“Do you have a picture of her?” Harry asked.
A growl from deep inside Jo-Jo’s throat became a barked word: “Whore!”
Blue Man sat down next to him.
Jo-Jo bared his teeth.
“She’s a whore. She always was. I probably cost my father a half a buck.”
“Is not so,” Blue Man said.
“Oh yeah, whaddaya expect for half a buck? A dog, that’s what.”
“But you tell me your Mama is nice. She always wiz you.”
“I lied. The only time she was nice to me was when there was a chance she could get me into Ripley’s Believe It or Not for money. Then she hit me when he turned me down.”
Jo-Jo spit on the figures he had drawn, obliterating heads, arms, legs. He covered his hands and mumbled:
“You told the priest I was from God … for your sins. I love you so much. All those hands on you. Coal-black fingers grabbing, pulling. And you wouldn’t even hold my hand.”
His voice disintegrated into babble. Blue Man put his arm around Jo-Jo’s shoulders. Harry slowly backed out of the alley on tiptoes. It seemed important not to make a sound. At the end of the alley, he stopped. Had he not known them, he would have guessed that they were father and son enjoying a moment of intimacy.
On the boardwalk, near Steeplechase Amusement Park, a perimeter of space segregated a knot of people, a configuration which usually meant a fistfight. He edged closer to see the action. It was not a fight. A group of men in suits and ties flanked a man in a white linen suit and ivory-colored Panama hat who was talking and waving his hands toward the beach and then at Steeplechase. He swept his right hand over the beach as if to smooth it out. The other men nodded. Two cops, front and back, cleared a path. Passersby gawked and shrugged. Such treatment usually was accorded to a movie star, but the crowd could not find one.
The man was a mystery Harry needed to solve. Intent on hearing some words that might provide a clue, Harry got his feet tangled up with his bike. He fell, creating a roadblock in front of the group. They stopped. A cop muttered, “Dumb kid” and pulled him to his feet. He was about to shove Harry aside when the mystery extended his hand and settled it on Harry’s shoulder.
“Are you all right, son?”
“Sure. I’m sorry I got in the way.”
Harry began to move away but the hand restrained him. He was sure he was in trouble.
“I said I’m sorry, mister. I gotta meet my folks.”
One of the group pointed to Harry’s captor and asked:
“Do you know who this is?”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“This is Robert Moses.”
The tone demanded recognition.
“Oh,” Harry said, trying to remember him in a movie.
“He is a Commissioner,” the man said.
It became clear. He was the Fire Commissioner looking over Coney, where fires were a way of life. Maybe, he thought, Mayor La Guardia is here in his fire hat.
The Commissioner bent down to Harry’s level.
“Have you ever been to Orchard Beach?” he asked.
His breath smelled like violets.
“No,” Harry answered.
“Why?”
“I like Coney.”
The Commissioner swept the beach with his arm.
“You like this filth? Nothing green. All these people rubbing together like guppies in a fishbowl. Wouldn’t it be better if all these shacks were gone and there would be space? The eye could breathe.”
The answer was no, but Harry was in no position to be honest. Yet he couldn’t desert Coney. He shrugged.
“How many times a year do you come to Coney Island, son?”
“I live here.”
The Commissioner’s fingers recoiled from his shoulder. He barked at the cop:
“Let’s move on. Why the hell are we standing here!”
Harry jumped out of the way. As the Commissioner passed, Harry saw him take a handkerchief from his lapel pocket and wipe his hands.
IN THE CHERRY TREE: FEBRUARY 29, 1936
Harry: Aba, today is Leap Year.
Aba: What does that mean?
Harry: It means we have an extra day in the year.
Aba: What happens to that extra day when there is no leap year?
Harry: It is not needed because the earth is spinning correctly and does not need another day to correct its mistake?
Aba: And what would happen if we did not correct the earth’s mistake?
Harry: I don’t know.
