Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (23 page)

“By the time we are reading this in class, Roy will be home,” Nicky thought.

Nicky sought out the single paragraph that recounted Kennedy's death. He felt odd, reading in a history book about events he clearly remembered.

“No mention of Dad's involvement in the shooting,” Nicky thought. He shook his head, embarrassed by the memory. “How could I have been so stupid?” He smiled at his private joke, and at how foolish he was when he was a kid.

“I'll never be that stupid again,” Nicky noted.

Nicky flipped back to the section on World War II. He loved reading about World War II. That war was over. We won. The troops were home, showered with gratitude, love, confetti, drinks on the house, and rousing documentaries such as
Victory at Sea
.

“Mr. Martini, what are you doing there?” It was Mr. Sullivan, another new teacher, addressing him from the front of the class.

“Nothing.”

“You mean, ‘Nothing, SIR.' You must be doing something.”

“I was reading. Sir.”

“Did I instruct the class to read?”

“No.”

“You mean, ‘No, sir.'”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes? I instructed the class to read?”

“No. I mean, no sir.”

“Then do not read. Understood?”

The class tittered, and the fun was out of Nicky's game of flipping ahead and dreaming of spring.

When he got home from this first day of school, Nicky found Mom at the kitchen table, peeling apples. Four pie plates layered with floury crust were lined up on the countertop. Water bubbled furiously in a large pot. A pile of eggplants, stacked like cord-wood, awaited peeling. A lineup of tomato cans, super-jumbosized, awaited opening.

“What's wrong?” Nicky said. “Why are you cooking like that?”

“Like what?” Mom said. “Nothing's wrong. Don't be such a worrywart.”

She dropped a peeled apple into the bowl and selected another apple.

“There's a letter from your brother over there if you want to see it.”

“What's wrong with Roy?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Mom said. “Calm yourself.” She let a ribbon of apple peel fall onto the nest of apple peels on the table. “Roy is fine. But your father is going to be beside himself when he reads it. Sometimes I don't know about Roy. What's the matter with that kid?”

Nicky dropped his book bag and plucked Roy's letter from the counter. The letter was written in tiny lettering on the front and back of a flimsy slice of tissue paper.

Dear Gang,

I guess I don't know how to say this so I just will. Last night I saw combat action. I am all right but it was quite a scare.

I guess I will start at the beginning. I was getting sick and tired
of working day and night as an office clerk while others are out there in the bush risking their butts. I felt like a goof off.

One of the fellows in maintenance even volunteered to go out into the bush but his commo said no way. At least he pulls guard duty every two weeks and that is a bit more dangerous because you are out on the perimeter, on guard and so on. I don't even do that because my commo says our office is so fouled up it will take a year to get it back in order and so he made a deal and he doesn't let any of us do guard work because he needs us in the office 14 hours a day. I asked him once twice and three times to please let me do guard duty and he said no and then the fourth time he finally said, “Okay, Martini, if you are so anxious to get your buttocks blown up go ahead but just for one night.”

They drove us out to our bunkers in the afternoon. The bunkers are sandbagged with little slits to look out of. There's also a cot. Boy did it stink. There are three men to a bunker and two are awake while one sleeps. It was a quiet night while I was on watch except for a few flares and the helicopters going by and our artillery going off every hour or so. I was asleep at 2:30
AM
when there was a big WHOOSH and a loud explosion that shook the bunker. I fell out of the cot. That was my only wound, a scraped knee. (Do not worry, Mom, I washed it and put a band-aid on it. Ha ha.) The VC were firing 140MM rockets at us and at the base camp. They fired 14 rockets and we sat in the bunker sweating it out and I prayed a lot. Nobody knew if the bunker would take a direct hit and survive and to tell you the truth none of us wanted to find out. It was over in a few minutes but I was shaking the rest of the night.

Now here is the awful strange thing about war. Only one rocket
landed in camp but it landed between my barracks hut and the bunker we use for shelter and it caught one of the guys from my barracks and killed him. He was Joey Carlisto, a nice kid from St. Louis. Remember I told you we were playing stickball here? Joey was our second baseman. I often walked with him from the mess hall. I might have been with him that night running for the shelter. He liked the Cardinals. We are all pretty sad and it was real creepy to look at his stuff and his bunk until an officer came and packed up all his things to ship home.

