In God We Trust (19 page)

K-tunk!

And from the south end of the left-hand Roman Candle a large red ball emerged. From the wrong end! He leaped high, but it was too late. The ball skittered along his forearm, striking his elbow sharply, and disappeared into the short sleeve of his Pongee sport shirt!

The crowd gasped. A few women screamed. Children suddenly cried aloud as my father, showing the presence of mind of a great actor in the midst of catastrophe, shot his final ball from his right hand toward the North Star, as simultaneously the red ball reappeared from between his shoulder blades, his Pongee shirt bursting into spectacular flames. With a bellow he raced up the sidewalk, over the lawn, and trailing smoke and flames he disappeared into the house. A brief second of silence, and
the sound of the shower could be heard roaring full blast from the darkened home.

Stunned for an instant the crowd remained silent, but then loosed a great roar of applause. They knew they had witnessed the finest performance of a great artist. Midnight tolled, and the Fourth was over.

    “Would you care to order, sir?”

I was jerked back into the present by the waiter, who had shoved a huge menu in front of me.

“I guess so,” I answered, “it looks like my date is not going to show.”

It was just as well. Outside in the clanging street the blasting continued, and here in
Les Misérables des Frites
the bottles rattled. I sat quietly for a moment and watched the heat shimmer on the taxicabs outside, and then, raising what remained of my Charlie, I said to myself:

“Well, here’s to the Fourth,” and began to read the menu. It was time to eat.

XVII
I SHOW OFF

Flick looked puzzled.

“A Bloody Charlie? How the hell do you make a Bloody Charlie?”

“You mean you don’t serve Bloody Charlies here?”

Flick rummaged under the bar and finally found his
Bartender’s Guide
.

“Forget it. You will not find it listed in that rag.”

I could see that Flick’s professional curiosity was piqued.

“Do you mean a Bloody
Mary?”

“No, I said a Bloody Charlie. Charlie, as in Charlie Company. If I recall rightly, Flick, you were in the Artillery. ‘C’ for Charlie.”

“Well, all right, how do you make a Bloody Charlie?” He sounded skeptical.

“Okay. If you have the makings, I’ll be glad to whip us up a couple.”

“This I have to see.”

“Okay. I will need vodka, which I see you have, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, and perhaps a bit of salt. And one other special ingredient.”

Flick set the tomato juice, the vodka, the Worcestershire,
and a salt shaker on the bar next to two tall glasses. I waited for him to bite.

“Now I suppose you’re gonna tell me I need one a them fancy French liqueurs, or something.”

“Not exactly. Do you have any olives?”

“Olives! I got plenty a olives.”

“I will need four. Two for your drink and two for mine.”

“Why two?”

“It is important that you use only
two
per drink. No more, no less.”

I poured a jigger of vodka into each glass, filling them with the ice-cold tomato juice, a dash of Worcestershire in each, a pinch of salt; then very precisely I dropped two olives into each drink. A few quick swirls of a red plastic swizzle stick, and then:

“Cheers, Flick. Enjoy. Here are two classical Bloody Charlies.”

“They look like Bloody Marys to me.” I sipped mine appreciatively, smacking my lips loudly, ostentatiously.

“No, Flick, there is a crucial difference. These are Bloody Marys with
balls
. I have invented it. I call it a Bloody Charlie.”

Flick sipped his for a moment and said:

“You always
did
have a dirty mind.”

I set my drink down precisely on the bar, saying as I did so:

“No, that is not exactly true. In fact, I well remember when I could not even understand the simplest, most basic obscenity. My innocence led me into considerable difficulty.”

XVIII
UNCLE BEN AND THE SIDE-SPLITTING KNEE-SLAPPER, or SOME WORDS ARE LOADED

Every family has a Joke Teller, and he is usually bad news. That’s right, bad news. But the kind of bad news that sneaks up on you and gets you before you know what’s happened.

Joke Tellers are not to be confused with Storytellers. The difference is not only a matter of technqiue, but of degree of desperation.

Uncle Ben was our family Joke Teller, and he was so far out on the fringes of the family solar system that nobody ever mentioned him, even in passing. Uncle Ben would show up at about every third or fourth family affair. He would arrive about one-third Bagged, as is the case with most Joke Tellers. He was not the Drinking Uncle, because he didn’t really drink. He just absorbed the stuff. He didn’t really knock it down, like Uncle Carl, who would fall down and holler and try to climb up the coal chute and all that kind of stuff. Uncle Ben just quietly drank. He just had a red nose, and sat, and he always looked like … well, have you ever seen a brass lamp? Uncle Ben had a kind of Brass-Lamp look. He’d just sit there and glow, and like most Joke Tellers was indecisively fat. And all he would do at any party was tell jokes. Not funny stories—Jokes. And I mean the worst kind. I mean the kind of jokes that should be fumigated before they are allowed in the house.

Joke Tellers rarely have even a barely perceptible sense of humor. Uncle Ben was no exception. It is very hard to know how to listen to a Joke Teller. What kind of look do you put on your face when he is telling a joke, and hitting you on the arm at the same time? Do you smile in preparation for the punch line? Or do you look sad, which is the way you feel? Or just uncomfortable?

Joke Tellers can be dangerous. I’m about seven years old, and I’m in the sun parlor of Aunt Glenn’s apartment. Uncle Ben is over, and one wing of the family is having an Afternoon.

Uncle Ben was the kind who would always sit in another room. When all of the family’s having a big thing, he would sit out in another room, drinking beer, coming out only to draw another stein and tell a joke. And then, finally, when the pinochle game was organized, he would play. Badly. In true Joke Teller fashion, everything he did seemed to have some comic or violent overtones. Whenever he played pinochle he would slam his hand down on the table with:

“That’s it!”

