Spinning Dixie (7 page)

I'm in English class and I'm not paying attention. Carvin' Marvin is standing outside the school with a stiletto in his pocket, a Ruger revolver in his shoulder holster, and a Beretta strapped to his ankle. I usually love English, and Mr. Hicks is the greatest teacher of all time.

I am trying to extract some reason for this Claudine disease. It doesn't make sense to me why all I can do is think about her. The science that explains it eludes me, but I've never been good at science. I've lost weight and Deedee's beside herself.

I spent three, four hours with the girl and have been walking into things for weeks. Had she said something profound? Not really. She hadn't even been that nice. When we read
The Inferno
in class earlier in the year, I remember Mr. Hicks telling us that Dante had only seen Beatrice once, when she was ten years old. And look how he became consumed by it. It made no sense, but that was precisely the point.

My operating theory was that I must have had a chemical reaction to Claudine. I began to remember a passage from a book I read for extra credit,
Lolita.
The child-molesting professor refers to his obsession as the “hidden tumor of an unspeakable passion.” We have these biological forces colliding with the mental, moral part. That I know better means nothing.

Eventually, I made a simple chart of Claudine's pluses and minuses:

No wonder I can't function. Everything cancels everything else out. I cannot pay attention despite every trick, like trying not to blink. I just want to escape from New Jersey. I have developed a bond with our hostages in Iran.

On the days when I worked at the track, Carvin' Marvin drove me there and lingered while I did my work. The moment I entered the stables, Swig was standing there. He held up the check Claudine had mailed him. “Looks a little light, Jonah.”

“It is a little light.”

“You know you owe it, right?”

“Of course.”

“And you know you're on your own getting that horse down there.”

“I know.”

“Mickey doesn't know, does he?”

“No, Swig. No, he doesn't…. Look, you said something about training the horse to impress the Polks. I can do that. That would have cost you something, right?”

“Not eighteen hundred.”

“How much?”

“Maybe eight hundred. Tops.”

“Can I shave off eight hundred?”

“Do you know how much time it takes to train an animal like that?”

“I got myself into it, right?”

Swig fell into his cheap orange swivel chair. “Jonah, you've been a real good worker here, but you're pretty dumb for a smart guy. Yeah, I'll shave off eight hundred if you train the horse, but you owe a grand, cash. And if Mickey asks me—”

“He won't.”

“Fine, you train the horse, you owe a grand cash by midsummer, and you're getting the horse to Tennessee however you can. It's your problem.”

 

In the ensuing weeks, I took special care of Shpilkes. I cleaned the dirt out of her shoes every day I worked, even though it was unnecessary. I worked Shpilkes out in the ring, but not too hard. Trots and canters mostly.

I wrote to Claudine every couple of days and called the Golden Prospect every day to see if she had written to me. The people in the front office were entertained by my desperation. It was not lost on me that part of the reason for their entertainment was that Mickey never got letters. Never. In fact, he always tilted his head quizzically whenever I got mail. “Why the hell does everybody have to hand things off with a stamp from the government?” he wondered. “Talk about a racket.”

Claudine sent one letter for every three of mine. She didn't say much in her letters, focusing on her daily activities as opposed to what she was thinking. The best thing about her letters was their smell. The paper had the same springtime scent as her hair had when I kissed her.

I called Claudine once a week. She never called back, but I didn't expect her to. For some reason, it was easier to call a girl who was far away than one who was close by.

 

One Saturday morning, I returned from Masada to the Golden Prospect with Mickey, Deedee, and a few guards. I looked for my favorite Dartmouth sweatshirt, but couldn't find it.

An argument with the building's maintenance man ensued because the air-conditioning system in Mickey's apartment had never been shut off while we were at Masada and the controls were frozen so that cold air was coming out at full blast.

I threw on a tank top and went for a run on the beach, attempting in vain to retrace where Claudine and I had walked. A local cop named Duffy paralleled my run in a patrol car along the Boardwalk. I ran about three miles to the south through Ventnor (imagining the theme to
Rocky
) and turned around, the cop car following me. As I neared the Golden Prospect, I spotted a strange, dark sack on the lifeguard stand. I stopped running and walked toward it. Duffy ran up behind me on the beach.

