Al Capone Shines My Shoes (9 page)

“What about Trixle?” I ask in a wobbly voice.

My father cracks his neck. “Doesn’t mean it has to happen that way. Seven Fingers gets his chocolate bars. Trixle gets his shoes shined. It’s a dangerous game is all I’m saying.”

“Yes, sir,” I whisper.

My father’s face registers concern. “Didn’t mean to scare you, son. I won’t let you get in trouble. Don’t you worry.” He pats my back reassuringly, which only makes me feel ten times worse.

I’m not the kid he can protect anymore.

“That was a good thing you did, getting Rocky up there so quick, Moose . . . you know that?”

I clear my throat, try to get ahold of myself. “Thanks,” I mutter as Theresa comes tearing around the steps that lead to the front entrance of the cell house. “Moose! Mr. Flanagan! Rocky! Is Rocky okay?”

“He’s okay, sweetie. Just fine,” my father calls back. “Don’t you worry. Your dad will be out in a few minutes.”

“Are you sure?” Theresa demands, panting hard when she catches up with us.

My father pats her messy black hair. “I’m sure, little one. I saw him with my own eyes.”

Theresa nods like she’s taking this all in. “And my dad’s coming?” Her voice gets hoarse.

“Yes,” my father answers.

Theresa’s little face screws up with the effort of closing her eyes so tightly. She turns on her heel and runs back down the switchback.

My father frowns as we watch her run past Piper, who is on her way up. “What was that all about?”

“I dunno,” I tell him.

Piper’s taking big angry steps, her hands crossed in front of her. She has a fierce expression like she’s chewing chain link.

“I think you got another problem here, Moose.” My father nods toward Piper. “She’s a wild one. Think I’ll let you handle her on your own. Good luck with it.” He winks at me and pats my arm, barely concealing his grin as he turns and heads down the hill.

“You got to go into the cell house, didn’t you?” Piper asks when my father is gone.

“Sort of.”

“Sort of? You either did or you didn’t.”

There’s no way to keep this from Piper. You can’t pick your teeth on this island without everyone knowing exactly what you dug out.

“C’mon, what did you see?” she demands.

I bite the inside of my cheek. “Capone,” I whisper.

“No! NO! I hate you so much! It’s all your fault, too, Jimmy!” Piper shouts down the switchback to Jimmy, who is heading our way.

Jimmy runs the rest of the way up to us. “What’s my fault?” he asks between breaths. He leans over like he has a side ache.

“Moose met Capone.” Piper glares at Jimmy. “MOOSE! He’s slow, he’s clumsy . . . he could have dropped him.”

“He didn’t drop him.” Jimmy’s voice is quiet.

“Yeah, well he could have,” Piper roars.

“Yeah, well he didn’t,” Jimmy spits back, “and everything worked out okay.”

“I’m gonna kill Theresa.
She’s
the one. I can’t believe you got to meet him.” Piper is standing an inch away from Jimmy, blasting him down.

Jimmy does not back up. “She didn’t do anything.”

“Heck she didn’t. She shoved me out of the way,” Piper insists.

“Look, Piper . . . Rocky’s fine, I didn’t drop him, and they’d never have let you meet Capone anyway. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re a girl,” I tell her as gently as I can.

“You’re a kid and they let you in,” Piper says.

“All I did is say hello to Al, so don’t get so burned up.”

“
Al,
is it? You’re his
buddy
now? What did you say to him?”

I shrug. “Hello. I said hello.”

Piper gets up close to me and shouts in my face. “You met Al Capone and all you said was hello?”

“What would you have said?”

“Something a lot better than hello.”

“Piper, nobody planned this, okay? It just happened. The important thing is Rocky’s fine. He could have
died
,” I tell her.

Piper shoves me hard. “Oh, don’t be stupid. Babies don’t die.”

Jimmy glares at her.

“What’s the matter with you? Of course they do,” I tell her.

“The one chance in the whole universe to meet Capone and
you
hog it!” She shoves me again.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, jeez,” I say, but Piper already has her back turned to me. She’s stomping up the hill toward her house.

I turn to Jimmy for support, but his lips are twisted like he’s trying hard to keep his feelings in. “You’re
sorry
?” he asks. “You save my brother and you get to meet Capone and you’re sorry?”

