An Angel On Her Shoulder

by Dan Alatorre

  “I like sauerkraut.” Jimmy took the Pepsi from me and sipped it without wiping it on his shirt first.

  “Man, I hate sauerkraut. That smell.” One of the true blessings in our house was Mom didn’t cook traditional German food very often. Grandma did, though, and her house always smelled . . . stern. The pungent nasal assault of her homemade pickles and sauerbraten reminded her many grandchildren that rules were strictly followed in that house.

  Jimmy and I walked between the rows of boardwalk style festival games, trying to out-burp each other. Our whole church parking lot had been transformed for the weekend, giving it a surreal, fun feeling it didn’t have most of the rest of the year. Happy, as opposed to respectful and somber. Even the girls from our class seemed different. At the festival, they would be in shorts or jeans, not the school uniform—a dull, blue-gray plaid skirt and plain, white collared shirt. It would be another year or so before those boring skirts would be the highlight of my school day.

  Popping six balloons with six darts would earn a festival goer a giant teddy bear. The overstuffed monstrosity was huge, like three feet tall. I practiced on the dart board Dad hung in our basement. It had real darts, too; not those toy darts with the suction cup tips. I worked on my dart throwing skills as I stood between my old toy box and our upright piano, waiting for my chance to impress some lucky girl one day.

  “Wanna try it, Dougie?” The booth attendant grinned at me. Small town. I didn’t recognize him, but he probably knew my dad, which meant he knew our family. Everybody kind of knew you in a small town, but if you were a doctor’s kid, they all knew you for sure. Dad had so many patients that knew him and loved him, I couldn’t ever misbehave. When everybody knows you, you can’t get away with anything. It felt like my parents had eyes all over town, and at that age, I believed that they did.

  When we got older, we’d figure things out differently.

  But the dart game cost too much and my allowance was too small, and I said so. Besides, I didn’t have any girls to impress just yet. I thanked the booth attendant, though. Manners. Maybe he’d let mom and dad know I was polite. “That boy of yours sure is polite, doctor!”

  Jimmy and I moved on.

  “Hey,” he said, stopping and turning to me. “Did you really eat a turtle?”

  I nodded.

  “Damn.” He kicked at a stone, watching it roll away under the bushes. He used to have little green turtles in a small aquarium, and sometimes we’d catch box turtles in the creek that ran behind our houses. It was an odd thing for us kids to think that some people ate them, but turtle soup was a kind of delicacy among the German people. It was part of the ambiance of the festival, and my mom got some once and let me try it. I don’t know if I liked it or not; I couldn’t get past the thought of eating little green reptiles. But somehow, trying the soup was like being brave. So I did it. I didn’t know “mock” turtle soup meant “pretend.”

  The festival games stretched beyond the cafeteria to a grassy area where they had a “smash car”—an old car for you to hit with a sledge hammer. The windows had been taken out, so you wouldn’t get cut by breaking glass, but for twenty-five cents you could whack the car three times. There was even a “barker,” a man with a microphone who explained the game over the loudspeakers. I guess it was a show of strength to see which man could put the largest dent in the car. To a kid, the idea of smashing anything was pretty appealing—and the thought of putting a memorable dent in a car on purpose was, too. Stray baseballs and other sports activities on Reigert Drive had put a few dents in a neighbor’s car from time to time. This was all sanctioned. Pre-approved destruction. What could be better? The smash car was fun for boys of all ages.

  The barker’s job was to draw a crowd. He would goad men into playing, then cheer or mock them over the loud speakers when they did. The crowd loved it. He’d call a really big guy “tiny” and really little guys “King Kong.” He announced the play by play as men tried to outdo each other damaging the smash car, but mostly he tried to get the crowd to laugh by making fun of the players. It was great entertainment.

  The sledge hammer was really heavy. At that age, I didn’t know they made them in different sizes and weights. The one at our house was heavy enough, but this was even heavier—and the players were surprised by it when they went to pick it up. That was the first trick up the barker’s sleeve. Men would attempt to wield it without showing that they were straining, but smart observers would see that even big men had trouble guiding the heavy sledge to its target. To us kids it weighed a ton, so we got to swing it one time for a nickel. Most kids my age couldn’t even do that.

