Stories Index

Initiation

Batavia, New York
1959

            Maxi and I form a secret club, so secret that we are the only members. We draft a cornucopia of rules, regulations and arcane initiations rites drawing from sources as varied as the Latin mass and Bugs Bunny cartoons. We write them all down as best as we can in red crayon on that funky three-line paper used to teach cursive writing at school. We lock the whole thing away in a shoe box that we bury in an underground vault deep in Maxi’s sandbox…
            …which is unfortunate as when it comes time to actually perform said rites and initiate ourselves, we remember very little of what they actually were and to make matters more desperate, we have lost the technology for unearthing our mythic past.
            So we improvise and between the two of us we decide that in order to join the club you first have to collect twenty spiders (Maxi’s idea) and put them all in a jar so that they fight like gladiators in the Coliseum. Next, squash any spiders that remain along with a variety of poisonous berries vinegar to create a sort of sacred goo (my idea). The final step is to smear the sacred goo over your chest in the light of a full moon while chanting the secret initiation rite. I wanted to use Latin — pull something appropriate from my daily missal — but Maxi nixes that idea (I think Protestants have a natural distrust of Catholic rituals). We try to write something ourselves, but it comes out sounding too childish and how do you harness the power of the Universe with a 2nd grade vocabulary? Can’t be done, so to save time we pick words at random from Look Magazine and my mom’s anatomy textbook:

Clever cloak abandons old woman,
Corked Wills to perfect.
Wreck amok, anal lady!
A low, blind, old maniac,
Bad old woman in lilac.
Fork collect: weird pest.
Slow! Left, decrepit rock.
I am oddball lawn coin.
Weak, lanky, modal car.

            Neither one of us are sure just what a “modal car” is supposed to be, but it sounds cool.
            Maxi robs a couple of screw-top jars from his mom’s stash and punches holes in the lid to give our doomed captives some air, and together on a fine spring Sunday morning we set out in pursuit of spiders. He tells me the best places for spider hunting are dark and cool.  The cool part should be no problem this early in April with temperatures hovering in the upper forty’s. I tell Maxi that it’s too cold, but he tells me with great authority that now is the best time of year for spider hunting as they are just coming out of hibernation. I had no idea spiders hibernated.
            In our quest for dark places the best we come up with is the crawl space under my porch. I grab a flashlight and side by side on our bellies we squeeze ourselves under the thickly-painted cross-hatched guard around the porch. With our legs sticking out in the open behind us, we search the dark crevices and find plenty in the way of web, but little in the way of spiders. I give Maxi a thanks-for-making-me-crawl-under-here-for-nothing sneer that makes his nose run.
            “Maybe it’s too cold,” he says.
            “Too cold?” I swat him in the arm. “I tried to tell you that!”
            We back out just in time to hear my mom calling. She comes out, bundled up as if it were the middle of winter and asks what we are doing.
            “Nothin’, ma,” I say having been sworn to secrecy. My mom studies the empty jar in my hand. She is about to say something when my dad comes out of the house leading my little sister by the hand, smoking a cigarette and muttering under his breath.
            “In the car everyone,” he says, offering no further explanation. I look to my mom and she whispers that we’re spending the day at the grandparent’s and whatever mischief Maxi and I were up to would have to wait.

