Facts of Life (10 page)

At the first house, the greeter was a little girl in pajamas. She had a thumb in her mouth and a blanket over her shoulder.

"Is your mom home?" I asked.

She shook her head no.

"Your dad?"

She shook her head again.

The grandmother was home but it was no sale. The door slowly closed in my face, dangerously close to pinching my shoes. If that had happened, Uncle Joe and I would have something in common: ruined toes.

I trudged down the steps, a few needles from the wreath raining on the ground. I ventured to the next house, and the next, and next. Instead of sales or holiday spirit, I produced something close to anger on the faces of these homeowners. I did get an offer to trim a hedge and climb a roof to clean out the gutters. And I sampled a cookie baked by a really nice old lady.

I was no salesman, and my product confused a few customers. One child turned and screamed, "Mom, this boy is selling weeds. Do we need any?"

Two hours later, I had not sold a single wreath. But when I met Uncle Joe at our designated place—the mailbox on Angus Street—he was all smiles. He tossed a few raisins into his mouth and announced, "I sold five, buddy boy."

"How!" I screamed. "People said I was selling nothing but weeds."

He chuckled and gummed his raisins. There was a mischievous light in his eyes.

"What?" I asked.

"I know I shouldn't have, but I began my pitch by asking em to look down at my shoes." He swallowed his raisins and reported how he revealed to his customers his Korean-vet status and how his toes had been run over by a supply truck.

"Uncle! How could you!" I screamed. The scam artist! This approach struck me as dishonorable, although why, I wasn't sure. His story was partly true—this much I know because I had seen his toes, which were long and flat from the weight of a four-ton truck. Still, it didn't seem right, taking advantage of people's sympathy for veterans when there were veterans in
real
need.

"How much you sell again?" he inquired with a chuckle. Before I could answer truthfully, he made an okay sign with his fingers, which for him meant zero.

"How did you know?" I barked.

Uncle Joe cleared his throat and said, "Boy, you need an angle."

We parted. I skipped a few houses where dogs with crazy eyes dwelled behind chain-link fences. But at one pretty house, I climbed the stairs, ran my fingers through my unruly hair, and announced to the person who opened the door, "Ma'am, we're having a school fund drive for the poor." The woman closed the door none too softly.

At the next house, I said, "Ma'am, we're keeping youth off drugs." This door closed quicker, the breeze adjusting the curls on my head. Still not ready to admit defeat, I braved the next house. "Ma'am, we're here early because cats need loving homes." The woman narrowed her eyes at me, then scanned the wreath in my hand and asked, "Are you selling bushes?" Before I could answer, "No, ma'am, we're selling preseason Christmas wreaths," she closed the door on me.

I was out of luck, and my sample wreath was now nearly as bald as Uncle Joe.

I dragged my red wagon down the uneven sidewalk, each bump shaking more needles from the wreaths. I had no energy to combat the sneering laughter of a kid asking, "Hey, ugly, how come you're hauling bushes around?" No, I kept my eyes cast on the sidewalk, which soon revealed a large shadow. When I looked up, it was a smiling Uncle Joe.

"Sold em all!" He did a jig on his gimpy legs.

"Great," I managed to say.

Uncle Joe looked down at my wreaths. He asked, "Hey, what did you do? Strangle the wreaths?" He picked one up as if it were a baby and put it back down gently. He picked up another and examined this one, too, mumbling complaints about the bald wreaths. Finally he settled on the best of my bunch and beckoned me to follow him.

"I told this lady that I would put one on the front of her car."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"You'll see," he said vaguely. He walked two blocks before we stopped our parade in front of a very nice house. On the front door, I noticed, hung one of his wreaths.

"Looks real smart," Uncle Joe bragged.

I had to admit that the wreath on the door was a nice touch, even though Uncle Joe wasn't worth a million dollars. Still, he had bills and coins in his pocket and they weren't about to come out soon! The guy was too stingy.

"You wait here," he ordered. He climbed the steps and visited with the homeowner, a mother with two children wrapped around her ankles like snakes. He descended with a whistle on his lips.

"She says it's okay," he announced.

"What's okay?"

Uncle Joe didn't elaborate. He just drew a length of wire from his pocket and tied the wreath to the grille of the Volvo station wagon in the driveway. He explained this was the style—not only did people put wreaths on their doors, but also displayed their Christmas spirit by attaching them to their cars.

