“It’s called Jamaica,” Sally said. “It’s in Mexico.”
“It’s not in Mexico,” Una said with a laugh. “It’s one of the largest islands in the Greater Antilles of the West Indies. I left long ago. I studied at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, the capital city of Jamaica and won a scholarship to finish my education in London, England. That’s the time when I first left, a dozen years ago or so. When I returned to the island, I started a business, but then I met your mother and father and came to work for them.”
“What did you study in England?” I asked and sat at the table with Sally, having no idea where England was.
Una served breakfast and sat down to eat with us. “I studied business.”
“Why don’t you have your own children?” I asked.
This question was met with the very first frown I ever saw on Una’s face. Stan came into the kitchen dressed in casual clothes and sat down with us. “Are you two ready to go flying?” he asked. Sally and I both nodded. It was like a dream. “Eat up,” he added, “we’ll head to Teterboro.”
“The Turnpike is closed this morning,” Una said, rising after eating very little and beginning to clean up. Stan nodded.
“Shall I have Larry bring the car around?” she asked.
“He is gone with Mary. I’ll drive.”
Stan drove a black Lincoln Continental and we both sat in the backseat holding hands. He asked us to put on the seatbelts. I’d never heard of such a thing and it took a few minutes to figure out. When we reached the airport, I remembered seeing what struck me as a sea of airplanes. We parked and walked up to what, to me, looked like a brand-new white jet. I’d never seen a plane so close before, nor had I even been near the inside of an airport. So much was happening at once, I could hardly take it all in. The plane was beautiful.
“It’s set to go,” he said. We boarded the roomy cockpit up a small stair. “Let Christian sit in the front for now, Pumpkin,” Stan added.
Though the inside was smaller than the Lincoln, it held four seats and was comfortable enough. The dashboard was alive with lights, buttons, gauges, and meters. Stan talked on the radio for a minute to get clearance. While he waited for a response, he showed me the safety checklist and named many moveable parts aloud, pointing to the right and left flaps, the ailerons, the rudder, and other equipment.
I focused on his every word and knew instinctively that if I wanted to get close to him, I would have to learn how to fly, which was perfectly fine with me. He indicated the largest gauges on the control panel.
“Those are the four important ones,” he said. “This tells how high you are, then there are the fuel and oil-pressure gauges, the air speed, and the compass or heading indicators. This is the tachometer which tells you the rotations-per-minute of the motor. This is the speedometer and the hydraulic gauge for the landing gear.”
I pointed to one in the center with a small picture of a plane on it. “What’s that one?”
“It tracks for vertical speed or the rate of the plane’s climb. The other two important things in this type of plane are the half-wheel, what’s known to a pilot as the stick, and the red dial over here, which governs the rate of fuel going into the engine, the choke.”
I nodded enthusiastically, trying with all my might to act like an adult, but very excited as well, as though it were Christmas morning. “Okay,” he said into the radio and drove the plane out to the liftoff area. “Here we go.”
The engine roared and we sped down the runway. As we gathered speed, I thought for sure we would crash and looked back at Sally who stared calmly out the window. When we lifted off the ground, I thought I would pee my pants. “Wow,” I gasped softly.
The ground rushed away and the houses and farms became small quickly. The wonder chased away any fear, and it seemed that in only minutes, we were flying over Niagara Falls.
“I can’t imagine anything better,” I said, although I could at least imagine one thing. Sally. I was so in love with her, even so as to be dumb-headed, yet I was determined not to make a slip.
“For an American,” Stan said, “flying is one of the greatest skills to obtain and our history is dotted with many brilliant aviators from the Wright brothers to Charles Lindbergh.”
“Don’t forget Melia Earhart, Daddy,” Sally said. “She’s American too.”
“Amelia,” Stan corrected her. I hadn’t even heard of the Wright Brothers let alone Earhart or Lindbergh, but didn’t show my ignorance by admitting it. We flew for over an hour and the landing was as exciting as the take off. After we returned, Una made us sandwiches and fresh cinnamon rolls. Stan sat with us for a moment.
