrigerator. It caught on fire. Mrs. Van Hoose was visiting her. They were eating bridge mix at the time.”
So the conversation went; labyrinthine, almost Byzantine in its complexity, as the kitchen grew hotter and hotter. Sometimes in Indiana, perversely, the heat grows as the sun disappears and night takes over.
The old man leaned back in his chair and luxuriously lit one of his beloved Luckies.
“How ’bout taking the car and going out for a ride?”
My mother, who was putting the dishes into the sink, said, “That’d be nice.”
“ ’Ray, h’ray!” Randy, who had once again sullenly refused to eat, came to life.
“Going for a ride” was a big thing in those days. Whenever the old man suggested such a debauch, he was in a good mood.
We trooped out into the Pontiac amid the soft, primal hum of a billion mosquitoes. Fireflies winked around the garage. A few crickets chirped doggedly in the steamy humidity.
We always sat in the same seats in the Pontiac; the old man behind the wheel, of course, my mother next to him, directly behind her Randy, who began kicking the seat ahead of him with his tennis shoes, and me behind the king of the house.
–Brooommm, Brroommm …
He gunned the mighty Eight.
“Listen to that power.”
Bar-ROOOOM.
The Pontiac was the very center of the old man’s existence. It had replaced his equally beloved Olds, and like an Arab chieftain tends to his horses, the old man meticulously curried and groomed his cars.
“Randy, would you stop kicking that seat! How many times have I told you not to do that?” My mother swatted a neat backhand in the direction of the kid brother.
“Awwwwww.” He scrunched down in his seat.
“What did you say? Don’t you give me any back talk.” He shut up, for the time being.
This seat-kicking business was an old battle between Randy and my mother.
The old man backed the car effortlessly out of the driveway and whipped neatly out onto the road. Although none of us knew it at the time, the wheels of great adventure were set in motion. This night would live in the memory of thousands, and would become one of the great legends of the Region.
The sun had finally set after the lingering Indiana twilight.
–SPLAT!
Some giant furry flying creature splattered its guts out over the windshield.
“Goddamn bugs.”
The old man spoke with no rancor, since bugs were a natural part of Indiana summer life and he, for one, accepted them.
“Why don’t you turn on the windshield wipers?” My mother was always giving the old man little helpful hints.
“Jeez, how stupid can you get? It’d smear that stuff all over the windshield.”
It was before the days of automatic windshield squirters, so viewing the world through bug juice was as natural as breathing.
“There goes Mr. Kissel, there goes Mr. Kissel,” Randy sang, thumping the seat back with his Keds.
“What a snootful! How ya doin’, Kissel?” The old man waved cheerily out the window at Kissel, who was staggering homeward from his nightly celebration at the Bluebird. He blearily peered at us, waving shakily, after which he fell heavily into a privet hedge.
The old man laughed sardonically. “He’s really tanked up tonight. He ain’t feelin’ no pain.”
“Poor Mrs. Kissel,” my mother said as she peered gloomily out her window at the passing scene.
“Wait’ll Kissel finds out the refrigerator caught on fire.” The old man laughed even more uproariously. The thought made me laugh, too. Naturally, Randy joined in.
“I fail to see the humor of that,” my mother said in a hurt voice. The old man didn’t answer; he just snickered on into the night. She gave him a mean look.
“Mrs. Van Hoose tried to put it out with a rug beater.”
The old man shook his head in mock amazement.
“Oh, Jesus,” was all he said.
Ever since that night I have had occasional fleeting visions, usually just before I fall asleep, of Mrs. Van Hoose banging away at a Kelvinator refrigerator with her mouth full of bridge mix, while the flames shot out the freezer compartment, and Mrs. Kissel flinging dishwater over the whole scene.
The hot summer air poured into the car windows like a flood of overheated oil. We drove past the ball park where I had spent the listless afternoon.
“I see they’re sprinkling the grass,” my mother observed, her spirits bouncing back after her brief sorrowful reverie over Mrs. Kissel’s failed life.
Sure enough, out there in the gloom I could see our faucet still squirting its fan of deadly river water into the night.
