New Moon (5 page)

He took us to a rodeo where cowboys and horses pranced to
loud music; men wrestled steers to the ground. He kept asking us if it was exciting enough. Jonny thought so and clapped, but I was sullen and silent, leading him to tease me about being a city boy.

With no more warning than when we came, we got on a train and went through cities into winter. Only when I was older did I learn my mother had left Daddy, then changed her mind a month later and came back.

When I reentered Miss Tighe’s class, everyone had gotten far ahead. I stared at gibberish. I couldn’t do the numbers or read most of the longer words, so I was given separate pages to work on while the others moved ahead.

At the three o’clock bell, we ran down halls into the yard and sorted in clumps for “group”—that was the name for our after-school program: a boys-only day camp. Wagons along the curb represented different companies: mine was Bill-Dave, the same fleet of drivers who picked me up in the morning—a rival group was Leo Mayer’s Champions. Bill was our fat, friendly ringmaster; Dave was the name of a man fighting in Korea.

On the curb we were counted and culled into wagons. I was put in the younger batch with seven- and eight-year olds. From there we were driven to Central Park. A counselor found an empty field where he organized games. These included “Capture the Flag,” bombardment, volleyball, and soccer.

In Capture the Flag, shirts or sweaters were set at the back of enemy territory. We had to run the gauntlet of the opposing team, grab the “flag,” and return with it to our own base without being tagged. If caught, we were put in jail near the flag, but any member of either team could release all his team’s inmates by dashing toward the prison, eluding pursuers by swerves, tagging a prisoner, and shouting some part of the mantra “Ringoleavio! Ally Ally, All Free.”

In bombardment a scratch in the dirt made by a stick separated teams. A fat, blubbery ball was heaved back and forth by those on the other side. If a player was hit, he was “out,” but if the ball was caught, the one who threw it was “out.” The best strategy was to charge the line and make a target of one’s self so as to be in position
for a catch. Since a throw had to be from the point of getting the ball—no stepping up to aim!—a close-in dare also allowed a well-targeted return.

I delighted in the smack of rubber in the chests of kids who caught it, the suspense of a sudden toss back among scattering opponents. I wriggled my body, jumping up and down. Sometimes the ball came my way and, once, I surprised myself by snagging it in my stomach and holding on. “Throw it!” they shouted. But I was slow to let my prize go.

More often I imagined that by whirling around I could avoid getting hit. The actual thump always startled me.

Soon after I began Bill-Dave Mommy wanted me to go on Saturday too. She said it would be good for me to be with boys my age. “And anyway all you and Jonny do is fight.”

I had to get up early to meet the wagon downstairs. I felt my innards tingling with their special Saturday weakness as if I were stringy and hollow inside. I wanted to stay home, but the day beckoned too with majesty and depth. I ran among other kids in soccer and football, a chill wind stealing the last ornaments from branches as, to the frustration of Bill, we abandoned plays to try to catch them mid-air.

Some Saturdays Bill held treasure hunts. Sent among fields and copses, we collected colored strings, leaves, clovers, bubble-gum comics, and candy wrappers, to complete a schedule of items. Stray amulets were precious when happened upon, but one had to be cautious in the brush, for we also came upon mushed pinions of pigeon slabs and dead rats: lady’s hats and dolls that weren’t hats or dolls.

My favorite activity was “Hares and Hounds.” In this adventure, a team called the Hares set out across Central Park, drawing chalk arrows on the pavement to signify their real direction, other arrows as camouflage—occasionally sending scouts to leave long false trails ending with suddenly no more arrows. After giving the Hares a fifteen-minute head start, confirmed by a counselor with a wristwatch, the Hounds had to track and catch up to them and, if there was time, become Hares and hide.

As Hares we crossed the park in haste, racing through tunnels and playgrounds, creating labyrinths, dispatching scouts—“Let me! Let me!”—to lead the Hounds to dead ends, waiting till they returned with proud tales of dupery: multidirectional arrows, spoors down remote paths.

As Hounds we followed the Hares’ markings on pavement, dispatching our own scouts to check out forks and see if one was actually the main trail, hurrying to make up ground.

