Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (13 page)

“The tape is a grip, for when you swing the bat,” Nicky said. “Otherwise the stick'll fly out of your hands and kill somebody.”

Lester adjusted his glasses and watched closely. “Very interesting,” he said. He didn't know this was Nicky's first attempt at taping a stickball bat. The job was a Roy specialty in the good old days.

“You're doing it all wrong,” Fishbone called out.

Nicky looked up at Fishbone, who was perched on the stairs, knees wiggling with excess energy.

“Lemme see,” Fishbone said. He arose and ambled over, weary and wise. He took charge of the stick and the tape, and went to work. He pushed his long black hair out of his eyes as he taped. It all came back to Fishbone. He taped the grip onto the stickball bat, in a perfect crisscross spiral pattern. A masterpiece.

“There,” Fishbone said. He swung the bat. It made a satisfying whip sound.

“Hey,” said Little Sam, who was busy tossing pebbles aimlessly. Little Sam tossed a pebble at Fishbone and Fishbone clocked it with the bat, producing a neat little line drive. The pebble plunked metallically off the roof of a parked Plymouth.

“Lemme see the ball,” Little Sam said, and the forces of nature took over. The older boys were hypnotized. No one could resist. Not even these wise guy Bronx boys, world-weary, a year or two out of high school. Not even these self-proclaimed tough guys, too grown-up and too cool to dabble in childhood games—except this game. You never grow too old for stickball, not any more than you get too old for eating or sleeping or watching pretty girls ride the No. 6 bus.

The gang rose from the steps, a couple at a time, then all at once, like birds from a telephone wire. The boys drifted into the courtyard of Eggplant Alley. They were lured there.

Nicky and Lester followed the pack. Nicky gazed around the courtyard and wondered why they didn't play stickball here in the good old days. There was even a stretch of grass in the middle, long ago cleared of trees. Who needed a meadow?

Little shouts came up from the older boys. A game was forming. The signs were unmistakable, like the first twisty winds of a tornado. Little Sam tossed the ball and Fishbone took a swipe and missed and yelped again. The swing and miss made Fishbone crazily eager for a next swing. The other boys were waltzing onto the walkway and onto the grass, on the verge of choosing up sides.

Fishbone connected on a toss from Little Sam. The Spaldeen darted straight into the ground. Icky gathered up the ball and elbowed Little Sam out of the way.

“Lemme show you,” Icky said. He reared back and threw.

Icky's drop pitch, rusty after all the years, didn't drop.

Fishbone connected, right on the button. The ball sailed and thumped on Building B, against a fourth-floor window.

“Get the ball. Get the ball,” Icky said. “That was plain dumb luck.”

Icky took charge and harangued the boys into picking teams. He surveyed the group and noticed Lester for the first time.

“Who the hell is this?” Icky said.

“This is my pal. Just moved in. Say hi to Lester,” Nicky said, remembering to leave off
Allnuts
.

“Sure,” Icky said, not giving Lester a second thought.

The teams were chosen: Icky, Little Sam, Skippy, and Nicky versus Fishbone, Mumbles, Skipper, and Lester.

Lester was picked last, because he was a new kid, because he wore glasses, and because he was smallest, even smaller than Nicky.

“We're up first,” Icky said.

“I wanna go up and get my glove,” Fishbone said.

“You don't need a glove,” Icky said.

“I know, but it's more fun with gloves.”

“Next game,” Icky said.

Nicky silently rejoiced: Next game!

He angled near Lester, who was on his way to the field.

“Didya hear that?” Nicky said. “Next game. Who said nobody plays stickball around here anymore?”

Nicky and Lester exchanged smiles as wide as their skulls.

Mr. Misener the superintendent strutted from Building A. The crabbed, wiry little man had a shovel in his hand. He squinted in the bright sunlight and said, “What do you think you're doing out here? You know there ain't no ballplaying allowed in here.”

“It's just a Spaldeen, it won't hurt anything,” Icky said.

“I don't care if it's a cream puff. There ain't no ballplaying allowed in here. Now get the hell out of here.”

Mr. Misener held more authority in Eggplant Alley than the police.

“Punks. Go get work instead of hanging around here,” Mr. Misener muttered, glaring hard at the boys.

