Diesel Heart

by Melvin Carter Jr

  Oh, the cloud formations! Floating lions, faces, battleships, and clowns.

  “Melvin.” Louder, “MELVIN!”

  “Huh?”

  “Come show the class how to divide this problem.”

  The usual pregnant hush echoed in the classroom sound chamber as I slowly emerged from the last row. A megaphoned vut-vut sound echoed from the crotch of my green uniform corduroy pants with every step. Tortured with self-consciousness, feeling stabs from the eyes of every classmate watching me with anticipation, I tried to avoid that inevitable moment of panic in attempting to work out the problem.

  “HUH?! WHAAAAT?! HU—uuhhhh?!?” The class let me know that what I was doing was ridiculous.

  But my desk in the back always provided asylum, especially if it was by a window. The leaves of trees blowing in the wind … no, wait, a bird flying by and chirping.

  “Melvin—Melvin—Melvin!” … me snapping out of la-la land.

  “Read!” I was expected to follow along and continue where the previous reader had stopped.

  “Uh, okay … what page?”

  Oh, and recess! Sweet recess! Sounds of recess filled me with euphoria, swings swinging, seesaws, balls bouncing, everyone running, yelling, and laughing. No, lunchtime! Yes, merciful lunchtime. It didn’t matter what we had—I’d slam it down in order to get to the playground as fast as possible, no matter what the weather was, rainstorm or snow blizzard. Yes, lunchtime was my almost-made-it-halfway-there cue. The bell! Ring the bell! PLEASE!

  St. Peter Claver was a Catholic church and school located at Lexington Parkway, the extreme uppity ghetto perimeter. The school was a tiny pillbox baby-doo-doo-yellow-colored building consisting of exactly eight classrooms, first grade through eighth grade. The playground was equipped with swings, a sandbox, a jungle gym, teeter-totters, and plenty of running room. That quarter-block playground was surrounded by and closed in with a towering chain-link fence, topped off with three rows of barbed wire. Drab green uniforms were mandatory. Boys wore “SPC” on their neckties and girls on the breasts of the pullover so-called jumper-type dresses. Under our breath, we called the school “Siberian Prison Camp.”

  Somehow I moved on to second grade. Sister Mary One had a heart attack and never came back. My mother assured me that no matter what nobody said, it was not my fault.

  In second grade, classmates disrupted my daydreams by making fun of me. They and Sister Mary Two engaged in conversations where I had no clue as to what they were talking about. I flunked second grade and had to repeat it. Then I flunked third grade and had to repeat that, too. Somehow, in my own personal interpretation, this flunking was some kind of victory, a statement of my own unique individuality in relationship to stuff that had nuthin’ to do with nuthin’. It was a kind of emancipation. But while I bragged on flunking, others regarded it as failure and stupidity.

  Recess never came too quick or lasted long enough. But when the bell would eventually, finally, mercifully ring, it wasn’t like a sprinter dash. Nope, you had to stand up, say a prayer, line up, boys and girls in separate lines, then move only when instructed, no talking. But when you got out, it was absolute survival to go berserk, to run, jump, play football, play a tag game we called “Pump,” and of course fight. I’d get into fights on the playground, in the sandbox, on the merry-go-round, and on the monkey bars.

  One day, Mother Maurice, the principal, and Sister Mary Three, my teacher, called me out of the classroom. A boy and his parents were in the hallway. Mother ordered me to stand still and then ordered the boy to punch me in my face. The physical part of it hurt a little, and a couple of tears trickled down my cheeks. But internally a secret ego retaliated, What? Is that it? Is that all you got? Just part of a routine. After all, this was like all the punishments I brought upon myself. And thank God I hadn’t gotten caught for most of the things I perpetrated.

  After recess, students filed into the room, stood by their desks, and said a prayer in unison. When Sister gave the “Be seated” command, everyone sat at the same time. One day during my second year in third grade, my punishment was to remain in the classroom by myself during recess. I found enough thumbtacks to place at least one in every chair except my own.

  Then recess was over. Everyone came in. The class said some Hail Marys and Our Fathers in unison. “You may be seated,” Sister said. Everyone sat down and jumped up at the same time.