Our counselors took these hunts seriously and discussed strategy with the older kids. They were concerned never to be done in by fellow counselors who had tricked them before. “Remember the time those pricks crossed that meadow with no arrows?” counselor Freddie said to counselor Wally.

“Remember? I’m going to put those jackasses in a corral and throw away the key. They break the fartin’ rules every time.”

Once we spent a whole day looking for the Hares while our counselor cursed and kicked the dust. Every trail, it seemed, was false, the most promising one ending in taunting crisscrosses pointing every which way.

They had hidden in the weather castle on the lake, a path we had discounted as an obvious false trail. The custodian, not realizing they were Hares, invited them in for a tour of the facility. We were hunted down later by howling Hares.

“Not fair!” we shouted when they led us to their hiding place. “The rules say you can’t go indoors.”

But we visited the necromancers’ chamber together. With its spinning globes and glowing dials, in my imagination this castle
made
the winds; its keepers, standing over maps and drums, decided when to send rain and snow through the City.

In late afternoons counselors acted out stories about “the olden days.” Bill-Dave Group was supposedly founded by a hero named Ranger, but almost from the beginning he was sabotaged and duped by the Bully. Throughout each episode, as Ranger turned the tables and got revenge, we shouted and cheered his feats. The Bully sniggered away, but he’d be back.

These were lazy, priceless times, as I lay with the others in our make-believe fort of rock outcroppings, eyes on horizons of buildings. Raptly following the action, we laughed at imitation voices and clapped or moaned at each turn of fate.

On the way back to the wagon on Fifth, we stopped at the drinking fountain, lining up for our chances. A spout was initiated and cobblestones moistened by pushing in a hard metal knob. I eagerly awaited my time at the oasis, to lean and put lips and palate and tongue into the flow, take cold greedy sips and quench thirst forever.

At the end of the day a short, round counselor named Bert drove people home in a familiar order while teasing and heckling us and giving disgusting accounts of war mutilations: severed arms and penises and other deformities. “You want to talk blood and guts,” he serenaded. “I’ll give ya blood and guts.” He described Japanese and Korean torturers, how they drove stakes through victims’ eyes, cut off hands, and held noses under dripping faucets.

Other times we convinced him to turn the radio to “Tom Corbett: Space Cadet” and “Planet Man.” As our vehicle swerved through traffic, eerie sounds sent rockets zooming to other worlds. One by one, to hoots and distortions of our names, we hopped out at our apartment buildings.

Before dinner I watched television. For the puppet show
Kukla, Fran, and Ollie
Jonny and I sat alongside each other, charmed by the squawky rumpus of marionettes. Daddy knew Fran, so he brought home a rubber Ollie-dragon glove and Kukla finger-clown after which my brother and I staged our own performances from behind a living-room table.

Although
Flash Gordon
terrified me, I never missed a show. Night after night I followed his escapades, as his rocket took him to covens of regal and rhinoceroid creatures. One time Flash got imprisoned on an enemy world in an acid shower and was pounding on the door, screaming to get out. I turned the TV off. I didn’t want to watch.

In a similar story on
The Cisco Kid
Indians wrapped his sidekick in poisoned blankets. The coverlets were killing him, as he shook
spasmodically.

My blankets could be doused too. How would I know? Some nights I kicked them clear down the sheets, unable to get the squirming man out of my mind.

Other times as I lay in bed before sleep, my hands changed shape and size on their own, my feet dwindling to beyond my torso. As fingers and lips swelled into fat trees, my legs shot out in the distance, so far beyond that my toes were as remote as a city seen from clouds. Inside my lips and up my arms I felt thick water pulled by a magnet.

I was frightened but curious, so tried staying there long enough to fill with electricity. In ensuing paralysis I struggled to move even a finger. Finally I willed myself to wiggle my left pinky, and the spell snapped as if it had never happened.

Nanny and Mommy didn’t know about these matters and, though I have no idea what they were, I think of them now as migranoid/hypnagogic trances. But they could have been anything. In the mystery that gives us a mind and a body, there are countless unknowns.

Mean kids and bullies at group enforced their authority with sticks and fists, stings from rubber bands and pea-shooters. The only alternative to a fight was being harassed and goaded, called a spastic—“you spazz!”—or worse. My wet pants qualified me as a full-fledged schmendrick, so I was shoved against the side of the wagon or someone stuck gum on my shirt. A kid elbowed me and then turned away, pretending not to notice: “Geez, who would have done that!”

