I Sailed with Magellan

by Stuart Dybek

  Once, on an impulse, while riding my bike with my brother perched dangerously on the handlebars the way friends rode—in fact, we called the handlebars the buddy seat—I hit the brakes without warning, launching Mick into midair. One second he was cruising and the next he was on the pavement. It would have been a comical bit of slapstick if he’d landed in whipped cream or even mud. I wasn’t laughing. I was horrified when I saw the way he hit the concrete—an impact like that would have killed Ralphie. Mick got up, stunned, bloody, crying.

  “Jeez, you okay?” I asked. “Sorry, it was an accident.”

  “You did that on purpose, you sonofabitch!” He was crying as much with outrage at how I’d betrayed the trust implicit in riding on the buddy seat as with pain.

  I denied the accusation so strongly that I almost convinced myself what happened was an accident. But it was my fault, even though I hadn’t meant to hurt him. I’d done it out of the same wildness that made for an alliance between us—a bond that turned life comic at the expense of anything gentle. An impulsiveness that permitted a stupid, callous curiosity, the same dangerous lack of sense that had made me ride one day down Luther, a sunless side street that ran only a block, and, peddling at full speed, attempt to jump off my J. C. Higgins bike and back on in a single bounce.

  It was a daredevil stunt I’d seen in Westerns when, to avoid gunfire, the cowboy hero, at full gallop, grabs the saddle horn, swings from the stirrups, and in a fluid movement hits the ground boots first and immediately bounds back into the saddle. As soon as I touched one foot to the street, the spinning pedal slammed into the back of my leg and I tumbled and skidded for what seemed half a block while the bike turned cartwheels over my body. Skin burned off my knees and palms. I’d purposely picked a street that was deserted to practice on. But a lady who could barely speak English poked her head out of a third-floor window and yelled, “Kid, you ho-kay?” She’d just witnessed what must have looked like some maniac trying to kill himself. I waved to her, smiled, and forced myself up. Amazingly, nothing was broken, not even my teeth, although I had a knot on my jaw from where the handlebars had clipped me with an uppercut. I collected my twisted bike from where it had embedded itself under a parked car. Had it been a horse, as I’d been pretending, I’d have had to shoot it. If someone had done to me what I’d just done to myself, I would have got the bastard back one way or another. My brother let me off easy.

  But years later, when he was living in New York, studying acting with Brando’s famous teacher Lee Strasberg, Mick and I spent an evening together, drinking and watching a video of On the Waterfront. During the famous “I could have been a contender” scene, when Brando complains about his “one-way ticket to Palookaville” and tells his older brother, “Charley, it was you … . You was my brother, Charley. You should have looked out for me,” Mick turned to me, nodded, and smiled knowingly.

  Chester was anything but a tough, yet despite his quiet way, you got the impression he’d lay his life on the line if anyone messed with Ralphie. You could see it in how he’d step out into a busy street, checking both directions for traffic before signaling Ralphie to cross. Or how, whenever a gang of guys playing keepaway with somebody’s hat, or maybe having a rock fight, barreled down the sidewalk, Chester would instinctively step between them and Ralphie.

  That willingness to take a blow was an accepted measure of what the gang bangers called amor—a word usually accompanied by a thump on the chest to signify the feeling of connection from the heart-although in matters of amor, as in everything else, the willingness to give a blow was preferred. There were guys in the neighborhood who’d lay their lives on the line over an argument about bumming a smoke, guys capable of killing someone over a parking space or whose turn it was to buy the next round. There was each gang’s pursuit of Manifest Destiny: battles merciless and mindless as trench warfare over a block of turf. There was the casual way that mob goons across Western Avenue maimed and killed, a meanness both reflexive and studied—just so people didn’t forget that in capitalism on the street, brutality was still the least common denominator.

  Not that there weren’t ample illustrations of that principle at the edge of the daily round of life where bag ladies combed alleys and the homeless, sleeping in junked cars, were found frozen to death in winter. Laid-off workmen became wife beaters in their newfound spare time; welfare mothers in the projects turned tricks to supplement the family budget; and it seemed that almost every day someone lost teeth at one or another of the corner bars.

