Stealing Flowers (6 page)

Moreover, my relationship with Stan and Mary
had grown naturally warm. Tomorrow morning, Sally and I were going
flying with Stan, for me, my fourth time, and we were going all the
way to Washington, D.C. The last time out, both Sally and I had
taken the handle for a few minutes. It was a rush for both of us
and that night as we cuddled in my second sleep, we dreamt of
becoming pilots.

I had several trips to doctors to take out
the stitches and to get creams to reduce the scar on my forehead.
It wasn’t too big and I didn’t mind it, except for it itched badly
every once and a while. I also had dentist appointments, visited
clothiers with Stan, and had a meeting with a man with a beard who
showed me his gun collection and asked me questions about what I
was thinking as I looked at pictures of images like clouds and
ink-spots. I easily made things up with fuzzy, soft, positive
answers. I knew I’d fooled him without difficulty. For some reason,
he wasn’t aware that as an orphan, I’d have already had many such
tests.

This week’s baseball game was the second
last one of the summer. We played on diamond two, the one farthest
away from the bay, the smallest one. The diamonds all had evening
lights provided from four cement columns the height of about twenty
meters. They also had small stands which could hold a maximum of
fifty spectators or so. They’d bullpens as well, although nothing
fancy.

The stands and lights separated the four
diamonds from each other, and they themselves formed a larger
diamond. No fences or other borders had been built between the
diamonds. That morning, I caught a fly ball and got a hit to first
base, then was hit home by Kurt who is a good baseball player. I
was happy and only wished Una, Stan, or Mary, had been there to see
it. Everything I did well, I wanted them to see. I wanted them to
know I appreciated what they did for me. Several of the boys on the
team were growing their hair long and I told them that they looked
like girls. We almost had a fight.

When the game ended, we bought hotdogs and
orange and grape soda-pop with the money that Andy and Kurt’s
father – Bert – had given us for a snacks. We also had four bus
tickets which he had pre-purchased and given to Kurt for safe
keeping. Usually Bert or Stan would be with us, but today Bert
worked and couldn’t see the game nor get us home. If he’d asked
Mary, Stan, or Una’s permission for us to bus it home without an
adult, I’d have been surprised.

I could see that Kurt grew apprehensive the
minute we stepped out of the park, and though he tried to hide it,
it only grew more apparent as we blended into the Saturday street
commotion. The riffraff and street people, many of them hippies,
were panhandling. The traffic wasn’t only busy, the level of noise
was annoying. Open construction-trucks barreled along Willow and
randomly spit up stones. Taxis erratically pulled U-turns to catch
sudden fares from the fast-food crowds on the north side. An
endless stream of buses barreled through. Just beyond the ballparks
the other way, a popular mall attracted much traffic as well.

Sally had her long blond hair pulled into a
pony-tail and Kurt wore a baseball cap. Andy and I were bare headed
with short haircuts. We wore t-shirts which said, The Yankees. Andy
shaded his eyes from the sunlight and looked back at the park. His
dark complexion and short athletic body, made him almost a dwarf to
me. He was an easy-going boy and I felt protective of him. “Look,”
he said and pointed to Diamond Two, “They’ve started another game
already.”

Sally handed me her baseball glove and the
bat, letting out her ponytail so that her hair fell loosely to her
back. To the north of us stood a well-known steak house, and beside
it, a theater showing, 2001, A Space Odyssey.

Kurt led us to the streetcar stop we needed.
Even at the traffic-lights, cars rushed to turn and honked at us
for going too slow or too fast or whatever we were doing wrong.
After a moment, the Hoboken bus came and we hopped on, turned in
our tickets, and with our transfers in hand, went to the back where
the only empty seats remained.

The air was so stale that I covered my nose
with my hand. It smelled of body-odor and farts. Sally gave me a
candy that tasted like banana, only better. It helped. The four of
us sat close together and ignored everyone else. Kurt tried to
behave like an adult but was obviously nervous, like a cat
surrounded by dogs. To make matters worse, I saw two older boys
swagger onto the bus three stops later and sit nearby. They were
maybe thirteen and fourteen-years-old, both were broad-shouldered
and glossy-eyed. They stared at us greedily.

