Shepherd Avenue

by Charlie Carillo

  I twisted the key. The motor squealed like a cat being stran­gled.

  "You're killin' the battery!" Johnny screamed. A kid no bigger than me slid behind the wheel, having entered from the driver's side. The key turned. A sneakered foot pumped the gas pedal expertly, zoop-zoop-zoop.

  "Faster, Johnny?" the kid called. A girl.

  "Hold her down for a sec, Mel," Johnny shouted. The motor roared steadily for five seconds. "Okay, that's good." He slammed the hood down. I followed her out the driver's side.

  Johnny wiped his hands again. "Mel, this here's Joey, he's Vic's nephew."

  We stared without shaking hands. Mel wore cutoff jeans, a T-shirt, and boys' black Reds. Her hair was nearly as short as mine, parted on the left. Her broad nose made her look like a street fighter. She was skinny but muscular.

  "Well Chrissakes somebody say hello," Johnny said.

  "Hi," I ventured.

  "See you guys later," Johnny said, getting into the car. "Sorry I yelled atcha, kid." He drove off.

  Mel cracked her knuckles. Her hands were wide. I looked at my own slender hands and rested them on my hips. I felt the bulge of chewing gum in my pocket, took out the pack, and held it out.

  "Gum?"

  "Thanks." She took a piece. We crossed the street and sat on Connie's stoop.

  "I never started a car before," I said.

  "Gotta get used to it," she assured me. I watched her chew the gum. It was the first thing I'd ever shared with another child, save for the loan of my eraser at the Roslyn Country Day School.

  "You sure do it good," I said.

  Mel shrugged. "I'm used to it. Johnny lets me do it all the time." She tried to blow a bubble but the gum was too soft. She tucked the wad back by her molars.

  "Watch 'Superman' last night?"

  "No, I missed it."

  "It was the one where the two guys have a fight over whose girlfriend makes the best lemon meringue pie and so they have a contest and one of the guys goes all the way to Alaska to try and steal a pie from his old girlfriend's new boyfriend."

  "That's a dumb one," I said.

  "I know, but it's cool when Superman crashes through the ice."

  "That guy can't really fly, he's just an actor."

  "Uh-duh. Everybody knows that." Mel cracked the gum. "How come your father ran away?"

  I spat my gum out. "Why does everybody say that?" I screamed. "He didn't run away. He's on a trip."

  "Yeah?" Mel challenged. "Where?"

  I slumped on the steps, feeling rough bricks against my back. "I don't know."

  "When's he comin' back?"

  "Soon."

  "Butcha don't know when?"

  "He's got a lot of stuff to do," I said evenly.

  Mel shrugged. "I got no parents. Live with my aunt and uncle up the street." She pointed.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "It ain't your fault."

  "Well, I'm sorry anyway. I got no mother."

  We fell silent, looking at our sneakers.

  "My cousin is Vic's girlfriend," Mel said. "When they have kids the kids have to call me 'Aunt Mel' on account of I'm practically a sister, like."

  "Vic didn't tell me he was getting married," I said. "When are they getting married?"

  "I don't know."

  "Then how do you know they are?" I challenged.

  Mel stood. I was startled by the way her face darkened. The hands bunched into fists. "Listen, you, they've been goin' out for three years."

  I hoped she wouldn't hit me. Gradually, her fists loosened. She sat again. "Everybody knows they're gonna get married, that's all."

  Momentary silence. Then she said softly, "I was sick last night. I threw up. Macaroni came through my nose."

  She was trying to make up. "Really? Through your nose?"

  "Yeah."

  "Ewww."

  "But I feel better now." She scratched a mosquito bite on her calf. "How old are you?"

  "Ten."

  She smiled. "I'm eleven."

  "I'll be eleven in December," I countered.

  "Well, I'll be twelve in September." She touched her fin­gertips, counting silently. "Hey! When you're still ten I'll be twelve," she said triumphantly.

  "Who cares?" I said, but she knew I did.

  She pounded my shoulder. "Let's get a lemon ice. Come on, I got a quarter."

  On the walk to the lemon-ice stand she softened considerably. She told me she hated her full name, Carmela Maria Di­Giovanna, and that her parents had died in a car crash, and that she'd lived in her aunt's house for two years and planned to stay at least a few more years. She hated cats, loved dogs, and hoped to play professional baseball.

