Batavia, New York
September, 1958
Maxi and I take our new bikes behind the Robert Morris School, a block away from my house on Union Street. It’s a crisp fall morning that hints of afternoon showers and as always, nuclear war. But that doesn’t bother us as Robert Morris School’s has a new Civil Defense bomb shelter—a reassuring thought when anticipating a sudden missile attack. My Dad never talks about it, although I’ve heard Maxi’s dad say more than once that the Communists will attack in the not‑so‑distant future.
“It’s the power plants they’ll hit first,” he had told us with all the authority of President Eisenhower. Both of us think he’s crazy.
I tell Maxi, “Once I drew a Commie flag and waved it when a plane passed overhead.”
“They won’t use planes. They’ll have rockets with atomic bombs. And when they hit, blam! Everyone will evaporate.” He makes an evaporation gesture that reminds me of the time our class practiced air‑raid survival. We had watched a movie showing us how to “duck and cover.” It scared the hell out of some of us, but mostly we were thankful for an hour reprieve from ciphering pictures of Jesus in arithmetic class.
The yellow and black Civil Defense Shelter sign, pointing the way to emergency salvation, hangs on the school wall at the bottom of a small hill in the school parking lot. As we stand at the top of the hill with our bikes, a figure emerges from the wall, gradually taking shape as if walking out of a mist. We both stare incredulously as the form slowly assumes the shape of a little girl dressed in a white, flowing gown. Her dark hair, the color of night, falls on her shoulders and sparkles with silver streaks. An iridescent halo is poised over her head.
Maxi and I look at one another, and then back at the translucent figure at the bottom of the hill. “You see that?” I ask him.
“God damn…” he says, stretching his words. “What is it?”
“Looks like a little girl.”
He swats me on the arm. “I can see that, dumb ass, but what is it?”
“Beats the crap out of me. A ghost maybe?”
“Ghost? What’s that thing on her head?”
“Looks like a halo. Maybe she’s an angel.”
Maxi shakes his head. “Why would an angel be hanging out in the back of the school?”
“I don’t know. Hey, look at that.”
The angel or ghost is walking around in a tight circle with her arms stretched out in front of her as if she were blind and looking for something. A moment later, she seems to spot something—the two of us. Her face contorts in rage as she points in our direction, her little lips mouthing angry, silent words. Maxi gives me a sideways glance as he slowly moves away. I inch in the opposite direction but the figure stays focused on me, screaming the same thing over and over. Even at this distance I can easily read her lips.
“You did this.”
Maxi says, “I did what?”
“Not you, her. That’s what she’s saying.” I feel a wave of panic, as if I were suddenly stripped naked at the front of my class.
“What did you do?” Maxi asks.
“Nothing. I don’t even know…” I stop in mid-sentence. Do I know her? Something about the hair, but no, it can’t be. I look away and say to Maxi, “She isn’t real.”
Maxi shakes his head, and then does the last thing I expect—he smiles, as if he had just gotten a bad joke. “Oh man, it’s a gag. Of course! Hey, watch this.”
Maxi pushes his bike down the paved hill on a solo flight towards whatever-it-is down there. His bike, a beat-up hand-me-down from an older brother, wobbles over a small stone, veers off course, and passes harmlessly through her before crashing sideways into the wall.
“Told ya! Your turn.”
I take aim and send my week-old Schwinn down the hill. It passes through her, ploughs into the wall and crumples into a heap. “Hey, you’re right.”
Maxi grins and we retrieve our bikes for another volley.
After an hour of this, the ghost or angel is no worse off for all the direct hits she’s taken, but our bikes are a mess. Fenders bent, paint scratched, chain loose—they’re all but unrideable. Maxi pouts and I can see he is fighting back tears.
“Oh man, my dad’s going to kill me.” I shake my head in agreement. The little girl, meanwhile, has mysteriously vanished. She leaves behind the two of us with our crumpled bikes and bad attitudes. Maxi takes off, leaving me alone and feeling ridiculous with my battered Schwinn. I start for home, riding as slowly as my undeveloped sense of balance allows, aiming for each sidewalk imperfection.
A group of older kids pull up beside me about a block away from my house. One of the kids taunts, “Nice bike, kid.” I recognize him—Tommy Hancock, a fourth grader from the public school and well-known neighborhood bully.
His buddies laugh on cue. Tommy has a black patch over his right eye. Sure it’s fake, but it makes him look tough. A Jolly Roger flag waves from a long pole mounted on his back wheel. These kids must be pirates. Ghosts, and now pirates, holy crap! I wonder if I can make a break for it on my poor, beaten-up Schwinn?
Tommy, who I think is the Captain, seems to know what I’m thinking. “Forget trying to get away. Why don’t you join up with us? We’re gonna crop some toys from Mancuso’s Toy Barn. Besides if you go home, your old man’s gonna beat the snot out of you.”
He’s right about that, but I have my doubts about the robbery.
“We’re only a bunch of kids,” I tell him (one kid with a plastic knife in his teeth makes a nasty face). “The grown‑ups have cars and guns and my dad will really kill me if I rob a toy store.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Tommy says confidently. “I got it all figured out.” He points to his head and taps his temple several times to unloose some high-power brain energy. “We can’t miss.”
Mancuso’s Toy Barn is on Main Street, about half a mile away. Our group of five kids, with Tommy leading the way, ride into the gravel parking lot like a bunch of criminals on holiday. There are a few cars around, but no one is in sight. Tommy huddles the group and explains his strategy.
