Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken

by Di Filippo, Paul

  Somehow that trivial domestic observation failed to console Rory.

  The first day of the Games finally arrived. The torch-bearer ran into the main stadium. The crowd unleashed a multilingual roar. The procession of the athletes took place. Rory felt silly marching with his teammates, waving to the cameras and spectators. He was anxious to get to the actual competition. He only hoped this strange high-altitudinal lightheadedness wouldn’t queer his performance.

  Innumerable tedious speeches represented a further immediate hurdle. The eighty-one-year-old Avery Brundage—looking like a wrinkled gnome—offered a particularly tiresome example. President of the IOC, Brundage had favored the inclusion of South Africa in the Games, and as such served as the focus of the wrath of the Blacks. Now he uttered a few mealy-mouthed platitudes about sports transcending politics, which the trackmen greeted with bold catcalls. The huge stadium mercilessly swallowed their small taunts.

  Rory was amazed at the courage shown by the protestors. To speak their minds amid these massed forces of craven neutrality and outright opposition— Their incomprehensible bravery struck him as highly admirable.

  The next day saw the start of the preliminary rounds for the springboard diving.

  Rory had never excelled at the springboard. His lack had something to do with that period of autodidacticism, some quirk he had internalized and could not uncover and extirpate. To further complicate matters Rory managed that day to stir the bubbling-under enmity of Coach Tyrebyter.

  George Tyrebyter headed the coaching staff of the USA diving team. He hailed from the Santa Clara Swim Club, nexus of US talent. He had always exhibited a vague distaste for Rory, who had edged out one of Tyrebyter’s proteges for a spot on the team. A burly, crew-cut, severe man whose constant sucking on mentholated cough drops did nothing to ameliorate his gravelly voice, Tyrebyter could not stand the least sign of what he referred to as “being trifled with.”

  Rory stood chatting with some of the trackmen early in the day. Tyrebyter, passing by, chose to focus a hard glare upon Rory.

  “Hey, Honeyman, ain’t it bad enough you got a Commie coach, you got to be hanging out with these agitators, too? Why aren’t you suited up and practicing already?”

  A red wash occluded Rory’s vision. He heard the sound of smashing barn-window glass. He strove to control his voice.

  “Coach Tyrebyter, we come from a free country and these are my fellow countrymen and fellow athletes. I would appreciate it if you spoke of them with more respect.”

  “Honeyman, you are one crazy hayseed. Get your candy ass in some trunks and start diving.”

  Tyrebyter left. John Carlos said, “Rory, my man, that is a honky mofo.”

  “I hear you,” said Rory.

  Rory made his practice dives clad in his old favorite trunks with the shell motif. Just before the actual rounds were to begin, Dzubas prevailed on him to change into the new Speedo suit.

  “Satisfying our commercial backers remains a crucial imperative, my boy.”

  “But I hate these trunks. They pinch.”

  “So does poverty, son. Now, just humor old Uncle Coleslaw.”

  “Oh, dang it—all right!”

  Rory emerged poolside feeling angry, uncomfortable and awkward. He carried his block of beeswax from which to adapt some earplugs. Spotting his mother in the stands he waved the book-shaped mass aloft. Later on Roz would tell him that she—and undoubtedly the rest of the civilized world—was convinced that he intended—in a show of coolness bordering on insult—to read a cheap paperback thriller during the more boring moments of the competition.

  Tyrebyter hailed Rory from several yards away. “Doubletime it, Honeyman! You’re nearly late!”

  Rory suppressed a sharp retort.

  The afternoon tumbled downhill rapidly from that point. Each of Rory’s dives earned fewer points than the prior one. Tyrebyter’s scowls and growls destroyed any remnants of his wonted composure. By the end of the rounds Rory felt like an utter novice. Needless to say, he did not advance to the finals in this event.

  After the whole debacle was over, Rory looked for some soothing words from his personal trainer and from his adoring mother.

  “Have you completely abandoned all my teachings, you young dog? Do you want to drag me through the briar patch of infamy?”

  “Where the heck was your mind today, kiddo? This isn’t a swimming hole back in Mayberry!”