            I know there’s going to be trouble whenever Sister Damian starts off with, “We have a surprise today children,” and today is no exception. She postures from her perch in front of the class —  a black-and-white Statue of Liberty, lighting the way to spiritual liberty, her head encased in the halo of a huge semi-circular headdress, her long black robes concealing religious mysteries. She seems to sail down the aisle to the storage closet where she extracts a box of some new trouble she has planned for us.
            “These are just some of the prizes you can win by selling Easter seals.” Everyone sits up, their hair standing on end as if a bolt of electricity just ripped through the classroom. No one wants to sell anything, especially Easter seals, especially when the best prize is a foot-high Statue of the Virgin and that’s the best prize. But she fills in the details as if planning a family vacation: each book of twenty seals costs one dollar, that’s a nickel a seal. Sell a book, get a prize certificate boasting of your participation in the Easter Seals Campaign of 1961. Sell five books, get a bigger prize and a fancier certificate. Sell forty books, get the foot-high statue of the Virgin and a plenary indulgence. Plenary indulgence? Is she kidding? What is any self-respecting third-grader meant to do with a plenary indulgence? I’m not even old enough to sin properly. We collectively groan; this is third-grade, door-to-door hell. She seams to read our thoughts and says in a cheery voice, “Think of it as your initiation into the community of the body of Christ. Now, how many books does everyone want? Shall we start with ten?”
            So armed with twenty books (I have no idea how she talked me into that), I drag my butt across St. Mary’s school yard and hook up with Maxi on his way home from Robert Morris School. Not being Catholic, he doesn’t get the whole Easter seal drama, but is always willing to help out.
            “Maybe your grandfather will buy some,” he suggests. Pa is pretty easy and after a moment of thought I figure I can get rid of at least five books that way.
            “What about the rest,” I ask him.
            He thinks for a moment and says, “Why not ask your dad. He’s a salesman isn’t he?”
            This sounds like an okay idea except that he’s pretty busy. Maybe if I can catch him at the right time, just after dinner when he’s in a good mood…
            …except that he’s rarely in a good mood and when I ask him about selling Easter seals he gives me one of those go-away-and-come-back-later kind of look but does offer some good advice.
             “Try everyone on the block,” he says between sips on his Manhattan. “You have to convince them you have the best, most exciting product on the market.”
            “But they’re just Easter seals, dad,” I say quietly.
            My dad takes a puff on his non-filter Pall Mall and spits out a piece of tobacco. “It doesn’t matter what they are,” he says. “It’s all the same thing, Donnie. You could be selling dog crap. The trick is to convince the customer that it’s the best damn dog crap going and they can’t live without it.” He goes back to his Manhattan, cigarettes and Father Knows Best rerun.
            “But dad…”
            “Marketing, son,” he says. “It’s all marketing.”
            I shuffle off thinking that it might just as well be dog crap, but resolve to try tomorrow right after school.

