a chapter from my boyhood autobiography ONLY: Growing Up Alone (available on Amazon for Kindles and other readers)
UNCLE FRED AND THE DEATH OF DANNY FINK
I think
I’ve mentioned the name of Danny Fink a couple times already and you're
probably saying to yourself "Who's this Danny Fink? I mean, is he
important, or am I ever going to meet him?" so I can tell you that no, he isn't
important‑‑but yeah, you're going to meet him, I guess‑‑but he did have a
pretty big effect on me when I was growing up, especially since I didn't have a
big brother or anybody to help me with him, but I did have Uncle Fred. Anyway, Danny Fink‑‑DANNY FINK‑‑was, well, he
was a pain in the ass, and a real puke, and the toughest kid in the world, or
at least, worst than the biggest goblin in my bedroom. And he came back into my life in seventh
grade, as if Miss Hoffman wasn't enough to keep me up nights.
That year, down in Whitney Junior High,
every seventh‑grader had study hall, even if we had nothing to study. Oh, we had plenty of stuff to do at home, but
studying in the middle of an auditorium that smelled like an Esso gas station
wasn't my idea of a good place to add to my education, and it wasn't very easy
to study, even if you had something to do, because these dumpy‑looking
teachers, who you never saw before or after study hall (honest, I don't know
where they came from or who'd got them to proctor study hall) took at least the
first half of the period calling roll and taking attendance, so you never
really could concentrate, especially if you had one of those dumb math
problems.
You know, like "If a man from New
York gets on a plane for Chicago going 400 miles per hour, with a 20 mile‑per‑hour
tailwind, and you are in Chicago, and get on a plane for New York, with a speed
of 350 miles per hour, with no tailwind, and if the distance between the two
cities is 650 miles, who will land first?"
First of
all, I never cared; honest, I mean if I really wanted to know that, I would've
gotten out of my seat‑‑once the "seat belts" sign went off‑‑and I
would've gone up to the cockpit (why do they call it that?) and I would've
asked the captain, or at least the navigator, "When are we getting into
New York?" In fact, I wrote that
for an answer one time, but my math teacher--the woman who looked like Robert
Mitchum--didn't think it was acceptable (she thought I was being a wiseguy) so
I got an F on that particular test, if you're wondering.
Secondly,
it never sounded right to me when those questions said "...a plane for Chicago going 400 miles an
hour." I mean, didn't that mean that Chicago
was going 400 miles per hour? That's
what the question said; it didn't say "...a plane going 400 miles
per hour, heading for Chicago..." Of course, my math teachers never really
cared about the grammar in their stupid math books, but still, it never sounded
right to me. I think if I ever become a
teacher, I'd better stick to English or something like that, because math never
really was my strong subject‑‑it still isn't‑‑and I never really had any respect
for math teachers because they didn't care whether they used English correctly
or not.
Anyway, on
a really windy, cold, and rainy Wednesday, I was sitting in study hall, where I
wasn't studying (and it wasn't a hall), when about five or ten minutes into the
period, the back door of the auditorium banged open, like a clap of thunder‑‑well,
not really, because the sound was more like "thuddonnnnng!"‑‑but
anyway, of course, everybody turned and looked, and through the open doorway
came this shape, walking really slow.
I could
tell it was a guy, and I could also tell that he wanted to make some kind of
great, big‑deal kind of entrance, a real statement, you know, and as he got
closer, I realized who it was, and I got that Drano‑in‑the guts feeling again,
and I almost died; actually, I think I really did want to die, because
as the shadow turned into a real person, I realized who it was, and I was sure
he'd come for me. Again.
Oh, God, Danny
Fink; it was Danny Fink all right, dressed in his official leather
greaseball jacket (with the fifteen million zippers and the collar turned up)
over a plain white T‑shirt and worn black pants and engineer boots; his greased
Brylcreem hair hung down like a big brown wave over his forehead and his
pinched‑together‑looking rat-face.
His eyes‑‑I'll
always remember his beady dark eyes‑‑those eyes swept back and forth across the
auditorium like a snake's that's looking for a mouse to eat for a snack. And he came sauntering down the aisle closest
to my side of the auditorium, and his boots, with the metal taps on the bottom,
made a hollow "tap‑tap‑scrape‑tap" as the sounds echoed around the
big room.
I just kind
of tried to shrink down in my seat and squeeze my head down inside the collar
of my cowboy shirt when he got close; he passed my row without seeing me, and
walked up to the man teacher who had been watching Danny make his lazy way down
to the front of the study hall.
Since they
stuck us in alphabetical order (which took an entire period on the first day of
school, I recall), I could hear the whole conversation between Danny and the
teacher.
"Yes,
young man, what are you doing here?"
"Goin'
to school," came Danny's wiseguy answer.
"Are
you being a smart‑aleck, son?" the teacher snapped.
"I
ain't your son! Here's my admit slip and my schedule. Where you want me to
sit?" Danny spat back, looking straight at the teacher until the teacher
lost the staring contest and snatched the slips from Danny Fink's hand.
"Uh, just
find a seat in the back and no talking.
This is a study hall, so starting tomorrow, bring something to work on
in here or you'll find yourself in trouble with me, understand?" the
teacher said, although he didn't sound as tough as he was trying to sound.
Danny just
stood there, looking at the man, with this sort of smirk on his pimply face; it
was then that I noticed that Danny Fink already had a beard; well, I don't mean
a beard, but just a bunch of black stubby nubs sticking out all over his
face and I knew he must've had to shave at least once or twice a week, although
it didn't look like he had recently.
Maybe he was afraid of tearing or slicing open his pimples, because he
had some pretty good big, purple ones down toward his chin and under his chin,
on his neck, you know.