Although I’d never seen them before, the way
they walked and looked around for marks, I knew they were bullies.
It didn’t look like they lived out on the streets, but they might
have been invested in a young strong-arm gang and even run tricks
for a bigwig. Lloyd had done this for a while, offering himself to
older homosexual businessmen, then getting them cornered with
several fellow ruffians, and pinching them for what they had agreed
to pay but without the sex. Sometimes, Lloyd wouldn’t use the help.
He’d let the businessmen do their thing and keep the money for
himself. That way nothing went to the strong-arm gang boss. Before
the Tappets, these were the images and stories which daily filled
my head, but now I was purified. When you’re purified, you’re
fearless. The two began making crude guttural sounds, and
whispering, “Hey girlies,” or “Faggot boys.”

It wasn’t exactly in our direction, but used
to intimidate everyone in their immediate purview. I was dismayed
to look around and not see a single adult in the back of the bus,
except an old man. They began punching each other on the arms with
forceful blows, any number of which would have laid me unconscious
in a second if connected. They swore aloud and attracted everyone’s
attention in the seats around us. I gathered this was their routine
of intimidation.

“Let’s go to the front of the bus,” I urged
Kurt in a low voice.

“Good game?” the big plug-ugly fourteen year
old said to Sally, coming up, sitting beside her, and grabbing
Kurt’s hand so that he couldn’t rise. I looked him over. He’d
uneven eyebrows and an almost completely healed black eye. He
weighed at least thirty or forty more pounds than me. Sally didn’t
answer and shook with fear.

“Hey slut, my friend asked you if you had a
nice game,” his companion said.

I gripped the bat extra tightly. “Fuck off!”
I shouted at him. I jumped to my feet and swung the bat at his
head. In these life or death altercations, as Lloyd had taught me,
you have to strike first, hard and fast or you’re finished. I’d
never have a better chance at beating two bullies. After all, I’d a
bat. They would both have knives, but probably switchblades, and if
I acted fast, they’d no chance to get them out. The bat connected
solidly to the younger boy’s forehead. He fell forward, blood
spewing out of his mouth. I’d have swung the bat at the second
combatant’s head, but Sally was too close to him, so I used it like
a spear and drove it into his stomach with all my might. I hit him
clean, then he crumpled to the floor with the wind knocked out of
him, covering his head as I threatened a second blow.

Several young passengers screamed. The bus
screeched to a halt and I flew forward onto the back of the
fourteen-year-old bully, but I managed to jump to my feet at once,
with the bat still in my hands, and grabbed Sally, rushing out to
the street through the back-doors. Kurt and Andy followed us. We
ran down a side-street for a few minutes.

“You saved our lives,” Kurt said.

Sally kissed and hugged me. “You’re the
best, Scrumps.”

We came out on a main street, and I flagged
down a cab. I could see everyone was immensely impressed with this
as well.

“Are you from West or East Pakistan?” I
asked the driver, after I got into the front-seat, letting the
others have the back. Lloyd had told me to ask this question to a
cab driver so that they wouldn’t cheat you and drive you
unnecessarily around the city. I was hoping Una was going to pay
for this when we got home and I tried to keep the cost down.

“Where you going, kid?” the driver asked
with a laugh. Sally gave him the address.

“Do you know where the Bronx is?” he asked.
I nodded and rolled down the window to avoid his tobacco smoke.
“That’s the part of Pakistan I’m from,” he said, “the Irish part.
What about you? What part of Pakistan are you from?”

I saw he enjoyed himself and that Lloyd’s
advice had again paid off. I shrugged and eyed him kindly. He was a
wiry fellow who looked like a boxer. “I’m from the English part,” I
said.

When we arrived, the cab driver pulled right
into the driveway.

“You don’t seem like a rich kid,” he said.
“What did you do? Muscle in on them?”

“I’m adopted,” I said. I could see the fare
was nearly eighteen dollars, but I didn’t know whether that was a
lot or a little. To my utter surprise, Sally passed him a plastic
card and he looked it over, laughing again. “This is yours” he
asked Sally. She nodded. “How old are you?”

“Eight,” she said.

“An eight-year-old with her own American
Express,” he said softly, clearly amazed. “We don’t take it. I want
cash.”

Sally gave him a twenty-dollar bill.

“Where did you get that card?” I said when
the cab had left.

“From Mary. Are you going to come for a
swim?” she asked Kurt and Andy. They both nodded. We swam the
afternoon away. I was very happy.

