Snow Day: a Novella (9 page)

I slowly got up from the snow and quietly made my way out of the yard, along the side of the house and down the driveway to the sidewalk where I stood, alone. Tommy was nowhere in sight.

I found myself standing on East Glendale, not far from where it met Broad and then turned into West Glendale. I peered up the street in the direction of home. The dark, snow-covered lane was illuminated by occasional splashes of broken light thrown by tree-crowded street lamps. I was looking uphill and the combination of shadows and the rise of the hill hid any sight of my house. Only then did I realize how far I had ridden the Grandville. Home was nearly a quarter mile away.

There was no one on the street. No one followed me, not yet anyway, and there was no sign of Tommy. He couldn’t have taken East Glendale in either direction or I would have seen him. He must have crossed the street to cut through more backyards and make his way to Columbia Avenue. That’s what I would have done; better to put more distance between us and ol’ George.

I crossed the street, following Tommy’s lead. As I reached the other side, there was a faint flash of headlights. Up the street, a car had turned onto the road. Was it a police cruiser looking for the kid who caused the accident on Woodlawn? As the car grew closer I heard the familiar sound of an engine in need of a new muffler.

Get off the road!

The house across the street was dark so I hurried up its driveway and hid behind a large, snowcapped bush. The sound of the car grew closer, but slowly, rolling in my direction, the unseen driver scanning the shadows. As it passed, I peered out from my hiding place and glimpsed a black Plymouth Valiant, the one that took Tommy away. It had to be ol’ George.

“B-billy...?” came a whisper behind me. “Billy...?”

It was Tommy’s voice, but I couldn’t see him in the dark. Behind me, at the back of the property, were only deep shadows; then came the sound of rustling bushes, and Tommy’s voice again, but a little more distant and heading away.

“Billy...?”

Crouched low, I made for Tommy’s direction. I slipped through the shadows to the back of the property. No Tommy, just an eight-foot tall hedge. He must have found a way through.

I reached inside the hedge and felt around. With one gloved hand and one bare and bloody hand, I felt for an opening between the plants that had grown together to form the hedge. It was painful. The cut from the Grandville’s bumper stung with a biting pain when it brushed against the branches. Finally, my fingers felt an opening just big enough. I turned sideways and looked away to protect my face from scraping branches while I pushed my arm through, and then my shoulder, and then a foot. At last, with a push, I launched the rest of my body through the hedge and fell to the ground on the other side.

Looking around, I found myself in an alley cluttered with trash cans and old crates. I was behind the building that housed many of the shops that faced Columbia between Broad and Summit Avenues. The back door of each shop – there was a drapery shop, a delicatessen, a pharmacy and assorted others – let out onto the alley. Each door had a small lamp above it; while most were broken or burned out, there were enough giving light so that I could see.

I was still alone and there was still no sign of Tommy. I pushed my aching, bleeding left hand into the wet snow. It was bitter cold, but felt good. The worst of the bleeding had eased, but the persistent trickle was enough to leave the white ice crystals beneath me streaked with a bit of red. I realized I’d been leaving those small streaks everywhere – on the Pontiac Le Mans that broke my fall, on the doorknob of the house with the body in it, on the cellar door that gave Tommy and me our escape from ol’ George, on the swing set and the snow beneath it. Was that why the German Shepherd was so persistent? Did she smell my blood? I wondered if George could smell blood. Was he even human? Was he hunting me? If so, it wouldn’t be difficult. Hell, I was Hansel and Gretel, leaving a trail of bloody bread crumbs.

I finally stood up and headed east along the alley until it opened into a small parking lot beside Columbia Cleaners. I crossed the lot out to the street and looked up and down Columbia Avenue; still no sign of Tommy.

That was it; I was done looking for him. I couldn’t risk backtracking and getting caught. I decided that if I couldn’t find Tommy, than neither could ol’ George. A disturbing thought crossed my mind: Tommy might squeal. If he tells anyone about the house, if it gets back to my mother, I’d be in deep trouble. I began walking home and made a mental note to pull Tommy aside the next day and let him know what kind of ass-whooping I’d give him if he told on me.