"Did
you hear me, young man?" the teacher repeated, aware that everyone in the
auditorium had been listening and was still watching the whole thing.
"Yeah,
I heard you."
"Well,
go take a seat and be quiet or you'll get yourself detention."
"Gee,
I'm really scared!" Danny snapped over his right shoulder as he started
back up my aisle.
"What
did you say? Hey, you, what did you say?" the teacher called out, but
Danny just ignored him with this curved‑lip expression on his puss and then, as
I looked up from under my lower eyebrows and right into Danny Fink's eyes, I
realized that he was looking right at me through the kids in the two rows in
front of me, and when he got even with my row, he just turned that lizardy neck
and head toward me and smiled, but it wasn't a nice‑guy smile, it was kind of
like the smile the Nazis in the movies always had when they were about to
torture some prisoner. And the Drano
started working down in my underwear zone again.
Maybe I
ought to tell you why I was sweating it so much.
You see,
back in fifth grade‑‑not in fifth grade but the year I had fifth grade‑‑I
was out on the school ballfield one Saturday, playing "three flies you're
up" with some other guys, and I was out in the field, trying to be the
first to get three so I could whack some good ones out to show everyone that I
was a pretty good slugger, even if I was small, and Dougie hit a pretty high
shot out toward me.
"Yours, Eddie!" cried Bobby, and I took off, racing toward my
right and knowing that if I was going to catch it, I was really going to have
to dig and use all the speed my old Sears sneakers had left in them. The
baseball and I were just coming into line with each other when the sky
disappeared, the ground came up fast and my right hand, with the glove on it
(I'm a lefty) and my face hit grass and dirt at the same time.
I don't remember the exact order of it
all, but I remember that this sharp pain shot up from my right wrist and my
nose had that really lousy feeling of being punched in it and there was this
kind of throbbing feeling in my right ankle, and then I realized that I hadn't
tripped and I hadn't hit a hole in the outfield—somebody had tripped me! That's where the throb in my ankle came from.
"Hey,
you jerk, whadja do that for!?" I yelled as I hopped back to my feet and
came face‑to‑face with some kid I'd never seen before. I mean, I'd thought one
of the other guys in the outfield had done it, but there was this other kid, at
least a foot taller than me, standing there, just laughing. Then he kicked my glove about ten feet
through the air.
By this
time, most of the other guys had trotted over.
"Cut
it out, you jerk, leave my glove alone!" I shouted, and not too
intelligently (I never could keep my mouth shut‑‑if there was one kid you could
hear a mile away when we were playing, it was me; just ask my parents; they
were always telling me that!)
"You
wanna do somethin' about it?" the guy said, balling up his hands into
fists and giving me this "I'm gonna kick your ass" look.
"Hey,
leave 'im alone," I heard Bobby say behind me as I walked over to pick up
my Sears bargain mitt and knocked the dust off it.
"You
wanna do somethin' about it, huh?" the kid said again, like a broken
record.
"Why'n’t you just get off the field
and there won't be any trouble," Bobby said; he and this guy were just
about the same size, but Bobby had some pretty good‑looking muscles in his arms
already because he was lifting weights at home, and I could tell this other guy
liked tripping guys my size a lot more than Bobby‑sized ones, so he just gave
Bobby this stare and said,
"This
ain't your field, you don't own it. I
can walk on it if I want to."
"Well,
why don't you go walk on some other part of it?" someone yelled, and then
I realized that it had come out of my big mouth.
Well, this
guy, who I'm sure you realize by now was Danny Fink, just turned to look at me
as if I was some kind of rodent, and said,
"You
got a big mouth, little boy, does your daddy know you're out alone?" he
said, saying it like he was talking to a baby or something.
"Do
you even know who your father is?" came back out of that same big
mouth.
Well, Danny
Fink just kind of looked like he'd been hit by lightning or something, because
first his mouth dropped open, and then his face got all red‑like, and then he
reached into one of his leather jacket pockets and whipped out this knife.
It was a long
skinny knife, almost like a straight razor, with red plastic handles and a
silver button on one side, and he started waving it in my face and then he
snarled, "You can't talk to me like that! I've killed for less than
that!"
Then the
brown stuff (you know) really hit the fan, because, even with that knife‑‑and
I knew it was a "switchblade" although I'd never seen one before,
except in Rebel Without a Cause‑‑ waving in my face and me feeling like
I had to go to the bathroom, I recognized that stupid line about “killing for
less that that” from an old George Raft or James Cagney movie and I just
exploded and started laughing.
That didn't
make things any better, because Danny Fink just got madder; then he got closer,
and he yelled, right in my face, "You wanna say that again before I cut
your heart out and eat it?" and that got the rest of the guys laughing
because even though he looked pretty mad and pretty mean, especially with the
leather jacket and a knife in his hand, I don't think any of us felt that
scared, especially since none of us believed he had done or could do any of
that stuff that he was talking about.
And all of
us laughing and sort of holding our hands over our mouths and looking at each
other got him really steamed, so he just held that hand out with the knife in
it and his thumb with a dirty fingernail kind of snaked out from the rest of
his hand and pushed that silver‑looking button on the handle of the knife.
I guess
since that switchblade was right there in my face, that's why I can remember
everything that happened next. Almost in slow motion, from between those two
red plastic handles, a thin silvery blade swung out toward my eyes, and just as
the blade was swinging into place, in line with the rest of the knife, I heard
this "twinnng‑snapp!" and the next thing I knew, the blade had gone
right past where it was supposed to stop and then it was just hanging down,
swinging back and forth a little, sort of like a pendulum, you know?
