Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (4 page)

The black kids ran a few steps, then gave up the chase when they saw the basketball headed toward the white boys on the stickball diamond.

“I got it,” Icky said.

Icky ran toward the basketball like a kickball player. He met the basketball with a mighty boot. Maybe he really intended to kick the ball back to the black kids. Nicky would never know.

Icky kicked the basketball and it sailed high and hooked sharply to the left. The ball cleared the wall near the long concrete staircase that led down to Summit Avenue. The ball made a hollow ring as it bounded down the steps. Theoretically, with a few fateful bounces, the ball could have rolled all the way down to the Hudson River.

Two of the black boys swore loudly and sprinted across the schoolyard. They ran, sneakers slapping, down the steps. Nicky pictured a long night of looking for that ball. A third black boy sauntered toward the steps, shaking his head, swearing bitterly. He hollered, “Dumb-ass. What's your problem?”

Icky boomed back, “I ain't got no problem. What's your problem?” Then he added, “Jigaboo.”

“I ain't got no problem, white trash. What's your problem?”

“I'll give you a problem.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And so forth.

The black boy hissed, “I oughta whip your ass,” and took off down the steps.

“Let's beat it,” Icky said to Fishbone. Then to Nicky, “You better get out of here before they come back with a bazooka.”

Icky and Fishbone loped into the shadow of Eggplant Alley. Nicky followed them across the concrete diamond, toward Building B. He thought, “What a lousy day. Nothing new. Nothing old. Nothing, nothing.”

“
S
o this is the historic first Earth Day,” Nicky thought, crunching cornflakes, listening to the radio news. The radio announcer declared Earth Day would “raise John Q. Citizen's consciousness to the ills of polluted air, dirty water, the chemicals and poisons in all things, from the meat we eat, to the milk we drink.”

Nicky eyed the grinning cow on the milk carton.

He examined his bowl of milk-sodden cornflakes.

He pushed the bowl away.

“Another turn for the worse,” he thought. “Some holiday. We don't even get a day off.”

The historic first Earth Day was a major topic at St. Peter's Elementary. Students drew posters about the smelly Hudson River. They read a story, and the moral of the story was: Littering is bad. They recited poems about the American Indians and clean air. Nicky's social studies teacher, Mr. McSwiggin, as usual, went a step farther. He took the class out of school, on a mission to clean up the empty lot next to Tony's Auto Body.

Mr. McSwiggin was fresh out of Fordham. He had arrived in the autumn with a full beard, which the principal, Sister Teresa, instructed him to shave back to a droopy mustache. Even then,
Nicky was unhappy to have a teacher with a cool mustache. Another break with tradition. A teacher with facial hair. It was a first, unless you counted Mrs. Hamm.

Nicky didn't like this Mr. McSwiggin, who wore a mustache but wanted a beard. Nicky suspected the energetic little man was a hippie. One of Them. Now and then Mr. McSwiggin spoke of rock 'n' roll music that he favored. This, from a teacher. Hippie stuff. Nicky already had a bellyful of hippies in his life, starting and ending with Roy's horrid hippie girlfriend Margalo.

And here was Mr. McSwiggin, leading the class down the block in this very hippie-style endeavor.

“Today we will clean this little space,” Mr. McSwiggin said. “Tomorrow the world.”

“Pinko,” Nicky muttered.

They marched out of school with bags and rakes and did a job on an empty lot, which didn't even belong to St. Peter's. The students at St. Peter's had not made the mess, but here they were cleaning it up. The seventh-graders picked up dirty bottles, crushed cartons, bashed cans, yellowed newspapers, wadded wrappers, smashed cigarette packs, shredded cigarette butts. The girls performed most of the actual cleaning. They worked earnestly, with a solemn goodness in their eyes. The boys mostly threw things, wandered aimlessly, and searched for oddball treasures. Vinnie Slezak found a container of glop that smelled like airplane glue. Tim Gemelli produced a knob from a car radio.

Nicky went all-out to find bottles. He dug into thick weeds. He crawled under a splintered wooden fence. He turned over rusted sheets of tin. He did this in order to impress the yellow-haired
Becky Hubbard, who carted around the bottle bag. He scrounged up four bottles, and made sure Becky Hubbard was alone when he dropped them, clanking, into the bottle bag. She said nothing. Nicky thought, “She's shy.”