  The shout would go up—“Fight!”—and kids would flock in anticipation, especially if a couple of alkies were whaling at one another, because invariably loose change would fly from their pockets. The scramble for nickels and dimes would spawn secondary fights among us. And if we weren’t quick enough, we’d be scattered by Sharky, a guy who’d lost his legs in Korea, or riding the rails to Alaska, or to sharks off Vera Cruz, depending on which of his stories you wanted to believe. He was a little nuts, and people wondered if he remembered anymore himself where exactly his legs had been misplaced.

  Sharky mopped up late at Juanita’s bar, but his main source of income was scavenging. He was also known as Gutterball for the way he’d rumble along alleys and curbs on a homemade contraption like a wide skateboard that he propelled with wooden blocks strapped over gloved hands, turning his hands into hooves. Late on summer nights, you could hear him clopping down the middle of deserted streets like a runaway stallion. Call him Gutterball to his face or get in his way, and he’d threaten to crack your kneecap with one of those wooden hooves.

  It wasn’t an idle threat, he’d been in several brawls. They usually started with a question: “What the fuck you looking at, ostrich-ass?”

  Anyone with legs was an ostrich to Sharky.

  “Huh?” came the usual response.

  But Sharky wouldn’t let it go at that. “Admit it, you rude motherfuck, you were staring at my bald spot, weren’t you?”

  Sharky did have a bald spot. He’d roll slowly toward the confused ostrich, who’d begin edging backward as Sharky’s pace increased.

  “You never seen a bald spot on wheels before? That it? I’m very fucken sensitive about my bald spot. Or is it something else about me that attracted your attention? Like, maybe, that I’m at a convenient height for giving head. You the kind of perv that wants a baldy bean doing wheelies while sucking your dick?”

  By now, Sharky had gained momentum and was aimed for a collision if the ostrich didn’t take off running, which he usually did, with Sharky galloping after him, raging, “Run, you perverted, chickenshit biped!”

  Sharky obviously enjoyed these confrontations. What nobody suspected was that such spectacles were only a substitute for what he really craved: a parade.

  There was no shortage of parades in Little Village. Most ethnic groups had one, and that must have figured in Sharky’s thinking. St. Patrick’s brought out the politicians, and St. Joseph’s was also known locally as St. Polacik Day since people wore red, the background color for the white eagle on the Polish flag. I never understood what was particularly Polish about St. Joseph, but I bought a pair of fluorescent red socks especially for the occasion.

  The Mexicans had two big holidays. The first was El Grito, a carnival at the end of summer, when as part of the festivities a wrestling ring was erected in the middle of Nineteenth Street. There’d be pony rides, and Mick and I would try to time it so as to be in the saddle when the El roared overhead because the ponies would rear.

  The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, was more solemn. Each December twelfth, no matter the weather, a procession wound through the streets led by a plaster likeness of the Virgin who’d appeared not to the Spanish conquerors but to a poor Indian, Juan Diego. She’d imprinted her mestiza image on his cloak—a miracle still there for all to see at the basilica in Mexico City. She’d told Juan Diego to gather flowers for her in a place where only cactus grew. When he did her bidding, he found a profusion o
f Castilian roses, and so all through Little Village people carried roses and sang hymns in Spanish to the Virgin whose delicate sandal had crushed the head of Quetzalcoatl, the snake god ravenous for human sacrifice. Even the alderman and precinct captains marched holding roses. And each year there was the fantastic rumor that the great Tito Guizar, the Mexican movie star of Rancho Grande— a singing cowboy like Roy Rogers—would arrive on a palomino to lead the procession through the barrio. His movies played at the Milo theater on Blue Island, where they showed films in Spanish. I’d study the posters I couldn’t read and wonder if his rearing horse was a celebrity in Mexico, the way that Roy Rogers’s horse, Trigger, was a star in America.

  Then, one year, Tito Guízar actually showed. Down Washtenaw, heading for Twenty-second, he came riding right behind the Virgin, not on a palomino but on a prancing white horse whose mane blew in the feathery twirl of the early snowfall. The horse left pats of golden manure steaming in the street, while Tito Guizar, dressed in black leather chaps studded with silver, his guitar strapped across his back like a rifle, waved his sombrero, blessing the shivering crowd that lined the sidewalks to see him.