I looked up
at Danny Fink and he had this dumb look on his face, like he was saying
"What the hell? Duh? Huh?" in a cartoon bubble over his head, and
looking down at the knife in his hand, that looked like it had died, and I
guess it had, or at least, whatever spring or piece of metal or something that
made the knife work had broken. That
must've been where the "twinnng‑snapp" had come from. I mean, that
switchblade really looked stupid, like a dead "L" in his hand, with
the blade still swinging a little, like it was slowly dying, along with the
rest of the knife.
Well, I did
something else that was really stupid: I laughed some more. I had to laugh, we
all did! I mean, we'd stopped laughing
all right, for about ten seconds maybe, when he'd pushed that knife's button, but
we were all back at it. Then he reached
out and grabbed some of my hair and started to yank me closer to him, but I
swung my Sears mitt at him and it hit him on the side of his face and he let
go, long enough for me to run, anyway.
We all ran,
straight for our bikes and when I risked a look back after I'd hopped on my
bike, Danny Fink was running toward us, stopping every five or ten steps to
reach down and grab a rock and throw it at us, but he threw really lousy,
almost like a girl; I wondered if he'd ever thrown rocks at cars and windows
like other delinquents. We just yelled
stuff at him and he cursed at us, you know, stuff about our mothers which we
all knew wasn't true, and he kept throwing rocks until we were over the hill
and he couldn't see us anymore.
"Let's
go to The Oasis and get a soda or A‑creams!" I remember Bobby yelling over
the wind in my ears from pedaling fast, but I didn't have any money and I
didn't know where Danny Fink was going to go next, and it had been me that he'd
tried to have all his fun with, so I yelled back,
"I
don't have any money! Let's just get
outta here, Bob."
"Yeah," Dougie shouted, "No money, either, and I'm
already in enough trouble 'cause we left my brother Billy's baseball back there
in the outfield."
Bobby, who'd been in the lead, pulled his
bike over to the curb and poked around in his pocket and counted his dough and
said, "Look, I'll buy ya all a nickel Coke and then we'll sneak back along
Maywood Road and we'll go get Dougie's brother's ball, okay?" "And anyway," he added, "we
got a bat if that kid tries anything, okay?"
Well, I
didn't feel too safe about hanging around or going back there, either, but my
mouth was really dry and you just don't turn down free Cokes every day, so
Dougie and me and the couple other guys with us just kind of nodded and mumbled
"Yeah" and we went to get our Cokes.
As we were
spinning around on the stools in front of the soda fountain and slurping our
Cokes through straws whose wrappers we had launched neatly into the air when
Mr. Pappas wasn't looking, I remember Dougie asking if anyone knew who the kid
with the knife was.
"That's Danny Fink," said Mike, one of the other guys who
lived on the other side of the school and who wasn’t in my class. "He
lives on my street. He goes to Holy
Immaculate now."
"Whaddaya mean, now?" I asked. "He wasn't ever at
our school, was he?"
"Naah,
I don't think so; he used to go to Our Mother of the Divine Sacred Heart, but
he got thrown out for somethin'. We
heard he got caught stealin' or cheatin' or cursin'‑‑maybe all three, I don't
know. You just better watch out for
him. He kicked all the spokes outta my
brother's bike last summer and then threw it in the street in front of a Good Humor
truck. Boy, was my old man mad when he got home and heard about it!"
"What
happened?" someone asked.
"Well,
my dad went over to the Finks' house and had a talk with Mr. Fink, who's not a
bad guy, really, but he's a little skinny guy and Danny's already bigger than
his old man, so he just does what he wants to, I think, that's why they keep
sending him to Catholic school, I guess hoping those nuns'll fix him, but it
ain't working, at least it don't look that way," Mike explained.
"Yeah,
but what happened about your brother's bike?" Bobby still wanted to know.
"Oh,
Mr. Fink told my dad to have it fixed and he'd pay for it."
"Did
he?" I asked.
"Yeah,
it cost a lot, too, 'cause the whole frame had gotten bent by the ice‑cream
truck and it needed two new wheels, but old man Fink paid my father."
"Whadd'he do to Danny?" Dougie wanted to know.
"Who?" Mike asked.
"His
father. Whaddid Mr. Fink do to
Danny?"
"Nothin' 'sfar as I know. ‘Cause Danny was out, hittin' other kids
and pushin' littler kids around all summer long, so you'd better keep your
mouth shut around him, Eddie," he said, turning to look at me,"'cause
I heard my father say that Danny was gonna end up in reform school or prison
some day, and I believe it. I mean, you
saw that knife, didn't you?"
"Some
knife!" my mouth blurted out. (I mean, don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying
to be tough or anything, it was just that I still had the picture of that dead
knife in my head yet.)
"Shut
up, Eddie," Bobby said, "he'd'a kicked the crap outta you if we
hadn't all been there. Anyway, if he
could get hold of a knife like that, he could probably get a hold of a zip gun
or a real gun next."
Well, that
thought shut me up, really tight, because I could pretty easily picture Danny
Fink whipping out a gun and drilling me, and that didn't seem so funny, so I
just kept my big mouth shut and went back to finishing Bobby's free nickel
Coke. (If you're wondering, yeah, I said "thank you" to Bobby, just
like my grandmothers taught me to.)
Well, we
sneaked back along the street behind the school and there wasn't any sign of
Danny Fink, so Bobby rode out on the outfield grass and found Dougie's
brother's baseball and then we all just kind of split up and went home.
That was
the first time I ever saw Danny Fink. I
saw him a couple times after that, along the street or over by The Oasis, but
I'd always ride my bike on the other side of the street or go somewhere else
until I knew Danny Fink wasn't there anymore.
Oh, he always saw me, and he'd shoot his middle finger up in the air at
me and stuff like that, or yell what he was going to do to me if he caught me,
but I'd just stay out of range and well, that's all, really. Until that day in seventh-grade study hall.
