Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (31 page)

Nicky strolled to the refrigerator on the morning of February 1 and ripped January off the calendar. He carefully folded the page into a paper airplane, just the way Roy had taught him. Nicky lifted open the kitchen window and the blast of icy air pinched his nostrils. He flicked the paper airplane out the window and watched it wobble on the gusts over Groton Avenue.

“What are you doing?” Mom said. “Do you own stock in Con Edison? Close the window.”

“Look, Ma,” Nicky said, pointing at the paper airplane. “Time is flying.”

“Cute,” Mom said. “Where are my boots?”

Nicky inhaled deeply and sang out, “February first. Spring is in the air!”

“Did you eat Sucrets for breakfast again?” Mom said.

“Yankees start spring training in eleven days,” Nicky said smartly.

“That's in FLORIDA,” Mom said. “You used to love winter. I have to go to work. Love it or hate it, either way, there's a lot of winter left.”

The next morning, Nicky awoke to a blizzard raging.

“She has weather radar, too,” Nicky muttered, as sleety snow hissed against the windowpane.

Nicky moped into the kitchen.

“Hey-lo,” he grumbled to Mom.

“What was that?”

“I said, ‘OH, no.' Because school is closed.”

“Since when do you dislike snow days?” Mom said. “Did you want to go to school? Did you hit your head or something?”

“It's just all this SNOW,” Nicky said. He wiped the fogged kitchen window with his hand and looked out at the PS 19 playground. The asphalt, the baselines, the bases were buried under huge, sugary mounds. Blowing snow was plastered against the schoolyard wall, whiting out the strike zone. Drifts of snow reached to the top of the chain-link fence.

“It's never gonna go away,” Nicky whined.

“Count your blessings,” Mom said. “It's just snow. Some people have to put up with earthquakes and tornadoes.”

Nicky was oiling and flexing a new B-4000 baseball mitt when Lester rapped on the door.

“Come on in,” Nicky said gloomily.

“Want to play Monopoly?” Lester suggested.

“Nope,” Nicky said, working his fingertips into the mitt in endless circular motions.

“Want to watch television?”

“Nope.”

“How about a spirited game of checkers?”

“Nope.”

“What do you want to do?”

Nicky looked up and said, “Play stickball.”

Lester swiveled his head to the window. Snow was falling harder than ever. He adjusted his glasses. He stared at Nicky, as if Nicky had cockroaches crawling out of his ears.

“I know it's snowing.” Nicky shrugged. “But that's all I really wanna do. I just can't wait until spring.”

Lester held up his hand. “Hold the phone. It's definite then? You want to play this spring? After all? No fooling?”

“Why do you think I was oiling the glove? For my health?”

“Very interesting,” Lester said. “Very, very interesting.” His eyes bulged behind his glasses. He slapped his hands together. It was the first and only time Nicky saw Lester clap his hands in glee.

Lester said, “No fooling. You mean it?”

“I ain't fooling.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Lester moved to the window to take a good long gaze at the snow, heavy and swirling. Nicky put down his greasy glove and stood next to him. The wind shook the windows in their casements. In a heavy snow like this, the tenements of Groton Avenue actually looked beautiful. It was a winter wonderland.

“I hate this lousy snow,” Lester said. “I sure wish this snow would go away and spring would get here.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Nicky said.

The snow did not let up. The day dragged. The boy had their minds on only one subject. Nothing else would do. The Ringling Bros. circus could burst through the door, and they would not be interested.

They oiled the mitts. They swung the old yellow stickball bat in the living room, careful of the lamps. They gripped the old Spaldeen. All they cared about was stickball.

They watched the snow and longed mightily for tender breezes and baby-blue skies and bright sunshine on asphalt.

“We have to do something,” Nicky said. “I'm jumping out of my skin.”

“Me, too,” Lester said, fidgeting.

Obsession is the mother of invention. Nicky and Lester improvised. They did what restless boys have done since the invention of indoors. They played ball in the house.