Amused by such antics as if watching chimps at the zoo, our counselors rarely intervened.

My mother presumed that I provoked other kids, but bullies didn’t need provocation.

A wish to retaliate smoldered in me. One time I did swing back. “Oh, the baby wants to fight!” my tormentor goaded as others went, “Woo-woo, nincompoop.” He put up his boxing stance and socked my chest hard, stunning me. They laughed, made faces, and sang:

“You think that’s funny!” I spat, delirious with rage. I punched back.

“Harty-har-har!” he countered, slapping my fist away and knocking me in the face as they finished their rhyme:

During winter, dusk came early, and Bill-Dave kids were beans in sweaters and overcoats. Our wagon skidded on snowy streets as we squealed and threw our bodies into one another.

On sunny days we stayed outdoors, sledding, building forts, staging snowball wars that seemed to last a lifetime. I felt like a soldier in an ancient battle of ice. We had to fight our way sector by sector around the rear of an opposing army, gain high ground on boulders and rock ledges, store enough ammunition (piles of hard snowballs), and charge their positions, heaving bullets down on them as they scattered.

We were sometimes surprised from another flank. Snow was stuffed down our collars and backs. We sought shelter behind any bush or tree.

Finally the glow of evening ended the battle. We trooped through the Park, our mittens caked with ice, our bodies throbbing, frost in our pants … past the Museum, past the chestnut man, into the wagons, then home.

On rainy afternoons, Bill-Dave went indoors to a variety of places: a drafty downtown gym where we heaved a basketball at hanging chains; the Metropolitan Museum of Art with its suits of armor, mummies, and stone tombs; the Planetarium where we could read our weights on the Moon (light as a sparrow) or Jupiter (heavier than a whale); the Penny Arcade (handed $2 each in a package of dimes); and a roller rink. I remember working my way around the circle of the dreary ballroom, dodging other skaters, going fast then slow, fast then slow, lumbering toward openings, passing through hot and cold drafts, collecting unexplained ball bearings from the hardwood as piped music played yet another same polka … waiting for the endless day to end.

At the Museum we chased through catacombs, making werewolf faces and moans, while long-dead kings, queens, and their runes watched impassively.

Next door at Hayden Planetarium we took seats in a round theater, a huge legless robot mounted in its center. Celestial music sounded as the ceiling darkened into the New York skyline followed by a starry night at which we let out a collective “oooo.” Soaring into the heavens, we landed on a Martian desert, as the narrator described the world’s bitter cold and tiny red sun; then we watched the planet’s two tiny moons rising and setting. After taking off, we shot farther out as the sun dwindled rapidly in the ceiling. Suddenly we plunged through Saturn’s rings to frigid Mimas. After a tour of its snowy crags we levitated out of our galaxy into violet-tinged nebulae, birthplaces of stars and the whole universe.

We spent many inclement afternoons at the 92nd Street Y. Rows of nuts and nougats sat in windows by magazines in the foyer, their indescribable smells cascading into the room…. Mounds, Oh Henry!, Spearmint Leaves, Butterfinger, Mallow Cup, Clark Bar, Hershey’s Krackle, Goobers, Cherry and Grape gums, Jujyfruits, Chunky, Snickers. These arrays were replicas of eternal events. Each bore some essence of hunger and was capable of filling me with its gist. All afternoon I longed to bite into morsels of their confection, but my allowance, a dime raised gradually to fifteen cents and then a quarter, was long ago spent.

Mallow Cups had a sweet, sticky vanilla cream in hard rippled chocolate. Mounds were pulpy with sugary coconut. Almond Joys were Mounds with nuts imbedded in their chocolate glaze. Butterfingers were a crunchy nougat of chocolate-covered caramel. Mars Bars had a mocha nutty goo. Chunkies were raisins and roasted peanuts in a hard cube of chocolate. Three Musketeers ensconced a whipped fluff, moist and porous to the bite.

Mommy told me to buy only raisins, never candy. That’s what I said I did, but she was uncanny at guessing the truth. She announced one night at dinner that I was destroying my insides with junk.