  As the procession approached St. Roman Church, a motorcycle gunned to life, spooking the white horse, and while Tito Guízar whoaed at the reins, a Harley rumbled out of the alley beside the rectory. It was pulling Sharky, who was attached to the rear fender by a clothesline like a coachman commanding the reins of a carriage. The Harley was driven by Cyril Bombrowski, once known as Bombs. He’d been a motorcycle maniac until, doing seventy down an alley, he’d collided with a garbage truck. He had a metal plate in his head and didn’t ride much anymore, as he was prone to seizures since the wipeout. Now people called him Spaz, and when he rode down the street, it was a tradition that whoever saw him first would yell a Paul Revere—like warning: “Spaz Attack!”

  No one yelled this time. Behind Spaz and Sharky, a procession of the disabled from the parish emerged from the alley. A couple of World War II vets, mainstays from the bar at the VFW Club, one with a prosthetic hook and the other with no discernible wound other than the alcoholic staggers; and Trib, the blind newspaper vendor; and a guy who delivered pulp circulars, known only as—what else?—the Gimp, pushing his wheelchair for support; and Howdy, who’d been named after Howdy Doody because his palsy caused him to move like a marionette with tangled strings.

  It was a parade of at most a dozen, but it seemed larger-enough of a showing so that onlookers could imagine the battalions of wounded soldiers who weren’t there, and the victims of accidents, industrial and otherwise, the survivors of polio and strokes, all the exiles who avoided the streets, who avoided the baptism of being street-named after their afflictions, recluses who kept their suffering behind doors, women like Maria Savoy, who’d been lighting a water heater when it exploded, or Agnes Lutensky, who remained cloistered years after her brother blew off half her face with a shotgun during an argument over a will.

  With their canes, crutches, and the wheelchair, it looked more like a pilgrimage to Lourdes than a parade. They’d been assembled by Sharky and now marched, although that’s hardly an accurate word for their gait, beneath the banner of a White Sox pennant clamped in a mop stick that the Gimp had mounted on his beat-up wheelchair. The Gimp never sat in his chair but rather used it like a cart, piling it with bags of deposit bottles and other commodities he collected while delivering the circulars no one read. Today, the chair was empty of junk.

  Their flag bore no symbol of allegiance, no slogan of their cause other than “Go Sox,” but what must have fueled Sharky’s outrage all along became suddenly obvious: they were at once the most visible and the most invisible of minorities. Instead of bit players out of the Gospels, fodder for miracles, the Halt and the Lame were in for the long haul, which required surviving day to day.

  As they passed the church, Sharky raised a wooden hoof, not in blessing or salute—more as if scoring the winning goal—and on cue those parading behind him raised their fists. At that moment, Ralphie, wearing a cap and bundled in a checked scarf, stepped out of the crowd lining the curb, catching everyone by surprise, even Chester, who couldn’t do anything more than exclaim, “Hey, where you going?”

  By then Ralphie had put on a burst of speed—the first time I’d ever seen him run—and caught up to the Gimp, climbed up on the wheelchair, and raised his fist, too.

  Ralphie died a few weeks later, on Gwiazdka. The word means “Little Star” in Polish, and it’s what Christmas Eve was sometimes called in the parish. At midnight mass kids too young to be altar boys would file up the aisle to the manger carrying goldpainted stars on sticks. Had he been alive, Ralphie would have been among them. He was buried in the navy blue suit already purchased for the First Holy Communion he would have made that spring.

  That was an observation made repeatedly at the wake, and afterward, at the Friday night bingo games in the church basement, and at bakeries and butcher shops and pizzerias and taquerias and beauty parlors and barbershops and corner bars: “Poor little guy didn’t make it to his Holy Communion,” someone would say.

  And someone would likely answer, “They should of made an exception and let him make it early.”

  “Nah, he didn’t want to be no exception. That’s how he was. He wanted to make it with his class.”

  “Yeah, he was a tough little hombre, never wanted special treatment, never complained.”

  “You know it. Always thumbs-up with him.”

  “God should of let him make it.”

  “Hey! You start with that kind of talk and there’s no stopping.”