Mrs. O'Riley

            I set out on my Easter seal campaign around three in the afternoon, armed with forty books (Sister Damian talked me into taking yet another twenty), an envelope for collecting my booty, and a simple strategy: try every house on this side of the street, and when I hit Main street, come back up the other side. I also have my spider jar with me, just in case I find any along the way. The first stop is at my neighbors, the O’Reily’s. Mrs. O’Reily is a nice middle-aged sort, thick Italian accent (her husband is Irish), known in the neighborhood for giving away hoards of candy at Halloween. I walk boldly to the door, knock three times and stand there patiently waiting, practicing my pitch in my head — “G’morning Mrs. O’Reily, would you like to support Catholic charities by buying a book of Easter seals? Only one dollar a book. Can I put you down for two?”
            It sounds pretty hokey, so I say it over a few more times while I wait. I knock again and listen for any sounds. Inside I hear a man’s voice, muffled at first, then louder.
            “Who the hell is that,” a man’s voice says. He sounds angry, probably Mr. O’Reily, not someone I’ve had any contact with as he rarely makes an appearance. More sounds, louder, a woman’s voice, Mrs. O’Reily, saying something to her husband. “Well go see who the Christ it is,” he says in a rough tone that carries through the door. I am about to turn around when I hear something thrown against the door, followed by a cry from Mrs. O’Reily. I inch slowly back, hoping to make a quick escape when I hear the mister yell, “Don’t give me that by-god piece of shit excuse. Just see who it is.”
            The door slowly opens. Mrs. O’Reily pokes her head out and looks around; her eyes are red, there is an ugly black bruise on her face just below her eye. She searches the porch, biting her lip and squinting, her mouth drawn tight across her face as if it were pasted on. When she finds me, she smiles, a little smile, and wipes away the moisture in her eyes. She says in a cheery voice to her husband inside, “It’s Donnie Bacon from next door.”
            Several moments of silence before I hear, “So what does that little brat want.”
            Right now I want to bolt off that porch and down the street, but Mrs. O’Reily catches my pleading face and says in a sweet voice, “What can I help you with sweetheart?”
            I make a somewhat abbreviated pitch. She relays the information inside and waits.
            I wait and shuffle my feet and wiggle my fingers to keep them warm.
            A few minutes later the door swings open and there in front of me is Mr. O’Reily himself. I’ve only seen him once or twice and somehow I was expecting a foul-breathed, hung-over jamoke . That would have matched the voice better than the tall, impeccably groomed and coifed jasper that actually appears. I stare at him as if I had heard the voice of Donald Duck issuing from the mouth of Sister Damian. He leans over and smiles, a greasy smile, and with a gentle push, edges his wife back.
            “So what do we have here,” he says, purposely, I think, exaggerating his already weedy Irish accent. “Easter seals, you say?”
            “Yes sir.”
            He stares up and down at me, a thin-lipped smile nearly jumping off his face. Turning to his wife with a patient sneer he growls, “Go get five dollars from your purse.” At first she seems dumbfounded, but he kicks her into high gear with a breathy, “Hurry the hell up, goddamnit.” Looking back at me he says, “Future salesman are you? Your dad must be very proud.”
            “Yes sir.”
            “I should have such a son.”
            “Sir?”
            He stoops down and takes me by the shoulders and breathes into my face; his breath, a fog of clove-scented chewing gum. “We don’t have any children, you know.”
            I wait for the Mrs. to return with the cash, and with O’Reily’s face inches from mine I think it best to keep up the chatter.
            “You don’t have any kids? Well, that’s okay, I guess. Maybe you can…” I stop there. Fear has pushed me this far and, having reached the very edge of my knowledge about kids and what-not, I cautiously back away.
            He stands back up and takes a cigarette from a silver case that has in his back pocket. He lights it with the patience of a surgeon and says through a thin smile, “No I can’t you see, my wife… well, you wouldn’t understand, but it’s a problem. See?”
            Finally Mrs. O’Reily returns. At first she seems unsure of just who to hand the money to, but she finally hands it to her husband who snatches it with the speed of a mousetrap from her hands. She flinches and backs away. He hands me the money.
            “So what will this buy, my fine young man.”
            “Five books, sir.”
            “Fine. Fine.” I hand him the five books, he looks them over, mentally licks each stamp, then pushes them toward his wife.
            “Well, you run along now and sell your stamps. Tell your father I said hello.”
            He closes the door, ever so slowly, smiling all the while. I turn to leave, but something keeps me there for a few moments longer. After a couple of minutes I hear more shouting from the inside. The yelling becomes screaming and crying. Something hard hits the door. I put my ear to the door and hear Mrs. O’Reily plead, “No please, please…” Something else hits the door and shatters, more cries, sounds of hitting. I clutch my five dollars in terror and bolt.

