The Roy Stories (10 page)

 

The Aerodynamics of an Irishman

There was a man who lived on my block when I was a kid whose name was Rooney Sullavan. He would often come walking down the street while the kids were playing ball in front of my house or Johnny McLaughlin's house. Rooney would always stop and ask if he'd ever shown us how he used to throw the knuckleball back when he pitched for Kankakee in 1930.

“Plenty of times, Rooney,” Billy Cunningham would say. “No knuckles about it, right?” Tommy Ryan would say. “No knuckles about it, right!” Rooney Sullavan would say. “Give it here and I'll show you.” One of us would reluctantly toss Rooney the ball and we'd step up so he could demonstrate for the fortieth time how he held the ball by his fingertips only, no knuckles about it.

“Don't know how it ever got the name knuckler,” Rooney'd say. “I call mine the Rooneyball.” Then he'd tell one of us, usually Billy because he had the catcher's glove—the old fat-heeled kind that didn't bend unless somebody stepped on it, a big black mitt that Billy's dad had handed down to him from his days at Kankakee or Rock Island or someplace—to get sixty feet away so Rooney could see if he could still “make it wrinkle.”

Billy would pace off twelve squares of sidewalk, each square being approximately five feet long, the length of one nine year old boy's body stretched head to toe lying flat, squat down, and stick his big black glove out in front of his face. With his right hand he'd cover his crotch in case the pitch got away and short-hopped off the cement where he couldn't block it with the mitt. The knuckleball was unpredictable, not even Rooney could tell what would happen once he let it go.

“It's the air makes it hop,” Rooney claimed. His leather jacket creaked as he bent, wound up, rotated his right arm like nobody'd done since Chief Bender, crossed his runny gray eyes, and released the ball from the tips of his fingers. We watched as it sailed straight up at first, then sort of floated on an invisible wave before plunging the last ten feet like a balloon that had been pierced by a dart.

Billy always went down on his knees, the back of his right hand stiffened over his crotch, and stuck out his gloved hand at the slowly whirling Rooneyball. Just before it got to Billy's mitt the ball would give out entirely and sink rapidly, inducing Billy to lean forward in order to catch it, only he couldn't because at the last instant it would take a final, sneaky hop before bouncing surprisingly hard off of Billy's unprotected chest.

“
Just
like I told you,” Rooney Sullavan would exclaim. “All it takes is plain old air.”

Billy would come up with the ball in his upturned glove, his right hand rubbing the place on his chest where the pitch had hit. “You all right, son?” Rooney would ask, and Billy would nod. “Tough kid,” Rooney'd say. “I'd like to stay out with you fellas all day, but I got responsibilities.” Rooney would muss up Billy's hair with the hand that held the secret to the Rooneyball and walk away whistling “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” or “My Wild Irish Rose.” Rooney was about forty-five or fifty years old and lived with his mother in a bungalow at the corner. He worked nights for Wanzer Dairy, washing out returned milk bottles.

Tommy Ryan would grab the ball out of Billy's mitt and hold it by the tips of his fingers like Rooney Sullavan did, and Billy would go sit on the stoop in front of the closest house and rub his chest. “No way,” Tommy would say, considering the prospect of his ever duplicating Rooney's feat. “There must be something he's not telling us.”

 

A Rainy Day at the Nortown Theater

When I was about nine or ten years old my dad picked me up from school one day and took me to the movies. I didn't see him very often since my parents were divorced and I lived with my mother. This day my dad asked me what I wanted to do and since it was raining hard we decided to go see
Dragnet
starring Jack Webb and an Alan Ladd picture,
Shane
.

I had already seen
Dragnet
twice and since it wasn't such a great movie I was really interested in seeing
Shane
, which I'd already seen as well, but only once, and had liked it, especially the end where the kid, Brandon de Wilde, goes running through the bulrushes calling for Shane to come back, “Come back, Shane! Shane, come back!” I had really remembered that scene and was anxious to see it again, so all during
Dragnet
I kept still because I thought my dad wanted to see it, not having already seen it, and when
Shane
came on I was happy.

But it was Wednesday and my dad had promised my mother he'd have me home for dinner at six, so at about a quarter to, like I had dreaded in the back of my head, my dad said we had to go.

“But Dad,” I said “
Shane
's not over till six-thirty and I want to see the end where the kid goes running after him yelling, ‘Come back, Shane!' That's the best part!”

But my dad said no, we had to go, so I got up and went with him but walked slowly backward up the aisle to see as much of the picture as I could even though I knew now I wasn't going to get to see the end, and we were in the lobby, which was dark and red with gold curtains, and saw it was still pouring outside. My dad made me put on my coat and duck my head down into it when we made a run for the car, which was parked not very far away.

