The Obstacle Course

by JF Freedman

  It isn’t like we hate niggers or anything. It’s just that they’re one thing and we’re another, and mixing us doesn’t do nothing but cause trouble. Actually, I’ve never hardly had any contact with colored people, except for maids and shit like that, garbage collectors. There’s an area south of town, the Heights, where they live, but I’ve never been to it. No one I know has. There’s all these stories about how they practice voodoo and all kinds of weird stuff, like drinking chicken blood and grisly shit like that.

  Of all of us, Burt’s the one who really hates coloreds, because they ran his family out of their own neighborhood. All his old stomping grounds are full of black faces now. It would be as if all of a sudden I woke up one morning and I was the only white kid in Ravensburg Junior High. I don’t know what I’d do if that ever happened but I wouldn’t stick around long, that is for shit-sure. That’s what Burt’s older brother must’ve felt—he went back to Eastern one time after it was desegregated, to get an old trophy or something, and the halls were filled with colored students, it made him so sick he almost puked on the spot. He drove over to the Anacostia River, took off his class ring, and threw it in. Then he went out and got royally shitfaced.

  We crossed the highway and went down the hill to Quincy Arms, these cheap two-story brick apartment buildings that were built ten years ago after the war for the returning vets who needed a place they could afford to live and start up their families in before they could buy regular houses. They were the first apartments built in Ravensburg—now there’s three other developments scattered around the town. Quincy Arms is only ten years old and already looks like it’s about to fall down, it’s so dirty and grimy and putrid. Ravensburg’s still a small town full of hicks for the most part, but it’s no longer the little out-of-touch farming community it was when I was born.

  A few apartments were lit, but it was pretty still. They don’t allow dogs here, so you can pretty much come and go as you please and no one ever knows.

  We approached the buildings from the back, waiting near the playground to see if there was any activity. Satisfied we hadn’t been spotted, we carefully picked our way down the icy sidewalk and went in through one of the unlocked basement doors.

  The basement was like a labyrinth, stretching under several adjoining buildings. It was dim, even in daytime, just some naked bulbs hanging down. There are dozens of entrances and exits and crawlspaces and doors leading upstairs to apartments.

  We’re always wary when we come in. Better safe than sorry, that’s my motto. After we were sure no one else was around we moved through a bunch of corridors until we came to the laundry room.

  The laundry room is a big square white-tiled room with four coin-operated washing machines and four dryers set against the walls. Each machine has slots for dimes and nickels. The first thing we always do is check to make sure nobody has a load going, because we don’t want somebody coming down to take out their dirty underwear and find us there. We’ve found some really funny stuff in those machines. It’s amazing what people’ll put in the wash.

  All the machines were empty. We had it made in the shade.

  “Helloooo down there,” Joe mooed in this real low voice, which echoed off the walls like at the Grand Canyon. He’s a real clown sometimes, most usually when it’s the wrong time.

  “Shut the fuck up, you asshole,” Burt whispered. “You want some dumb-shit housewife to come down here and start screaming her lungs out?”

  “I got her lungs,” Joe laughed, grabbing his balls through his pants.

  “You got jack-shit,” Burt said. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  There were two entrances, the one we’d come in and another one at the far end, about fifty feet further down. Joe stood guard at one and Burt watched the other. I took the long-necked screwdriver out of my jacket pocket and pried it into the coin box of the nearest washing machine. I’ve got this down to a science; a few good thrusts, and the box popped open. I scooped the coins into a bookbag Joe’d brought and went to work on the next one.

  I checked Burt and Joe. They were bouncing on the balls of their feet, ready to run. I was the cool one—I just went from box to box, doing my work. I’m pretty cool under pressure, I guess it comes from having to dodge my old man all the time.

  The whole operation took less than three minutes. I scooped the last of the coins into the bookbag and carefully reattached the coin boxes to the machines; until they were opened by the guy that services them nobody could tell they’d been fucked with.