  “Yeah, but just for this once, if I was God, that kid walks up there for his First Communion. Then, if it’s his time, so be it.”

  “If you was God we’d all still be waiting for the Second Day of Creation while you slept off your hangover from the Big Kaboom. God knew he didn’t want to be no exception. He made him that way.”

  “Yeah, he made him with blue fucking skin, too.”

  “Hey, maybe that was God’s gift to us. Somebody too sweet for the long term in this world. Somebody to be an example—‘A little child shall lead them,’ like Father Fernando said at the service.”

  “Talk about hungover, that priest was still shitfaced. The night before he was pounding tequila at Juanita’s till they eighty-sixed us out into the goddamn blizzard—snow piled so fucking deep we couldn’t hardly get out the door. Me and Paulie have to help him back to the church, then Paulie falls in a snowbank, and while I’m digging Paulie out, Father Kumbaya decides to take a leak. I look up and there’s our new padre waving his peter in the middle of Twenty-sixth.”

  “So, big deal, he’s a human being. It was a beautiful service, he did a good job. I thought that older brother was a little weird, though, guarding the casket like a rottweiler. Somebody shoulda told him it was all right to cry. What’s his name, anyway?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “That little Ralphie was a saint. Don’t be surprised if someday they don’t canonize him.”

  “I think there’s gotta be like miracles for that.”

  “Yo, that kid was a living miracle. Maybe that’s it—why God put him here—what Little Village will be famous for: the Blue Boy! Mark my words, people will come from all over like they do to places in the Old Country … Our Lady of Fatima, the Little Infant of Prague. Know what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, somebody always figures out how to make a buck off it.”

  A year later there were yet to be miracles, at least none I’d heard about. But the Blue Boy wasn’t forgotten. As we approached another Christmas vacation and the first anniversary of Ralphie’s death, Sister Lucy, our eighth-grade teacher, assigned a composition on the meaning of Christmas, and dedicated it to Ralphie’s memory. Chester was in our class, and at the mention of Ralphie, Sister Lucy smiled gently in his direction, but he just stared at his hands. He’d been a loner since his brother’s death, and all but mute in school. We’d heard the rumor that Chest
er periodically showed up, only to be repeatedly turned away, at the blood bank on Kedzie where the alkies went to trade their blood for wine money.

  “Do your best,” Sister Lucy instructed our class. “This will be the last Christmas composition you will ever write.”

  The Christmas composition was an annual assignment at St. Roman, required from each class above third grade. The pieces judged best received prizes, and the top prize winner was read aloud at the Christmas pageant. Not that there really was any competition for top prize: it was reserved for Camille Estrada. She was the best writer in the school. Probably, before Camille, the concept of such a thing as a best writer didn’t even exist at St. Roman. Camille was a prodigy. By fifth grade she’d already written several novels in her graceful A+ cursive and bound them in thread-stitched covers cut from the stays of laundered shirts. They were illustrated—she was a gifted artist as well. And they were filed, complete with checkout cards, in the shelves beside Black Beauty, Call of the Wild, and the other real books in the school library.

  Camille’s early works, mostly about animals, had titles like The Squirrel of Douglas Park and The Stallion and the Butterfly. I never actually checked them out, but I read them on the sly one week when I was exiled to the library for detention. Camille loved horses, and they often suffered terribly in her stories. They were the subjects of many of her illustrations: huge, muscular creatures with flared nostrils, often rearing, some winged, some unicorns.

  By sixth grade she’d taught herself to type, and then the writing really poured from her. Camille became founder, publisher, editor, and chief reporter of our first school newspaper, To Change the World, as well as translator for an occasional Spanish edition. She represented St. Roman in the Archdiocese of Chicago Essay Contest, writing on why a Catholic code of censorship was needed for pop songs and movies like the Brigitte Bardot film And God Created Woman. It was a foreign film that would never have played in our neighborhood anyway. Still, although none of us had ever seen Bardot on screen, the B.B. of her initials—which also conveniently stood for Big Boobs—mysteriously appeared as a cheer scribbled on the school walls: BB zizboombah! When Camille’s censorship essay won, she got a mention in the Metro section of the Tribune.