As I drew closer, I felt sick. There was a tugging somewhere down low. I felt hollow the way I had when my mother told me that she was sick. Everyone had tried to make me feel better, but I knew she would not be okay. I was smart that way.

My Dartmouth sweatshirt had been smeared with blood and nailed to the lifeguard stand. Pajamas crept into my mind.

“Jonah, get away!” Duffy yelled.

I could not back off. I froze about three feet from the stand.

Duffy radioed his precinct. As soon as another car pulled onto the Boardwalk, Duffy walked me up to the hotel.

“What?” Mickey yelled the minute he saw us in the apartment. He was wearing Deedee's mink stole and fluffy bunny rabbit slippers, shivering, and holding a suitcase. The air conditioner was still blasting.
This
was who the FBI had been hunting for fifty years?

Duffy told Mickey what we found as I walked into my frigid bedroom and fell face forward onto my bed.

There was shouting in the living room. Deedee was going after Mickey big-time. Within minutes, she came into my room and knelt by my bed. She was wearing short pants and a T-shirt that read “Foxy” in giant, shiny letters.

“Listen to me, sweetheart. We've got to get you out of here. I've told your grandfather a few things. I told him that we're getting you out of Jersey no matter what it takes. He said he can deal with the Ventnor schools—Mr. Connections, your grandfather. You can stop with that job, too. And I told him that I'm gonna personally kill whoever did this.”

Looking at her tiny, made-up face, her hair multiplying her mien of rage, I began to laugh.

“What?” she scowled. “You don't think I'd do it?”

“I do. You know, I really do. You're sexy when you're murderous.”

“Listen to you talking to your grandmother that way, you
bondit!
”

“I know where I want to go.”

“
Ach,
enough already with that Ava Gardner!” she announced skyward. “This isn't love you've got, it's malaria. Sucking the life out of you with this obsession! Did you work off all that money at the track?” Seeing Deedee's stricken face, it occurred to me that I might have leverage.

“Eight hundred of it. I still owe a thousand, so I can't just quit work. Anyway, how can you make predictions about how things with Claudine will turn out?”

“I'm not making predictions, I'm making
odds
. You forget who I've been married to for fifty years.”

“What, do you think I'm going to pull a Jimmy Hoffa on you and vanish?”

Deedee cupped her hand to her mouth and whispered, “Boy, was your grandfather pissed at
him
.”

I thought any further engagement on the Hoffa matter was unwise, so I just said, “I want to go to Rattle & Snap.”

“I don't want to argue right now,” Deedee said, cupping my face. “But it's fine with me. Better you learn it now than when you have little ones.”

Zeus answered the telephone. “Rattle & Snap,” he thundered.

My heart was pounding. It felt as if it were echoing off the walls in our Masada cabin. I began to stammer. Claudine's grandfather.

“Yes, I, uh, was—”

“Is this about the stable job, boy?”

Stable job?

“Uh, yeah,” I deepened my voice to sound more…stable-ish.

“Minimum wage, room and board on the plantation.”

“That sounds good.”

“Where are you from, boy?”

“Just north.”

“Nashville?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Uh-huh. What's your name?”

“J-John,” I said thinking of the closest thing to Jonah. That way I could write the whole thing off as a misunderstanding if I got nailed.

“When can you start, John?”

“Mid-June.” School was out by then.

“Not soon enough. How's after Memorial Day?”

“Memorial Day?”

“Yes, boy.”

“Okay, I guess.”

“We'll be tickled to have you, John.”

 

“Tickled?”
Deedee overheard, walking into the cabin. “
Who
anymore says tickled?”

I felt a rush of heat surge through my backbone.

“So what did they say?” Deedee asked.

“The grandfather hired me.”

“As what? A ceramic plant?”

“Stable boy.”

“I'll have to make arrangements with the school, stable boy,” Mickey said. “And we'll have to brush you up on what goes on down in the South,” he added, worried. “It's different from Jersey.”

“I know. I'll do fine. I'll be happy there.”

“Listen to Jonah
Godol,
” Deedee said, world-weary.

Me, perplexed:
“What?”

“Jonah the Grand. You'll change the South…. Oh, it's our fault,” she cried. “We pounded that in your head so you'd overcome losing parents so young.”

 

My next phone call, a bit later.

“Raddlinsnap.”