Mrs. Howard

            I run past the next two houses, wanting to get as far away as possible from the O’Reily place. Her cries still echo in my head as I reach the porch steps of the Howard’s’ house. Mrs. Howard is young, my mom’s age or a little bit older, pretty, petite, a widow from the stories I’ve heard. Grandpa told me all about it — she murdered her husband; chopped him up into little pieces and buried him in the back yard. Now I don’t know if this is true or not. My grandfather had a story about everyone and she seems nice enough, whenever she does come out which is rare. I think he’s just trying to scare me and it didn’t help when he told me that she had some kind of monster in the house.
            “That’s why she killed him,” he told me. “Fathered her a monster — two heads, three eyes, born without a back bone, slithers on a layer of slime like a human snail.” It scared the b’Jesus out of me at the time, but I don’t really believe it and so I traipse up to the door and give her doorbell a manly push. A pleasant but unfamiliar five-note refrain echoes inside.
            After a short wait, the door cracks open an inch or two and half a face appears, silhouetted against a black background. From the shadow a disembodied voice says, “Can I help you?”
            The strangeness of the greeting pushes my Easter seal pitch momentarily from my head. I stand there and stammer, looking for an escape and finally blurt out, “Would you like to buy some Easter seals?” My voice cracks at the end like nails on a chalk board.
            The eye scans up and down. Behind the door I hear scraping, scratching. The eye darts down in that direction, the figure at the door seems to push something aside.
            “Easter Seals? Oh yes, of course. You must go to Saint Mary’s school.”  She has a hypnotic voice that lulls me into a senseless calm. “You’re the Bacon boy, from down the street.”
            A scraping against the bottom of the door, like a small animal trying to claw its way free, distracts me.
            “Well?” the voice says.
            “Yes Ma’am, I mean Mrs. Howard.” From inside I hear a ominous gurgling noise. It makes me think of squashing a giant slug slowly on a slick pavement with bare feet.
            “How much,” she says quickly. I quote my price, more scratching, and the sound of something sniffing, like a small animal; the door shakes slightly like something was pushing from behind. The eye darts around some more and half a mouth says, “I’ll take… ten.”
            I dig out ten books and pass them through the thin crack to a pair of slender hands with long, painted nails; they disappear and are almost immediately replaced by a crisp ten dollar bill, as if she had it ready all the time. I take it with a curt “thanks” and the door closes, slowly, quietly. I stand there feeling incomplete, like something else should be happening but nothing does, except the scraping that was behind the door disappears and a strange, misshapen figure and several eyes appears at the window. Or does it? Before I can get a closer look the blinds close, locking me out.