For a
couple of weeks after the switchblade incident, I didn't see Danny Fink; we'd
heard he'd gotten kicked out of another Catholic school and Mike'd heard in his
neighborhood that no other school would take him and that he'd gotten caught
shoplifting in Rumson's Sporting Goods Store, trying to swipe a hunting knife
(oh, great!) and was on some kind of juvenile parole or probation, something
like that.
Well, one
day in junior high, I was eating lunch with Dick and Mike and some other school
friends, and I was telling some pretty good jokes, I guess, because everyone
was laughing really hard, when I heard, "You think you're real funny,
don't you? How's your mother? She get outta jail for being a prostitute
yet?"
I looked up, but I'd known who it was, and
it was. And he was just standing there, with that beardy‑pimply face, smiling
at me. Well, I could feel Dick's and Mike's eyes on me and I knew I had to say
something; otherwise, they'd think I was scared of him (which I was), so I just
sorta gulped, I remember, and then said, "You shut up about my
mother! At least I got one."
"Oh,
you can say stuff about mine, but I can't say nothin' about yours, huh?"
he snarled, kind of. I knew he really probably didn't even care about his
mother, from what Mike had said about the way he talked back to his father; I
knew he was just trying to push me.
"You
started it," was all I could think of saying back, so I did.
"You
wanna finish it?" he asked, and being stupid, I didn't realize what he'd
meant; I mean, I thought he was asking if I wanted to end the conversation, so
I said, "Yeah!"
Well, he
just flashed that smirky smile again, like he'd just caught his mouse, and
said, "Good! See you behind Caulfield Elementary today at four, and you
better be there, or I'll come find you this time!" and then he walked
away, with that "tap‑tap‑scrape" of him and his motorcycle boots.
Then I
realized what he'd meant and what I had waiting for me at four o'clock back
behind old Caulfield Elementary School and I've already told you about what a
great boxer or fighter I'm not, but there wasn't much I could do, because Mike
and Dick had heard the whole thing and about all there was left for me to do
was either meet him and get beat up or be called a "chicken" by the
whole world. I just felt like going to
the bathroom, so I did, but nothing but gas came out.
While I
was sitting there, though, I had lots of pictures of blood and guts coming out
of me by about 4:05 that afternoon.
This part
of the story is kind of embarrassing and painful to remember, much less write
about; just take my word for it that I showed up (without my bike, because I
still remember the story Mike had told about Danny Fink and Mike's brother's
bike) and Danny pushed me and punched me and kicked me when I was rolling
around on the ground (which they never did in the movies; I mean, even the bad
guys never did that‑‑they just waited for the other guy to get up before they
tried to knock him down again) and then he said some more stuff about my
mother, which got me mad and I charged him and he tripped me and then kneeled
on me and hit and kicked me a few more times…I don’t remember how many.
Anyway, I said I don't want to get too
detailed about this; I got a bloody nose and a cut lip and some sore ribs and
nice big scrapes on both elbows, and went limping home, crying and sniffling
because it was bad enough that Danny had beat me up, but Dick had been there
and had seen it all. Oh, he walked me
home to Presto, even though it was out of his way, and kept telling how I'd put
up a good fight and how no one could call me "chicken," which
might've made Dick feel better, but it didn't help me much. It just hurt and it was embarrassing, even
though nobody would've bet money on me winning.
But I guess
the worst part was getting home, because Uncle Fred was there that day.
You see,
Uncle Fred is my father's older brother, and he's really huge, I mean, he's
about 6'6" and must've weighed about 250 pounds back then. He's a truck driver and owns his own
business, even though he'd never gotten past eighth grade. And he's a bachelor, so he always has lots of
money and girlfriends. When I was a
little guy, maybe three or four or five, he used to pay me a quarter to scrub
his great big, freckled back when he took a bath, and later, when I was maybe
ten or eleven, I guess, when he'd come to visit, he'd give me a buck or two for
washing his car, which he never bothered to wash. I remember my father always giving him a hard
time about that, because Uncle Fred always had really good cars, like
Oldsmobiles and big Chryslers (we had Chevys or a couple of DeSoto models), and
then he'd get on Uncle Fred about paying me.
"What're you giving him money for?
He doesn't need that much money and anyway, you're usin' my water, so
you oughta be payin' me!" my father would say, even though it was
my old man who was always yelling at Uncle Fred about how he never washed his
cars or waxed them and how he had better cars than my father but didn't take
care of them and all, but Uncle Fred would just kind of ignore him and pay me anyway; one time, he
just told my old man to “shut the hell up!”
I really liked that. Of course, I'd have to give the money to my father
or mother, "for safe keeping," and if I was really good, they might
give me some of it to buy candy or a soda with it, sometimes.
Anyway, if
my old man was around, he'd always slip me a dollar or sometimes five and once
even a ten‑dollar bill, and he'd always say "Don't tell your old man"
or "Don't tell anybody" although I never really understood why it was
bad for him to give me money.
Uncle Fred
has always been like a hero to me, maybe because he's so big; three of my
fingers were like one of his; he could put my whole fist inside of his and you
wouldn't even see any part of my hand at all.
I don't think my mother liked him much, because she was always saying
stuff like "If you don't straighten up your room, you're going to turn out
just like your uncle" or "If you don't like to study, you can wind up
like Uncle Fred," which didn't sound so bad to me.
Once, when
she'd said, "You're going to turn out like your uncle!" I'd said,
"That's good," which got me a good, hard slap across the face--the
only time my mother's ever really smacked me--so I didn't say I wanted to be
like him anymore, but I still thought about it, you know.