“Billy, you take Ken and hang out on aisle five.”
“Hang out and do what?”
“I don’t know. Pretend you’re looking at dolls or something.”
Ken whines like a baby, “Aw, I don’t wanna look at any dumb dolls.”
“I’ll give you something to whine about,” Billy gives him a sharp punch in the stomach. Ken doubles over with the wind knocked out of him.
“I’m… telling… mom…” he stammers.
“You’ll live. Come on.” Billy drags Ken, who is still trying to catch his breath, into the store.
“Larry, you go stand around the Hula‑hoop display near the cash register and wait for my signal. I’ll take the new kid. What’s your name again?”
“Don Bacon.”
Tommy forces a laugh. “Bacon? What kinda name is that?”
Larry says, “Bet he’s a Rusky.”
“Dumb ass! Bacon ain’t no Rusky name. If he was Rusky he’d be Bakonovsky or something. Man, never mind. Go on and take your spot in the store while I give Bacon here the lowdown.”
Larry crouches down like a some kind of spy and zigzags his way between parked cars and into the store. Tommy turns to me and grabs my arm. “All right, Bacon, listen up.”
He explains his plan in a whisper, completely unnecessary as there is no one else in site. “I’ll grab a shopping cart, see?”
“Shopping cart. Right. What do I do?”
“Nothing. You just stand there and I’ll pretend to hit you with the cart.”
“Then what?”
“I’m getting’ to that. You fall down and start crying like a little baby. And I’ll yell out—help! my little brother is hurt! Help! Get it? We make a big stink. Everyone runs to the front and while all that is going on, Larry, Billy and his goofy little brother grab the loot…”
“What loot?”
“Dumb ass, toys! Whata you think? Now come on.”
Tommy and I walk our bikes toward the main entrance of Mancuso’s. On the side of the building is the familiar Civil Defense Shelter sign. I catch myself scanning the cloudless sky for any stray missiles. We get within ten feet of the door when a threatening voice booms over a concealed loud speaker.
“We have your friends in custody. Give yourself up, Tommy. Give yourself up!”
Tommy curses under his breath. “Damn, the cops got wind of us. Some dirty‑rotten two‑timing yellow‑bellied scum-sucking dog must have finked.” He flashes a look of such vile contempt it makes my toes curl, but before he has time to do anything about it, a stocky, uniformed policeman runs at full tilt out of Mancuso’s toward us.
“I’ll take care of you later, jerk!”
Tommy hops on his bike and is off like a streak with his Jolly Roger flapping in the wind.
The cop reaches me. I’m doomed for sure, an accomplice to the crime, destined to spend the next thirty years in the Batavia Town lockup. Instead he grabs my bike, nearly knocking me over and barks, “Lemme borrow yer bike, kid.” He jumps on, knocking off the chain guard in the process, and takes off after Tommy.
The two of them fly down Main Street, past the Land Museum, past the Batavia Town Hall to the granite war memorial at the intersection of Main and Prospect. The cop jumps off my bike. It sails into the memorial at top speed, bending the front fender and knocking off a training wheel. My poor bike falls into a mechanical heap at the foot of an epitaph carved into the stone that honors Genesee County Civil War veterans. The cop has no trouble overtaking Tommy. He slaps on a pair of cuffs, and pushes him into a waiting patrol car. I hear Tommy threaten, “I’m gonna tell my dad,” as they drive him off to the poky.
The cops, the kids—no one has much interest in me, so I slowly walk my bike home, as it’s in no condition to ride, knowing I will never have another bike for the rest of my life.
I have this idea to park my bike someplace and sneak into the house; maybe no one will notice. No such luck. My mom is puttering around with some plants in the front yard and my pop is mowing the lawn. He sees me coming, stops what he’s doing, walks over and inspects my bike. He doesn’t say a word, just looks up and down the crumpled frame, bends over for a closer look at the flat front tire and scraped back fender. I wait, thinking that if he doesn’t say something pretty quick, I’m going to piss my pants right there in front of him.
Finally he concludes the inspection. “What happened,” he asks with a snarl designed to scare the truth out me.
My mom looks up from her gardening. “Now don’t be too hard on the boy.”
She’s no help. I try to divert attention away from me, “Well, Maxi and I were down by the school…” I start to explain but my dad interrupts.
“So he was involved in this? I should have known. Damn shittin’ kids! Did he put you up to this?” My mom frowns so I know not to use that excuse—better attempt the real explanation.
“Well, uh, you see dad, we were just standin’ around and, uhm, some ghost or angel or something appeared on the wall out of nowhere, and she made us roll our bikes down the hill into the wall and we did and, uhm, she disappeared so Maxi left and I was on my way home but some pirates kidnapped me, big kids on bikes, fourth graders with some kid named Tommy and they were gonna rob Mancuso’s so they made me go with them, and I did, and uhm, the cops found out about it and one of them took my bike and was chasing Tommy and wrecked it when he drove it into the monument downtown.”
My dad looks at me suspiciously, “Ghosts, huh? Pirates?” He circles me like a vulture looking to pluck out a ripe organ. My mom goes back to her gardening. “Whatayathinkiam-somekindadummy?” The look in his eyes diverts my attention away from atomic bombs, CD shelters, pirates, and renegade angels to a more immediate problem.
Copyright © 2010 Donald W. Bacon |