Judith

            Next house is the Kaplan’s. They’re friends of my parents so I expect to dump a few books here. I ring the bell and as I wait, I notice a web above the door sill. With Maxi well ahead of me in the search for spiders I can’t afford to shun any opportunity, so with mason jar in hand I drag over a shaky chair and climb up for a closer look. Nuzzled solemnly in the corner of the chaotic web is an enormous black spider. Jesus, it must be an inch long and weird too, her fat body flanked with silver streaks. I hesitate, but slowly reach up with my jar and gently flatter the creature into my jar and quickly close the top. Well I lived through that okay, so I reach back up into the web. There are more, but not just one, there must be twenty or more and they all fall onto my head, into my stocking hat and the only thing I can think to do is to kill them, smash them to death. I jump off the chair and beat my head against the door, over and over, smashing each and every one of them, yelling all the while, too terrified to even think about my Easter Seals. Bang, bang! I beat my head, taking no chance that any remain alive, when the door opens and old woman appears.
            I look up, for the moment forgetting the terror of having a nest of spiders fall into my stocking hat and gape at the figure hovering over me. It’s the old lady. I think it’s Mrs. Kaplan’s mother or even her grandma. I remember her from when her mutant dog Elektra ran Maxi and me up a tree. My heart sinks as I realize that I have to deal with her and not my parents’ friends. In one hand she wields a smoldering cigarette in a pearl holder like a weapon, in the other, a cocktail glass filled with clinking ice and a vile smelling drink the color of ice tea. Her outfit is outrageous: tight-fitting pink pedal-pushers, half-open silk blouse revealing an inch or two of wrinkled cleavage, silver-gray hair puffed up to enormous proportions, red ankle-high boots, rings adorning each finger that collectively must weigh a pound, and make-up so thick you could write your name in it.
            “Well? What do you want,” she says, forcing out each syllable. She takes a lethargic drag from her cigarette and blows a pasty smoke ring in my direction.
            “I’m selling Easter seals for St. Mary’s school…” I start, but she interrupts me.
            “What’s your name,” she snaps then immediately answers her own question. “You’re that Bacon kid that lives down the street.” Immediately a broad, gaudy smile crosses her face. “You’re the boy that teased my Elektra, isn’t that so my precious,” she says to a dog hidden somewhere behind the door. Her demeanor suddenly changes as if the nice pill suddenly wore off. “So, what do you want?”
            I remember telling her this, but because she’s a potential customer, I repeat myself and remind her about the Easter seals.
            “O yeah,” she growls. Two thin streams of smoke leak from her enlarged nostrils as if she were some sick, lamenting dragon. “Well, come in and show me what you got.” I set my jar of spiders down on the porch. She pokes the cigarette holder back into her mouth then grabs me by the arm and drags me inside.
            She slowly closes the door behind me. I stand in the white marble foyer, marveling at the interior: waves of whites and pinks, creams and fuchsia, glided, golden frames bullying black-and-white photographs, knitted pillows on cushions of gold, carved wood and glass tables, bottles of things everywhere, and across the room over a fireplace, hangs a long, elegant painting in black and gold of a bare-breasted woman. I follow my host into the living room. She stops in front of the painting and stare up at the haunting face. The name “Judith” is embossed in gold over the top of the picture.
            “Beautiful, isn’t it,” she says with a sigh, as if troubled by some sad memory. Next to the fireplace is a tall, white book case laden with what must be family photographs. She scans the shelves wistfully, with a contaminating vacant sadness. I stare at them; they all stare back. A large photo of a family group at a party of some sort, sits in the middle of the middle shelf.  “My granddaughter Susan, and her husband,” she says sadly. With a smile that crowds out all other facial features, she points to the young girl in the photo. “And this is my great-granddaughter, Jill, taken on her eleventh birthday.” she beams.  “Such a sweet child. Arrived early.”
            “Early?”
            “Yes, the little viper,” she grins and wiggles a crooked finger at the young girl in the photo. “You little viper, two months early. Nearly killed her mother; ruined our Florida vacation, didn’t you. Still… what a sweet child.” She stares lovingly at the freckled and pigtailed image in the photo. I imagine them talking to each other in some sort of secret language. She snaps out of her trance and curtly directs me to sit down on the love seat facing the portrait.
            “You want anything to drink?” she asks gruffly.
            Is it my imagination, or does the little girl in the photo smile at me?
            “Well?” she snaps. I pull my eyes from the photo and dutifully take a seat.
            “Thank you ma’am,” I say. “A glass of milk  please.”
            Her demeanor again shifts, “Of course I do,” she says with a lonely smile, “and please, call me Judith.” I nod vigorously. She disappears into the kitchen, humming a haunting tune. Moments later she returns with a plate of Oreos and a glass of milk and sits next to me. She stares up a the portrait, smiling while I eat my snack. Between cookies I take the Easter seals out of my pocket and lay them down on the coffee table. I wait for an opportunity for some to make my sales pitch, but she just wistfully stares up at the picture.
            “That’s me, you know, just after I killed that Persian general. Cut his head off. Oh, but it was easy.”
            I swallow what I have in my mouth. “Ma’am?”
            She shakes her head as if waking from a dream. “Don’t you know any history? What do they teach you kids in Catholic school anyway?”
            Not a thing about Persian generals.
            She softens suddenly, “I’m sorry, I do get carried away at times. Yes it’s a portrait of me, you can see my name across the top in gold, can’t you? But I was much younger then, so much younger.” She pauses, I want to keep the conversation going so that I can somehow divert it back to my Easter seals, but she rambles on as if I weren’t there.
            “I was a model for my Gustav. He painted it for me, my beautiful Gustav. He was a famous painter you know…”