It was well past six o’clock when I walked along Columbia Avenue. The shops were all closed – the butcher shop, a stationery and card shop, Jack’s News, Candy and Comics. The lights were out in all of them. Most Blackwater shopkeepers never bothered to open in weather like this; those who did were closed now, too. Most of the shop owners were sitting down to dinner in their apartments on the second floor above their shops, or down the street where they lived in the garden apartments.

Columbia is usually a busy street, but not on that night, not in that weather. As I approached the corner of Columbia and Summit Avenues, just one short block from home, I heard a car pulling up beside me, slowing to stop at the traffic light, its muffler coughing.

It was the black Plymouth.

I panicked. Without thinking and without looking, I bolted straight down Columbia, across Summit Avenue and –

Beeeeeeeeeeeee

The driver of the Ford pick-up that I never saw leaned hard on his horn and even harder on his brakes.

eeeeeeeeeeeee

He was heading north on Summit and about to cross Columbia when I ran into his path. When he punched his brakes, they locked up and the pick-up started to slide in the filthy slurry of snow and ice that covered the intersection. I was able to stop in the middle of the street without losing my feet and quickly jump back as the pick-up hydroplaned past, missing me by inches.

eeeeeeeeeeeeep!

I hurried across Summit Avenue to the opposite corner, but where to go from there? Turn right and the Plymouth follows me home; he’ll know where I live. He’ll get me.

Keep running straight down Columbia Avenue and I wouldn’t get far before ol’ George pulled over, jumped out, and grabbed me. I needed to lose him fast. On the opposite corner stood the Columbia Bar and Packaged Goods Store. It seemed like my only option.

Now remember, I was just ten. The only bar I’d ever been inside by that point in my life was attached to an American Legion hall in Jersey City, where my family held its annual Christmas party. It was a concession my mother made when I argued that attending the Christmas party to see my Uncle Kenny, unsteady with drink, dress up as Santa Claus and pass out gifts to the kids, would mean missing half the NFL Divisional Playoffs. My brother was no help in making this argument. Frank had a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. His well-crafted lie about needing to attend basketball practice, was flawless. It meant he, Jimmy, and Carl could drink beer, smoke Luckies and watch the game in living color on the TV in our basement, while I was stuck with Uncle Kenny and my mother.

But eventually, after hours of my pleading and whining, even my mother could see how such a sacrifice was unthinkable. The solution my mother devised was to set me up in front of the TV in the adjoining bar with a bowl of pretzels and a Seven-Up. She found this compromise acceptable because there was a doorway that joined the bar with the hall where the family would be gathering. That meant, in theory, she could peer through the open door to look in on me from time to time. That meant I’d be safe. At least, that’s what she told herself while sipping her Mai Tais and enjoying a laugh with her sister and the rest of the family. So while my cousins, aunts and uncles sang
Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
to Uncle Kenny’s staggering entrance over in the American Legion hall, I was in the bar. It was just me, the guy pulling the tap, and a half dozen old farts who did their best to ignore the kid watching the Vikings play the Rams in Minnesota’s frosty Metropolitan Stadium on a raised 18-inch black and white TV. That was the extent of my bar-trolling experience at the ripe old age of ten.

Somehow, I believed that fresh memory of flat Seven-Up, stale cigar smoke, and pretzels gave me admittance into the I-can-hang-out-in-bars club. So when the Columbia came into sight, I decided it was my best option. I hurried across the street, half running, half sliding on the ice, and pushed through the front door.

Looking around the bar, I quickly thought of downtown Pottersville. I was a gape-mouthed Jimmy Stewart. This was not the local American Legion’s club bar; the Columbia was a different animal.

It was a single room, thick with the smell of tobacco ash, stale pretzels, beer, and human sweat, and something else. I couldn’t place it then, but I know it now. It was the smell of decay, perhaps even desperation. The atmosphere was humid, musty and almost cave-like. The accordion-shaped iron radiators against the walls were working overtime and the plate glass window with the faded, chipped lettering that looked out on Columbia Avenue was partially clouded with condensation. The room felt close, an expression my mother sometimes used, but which I hadn’t understood until that moment.