  Rory pulled the towel hanging around his neck up to completely cover his shameful head. What a day!

  That night the whole Olympic village buzzed with conversation about what had happened earlier at one of the track events. After the 100-meter final, the three black medallists—Jim Hines and Charlie Greene of the USA, and Lennox Miller of Jamaica—had announced that they would not accept their medals directly from the tainted hands of Avery Brundage. This transgression of protocol and sportsmanship was already making headlines around the world.

  Rory headed for the runners’ dorm to get the straight scoop on the affair. He discovered the place in an uproar.

  Everyone was trying to speak simultaneously. Rory could make out bits of speech, including Carlos saying, “Shee-it! If they think they seen something already, just wait till tomorrow!”

  Having no diving obligations the next day, Rory resolved to be present during the track events involving his friends.

  During the 200-meter run he found himself sitting next to Lee Evans, who was not participating in the event. The hip pocket of Evans pants bulged with some mysterious objects.

  Rory cheered loudly as Smith took the gold, and Carlos the bronze. They disappeared for a few moments after the race. Rory could feel an almost palpable tension building.

  When the men returned for the bestowal of medals they wore their warm-up suits. They mounted the stepped victory stand under the hot Mexican sun. As the band began to play the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the men donned African beads and scarves. They removed their shoes (to symbolize poverty, they later explained), donned a single back glove apiece, and raised clenched fists while bowing their heads.

  Rory turned to Evans. Among the spectators the lonely Black athlete stood, similarly clad and similarly protesting, but no one saw him. His face, Rory noted, exhibited a sweaty tight serenity.

  Some Americans in the crowd began to shout and boo. Things swiftly became chaotic. Officials aborted the ceremony.

  That night Jesse Owens, star of the 1936 Olympics, arrived at the trackmen’s dorm, sent as a neutral intermediary by the IOC. He announced that Smith and Carlos would certainly be expelled from the rest of the Games, and that the entire American team might suffer a similar fate. Rory was present and he tried to voice his opinions about the unfairness of such a decision. But in the angry confusion he could not make himself heard.

  The following day Smith and Carlos were indeed sent home, but the rest of the team was “generously” allowed to remain.

  The platform diving prelims had a slot that day. In the hours preceding his own event Rory stewed at the injustice done to his friends. When Dzubas reminded him to wear his Speedo suit, Rory snapped at his coach and defiantly donned his old trunks. Dzubas ruefully shook his head and retreated.

  That day Rory dove like an oiled machine powered by a hot core of indignation. He passed easily on to the finals. Afterwards his mother kept jumping up and down and punching his shoulder until finally Dzubas had to exclaim, “Madame, desist! You are raising a bruise the size of a geese egg

  Rory himself felt no elation, only a cool determination. He seemed a million miles out of himself.

  The day of the final diving rounds arrived. The minutes of Rory’s final dive comprised a significant portion of that day. The Italian, Dibiasi, held first place. By no means could Rory overtake him. However, by selecting a dive with a high degree of difficulty for his last one, Rory stood a chance to vault from fourth place two slots over his teammate Edwin Young and the Mexican Alvara Gaxiola—both had finished diving—and take the silver.r />
  If he nailed the dive almost perfectly.

  Rory chose an armstand, cut-through, reverse 1½ somersault. The same dive during which he had recently “lost the water.”

  The seven judges distinguished and ranked four stages of each dive: takeoff, height, technique and entry.

  Rory’s judges must have been quadruply impressed. His lowest score came in at 8.5. When he broke from the water he could hear his mother screaming cheers right through his beeswax earplugs. He had taken the silver medal.

  When it came time to ascend the victors’ stand Rory’s mind went blank. Now he operated on some level imperceivable to his own consciousness.

  The Italian national theme played for Dibiasi. When the first notes of the US theme broke, Rory donned John Carlos’s borrowed black glove, raised a clenched fist and bowed his head. The expected catcalls followed, but Rory held firm, knowing he was striking a powerful blow against all injustice everywhere.

  Unfortunately, in a moment of network inattention, not a single television camera caught Rory in its lens. Across the city at that exact moment, Lee Evans, Larry James and Ron Freeman, having won the 400-meter event, were mounting an identical protest. As genuine Black men, they drew all media attention on themselves.