“Are we allowed to do this?” Lester said, popping his fist into Roy's old mitt.

“No,” Nicky said, pushing aside the coffee table. “Let's get started.”

“Very interesting. Have you ever played catch inside before?”

“Plenty,” Nicky said.

Lester's first throw sailed past Nicky and knocked the rabbit ears off the television. Nicky threw back and Lester muffed the catch. The ball bounced off Lester's shoulder and plopped into a flowerpot, spraying black soil onto the floor.

“Kick the dirt under the table,” Nicky advised.

Lester's second throw hit the ceiling and ricocheted solidly against the windowpane. The boys held their breath, awaiting the sickening crash of heavy glass.

The window did not break.

“Close but no cigar,” Nicky said. “I guess this room is too small.” He dropped onto the plastic slipcover on the couch. “Guess I'll just oil my mitt some more.”

“What will I do?”

“Go get your mitt and oil it.”

“I don't wanna get oil on Willie Mays's autograph.”

Nicky shrugged.

“I have got an idea,” Lester said. “I read about this in a magazine.”

Lester told Nicky the story about a baseball player in the minor leagues. This player prepared for each season by eating the baseball cards of star players.

“He's nuts,” Nicky said.

“Maybe,” Lester said. “This fellow said if he eats the baseball card of a player, it gives him the skill of that player.”

Nicky shrugged. Snow pelted the window. “Why not?” Nicky said. “We haven't got anything else to do.”

Nicky toted the worn shopping bag of baseball cards into the
living room. Lester wanted to improve his hitting. From the bag he selected a Frank Robinson card, a Willie McCovey card, and a Hank Aaron card. He placed them side by side on the coffee table. Nicky was interested in pitching. He selected a Mel Stottlemyre, a Sam McDowell, and a Jim Palmer. Nicky placed the cards on the coffee table.

The boys looked at the cardboard cards. The faces of Robinson and McCovey and Aaron and Stottlemyre and Palmer and McDowell, smiling in various action poses, stared back.

“I don't think I'm going to be able to do this,” Lester said with a grimace.

“Me, neither,” Nicky said. He thought for a moment. He snapped his fingers and jumped to his feet. He raced to the kitchen and returned with a jar of Skippy. “Peanut butter. Roy always said anything tastes good with peanut butter on it.”

Nicky applied a layer of Skippy to Jim Palmer. Lester spread a swirly coat onto Hank Aaron. Covered by peanut butter, the baseball cards appeared exactly like crackers.

The boys dug in. They ripped and chewed and giggled. They bit some more and chewed some more. The cards still held a hint of bubblegum, which combined interestingly with the taste of cardboard and peanut butter.

“Water,” Lester croaked.

“Yeah,” Nicky gagged, bolting for the kitchen tap.

The boys gulped their water and licked the peanut butter from their teeth. They smacked their lips and grinned.

“I may be crazy,” Nicky said. “But my right arm. It feels really strong.”

“Very interesting,” Lester said. “I think I know what you mean.” He examined his hands. His eyes bugged behind his thick glasses. “My hands. My wrists. They feel powerful.”

“Do you think it's possible?”

Lester shrugged and said, “You have to have faith. My grammy always said to believe in the power of faith.”

“I believe it when I see it,” Nicky said. He flexed his shoulder. His arm felt rippled, as if mighty steel bands were coiled tightly in his biceps. “I don't think I can wait for spring to see it.”

“Me neither,” Lester said, examining his wrists.

Nicky and Lester rode the elevator down and tried not to laugh. They wore heavy wool hats, winter coats, galoshes, and scarves. And they carried baseball mitts, the yellow stickball bat, and a Spaldeen.

“They're going to put us in the nuthouse,” Nicky said.

“We ate baseball cards,” Lester said. “Perhaps we belong in a nuthouse.”

