“That’s pretty spooky, Pops. See, this is the kind of stuff they don’t teach us in school.”
Lucky
“You sure the coal man’s comin’ this mornin’?”
“He usually comes around nine or ten every other Saturday during the winter. Depends on how many deliveries he has.”
Roy and his friend Johnny Murphy were standing in the alley behind Roy’s house waiting for the coal truck to arrive. Two feet of snow had fallen during the night, then the temperature had dropped, so the ground was covered by a frozen crust. The boys, who were both eight years old, liked to slide down the coal chute into the pile in front of the furnace in the basement. The best time to do it was on delivery day, when the pile was highest.
“I’m freezin’,” said Johnny. “I shoulda worn two pairs of socks.”
It was almost ten o’clock when they heard and then saw the big red Peterson Coal truck turn into the alley. The truck crunched ahead and skidded to a stop in front of Roy’s garage. Alfonso Rivero, the driver, climbed down from the cab and tromped over to where Roy and Johnny were standing. Alfonso was a short, stocky man in his mid-forties. He was wearing a black knit hat pulled down over his ears, a navy blue tanker jacket and steel-toed work boots. An unfiltered Camel hung from his lips.
“You waiting go slide?” he said.
“Hi, Alfonso,” said Roy. “Yeah, I thought you might be late because of the snow and ice.”
“We been out here since nine,” said Johnny Murphy.
“I hate the nieve,” Alfonso said. “In Mexico, no hay snow and ices, except in los montañas.”
“Why do you live in Chicago?” asked Johnny.
“We don’t have no work in Mexico, also.”
Roy and Johnny watched Alfonso take down a wheelbarrow mounted on the back of the truck and set it on the ground, then open the two rear doors and hoist himself inside. He pulled a thick glove from each of his side pockets, put them on, picked a shovel out of the coal pile and began shoveling it down into the wheelbarrow. When the barrow was full, he leaned down holding the shovel.
“Take la pala, chico,” he said to Roy.
Roy took it and the deliveryman jumped down. Roy handed Alfonso the shovel. He stuck it into the pile of coal in the wheelbarrow and wheeled it through the passageway leading to Roy’s backyard. The boys followed Alfonso, who stopped in front of a pale blue door at the rear of the building, undid the latch on the door and swung it open. He shoveled most of the contents of the wheelbarrow down the chute and dumped in the rest, then headed back to the truck for another load.
After six trips back and forth, Alfonso said to the boys, “Es todo, muchachos. Okay now for deslizamiento.”
“Muchas gracias, Alfonso,” said Roy.
“Yeah, mucho,” said Johnny.
Roy went first, sliding all the way down and landing in front of the furnace. As soon as he got up, Johnny did the same. They went out the basement door and ran up the steps into the yard.
“Once more, Alfonso!” Roy shouted.
“Si, uno mas,” said the deliveryman, and lit up a fresh cigarette.
After the boys emerged from the basement, Alfonso closed the door to the chute, latched it, and pushed the wheelbarrow back into the alley. Roy and Johnny trailed him and watched as he tossed in his shovel, closed the doors and re-attached the wheelbarrow.
“See you dos semanas, amigos,” Alfonso said, then climbed into the cab, started the engine and drove slowly away down the alley.
Roy and Johnny’s faces were covered with coal dust, as were their hands and clothes. They picked up clean snow, washed their faces and hands with it and rubbed it on their coats and pants.
“I wouldn’t mind havin’ Alfonso’s job,” said Johnny. “You get to drive a big truck and stand around smokin’ cigarettes in people’s yards.”
“Alfonso’s a good guy,” said Roy. “He probably lets any kid who wants to slide down the piles.”
“It don’t seem so cold now,” Johnny said. “You hear about Cunningham’s mother?”
“No. What about her?”
“She died yesterday.”
“Tommy didn’t say anything about her being sick.”
“My father says she committed suicide. It’s a mortal sin, so now she can’t get into heaven.”
“Maybe it was an accident.”
“My father says she ate a bullet.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Shot herself in the mouth. She’s probably already in hell.”
“Don’t say that to Cunningham.”
“My mother said she thinks Tommy’s father pulled the trigger.”
“Why would he murder her?”
“When husbands and wives are arguin’ they’re always sayin’ how they’re gonna kill each other. I hate hearin’ it when my parents fight. You’re lucky you only got a mother.”
Danger in the Air
Roy liked to fly with his mother. Most of the time they drove between Key West or Miami, Florida, and Chicago, the places in which they lived; but if they needed to be somewhere in a hurry, they took an airplane. Roy’s mother always dressed well when they flew, and she made sure Roy did, too.
“You never know who you might meet in an airport or on a plane,” she told him, “so it’s important to look your best.”
“Even a little boy?”
“Of course, Roy. You’re with me. I’m so proud of you. You’re a great traveler.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’m proud of you, too.”
One afternoon when they were flying from Miami to New Orleans to see Roy’s mother’s boyfriend Johnny Salvavidas, their plane ran into a big storm and lightning hit both wings. The plane tilted to the right, then to the left, like Walcott taking a combination from Marciano, only the airplane didn’t go down.
