Muckers (14 page)

“Corpus Christi,” Father says, gazing over the top of my head. He doesn’t want anything to do with me either.

Father spoons the mixture into my mouth and I swallow. Then I realize he’s given me an empty spoon. It catches me by surprise and I should have gotten up already, made the sign of the cross, and moved on. But the Father’s not budging either, and he should be at Cruz by now, only he isn’t.

There’s a break in the singing. I guess they must’ve run out of verses. Father turns to Leon and says, “Get me the longer spoon.”

Even Mrs. Featherhoff in the balcony must have heard it.

Cruz is staring at the statue of Guadalupe, his lips tracing the words of a prayer I can’t understand. My knees are numb, but I won’t leave him. I gaze up at Mary and Joseph and Jesus all together and think how Cruz is just about as close to being family as I’ve got right now.

Leon comes back with the spoon, but Father Pierre starts in on another row. And what he’s doing to Cruz, it would’ve been better if he’d punched him instead of this: kneeling here in front of the town waiting for scraps like a mangy dog.

Father finally takes the spoon. It’s a long silver one—the kind Benny mixes chocolate malts with. Father Pierre grips the end, leaving a good four inches between him and Cruz. His eyes narrow, and it’s clear to me now who the enemy is. He’s hiding under saintly robes and feeling mighty powerful.

“Corpus Christi,” Father murmurs.

Cruz grabs the chalice instead and takes a good long drink from the wine.

There’s gasping and Leon drops the towel, making the bell under his cassock fall and let out an unexpected
ping
. But I’ll never forget the look on the Father, his face turning the color of that pom-pom: a mixture of pink and red, like a maraschino cherry.

Cruz hands the chalice back and gets up from the kneeler. I make the sign of the cross and follow him, just like those hundred other sets of eyes. All you can hear is the
drip drip
of the rain against the metal sides of those buckets. I expect
Cruz to curve back into our pew and kneel to pray, but he keeps walking down the aisle and out the front door.

I stay in church a long time after, thinking about Cruz. I run my hand across the gold lettering on the nameplate nailed to the end of our pew:
In loving memory of Robert A. O’Sullivan. Beloved son, cherished brother. Laid to rest 1945
. All of that’s true. Except the last part. I can’t imagine him resting after what he went through.

“I prayed for snow,” Father Pierre calls out to me from the back of the church, “but He gave me rain.” Father takes a few steps, then thumps his cane on the carpet until he reaches my row. “I can take your confession now, Felix.” He points to the curtain lining the confessional in the vestibule.

“I’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

Father squints to get a better look at me. “Is that the attitude you learn on the football field? You think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you? You and your little brown friends. I saw you jump on the train with that Mexican girl.”

“Why do you hate football so much?”

“The town draws its strength from this church, not a football field.”

My throat tightens. “You’re wrong,” I tell him. “We’ll win.”

Father looks at Bobby’s nameplate and taps it with his cane. “This will be removed by the end of October unless it is paid in full.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s a privilege to have your own pew, Felix. Even God needs assurance of our daily love. It’s fifty dollars for the year, and I’m afraid I’ve already given your father three months’ grace.”

“You’ll get your money,” I tell him, and head for the door.
I’ll find a way, somehow. I catch sight of myself in the organist’s mirror before leaving. My eyes look twisted and my face so contorted that I barely recognize who I am. I might know who the enemy is, but I don’t like the sight of me either. It’s the look of being afraid.

THERE
’
S NO SCHOOL BECAUSE OF
Labor Day and no work for my pop either. He’s sitting in the kitchen staring at the Frigidaire, and I don’t remember him looking this sad in a while. He’s getting ready for another funeral. That’s why he’s clean-shaven. The mine took another one of his men, and his fingers are no good with a tie.

“I’ll do it,” I tell him, reaching for the red knot he’s trying to make. “I can do a Windsor knot, you know.”

“Not bloody well,” he says. “And don’t be siding with the Queen.”

But I try again anyway.

“Not too tight,” he tells me as I draw the knot close to his neck and fold down the collar.

“Poor bastard didn’t deserve it,” Pop murmurs. “He never said a harsh word. At least there’s no family left behind to be missing him.”

He brushes my hand aside, but I’m almost finished with the knot. I catch him looking up at me the way he
does when he’s gone too far—like I must be thinking that he’s the one who deserved it. Then he sighs in the same way he did at Bobby’s funeral, looking broken—like an old toy you keep trying to fix but knowing it won’t ever work the same.