  It wasn’t funny for very long. In the principal’s office, Mother ordered me to pull down my pants, lean over a chair, and allow an eighth-grade boy to whip me with his belt. Although SPC was predominately a Black school with all Black teachers, it just so happened that the boy Mother had ordered to whip me was a white boy. Well, I had a technique for handling this scenario that helped to preserve some dignity. The lower part of my light green ever-so-drab uniform shirt extended low, just beyond my butt cheeks. So I pulled my pants down in such a way that the shirt prevented my ripped, stained, dingy drawers from coming into view.

  At SPC, the sisters had absolute authority, and Mother had even more. At the beginning of every year, all classrooms were equipped with new rulers, wooden pointers, and yardsticks. They never lasted too long but got broken across somebody’s knuckles or over somebody’s back, often my own. By October, the sisters would be pointing at blackboards with broken or partial wood fragments.

  An ass whoopin’ was almost an everyday occurrence for me. My biggest fear was that the sisters would tell my parents. At that time, my cover story for everything was that I got into a fight.

  But whether there was trouble in school or not, there were always things going on in our neighborhood, and some of them were big transitions. For instance, one day there was a bunch of commotion at Skeeter’s house, directly across the street. His mother had died. I was four then, so he must have been almost six. After she was gone, he seemed to come and go as he pleased. He could even cross Rondo, a busy street, without anyone’s permission. Since I always had to play in front of our house, he was my contact with the outside free world.

  It was adventure time when Skeeter showed up. All that don’t-cross-the-street-stay-in-front-of-the-house crap ceased to exist. It was exploration time! Time to raid, forage, and plunder! Fight with the new guys down on the corner. Race with Charles, Bernie Brooks, and them other guys on bikes. I’d jump on the handlebars with Skeeter pedaling. Bike out of control, we plowed into a fire hydrant at full speed. I rolled around on hard sidewalk pavement in excruciating agony (later in life to learn of broken ribs). But other than that one time, we always won the race.

  Bernie Brooks’s big balloon-tire Hawthorne bicycle was almost identical to mine, except his was more brownish, mine more reddish. He could ride—ride fast-fast-fast. Nobody but nobody could ride like Bernie! But the last time I rode on his handlebars, something made me promise myself never ever to ride with him ever again.

  Abandoned buildings, rooftops, back alleys, and Big Game Bug Hunting called my name. Wash empty mayo jars, punch air holes in the lids, lurk, stalk, and capture wasps, bees, ants, hornets, butterflies, and especially big ol’ spiders. Filthy cluttered abandoned garages had the best spider webs, the kind you see in scary movies. We gathered bees, ants, caterpillars to put in a spider web. And watched, mesmerized.

  The more unharmed the bait, the better the fight. Sometimes the spider approached cautiously; other times it just pounced. We’d sit there and stare, then jump up and down and cheer. Once a big ol’ hairy spider, running to escape, busted through the ranks of our circle quick, making us run, jump, and holler. Even Skeeter hopped up and jumped back. But Tweet, never scared of anything, just grabbed it with his bare hand and played with it. Astonished hush! Then handling spiders became mandatory routine daredevil stuff.

  “But Momma, I was with Skeeter!”

  Momma hovered threateningly with a long green swooshing lilac switch that I’d had to go select off the bush for my own whoopin’. “Boy, didn’t I tell you to stay in front of the house and not go anywhere?”
Swoosh-swoosh like Zorro. “Boy, you tell me everything!”

  “No, Mom, but see …”—offering a sterilized cover story.

  “Uh-uh, boy, don’chu play with me!” Looking madder and madder. “Where were you?”

  I had to tell her about the pee-pee firing line. Booger removed the jar lid. All the boys lined up, firing squad style, and peed in the jar on escaping hornets, bees, and wasps. I could pee on a bee from across the garage, farther than everybody else.

  Her face went blank. Anger suddenly vanished, replaced with something I couldn’t read. She rushed into her room and shut the door. I stood stupid, scared of the impending butt whoopin’, hearing what sounded like muffled gagging laughter.