  We ran out the way we’d come in and up the hill clear of the apartments, resting behind the Mobil station.

  “I thought sure somebody was coming down that time,” Joe said, gulping for air, “it was so quiet I couldn’t hardly stand it.”

  “Somebody should’ve come down the way you were mouthing off,” Burt said.

  “Oh, fuck you,” Joe said.

  “Fuck you, too,” Burt came back.

  We’re always talking to each other like that. It’s like somebody else saying ‘how you doing.’

  “I’ve been through every corner of that place,” I told them. “I’ve got ways in and out of there you ain’t never seen yet.” I’m good at planning strategy for shit like that, that’s how come I know I’ll do good at the Naval Academy.

  “Count up and let’s get out of here. I’m freezing my cookies off,” Burt said, shivering as much from the danger as the cold.

  “You ain’t got enough cookies to freeze off,” I told him.

  “Ask Carolyn Hill how much cookies I got,” Burt fired back.

  “You getting any off her?” Joe asked.

  “Bare titty and more to come,” Burt said, strutting his achievement like a goddamn rooster in a barnyard.

  “You wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it, which you never will,” I jibed at him.

  “Fuck I wouldn’t.”

  “Come on, count up,” Joe said. It really was cold out, our breath was condensing in front of our faces.

  I laid the change out on the ground, making three equal piles. The take came to almost three dollars each.

  “Not bad for a night’s work,” I stated, feeling proud. Three dollars is good money any way you look at it.

  “Let’s adios the hell out of here,” Burt said, scooping his share into his pockets.

  “We’ve already done the deed,” I told him, “so don’t get your bowels in an uproar.”

  I silently climbed through the window into my room, crossed the dark floor, and opened my closet door, where I took out a Mason jar that I’ve hidden behind some old football pads, way in the back. I opened the lid and put my night’s work inside. The jar was three-quarters filled with nickels and dimes. That’s where I get the money to buy stuff like my models and the new Ravensburg High jacket.

  I hid the jar away and got back into my pajamas. Then I cracked my door, checking things out. There weren’t any lights except the glow from the television set.

  My old man was sleeping in front of the test pattern. He woke up with a start when he heard me come into the room.

  “Got hungry,” I explained, making sure to stay upwind from him, because his breath, a combination of booze and mouth-open sleeping, was truly vicious. He could get a job steaming wallpaper off walls, I swear to God.

  He grunted with a loud belch. If he lit a match he’d blow up the whole goddamn house. Finally he forced himself up from the couch and staggered upstairs, shedding his clothes as he went for my mom to pick up in the morning.

  There was the usual stack of unwashed dishes in the sink along with a bunch of greasy glasses, some smeared with lipstick. I got out a fry pan and fixed myself three western-omelette sandwiches and washed them down with a couple glasses of chocolate milk. I’m a growing boy, since I was about six years old everyone’s been saying I’ve got a hollow leg. My old man’s always threatening to charge me room and board because I eat so much. Someday he will, he’s such a bastard.

  The kitchen was clean when I wen
t back upstairs. I hate a dirty kitchen.

  I lay on my bed looking up at the ceiling for a long time, playing with my cock, thinking of Darlene, Ginger Huntwell, Mrs. Fletcher. My ceiling is papered in swirls and patterns, an old job that’s faded over the years. As I lay there thoughts of pussy faded away, and just before I fell asleep I saw the patterns above my head come alive and start to move.

  I was running the obstacle course in my dream. I was in slow motion, flowing like the wind to the cheers of the spectators who were lined up to watch. I ran effortlessly, smoothly, all power and grace, every muscle working in harmony.

  I came to the last hurdle, the highest one. Springing at it, I cleared the top with ease, soaring into the air, up and up and up, flying like a young god towards the sky.