BANG
!

“Seven spades! That’s it!”

POW
!

He also was a great one for trick shuffles.

On the day in question, Uncle Ben and the men are playing double-deck pinochle. My kid brother and I are out in the sun parlor, knee-deep in ferns. Uncle Ben starts telling jokes, in his Joke Teller’s voice. One of the men says:

“Hey, you know the kids are here.”

And Uncle Ben says:

“Ah, they’re old enough to hear this. And if they’re not old enough to hear it, it won’t make any difference anyway. Hahaha.”

And he plows ahead:

“And so the bartender says to the guy.…”

Of course, my ears are like two giant cabbages hanging out of the side there, because I know I am Hearing Something. And boy, did I!

Well, it went like that for about twenty minutes. Ben is telling them the story. Of course, one thing about a family Joke Teller—it’s downhill all the way. It rarely is uphill, because these guys, being notably non-talented, do not know how to pace themselves. They usually pad their stories too much, and often tell the punch line before they get to the end of the story.

He’s struggling away with his act. What happens with a Joke Teller is that when they don’t get a big laugh, they immediately leap in with a longer story, instead of a shorter one. They pour it on with a longer one. And then they try their dialects. This is always the last resort of a scoundrel, using the Jewish and the Irish dialect in a story. This is almost invariably the stamp of the non-talented but desperate Joke Teller.

Uncle Ben is pouring it out. I’m listening to the stories—the Jokes. And soaking them up like a two-dollar sponge. Remember, I’m seven, and my knowledge of the Seven Deadly Sins was somewhat hazy. In the ensuing years this has cleared up somewhat, but not much.

About four days later I’m out in the backyard with good old Casmir. Casmir came from a very good, basic, wonderful, totally antiseptic Polish Catholic family. I mean the kind that had drapes on top of their drapes. Every third or fourth day his mother would wash down the whole neighborhood, on her hands and knees, wearing a shawl over her head. Go all the way down the street, wash the sidewalks, sweep up the curb, hose down the fences, and brush off all the kids. She was that sort of a Polish lady. She spoke no English at all, discernible. This was Casmir’s family. His father wore round black hats and black suits, and for some reason always buttoned his white shirts clear to the top, but wore no tie. Except on Sundays.

Casmir and I are playing by the fence. We are fooling around and hitting things, and just messing around, when I suddenly remember Uncle Ben’s great joke. Which I proceed to tell to Casmir, including all the words I could remember, and the Irish dialect that the bartender had.

I had only a vague inkling of what it was about. All of these
words meant nothing to me. In fact, I thought one of them had something to do with Hockey.

So I told Casmir the joke, and Casmir laughed because he knew it was supposed to be a funny joke. Both of us are laughing up a storm, and hitting each other on the back, and cackling lasciviously. We mess around some more, and it is time now to go home. It is about four in the afternoon.

The following traumatic experience slowly began to unfold. About five in the afternoon, my mother is out on the back porch, and she rarely spent much time
on
the back porch. She is talking to Mrs. Wocznowski. They rarely talked much together because Casmir’s mother spoke no English, discernible, and my mother spoke no Polish. But the two of them are jabbering away out there. I am paying no attention, because I am inside listening to the radio.

Suddenly my mother comes whamming through the back screen door, and let me tell you, there was blood in her eye. Blood! I mean
BLOOD
! There was smoke coming out of her ears.

“I want to talk to you.”

I knew it! You know when there’s disaster.

“What?”

“I want to talk to you. Come into the bedroom. I don’t want your brother to hear this.”

Uh oh. This is the big one. You know when the jig is up—

“I don’t want your brother.…”

We have both been sitting there listening to
Steve Canyon
or something, and the instant this fatal line came out, it goes off inside of me. I start to break up. I’m crying and hollering like mad.

She drags me into the bedroom and closes the door. There was a silence that went on for, I’d say, about a year and a half. I didn’t know anything then about what is commonly known as a “pregnant pause.” I wouldn’t have known what
that
word meant, but this silence is really hanging there, like big ripe grapes. Containing seeds. Finally:

“Were you just out with Casmir? By the fence?”

“Yah … yeah, we were playing, we didn’t do nothing!” I said.

“Now wait a minute. Do you know what this word means?” And she says this word, which, by the way, to this day I have never again heard my mother use.

“Yeah, yeah, I know … ah.…” Long pause.

“What does it mean?”

“Ah … well, it’s about a Hockey thing there!”

“Oh. I see.” And there is another long pause.

“Go back out and listen to the radio, will you.”

Well, I went out and sat on the ottoman next to my kid brother. The radio is playing. He knows something has gone wrong, and I know something has gone wrong, but I can’t figure it out. I had no idea what it was about. Both of us are sitting there, and it’s going back and forth between us.

My mother goes back out in the kitchen, and she’s stirring away at the red cabbage. The hamburger is on. Supper is being made.

About half an hour later I hear her out in the back, talking over the fence to Mrs. Wocznowski. And I am frantically trying to hear what she is saying. I’m out in the kitchen, next to the icebox. This is terrible, because I know I have done something awful, and yet I don’t really
know
. You know what I mean? You don’t really know, you just know that what you have done is unspeakable. Unspeakable! You not only feel that it was unspeakable, you feel untouchable. I mean, you’re just really
rotten!
To the core. You are never going to make it up the ladder of human virtues. You are never again going to be accepted into the race. Ever. You know that sickening feeling? It takes a hundred years to grow out of that one, if ever!