“Claudine?”

“Jonah?”

“Yes.”

“I made arrangements to have the horse delivered right after Memorial Day.”

“I'm so excited.”

“You promise I can visit her someday?”

“A-course.”

 

Mickey was outside on the Masada gazebo with Irv the Curve. Two imported gunmen paced nearby. Deedee, standing in the cabin's kitchen, motioned me over conspiratorially.

“Get the matzoh,” she ordered in a loud whisper.

I reached for the box and handed it to her. She swatted me away. “Open it.”

“Open the matzoh?”

“No, open the Olympic Games. Of course, open the matzoh!”

Cash. A grand. Swig's grand.

“Oh, look, you found the
afikoman,
” Deedee said, referring to the piece of matzoh that grown-ups hid on Passover. The kid who found it got money.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

She threw up her arms: “It's a mystery,” she said, turning away from me. “Now, if your grandfather asks what I got you for graduation—he will suspect something—don't tell him about the cash. Tell him I got you this.” She handed me a small box with some kind of radio contraption illustrated.

“It's a Sony Walking Man or something. It's a radio that you can listen to yourself and not bother anybody else with the noise. It takes batteries but I don't know what kind. I'm not good with all the scientific things.”

 

Mickey called me up to the gazebo. He waved Irv the Curve and the muscle away. I carried my new Sony Walkman, having removed it from its box. “New York Groove” by Ace Frehley was playing.

Mickey gave my face a light, affectionate smack. “What's that nonsense?”

“A gift from Deedee. A new kind of radio.”

“How the hell can you hear anything on the outside?”

“You can't. That's the point,” I said.

“Give me that,” Mickey ordered.

“No!…Why?”

“It's not safe. You can't hear footsteps, people coming.”

I contemplated this. I liked the radio, but if I resisted Mickey, he might make a scene with Deedee. If he made a scene with Deedee, there was a chance that the money she gave me for the horse would come up. If that happened, my whole trip to Tennessee would be in jeopardy. Don't be greedy, Jonah. I handed Mickey the Walkman.

“Look, kid, you have an advantage over boys your age,” Mickey said.

“What's my advantage?” I asked skeptically.

“You have seen in your young life that God created things larger than yourself. But it's good to see that other forces, other people, have useful skills, powers that can be turned against you. You will go down to see this girl. You are smart and you are handsome, but there may be men down there smarter and handsomer.”

“I know.”

“You
think
you know. It doesn't get better. This fall, you'll go to college. They've got Rockefellers there, you know?”

“I know.”

“You'll go up against these fellows who have better weapons to compete—not just for grades, but for position, for girls, for money.”

“You make it sound like I'm some kind of loser.”

“The opposite. You are a winner. You've got weapons. Who knows what waits for you in the South? Who knows what will happen with this war around here? For these unknowns, there's two weapons. The first weapon is knowing what your skills are
not
. You're scrappy, but God didn't put you on this earth to beat people up. There are other people to do that.” He gestured somewhere vague, as if to say,
Not us
. “I don't have a genius with my fists. I found partners like your Uncle Blue. You should have seen him move in his day. And he's as smart as he is tough, though he likes to play the dumb guinea. I also am not, you know, all fancy with the words, with expression. That's what your Uncle Irv can do better.”

“The second weapon, Pop?”

Mickey pointed to a small, heavy metal box on the picnic table.

“What's this?”

“A loan. Open it.”

Inside was a revolver.

“Smith & Wesson. Thirty-eight. Two-inch barrel. Stainless steel. Takes six bullets. I've had it since Prohibition.”

“Is this for me?”

“No, it's for Leo Frank.”

Ah. The Jewish pencil factory supervisor lynched in Georgia for the murder of a thirteen-year-old girl, Mary Phagan. 1915. On his deathbed, a witness confessed to seeing a man other than Frank carrying Phagan's body from the crime scene.

Mickey continued. “You're going South in a few days. Before you go, you're gonna get used to this. Just in case.”

I had rehearsed this handoff over and over in my head a hundred times. I had even snuck the gun out into the Pine Barrens to practice firing it. Still, I had envisioned I would be older when this ritual occurred.

“Do you think I'll be a good shot, Pop?”

Mickey frowned. “In this business, you don't need to be good. You need to be willing.”