  Emotionally, I was Momma’s personality clone. Because she and I were so much alike, we knew how to push each other’s anger triggers. Man! She could irritate me more and make me madder than anyone else on this earth. Like her, I had extreme flash temper anger issues. My head would throb, throat swollen up like a cobra emitting faint hissing sounds. Out of her earshot, I vented, “That shit always pisses me off! She makes me sick!”

  But Skeeter heard me. Stunned as if an ice-cold bucket of water had been poured down his back, almost going suddenly limp, he said, “Baby Brother, you just don’t know! You’d better appreciate having a mom.” In our own silent language, he forbade me ever to disrespect my mother in his presence. I almost never did, because I’d catch myself when I knew he could hear me.

  Skeeter was the best storyteller. I’d stand there big-eyed, amazed and amused. “Den what happened, Skeeter?” He knew he had me goin’! Skeeter could take me to a different place without ever leaving my front porch, even though I knew that he was putting me on.

  We were chasing butterflies one day in a big grassy field when Skeeter tried to tell me about this great big street called a freeway that was comin’ through our neighborhood. Kinda like a highway, only bigger. “Gonna be from Rondo to St. Anthony wide and come straight through Rondo right where your house is. My family gets to stay! But you’re on the odd side of the street. They gonna tear down your house!”

  Momentarily stunned and haunted, trying to imagine, I concluded, Naw … just another Skeeter story.

  It was one of those lazy late summer afternoons, and Momma had told me not to go down to the corner. I wasn’t deliberately disobedient; I just wandered too far down the street, looked up, and found myself running home fast with the Thompson boys closing in on me. I fled as fast as my PF Flyers (a most coveted tennis shoe at that time) could carry me. I couldn’t see those boys, but my senses revealed their exact location.

  Although the distance between us was increasing, my feet slowed down. Without my consent and beyond my own understanding, I allowed those boys to catch up. The next thing I knew, my feet stopped, planted—and my miniature fist buzz-sawed, disappearing deep into one’s belly and across another’s jaw, using their own momentum and speed against them. Two boys rolled on the ground, weeping in agony. The other turned and ran home.

  Neighborhood porch sitters exploded out front doors and down Rondo Avenue with applause and laughter, amazed with what they had just witnessed. “Billie, what you been teaching that boy?” Momma had seen it, too, and tried to act disgusted, but couldn’t hide her shock and amazement, along with a glimmer of pride.

  “Boy, get in the house!”

  By around 1956, when I was about seven, CONDEMNED notices appeared on door after door, house after house, on the odd side of the street. That couldn’t mean nuthin’ good. But the whole process happened in slow motion, taking years to come to pass. The vacant houses, abandoned businesses, tall grasses, bare fruit trees, and all the forbidden places proved to be adventure/explorer wonderland.

  But sometimes as I wandered alone, the ruins, empty houses, silence where there had once been songs—jazz, blues, gospel, and boogie-woogie—reminded me of the ruins of ancient civilizations where great empires once flourished, then disappeared, and nobody knew whatever happened to ’em.

  The “Do Not Enter” signs on boarded-up doors of abandoned buildings were an open invitation. Inside the old red-bricked Maxfield school-house, I stepped into the dark room where the floor had been removed and fell face-first onto a long wooden plank that broke my fall. Then on my way out, my foot dragged along a wooden board, and a long nail pierced the sole of my PF Flyers but did not go all the way through the top of my foot. Good thing I’d had so many tetanus shots back when I’d cut up my left hand on that tall rusty chain-link fence. They’d maxed me out on the tetanus dosage, so much so that Dr. Sprafka had told me never to get another tetanus shot in my life because it could kill me.

  Ober Boys Club had a summer camp at Snail Lake, the same one my dad went to when he was a boy, and it still cost precisely one dollar for six days. The club itself was located down in Lower Rondo. We had already moved way to the opposite end of Rondo, near Lexington, and the kids I mostly played with were on the Oatmeal Hill side. And the kids my age on the Cornmeal side mostly went to other schools, so this was like going with campers from across town.