  "But I'm a girl," she added grimly as we reached Willie's lemon-ice stand. "I might wind up just bein' a coach. Two, Willie."

  A fat, benevolent-looking man with a wide bald head scooped ice into white cups, shaping it into smooth mounds with the back of the scoop. He gave them to me while Mel fished out her quarter.

  Willie gave back a nickel. "I ain't seen you before."

  "This is the kid who's living with Vic whose father ran away,"

  Mel explained. I was tired of giving my version of the story so I didn't.

  "Pleased to meet you," Willie said. "I knew your father, he was okay."

  "He's not dead," I snapped, sinking my teeth into the ice. It wasn't like anything I'd ever tasted before — soft and tart, with no stiffness to bite through.

  Sucking our ices, we returned to Connie's stoop. "Willie's okay," Mel said, "but he was a bastard not to give us these free, you just movin' here and everything."

  Then she mapped out the territory of Shepherd Avenue for me.

  A block beyond the lemon-ice stand was a deli owned by Rudy Rothstein, Grace's husband.

  "Vic calls her 'Aunt Grace' even though you ain't related, on account of Grace always goes to the store for your grand­mother," Mel informed me. "She don't get around too good, your grandmother."

  Mel lived half a block from us. In between us lived an old lady we only saw when she swept her porch, and a family with a new baby. The other families she didn't really know.

  On the opposite side of the street the only people I knew so far were Louisa, the retarded girl, and Johnny Gallo. A huge part of the block was a sewing machine factory, which went all the way to Atlantic Avenue. Mel showed me a rectangular box chalked onto the brick side of that building, with a large white "X" that connected its corners.

  "Our strike zone," she explained. "Vic taught me to play stickball here. I'll teach you."

  "I'm not allowed to play baseball."

  Mel cocked her head as if I'd just spoken in Arabic. "Whaddya mean, you're not allowed?"

  I swallowed. "My mother told me not to."

  It was the truth. Two years earlier my father, sensing some­thing weird about the way I was growing up, signed me up in the local Little League even though I'd never even held a bat in my hands. On my first and only time at bat a spider-limbed boy named Phil McElhenny let fly with a wild pitch that conked me on the head. Luckily I was wearing a gigantic plastic helmet with earlaps that reached below my cheeks, so when I fell to my ass it was more from shock than injury.

  But my mother didn't know that. She ran onto the field in hysterics, tore off the helmet, probed my skull for dents, and screamed over her shoulder at Phil. She weighed maybe a hundred pounds, but she carried me off that field in front of all those jeering kids and their parents, loaded me into the Comet, and ran red lights on the way to the family doctor, who informed her that not only would I live but that if I wanted to, I could go back and finish the game.

  "Over my dead body," my mother said, and it was piano lessons and a new doctor for me from then on.

  "Your mother told ya not to?" Mel said, but not maliciously. "How come?"

  "I got hit in the head once, that's how come."

  Mel scratched her head. "But your mother's dead. Do ya hafta obey people when they die?"

  "I don't know
." God, I felt alone. "Your parents are dead," I countered. "Do you still obey them?"

  Mel shrugged. "They never told me not to do nothing." She smiled, scratching her nose. Suddenly I didn't feel so alone. "Well if ya don't play ball what do you do?"

  I had to think it over. "I like to walk."

  She laughed. "Listen, nobody around here walks. Look, I'll teach you stickball, it's easy. It ain't like baseball. The ball's soft. Ya won't be disobeyin' your mother. Come on."

  She pointed. "If you hit a ball across the street it's a home run, except if you hit one now you lose the damn ball."

  She walked me across the street to show me why. Mounds of dirt surrounded a deep, ugly hole that was to be the foundation of a fast-food hamburger joint.

  We went to the lip of the hole. There was a puddle of dark water at the bottom of it, and a couple of pink Spaldeens floated on its surface like bobbing apples.

  "Damn this thing," Mel crooned, spitting into the hole. I envied the way she could do that — a clean, round ball of spit smacked the water like a coin. I tried but managed only a sloppy spray.

  "Let's get outta here," Mel said. "The workers'll get back from lunch soon and they'll scream at us."