The boys grumbled and griped and took their sweet time moving out of the courtyard while Mr. Misener stared, on guard, rusty shovel in his red hands.

“Wanna play on the street?” Skipper said.

“Too many cars,” Icky said. “Just forget it.”

“Let's go to Glen Island, like I wanted to.”

“It's too late. The bus takes forever.”

There was silence. Fishbone looked at the Spaldeen in his hand. Icky swung the stickball bat. Stickball held hypnotic allure. Men from Mars could not resist playing stickball. The tug to play was
as strong as the urge to eat. But even the Yankees would be stuck, plain out of luck, scratching their heads and cooling their heels, if they didn't have a playing field.

Nicky heard voices, young and faraway. And the whop of bat on ball. And perhaps the clatter of a bat. Sweet sounds from the PS 19 schoolyard, dripping down the alleyway from up the hill.

“Let's go up to the schoolyard,” Nicky said.

“Screw that,” said Icky.

“Yeah, I ain't in no mood to fool with the mulignane today,” Skippy said. “They're all over the schoolyard.”

“Yeah. Who needs the aggravation.”

Instantly, the life went out of the stickball idea. It was a dead issue. And the sweet sounds from Groton Avenue no longer sang in Nicky's ears.

Icky handed the bat to Nicky. Fishbone handed the ball to Lester.

The old gang dropped themselves onto the stairs like sandbags. They went straight back to lounging and sighing and belching. Without enthusiasm, Icky began to tell the boys a long pointless tale about a female shopper, a girl in a tiny T-shirt, for whom he sliced baloney at the deli counter.

“I'm pretty sure she wasn't,” Icky concluded.

Nicky said glumly to Lester, “We came so close.”

“But no cigar,” Lester said.

Nicky jerked his head at Lester. “Let's beat it.”

They walked through the courtyard toward Building B.

“Why don't we go over to the schoolyard?” Lester said.

“They didn't wanna.”

“Then we should go. They'll follow.”

“No, they're right. You heard Skippy. Too many mulignane.”

“Huh?”

“Mulignane. That's what we call the blacks. The colored. Too many of them over there. We'd get eaten alive, just the two of us.”

Lester sighed. He shook his head. He sighed again.

“Very interesting,” Lester said, sounding weary. He took a deep breath. Lester said slowly, “Mull-yarn. MOOL-ing—oh, I just can't say that word.”

“Mulignane,” Nicky said. “You'll learn.”

They walked into the lobby of Building B and Nicky added, “Just so you know, it's not a nice word. I would never say it to their face, if I were you.”

N
icky was bored, and ashamed of his boredom. In the smelly classrooms of May and June, he had daydreamed about the lazy days of summer. Now it was only July 1, and he didn't know what to do with himself.

“Bored?” Mom said. “Count your blessings. When I was your age, it was the Depression. I had to work in the summer.”

“I thought there were no jobs during the Depression.”

“We didn't fresh-mouth our parents, either,” Mom said. “Why don't you go get the mail, if you're looking for something to do. Maybe there's something from your brother.”

Nicky took the stairs to the lobby, which was dark and cool. He unlocked the mailbox and pulled out four envelopes: three bills, plus one airmail envelope, red, white, and blue trim around the border. A letter from Roy.

“Mom has radar, I swear,” Nicky said.

Nicky climbed the stairway, and his ears picked up the faint thwock of a Spaldeen and the clatter of a stickball bat on pavement. The sounds were coming from the PS 19 schoolyard. The old sweet sounds swirled softly against the red-brick nooks and
crannies of Eggplant Alley and curled into the open window on the second-floor landing. Nicky heard the chain-link fence jangle. “Home run,” Nicky whispered.

Nicky rapped on 2-C. He glanced at the mail, at the envelope from Roy, with the glaring airmail border and military postmark. He shuffled Roy's letter out of sight into the pack.

Nicky heard footsteps inside the apartment. Slippers shuffled on the floor on the other side of the door. He heard breathing and the gentle brush of a face against the peephole. And the door did not open.

“Hey, Lester,” Nicky called.

Nothing.

Nicky imagined Lester inside the apartment, freezing in place, perfectly still, now not even breathing.

