Muckers (17 page)

I get the other rock while Cruz lines up the pins, then I aim the greenest part of the malachite at the whiskey bottle to the right of the liniment bottle, taking out Father Pierre. “There goes the priest!” I say.

Cruz starts clapping. “What’s he got? A silver spoon and a cane for a whip?” he says. “There’s nothing he can use that’s gonna break us.”

One tequila bottle’s still wobbling—the new kid, Rudy Kovacs—and he holds on, the jerk. But I get him the second time, sweeping him clear off the ground.

“We should have outdoor bowling,” Cruz says. He leans against the gym bag and looks out at the stars. “There’s plenty of empty lots around here. I could run it.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I tell him, looking up at the stars, too. They’re blinking and round as peaches, scattered all over as if they just fell off the moon. The more I look at them, the more they seem within reach.

“Damn straight I’m right,” Cruz says. “And don’t think I haven’t thought about it before.” Then he looks over at me. “What about you?” he says.

“What about me?” Cruz catches me by surprise.

“After you get that football scholarship,” he says. “You could coach.”

“Nah. Not me.”

“I’m serious. You see all the positions.”

“The school’s closing, remember?”

“It ain’t closed yet,” Cruz says. “And I don’t mean here. You’ll get out.”

“And what if I don’t want to?”

He pauses, looking serious for a second. “Then I’ll just have to make you,” he says, looking me in the eye. “Now let’s line these things up.”

Cruz takes what’s left of his battered rock as I straighten the bottles. He hurls it into the air and hits the toilet. “Now, that’s something Rabbit would do.” He laughs.

“If Rabbit was here, there’s no way he’d be doing this,” I tell him. “He’d be too scared of getting caught.”

Cruz is quiet for a while. Then he says he’d have Rabbit take care of the food in his bowling alley. “Nothing fancy. Full-o-Flavor sandwiches on French loaf. Stuff like that. When he gets back from playing soldier and finally finishes school.”

My bottle’s still got an inch of beer, so I down it. “You know that piano Mrs. Featherhoff got lowered from her house? I’d learn to play it.”

I’m waiting for Cruz to tell me how crazy that is. How old ladies who’ll always be virgins are the only ones who play the stupid piano. But he looks at the horizon like he can imagine me playing.

“I always figured when Mrs. Featherhoff got too old and they’d wheel out the piano in the Square on Christmas Eve, asking who can play, I’d go up and start into ‘Silent Night’ like there was nothing to it. Not making a fuss or anything, no matter how hard they’d clap after.”

Cruz takes a swig from the tequila bottle and starts humming “Silent Night” real low.

“I should have a piano in my bowling alley. And you could come and play it sometime.” He finds another rock. “Let’s go, double or nothing,” he says, and we lift our rocks and roll them down the jail at the same time. This time we aim for those Cottonville Wolves.

All the bottles shatter, making a shotgun sound. Cruz looks up at the street to see if anyone noticed. “Can’t do nothing to us. We’re already in jail. Can you see Rabbit right about now if he was here? He’d be cleaning up the broken glass, feeling like a sinner. And you’d be helping him,” he says, watching me scrape the pieces into a corner with the edge of my sneaker.

“You think I only brought two?” Cruz takes out a couple more beers from the gym bag.

“Got any food in there?” I ask.

He nods and hands me a burrito, or maybe it’s a taco. I keep thinking they’re the same thing. All I know is that it’s good.
Very good
. “How many of these things can your mother make?”

“As many as you want.”

“But no meat. Not before a game anyway,” I tell him.

“
Arroz
and pintos,” Cruz says, “à la Villanueva.” He hands me a new bottle.

“To Rabbit,” I say, lifting it. Then we get all quiet again.

“They’ll be sending him home any minute,” Cruz says, “when they see how he can’t run.”

“Looks like they’ve got the communists licked anyhow,” I say, hoping maybe it’s true and that this war will be a short one—that Rabbit won’t even get to see it. Maybe the mine will stay open, too. Because tonight I’d rather believe Cruz and all he’s saying. I’d rather be in this jail with a perfect record and the whole town all happy, even if happy means drunk.

“Just wait,” Cruz says. “You’ll get that scholarship and I’ll start my bowling alley.”

“We gotta win the next four games first,” I tell him.

“That’s the easy part,” he says. “You, me, Tony, Coach. We beat Ruffner, didn’t we? If we can do that, we can take the state.”

YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN MR
. Mackenzie sweat yesterday, taking that stupid oath along with Superintendent Menary, having to prove to everybody that he isn’t a Communist (they’re putting a capital
C
on it now in the papers), and Sims right there holding the Bible up for good measure, though he couldn’t look Mr. Mac in the eye.

This tree I’m under is as crazy as Sims is, growing up through the fire escape on the side of the school and reaching right up to the roof. Like it was natural as rain to be sprouting out of a flight of metal steps. I’ve been looking at its weepy leaves since the sun rose, and all I’ve come up with is that the tree’s just plain crazy going through all the trouble, twisting its way around the grate I’m lying on. But then there’s patches of craziness scattered all over our town.

Father Pierre is mean crazy, and I think that’s the worst kind of crazy you can be. And I suppose Pop’s copper crazy
and drunk crazy, too, though I never know which one will show.

But Sims is crazy in a cowardly way, hiding behind that Commie box. Mr. Mackenzie says Sims hasn’t been the same since his father got killed in the mine years ago. Still, he gives that box such a violent shake, you’d think it would explode and blow somebody else’s life to bits right along with it.