“I’m leaving shortly for the office,” he said to me. “Mary and I have meetings there this afternoon and well into the evening. Before I go, Professor Vondt will arrive. He’s your new private instructor. You’ll be a student with him from one to five o’clock, Monday through Friday, until September. If everything goes well then, and you pass the entrance test, he’ll come by three evenings a week to help you out with your homework.”
To an eight-year-old, this might have been a deadly blow to his summer’s plans, but it didn’t strike me that way at all. Mr. Vondt, to my utter surprise, was the man from the television program. Seeing him in person, magnified his thinness. He was much younger than he looked on the screen and his eyes were shrewd. He’d eyes like Lloyd, and I wondered if he was like Lloyd in other ways, but he also had bushy eyebrows and a wonderful smile which took away the cruelty from his eyes. His moustache was also bushy and he was growing a straggly goatee. Stan introduced me as his son, and I was proud of that. It felt good to be a Tappet instead of a Briner, but I realized as well that Mr. Vondt and Stan might be old friends and he’d know I wasn’t really his son. Happily, I learned immediately this wasn’t the case.
“When I met Mr. Vondt during the taping of his television show,” Stan said, “he’d mentioned that he was free for the summer. He has done some teaching at all levels of the school system, all the way from grade four to university, and is considered an expert in the field.” We shook hands. “Una has set up the Rose-room. It’s downstairs and faces the side-yard to the east. Una will show you and I’ll let you two get acquainted. If you need anything, Una will look after you. She pretty much runs everything here and you can take her word for authority.”
I was astounded to actually hear the words. Stan openly acknowledged Una’s power to a stranger. After he left, Mr. Vondt and I found Una in the kitchen. “Mr. Vondt,” she said happily, shaking his hands. “He’s a good boy,” she added, “just a little behind in his schooling. This way.”
She took us through a part of the house I’d never seen before and down into a room wallpapered in pink with crimson roses raised in a relief. The ceiling was a light powdered pink, almost white, and the dark hardwood floors had a white area rug. The two couches were large light-brown cloth ones, facing each other with matching sofa-chairs pushed against the walls.
“Tea?” Una asked Mr. Vondt when we had settled across from each other on the couches. He refused with a shake of his head and she left.
“Come sit beside me, Christian,” Mr. Vondt said, softly, “and read the first page of this book aloud.” He took out a book and turned it to the first page.
“Chapter One,” I said. The title of the chapter was in a foreign language or something. I attempted it and failed miserably.
“Ebenezer Scrooge,” Mr. Vondt said. “It is the name of the main protagonist.”
I turned red but when I heard him say the name, I realized I knew the story of Scrooge, I’d seen it on television, a cartoon of A Christmas Carol, and might be able to impress him so that he wouldn’t tell Stan and Mary that I was just a dumb orphan.
“Jack-cob Mar-lay was dead,” I said. I had got through my first sentence. I was relieved. “Everyone knew that. There was no doubt about that.” Two more down. It looked good. “All the–” I couldn’t get the next word. I was sweating.
; “Official,” he said softly.
“Papers were properly signed by–” nor could I get the next one.
“Witnesses.”
“To make them legal. The–” nor the next word.
“Clergyman.”
I didn’t even know the definition of clergyman. “Signed the papers.”
“Good,” he said. “Relax. We’ll be doing a lot of reading this summer, but before September, I’ll open up a world for you that you never thought possible. I know you have been hit and miss with school, but I can see in your eyes that you’re smart, that you’re a dreamer, and that you’ll succeed at school as well as your sister.”
He was a mystery all right. I couldn’t make up my mind about him, but I decided he’d behave himself. He seemed to want to help me. Our first lesson was difficult and long, but I tried to stay focused the entire time. He did little arithmetic, which was too bad. It had been my only B in grade three, the rest were Cs or Ds. But maybe he knew that. We mostly did reading and cursive lettering. In both areas, I could see he wasn’t overly impressed. Sally had promised to go swimming afterwards, and I kept remembering that. It helped.