Uncle
Fred's always looked like John Wayne to me, even though he doesn't sound like
him…or have much hair. Actually, he only looks like John Wayne from the
eyebrows down, because Uncle Fred lost most of his red hair by the time he was
twenty, but all the guys who know him still call him "Red." Like I said, Uncle Fred is pretty much of a
hero to me...even now.
Well, I
came limping and snuffling home alone that afternoon after Dick left, and I saw
his big box-like delivery truck parked in the street in front of our house, and
I didn't want him to see me, so I tried to sneak around the back, but he
must've seen me in his side‑view mirror, because I remember him saying,
"Hey,
nephew, don't you say hello to your old uncle anymore?"
He stepped
out of the truck, with one of his Chesterfields
hanging out of the side of his mouth, and then I guess he saw me, I mean he saw
what I looked like because of the fight, because he said,
"Jeez‑us H. Christ! What the hell
happened to you?" And he looked so
sad‑‑I'd never seen him look like that before; he always was laughing or joking‑‑that
I just started crying and burbling and he was there with his great big hands,
holding me by the shoulders, and telling me to calm down and stop crying, but I
couldn't, so he just picked me up around the waist and carried me around to the
back of the house and turned on the hose and made me wash my face, which hurt
because I hadn't realized until then that my lip was cut because the rest of me
had felt so lousy, inside and out.
"Here,
blow your nose," he'd said, handing me his handkerchief, one of those big
red‑and‑blue ones that always looked like the neckerchiefs that Gene Autry
wore. So I honked into his handkerchief
and slowly stopped huffing and puffing and then he led me back to his truck and
opened up the passenger door and just lifted me up into the cab as if I was a
tissue or something, that's how easily he did it.
"Tell
me what happened," he said, still with that sad look on his face. So I told him, and every time I started to
get embarrassed about getting beat up and started to get teary, Uncle Fred
would hold up his hand and tell me to take deep breaths, and I'd slow back down
until I finally got the whole story out.
Then I looked up.
"What'd the other guy look like?" he asked next. Well, I started to tell him what Danny Fink
looked like, like about his hair and leather jacket and all.
"No,
Eddie, what did he look like today? Did he
look like he was in a fight, or are you the only one who looks like that?"
Well,
having my uncle, my hero, say it like that made me lose it all over again, at
least for a minute, and then I just blurted out stuff about how much older and
bigger Danny Fink was than the rest of us in seventh grade and told him about
the knife thing two years before in fifth grade and so on.
"Get
outta the truck and come over here," Uncle Fred said, getting down from
his side. I went around in front of his
truck, the one that said "Fred's Express" on the doors--the truck he
drove six days a week to make the money he gave me--and went to stand next to
my giant relative. As he reached behind
his seat, I heard him say,
"If
you're gonna get in a fight with someone that big, an’ you ain’t got a chance
of winnin’, you gotta have an equalizer. Otherwise, you're gonna get the crap
beat out of you every time!"
Well, I had
no idea what he meant about an "equalizer," so I stammered,
"What's an equalizer?"
His great big freckled arm came back out
from behind the truck seat and at the end of that great big arm was one of his
great big, freckled hands, holding half of a great big Louisville Slugger,
although it didn't look so big in his hand. (For those of you who don't play
baseball or you women out there, a Louisville Slugger is just about the best
and only baseball bat to buy in the whole world, a lot better than a bat from
Sears, at least. I mean, nobody on the
Giants or Dodgers would be caught dead using a Sears bat.)
Anyway, I
just kept staring at that half‑bat, because Uncle Fred was waving it slowly in
front of my face, more or less the way Danny had waved that knife, but it
wasn't the same, because I was with Uncle Fred, you know.
The end of
the bat stopped right after the label, and in the middle of the wood was a
round circle of something gray.
"See
that gray stuff at the end?" Uncle Fred asked. "That's lead. I had a
guy drill out the end of the bat for me and then he poured hot lead in there
and let it get hard. This, Eddie,
is an equalizer."
"What
do you do with it?" I wanted to know.
"Nothing, hopefully, but when I'm
driving down in the bad part of Newark, some guys'll try to steal your truck
when you're stopped at a light, or they try to yank you outta the truck and
grab your wallet, so I keep this on the seat, just in case."
Well, I
couldn't picture my uncle ever needing to use a bat with hands and arms like he
had.
"Did
you ever really hafta use that thing, Uncle Fred?" I wondered.
"Yeah," was all he'd say. "Listen, Eddie, next time
you're gonna get in a fight you got no chance of winnin’, stay out of it or
take a bat or look for something big and hard
for an equalizer and use it if you hafta," he said. "I just
don't wanna see you comin' home lookin' like this again. And don't say anything
about this to your old man or your mother, or I'll never hear the end of it,
you hear?"
"But
Uncle Fred, Dad'd kill me if I hit someone with a bat!" I argued.
"You
wanna get beat up again, nephew?" he asked.
"No,
but‑‑"
"--Then take an equalizer or stay outta fights, but if you come
home like this again and I see you, I'm gonna kill you, and you won't
have to worry about your ol’ man. Just
don't tell them I told you to do it. Just beat the other guy up and keep your
mouth shut!"
Well, I
wasn't going to argue with Uncle Fred, and anyway, the thought of winning a
fight was better than getting killed by my uncle (or my father), so I just
stayed quiet.
"What
are you gonna tell them when they see your mouth and nose? You get in trouble
in school or anything like that?"
Well, I
explained that school had nothing to do with the fight and said that I thought
maybe I'd say I fell on my bike.
"Yeah,
do that; that way, your old man won't have to worry about his kid not being `a
good soldier' and biting the bullet." Then he really started to chuckle,
although I still don't know what was so funny to him. Maybe it had something to do with my father
and him being brothers and when they were younger or something; I don't know. I mean, I don't know because Uncle Fred never
said, plus I also don't have a brother.