“We’re really getting knocked around, Roy. Better keep your head down in case things start flying out of the overhead compartments.”
“I want to look out the window, Mom. I have a book about lightning, remember? The worst thing that can happen is if the fuel tank gets hit, then the plane could explode. Also, lightning can make holes in the wings and pieces of them can fall off. If it strikes the nose, the pilot could lose control and even be blinded. And during thunderstorms ball lightning can enter an airplane and roll down the aisle. That’s pretty rare, though, and the fireball burns out fast and leaves a kind of smoky mist in the air. Some scientists even believe ball lightning might come from flying saucers.”
“Don’t be silly, Roy. There’s no such things as flying saucers. That’s just in movies and comic books.”
When the plane landed at the airport in New Orleans, Johnny Salvavidas was there to meet it. He asked Roy’s mother if it had been a good flight.
“It was horrendous,” she told him. “We ran into a terrible thunderstorm and there was a lot of turbulence. My stomach is still upset.”
“What about it, Roy? Was the storm as bad as your mother says?”
“Lightning hit the wings,” Roy said. “We could have gotten knocked out of the sky, but we weren’t.”
Johnny smiled and said, “That can’t happen.”
He smoothed back both sides of his hair with his hands. His hair was black and shiny and fit tightly to his scalp like a bathing cap. He took Roy’s mother’s right arm and they walked together toward the terminal to pick up her suitcases.
The sun was going down and the sky was turning redder. What did Johnny Salvavidas know? There was a kind of lightning that moved across rather than up and down called spider or creepy-crawly lightning that can reverse itself and probably bring down a spaceship. Roy watched his mother and Johnny enter the terminal. He wanted to get back on an airplane.
Child’s Play
The two Greek brothers, Nick and Peter, had settled in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1935, three years
after they emigrated with their parents from Patnos. Their father, Constantin, had worked in a grocery store for a Jewish family in New York City, where the immigrants had landed; but when the Great Depression cost Constantin his job, rather than join a bread line he used the few dollars he had saved to move his family south, where, he’d been told, it was cheaper to live. The Jewish grocers had a cousin who traveled in a wagon throughout Mississippi peddling household goods who apparently made a decent living, so Constantin informed his wife and sons, ages six and nine, to take only what they could comfortably carry, and they entrained to another, quite different, country.
In Jackson, the state capital, Constantin and his wife, Josefa, found part-time employment as night cleaners in government buildings, then Constantin got a job scrubbing down a diner frequented by local businessmen and politicians. After six months, he was hired on as a waiter, and within a year the owner died. With the assistance of several of the patrons, Constantin bought the diner, which he renamed The Athens Café. Josefa and their sons worked with him and soon The Athens was the most popular restaurant in town. After their parents died, Nick and Peter took over.
During the year or so that Roy’s mother had a boyfriend named Boris Klueber, who owned a girdle factory on the outskirts of Jackson, they often accompanied him when he traveled there from his headquarters in Chicago. Roy and his mother always stayed in the Heidelberg Hotel, as did Boris. The Heidelberg was the best hotel in Jackson, located only a few blocks from The Athens Café. This was in 1955, when Roy was eight years old.
Negroes were not allowed to eat in the diner, but all of the kitchen workers, including the cooks, were black. To get to the toilets, which were accessible only by a steep flight of stairs, customers were required to go through the kitchen. It was in this way that Roy became friendly with the employees. He was friendly, too, of course, with the owners, who enjoyed showing him photographs they took in Greece on their annual vacations. Neither of the brothers ever married, but Roy’s mother told him that according to Boris both of the brothers kept Negro mistresses.
“What’s a mistress?” Roy asked her.
“Women who aren’t married to the men who support them.”
“Why don’t they marry them?”
“Well, in Mississippi, it’s against the law for white and black men and women to marry each other. Don’t repeat what I’m telling you, Roy, especially to Nick and Peter. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“It’s a sensitive issue in the South.”
“Can Negroes and whites get married to each other in Chicago?”
“Yes, Roy. Laws are often different in different states. In Mississippi, and some other southern states, a white man can get arrested for dating a black woman; and a black man can be put in prison or even murdered for being in the company of a white woman. I know this doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way it is. As long as we’re here we have to respect their laws.”
“What if you went on a date with a Negro man? Would you be arrested and the man murdered or thrown in jail?”
“Let’s not talk about this any more, Roy. I shouldn’t have told you about Nick and Peter. And don’t mention it to Boris. Promise?”
“I already did.”
couple of days later, while Roy was cutting through the kitchen of The Athens Café to use the toilet, one of the cooks, Emmanuel, who was taking a cigarette break by the back door, said to him, “How you doin’ today, little man? You enjoyin’ yourself?”
“Sort of. There’s not much for me to do. I don’t have anyone to play with.”
“I got a boy about your age. His name’s John Daniel.”
“Can I meet him?”
Emmanuel removed his wallet from one of his back pockets, took out a photograph and handed it to Roy.