Do not worry, Mom, because you have as much chance to get hit by a rocket here as getting hit by lightning. Joey Carlisto was just unlucky. That's the way we look at it. Also, there will be no more guard duty for me. My commo said it will take two years to clear up the backed-up paperwork in the office and I am his best typist. So I will type away the rest of my tour, and now at least I know I have done my part even if it was just one night.

Love to all. Be home in 27 weeks.

—Roy

PS—How is Checkers?

Nicky placed the paper to his face, hoping for a whiff of Roy's aftershave.

“Don't rub that on your face. Who knows where it's been,” Mom said. She waved the apple peeler. “So what do you think of that letter? What's with that kid? Your father specifically told him not to volunteer for dangerous duty. You knew that, right? Remember that letter you mailed for me? That was in the letter.”

Nicky's tummy gurgled.

“He went out and did it anyhow,” Mom said. She let the apple peeler fall onto the table. She took a deep, shuddering, tear-choking sigh. She clasped her hands over her eyes.

“Just thank God he's all right,” Mom said from behind her hands. “I keep thinking of that Joey boy's mother. I won't relax until my baby comes home.”

“I'm going out to sit on the steps for a while,” Nicky said.

“Take a jacket. It'll get chilly. Be careful. Watch out for Mr. Feeley. Please Nicky, I don't want to have to worry about you, too.”

Nicky rapped on the door to 2-C. He heard footsteps inside the apartment, saw a shadow under the door. But the door did not open.

“Lester, I can hear you,” Nicky said testily. He was not in the mood for Lester's shenanigans.

“Present,” Lester said from behind the door.

“So open up.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I just got out of the shower.”

Nicky didn't say anything.

“I'm not wearing any clothes.”

Nicky didn't want to know that.

“Whatever. I'll be down on the front steps. Don't forget your pants.”

Nicky reclined on the front steps and watched the sun set behind the aspirin factory. Mom was right about the chill, as usual. Nicky
pulled on his old red baseball jacket. He had not worn the jacket since way back in the spring. He noticed it was short in the sleeves.

“I'm growing?” he wondered.

Lester arrived. Nicky saw that his hair was not wet, and his fingernails were dirty. He did not look like a boy fresh from the shower.

Nicky told him the story of Roy's letter. He confessed about the letter from Dad, the one he threw down the sewer. As he spoke, Nicky was surprised he was telling anyone about the dirty, horrible deed.

Lester adjusted the glasses on his nose. He squinted and worked his jaw, as if chewing on something.

“This is the way I see it,” Lester announced suddenly. “Because you threw your daddy's letter down the sewer, your brother volunteered for guard duty and might have been killed because of it.”

“Yes,” Nicky admitted woozily, eyes stinging.

Lester continued, “But because you threw your daddy's letter down the sewer, Roy volunteered for guard duty. And his life was probably saved because of it. Roy might have been caught between the barracks and the shelter by the rocket, just like his friend. If he had not volunteered for guard duty, which put him in the bunker that night instead. See?”

Nicky nodded. It was a blessing to have a best friend. Nicky was especially grateful to have a regular Encyclopedia Brown for a best friend.

Nicky said, “I guess nothing is simple these days.” He planned to read ahead tonight in his history notebook, in the section on World War II. The section on World War II would be simple.

The boys stood and walked up the steps and into the courtyard of Eggplant Alley. There were orange lights behind some of the windows. Dishes clattered. Faucets rushed. Televisions blathered. Mr. Storch's xylophone rang out. The sounds surrounded the boys and gathered them in as they walked deeper into the horseshoe, toward Building B.

“Wasn't that pretty gutsy of Roy to do guard duty?” Nicky said.

“You bet. Say, anybody who is over there has plenty of guts. My daddy says there are a million ways to get killed in a war. He knew a fellow in Korea who was killed by a can of tomatoes thrown out of a passing airplane.”