            “No Mrs.…”
            “Kreutzer. Mrs. Kreutzer, but please, Judith.”
            “No I didn’t… Judith.”
            “Oh yes, quite famous. Gustav Klimt. They really don’t teach you anything in Catholic schools, do they? I was barely a teenager, living in Vienna before the turn of the century. He was so, so manly, so bold, so full of life that he could just about burst. He taught me so much….”
            Turn of the century? I do some quick math in my head — if she was a teenager in, say 1900, she must have been born around 1885 or so, and it’s 1959 now then she must be about… Judith interrupts my mental ciphering with a luminous smoke ring that travels around my neck and settles over my head like a forlorn halo.
            “…about art, and men, and politics, and good and evil, and life.”
            … seventy-five years old, probably older. “Gee Mrs. Kreutzer…
            “Judith, dear”
            “So Judith, is that really you?” I nudge my lonely pile of Easter seals forward, hoping for a chance..
            Judith abruptly turns toward me and places a bony hand on my knee. She goes on as if I hadn’t asked the question. “… and about love. Oh my Gustav, you taught me so much about love. I miss you so…” Her eyes swell with tears that run down her cheeks, carrying with them a silt of black mascara. Her hand inches up my leg slowly as she talks.
            “You are young, so young, much younger than I was when Gustav had me. But, we are never too young to learn of love, are we?” Her hand inches higher still. She places her other arm around my shoulder, trapping me there. She still holds the smoldering cigarette and an inch-long ash falls to my trousers. Judith brightens up, apologizes profusely and tries to brush the ash away from my lap. Her hand lingers there for just a moment.
            I look into her red eyes and see a world of confusion. Judith parts her lips as if to say something, but nothing comes out, just a delicate bridge of saliva between cracked lips. Two thin streams of smoke trickle from the corners of her mouth. She notices where her hand is placed and she smiles, an embarrassed schoolgirl smile, and pulls her hand back. Then as if some connection had suddenly been broken she sits straight up and in a no-nonsense voice says, “So, remind me again, what is it you want? You’re selling something is that right?”
            My Easter Seals. I pick up one book from the pile and hand it to her. “One dollar for twenty seals.”
            “One dollar,” she says vacantly as if this had some special significance, and instantly her manner switches back to Gustav’s Judith. With a girlish, teasing smile she bounces off the couch. “Wait right here my little prince,” she says running into the next room. “I’ll be right back.”
            I wait, and wait, five minutes, ten. From the next room I hear Judith singing in a foreign language, German I think, in a crusty voice that makes daring attempts to scale melodic peaks, but invariably falls into a phlegmatic chasm. Still she carries on, a deaf nightingale lost in the beauty of her own past. Finally after almost fifteen minutes I call out, “Mrs. Kreutzer? Judith?”
            “One moment Gustav,” she says sweetly. “I only have twenty dollars my love. It’s all I can afford. Please don’t be angry.”
            Her gay banter confuses me and while I continue to sit there on her perfectly pink couch, listening to her chirping, I begin to plan my escape. First step, stand up. Good, she’s still singing.
            “Oh but your Judith has been so naughty,” she says. “Please don’t be angry.”
            I inch my way slowly towards the door when I remember the dog, Elektra. The little mutt is sitting on a chair next to the door, watching me nervously. Still I edge towards the door, one foot at a time. When I’m almost within striking distance, I realize I’ve left my Easter Seals, not all of them, but twenty books, on the coffee table.
            “I’m coming Gustav. You’re little angel Judith is almost ready…”
            Do I run back and get them? Sweat begins to roll down my brow and into my eyes, and that nasty little dog must smell my fear and starts to growl.
            “Here I come…”
            I decide to do it, dive to the coffee table, snap up the books, and bolt out of the room before that miserable pup has a chance to react, and just as my legs coil for the spring, Judith dances out of the bedroom.
            “There you are my sweet,” she says.
            I look up to find her running towards me, her arms outstretched as if she could gather in all the love in the cosmos. My god, how ghastly, how incredibly sad she looks in that getup — translucent chemise, red garter belt and black nylons. Her pendulous breasts heave with every step, her face is caked with bright, red rouge, green mascara and layers of white powder, her lips hidden in a morass of crimson lipstick, her hair puffed to incredible proportions, silver with two great streaks of black running up the sides like a Bizarro-world version of the Bride of Frankenstein. She waves a crisp twenty in one hand and her pearl cigarette holder in another. I panic and dive for the door, but she catches up and grabs on to me, stuffing the twenty into my pants pocket. Her demonic dog gives chase and nips at my heel.
            “No wait!” she cries, “You promised to marry me…”
            A flurry of arms, hands, teeth, but somehow I find the doorknob and with a brave tug, throw the door open.
            “Don’t go,” she pleads, throwing her arms around me and knocking me down in the doorway. I fall flat on my face on her porch, next to the jar of spiders I left there. I grab it just as she falls on top of me and her dog on top of her.      Somehow I manage to turn around, jar in hand, and flash it in front of her face. For a moment she just stares at my monster in a jar. Judith finally realizes I’m holding a huge spider inches away. Her face stretches out into a mask of terror and she screams, a high-pitch wailing as if all the demons from hell were chasing her. She leaps off of me, throwing her poor dog across the porch, vaults back inside the house and slams the door. Elektra collects herself, leaps up with a threatening growl and tears off in my direction. Like a brave gunfighter with a single bullet left, I take aim at the mutt and throw my jar of spiders. It hits the dog square on the head and shatters into a thousand pieces, scattering spiders across the porch. The beast yelps in pain, runs off the porch and out of sight.