  From down the street a shrill voice called her name. "Get in here! You were sick last night!"

  She rolled her eyes. "I'm supposed to be in bed. I sneaked out."

  "Oh."

  She reddened. "I . . . wanted to meet you."

  "Well, I better go."

  "Thanks for the lemon ice," I said, but she was already tearing up the block.

  Vic was remarkably patient that afternoon.

  "The trouble is you're lookin' at me but you ain't lookin' at the ball," he said, twirling it on his long fingers. "Keep your eye on this baby."

  I nodded and toed the rough sidewalk with the tip of my sneaker. The stickball bat, a sawed-off broomstick handle wrapped with black tape, seemed like a big toothpick. I'd missed ten straight pitches. If I'd been in Roslyn I could have fled to the safety of my room, but this was Brooklyn.

  "It's impossible," I whined.

  "No, it isn't."

  "The bat's too skinny."

  "It don't matter how skinny the bat is because you're hittin' the ball with the middle of it, Joey."

  I didn't understand that but I let it ride.

  "Keep lookin' at the ball," he said. "Ted Williams says you should see the ball even when you're hittin' it."

  "Who's Ted Williams?" I asked, but Vic had gone into his windup and lobbed the ball in. Behind him Mel, who'd sneaked out of her house, braced herself in anticipation of a hit. I swung and missed. Eleven pitches. Tears stung my eyes.

  "I want to go in the house," I said, my voice breaking. But Mel wouldn't let me.

  "Don't throw it like that, Vic!" she shrieked. "Jesus, nobody can hit a ball like that! Just throw it regular, he'll hit it."

  I wiped my eyes. Vic heeded her advice as if she were a peer.

  "You may be right," he said. He threw a regular fastball, and I astonished myself by hitting a clean single that Mel fielded on the short hop. She winged the ball in to Vic, who threw an identical pitch. I hit it straight at him. He could have fielded it but he let it split his legs.

  "All right!" he exclaimed. "I knew you could do it! Everybody in this family can hit."

  "I'm not hitting it far," I said, secretly aglow with pride.

  "Ah, that's okay. You're a singles hitter. Nothing wrong with singles hitters, they make good leadoff men." He threw again and I hit it over his head. It bounced toward the open foundation but Mel fielded it at the last second.

  "I ain't always gonna groove 'em like this," Vic warned, but there was pride in his voice. I could hit.

  At the supper table I met Freddie Gallo. He and my grand­father had worked together that day, doing a small cement job somewhere in the neighborhood. Angie, a plumber, and Fred­die, a bull of a laborer, were both retired, but they took on jobs together to pad their union pensions.

  But I think they worked more for the companionship than for the extra money. They also caroused together at night —no one ever told me where.

  Freddie sat at the end of the bench near Angie. They both smelled of Lava soap and their hands, hard-scrubbed, were pink. Still, there were deep lines of dirt under their fingernails and along the creases of their necks.

  Still sweating from stickball, Vic and I sat next to each other. "The kid's a natural hitter," Vic said, his hand on my back. Angie smiled neutrally at me.

  "You're both sweating," Connie said.

  Vic laughed, "How are we supposed to keep from sweating, Ma?"

  Connie didn't answer as she ladled vegetable soup out into big bowls. It was full of beans, tomatoes, lentils, and spinach.

  Such flavors! Connie was able to extract tastes from foods like no one I'd ever known. The vegetables seemed alive in the broth, and the soup was so thick you needed a fork and a spoon to eat it. When shreds of grated cheese hit its steaming oily surface they disappeared like snowflakes landing on a warm sidewalk.

  Angie's manners were impeccable: though he was served first, he waited until everyone had food before starting. Freddie was a chowhound to rival Vic, slurping and letting out belches he only half muffled. Freddie was nearly six feet tall but he looked even taller. He was a stretched version of my grandfather, a bit leaner, with longer, stringier muscles. He wore a black T-shirt that showed off his round pectorals and pinched his upper arms. Veins and tendons coursed down his forearms like telephone cords.

  Only his head looked old. His eyes were narrow and he was almost totally bald, the narrow scallop of bristly hair near his ears a close-cropped stubble.

  There was no formal introduction to Freddie Gallo — he'd heard about me and I'd heard about him. A nod and a grunt sufficed.