“I just don’t want Piper mad. When she gets mad, she makes trouble. You know she does.”

Jimmy snorts. “That’s right. Got to keep
everybody
happy, right, Moose?”

“C’mon, Jim.” I search his face trying to figure out why he’s so burned up at me. “You’re still sore about Scout?”

“I was never sore about Scout,” Jimmy says. “He’s not my friend. Why would I care what he does?”

“What do you want me to say here, Jimmy?”

“You just saved my baby brother, you don’t have to say anything,” he sputters, but his eyes won’t engage with mine.

“Then why are you all steamed up?”

He looks up at me like he’s searching for something he lost a long time ago. “The guys at my school are just like Scout. You can’t play ball, you’re no one,” he whispers, his voice strained. “You’re the only guy who likes what I like. It’s kind of important, you know?”

“Okay,” I tell him, “I know.”

11.

A ROOMFUL OF WIND-UP TOYS

 

 

 

 

The next day when I come in from the parade grounds, my mom pounces on me. “Hi, sweetheart,” she says. I take a step back.

She waits for me to look inside the icebox, check the breadbox, open the cake plate, and mop up the stray crumbs.

“Last piece is yours,” she offers.

I’m wolfing it down on the way to my room when she starts in. “You know I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. Natalie would really appreciate a visit. She’s been asking about you.”

“She’s coming home next month, right?”

“Look.” She puts her hands up, her nostrils flare. “I know you have a lot going on, what with your baseball and your friends here on the island.”

“And she doesn’t have anything,” I mumble.

“I didn’t say that, Moose.”

“You don’t have to,” I tell her.

My dad comes out of his room. He takes one look at us and seems to recognize trouble is brewing. “Did I miss something here?”

My mom and I look at him.

“When are you going to visit your sister?” he asks, guessing what we are discussing and automatically taking my mom’s side. He pours himself a glass of lemonade. “She misses you, Moose.”

“It hasn’t been that long.” I already feel cornered.

“No, it hasn’t,” my father agrees. “But we would like you to visit.”

How do I tell my parents I don’t like to go to Nat’s schools? The teachers talk to guys my age like they’re toddlers. And the kids never stop moving and swaying like a room full of wind-up toys each with its own weird rotation.

It could be me in there. Locked up that way.

I got lucky. Natalie didn’t.

But it’s more than that. I risked everything for the Esther P. Marinoff School. It has to be perfect. I can’t stand it if it’s not.

If only I could tell them what I’ve done for Natalie. If only they knew. Then they’d be sorry for making me feel like a heel just because I don’t want to visit this one stupid time.

Since Nat’s been gone, my mom goes up to the Officers’ Club and plays the piano every night. She spends the time she isn’t teaching playing music or cards with Mrs. Mattaman and Bea Trixle and Mrs. Caconi. My mom never even knew how to play bridge, and now she talks my father’s ear off about it. And me? I come and go as I please. I never have to think about anyone but myself.

“I’ll go, Mom, okay? You know I will.”

“I appreciate that. Your dad and I both do. More than you know. And Natalie . . . ”

“Cut it out, Mom,” I say more firmly than I planned. “I said I’d go, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay.”

12.

THE IRISH WAY

 

 

 

 

I stay in my room for the rest of that day and all of the next, reading
The Definitive History of Baseball.
There’s nothing like
The Definitive History of Baseball
to make you feel better when the clock is ticking and in only a matter of hours you’ll be hunted down by a guy with a shotgun in his violin case, because you can’t figure out how to get yellow roses to Big Al’s wife. And if that’s not bad enough, your best friend on Alcatraz and your best baseball-playing friend on Alcatraz and the girl you’re sweet on are all mad at you for reasons that make no sense at all. Plus you just got more hives on your leg, and the itching is driving you buggy and you just may scratch the skin off your leg so you’ll be skinless sometime soon.

I guess when you’re dead it doesn’t matter if you have skin or not.

This does not make me feel better.

I’m in the middle of reading how the new shoes of a pitcher named Joe were giving him blisters, so he played in his socks and after that they called him Shoeless Joe Jackson, when I hear a knock on our front door.