"It's neat, huh?" Uncle Joe added that the woman had bought two wreaths because of his war injury.

"What did you tell her?"

"Nothing, really." Boyishly, he kicked at the ground, a sign of embarrassment, and jingled the coins in his deep pockets.

"You told her a lie, huh?"

Uncle Joe dramatically snorted. "Boy, you got to learn how to talk to your elders." He then confessed that, indeed, he had extended the boundaries of truth by informing his customer that he'd had the tips of
both
shoes run over.

"You didn't," I admonished.

"I did, and I feel bad." He pouted.

"How could you?" I scolded.

He shrugged and muttered that he'd been wrong to fib, but he needed the money because his injury cost him more than an ugly foot. When he bought shoes (every six years), he had to buy one in size nine and the other in size ten. His flattened toes needed more room to breathe, he explained.

We walked up the street, now growing dim, but Uncle was still in the mood to make money. He scooted the wreaths from the wagon into the gutter. In their place he started tossing in aluminum cans from the neighborhood trash cans, after stomping them flat in a crazy dance.

"Uncle, I got to go," I announced after ten minutes of this kind of work.

"Go?" he barked. "There's money to make."

"You make it," I said.

He gave me one of his narrow-eyed stares until I groaned and agreed to help.

We canvassed the gutters and trash cans until the wagon chimed like music as we hauled our loot down the street. Uncle Joe said that life was hard, but if you didn't have to pay for it, it was good.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Think about it, boy," Uncle Joe advised. "I'm not sure myself, but I know there's truth in my words."

Like Ben Franklin, he knew about pennies, as each can we scavenged was worth a few of them. And no can was going to be passed up.

"Get that one in the road," he commanded. He pointed to an aluminum can in the street and I hurried to retrieve it. While I was bending over, a three-eyed car moved toward me. The middle headlight appeared to be blazing. I righted myself and muttered, "What the heck!"

It was only after the vehicle surged past me that I understood that the headlight
was
blazing.

"Did you see that?" I called to Uncle Joe, who appeared confounded by the car that had just passed. He raked a hand over his sharp chin. He munched on his lower lip as if in deep thought. Uncles mind, I could see even in that early dusk, was at work. He spit sharply at the ground and remarked, "Yeah, boy, I did."

We watched the car stop at the corner, then speed down the street, throwing off a light like dawn peering over a mountain.

"I think it was the Volvo with—" I started.

"You don't have to tell me." Uncle Joe came alive, grabbed the handle of the wagon loaded with aluminum cans, and commanded, "
Vámanos!
"

The third eye of the Volvo was the wreath Uncle Joe had attached to the grille. Made of combustible twigs, it had caught fire. While it was an honest mistake by my well-meaning uncle, we felt like fugitives and galloped away.

"Are we in trouble?" I asked.

"Depends," he answered, and pocketed his dentures so he wouldn't lose them if we actually had to sprint.

Several times, at the sighting of cop cars, we were forced to hide behind bushes until we were soiled and drenched in sweat from throwing ourselves onto the ground. But we got home without incident.

We had to wait a whole worrisome day before we found ourselves in the news. Uncle Joe and I went down to the library to read a small article in the newspaper— buying a paper would be a reckless expenditure of money!

I broke the silence as we walked down the steps of the library. "Uncle, they could have gotten hurt." We had read in the article that an unknown scam artist was working the neighborhood, selling dry flammable wreaths. I could tell that Uncle Joe resented the implication: scam artist! Uncle was stingy and occasionally a weaver of stories that were not entirely true. But at heart he was honest.

Later, when we huddled at his small kitchen table, he poured the weakest of weak teas into a jam jar and pushed it with a knuckle in my direction. He had used an old tea bag, and I swore that the staple that held it together was rusty. But I kept my lip buttoned. Neither of us was in the mood to argue over something as meaningless as a tea bag.

"Drink up," he ordered.

Darkness at last climbed the kitchen walls. The wind rattled the windows, and the neighbor's cat walked the fence like a sentry.