When it quiets down, he’ll show us pictures of Communists, lining them along the blackboard railing. Yesterday he put up a poster of the Weavers and my jaw just about fell on the floor. You can’t go near a radio without hearing them sing, and I really like the way they sound. But there they were, Pete, Lee, Ronnie, and Fred, smiling at me the entire class, so polite and neighborly, with Penny Bruzzi whimpering in the front row all shook up about it and me wondering if they really were Communists and maybe “Irene” was a code name they used to let other spies know what they were thinking.

I grab hold of the gnarly branch—the one wrapped around the railing—and give it a good shake. Sims is like that knot, too, right in the middle of things, twisting them around until it seems normal to be hating people you’ve known all your life, just because they’re different.

The moon’s gone and the satiny white moonflowers at the foot of the fire escape fold under the strengthening light of the day. But they’ve been blooming in front of Sims’s classroom window all night, and that’s crazy, too.

I get out my jackknife and carve
SIMS IS CRAZY
right in the middle of that knot, cutting it deep and in capital letters. I feel better while I’m writing it. But as soon as I’m done I just get mad all over again. Carving those words in that branch won’t change Sims.

And the morning’s starting off all wrong. I suppose the evening will, too. They play “Goodnight, Irene” on the radio at ten, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to listen without reading into those lines or seeing Penny whimpering, she’s got such a crush on Pete Seeger and she wears her hair like Ronnie Gilbert’s, too.

There’s only one way I can get this day off to a better start, so I carve a few other words in the tree. This time the satisfaction lingers as I mouth what I wrote over and over again—
MUCKERS WIN
.

* * *

6:15
P.M
.

There’s a gentle knock at the bottom of the screen door—somebody tapping out the rhythm to “shave and a haircut … two bits.” I haven’t heard that since I was little, but I know who it is. There’s only one person who made that knock every time she came to visit, and that’s Faye Miller. She’s standing on the porch. We look at each other through the screen until Faye says softly, “I brought you this,” holding up a glass container that smells like our house used to smell.

“It’s a casserole,” Faye says, fussing with the tinfoil on the edges, making them tighter with her thumbs. “It’s still warm,” she says, telling me it’s got beef and peas in it, but no carrots, since she remembered how I didn’t eat them because, well, I didn’t want people saying that’s how come my hair’s that way. And that she makes casseroles every week and it’s no trouble at all to throw another one in the oven.

“Thanks.” I smile, taking the dish.

“I saw you being kind to that little boy, Leon, in front of the furniture store after Father Pierre’s Buick went haywire,” Faye says, “and how the Father wasn’t very nice to you after,
even though you were helping him out. I guess some things don’t change, do they, Red?”

“Not when it comes to some people.”

“You sure must miss him, huh?” Faye whispers.

“All the time.” I bite at my lip. “Do you miss him, too?”

“Every day.” Faye starts to say something else, but smiles instead and then tells me, “Good luck at the game Friday night.”

“Thanks, but I won’t be playing quarterback.”

“Well, I’m sure you will soon,” she says, stepping off the porch and onto the cobblestone road. “The recipe’s from your mother, by the way. She’s the best cook I know.”

WEEKEND EDITION

Mighty Mites Win Third Straight

The undefeated Hatley Muckers, now nicknamed the Mighty Mites, are racking up points downing teams twice their size. But last night, minus the watchful eye of quarterback Felix O’Sullivan, their winning ways looked in doubt.

Cruz Villanueva, speedy wingback, pulled the game out of the fire for Hatley by running a late punt back 83 yards for a touchdown as the Muckers defeated the Coldbrook Roadrunners, 12–7.

Two unlucky breaks in the game kept the pesky Mucker 11 from chalking up a more impressive score. Early in the first quarter, Lupe Diaz, touchdown bound, fumbled the ball away just short of the end zone.

The second was a Hatley touchdown called back when Villanueva illegally pushed
away his interference. Later, Martin Quesada, subbing in for O’Sullivan at the quarterback position, plunged over from the three to hit pay dirt as Tony Casillas held the line. Muckers Coach Ben Hansen says O’Sullivan will be back to lead his team against Cottonville in a week’s time.

SOCIAL NEWS & ARRESTS

—Leroy Piggett
was charged with obstructing Hatley traffic on Upper Main Wednesday evening. According to the citation, Piggett obstructed the road by sleeping on it. Fine notice of 25 dollars was pinned to Piggett’s flannel shirt.

—Back to complete the visit interrupted by a call to Korea in July, S. Sgt.
Buddy Ritz
promptly asked Bernadette Cushman to marry him. They were wed the next day, before Staff Sergeant Ritz returned to duty.

—Lee Fong
was called in for questioning by Sheriff Doddy on two counts. The first was for complaints that food served in his restaurant had been scavenged from the back of Peila’s Grocer, which Fong hotly denied. The second was about registering as a member of the Communist party under the anti-subversive bill. Fong says he is not a Communist, nor has he contacted relatives in China since that country turned Communist last year.

Allies Land Behind Red Lines at Inchon. Take Offensive for First Time, p.3
.

I DON
’
T KNOW WHAT TO
do without Rabbit. He’s always been here beside me at the fiesta for the Mexican Independence Day parade. It’s our only chance to laugh at Cruz and get away with it, watching him march by us in the band, since he doesn’t know how to play. And all Cruz can do about the ribbing is blast out more sour notes to the Mexican anthem, on the horn every Villanueva’s blown into since the first Mexican Independence Day 140 years ago. So I sit on the cement wall across from Penney’s to wait out the half hour until the parade starts, watching Tony singing on the Mexican Legion float.

Tony’s standing next to his father, who’s commander of the post—which means Mr. Casillas gets to dress up as Father Hidalgo himself. (He’s the Mexican priest who planned the whole revolt against the Spaniards in the first place.) He’ll shout
“¡Viva Mexico!”
in the Square a little while from now and ring a bell that’ll start up the mariachis, which used
to be my favorite part until this year, with Angie being in the pageant and all.