“Moose, mind if I come in?” Mrs. Mattaman calls out.

“Come on in, Mrs. Mattaman,” I answer. This is the first good news I’ve had in two days. Mrs. Mattaman never visits without baked goods in her hand.

She sets a whole plate of cannolis on my bookshelf and smiles, clearly pleased at my reaction. “We’re awful grateful, Mr. Mattaman and me,” she says, sitting on my bed, which squeaks like a rusty bike.

“I feel like a big fool here, Moose, after all you’ve done . . . but I’ve come to ask for something else.” Her hair is neater and her face is more mature than Theresa’s, but her eyes are just as lively—
full of the dickens,
my mother would say.

Mrs. Mattaman balls up a corner of her apron. “Jimmy knows he should have watched Rocky more closely. But he’s not going to go making himself sick over it. My little girl, she takes everything hard. I know she’d never have hurt that baby. I know it was an accident. But Theresa—” Mrs. Mattaman sighs. “She can’t forgive herself for giving that penny to Rocky. She’s in bed now. Been there for two straight days. Won’t come out for love nor money.

“Everybody makes mistakes. You try and learn from them is all, get a little more information in your noggin.” She taps her brain. “So you know better the next time.”

“You want me to tell Theresa that?”

“My Theresa thinks the world of you, Moose. Course you Irish have a way about you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” She wags her finger at me. “But if Theresa thought you needed her really badly for something—”

“Oh . . . like what?”

She throws her hands in the air. “Whatever it is you kids are always so busy doing. Come talk to her, will you?” she asks, sucking her lips inside her mouth like Theresa does.

I follow Mrs. Mattaman to her apartment. On the way, I see Jimmy down at the dock, tracking our progress. When he sees that I see him, his head ducks down as if he wasn’t watching. Here I am, stepping on his toes again. But what am I supposed to do? This was Mrs. Mattaman’s idea, not mine.

Why is it people always ask me to do these things anyway?

Theresa is completely under the white nubby bedcover. Not even a toe is sticking out—it’s just one big Theresa-size lump planted in the middle of her bed.

“Hey Theresa . . . c’mon, stick your head out, I gotta talk to you,” I say.

“Theresa isn’t here,” she whispers.

“Well, hmmm,” I say, “this is definitely Theresa’s room. I wonder where Theresa went?”

The lump is silent.

Out in the living room, Mrs. Mattaman switches the station on the radio. It makes a patchwork of high-pitched squeaks until she settles on Jack Benny.

I try again. “Look, I heard Annie wants to put together some more gangster cards. She really needs your help. Nobody knows how many bullet holes to put in Bonnie and Clyde except you.”

Still nothing. Not even a change in the wrinkle pattern over her little self.

I look around her room. What am I going to do here? If Mrs. Mattaman can’t figure this out, then how am I supposed to?

Where is Theresa’s strange stuff on Alcatraz book? I wonder. Maybe there’s something in that. Once she was sure Baby Face Nelson was hiding in the canteen pickle barrel. Another time she thought she’d found Al Capone’s pinky ring, but it was a clasp that fell off of Bea Trixle’s purse.

On her bedside table is a pad of paper. Maybe I’ll write her a note and send it under the covers. I flip through looking for a blank sheet. “Dear Theresa,” I begin on a page with a faint impression of a checkerboard. I know what this was from. Theresa drew a checkerboard so that she could play button checkers with Natalie.

Theresa understands Natalie better than any other little kid ever has. She’s able to figure out how to play with her too.

“I’m going to visit Natalie tomorrow,” I blurt out.

Just as my lips form these words, a plan begins to take shape in my mind. I could go to San Francisco to visit Natalie and then make certain I got on the 2:00 boat, the ferry Mae will be taking. Theresa could come with me. Seven-year-old little girls can get away with things that almost-thirteen-year-old boys cannot. Theresa could just hand Mae the roses . . . couldn’t she?

“I need help.” My voice comes out in an urgent rush. “Will you come?”

The Theresa lump moves a smidgen. The covers rearrange around her middle.

“I have to talk to Mr. Purdy, the headmaster. You could play button checkers with Natalie. That way you can keep her busy while I talk.”