Well, my
parents believed the bike accident story, and after Dad checked the bike to
make sure it hadn't been damaged ("bikes don't grow on trees," you
know), he just said "You'll live!" and that ended it, at least that
part of it.
Uncle Fred
stayed for dinner (that's why he'd shown up that afternoon) and lied and told
my mother that dinner was "wonderful" and gave me this really serious
look all during dinner, but when he left, when we were standing out by his
truck, he just shook my hand and slipped two folded dollar bills into it and
said, "Remember: take an equalizer and don't tell anybody I gave you
money. Enjoy yourself. Keep it hangin'." (I never understood that last
part..not then, anyway.)
And then he
hauled himself up into the cab, groaning something about "...learning to
cook like Ma" and then he drove off into the night, the dull red glow of
the taillights and his truck rattling on off over the hill.
Well, I
spent the two bucks eventually, mostly on vanilla A‑creams and licorice, I
guess, and forgot about the equalizer part until later that spring, when I had
that feeling, you know, the one where you think you've been someplace or said
something or done the same thing before, sometime. I forget what it's called;
it was on a vocabulary test last year, some French words is all I
remember. Anyway, you know what I'm
talking about because everybody's had that feeling. Anyway, that's when it happened, again.
A couple
weeks after Danny Fink had shown up in that study hall, I was out on that same
school ballfield, playing the same game, only I was the one hitting the ball
out to the other guys that time, and I was smacking them out pretty well and
feeling good about watching Davey and Bobby and the other guys, Dougie, too,
scampering all over the outfield. I wasn't feeling small at all, because those
flies were really sailing over their heads.
It's great
when you toss that baseball up into the air and get that bat to whistle around
your head and hit the ball just right and there's that "thock" and
you know you've nailed it just right and the ball just kind of disappears up
into the blue sky and the clouds and everything.
Anyway,
there I was, watching Davey chasing a rolling ball through the grass behind
him, and I looked a little to the left and saw the leather jacket and the
slicked‑back hair and Danny Fink; my hands got all sweaty and I could actually
feel my lip and nose start to throb, as if lips and noses had memories,
too. And he just kept coming across the
field, looking right at me, and getting that stupid grin on his hairy face
again.
I guess the
other guys saw him, too, because they started walking in toward me, Bobby
walking faster than Davey or Dougie, and then I could hear Danny Fink's voice
come across the infield.
"Uh‑oh,
here come your big brothers, I better run away before they get me."
I
remember thinking, "Yeah, well, if I
had big brothers, they'd kill you!" but I didn't say much else to
myself because I was really starting to worry about getting kicked around
again, and I knew that's what he had in mind, too.
Then I
started to figure that since he hadn't done anything to me back in fifth grade,
because there'd been too many of us, that maybe he wouldn't try anything this
time, either. Well, by the time I'd
finished doing all that figuring, there he was, standing right in front of me.
He still
needed a shave and a good acid treatment for his pimples; I noticed that he'd
picked up another habit, because there was a pack of Camels in the pocket of
his T‑shirt and he really smelled like one of my father's ashtrays. I mean, maybe it wasn't a new habit, because
guys like him, they probably had started sucking smoke out of cigarettes when
the rest of us were still sucking our thumbs, you know?
Then I was
down, on the ground, with absolutely no idea how I'd gotten there. There was Danny Fink, like a dark tree above
me; I remember the smells of the grass and dirt and leather and cigarettes, but
there was this really deep blue sky with those mashed‑potato clouds floating
along on either side of him, as if they had no idea what was happening to me,
down there on the ground.
"Leave
'im alone, Fink!" I heard Bobby, just as if I was reliving part of my
life.
"This
is just between him and me; he said dirty stuff about my mother at school
yesterday," he lied, "and I'm gonna take care of him."
"You're a stinkin' liar!" I yelled as I got back up to my
feet, backing up at the same time, "I didn't say anything about you or
anybody and you know it!"
"Did I
hear you callin' me a liar?" (Was he deaf?)
"Just
leave me alone, 'cause you know I didn't say anything about you. Go pick on somebody your own size!" I
yelled some more.
"Yeah," I heard Davey say, "why don't you leave him
alone?"
"You
wanna fight, big shot?" Danny said, looking at Davey.
Davey didn't say anything after that, not
that I blame him, because he was just about the worst fighter of us all, other
than me.
Meanwhile,
just as much as I was backing away from him, Danny was still coming toward me.
"Come
on, chicken, here chick-chick-chick, just say you're sorry about what you said
about my mother and maybe I won't kick the shit outta you. Just get down on your knees and say you're
sorry."
I actually
thought about doing that for about a second or two, and then I remembered what
Uncle Fred had said about killing me if I let Danny Fink do it to me again, and
believe me, I believed my uncle Fred, I really did, so I just opened my big
mouth all over again.
"I'm
not getting on my knees for you, you pimple‑faced puke! Why don't you go cut
somebody's heart out and eat it?!"
Then I heard Bobby start to laugh because I knew he remembered the last
time, two years before.
Danny just
got red in his pimply face all over again, just like before, and kept coming.
"Leave
me alone! I mean it, leave me alone, or‑‑"
"Or
what? What're you gonna do, bleed
on me?" Danny sneered and then there he was, right in front of me, with
his hands reaching out for my shirt.
Honest to
God, I'd completely forgotten that I still had Bobby's Louisville Slugger (Duke
Snider model) in my hand‑‑I'd had it the whole time; honest, I didn't even
realize it, but the next thing I knew, Danny was on the ground, holding his
right leg in his hands and screaming, really screaming up a storm, and I was
standing there, not understanding why he was on the ground and I was still up,
looking down at him.