Aba: I will tell you. All the calendars in the world would be of no use. For example, we all know that King George of England died last month, precisely on January twenty-eighth. But if we had not made up all our leap years, there would be many different calendars, subject to the whims of many calendar makers, and there would be great confusion as to the day George died. Because of this some people might believe that for a day or more England was ruled by a dead king. Even worse, some could conclude that England had both a live king, Edward the Eighth, and a dead king, George the Fifth, and would not know whom to bow down to.
Harry: How does someone get to be a king?
Aba: He is born a king.
Harry: King David was not born a king. He was born a shepherd.
Aba: Correct, Heshele. Sometimes the people make a person their king.
Harry: How do they know whom to choose?
Aba: They choose a man most unlike themselves.
Harry: Why?
Aba: Because they know they are not kings.
Harry: Suppose they make a mistake. Can they tell the king to stop being king?
Aba: Yes. But first they must find a day that has disappeared when there is no leap year, and do it then.
CHAPTER
29
“WELL, HARRY,” MOREY SAID, STOWING HIS WHITE HAT UNDER THE counter, “looks like it’s time to knock off.”
Harry put his hat beside Morey’s. He looked across garbage-coated Surf Avenue at the smoky, darkened bulbs in the marquees of the Loew’s Coney Island and RKO Tilyou. An occasional car dragged a carton under its chassis or sent refuse soaring like spiraling footballs. A cat scooted from under a parked police cruiser which appeared empty, but where, front and back, cops were stretched out.
A magician had performed a wondrous disappearing act. The bumping, chewing, licking, smooching crowd had evaporated in the time it had taken Harry to look up from filling his last cone. Even next door at Nathan’s, where through the night people had covered the sidewalk and cars had triple-parked, only two customers remained, one a bum promoting a handout.
Harry’s legs tingled. He shifted his weight, lifting each foot and rotating it. Morey laughed.
“Feel it in the legs. Sure. A couple of days and you’ll get used to it. But don’t try to go to sleep right away. You’ve got to unwind. You lie down now and you’ll feel like your legs are exploding.”
Harry nodded.
“You didn’t do bad, kid. A little sloppy, but that’s to be expected. But you got to remember equal portions. Nothing make ’em madder than seeing someone get more. They like to kill.”
“Yeah, one guy said to me: How come you gave that broad more than me? You got a thing for her?”
“I heard that. He was a fat guy. Fat guys always think they’re getting the short end of the stick. Well, let’s go.”
Harry, leaning on his bike, watched Morey pull down the rolling metal door onto the sidewalk, then turn a handle which passed a bolt through a wicket sunk into the concrete. He inserted a key in the handle, turned, tested, flipped the key and caught it behind his back.
“Kid, you want me to drive you home?”
“No thanks. I’ll walk awhile. Maybe it’ll help my feet.”
“Good idea. Well, seeya tomorrow.”
Morey walked toward a parking lot. After a few steps, he stopped, turned, and pleaded:
“Harry, don’t screw me. Come back tomorrow. You’re really very good.”
“I will. I swear.”
Harry walked his bike along a deserted side street toward the boardwalk, where he intended to pedal away the agitation in his legs. The heavy air lay on his head like a wet sponge. A rat crossed a few yards in front of him heading for the garbage on the Midway. He wondered where the pack was and if any had died.
The wind picked up. Lightning lit up black clouds. He counted seconds: one thousand and one, one thousand and two … A deep rumble like a diving roller-coaster began at one thousand and five. Five miles away, nothing to worry about. He was being scientific. He would not allow his mother to pass on to him her irrational fear of lightning.
Suddenly the boardwalk glowed silver and white. An almost simultaneous crack of thunder mixed with the ripping sound of a sheared tree. Raindrops the size of blood-bloated bugs fell. Not near the ocean. Not under a tree. Don’t be the tallest object.
He flattened himself under the eaves of the rifle shoot. Rain flooded the Midway, launching an armada of garbage.
