Wise Men and Other Stories (9 page)

Matt and the older guys called themselves “The Clique,” and they were apparently expecting trouble that night. Kenny Vessels had been cornered and beaten up earlier that day by several black guys along a stretch of Shelby Street. One of the black guys, known only as Rodney, had threatened Kenny with a gun. Tonight, Kenny was prepared: he had his father’s gun and he was showing it around.

While the older guys talked on the front porch, Mark was trying to get me to slap box with him. Slap boxing was like boxing except you were supposed to land your punches with an open hand—a slap. Mark was pretty quick with his hands, so I tried to avoid slap boxing with him. Generally speaking, it was the exception rather than the rule when a slap box fight didn’t turn into a regular fight. Mark ended up slap boxing with Vince Metz, one of the older guys.

The guys in The Clique were still talking about Rodney when Joey Russo came by. Joey knew Rodney. Shelby Street where Joey lived was more or less the boundary line between black and white neighborhoods. The guys seemed to be arguing about Rodney. After a few minutes, Joey walked over to where Mark and Vince were sparring.

“Let me take him on, Vince,” said Joey.

“Sure.” Vince walked away and Joey stepped in.

You could tell Mark did not really want to slap box Joey Russo, but Joey insisted. He taunted Mark into attacking, then ducked under Mark’s punches, slapping Mark once on the way under the punch and again on the way back up. This went on over and over again until Matt Schmid (Mark’s big brother) quietly observed, “That’s enough, Joey.”

“No problem,” said Joey. He let Mark walk away. Then he looked at me. “How about you?”

“No thanks,” I tried. But everybody was watching, so I took my place for my slap box fight with Joey, thinking for the second time in my life, this is it: I’m gonna get my butt kicked by Joey Russo.

Our fight started with Joey dancing around, feinting punches while I concentrated on defense. All the while, he was taunting me to throw a punch, which I finally did. Not only did I fail to land my punch, I found myself getting slapped with a counter punch before my right arm was even fully extended. It wasn’t much of a fight. Gradually, the other guys lost interest, and our bout eased to the pace of a casual sparring match. Before I knew it, I found myself in a conversation with Joey Russo.

“You told on me about those bikes, didn’t you?” Joey said.

“Yeah, I did,” I said.

“That’s what I figured,” he said.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Joey. “The cops tried to blame me for it, but they never found the bikes, so there was nothing they could do.”

I didn’t say anything. After a moment, Joey dropped his arms and turned toward the bright lights of the stadium.

I dropped my arms, too, and watched him. He was only a year older than me, but he had the same worn, expressionless face as the old men that used to shuffle into the Blue Motor Coach bus station to get warm in winter. That could be Joey, too, I thought. Shuffling around downtown, looking for warmth, being chased off wherever he went.

I was feeling sorry for Joey, when suddenly, he turned and swung at me, stopping an inch from my face and smiling a nasty smile.

“You know something?” he said; “sometimes you ain’t too smart.”

At that moment, Kenny Vessels and the members of The Clique started down the driveway.

“You coming, Joey?” Kenny asked.

“Rodney’s a lot of talk,” said Joey. “Don’t go looking for trouble.”

“You coming or not?” responded Kenny.

And with that, Joey left me and Mark and went with the older guys.

* * *

There wasn’t any trouble that night, but there were more and more clashes between black and white kids in Germantown as the year went on. That was 1967. It seemed like every time you looked at the television, Martin Luther King was leading a march somewhere. When he came to Louisville, my parents took me to my grandmother’s house. We watched on television as Martin Luther King led a march through town.

“Somebody is going to kill that man,” declared my grandmother. It was not a threat. It was not a wish. She was simply stating what she felt to be obvious.

When King was shot in 1968, there were fights all over town. It was nothing compared to the rioting that went on in other cities, but things had changed. Nobody dribbled basketballs in the alley behind the Eberhardts’ house. It was a dangerous place. White kids stood at one end of the alley calling names and throwing rocks at black kids, who stood at the other end of the alley and did likewise. Our neighborhood—our world—was not as nice a place as it had once been. It was as if the fabric of the whole country had unraveled to the point where we were all living on the fringe. And I came to realize that for Joey Russo, who had spent his whole life on the fringe, the world had never been a nice place.

I did not see Joey for a long time after our slap box fight, but the memory of that night stuck with me. Once again, with an opportunity to hurt or humiliate me, Joey Russo had let me off the hook.

Not too long after that, I began to get into trouble myself. After the sixth grade, I left St. Elizabeth for Highland Junior High School. While at Highland, I got into progressively more trouble until by the ninth grade, I barely passed, getting six Ds and one F after skipping forty some-odd days of school that year. My problems at school, combined with an arrest for shoplifting and my parents’ divorce, meant I had enough troubles without worrying about Joey Russo any more. I ended up moving away to live with my father.

The next time I saw Joey Russo was a few years later when I was back to visit my mother for the holidays. I saw Mark Schmid and a lot of the other guys I had always hung around with, but I was surprised to find that Joey Russo was now hanging out in our part of Germantown. Joey had always hung out with the tough guys, the older guys, even some of the black guys. He didn’t really fit in with my mischievous—but not necessarily tough—friends. Yet there he was, hanging around, trying to fit in.

One night, a bunch of us were in front of my mother’s house with nothing to do when somebody suggested that we go ice-skating. Mark Schmid said he could get his parents’ car, so the rest of us went to tell our parents what we were planning to do. Everybody went their separate ways except Joey, who just kind of hung around in front of my house.