In between
the screams, I can still remember him howling, "My leg's broke, oww! You
broke my fugging leg, you shit, I'll kill you, you little bag of shit!"
And then Danny Fink actually started crying, not loud or anything, but he was.
I looked down at Bobby's bat in my hand and
dropped it, as if it was a murder weapon or something, and the next thing I
knew, I was halfway home on my bike, waiting for the sounds of police sirens
behind me and wondering what reform school was going to be like. Then I realized, just before I got to
Silverman’s Hotel (the old, abandoned one) that I didn't know what to do. I mean, it was the middle of the afternoon of
a beautiful spring day‑‑what would I tell my parents? They'd go into cardiac arrest if I just came
home voluntarily in the middle of a Saturday, and I sure couldn't tell them
what had sent me home.
So I rode
my bike up the old dirt driveway of the hotel and hid out in the woods, back
where our tree fort used to be, where the vines and stuff grew really thick,
like a tent.
I just sat
in there for about two days or a couple hours, trying to cry and trying to
think and wondering whether I should run away, maybe to my grandmother's farm
in Freehold and sleep in her barn, like I'd seen some kid do in a movie, and
wondering how long it would take me and the bike to get there, when I heard
bush sounds in the woods, and the sounds were mixed with whispering and more
thrashing about and I peeked out, trying to catch the blue of police uniforms
and the glint of sunlight off their badges and buttons‑‑and guns.
"Boo! Ha, ha,
ha-ha!"
I must've
jumped a hundred feet out of my underwear and sneakers and there were Bobby and
Davey, sitting on top of my big granite rock that rose behind the vine wigwam
I'd been hiding in.
“What the
heck're you doin' in there, Eddie?" Bobby said, all the time laughing at
how his "boo" had made me jump.
"Shut
up, stupid!" I whispered, "you wanna get me caught?"
"Caught by who? Who's gonna
catch ya?" Davey asked. (What was he, stupid, too? Hadn't he ever seen the movies?)
"Why
you think I'm hiding in here? Danny
Fink's gonna get the cops after me and you guys're gonna lead them right to
me! You probably broke a million twigs
and stuff gettin' here, so you're gonna lead them right to me!" I
whispered angrily.
"You've been watching too many cowboy movies, you dope!" Bobby
said, still laughing. "Whaddayou
think, the cops got Indians to track you down or something? Jeez, what an imagination."
"Just
go away and leave me alone, or you're gonna get in trouble, too," I
pleaded with them.
"Listen, Eddie, nothin's gonna happen to you," Davey insisted.
"That Danny kid got what he asked for and we'll all swear to it if
anything happens."
"Yeah,
it was self‑defense," Bobby said, just like they did in the movies.
"We're all witnesses. He attacked
you and you protected yourself. That's all.
Come on, let's go play in the woods…an’ get your stupid bike outta those
weeds."
"What
bike?" I asked, because I had camouflaged it really well with some
branches and leaves.
"The bright blue bike we could see for
about a mile, you know, the one over there under the leaves and branches,"
Bobby said, laughing some more. So much
for camouflage.
Well, we
played hide‑and‑seek in the woods for the rest of the afternoon, but when I was
hiding, and alone inside my thoughts, I never could get over the queasy feeling
that when I left the woods (with my bike) and went back home, that there'd be
two or three police squad cars out front, waiting for me, waiting to take me
away to reform school.
There were
no squad cars on our street when I crept out of the woods after it had started
to get dark. Of course, I really caught
it again for being late for dinner and because my mother had had to go out in
the street, screaming "Edddddiee!" and getting no response, which
always got my father really burned up; I guess hearing your wife howling all
over the neighborhood could be pretty embarrassing, probably because they both
knew I'd come home eventually and so did the rest of the neighborhood. I mean, I always came home, at least up till
then. Where else could I go?
Well, I was
pretty worried about getting to school the next day. I was sure that Danny Fink had gotten a hold
of a gun overnight and was going to jump me in the boy's room, so I never took
a pee the whole day, because I just knew if I did, that would be the bathroom
he'd be waiting in, so by the time I got home, my bladder was about ready to
explode. But nothing happened, and
nobody had seen Danny the whole day, so then I was sure he was being
interviewed by the police, and that they'd all be there‑‑Danny Fink and the
cops‑‑in front of our house when I got home from school that day.
As I walked slowly over the rise in the
road that led down to our house that afternoon, my knees got really weak and I
almost started to cry and run back down the hill, but as I said before, where
else could I go, so I just got to the top and looked down at the police cars
that weren't there.
I bet I had a smile on my face for about
an hour after I got home, and for the whole time we went out to the field
behind Silverman’s and played catch. I
was starting to believe Bobby and Davey, that nothing was going to happen to
me, and anyway, they said they'd be witnesses at my trial.
I even made
sure I got home early for dinner that night, and helped my mother set the table
(for all three of us) just to try to get back on their "our son's
okay" list that I always imagined them having locked up somewhere, along
with the one that said "our son's a criminal" at the top, with dates
of things I'd done wrong, since they could always quote the day and minute and
year of everything I'd ever done to make them sad or disappointed, you know.
I didn't
even mind the cream-of-celery soup and the stewed tomatoes we had for dinner,
because I was starting to feel relieved, finally. Then the phone rang.
You might
be saying "So the phone rang. Big
deal," but it didn't ring all that much in our house, I don't know why,
but it rang, right in the middle of the hot, soggy tomatoes and rubbery fried
chicken. With a tired groan, my father got up and answered it, picking the
receiver off the phone on the little table next to the door to the living room.