            I fall asleep reliving my visit to Judith and counting my money in my head. Thirty-five dollars and only three customers. The dreams poke at me all night, no spiders, just a rush of images and sensations. Judith is there. And so is her creepy little great-granddaughter.
            I wake up suddenly, not from the dreams, but from a commotion outside — lights flashing and voices, too loud for this time of night. Leaning into my window and staring through the haze, I see several police cars and an ambulance next door at the O’Reily’s. Two policemen are roughly dragging Mr. O’Reily from his porch and into one of the patrol cars; he screams curses at the officers as they push him into the car and close the door. Moments later, a draped figure on a gurney is carried out of the house and loaded into the ambulance. Banging on the windows of his cage with cuffed firsts, I hear the muffled voice of Mr. O’Reily yell, “She had it coming…”
            I watch as the police cars and ambulance speed off into the night, the wailing sirens fading into Mrs. O’Reily’s terrified voice.

            Friday afternoon. I count the minutes, the seconds until three-thirty. I prime myself waiting for the bell, my legs ready to spring from my desk. I know what’s coming but if I can leap at just the right instant, I can delay the gruesome ordeal. I watch the second hand sweep past the nine, the ten, the eleven, the … but no, it stops, right there on the 11, five seconds before the bell. I can’t believe it.  Sister Damian smiles and announces in a chillingly pleasant voice that before we leave for the weekend it’s time to award the prizes for the top sellers of Easter Seals. She stands at the head of the class, towering over us, list in hand. I slink lower in my seat and under my desk and in that precarious position listen to the names of the other twenty-four children and their paltry sales. Then the moment I dread. She announces, “…and the grand prize goes to Donnie Bacon for selling,” and here she inserts a dramatic pause, “sixty books.”
            The classroom exhales collective awe and wonderment, and here I go, traipsing down what seems like a three-hundred foot aisle, to the front of the class to collect my booty: a foot-high, powder blue and gold statue of the Virgin Mary. “You’re quite a little salesman,” says my teacher.

            “You’re quite a salesman” puffs my old man when I show him my prize. “You see, it’s all about Marketing.” He’s on his way out to who knows where, but as he leaves he tells me that I am now initiated into the proud ranks of door-to-door salesmen.
            I look at my lonely Virgin sitting here on the kitchen table, her arms clasped in prayer, a golden halo over her head, her heart bared and bleeding with the loss of her son. Maxi stares at it and says, “How’d you sell sixty books?”           
            “Well my dad bought ten and my grandfather bought fifteen…”
            “What ’bout the rest?”
            I think a minute about how much to tell him and finally settle for, “I sold the rest around the neighborhood. You know…”
            “Yeah,” he says. “Hey, did you hear that the Kaplan’s dog ran away?”
            “No I didn’t hear that.”
            Maxi pokes the statue’s head a few times. “What’s it do?” he asks. He still doesn’t get it about saints and the Virgin and I can’t explain it to him.
            “I don’t know,” I say with a few pokes of my own. “You just pray to it.”
            Maxi thinks for a moment and says, “Maybe your neighbor should have prayed to it.”
            “I don’t know Maxi. What can you get by praying to a block of plastic? Her husband was a real dick-head…”
            “And scary as hell.” He pulls out his jar of spiders and says. “At least I collected the most spiders. Now I can get initiated into the club.”
            I nod in agreement and poke her head one last time. It pops off, rolls over the edge of the table onto the floor, and underneath the refrigerator.
            We both stare at my crippled first prize and even without a head it seems to stare back.

Notes