The boys stepped off the elevator in the lobby and waddled in their heavy getups toward the rear door. Professor Smith was passing through the lobby. There was snow on the shoulders of his overcoat and snow in the rim of his derby hat. His cheeks and nose were red. The Professor eyed the Spaldeen and the bat and the gloves.

“That's the spirit, gentlemen!” he said.

Nicky and Lester slogged through the blizzard, toward the PS 19 playground. Snow stung their faces. The wind took their breath away and their knees ached against the deep drifts.

The boys trekked across the playground. They giggled as they struggled, crunching the snow, marveling at the intimate hush of a raging snowstorm. Lester guessed the location of home plate on the wall and assumed his batting stance. Nicky counted off forty paces. He could barely see Lester through the snow. He took a pitcher's stance.

Nicky wound up and threw the Spaldeen through the falling snow. His pitch was straight and powerful and true, faster than any pitch he had ever thrown. It was faster in fact than any pitch he had ever seen. It was a pitch worthy of Jim Palmer.

And Lester, with the Hank Aaron baseball card bubbling in his belly amid peanut butter and tap water, locked his eyes on the ball as it sizzled through the snowflakes. He swung the bat with ease and power, a mighty, crisp swipe. He connected, right on the button. He walloped the ball high and deep. The ball took off in the direction of Groton Avenue and disappeared in the gauze of falling snow.

“If I hadn't seen it, I would not believe it,” Nicky shouted into the wind.

“I saw it and I don't believe it,” Lester said, making a face at his icy wrists, as if they belonged to someone else.

They searched for the Spaldeen in the snowdrifts near the chain-link fence. There was no sign of it. The Spaldeen had been swallowed up by the swiftly falling snow.

“That was Roy's ball,” Nicky said, ice on his eyebrows.

“Don't worry, we'll find it,” Lester said, eyeglasses fogging. He placed a frigid hand on Nicky's winter coat. “As soon as the snow melts.”

“Yeah. In the spring,” Nicky said, brightening at the promise.

N
ow Nicky could look ahead to the spring and see promise and relief, which is to say he saw stickball and Roy. And because of this he felt a gladness creep into his heart and snuggle there.

He hopped out of bed each morning, rushed to the refrigerator, and drew a hearty X through another date on the calendar. And for the rest of the day, he lived light and happy. He felt like a traveler, motoring to a favorite place, making good time, heading in the right direction. He walked through his days smiling. People being what they are, they would ask him, “What are you smiling about?” And Nicky could not explain it to them. He didn't want to explain. Nicky would just shrug, and smile wider.

At school, Nicky suddenly got the hang of algebra. He merely looked at problems involving triangles and intersecting lines and immediately saw the course of action needed to solve them. This mathematical aptitude came out of nowhere.

In gym class, in his first crack ever at volleyball, Nicky scored the winning point. He slapped the ball into the face of Ricky McFarlane, the class tough guy. Nicky saw the red welt rise on Ricky McFarlane's cheek and marveled at the new strength in his pulsing right arm.

“Thank you, Jim Palmer,” Nicky said.

One day during lunch, Nicky glanced up from his baloney sandwich and gazed without fear or shame at Becky Hubbard. She was seated two tables over, taking dainty nibbles from a sandwich. Her spearmint eyes caught him looking. And when she looked back, she might have smirked, but there was also a chance she had smiled. Nicky guessed that the odds were 70:30 in favor of a smile. Best of all, he didn't really care, either way. Becky Hubbard didn't seem so pretty anymore. Ann-Margret was prettier. Margalo was way prettier.

One sunny February morning, when there was a tiny trace of warmth in the air, Nicky passed Mr. Misener in the courtyard and said, “Hey-lo, Mr. Misener. Almost feels like spring, doesn't it?”

The old grouch grunted and moved on, but not long after that, the first-floor windows in Building B were suddenly repaired. These were the windows broken in the fall of 1963 and left unfixed since, and now the punched out panes were removed and replaced by shiny new glass.