Inside the house, my mother gave me five dollars—two for admission, three to spend—but rather than wait outside with Joey, I stayed in the house. I didn’t go out until everybody else was back. Then as we were getting into Mark’s car, Joey asked me if I would lend him the money to go ice-skating. This caught me off guard, but I knew right away that I did not want to lend him the money. I knew I would never get it back. I also knew that, although no one had said the words, none of us really wanted Joey to come with us.

“No,” I said. “I only have enough for me.” I said this knowing that I could have given him two dollars for admission and still have had enough left to pay for myself. I said this also knowing that Joey might simply decide to take my money.

We then waited for Joey to ask the other guys if any of them would lend him the money. But Joey didn’t ask. He just waited to see if anybody else would speak up. No one did. After a moment, we piled into the car without Joey. As we pulled away, I saw him head back toward his house on Shelby Street, walking right down the middle of the street.

That was the last time I saw Joey Russo. He didn’t come to our neighborhood any more. Over the years, I heard he was constantly in trouble until finally he ended up in prison. I never heard why, but I assumed it was for stealing. A few years later, I heard he was out and that he had a girlfriend over on Mulberry Street. People said he was trying to straighten out his life.

Then one day, his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend showed up on Mulberry Street and found Joey there and shot Joey in the chest. Joey died on his girlfriend’s front porch, three blocks from where he grew up, two blocks from St. Elizabeth Elementary. He was twenty-three years old.

* * *

Sometimes we hear about somebody like Joey and we say, “Well, he was in and out of trouble... he had just gotten out of prison... he was always with the wrong crowd... what did you expect?” And we’re right. All those things were true.

And yet, at the risk of sounding like his mother, I will say that Joey Russo was not a bad kid. He deserved better. He was no saint—he sometimes pushed people around—but maybe that was the only way he knew. And seeing how reluctant some people (including me) were to do something for him when he asked, it’s a wonder he wasn’t meaner and nastier and more spiteful than he was.

In the end, living on the fringe must have worn on him. He wanted a nice girl like Kathy Johnson, or nice friends like some of the guys in my neighborhood, or just a nice place to visit like the ice rink or his girlfriend’s house on Mulberry Street. He wanted out of the tough-guy/bully role, out of our dreary, blue-collar neighborhood.

But he didn’t fit in, so when he came around, we told him, “No.”

On the night I heard about Joey Russo’s death, I went to the lagoon and skated. And now, when I’m out on clear, crisp nights, I look up at the loose fabric of our universe and think there must be some place in it for people like Joey Russo. Wherever it is, I hope Joey has found it and that it is a nice place.

Meanwhile, back here on the creaky ice of the lagoon, I realize how lucky I am to have a nice place to visit... a nice life to live. And while I have difficulty remembering much about the skating rink I visited twenty-five years ago, I have no trouble at all bringing Joey Russo to mind, recalling that he was, in fact, not a bad person, and wishing things had been better for him in his short life, wishing I had lent him a few dollars to go ice skating when I had the chance to do so, and thinking if I had the opportunity today, I would bring little Joey Russo to this frozen lagoon and ask him to skate with me.

And later this year, when the ice melts and the ducks come, I will feed them all.

It was a spur-of-the-moment thing: “Put on your winter coat and get a warm blanket,” I told my daughter. “We’re going out to look at Christmas lights.”

When I was a kid, one of the highlights of the holiday season was driving around town looking at everyone’s Christmas decorations. Our family—seven kids and two adults—would pile into the station wagon and off we’d go.

Normally, my father and a car full of kids was a volatile mixture. But it was different at Christmas. When you put us in our pajamas, wrapped us in our blankets, and took us out for a late-night ride to look at Christmas decorations, it was actually peaceful in that station wagon.

But that was then. My days of riding around in pajamas and blankets are pretty much over. However, one of the privileges of being a parent is that your children provide you with a legitimate excuse to do some of the things you haven’t done since you were a kid. And so, we set out in search of wonderful, awe-inspiring Christmas lights.

Unfortunately, things seldom go according to plan when we try to recreate our childhood. Some little variable always changes the equation, sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse. Such was the case that evening when I took Kathleen, my little six-year-old variable, out for a Christmas drive.

I had in mind a little subdivision in the neighboring town of Sycamore, Illinois, about five miles from our house. My wife and I had gone there earlier that week for a Christmas party, and we both thought it was nice that everybody in the neighborhood had decorated their homes. However, rather than drive through Sycamore to the subdivision as I had done with my wife, I decided to save time by taking the back roads. It turned out to be a bad choice.

We saw a few decorations at farmsteads en route, and when we got a little north of Sycamore, I turned down a road that I thought would lead to the subdivision. I was wrong. We drove around for half an hour without seeing any lights at all, let alone Christmas lights. However, while we were lost, we had a very interesting conversation:

“Daddy,” Kathleen asked, “Do you believe in Santa?”

“Do you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then I do, too,” I said.

My answer seemed to be acceptable. Score one for Daddy. Soon came another question.

“Do you believe in God?” she asked.

This one caught me off guard. I’m sorry to say despite attending St. Elizabeth Elementary School and serving as an altar boy, and despite a higher education that included exposure to Hinduism, Buddhism, existential philosophy, and the theological writings of Paul Tillich, I was not prepared to give my daughter a definitive answer at that moment. I had never been able to assimilate any of the things I had learned into a set of beliefs that made much sense to me, and it seemed that an appropriate answer would require a lengthy discussion of abstract and complex theological and philosophical thought. And after all that, it still pretty much comes down to a leap of faith. The thought of trying to explain all of this to my daughter in a few simple words seemed overwhelming. However, in all my feeble reflections on the subject of religion and God, Being and Non-Being, I have come to one conclusion: I do not believe that there is nothing—which implies I must believe that there is something. And so, I took a leap that night and provided my daughter with a slightly boiled-down version of what would otherwise have been a very lengthy and probably confusing answer.