As in a mercurial dream, a white bolt with a tail like tree roots hit the thirty-foot-tall High Striker, a test of strength in which a blow from a sledge hammer sent a metal disk, grooved on two pieces of wire, careering upward past sections marked powder puff, pen pusher, muscle man, champ and finally against a golden gong which rang and vibrated for superman. The lightning severed the gong, which spun away like a Hercules-thrown discus, while the wood splintered. Embers generating heat as strong as the midday sun whizzed by him.
The rain was now a waterfall; its source, heaven. Ankle deep in water, he awaited death riding the electricity through a puddle, into his wet socks, up his legs and finally severing his head as it did the gong. He imagined his decapitated body, crackling like a shorted wire, floating down the Midway, a feast for the rats.
He called on God. He was willing to strike a bargain: Spare me and I’ll do anything you want. He often made the same offer in return for a victory by the Brooklyn Dodgers. As payment, God imposed tasks such as being extra nice to Joe Baker, or giving a little kid a speedy ride on the handlebars of his bike.
God was unavailable, absorbed in playing a game of lightning hopscotch up and down the Midway. Across from Harry, under a sign that promised The greatest variety of freaks and living monstrosities from all parts of the world, renderings of Jo-Jo, Moho and Loho and Fifi glowed like sepulchral pop-outs in the House of Horrors ride.
He conceded that he should have expected annihilation because the people in his two lives—his father and Aba on one planet, and the freaks on the other—had somehow merged through common furtive eyes and whispers meant to exclude him. According to his science teacher, the fusion of matter and antimatter would blow up the world. What was more matter and antimatter than writers and freaks?
Science brought salvation. He remembered the same teacher saying that the safest place in an electrical storm was inside a car because the rubber tires served as a ground. He didn’t know what that meant, but his bike had rubber tires. He laid his legs across the handlebars. Safe, he laughed hysterically at a self-portrait: a Sholom Aleichem schlemiel sent to buy a boat and talked into a bike.
God, somewhat spent, previewed his next appearance by showcasing his bag of horrors: dinosaur tails scalding the ocean, thunder too loud for mere ears, clouds weighted by water tumbling to the ground. But he knew he had escaped God’s enema, as he had Zadeh’s.
The wind went limp. The cool air smelled of shelled creatures sprinkled with a pinch of salt. It pricked the nostrils. A languid, reassuring three-quarter moon popped into the sky like a quickly hung prop. Only the ocean disturbed the silence, still crashing like a child unable to end a tantrum.
Harry pumped the bike pedal lightly, creating whirlpools. Water rippled outward, just like ocean liners pushing out monster waves.
As he turned a corner, he saw, three yards in front of him, the backs of Otto and Albert-Alberta. Otto, his torso bare, crushed water from his undershirt. As he walked, rolling left and right, hills of muscles wiggled. Albert-Alberta’s purple blouse clung to his almost shoulderless shape, a sapling to Otto’s giant redwood. Harry decided to play private eye, tailing them and eavesdropping. It was not difficult.
They were yelling at each other.
“Ach,” Otto spat, “you are de disgusting homo.”
Albert-Alberta threw out his arms in disbelief.
“You can say that to me, who has welcomed you with open rectum? You can deny being a homo?”
“Yah.”
“How, pray tell, does that come about?”
“Only de one on de bottom is de homo.”
“Why is that?”
“Because dat is de woman’s position.”
Otto slid one palm quickly over the other, signaling an irrefutable fact.
“I think you really believe that,” Albert-Alberta said.
Otto stopped walking and twisted his body to flex the maximum amount of muscles.
“Yah. Could dis body be homo?”
Albert-Alberta mimicked the pose.
“Charles Atlas is a homo.”
“Liar.”
“I have a fifty percent chance of being right.”
“Yah. Yah. Fifty percent, dat is you. Fifty percent and fifty percent add to nothing.”
Albert-Alberta executed a bump and grind.
“I’ve also had women,” he said, squeezing imaginary breasts. “There was a German fräulein, a maid in my cousin’s house in London. Big, fat, stinking, the way I like them. Would fart while fucking. A rare talent.”
“Englander pig, you make it up.”