  The only newsman at the diving event represented an Iowan newspaper, the Independence Daily Gleaner. He snapped a shot of Rory which, reprinted the next day back home, made Rory appear to be sniffing his own armpit. The accompanying headline declaimed local boy shames nation and state.

  The all-seeing IOC officials plainly agreed with the headline editor. The subsequent day witnessed Rory’s expulsion from the Games. A pointless and mean-spirited act, since he wasn’t even scheduled for further competition. They allowed him, however, to retain the honestly won medal itself.

  The plane ride back to Iowa matched JFK’s funeral cortege for gloom and despair. Dzubas, who had ventured no opinion, fractured or otherwise, since the medal ceremony, emitted frequent gargantuan sighs. Finally, nearing their destination, he said, “I have witnessed many self-destructive acts in my days, but none to compare with your Peter Pan heroism, Rory Honeyman. I am sad to believe this, but I confidently predict that your career is at an end, my lad. You will never achieve even a single magnificent dive ever again.” Dzubas smiled wistfully beneath his mustache. “Still, it is good for the mouse to squeak, even if the cat of state eventually eats it. I cannot hold your principles against you, boy.”

  “I won the silver fair and square, Czeslaw, thanks to your training. That’s an accomplishment they can’t take away from either of us.”

  Roz Honeyman interjected her own hard-nosed commentary. “No, they certainly can’t. And I’m proud of the way you dived, Rory. But all the endorsements, the commercials, the contracts— Poof! Up in smoke!”

  “Aw, Mom, that’s all crap anyway.”

  Rory could describe his mother’s smile only as “wan.” “I suppose. But you would have looked so cute on a box of Wheaties.…”

  They retrieved Roz’s car at the airport. Half into his own Plymouth, Dzubas paused and said, “My continued services are supererogatory now. I will betake myself on my vagrant way, resuming the journey I interrupted six years ago. Perhaps my relatives in Waterloo have need of an extra udder-squeezer. Goodbye, Rory, Mrs Honeyman. Think of Uncle Dzubas now and again, good people, and I shall do likewise for my fair friends.” And with that melancholy sentiment Coleslaw Tubas drove out of their lives in a vicious haze of pipe-smoke.

  This definitive departure of his fairy godfather, a figure he had relied on and confided in so heavily for six years, happened so fast—as had the whole Olympics—that Rory didn’t know quite what to feel.

  Lieutenant Rudy Honeyman, Ret., stood waiting for them in the doorway of the farmhouse. He held a copy of the Daily Gleaner curled into a tight tube.

  “You should be court-martialed,” Rory’s father said, then turned and marched off. These words constituted the only speech he addressed to his son for the next week.

  For most of those seven days Rory lay on his bed. He tried to figure out exactly where his preplanned life had gone off its tracks. He had no ambition beyond a mild desire for his next meal. He possessed no idea of what the future might hold in store.

  On the seventh day he learned the score.

  His mother came upstairs, cautiously but with a certain evident curiosity, bearing an official letter for him. Thinking it to be some sort of formal IOC communication, Rory slit it open.

  The letter was his draft notice.

  (Almost twenty years later, sitting in a Hoboken bar, talking with a chance acquaintance who represented himself as a retired CIA man, Rory learned that those members of the ’68 USA Olympic team who had been ROTC enlistees had received phone calls in Mexico City warning them not to join the protest. And those defiant ones like Rory with no military strings to pull had afterwards all gotten draft notices.)

  At supper that night Rory calmly broached his intention to pass an indefinite time in Canada.

  His father spat out a mouthful of mashed potatoes and pushed back violently from the table. “I suppose that’s all I could expect from such a gutless wonder!”

  “Now, Rudy, don’t you think that’s a little harsh—”

  “Harsh! A good strapping with some horse-tackle wouldn’t be out of order!”

  Rory jumped up, cheeks hot and thigh muscles quivering. “Listen, Dad, I don’t have to stand for this. I’m leaving tonight. And I’m taking my share of this year’s profits. I worked hard for them.”