“That’s John Daniel, that’s my son.”
“He’s white,” said Roy, “like me.”
“That’s on account of his mama is white. He’s got her colorin’.”
“My mother says white and black people can’t get married to each other in Mississippi.”
“That’s right. John Daniel’s mama and I ain’t married, not to each other. I don’t get to see him except his mama sneak me a walk by.”
“There’s a Negro boy in Chicago I play with. His name’s Henry Cherokee, and he’s part Indian.”
“Me, too. My grandmama on my daddy’s side is half Choctaw.”
Roy returned the photo of John Daniel to Emmanuel, which he replaced in his wallet.
“Gotta get back to work,” he said, and tossed his cigarette butt into the street.
That evening Roy and his mother were having dinner with Boris in the dining room of the Heidelberg Hotel when Boris whispered to her, “See that waiter there? The one who looks like Duke Ellington.”
Roy’s mother looked at the waiter, who, like the other waiters, was wearing a tuxedo.
“He’s quite handsome,” she said.
“He’s Mrs. Van Nostrand’s back door man.”
“Sshh. Don’t talk that way around Roy. Why do you have your factory here, Boris? I don’t like Jackson.”
“Manufacturing’s cheap. No unions, no taxes. It would cost me four times as much to have a plant in Chicago like I have here.”
Roy watched the waiter Boris had said resembled Duke Ellington as he served an old white man and an old white woman at another table.
“Mom,” he said, “the next time we come here, could we bring Henry Cherokee with us?”
The Message
Roy was alone in the hotel room he shared with his mother when the telephone rang. It was ten to four in the morning and Roy was less than half awake, watching Journey into Fear on TV. He’d fallen asleep on and off during the movie, and when the telephone rang Roy looked first at the television and saw Orson Welles, wearing a gigantic military overcoat with what looked like dead, furry animals for lapels and a big fur hat littered with snow. The picture was tilted and for a moment Roy thought that he had fallen off the bed, then he realized it was the camera angled for effect.
“Kitty, that you?”
“No. She’s not here, I don’t think.”
“Who’s this?”
“Her son.”
“She’s got a kid? How old are you?”
“Seven. Six and a half, really.”
“Your mother didn’t tell me she had a kid. How many more kids she have?”
“None.”
“What’s your name?”
“Roy.”
“You sure she’s not there?”
“No. Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Know where she is?”
“She went out with some friends, around ten o’clock.”
“It’s almost four now. She was supposed to meet me at one. Said she maybe would, anyway.”
“Do you want to leave a message?”
“Yeah, okay. Dimitri, tell her. If she comes in, I’ll be in the bar at the Roosevelt Hotel until five.”
“All right.”
“She leaves you alone this time of night, in the room?”
Orson Welles was growling at someone, a smaller man who kept his head down. The picture was lopsided, as if the camera had been kicked over and it was lying on the floor but still rolling.
“Kid, she leaves you by yourself?”
“I’m okay.”
“She’s kind of a kook, your mother. You know that?”
Orson Welles did not take off his coat even though he was in an office.
“Go back to sleep, kid. Sorry I woke you up.”
Roy hung up the phone. He and his mother had been in this city for a week and Roy was anxious to return to Key West, where they lived in a hotel located at the confluence of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. A beautiful, dark-haired woman was on the screen now but she kept turning
her head away from the camera so Roy could not see all of her face. She looked Cuban, or Indian.
When Roy woke up again, the television was off and his mother was asleep in the other bed. He looked at the clock: it was just past ten. The heavy drapes were drawn so even though the sun was up the light in the room was very dim. Roy’s mother always hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside doorknob. She was wearing a blindfold. Roy lay listening to her breathe, whistling a little through her nose as she exhaled.
What was the name of the man who had called? When she woke up, Roy would tell his mother that a general or a colonel with a strange accent had called from a foreign country. Roy could not remember his name, only that the man had said it was snowing where he was calling from.
River Woods
Roy’s father drove as if his powder blue Cadillac were the only car on the road. In the fall of 1953 there wasn’t much traffic between Chicago and the western suburb of River Woods, where they were headed. It was mid-October, Roy’s favorite time of the year. Sunlight slithered through the trees and the air was comfortably cool; in a month they would have to keep the car windows closed and the heater on.
“Who are we going to see, Dad?”
“A business associate of mine, Jocko Mosca. He has a classy layout in River Woods.”
“Does he have kids?”
“Two sons, much older than you. They don’t live here.”
“Did you tell him tomorrow’s my birthday?”
“You can tell him.”
“Jocko is a funny name.”
“It’s short for Giacomo. He was born in Sicily, which is an island off the heel of Italy.”
The houses they passed were set far back from the road. Most of them had long, winding driveways leading to buildings you couldn’t see from a car, and some were behind iron fences with spikes on the top. Jocko Mosca’s house had an iron fence in front of it but the gates were open. Roy’s father drove in and stopped next to the house. Just as he and Roy got out of the car, a man came out and shook hands with Roy’s father.
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