  On the first morning, Dad just dropped me off and left me waiting for the camp bus. I was about seven years old and a little nervous because this was my first time away from Mommy and Daddy. All the other boys knew each other. Clearly I was kind of an outsider, except for the fact that Skeeter was there. Although he never let me be bullied, he always allowed me to fight my own fights.

  It started right away. The first day of camp, the counselors were giving a tour. As I was standing on the dock, looking over into the lake, a hand from the crowd behind me shoved me into the shallow water.

  Livid, berserk in angry delirium, I spun around in the air before touching down. I splashed back to the group, shouting, slobbering, yelling, “Who the fuck did it?”

  For a brief moment, people in the crowd stepped back. About the third yell, a boy with hostile eyes, even angrier than my own, jumped into the shallow water at me. “I did it, man! Whatchu gonna do?”

  Deep-set eyes centered in a big broad face with protruding clamping jaws and square chin—he had me outmuscled, outsized, and even out-angered. His name was Pitbull. The counselors acted like they wanted to break it up, but no, it was on!

  This guy could fight, dish it out and take it, introducing my face to a “double combination”—the hard way. Funny thing about a fully engaged fight is that you can feel the impact now and postpone the pain. I had never heard the term double combination before, but I could hear spectators cheer, admiring as my head snapped back and forward a couple of times in a row. Nevertheless, I held my own pretty good, in fact was just about to gain the upper hand when the counselors dove into the water and pulled us apart. Already I was thinking we’d have this fight again, and then we’d be friends. Maybe they’d move the bunks aside and let us finish it inside. I fully anticipated getting it done before we left camp. But it never happened that summer, and it certainly wasn’t over.

  4

  Learnin’ Lessons

  That second time through third grade—being trapped in a classroom every day through autumn and winter and into spring—was excruciating, agonizing torture. But oh, the lilacs! The early, fresh, rich bulbs budding into rich, green leaves, followed by tiny deep purple flowers gave proof that I somehow miraculously survived another school year. And they promised summer. Oh, the fragrance! Oh, the sweetness! It was about 1958, and spring had sprung. Time for the great outdoors; to bike, swim, fish, canoe, or hang out in alleys and explore.

  We had just moved to 1026 Aurora, near Lexington. There were multitudes of vacant lots and abandoned buildings that needed exploring, and apple trees, pear trees, plum trees, and raspberry and rhubarb patches that needed raiding.

  But I was clearly the only person in the history of the world ever to flunk second and third grades, back-to-back. So this summer, Billie Dove decided to deal with this book learnin’ stuff once and for all. She got a set of old torn-up schoolbooks and made me sit down at the dining room
table with her. We both worked very hard for half that summer, but she worked way harder than I did. She managed to process readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic in ways that got through my thick skull.

  I tried to tune her and all that education stuff out. I scanned and searched for some birds, cloud formations out one window or a tree leaf out another. But Momma’s face appeared in my face everywhere I turned no matter how many times or directions I turned my head or tried to blink her out. My new set of friends—Fatso, Ronnie, Tootsie, Jasper, and Nim—repeatedly came to the door, rang my doorbell to see if I could come out.

  But no! “Melvin, spell the word. Now sound it out. Now put the syllables together!” “Learn one times table at a time. Go to your room and come out when you have it memorized!” Eventually Momma found my fleeting learning wavelength, only tapping the surface. To this day, I can still feel her forcing me, flooding me with survival information, literally loving it into me. She demystified the mysteries of book learnin’.

  She grinned. “You just put together a bunch of basic stuff, then apply it to everything else!”

  “What? You mean to tell me that I can do dis?”

  She smiled.

  By then, half the summer was gone. The doorbell would ring. “Boy, be in this house by dinnertime!” she’d say.

  Bam! The door slammed. I was gone before she had finished the sentence.

  Now that I was free for the summer, I had some catching up to do. I absorbed summer with the distant song of the mourning dove. Minnesota summertime, sent personally to me as a special gift, had finally appeared. Better get it right now. BANG!

  My new neighborhood bustled with kids of all ages, up and down the street, down the block, around the corner, and especially across the alley. Sublime poetry echoed from alleys to streets.