Nicky was a mess when he got home from school. His hands were black to the wrists. The knees of his good school pants were caked with mud. He had a cut above his eye, from the trip under the fence. His cheek was smeared with oily grime.

“What happened? Were you in a fight? Were you mugged?” Mom wanted to know.

He told her about the Earth Day activities.

“Great, we're sending you to school to learn how to be a garbage picker,” Mom said. “Look at you. At least the vacant lot is nice and clean, right?”

She glanced over the other piece of Mr. McSwiggin's Earth Day lesson. Nicky had produced a Crayola rendition of our planet, continents and oceans and all. The masterpiece was captioned in block letters, as instructed by Mr. McSwiggin:
THE EARTH IS YOUR MOTHER
.

“Oh, yeah?” Mom said. “Next time you need to puke at three in the morning, have the Earth bring you a bucket. What baloney. What's going on at that school?”

Nicky shrugged. Another sign of the general downhill slide.

Mom went on, “And since when does anybody clean up after their mother? What baloney. Go wash up. Change your clothes. But go get the mail first, will you?”

That was the real source of Mom's touchy mood. The mail. There wasn't a single piece of it from Roy, not since the pre-printed postcard.

“Unless his fingers got cut off, he should write,” Mom said quietly, sadly.

Nicky was happy to travel to the lobby for the mail. The chore once belonged to Roy. Young Nicky was awed in the old days when his big brother ventured alone to the lobby and returned with the day's mail. In Nicky's young eyes, Roy was a dashing explorer, a regular Lewis or Clark.

Mom told Nicky, “Remember, don't take the stairs, don't talk to strangers, don't linger down there. For crying out loud, if Mr. Feeley gets on the elevator, you get off at the very next floor. Did I tell you not to take the stairs?”

“A million times,” Nicky said. “Why not? Roy always took the stairs.”

“Times have changed,” Mom said.

“Oh, yeah,” Nicky thought. “How could I forget?”

Nicky pressed for the elevator. The elevator shaft came alive with the growly hum of heavy machinery. The elevator thumped and stopped on the fifth floor. The door shuddered, crunched, and slid open and Nicky's nostrils were filled with a sharp stench. Someone had gone to the bathroom in the elevator again. Most residents suspected black kids from Groton Avenue, but Nicky had a hunch it was the Rosatto brothers. Once he spotted Ernie and Sabby Rosatto zipping up as they stepped off the elevator.

Nicky took the stairs. He passed along floor by floor and read the apartment numbers. He barely knew the tenants behind those numbered doors anymore. He was well aware of who used to live
there. Friends who went bye-bye. Nicky forgot their names (except for Andrea Abbananzo, formerly of 2-C). Now there wasn't a single kid near Nicky's age in all of Building B. Apparently, nobody with kids wanted to live in Eggplant Alley anymore. Not if they could help it.

Nicky passed 3-B and the door was ajar. A kid named Bobby-something used to live there. Nicky didn't know the current tenant. As he walked by, Nicky stole a peek into 3-B—an umbrella stand, an oval rug, brown shoes. And the door slammed shut, a lock snapped, a bolt clanked. Nowadays, footsteps in the hall were a signal alarm—
Close up fast!
To walk through Eggplant Alley nowadays was to hear doors slam and chains rattle, as fast as the fingers could work.

Nicky moved along the second floor, sighed deeply at the sight of 2-C, and started down the final flight of stairs to the lobby.

Behind him, out of sight on the second floor, an apartment door squeaked open.

Feet shuffled.

A door banged shut.

Slow footsteps sounded along the second-floor hall tile. Grownup shoes that made a clicking, scraping noise.

Click-scrape. Click-scrape. Click-scrape.

“I'm being followed,” Nicky concluded.

He did not stop, wait, and look to see who was there. In most places, in most times, that would be the natural reaction: “Who is that? Hey, hi, hello!” In Eggplant Alley, the reaction was: “Just keep walking.” In Eggplant Alley, you never looked back. Somebody might be gaining on you.

Click-scrape. Click-scrape. Click. Click.

Somebody was gaining on Nicky.

Nicky bounded down the stairs to the lobby. He halted and stood, still as a statue. He clenched his teeth and listened hard.

