My Great-grandfather Turns 12 Today (12 page)

“ ’Bout time!” she huffed.

“You all right?” Uncle Peter asked me. He was standing in the back yard with Pat.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“You ever pitch?” he asked, holding up a horseshoe.

“Pitch?”

“Horseshoes,” he said, pointing down at a metal pole that stuck about a foot and a half out of the ground.

“No,” I said.

“You want to try?” Pat asked.

“Careful,” Uncle Peter warned me. “Pat’s one of the best in the county.”

“
The
best after next Saturday,” he said. “That’s when I take first prize at the Culver City Founders’ Day Festival.”

“This could be your year,” his father agreed. Pat carefully aimed at another pole that was about forty feet from where he and Uncle Peter were standing. He threw the metal shoe and it hit the pole with a clang and spun around it.

“So what do you like?” Uncle Peter asked me. “Baseball?”

“It’s all right,” I said, “but my game is bask . . .”

“IT SURE STINKS IN THERE!” Sissie announced, coming out of the outhouse and I felt myself blushing.

“Sissie!” her father scolded her.

“Oh, that’s right,” Pat said, “Michael here doesn’t pitch horseshoes. He’s a juggler. He was telling me and Charlie all about it this morning. Promised to put on a show right after supper.”

Chapter 19

I Entertain the Family

Pat looked like he thought he really had me now. He kept that same expression while we were eating dinner. Excuse me. He kept it while we were eating supper.

Supper was leftovers from dinner and it still tasted good. All that swimming and walking had made me very hungry.

“Are you done with the sideboard, Papa?” asked Jerome, who looked about eight or nine.

“I’ll finish the carving on Monday for sure,” he answered.

“So you just need tomorrow and Monday?” I asked.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday, Michael,” Uncle Peter said.

“I know. Sir.”

“No working on Sunday.”

“Oh.”

“You sure you’re a Catholic?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“A
Roman
Catholic?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you know there’s no unnecessary servile work on Sunday. Taking care of the animals and that’s about it.”

“Michael here had to work on Sundays, didn’t you Michael?” Pat asked me. “I mean, when you were in vaudeville.”

“That was necessary,” Charlie said.

“Do you have any plans, Michael?” Aunt Mary asked me. “You’re welcome to stay, of course, but I was just wondering.”

“I think I’ll head for home in about a week,” I said. I hoped so. “I’d like to stay here till next Saturday. If that’s all right with you.”

“Of course, it is, laddie,” Uncle Peter said. “With you we’ve got our own entertainment.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant because they thought I was in vaudeville or if he meant because I kept saying things that sounded so stupid to them.

“And,” Uncle Peter continued, “after we eat we expect a little show. You’ll be singing for your supper here, Michael.”

“He’s getting a cold,” Charlie said. “Shouldn’t have gone swimming. It’s getting worse.”

“Let me see,” Aunt Mary said. She stood up and came over to me. She put her hand on my forehead and then made me say “Ahh” while she looked at my throat. “Fit as a fiddle,” she decided.

“Castor oil,” Pat said. “What he needs is castor oil.”

“That’s the last thing he needs,” Sissie said and Uncle Peter told her to hush.

While Aunt Mary and the girls did the dishes, using water that had been heated on the wood stove in the summer kitchen, Uncle Peter and the two older boys went out to check on the animals.

“Since we have company,” Aunt Mary said, “I believe we’ll use the parlor this evening.”

“Is it all right if I show Michael the rest of the house?” Charlie asked and she nodded. “Come on,” he said to me.

First he led me out to the summer kitchen. It looked a lot like the other kitchen only it was smaller and it had a little table. The main part of the house was the regular kitchen, a dining room (“Which we never use,” Charlie said.) and a parlor.

A parlor, I discovered, is a living room. There was a sofa, a couple of stuffed chairs, a piano and some end tables with weird lamps on them.

“How do these work?” I asked, pointing to the lamps.

“Kerosene,” Charlie said.

Then he led me upstairs. There were three bedrooms. One for the boys, one for the girls, and one for Uncle Peter and Aunt Mary and Francis.

“Let’s go, boys,” I heard a man call up the stairs. “We’re waiting for you.” It sounded just like Dad.

“Coming, Pa,” Charlie answered. “Look at this,” he said, opening the top drawer of his dresser. He pulled out an old sock, a clean one. Inside it was about two dozen marbles. “I got twelve of these this morning for my birthday,” he said. “One for each year. Get it?”

“Uh huh.”

That was it? Twelve lousy marbles?

“You play?” he asked.

“Play?”

“Marbles.”

“Uh, no.”

“It’s a fun game,” he said.

Marbles was a game?

“Look at this one,” he said. It was clear glass with streaks of red, white and blue in it. “This is my best one,” he said.

“BOYS!”