“Christ Almighty, no wonder our taxes are so high. Sprinklin’ the stickers.” The old man was always spotting evidences of further idiocy on the part of “stupid politicians,” all designed to increase the bite on the taxpayer.
The twin devils of his existence, “stupid politicians” and the “cheapskates” at the office, formed at least 95 percent of the conversation when he and his buddies got together at, say, the bowling alley.
“Jeez, look at those dummies, sprinklin’ the stickers!”
I kept my mouth shut.
“I gotta wee-wee,” Randy piped in his most irritating voice. There was something about just stepping into the car that apparently was a powerful, irresistible stimulant to his bladder.
“You’ll just have to wait till we get home.” My mother had been handling the wee-wee problem for years. Like most mothers, much of her life was spent in mopping up wee-wee left behind by everything from kids to turtles.
“But I gotta go!”
“You’ll just have to hold it.”
“Eeeeaaagghhh,” he whined nasally, making a sound that he had perfected since tothood. He had one of the most effective nasty whines of his generation.
“Will you knock off that damn whining!!” The old man’s voice was rich with warning. “You heard what your mother said. Now cut out the whining.”
That did it. It was before the days of Dr. Spock and the age of the mollycoddled moppet riding roughshod over his parents. The old man was the possessor of a lethal backhand, and he did not hesitate to use it when the occasion arose.
We rolled on, chattering away, enjoying the ride. We passed my old man’s favorite signboard, a giant, multicolored creation, brightly lit, starring an enormous, well-endowed bull, advertising Bull Durham. It bore the legend, under the bull, HER HERO. My mother modestly averted her gaze.
The old man lit up one of his Luckies. He coughed fitfully.
“Hey, I got an idea …” he wheezed, blowing smoke out of his nostrils. “How ’bout us going down and watching the mill for a while?”
“ ’Ray, ’Ray!” Randy cheered.
“Watching the mill” was a special treat known only to the residents of the Region. On hot nights, people would drive to the lakefront and park in the velvet blackness near the shore to watch the flickering Vesuvius fireworks of the blast furnace and the rolling mills across the dark waters. Cherry-red ingots and sepia-shaded orange glowing sprays of sparks flung high in the air by the Bessemer converters made a truly beautiful and even spectacular sight
as the hissing colors were reflected in the black waters of Lake Michigan. It had a curious hypnotic effect, since the mill was far enough away so that no sound came over the water, but the darkness and the lake somehow magnified the colors in the eerie light. It was a sight genuinely worth seeing. Heavy industry has a very distinct beauty all its own; mighty forces at work with the unearthly radiance of distant volcanoes.
“Boy, ain’t that somethin’?” The old man’s voice was edged with awe as the orange light played over our faces in the dark car.
The Pontiac was only one of a silent fleet bearing beauty lovers, all enjoying the colors, the mysterious majesty of barely controlled explosions, and the heat.
The smell of the lake was part of it, of course. Lake Michigan, that great, sullen, dangerous, beautiful body of water is, in midsummer, like a primitive reptilian animal in heat. For miles inland on such nights, the natives can “smell the lake.” It makes them restless, on edge; dangerous. Tonight was no exception. Maybe it was that damn lake that caused it all, but who’s to know?
We sat for a while in the blackness.
“Randy, go out and wee-wee now beside the car.”
My mother unerringly knew how to shatter a magic moment.
“I don’t have to wee-wee,” he whined.
Of course, I thought, one day the old man’s gonna kill that kid. And he deserves it.
“I thought you had to go.”
My mother hung in there.
“… Nahhh.”
The old man’s head swiveled in the darkness, and he turned the Ray on the kid.
“Look, you, if you don’t go now and I hear one more word about wee-wee tonight, you’re gonna feel it, y’hear?”
Randy mumbled something from deep in his seat.
“Whaat was that? Are you giving me back talk?”
Silence. As Hemingway would have put it, the wee-wee question was well and truly settled. For tonight.
We sat for a few moments more, enjoying the fireworks, when the old man laid a true goodie on us, one that led, in the end, to our part in one of the great dramas of our time.
A Fistful of Fig Newtons Page 22