My dad drove me home and talked to me but I didn't hear what he said. I was thinking about the kid who would be running after Shane in about ten more minutes. I kissed my dad good-bye and went in to eat dinner but I stood in the hall and watched him drive off before I did.

 

Renoir's
Chemin montant dans les hautes herbes

The path on the hillside is a stripe of light, a three-dimensional effect. There is nothing theoretical about this: everything is where it is supposed to be. Not merely light and shadow and balance and color but the unprepared for, the element that informs as well as verifies the work. As the light in the Salle Caillebotte in the Jeu de Paume changes the painting changes, too—like the sun slowly emerging from behind a cloud, it opens and displays more of itself.

The people and the setting are from a previous century: women and children descending the path. There is absolutely nothing savage about the picture. Flowers, fruit trees, foot-worn path, wooden fence—nothing to disturb. The element of feeling is calm; difficulty disappears.

An early summer afternoon in the house in Chicago. I'm ten years old. The sky is very dark. A thunderstorm. I'm sitting on the floor in my room, the cool tiles. The rain comes, at first very hard, then soft. I'm playing a game by myself. Nobody else is around, except, perhaps, my mother, in another part of the house. There is and will be for a while nothing to disturb me. This is my most beloved childhood memory, an absolutely inviolable moment, totally devoid of difficulty. It's the same feeling I have when I look at Renoir's
Chemin montant dans les hautes herbes
. I doubt very seriously if my father would have understood this feeling.

 

Forever After

Riding in a car on a highway late at night was one of Roy's greatest pleasures. In between towns, on dark, sparsely populated roads, Roy enjoyed imagining the lives of these isolated inhabitants, their looks, clothes, and habits. He also liked listening to the radio when his mother or father did not feel like talking. Roy and one or the other of his parents spent a considerable amount of time traveling, mostly on the road between Chicago, New Orleans and Miami, the three cities in which they alternately resided.

Roy did not mind this peripatetic existence because it was the only life he knew. When he grew up, Roy thought, he might prefer to remain in one place for more than a couple of months at a time; but for now, being always “on the go,” as his mother phrased it, did not displease him. Roy liked meeting new people at the hotels at which they stayed, hearing stories about these strangers' lives in Cincinnati or Houston or Indianapolis. Roy often memorized the names of their dogs and horses, the names of the streets on which they lived, even the numbers on their houses. The only numbers of this nature Roy owned were room numbers at the hotels. When someone asked him where he lived, Roy would respond: “The Roosevelt, room 504,” or “The Ambassador, room 309,” or “The Delmonico, room 406.”

One night when Roy and his father were in southern Georgia, headed for Ocala, Florida, a report came over the car radio about a manhunt being conducted for a thirty-two year old Negro male named Lavern Rope. Lavern Rope, an unemployed catfish farm worker who until recently had been living in Belzoni, Mississippi, had apparently murdered his mother, then kidnapped a nun, whose car he had stolen. Most of the nun's body was found in the bathtub of a hotel room in Valdosta, not far from where Roy and his father were driving. The nun's left arm was missing, police said, and was assumed to still be in the possession of Lavern Rope, who was last reported seen leaving Vic and Flo's Forever After Drive-in, a popular Valdosta hamburger stand, just past midnight in Sister Mary Alice Gogarty's 1957 red and beige Chrysler Newport convertible.

Roy immediately went on the lookout for the stolen car, though the stretch of highway they were on was pretty lonely at three o'clock in the morning. Only one car had passed them, going the other way, in the last half hour or so, and Roy had not noticed what model it was.

“Dad,” said Roy, “why would Lavern Rope keep the nun's left arm?”

“Probably thought it would make the body harder to identify,” Roy's father answered. “Maybe she had a tattoo on it.”

“I didn't think nuns had tattoos.”

“She could have got it before she became a nun.”

“He'll probably dump the arm somewhere, Dad, don't you think?”

“I guess. Don't ever get a tattoo, son. There might come a day you won't want to be recognized. It's better if you don't have any identifying marks on your body.”

By the time they reached Ocala, the sun was coming up. Roy's father checked them into a hotel and when they got to their room he asked Roy if he wanted to use the bathroom.

“No, Dad, you can go first.”

Roy's father laughed. “What's the matter, son? Afraid there'll be a body in the bathtub?”

“No,” said Roy, “just a left arm.”

While his father was in the bathroom, Roy thought about Lavern Rope cutting off Sister Mary Alice Gogarty's arm in a Valdosta hotel room. If he had used a pocket knife, it would have taken a very long time. He had probably brought along a kitchen knife from his mother's house to do the job, Roy decided.

When his father came out, Roy asked him, “Do you think the cops will find Lavern Rope?”