  FOUR

  MACGREGOR’S HOBBY SHOP is the most complete model shop in the Washington area. It’s way over on Georgia Avenue, in Silver Spring, which is in a different county, but it’s the only place to buy your models if you’re a serious builder. I take the bus near my house down to the Mt. Rainier depot and transfer to another bus that goes to Montgomery County, which takes more than an hour, or I hitchhike, which can take a lot of time, too, depending on the rides. Even so, I mostly hitch unless the weather is bad, because I’ll put my money into a model over bus fare every time. I was checking out this frigate, a Confederate model from the Civil War. I like frigates; I like older boats in general, they come from a time I wish I’d lived in, such as when Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and those guys lived. I’ve built a couple frigates, one from scratch even; I found these old drawings and diagrams in this book I checked out from the library in Hyattsville, it took me three months and it didn’t come out exactly the way I’d wanted it to, but it was a good ship, I had a lot of fun making it. Building ships is fun, especially sailing ships. Someday when I’m old and retired from the Navy I want to be a ship’s architect and builder.

  One thing I’ve got to do first is learn how to sail. I’ve never actually been on a boat, I mean I’ve been on them but they were always tied up at the dock, not counting boats like canoes and rowboats, I’ve been on those of course, just not a real sailing boat. This summer I’m going to learn, I’m going to go up to Annapolis and find somebody that owns one and volunteer to help out in exchange for lessons. I’ve seen these ads posted around the harbor looking for people to crew, I could be good at that, I’ll be old enough to be away from home on my own, it’ll probably be a relief for my folks to have me out of the house for a while—the feeling would be mutual on my part, too. I’ve been looking forward to it for months, actually, I’ve even figured out how many weeks it’ll be before school’s over.

  Besides the frigate there was also this battleship that interested me. It was a World War Two model, really big. It would be the biggest model I’ve ever built. It isn’t graceful like a sailing ship, it’s more just raw power, meant for hunting and destroying. It’s the kind of ship I’ll be in command of someday.

  I really like frigates but I’d already built a bunch of them. It was time to build a battleship. I started looking at the plans.

  There were a couple other kids in the store besides me, but they were with their dads. These professional-quality models take too much time for a kid, plus they cost real money, a kid would have to be pretty rich to be able to afford them. I’ve tried to get a conversation going with a couple of these kids but we don’t talk the same language. Like I said, I’m a serious builder.

  “Now that is a ship.” Bill, a man about my dad’s age who’s one of the owners of the shop, came over and looked at the plans with me. “You’re going to have your hands full with that one, Roy.” Bill’s a really neat guy, we talk about models all the time, he doesn’t talk to me like I’m some dumb kid, like my teachers do. If some of my teachers could see me in here with these complicated models they’d be pretty impressed.

  “I know,” I said. “I’ve never built one this big.”

  “I guess your dad’ll be helping you, huh?”

  What guys like Bill don’t know won’t hurt them.

  “He likes ’em, but I do most of the work. He just kind of tells me how great they are. He’s real proud of me.”

  My old man’s never seen one of my models, not up close. The times he’s looked in my room he was usually drunk and ragging on me, he wouldn’t know if there was a full-size boat in there, the shape he’s in those times. If he ever did check them out for real he’d think they were junk I’d wasted my money on.

  “I want to try a new kind of glue,” I told Bill, moving the conversation off my family, “that kind you were telling me about that dries slower but holds better.”

  “These are what the old pros use,” Bill told me, reaching up on the shelf for a handful of bottles. “You have to be very careful with them. I usually don’t recommend them to fellows your age but I think you can handle these, the sophistication level of models you’ve been building.”

  He glanced up at a man who was waiting to pay for some brushes.

  “What do you think, Admiral,” Bill asked, “isn’t this the brand you like?”

  I turned around. This older man was standing behind me. He picked up one of the bottles and examined it with a practiced eye.