“Sally and I are going to mass at eleven
o’clock in Kearny tomorrow morning,” Mary said at supper. “We’d
like you to come.”

“Is that where you get the plastic card
Sally has?” I asked.

“That’s a different church,” Stan said.

Mary and Una laughed. “Will I still be able
to go flying with Dad first?” I asked.

“Oh, I forgot,” Mary said.

“I can have you back by eleven,” Stan said,
“if you’d like to go. We were going to land in Washington, but we
can do that run another time.”

“Don’t you go to church?” I asked.

“I have no idea what’s out there in the
world of the hocus-pocus,” he said, “and the truth is, neither does
anyone else, no matter what they say.”

“You have to have faith, my full grown
child,” Una said, contradicting Stan and looking at him
mischievously with her big happy brown eyes. “Lots and lots of
faith. The more faith, the clearer the path. Jesus gives everyone
the gift of faith.”

I nodded almost imperceptibly, agreeing
completely that Jesus did just that, but I didn’t want to appear to
choose one path over the other. I hadn’t detected any friction in
the household over it, but there was clearly disagreement. That
night during my second sleep, as I held Sally, I asked her what I
should do.

“We can go flying first,” she answered. “Mom
won’t mind, but then we should go to church with Una and her. Una
doesn’t believe in the Catholic Jesus, but she still goes to church
with mom. We’re Catholics, but not Dad or Una. Dad doesn’t believe
in God. Una doesn’t believe in the Pope.”

“I don’t know the Pope,” I said, “but I know
Jesus. He comes to me in my dreams.”

“Why is your thing always hard when your in
bed with me?” she asked.

“Because I love you.” This seemed to satisfy
her and she kissed me on the mouth. “It’s supposed to go inside a
girl when you love her,” I added.

“Don’t do that. It would hurt.”

The last thing I wanted was to hurt her, and
besides, Lloyd had told me that splashing inside a girl makes
babies, so this answer didn’t bother me at all. “I won’t,” I
whispered and kissed her again.

The next morning, Stan took us flying. After
lift-off, he let Sally take the stick while he found his place in
the book of aviation, Power of Flight.

“The hardest part in learning to fly is
judging speed,” he read aloud. “At first it seems hard to know.
Knots Calibrated Airspeed for instance is speed graduated to equal
knots true airspeed. Knots Indicated Airspeed shown on the KIAS
speed indicator is speed expressed in knots. Maneuvering speed,
maximum-flap extended speed, maximum structural cruising speed,
never exceed speed, stalling speed, best rate of climb speed, all
indicate different operational speeds. Although you should know how
the demonstrated crosswind velocity of the plane and the nautical
miles per gallon interplay, with practice, it all takes on a life
of its own. You’ll acquire a sense of wind force, how it interacts
with speed, fuel, and maneuverability. With practice, you’ll always
know where you sit in these regards while piloting the craft.”

Stan read for a few minutes more and then
Sally and I traded places. The sensation of flying a plane is
exceptional. With Sally, Una, Mr. Vondt, Stan, and Mary, my life
had already become a fairy tale. Added to that, the mansion, my
room, organized baseball games, swimming lessons, and a promised
credit card, it was a complete disconnection with my old life.
Flying definitely put it over the top. It was a feeling of power
and freedom, of being above the world, of being in control and of
being in a dream.

Before me, there were fifty or so system
indicators, markers, or lights on the instrument panel. I had
memorized them all, even the unimportant ones like the cigar
lighter and ashtray. I knew in my heart, Stan was enormously
impressed. Sally had overheard a conversation between him and Una
with respect to my progress in swimming, flying, education, and so
forth.

“We’ve hit the jackpot in that boy,” Stan
had said.

I didn’t know what kind of pot that was, but
Sally said it was a valuable one.

We flew over Long Island to Rhode Island,
then I flew over the Long Island Sound on the way back. The water
was calm and quiet. A few sails were out and they appeared to be
anchored and unmoving. After we arrive home, we went to mass with
Una and Mary. The Catholic Church was enormous and there were
paintings everywhere. One painting of Jesus with his heart outside
his body circled by shining light captivated me. He looked exactly
as he did in my dreams. The choir music during the mass swept me
away in prayer. I talked to Jesus and asked him to guide my life.
The tall lean robed priest at the front of the altar held up the
chalice with great dramatic effect and took to the pulpit sometime
afterward.