  “Take my savings, take it, what do I care! I’ve already thrown enough money down the sewer on this stupid hobby of yours. You and that goddamn Commie Tubas! He’s probably the source for your rotten traitor’s actions!”

  “Leave Czeslaw out of this, he had nothing to do with anything. I’ve got a mind of my own, you know.”

  Rory and his father faced each other tautly across the table, as if joined by a stretched elastic. They only faltered in their hostile standoff when Roz began to cry. Both men left the room. On the stairs, Rory could hear the clink of liquor bottle against glass as his mother poured herself a drink.

  Upstairs he tossed some random garments into a duffel. He stuck his bankbook into the breast pocket of his coat. He hoisted his bag over his shoulder and went downstairs.

  In the study, his father was writing a check. Rudy Honeyman passed the slip of paper over silently to his son. Rory took it just as silently and walked to the front door.

  He was halfway out when a work-worn hand clamped tightly around his upper arm.

  “You’re just like your goddamn grandfather,” said Rudy Honeyman. A lone tear snailed one cheek.

  Rory shook off his grip and strode away.

  Chapter Four

  Days in the Pantechnicon

  Contrary to all that Rory had heard, Canada wasn’t a big country.

  In fact, Rory’s Canada turned out to be not much bigger than a single furnished room.

  Seeking to conserve his limited funds, Rory had taken a Greyhound to Chicago. The sleazy bus station with its tacky floors and grimy walls depressed him immediately, and he decamped momentarily to the sidewalk for relief. Outside the station’s derelict purlieus a sad autumnal rain curtained the city, sliced by herds of rushing cabs and dawdling delivery trucks. No obvious beacon of hopefulness beckoned, so Rory retreated to the depot.

  Inside the station, hippies and runaways panhandled for spare change. Rory just knew they were all murderous dope-fiends. Seated in an untrafficked corner, a skinny girl with a baby in her arms lifted her colorful Mexican poncho and embroidered shirt to give suck. Rory’s eyes bugged out and he couldn’t help staring. The girl looked up and returned a friendly gaze. Rory flushed and walked off.

  Slumped in a molded plastic chair, legs carelessly outstretched into the flow of bustling travelers, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans like dead fish, an unshaven Rory thought of the happy olden times when he had visited this cit
y with his parents.

  Half an hour prior to their actual arrival, his mother would begin to exhibit signs of what Rory had privately dubbed “Metropolitan Brain Fever.” Studiously oblivious, his father would grow more stolid. Rudy Honeyman would calmly make D-Day-magnitude plans and rigid schedules for their activities, just as if anyone would actually follow them. Once checked into their hotel, Roz Honeyman would launch husband and son onto a whirlwind spontaneous and improvised tour of museums, stores, restaurants, beauty parlors and historical attractions, striving to obliterate a year or two of Iowa boredom in just a few jam-packed days. For the first couple of hours Rudy Honeyman would vainly plead that such-and-such a visit wasn’t scheduled till the next day. No one listened. Eventually he would admit defeat and cease cajoling. The trip was Roz’s. Nothing in the city held any real appeal for Rudy. At his most excited he would occasionally comment, “Just look at that, will you. Can you imagine? I’ve seen Paris, but this beats all. Nope, you’d never get me to live here.”

  At this point in his life, Rory’s own deep knowledge of cities extended only to Chicago. He had traveled all over America and to parts of Europe with Dzubas for various diving meets, but all he had seen on these focused jaunts had been blue-tiled pools and anonymous hotel rooms. Chlorine smelled much the same in Munich as it did back home. In sheer mileage Rory was a world-beater. In mental conditioning he had never left the farm.

  A staticky voice announced the departure of the Toronto-bound bus. Slinging his duffel over one shoulder, Rory joined the line for the bus.

  At the border a spasm of nervousness threatened to unman him. Surely the Customs officials would have a list of potential draft-dodgers against which they would check each and every ID.… Did federal penitentiaries have diving teams…? Black-and-white-striped swim trunks with your prisoner number stenciled across the butt.… But no, the bored Customs official merely asked how long he planned to be visiting Canada.

  “Um, a week? No, two weeks! Maybe three. Yeah, three, tops.