"Hello?...Buhrer, not Brewer...Yes, I have. Why?...Yes, that's his
name...Uh‑huh...What?!...He did wha‑‑!...Yes...Yes...I
understand, but no, I won't tell him....No…yes, I understand what you're
saying, but I'm not going to tell him that...Yes,I understand, thank
you...That's very understanding of you and I'm sorry this happened. It will not happen again, you can be
sure of that...No, fine...Thank you. Goodbye." (click)
Well, I
knew my time had come, because the whole time my father had been on the phone,
the entire time he'd been talking to the police, he'd been looking at me, and
those green eyes of his had been getting narrower and narrower and by the time
he hung up the phone, those eyes had eaten a hole right through me.
"You
know who that was, Edward? (Edward--uh-oh!) he asked.
"The
police?"
"The
police!? What the h...what's the matter with you? That was a man named Fink. Do you know anyone named Danny Fink, and
don't lie to me, because I'll see it in your eyes!"
"Yes."
"Did
you break his leg with a baseball bat Sunday?"
"No,
it was Saturday," I said, as I watched my father's eyes change from green
to red.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Do you know what could've happened to you
and to me and your mother? Do you have any idea? Do you?"
"I
could go to reform school?" I offered, not knowing anything about what
could happen to them; I mean, Danny Fink never did anything to them that
I knew of, and I didn't think they'd ever done anything to Danny, because if
they had, he wouldn't have been around to get me.
"Reform school! Oh my God!
If Mr. Fink felt like it, he could sue us for everything we have and
we'd all be out on the street, living in cardboard boxes and eating acorns! Do
you know what he said, do you?" (Dad wasn't really looking for an
answer to this one.) "He told me to tell you that what you did was okay
and that if his son ever bothered you again, you should break his other leg.
That's what he told me! What do you think about that?!"
Well, I
guess I had the wrong expression on my face, because I said "Great!"
and then they both started yelling about lawsuits and the legal
responsibilities of parents and how they could go to jail or lose our house and
I didn't know what I was supposed to think, what with Danny's father saying it
was okay to whack him but my father saying it was wrong, so I just started
crying and without meaning to, I babbled out something about an
"equalizer."
Honest to
God, I didn't mean to say anything.
But they both just shut up completely, as if someone'd flipped a switch
and then they turned and stared at me.
"Equalizer? What equalizer? What are you talking about?"
my old man yelled.
"Nothing," I tried, but it was
too late; maybe he'd recognized the term, I don't know.
"Don't
tell me `nothing.' What equalizer?"
"I
didn't mean to break his leg, I didn't!
He’s a big kid and a bully an’ just came at me and tried to beat me up
again like he did two years ago, and I had Bobby's bat and I didn't mean to do
it but I guess I swung it like Uncle Fred‑‑"
"Oohhh, Uncle Fred!" my mother shrieked, "Uncle Fred again!
No wonder! Oh my God! Fred! Oh‑my‑God!" And she went off and
on like that for about ten minutes, about how "he" was going to ruin
her only child and how she didn't bring him (me, she meant) into the world to
have "your brother" (looking at my father, this time, instead
of up at the ceiling) ruin me and so on.
Of course,
this just got my father even more angry with me and, well, you can figure
the rest out by now. It wasn't a happy
night, put it that way.
Well,
Danny Fink never came back to Whitney Junior High; I don't know what happened
to him. We'd heard some rumor that he
got caught trying to rob a liquor store, but I remember seeing him coming out
of the Capri Pizzeria on crutches with two older guys a couple weeks after
that, so I figured the rumor had been just a rumor. We also heard that his parents had sent him
to live with relatives who must've been some kind of lunatics in some other
city or state; Mike said he hadn't seen Danny around his street, so that was
probably closer to the truth than the liquor‑store story.
I tried
to start a rumor that he didn't come back to school because he was afraid of
somebody (hoping they'd all figure out that the "somebody" was me)
but that rumor didn't last more than an hour or two. All I know is that a lot of the littler kids
in the school got to spend their lunch money on lunch after that, instead of on
Danny Fink's Camels. And I still don’t know how Mr. Fink got my name. Maybe from Mike.
The next
time I saw Uncle Fred was when we went down the shore to see my grandmother (my
father's and Uncle Fred's mother) in Keansburg and Gran sent me out to wake him
up to tell him we were there. She knew I liked waking Uncle Fred up, because
the first thing he'd always say was, "Get me a beer, nephew," and I'd
dig a Shaefer or Rheingold out of his rusty old refrigerator in the bungalow he
lived in out back and he'd always let me have a sip or two.
I loved the
smell and taste of his beer‑‑it was kind of yeasty and cold and bubbly, all at
the same time. Then he'd grab the can of beer back and tell me not to tell my
parents he'd let me have some. And I never did.
But that day,
I really didn't want to go wake him up because I'd heard my father on the phone
to Uncle Fred the same night Danny Fink's father had called, and they'd kind of
had an argument, at least from what I could tell, and I just knew that Uncle
Fred was really mad at me, because if he ever said one thing to me, it was
always "Don't tell your ol’ man this or that" or "Don't tell
your mother I told you this or that," and I had‑‑I'd told and I
knew he hated me for telling, too. But my grandmother had told me to wake him
up and I had to do what she told me, so I crept out to his bungalow and went in
kind of slow, and just as I was letting the screen door close as quietly as I
could, I heard him growl,
"Get
me a beer, nephew, and this time, don't tell your mother I let you have
any, awright?"
That's when
I knew it was going to be all right, that Uncle Fred didn't hate me. I don't think I could've lived with
that. And beer will always taste good to
me, maybe because it'll always remind me of Uncle Fred. I love you, Uncle Fred.