A collection of small tables littered the floor and the bar stood along the far wall. One look at the place and you’d think it hadn’t been cleaned since the 1920s when it served as a Pharmacy and Notions shop, complete with a soda fountain and ice cream counter. The pharmacy’s checkered linoleum floor still remained, though cracked and yellowed, as did the tin embossed ceiling panels, now stained to almost black from the cigarette and cigar smoke; only now the shelves behind the counter held the likes of Johnny Walker and Dewar’s instead of soft drink syrups, ice cream and candy bars.

The patrons, only about a half-dozen, were huddled over their drinks; a couple in the corner, and a few solo drinkers. These were people who had braved the State Police warning to stay off the roads and stay inside, just so they could... what? So they could grease the wheels of their own decline? These were not the kind of people I knew, or ever expected to know, or ever wanted to know. I had made a mistake thinking I’d be welcome at the Columbia. There was no Mr. Gower in here.

I must have pushed on the door a little too hard as I entered because everyone in the place turned to look at me. I took a second to collect my breath, and then walked over to the phone booth in the corner. All eyes followed me and mine followed theirs right back, as if to say:
What, you never seen a guy making a phone call before?

It was an old wooden phone booth, old even by mid-seventies standards, maybe from the ‘20s, like the rest of the place. I slipped into the booth, folded the door shut behind me and sat on the bench opposite the phone. The overhead light in the booth was out, no surprise there, so only a thin band of light bled in from the room’s lamps and the glowing beer signs behind the bar. I picked up the receiver, pressed it to my ear and pretended to make a call while glancing out the window of the phone booth. Ol’ George must have seen me duck into the Columbia. But he wouldn’t come in here, and if he did, he wouldn’t try anything with people watching.

A bald man with a lined face and tattooed forearms wore a filthy white apron and stood behind the bar pouring a beer from the tap. He eyed me suspiciously as he slid the full and foamy pilsner glass across the counter to a patron, a large man in a plaid sport coat sitting on a stool at the bar. The patron leaned forward on the bar sipping the foam from the lip of his glass, then he casually looked over his shoulder in my direction. When he did, he cocked his head, not unlike a hunting dog when it looks curious about something it’s found in the field.

I quickly leaned back in the bench, hiding again in the shadows, still doing a lousy job of pretending to make a phone call from a pay phone into which I hadn’t fed so much as a dime. After a moment, I leaned forward for another look at the man with the tattooed forearms and his large, ill-dressed patron. They were talking now, likely talking about me. The big man looked familiar, but he no longer looked in my direction. Instead, he peered past the bartender into the mirror, which cast a reflection of the room and the phone booth. He was watching me in the mirror, watching to see when I would come out.

It was clear that coming here was a mistake, now the trick was not only losing George, but getting out of the Columbia without someone stopping me. I was a minor in a saloon, after all.

I took a deep breath, then pushed the phone booth door open and stood up with the receiver still pressed to my ear.

“Yeah, Sorry, Mom,” I said to the dead line, loud enough for the rest the patrons to hear. “Yeah, I know I’m late. I’m on my way home now. I’ll see you in a few. Bye.”

I hung up the phone, stepped out of the booth and stole a glance out the front window. There, parked at the curb, was the black Plymouth.

Ol’ George was still waiting for me; there was no going out that way. I turned to the man behind the bar with the tattooed forearms. He was staring needles at me while wiping a dirty mug with a dirty dish rag.

I said: “Mister, you got a john in here?”

My brass clearly surprised him because he stopped wiping the mug and just stood there for a moment, not saying anything. I think he was genuinely surprised that a ten-year-old could have the balls to walk into his place like he had every right to be there, like the kid wasn’t putting his liquor license in jeopardy, like strange 10-year-olds waltz into corner bars every night.

He didn’t answer at first, and the big man with the plaid sports jacket didn’t turn around either. He just kept his eyes forward, yet in his mirrored reflection I’m sure I detected the faintest smirk crease his lips.

The man with the tattooed forearms eventually said “Yeah,” and jerked a thumb in the direction of a doorway at the back of the room. “Back there.”