Mr. Vondt was insistent and gentle. He kept his hands off me and often smiled. I’d heard somewhere that it’s all in the balance. It’s hard to get that right. Why I say this is because I believe he used self-control to keep his hands off me that day just as much as I did to stay focused, and the days afterwards. He was definitely a Lloyd kind of guy, and by the end of that first lesson, I was aware of it.
At five o’clock, he released me and I flew up the stairs to find Sally. We ate and played in the backyard with two boys who lived next door, Andy Arckon, aged nine, and his older brother, Kurt, ten. They both had curly black hair and acted like tough kids, but compared to the gangsters at Carling Street, they were pussycats. I just laughed at them. We played, Kick the Can and Graveyard and had to come in for bed at nine o’clock. That night Jesus came to me in my first sleep.
“I’ve placed you among the Tappets to bring a message to the planet,” he said in his soft gentle voice of love. “As you have seen, we’ve given you a guide. Just as I have mounted a force of earthly good for your success, so Lucifer will rally an earthly fellowship to bring you into his fold. When he strikes at you, you may not know it. Stick close to your guide.”
This sounded even more ominous than before, and moreover, it seemed my obligation was going from saving me to saving the world. I was starting to wonder if it was really Jesus.
When I woke up at one o’clock to sneak into Sally’s room, I quickly chased these thoughts away. This time Sally woke up and we kissed each other on the mouth and held each other tight. Tonight she wore panties. This didn’t bother me. She still let me snuggle against her. We slept in each other’s arms until four o’clock when I snuck back to my room to sleep in my closet.
Chapter Two
Pulaski Park has four baseball diamonds on the west side and is where Sally and I play baseball. The Pulaski Skyway delivers and receives traffic from a dozen places, including, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, JFK Boulevard, the New Jersey Turnpike, Tonelle Avenue, Hoboken Street, and other busy roadways. The traffic ebbs and flows at surprising speeds in-between yield-signs, lights, crosswalks, streetcar stops, and a hundred other obstructions. Every time I saw it, I thought of the poor cats, dogs, and other helpless creatures trying to cross and being killed. It was one of the most dangerous crossroads one could ever imagine.
Not far from here, snowball had been run over, and not only animals got it in this area, but plenty of people as well. On Saturdays, Sally, Andy, Kurt, and myself played in an Essex County Peewee Baseball League. Our fathers would alternatively drop us off. My instruction with Mr. Vondt had continued uninterrupted and everyone seemed satisfied with both my effort and lack of complaining, if not my results. Truth was, I read now as fast as Sally. The Adventures of Robin Hood took me only two days to finish.
Moreover, my relationship with Stan and Mary had grown naturally warm. Tomorrow morning, Sally and I were going flying with Stan, for me, my fourth time, and we were going all the way to Washington, D.C. The last time out, both Sally and I had taken the handle for a few minutes. It was a rush for both of us and that night as we cuddled in my second sleep, we dreamt of becoming pilots.
I had several trips to doctors to take out the stitches and to get creams to reduce the scar on my forehead. It wasn’t too big and I didn’t mind it, except for it itched badly every once and a while. I also had dentist appointments, visited clothiers with Stan, and had a meeting with a man with a beard who showed me his gun collection and asked me questions about what I was thinking as I looked at pictures of images like clouds and ink-spots. I easily made things up with fuzzy, soft, positive answers. I knew I’d fooled him without difficulty. For some reason, he wasn’t aware that as an orphan, I’d have already had many such tests.
This week’s baseball game was the second last one of the summer. We played on diamond two, the one farthest away from the bay, the smallest one. The diamonds all had evening lights provided from four cement columns the height of about twenty meters. They also had small stands which could hold a maximum of fifty spectators or so. They’d bullpens as well, although nothing fancy.