  “Whoa, big fella!” the barker would say to a kid. “You’re supposed to swing the hammer, not let the hammer swing you!”

  I had never picked up a sledge hammer except to carry it from the garage to the back yard for some Saturday afternoon project my dad was working on. Even then, it seemed like too much weight for a kid. This one was extra heavy, so the adult men couldn’t swing it too hard or too many times.

  “Can we get this guy some help?” the barker would ask the crowd. “I’m not sure he can pick up a mallet this heavy.”

  Then he would find a pretty girl in the audience. “Maybe you can help him, dear. With a dress like that, you could pick up anything!”

  The crowd would roar.

  If he embarrassed her enough, she would walk off and he would stop the game. “Just a minute, folks, just a minute.” He’d take off his hat and hold it over his heart, shaking his head and leaning over dramatically to stare at her behind as she sauntered off. Then he’d hold up his microphone and say, “Bless you, dear.”

  Laughter erupted from the crowd again.

  The barker knew his stuff, and the audience enjoyed it, even if he had been using the same lines for twenty years. By the time I was a senior in high school, I could recite the lines along with him. Still, if guys made enough visits to the beer booth, the barker was always able to draw a crowd and get them to beat on the smash car.

  He made guys feel like they were in a competition with each other, and with the big sledge hammer, there was a thrill factor for the audience.

  Men would hoist it waist high, get a feel for its weight, and then walk around the car looking for the best spot to inflict damage. Then they would raise the giant hammer over their heads.

  There was always a slight pause at the apex, the point between the giant hammer going up and it coming down, as the player attempted a last bit of aim. The crowd would draw quiet then. But it was only for a moment, and then the man would bring down the mallet with great force and a grunt, crashing it onto the car.

  A sizeable dent would be met like impressive fireworks. The crowd would all say “Ooh,” in unison. A lame dent, or—God forbid—a miss, would be met with chuckles.

  And some teasing by the barker. “Maybe you should have your mother help you next time, pal.”

  It was a balancing act for the barker, keeping people entertained while continuing to draw in more, so he never let things go too far. One of the smaller—and drunker—contestants bounced the sledge off the car and into the dirt, taking the man with it. Not only did he not leave a dent in the car, he put a hole in his pants leg and skinned his knee.

  The barker jumped in. “Hey, let’s have a round of applause for our friend here!” Leaning down, he put a hand under the small man’s armpit, helping him to his feet and raising one of his hands into the air. “It’s harder than it looks folks! Harder than it looks!” While getting the crowd to applaud, the barker slipped the sledge hammer out of the man’s grasp, avoiding a scene. “Good try, sir!” The barker put the microphone up to the man’s mouth. “It’s a lot harder than it looks isn’t it, fella?”

  Taking the hint, the little man wiped his brow. “It sure is.” He even managed to muster a smile.

  “What a good sport!” The barker waved to the crowd. “How about another round of applause!” The circle of festival patrons complied.

  Cha
nging gears, the barker went back to work. “Who thinks they can do better? You, sir, how about it? Impress the little lady!”

  Step right up!

  What a great time the festivals were. I could practically still hear the barker’s jokes echoing in my ears as Jimmy and I breezed into the park on our bikes a few days later. A sunny, warm morning, I was certain I’d find some rare dinosaur teeth or other treasure in the creek there.

  A few tough kids were milling around up on the park’s far hill. They were probably waiting for their friends, but they kept staring at Jimmy and me as we walked our bikes over the rocky creek bed. I lowered my head and acted like I didn’t notice them, trying to glance in their direction without making it obvious. I pretended to scour the water for fossils and ignore the knot growing in my gut. Jimmy just shrugged and said the punks wouldn’t be a problem until a few more of their friends came.

  Taking a long look at my green Schwinn, I eased it against a thin maple tree.