“Otto, I make up everything. Just as you do. And then we believe. And that makes it true. Like your Mr. Hitler and my Mr. Chamberlain.”
“You crazy. Hitler is de great man. He not make up nossing.”
“Who’s pumping on top, Hitler or Chamberlain?”
Otto’s bent fingers clamped onto Albert-Alberta’s shoulders and lifted him straight up, like a picture about to be hung on a high hook.
“Englander, I no bluff. You say like dat about Hitler, I kill you. No bluff. Trow you in ocean.”
He swiveled Albert-Alberta to show him his grave. They saw Harry. Otto dropped Albert-Alberta, who called to Harry:
“Have you got a ticket? The ride is open.”
“Is that an exercise?” Harry said to Otto, smiling at the strongman. Otto did not offer Harry his usual smile of greeting, but rather the menacing stare that threatened audiences as a prelude to running amok.
“You haff followed us, yah?”
“Followed you? Oh yeah. Up the …”
“What you see?”
“I see … saw you walking.”
“What you hear?”
“Something about Hitler. Otto, what …?”
“In alley, what you see!”
“What alley?”
Albert-Alberta splashed water on Otto, who spat and wiped his lips.
“Englander pig! You trow dirty water in my mouth. You make me sick. I kill you.”
“Otto, leave the kid be. Harry, how come you were out here in the rain?”
Harry explained. Otto shook his head, squeezed a bruise into Harry’s arm, and said:
“Come, ve valk togedder. Get on bike. I help.”
Otto grabbed the handlebars with one hand, tilted the bike and Harry until the front wheel barely touched the water and ran. Harry screamed:
“Faster Otto, faster.”
Suddenly the bike gained weight. Albert-Alberta lay on his stomach, holding on precariously to the back of the seat and kicking his legs.
“What an act!” he shouted, before his lips went under water.
Otto turned right on the corner of Surf Avenue. A car traveling in the opposite direction made a skidding U-turn and mounted the sidewalk in front of Otto. A back window rolled down halfway. A gun pointed at Otto’s forehead.
“Drop the bike,” a voice commanded.
Otto froze, still holding the bike.
�
��I said drop it!”
Albert-Alberta stood up. Otto let go. As the wheels hit the ground, Harry leaped off and spoke to the presence behind the gun:
“He wasn’t hurting me, Mr. Policeman.” He pointed to Otto and Albert-Alberta. “We were just having some fun.”
“Don’t I know you, kid?” the voice said.
Probably a cop from Woody’s, Harry thought.
“I don’t know,” Harry answered.
“What’s your name?”
“Harry Catzker.”
“Catzker, of course, you should be home. We’ll drive you.” He spoke to the driver.
“Vince, load the bike in the trunk.”
“You, bullet head,” he said to Otto, “take your freak buddy and move on,”
Otto began to protest. Vince stepped out of the car, gun in hand.
“Get lost,” he said, waving the pistol toward Nathan’s.
“Don’t do anything to Harry,” Albert-Alberta pleaded. “He’s only a kid.”
“Get lost!”
Albert-Alberta grabbed Otto’s hand and tugged. As they ran, their heads swiveled sideways to catch what was happening behind them. In front of Morey’s custard stand, Otto stopped and shook a fist.
“I kill you!”
Harry got into the backseat.
“Now I remember you,” he said.
The man frowned.
“Being a cripple is a great identification.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Before, I couldn’t see your face.”
“Oh, sure.”
The car pulled up in front of Harry’s house.
“How’d you know where I live?”
“I know plenty.”
Vince unloaded the bike and leaned it against the car.
Harry opened the car door. Menter put his hand on his shoulder, restraining him.
“I just remembered, Harry. You can deliver a message to your father for me. Tell him that you are now part of the enterprise.”
“Huh? You know my father?”
“Sure do. Just tell him exactly what I said.” Menter put his hand on Harry’s chin and turned his face so that their eyes met. “Victor Menter says that you, Harry, are now part of the enterprise. He’ll understand.”
CHAPTER
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