We headed downstairs and everyone else was in the parlor. They were on their knees, facing the sofa and the chairs. Aunt Mary nodded at the door and Charlie reached around back and took two rosaries from the door knob. He handed one to me and then he knelt down. I did, too.

For the next fifteen minutes or so we said the rosary together. I was familiar with all those prayers, of course, and I thought Uncle Peter looked a little relieved when he saw that I knew how to answer.

When we were done praying, Pat said to me, “First you juggle and then you sing.”

“He hurt his hand,” Charlie said. “Something fierce.’ Bout broke it clean off swimming.”

But Pat wasn’t listening. He had gone out into the kitchen. He returned with three red apples.

“His back!” Charlie said. “He hurt his back, too.”

“Well, Michael, it sounds as if you’re falling apart,” Uncle Peter said.

“The show must go on,” I answered and Charlie groaned. Everyone sat down as I took the three apples. I walked over by the piano and I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages . . .”

“Just like the circus,” Sean said. “I hope you don’t plan on doing handstands on a horse in here.”

And then—much to almost everyone’s delight, Charlie’s surprise, and Pat’s dismay—I juggled. I did a regular underhand juggle. I did it large. I did it small. I did it over the top. I did two apples with one hand and then switched and did two apples with the other. Then I went back to a regular underhand with three apples and ended up tossing one to Pat, one to Charlie, and one to Sissie. I bowed and they clapped and I felt wonderful.

Sissie immediately began eating hers.

Then I sat down at the piano. It’s funny how things work out. Last winter I had sprained my ankle right in the middle of basketball season and I could only hobble around and so Dad bought me three juggling balls and a book on how to juggle.

I had practiced that because I couldn’t play ball.

And Mom . . . . Ever since I was in second grade Mom had insisted I take piano lessons. At first they were okay; then I hated them; and, recently, with a new teacher, I had learned something besides stuff by Mozart or some other guy who has been dead for a million years.

So I decided to use the same piece I used for the spring talent show at school. I started with Mozart and Uncle Peter and Aunt Mary looked pleased and everyone else looked bored. Then after just a little bit of that, I switched into a rock and roll classic sung by Jerry Lee Lewis: “Great Balls of Fire.”

I couldn’t do it as well as he did, of course, but I could bang it out pretty loud and then I started singing, too, and everyone was clapping and the littlest kids started jumping around.

When I got done, Uncle Peter said, “Goodness!”

Aunt Mary said, “Gracious!”

And all the kids shouted, “Great balls of fire!”

All except Sissie. She was just standing there. She looked as if she wanted to cough but she couldn’t. Her hands were up at her throat. She looked scared. Her eyes fluttered and then she fell to the floor.

Chapter 20

Sissie

“Lord, bless us and save us,” Aunt Mary said as she rushed to Sissie’s side. The little girl wasn’t moving. Her lips were turning blue.

“She’s choking!” Uncle Peter said and he knelt beside her. He put her into a sitting position and began to firmly pound on her upper back. She was like a rag doll. If he hadn’t held her tightly with the other hand, she would have toppled forward.

“Hold her upside down,” Aunt Mary suggested and Uncle Peter stood and easily lifted the little girl by her ankles and started shaking her. By now about thirty seconds had gone by since she had passed out.

Francis, Catherine, and Jerome were crying. I could hear Charlie whispering, “Not like William, not like William, not like William.”

People in the future still choke, I thought.

“Sissie!” Aunt Mary remained on her knees, talking right at her daughter. “Sissie! Come on, Sissie!”

But in the future, I thought, we use the . . .

“Heimlich!” I shouted but no one paid any attention to me.

“The Heimlich maneuver,” I said. “Use the Heimlich maneuver!”

It was on a VCR movie we had had to watch in science class. It was kind of a stupid movie but it did show a person exactly what to do. I remembered the steps because later some of us boys had been kidding around on the playground. Pretending to use it and then seeing who could spit the farthest.

I saw the movie a second time in my Boy Scout first aid class.

“Uncle Peter,” I said, “let me.”

It had been about forty-five seconds now. I couldn’t remember how long a person had to go without breathing before getting permanent brain damage. A couple of minutes at the most, I thought.

“Put her down,” I said. I kind of ordered him.

“Michael,” Aunt Mary said, “this is no time for . . .”

“There isn’t much time,” I said. “Put her down. I know what to do. I learned it in school. Put. Her. Down.
Now!
”

I heard Brigid gasp. I guess no one ever talked to her dad that way. But there just wasn’t time to be polite or do a lot of explaining.

I bent over and grabbed Sissie around her chest and lifted her up. She didn’t weigh very much. “Let go of her ankles,” I said to Uncle Peter. He did and her legs flopped down.

I spun her around so her back was to me, just like in the VCR movie. Then I joined my hands together in front of her where they were supposed to be and pushed in and up.

Nothing happened.