  I winced and rubbed my stomach, unable to shake the growing feeling that something wasn’t right. To me, if anybody else showed up, we should have already been long gone.

  Chapter 3

  There had been a recent rain, so Jimmy said we might find some good stuff—fossils or whatever—among the rocks in the creek bed. The three-inch-long, cone-shaped pieces we collected each summer forever were really only worthless horned coral or petrified squids, but we didn’t know that then. We were certain each one was a tooth from a massive Tyrannosaurus Rex and we tried to fill a shoe box with them.

  Two other small creeks joined ours near the park by our house, so it wasn’t unusual for things to just kind of appear there. Tributaries in southeast Indiana were prone to flash floods, and anything we left in our creek would be gone the next day if it rained overnight, swept straight into the Whitewater River. That was a harsh lesson to learn with a new G. I. Joe Jeep or the scale model aircraft carrier we spent weeks building and painting. Even the smallest rain at our house might have been a big storm upstream, causing our little puddle of a creek to become a raging monster, gushing south to the Whitewater and then into the Ohio River, right down the Mississippi and ending in the Gulf of Mexico. And we just knew some kids with a net in New Orleans were snagging our all best toys as they floated by on the way to Cuba.

  Sometimes a summer rain would wash a tree off the hillside. Other times, all sorts of strange rocks and fossil treasures might appear. Beds of blue clay on the creek bottom would be exposed by one spring shower, then buried forever by the next.

  It was a minor adventure every day, going to our creek, and we played in it as often as we could—nearly every day in summer. We never knew what it would show us. At the north end was a deep green pool where a stone bridge used to be. At the south end, our neighborhood park. On lazy fall days, we’d meander among with the puddles of tadpoles and minnows to the grassy triangle where the three creeks converged.

  It wasn’t a standard park by any measure. It was a long, odd shaped triangle, with some rusty old swings up the hill at the street entrance, and a large flat area behind them that ended where the three creeks came together. The tip of the triangle disappeared into a wooded hill we would sled on in winter, and across the creek in the other direction were the railroad tracks.

  There were nicer parks nearby, so parents never took their kids to this one. That made it ideal for juvenile delinquents and teenagers looking for a place to smoke or drink. There were “Indian caves” in the side of the steep hill past the first ridge, but when we went to investigate them, they seemed to be big holes that somebody had dug into the soft dirt. On a dare, I crawled in one about five feet. The back wall lay another five feet or so beyond me, but the cave was cramped and smelled musty, like if you took a deep breath you’d get mold spores growing in your lungs and die—so I got out. Beer cans and nudie magazines littered the two or three holes that dotted the side of the big dirt slope. Supposedly, a dead body had been found in one once, but that was probably a story the older kids told us to keep us away from their party spot.

  It wasn’t a big surprise when we rode our bikes down to the park and found an old abandoned car there. We figured somebody got tired of having a junker like that around, and dropped it off at the park like the old washing machine we found once.

  The very sight of it made me forget all about the tough kids watching us from the hill.

  I don’t know how long it had been there; we hadn’t gone down to the park in a while. The old car was right there in plain sight, way in the back of the park, where the creeks came through. The antennae was gone and the windows all smashed out. We propped our bikes against the maple tree and had a look inside. Bits of green windshield covered the seats. Outside, the finish was splattered with dirt from where somebody had been using it for mud ball practice. It had dents everywhere, probably from rocks, and the parts that weren’t covered in mud were spray painted with graffiti—dirty words, and stick figures with boobs—probably by the punks watching from the hilltop.

  There were no headlights or tail lights anymore. The driver’s side door was stuck open like it had been bent too far, and the trunk lid was missing. It was a rundown, rusty old piece of crap that somebody had dumped in the back of our park.

  And it was perfect.

  We didn’t have a barker, but now we had our very own smash car.

  I glanced around for anything that could be used like a sledgehammer on it, to bash it like the one at the church festival. There’d be fallen branches under the trees, and large rocks would be down by the creek. I started searching.