  The man had salt-and-pepper hair, wore these old-fashioned rimless glasses, and stood erect, like he had a coat hanger in his shirt, except he was relaxed, too, like the way the midshipmen at the Academy stand. I felt myself standing up straighter without thinking about it. He was an old guy, definitely older than my old man, maybe as old as fifty, the kind of man you felt you had to respect just because of the way he looked, like Admiral Halsey, who I’ve seen in the old war newsreels they show at the movies, or MacArthur. MacArthur’s in the Army, not the Navy, but he’s a neat-looking guy, with the aviator sunglasses and the corncob pipe you always see between his teeth. I’ve got this corncob pipe which I hooked from the dime store after I saw this movie about Huckleberry Finn, the one with Mickey Rooney. Once in a while me and my friends go out in this abandoned field near our houses and lie on top of the tall grass and smoke cigarette tobacco in our corncob pipes. It’s nice out there in the fields, it’s like we’re not in Ravensburg at all.

  “Yes, I use this brand,” the old guy said, turning to me. “What model are you planning to build?”

  “This one,” I said, showing him the battleship kit.

  “That’s a large undertaking. You must be an experienced model builder.”

  “Roy’s as capable as any of my adult customers,” Bill told him, gushing all over me. Usually I hate it when people do shit like that but when Bill does it it’s okay, because he means it, he isn’t trying to snow me like my teachers do when they’re talking about my so-called wasted potential.

  “You should see some of the frigates and cutters he’s completed,” he went on. “He brought one in last month, I swear you would have thought it was crafted by someone who’s been building these things for a lifetime.”

  This was getting to be too much, this bragging on me that he was doing. I’m more used to being told how crummy I am at things, not how good.

  “You like building ships, do you?” this old guy asked.

  “Yes, sir. Someday I want to have a full collection, every ship that’s ever been commissioned by the U.S. Navy.”

  “You must have salt water in your blood,” he said, smiling at me.

  “Yes, sir.” There was something about him that made it natural to call him “sir,” it wasn’t phony or anything, I didn’t feel like a brown-noser doing it. “I love it, when I graduate high school I’m going to Annapolis.”

  I’ve never told anybody that before, not even my best friends. They’d mock me for it is why. This old guy, though, he didn’t look the type who’d mock anyone.

  He stared at me for a minute, this unblinking stare.

  “I’m a graduate of the Naval Academy myself,” he informed me, not bragging or anything, just stating a fact.

  “You
are … were …?” I felt dumb saying it like that. He didn’t seem to notice, fortunately, or I’d have really felt stupid.

  “Class of ’23.”

  “I’ll bet you’ve been all over the world.” This was a real Navy man standing in front of me, the first one I’d ever actually had a normal conversation with.

  “I’ve seen my share.”

  “I guess you were in World War Two.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Which theatre?” I asked.

  “Pacific.”

  “The big one.” I nodded. I’ve studied all the battles of World War Two. I pretend I’m in them, commanding a battleship or a destroyer. “Did you know Admiral Halsey?” I asked.

  “Yes, we knew each other.”

  “Nimitz?”

  “I knew him as well.”

  “The admiral’s being modest,” Bill cut in, from behind the counter, “he was Nimitz’s right-hand man before he retired.”

  “You were?” I was in awe, I shit you not. He was just this little guy, he kind of looked like old President Truman, who was a little guy too, although he was a tough motherfucker from what my teachers have said. Here I was standing at a counter in this rinky-dink hobby shop talking with a guy who’d been a real Navy admiral, who’d worn stars on his collar.

  “For a time.”

  “During the war?”

  “Yes.”

  For one of the few times in my life I was speechless.

  “Where are you from, son?” he asked me, it was like he could tell how I was feeling.

  “Ravensburg, sir. Over to Prince Georges.” It was pretty obvious since I was wearing my Ravensburg High jacket, but he was the kind of polite guy who would ask you where you were from even if it was obvious.

  “A town I know,” he said.

  “You do?” Ravensburg’s a hick town, how could a man like this know it? Heard of it, maybe, but know it?

  “The British burned it on their way to the capital during the War of 1812,” he informed me.