Nicky made a mental note to write to Roy, to warn against tomatoes and airplanes.

“Feel better?” Lester said.

“Plenty.”

Nicky had an urge to buy a nice gift for this Lester, a present for nothing in particular, a present just because.

Lester shuddered in the brisk air and said, “Fall is coming. Then winter. Then the spring.”

The spring. Nicky felt light-headed, dizzy, sick to his stomach. He thought about the spring, when Lester's father would come home from the war. He imagined Lester's father taking one look at Eggplant Alley and packing up his wife and kid and fleeing north, back to Hick-city. Nicky wondered what he would do without Lester. He shivered at the possibility of another good-bye in the spring. Not again, not another one.

“In the spring,” Nicky said. “Know what? In the spring, we really oughta give stickball another shot. This time let's make it
work. We can do it, if we really try. If there's a will, there's a way. Whatever it takes. Let's make a pact.”

“Very interesting,” Lester said. “I couldn't agree more.”

“Promise?”

“Surely. It's a promise.”

Nicky pulled open the door to Building B. He took a last sniff of courtyard air. He thought the air smelled of liver and onions, but also of autumn, of change, of promise.

N
icky could not concentrate on his homework. It was a brilliant, warm autumn afternoon, the kind of afternoon that screamed, “Last chance before a long, gray, cold winter!”

He sat at the kitchen table and twirled his pen and stared at the ceiling and chewed his fingernails. Sheets of undone math problems lay before him. Sister Martine had really loaded them up. But the sun was warm on his back and he heard noises from the schoolyard, the old sounds of stickball games.

“I give up,” he said.

He grabbed the old Spaldeen and Roy's mitt from the closet and hurried out of the apartment and down the stairs, two at a time. He skidded to a stop at Lester's door and banged his fist on it. No sound. No movement. No one home, for real.

“Gotta do this alone,” Nicky thought, shrugging.

He zipped down the last two flights and out the back door of Building B.

The schoolyard was empty. Groton Avenue was quiet. Nicky passed through the gate and walked across the concrete diamond toward PS 19. He felt grown up, a boy of action. The open air invigorated him and blew the cramps of math homework from his
brain. Nicky watched the faded baselines pass beneath his feet, took a long look at the faded strike zone painted on the wall, and he knew he was saying good-bye to them till the spring. He already looked forward to spring.

“There will be great games next spring,” Nicky thought, hoping and wishing and praying.

Nicky slipped his hand into Roy's mitt. He tapped the Spaldeen into the glove and positioned himself across from the schoolyard wall, in line with the strike zone box. Bouncing a ball against the wall would do a world of good. Breaking a sweat in the Indian summer sunshine would be just the thing. He planned to return upstairs in fifteen minutes, long before Mom could walk all the way to the A&P on Broadway and hike all the way back with an armload of paper bags.

Nicky wound up with a high leg-kick, just the way Jim Palmer of the Orioles had wound up that afternoon in the World Series against the Reds. Jim Palmer was tall and lean. Nicky was already lean. He wondered if he would ever be tall.

Nicky pitched. The ball hit the wall and bounced back neatly, on one hop. Nicky found this satisfying. He pitched and caught, pitched and caught. He didn't throw very hard. He didn't hit the strike zone often. But he held a fantasy about pitching in the spring. That would be something. Nicky on the mound, Roy behind him in center field, barking at him to “put it in there, old kid. No batter, no batter.” Just the way Roy used to chatter at Icky and Mumbles, in the good old days.

Nicky heard the young men before he saw them. They made a racket, howling and shouting, as they climbed the steps from
Summit and spilled out onto the schoolyard. Nicky counted five of them, white kids that Nicky did not recognize. They all appeared to be about Roy's age. One of them had long, greasy hair and an arm swirled with tattoos. The tattooed boy scared Nicky. He didn't want to mess with anyone who had gone out of his way to be stuck by needles.

“Hey, looky here,” said the tattooed boy, a short stocky kid. “What have we? It's a baseball player. Looky, looky. Hey, kid. You. Give it here.”