“Rabbit’s going to Korea,” I tell him.

Pop takes his jacket off the step stool and walks toward the door. Then he pauses. “Poor bastard doesn’t deserve that either,” he says before leaving.

I head up to Main Street to meet Cruz and Rabbit, who’s sitting on his duffel bag.

“Where the hell’s Korea?” Cruz asks.

“In the Sea of Japan,” Rabbit says. He rubs his shiny scalp, which is the color of chalk except where the shaved hairs are starting to poke through.

The Greyhound bus is already here, idling on the slope and caught in shadow across the street in front of the cigar store.

“It’s a peninsula,” I tell Cruz.

“Oh, that explains it,” he says, scowling at me. “We’re fighting a peninsula. Sounds like another new screwball disease, no?”

“I might not even get to Korea.” There’s a tinge of disappointment in Rabbit’s voice. “I could end up in Japan. That’s where Pete Torres’s brother’s been stationed. Going over drills and building foxholes at the base in Sendai.”

Rabbit stuffs a sack of Mrs. Palermo’s food into his duffel. Cruz says she was bawling something awful in front of the ovens and too shook up to come.

“At least you won’t be fighting the Reds,” Cruz says. “Get anywhere near an A-bomb and you’ll be screaming bloody murder.”

“You can live through one,” Rabbit says, tugging the
drawstring secure before eyeballing Cruz. “Don’t you ever read the paper? They write about it all the time.”

“I don’t need no paper telling me to be a few countries back when that atom bomb hits. And all the
Verde Miner
writes about is those stupid pineapple parties up on Gringo Ridge.”

“Pinochle, not pineapple,” I tell him. “And the Russians are the ones behind Korea.”

“Pee-knuckle.” Cruz repeats it like he’s some bratty kid. “Bet they play that on the peninsula, too. Huh, Ugly?”

“Half Korea’s communist, Cruz,” Rabbit says.

“Think I don’t know that? And you ain’t been further than Kingman, so don’t be showing off.” Cruz takes a kick at the duffel bag before Rabbit hauls it over his shoulder. “If you don’t come back, I don’t wanna hear about it, idiot. No griping.”

Rabbit waves a hand in the air and keeps walking.

“You know we play Cottonville in three weeks,” Cruz hollers, throwing a silver lighter at the duffel bag.

“What’s this for?” Rabbit bends down for it and gets whacked in the head by the bag.

“For when you smoke,” Cruz says. Then he starts laughing. “But don’t be trying it when you’re carrying something.
Like a gun
.”

“I don’t smoke.” Rabbit tightens his fist around the lighter and whips it at Cruz, but the lighter caroms off the sidewalk and dribbles toward us, settling next to my foot.

“You will.” Cruz grins. “Keep it.” He tosses the lighter back, gently this time, so Rabbit can make a one-handed catch. “It was my grandfather’s,” Cruz says.

Rabbit takes it and heads up Main, waiting for a cranky old Studebaker to pass. We keep watching him from the
other side and it’s strange, him walking away from us. Then Rabbit hops on the bus like he’s headed for Smelter City to visit a cousin or something—no different—and we lose sight of him.

Things get quiet—there’s not even a wind—and the sun is leaving an amber trail of ninety-degree heat, like yesterday’s rain never happened. A bead of sweat from Cruz’s brow drips onto his nose. He lets it slide all the way down his chin.

“What are you looking at?” he growls, but the air’s already gone flat between us. Cruz reaches for something else to say, but now there’s only me.

“He’ll be home by Christmas,” he finally grumbles.

They said that about Bobby, too.

“Think he’d miss a free meal at the Square on Christmas Eve?” Cruz jabs me in the ribs with his pack of Luckies. “Maybe he’ll be home sooner. He’s only got enough smoked-meat sandwiches to get him through the first hour. By the time they get to Prescott, his stomach’ll be rumbling.”

The first time I ever saw Rabbit was at Christmas, lined up to see Santa. I think he must have been six. I already knew Santa didn’t exist. I’d found out the year before, when they’d asked Pop to play him at the Square. Only he couldn’t go through with it. He’d managed to get the beard on and the shiny, fat belt before passing out on the chesterfield, stone drunk. The furry red-and-white costume was lying on the dining room table still wrapped in cellophane. So Santa was a no-show at the Square and we had to go to Cottonville instead.