  Jimmy said he wanted to check the car over to see if there were any interesting parts left to take home. The passenger side mirror was still intact. The ball hinge holding the mirror to the door just needed some leverage to pop it off. With both hands on the mirror and a foot against the side panel, Jimmy dropped all his weight downward and grunted. After a few attempts, the mirror broke free—and dropped Jimmy on his butt with a thud.

  He stood up, dusting off the back of his pants and acting like it didn’t hurt, but it had to. The ground was pretty rocky. After a minute, he looked inside. The dashboard would have interesting items to pry off.

  After a few knobs and a pen had been procured, Jimmy exited the vehicle and turned his attention to the car’s hood. It was stuck shut. Meanwhile, I had found a decent sized limb to put some dents in the roof. I climbed up the back of the car and stood, raising the limb over my head. I brought it down with all my might, the way I’d seen the men do with the smash car.

  The tree limb bounced off the roof and almost took me with it.

  Jimmy laughed as I rubbed bits of bark out of the palms of my stinging hands. We needed something heavier.

  There were bigger limbs under the trees, but Jimmy went for a rock. Kicking over a few baseball sized stones, he searched until he spied a large, flat mini-boulder the size of a dinner plate. It was about three inches thick, so it was ideal—any smaller and it wouldn’t do much damage, but any larger and he probably couldn’t pick it up. I scavenged under the trees to find a thicker limb, anxious to get my shots in.

  We were having a blast, beating the crap out of our own private smash car, just like at the festival. We wore ourselves out on that thing.

  Over my shoulder came a car noise, so I turned to see what it was. We had seen a city maintenance worker on a converted golf cart vehicle once, but this was louder and faster. In the distance, a dark sedan sped down the dirt path, bouncing along as it went and kicking up a trail of dust. That was unusual. People never drove back here. On occasion, a cop might roll through the upper area by the swings, but that was only about once a summer. And cops don’t drive fast in a park.

  As the sedan got close, the punks on the hill disappeared. Then I looked back at the car. It was speeding up the dirt bike path and came to a sudden, noisy stop. A heavy, middle aged man scrambled out, eyeing the abandoned car.

  “God damn it.” His face was bright red. That got my att
ention.

  I’d been under a tree trying to find a bigger stick, but Jimmy was banging on the car’s fender with his massive rock.

  The man glared at Jimmy. “Hey!”

  We both froze.

  The stranger ran towards Jimmy, but it was loose, rocky ground. He slipped on the shifting rocks and nearly fell. As his eyes took in the dents and graffiti all over the abandoned car, his jaw dropped. “God damn it!” Stopping for a moment, he grew redder.

  I had an uneasy feeling rising up in my stomach. Something seemed wrong with this man.

  “Son of a bitch,” he groaned, walking around the car. “Son of a bitch!”

  I didn’t know why he was so upset, but it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  Jimmy set down the rock and backed away. The man was red-faced and sweating. He leaned on the car door and peered inside at the broken glass. Then he reached in and pulled out a floor mat. It was like he was in a momentary daze.

  Raising the mat over his head, he flung it to the ground. “God damn it!”

  He turned his gaze to me. I was standing there with a tree limb in my hand. The stranger’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. My stomach tightened.

  “I know you.” He growled, pointing at me. “You’re the doctor’s boy.”

  My heart jumped in my chest.

  I nodded, my breath coming in short, shallow gasps. I had no idea what to do. Lots of people around town knew me through my dad, but this . . . this was different. A twinge of fear went down my spine.

  The stranger eyed Jimmy. “You God damned—” He took a few steps in Jimmy’s direction, then stopped again and looked at the fender Jimmy had been pounding on. It was pretty dented up and a lot of paint had been knocked off.

  The man shouted again, a loud, guttural groan. Another shiver went through my gut.

  “You!” He yelled at Jimmy. “Come here!”

  I swallowed hard. Don’t move, Jim.

  Jimmy didn’t budge. I found myself walking out of the woods toward the scene. The man spun towards me.