The stands and lights separated the four diamonds from each other, and they themselves formed a larger diamond. No fences or other borders had been built between the diamonds. That morning, I caught a fly ball and got a hit to first base, then was hit home by Kurt who is a good baseball player. I was happy and only wished Una, Stan, or Mary, had been there to see it. Everything I did well, I wanted them to see. I wanted them to know I appreciated what they did for me. Several of the boys on the team were growing their hair long and I told them that they looked like girls. We almost had a fight.
When the game ended, we bought hotdogs and orange and grape soda-pop with the money that Andy and Kurt’s father – Bert – had given us for a snacks. We also had four bus tickets which he had pre-purchased and given to Kurt for safe keeping. Usually Bert or Stan would be with us, but today Bert worked and couldn’t see the game nor get us home. If he’d asked Mary, Stan, or Una’s permission for us to bus it home without an adult, I’d have been surprised.
I could see that Kurt grew apprehensive the minute we stepped out of the park, and though he tried to hide it, it only grew more apparent as we blended into the Saturday street commotion. The riffraff and street people, many of them hippies, were panhandling. The traffic wasn’t only busy, the level of noise was annoying. Open construction-trucks barreled along Willow and randomly spit up stones. Taxis erratically pulled U-turns to catch sudden fares from the fast-food crowds on the north side. An endless stream of buses barreled through. Just beyond the ballparks the other way, a popular mall attracted much traffic as well.
Sally had her long blond hair pulled into a pony-tail and Kurt wore a baseball cap. Andy and I were bare headed with short haircuts. We wore t-shirts which said, The Yankees. Andy shaded his eyes from the sunlight and looked back at the park. His dark complexion and short athletic body, made him almost a dwarf to me. He was an easy-going boy and I felt protective of him. “Look,” he said and pointed to Diamond Two, “They’ve started another game already.”
Sally handed me her baseball glove and the bat, letting out her ponytail so that her hair fell loosely to her back. To the north of us stood a well-known steak house, and beside it, a theater showing, 2001, A Space Odyssey.
Kurt led us to the streetcar stop we needed. Even at the traffic-lights, cars rushed to turn and honked at us for going too slow or too fast or whatever we were doing wrong. After a moment, the Hoboken bus came and we hopped on, turned in our tickets, and with our transfers in hand, went to the back where the only empty seats remained.
The air was so stale that I covered my nose with my hand. It smelled of body-odor and farts. Sally gave me a candy that tasted like banana, only better. It helped. The four of us sat close together and ignored everyone e
lse. Kurt tried to behave like an adult but was obviously nervous, like a cat surrounded by dogs. To make matters worse, I saw two older boys swagger onto the bus three stops later and sit nearby. They were maybe thirteen and fourteen-years-old, both were broad-shouldered and glossy-eyed. They stared at us greedily.
Although I’d never seen them before, the way they walked and looked around for marks, I knew they were bullies. It didn’t look like they lived out on the streets, but they might have been invested in a young strong-arm gang and even run tricks for a bigwig. Lloyd had done this for a while, offering himself to older homosexual businessmen, then getting them cornered with several fellow ruffians, and pinching them for what they had agreed to pay but without the sex. Sometimes, Lloyd wouldn’t use the help. He’d let the businessmen do their thing and keep the money for himself. That way nothing went to the strong-arm gang boss. Before the Tappets, these were the images and stories which daily filled my head, but now I was purified. When you’re purified, you’re fearless. The two began making crude guttural sounds, and whispering, “Hey girlies,” or “Faggot boys.”
It wasn’t exactly in our direction, but used to intimidate everyone in their immediate purview. I was dismayed to look around and not see a single adult in the back of the bus, except an old man. They began punching each other on the arms with forceful blows, any number of which would have laid me unconscious in a second if connected. They swore aloud and attracted everyone’s attention in the seats around us. I gathered this was their routine of intimidation.
“Let’s go to the front of the bus,” I urged Kurt in a low voice.
Stealing Flowers Page 4