Maw took me to the Square the following year, maybe thinking I hadn’t remembered. And I still wanted to
believe, to be like Rabbit. But you can’t undo a thing like that.

That year Rabbit wouldn’t get on Santa’s knee unless he got the candy cane first. Cruz was in line right behind him and wondering why Mr. Mackenzie had taken Santa’s place. He walked right up, pulled down that flimsy white beard, and said, “Hey, Mr. Mac.”

Rabbit screamed and Cruz knocked him over. “What’s the matter?” Cruz said. “You think the
real
Santa’s got time to be here when he’s busy making a million toys?” So Rabbit stopped crying, took the candy cane from Mr. Mackenzie, and told him what he wanted for Christmas. But I couldn’t believe Cruz. I knew that if Santa was real, he would have never asked Pop to stand in for him.

All the passengers are on the bus now, and Rabbit’s grabbed a window seat on our side, about halfway down. He leans into the glass and I’m waiting for him to glance back at us, but he doesn’t. And he’s got to know we’re still here. No one else is around.

I guess it’s no big deal going off to Korea. The only other person I know who’s there is Buddy Ritz, and he’s been in the service since 1938. Not like when Bobby left for the Second World War; that felt like a party. There were nearly two dozen boys who’d signed up, calling it “the pursuit of happiness” or “fighting for the noble cause.” And I swear the whole town filled up Main Street, swarming the bus and yelling, “Kill a Jap for me!” They even had a police escort, with Faye Miller leading it, stringing a necklace of candy hearts around Bobby’s neck before he walked onto that bus so he wouldn’t forget they were engaged. Was
he
red.

“I don’t even know which way their eyes go over there,”
Cruz says. “Do they slant up or down?” Cruz is acting like an idiot, the way he always does when things get bent out of shape.

“They must be waiting for the driver,” Cruz figures, spreading his legs out and leaning against the fire hydrant. “Can’t you see him sucking back coffee at the lunch counter?”

I think I do, so I nod, but I can tell Cruz is itching to argue. He grips the head of the fire hydrant and his legs start fidgeting. It’s going to be tough on him not having Rabbit here to argue with. I’m more of a listener.

“It’s not even a war,” Cruz says. “They’ll push those commies back to their line. What is it? Thirty-eight yards? That’s all they need to do. How long can that take? Nobody beats MacArthur.”

“If it’s not a war, then why’s MacArthur even there?”

Cruz just about falls off his perch when I say it. But MacArthur’s the one who got Bobby killed, sending him over to the Pacific when he was due to come home. Now the general’s taking ninety-eight-pound teenagers with him to Korea, who’ve flunked P.E.

The driver hops on and the bus pulls out. That’s when Rabbit turns around and looks at us. He’s got the biggest grin on his face and I’ve never seen him smile that way before. Like he’s got something over Cruz and me. It gets even bigger as the bus heaves, coughing a black wad of smoke at us before rounding the switchback to Prescott.

“Hey, next time we see him, he’ll be in a green uniform. Can you beat it?” Cruz says.

“Maybe even a Purple Heart,” I joke.

“Or a yellow one.” Cruz smirks. “He’s still afraid of the dark.”

It’s true. At Scout camp the first time, Rabbit slept in
his bunk with a flashlight aimed at the ceiling the whole night, until Mr. and Mrs. Palermo came to get him the next morning. It’s the only time he’s ever been away from home overnight. And none of us has ever been outside of Arizona. The closest me and Cruz have come was the White Mountains, when we gave St. John’s a good going-over on their football field last year, a few miles before New Mexico.

Rabbit will be halfway around the world, six thousand miles from here.

“That’ll get him laid,” Cruz laughs, looking at the sky like he can imagine it. “A Purple Heart’s gotta be at least as big as an Eagle Scout medal.”

By the time it’s Christmas, we’ll have taken the Yavapai Cup. That’s what I’ll focus on.
Rabbit getting back. Us winning the Cup
. I don’t want to think about either of those things not happening. Rabbit could get lucky and so could we. Not everyone who goes to war gets killed. Only he doesn’t have Cruz beside him anymore, and I don’t know how much good a gun’ll do.

“He’ll miss the game of the year,” Cruz says, tapping the butt of his cigarette pack to coax out a smoke. “Maybe the century. You’ll have to write him about it.”