“Lester, what's the matter? Open up. I know you're in there. I can hear you.”

Nicky squatted and peeked under the door.

“I can see your slippers, even. Open up.”

Nothing.

Nicky stood. He sighed.

“Come on up if you wanna play Monopoly. I was also thinking maybe, you know. About stickball.”

Nicky's mind worked as he walked upstairs. Like all New Yorkers, he was proud of his native-born knack for quickly flushing out the story behind the story. Dad always called it “the inside dope.” It came with the territory—that is, from growing up in the capital of the world, the center of the universe. Nicky put two
and two together and he thought, “Lester can't fool me. He has something to hide.”

Nicky couldn't stop thinking. His mind churned. He had recently checked out of the school library a book titled
Reds Under the Beds
, a mildewy volume about communist agents honeycombing America. They were everywhere. By the time he reached the apartment, Nicky had formed several theories about the Mystery of 2-C, all of them centered on the theory that Lester's apartment was a den of enemy espionage. This made Nicky sad, because Lester was becoming a friend, and this made Nicky happy, because the notion of Red agents in Eggplant Alley was grand adventure.

Nicky pushed through the door and announced, “Mom! I think there are commie spies in our building.”

Mom came around the corner and said, grabbing, “What's that? A letter from Roy?”

She tore open the letter and walked to the kitchen table, reading. She felt for the chair, reading. She sat at the table, reading. She bit her bottom lip, reading. The letter was several tissue pages long.

“I have to go food shopping,” Mom said.

“Mom, I think there may be a Russian spy ring operating in the building,” Nicky said.

Mom said, “You can read the letter if you want.” She grabbed her purse. On her way out the door, she said, “I'll be at the butcher's, the fish store, the A and P, Lombardo's, and whachamacallit's, the place over on Tilton that sells pig intestines.”

Nicky read the letter from Roy.

Dear Gang,

Sorry that I have not written to much of late. I am real busy. They have us work from 6:45 in the morning to 5
PM
. Than we come back for 6–8. You can't believe how much paperwork goes with a war.

It is like living in a small city here. Except for the helicopters all day and the artillery all night and the OH-2 observation plane that is based here you would not know there was a war. (I really want to grab a ride on that OH-2 before I go.) This is a big bore. I work, watch TV, listen to the radio. The highlight of my week was going to the Italian restaurant on post and it was lousy. I miss your eggplant Parmesan, Ma! The only real fun we have is playing stickball. Yesterday I hit a home run off a guy named Joe Bell. He's a New York guy, too, from Harlem. You do not know how much fun it is to play that again. Even the country guys who never heard of stickball are into it. Hey Nicky—when I get back I have to show you my curveball. Except for the stickball games, it is all very boring.

It is so boring that the Sp.4 I work with told me he volunteered to do three months in the bush. He saw some action and now he is happy to do paperwork. He did this before I got hear. He did it and now he will have something to tell his children when they ask what he did in the war. He did his part and I am starting to think I should do something a little more. If I stay here and push papers someone else has to go out in the bush and fight. Right, Dad? All
I see about the war is what I read in the paper and see on the TV, same as you. I feel skeevy about that.

That is all for now. See you in 40 weeks!

Love,

Your son,

Roy

PS—I have sent a slew of letters to Margalo but have not received any from her. I wonder if she moved. Could you call her, Ma? The number is GH3-8806.

Nicky shrugged. So Roy was bored. At least he got to play stickball.

Nicky lounged in his room, on his bed, mulling over and over the Mystery of Apartment 2-C. The commie spy theory made sense. Roy once said there were communists everywhere in New York. He said they caught a slew of commie spies in New York before Nicky was born. In fact, the top man in the Communist Party of the United States of America lived in a nice house up in Yonkers. Nicky knew this because years before Roy and some of the gang rode bikes up to the house in Yonkers, a long ride, and rang the man's doorbell and ran away. Roy often bragged about this tiny but satisfying victory in the Cold War.

Mom came home, lugging brown paper bags, and five minutes after she pushed through the door, Nicky heard the crash of pots and pans. He shuffled to the kitchen and said, “Ma, I really, really think there are commies in the building.”