“Sure, they'll catch him.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“I bet they never find the nun's arm.”

“Won't make much difference, will it? Come on, boy, take your clothes off. We need to sleep.”

Roy undressed and got into one of the two beds. Before Roy could ask another question, his father was snoring in the other bed. Roy lay there with his eyes open for several minutes; then he realized that he needed to go to the bathroom.

Suddenly, his father stopped snoring.

“Son, you still awake?”

“Yes, Dad.”

Roy's father sat up in his bed.

“It just occurred to me that a brand new red and beige Chrysler Newport convertible is a damn unusual automobile for a nun to be driving.”

 

The Mason-Dixon Line

One Sunday I accompanied my dad on an automobile trip up from Chicago to Dixon, Illinois. It was a sunny January morning, and it must have been when I was ten years old because I remember that I wore the black leather motorcycle jacket I'd received that Christmas. I was very fond of that jacket with its multitude of bright silver zippers and two silver stars on each epaulet. I also wore a blue cashmere scarf of my dad's and an old pair of brown leather gloves he'd given me after my mother gave him a new pair of calfskins for Christmas.

I liked watching the snowy fields as we sped past them on the narrow, two-lane northern Illinois roads. We passed through a number of little towns, each of them with seemingly identical centers: a Rexall, hardware store, First State Bank of Illinois, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Catholic churches with snowcapped steeples, and a statue of Black Hawk, the heroic Sauk and Fox chief.

When my dad had asked me if I wanted to take a ride with him that morning I'd said sure, without asking where to or why. My dad never asked twice and he never made any promises about when we'd be back. I liked the uncertainty of those situations, the open-endedness about them. Anything could happen, I figured; it was more fun not knowing what to expect.

“We're going to Dixon,” Dad said after we'd been driving for about forty-five minutes. “To see a man named Mason.” I'd recently read a Young Readers biography of Robert E. Lee, so I knew all about the Civil War. “We're on the Mason-Dixon line,” I said, and laughed, pleased with my little kid's idea of a joke. “That's it, boy,” said my dad. “We're going to get a line on Mason in Dixon.”

The town of Dixon appeared to be one street long, like in a Western movie: the hardware store, bank, church, and drugstore. I didn't see a statue. We went into a tiny café next to the bank that was empty except for a counterman. Dad told me to sit in one of the booths and told the counterman to give me a hot chocolate and whatever else I wanted.

“I'll be back in an hour, son,” said Dad. He gave the counterman a twenty-dollar bill and walked out. When the counterman brought over the hot chocolate he asked if there was anything else he could get for me. “A hamburger,” I said, “and an order of fries.” “You got it,” he said.

I sipped slowly at the hot chocolate until he brought me the hamburger and fries. The counterman sat on a stool near the booth and looked at me. “That your old man?” he asked. “He's my dad,” I said, between bites of the hamburger. “Any special reason he's here?” he asked. I didn't say anything and the counterman said, “You are from Chi, aren't ya?” I nodded yes and kept chewing. “You must be here for a reason,” he said. “My dad needs to see someone,” I said. “Thought so,” said the counterman. “Know his name?” I took a big bite of the hamburger before I answered. “No,” I said. The counterman looked at me, then out the window again. After a minute he walked over behind the counter. “Let me know if ya need anything else,” he said.

While my dad was gone I tried to imagine who this fellow Mason was. I figured he must be some guy hiding out from the Chicago cops, and that his real name probably wasn't Mason. My dad came back in less than an hour, picked up his change from the counterman, tipped him, and said to me, “Had enough to eat?” I said yes and followed him out to the car.

“This is an awfully small town,” I said to my dad as we drove away. “Does Mason live here?” “Who?” he asked. Then he said, “Oh yeah, Mason.” Dad didn't say anything else for a while. He took a cigar out of his overcoat pocket, bit off the tip, rolled down his window, and spit it out before saying, “No, he doesn't live here. Just visiting.”

We drove along for a few miles before Dad lit his cigar, leaving the window open. I put the scarf up around my face to keep warm and settled back in the seat. My dad drove and didn't talk for about a half hour. Around Marengo he said, “Did that counterman back there ask you any questions?” “He asked me if you were my dad and if we were from Chicago,” I said. “What did you tell him?” “I said yes.” “Anything else?” “He asked if you were there for any special reason and I said you were there to see someone.” “Did you tell him who?” Dad asked. “I said I didn't know his name.”

Dad nodded and threw his dead cigar out the window, then rolled it up. “You tired?” he asked. “No,” I said. “What do you think,” he said, “would you rather live out here or in the city?” “The city,” I said. “I think it's more interesting there.” “So do I,” said Dad. “Relax, son, and we'll be home before you know it.”