Click-click. Click-click.

Slow, careful, creeping footsteps descended the stairs from the second floor.

Click.

The footsteps stopped.

Someone was standing on the landing, out of sight, waiting. Nicky felt like the antelope in a
Wild Kingdom
special, stalked by the cheetah.

Nicky quietly unlocked the mailbox. He plucked out the envelopes.

He gasped.

Big mistake. Exactly what the stalker wanted. The mail—that's what afternoon muggers craved. Envelopes stuffed with checks and cash. They wait for you to unlock the box, smash you over the head, leave you on the tile in a puddle of blood, make off with your mail. The lunatic was probably on the landing right now, grinning evilly, dripping saliva, rubbing his grimy hands.

Nicky considered his options. Go back up the stairs?

No way.

Run out into the courtyard and scream for help?

Maybe.

Hop on the elevator and make a break for home?

Go for it.

Nicky hit the button to summon the elevator. Heavy machinery clunked and the elevator shaft hummed.

The shoes scraped on the landing. The lunatic was up there, listening, waiting, breathing through his mouth.

Nicky smacked the button again and again and again. He banged it with his fist, over and over, as if a solid punch would hurry the elevator down to rescue him. He thought, “Why didn't I listen to Mom?” She warned against taking the steps. She was right, once more. Nicky thought, “When they find pieces of my dismembered corpse scattered throughout the Bronx, that ought to be a consolation to Mom.”

The elevator shuddered down the shaft, slower than ever. Nicky whispered, “Come on, come on, come on.” Sweat dripped down his back. His socks were hot and sweaty. The cut on his face stung.

The elevator thumped on the ground floor.

Click-click click-click click-click.

Footsteps cascaded down the stairs, coming for Nicky.

The elevator door grumbled open. Nicky squeezed through when the opening was barely wide enough. He smacked his palm on the
CLOSE DOOR
button.

Click-click click-click click-click.

The footsteps hit the last of the stairs. The odd thought occurred to Nicky: I am being stalked by a tap-dancer.

He leaned into the
CLOSE DOOR
button.

The door grumbled and slid across. Like everything else in Eggplant Alley, the elevator door had seen better days. It shuddered, moaned. The door stopped closing.

Clickety-click. Clickety-click. CLICKETY-CLICK.

Frantic footsteps sounded on the lobby tile, nearby to the elevator.

“Close, door, close!” Nicky begged.

The door shuddered, crunched. The door slid, closing.

Click-CLICK.

A face flashed in the narrowing space of the elevator door. The face was contorted, thick-lipped, grotesque and yellow-red in the shadows thrown by the elevator light. Nicky saw eyes bulge behind black-rimmed eyeglasses. The lunatic creature emitted a raspy panting sound. Nicky was horrified when he saw tiny fingers claw around the sliding elevator door. The fingers scratched and hissed on the metal.

Nicky opted for surrender. He would hand over the mail.

“I'll let you have it,” Nicky howled.

The small fingers snapped away from the elevator door.

And the door clonked shut.

“Close shave,” Nicky said, breathing heavily. He felt the sweet lift of the elevator in his belly.

Nicky squeezed out of the elevator on the fifth floor. He thrust his key into the lock of 5-C and zipped through the door in record time. He slammed the door, turned the lock, and hooked the security chain, as fast as his trembling fingers could work.

N
icky huffed and puffed into the kitchen. The envelopes clattered in his shaking hands. Mom was seated at the kitchen table and did not look up from her beadwork. Beadwork involved stringing exactly 467 orange plastic beads onto an twelve-inch length of elastic to produce a cheap necklace. A friend of Uncle Dominic's from Brooklyn would send over big spools of elastic and huge cardboard boxes filled with thousands and thousands of beads. The guy paid Mom two cents for every necklace she put together. Beadwork was part of the effort to get money to move away from Eggplant Alley.

Nicky panted, “Mom! This guy, this creature, came after me in the lobby.”

“I've made two dollars today,” Mom said without a trace of pride. “That will make a nice down payment on a house, right? I never want to see an orange bead for the rest of my life.”

“He chased me from the second floor to the lobby. I think he was after the mail.”

“Anything in the mail?” Mom said over her shoulder.