Uncle Joe, head bowed, spoke into his weak tea. "I guess you live and learn." He tapped a finger against the kitchen table, and I could see that he was reflecting on the near tragedy of a woman driving her Volvo unaware that her grille had become a grill on which you could barbecue. He sighed deeply, raked his whiskery chin with his hand, and shook his large camel head.

We sat in silence, we sat in shame, and finally we sat in darkness. Uncle Joe rose and turned on the overhead light, then spoke up.

"Did I ever tell you 'bout a comrade of mine who parachuted into the arms of a beautiful Irish lassie? World War Two, that was." He took a sip of tea and re-counted the story of Fred Flitter, a foot soldier who was assigned to an airborne unit because he was chubby and everyone figured that if he hit the ground hard he could roll like a meatball and come up shooting. On the first day of a practice run, he parachuted right into the arms of a very strong local beauty.

I hadn't heard that one. I listened, now and then sipping my tea and trying to dismiss the fear that I might get lockjaw from the rusty staple in the tea bag.

"It was fun time for ol' Fred." He chortled. Uncle Joe told me that this guy Fred Flitter learned to shear sheep from this Irish lassie. Uncle pulled his chair away from the table and began to shave an invisible sheep, his hand making a swooping motion, all the while imitating the buzzing sound of a razor. With each uplifting stroke he increased the volume.

"This was 1944," Uncle Joe recalled. "Hitler was on the run, and the war was almost over. Fred parachuted again weeks later and twisted an ankle. The old fellow earned the same injury ribbon as me." His mood had improved mightily. He drank his tea, smacked his lips, and bellowed, "Let me show you again! No telling when it'll come in handy." He bent over and began to run an invisible razor over an invisible sheep. He made the buzzing sound and even shook out the invisible sheep wool. Soon I was called to imitate sheepshearing; after all, there was no telling when it would come in handy.

"More wrist action, boy," Uncle Joe scolded. "Put something behind it!" He shuffled to the refrigerator and brought out a cloudy jar of prunes. He downed two, permitted himself a soft and painless fart, and returned to the kitchen table. He began a yarn about another Fred, someone named Fred Salinas, a man with arms like anvils and the tiny waist of an ant. But I cleverly tuned Uncle Joe out by making my lips buzz like a giant razor while I concentrated on my sheepshearing.

"Boy, are you listening?" Uncle Joe scolded.

"Yes, sir!" I answered, startled from my musings.

"I'm telling you 'bout Fred Salinas. Man who saved our nation in spring of 1944." Uncle Joe poked my shoulder with a finger. "How come you're so soft?"

"Because I'm tenderhearted," I answered.

"Tenderhearted!" he roared. "That will set you back, boy! Don't you know this is a dog-eat-dog world—and quit with that buzzing noise! What's wrong with you?"

So, late on an autumn day, I learned to shear an invisible sheep, absorbed monotonous stories about Fred Flitter and Fred Salinas, and as Uncle's last order for the day, raked leaves in the near dark. For my labor in the backyard, Uncle said if I found a penny, nickel, dime, or quarter in the grass, we could split it. How? I don't know. But I'm sure that wise Uncle Joe would have found away.

AT THIRTEEN, Letty Rodriguez had fallen for Miguel Padilla. He was nice. That's what she liked about him, and that he was funny. He was not super handsome, but girls thought he was a catch. Letty's catch. While she was a top student in her seventh-grade classes, he was barely making it through eighth grade. His grades, already inflated because he was a charmer with the teachers, were mostly Ds and Cs. He blamed the situation on his home life: His father was gone, his mother worked a lot at the packing shed, and his two brothers and sister were noisy as pirates. He couldn't study with the television blaring and his mother on his case about one thing or another. Letty would suggest tenderly, "Miguel, you could study at the library."

"The
liberry
is for little kids," he would argue, and go off with friends to play soccer.

Letty thought Miguel was a keeper, even if she used her allowance to make him happy: Big Gulp sodas, candies and potato chips, tickets to movies that she didn't really want to see, like the one about snakes on a plane. But he was nice and funny, and she liked his hair. And there was a sensitive side to him.

"Yeah, I like flowers," he had once remarked. He sucked his Big Gulp through a straw and related how he and his friend Richard used to pick their neighbor's flowers and give them to their mothers. He sucked again on the Big Gulp, rattled the ice, and said, "You want some?"