  When we finished the soup Connie cleared the table, leaving behind wine and cherry soda. Freddie and Angie rehashed the day's work while Vic idly pushed crumbs around the tablecloth.

  Angie went to the back of the cool cellar and returned with enormous oranges and apples. Connie brought him a sharp knife and he began cutting the apple into sections.

  He rolled an orange at me and asked me to peel it, but its skin was too hard and thick for my fingernails to penetrate. Laughing, Freddie took the orange from me.

  "When you work you'll get hard hands so you can do this," he said. "When I was your age I was tyin' grapevines to poles in Naples. They hadda hire kids to do it — we fit easy between the vines."

  He ripped the skin off the orange.

  "You and your stories," Vic said.

  Freddie tossed a piece of peel aside. "You, when are you gonna make a buck?"

  "I'm playin' ball," Vic said calmly. "When I sign with a club I'll have more money than you ever made tyin' vines." Freddie cackled knowingly, a sound that warned: wait, wait. "Enough already," Angie said. He jabbed a slice of apple onto the end of his knife and offered it to me.

  "Johnny makes good money working on cars," Freddie said. "Be a mechanic. If you don't make it in baseball you won't starve."

  "I'll make it," Vic said. "Don't worry about it."

  "I ain't the one who has to worry." Freddie pointed. "You, you could break your leg, you could get hit in the head with a pitch —"

  "Oh! Shut up already!" Connie said from the sink. "You make me shiver."

  Vic yawned and said, "I don't want to get my hands dirty, anyhow." He kneed me under the table to let me know he was after Freddie's goat, which he got with ease.

  "Dirt is good," Freddie said. "A real man ain't afraid of it."

  "Freddie. Your wife's callin'," Connie said, but he ignored the hint.

  "How come you don't eat with your wife?" I asked. Freddie stared at me, then looked at Angie.

  "What's this kid, a wise guy?"

  "No," I answered. "It's not nice when people have to eat alone. My father always said that."

  "Your father!" he exploded. "He should talk!"

  He was sorr
y the moment he said it, and put a knuckly hand over his mouth.

  "Let's all calm down," Angie said softly. Freddie turned to Vic and picked up the thread of the other conversation.

  "I never, never - you listening? - never came home from work with clean hands." He passed the peeled orange to Angie and looked at me. "I got buried alive, kid. Twice they buried me alive."

  "Here we go again," Vic sighed.

  "Twice," Freddie said again, cupping his hands around his wine glass as if to warm them. "Ten feet down the first time, fifteen the second." His eyes glittered. I was suddenly afraid of him.

  "Why?" I finally asked.

  "Because I wouldn't join the union. Because the boss paid me twenty-one bucks a day and everyone else eighteen. Well, the guys didn't like that, so one day they say, 'Fred, join the union.' I told 'em I was doin' okay without it."

  "Eh, that's all," Connie said.

  He began to nod. "Same day, late in the afternoon, the boys are puttin' away the tools. Foreman says, 'Somebody go down and get that goddamn pick we left behind.' I'm not doin' any­thing, so down I go."

  He gulped wine. Connie said, "He's talkin' so much he's dry."

  "Ten feet," Freddie continued. "Even in August it's cold like ice in that hole. You press your fist against the side and it gets numb. Am I right, Anj?"

  "Always cold in a hole," Angie said.

  "Next thing I know I hear the dirt slidin'. Slidin' like some­body's pushin' it, not like it's fallin' by itself. I turn my head to look and the dirt gets in my eyes, so now I'm blind. But I know what's goin' on, all right."

  Freddie's color changed, as if a wash of black ink had been brushed over his face. Angie poured more wine for him. The apple slice in front of him was browning.

  "I get down on my hands and knees and put my arms around my head to make an air pocket," he continued softly. "So's I can keep breathin' awhile, you know?"

  He demonstrated, putting his head on the table. He stayed in place so long the top of his head went pink.

  Connie snapped him out of it by saying, "You should have joined the union."

  He lifted his head. "Damn the union!"

  I swallowed. "Then what?"

  He grinned evilly. "What could I do but wait? Wait for the bastards to dig. I listen for the shovels. Tons of dirt on my back, I can’t move an inch."