lilt only the Irish can convey to their words. She called the attendance roll, asking us one at a time to stand and say our names.
Paolo stood up from the ancient, dark-oak desk with the hole in the top that once held an inkwell. He barely avoided falling over himself as he stood away from his chair, and then I felt my skin crawl as he spoke.
My old-man’s memory recalls an olive-skinned boy, thin but with a head disproportionately large for his body. His mouth seemed set in a perpetual smile, lips a bit too large, eyes spaced not quite right, ears set slightly too far down. I had to look at him twice before the pieces of his face seemed to complete the puzzle.
After nearly half a century of dealing with the human machine and the toss-of-the dice results of chromosomal mixing I still cannot fit a label to that boy: fetal alcohol syndrome, in-utero infection, hydrocephalus, cerebral palsy variant, or a mixture of several of the nasties Mother Nature can play when She casts the genetic dice.
Even today the medical profession throws up its hands and just calls them “FLKs”—funny-looking kids.
Yes, doctors can be cruel, too.
He stood there, his arms moving back and forth. He opened his mouth and his jaw jutted forward.
“Uhhhh … I-I-I-I am-m-m-m…”
And then he gulped and said, “Puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-p-a-a-a-l-l-l-l-lo Che-che-che-che-eru-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bino.”
Thank God Sister Concordia was not like some of the other nuns. They would have forced him to say his name over and over “until you get it right.” Instead, she smiled and said, “Thank you, Paolo. You may sit down.”
I saw other smiles in the class that day, but they were malignant ones, and I knew what would happen at recess.
“Hey, dork face, where ya from?”
Sammy Welch was mean.
Paolo turned toward him, that broad smile infuriating the other kid even more. Welch collected his hand into a fist to punch Paolo, when my friend Sal grabbed his arm and said “No!”
Welch pulled away and yelled, “Yeah, one wop protecting another!”
The next thing Sammy knew he was surrounded by my friends Angie, Tomas, Sal—and me!
But the recess-ending bell saved his ass.
No, we didn’t make him one of the group—not really. We were too cool for that. But we did look after Paolo in the schoolyard and sometimes even walk him home afterward. It was hard not to feel sorry for him.
He was friendly like a puppy. He couldn’t do enough for you, even though it wasn’t what you wanted. I never saw him cry, even when kids like Sammy Welch snuck in a punch or tripped him when we weren’t looking. I think our protection made Sammy even angrier and more determined to invoke pain.
It only stopped when Sal, the strongest of us, broke Sammy’s arm. It was an accident, but it set in motion a series of events which, years later, culminated in a tragedy.
You see, Sammy’s father, Samuel Welch Sr., was a cop and, unlike most of the decent, hardworking police at the time, a crooked one...
Well, maybe I’ll tell that part of the story later.
On some Saturdays, when Angie, Tomas, and Sal had to “do things” instead of playing, I would contain my disappointment and meander around the neighborhood, shuffling my feet and trying to decide whether to hide out in Andrew Carnegie’s library or keep going until I reached the end of the world.
Sometimes when he saw me Paolo would appear out of the shadows of his building and tag along, puppy-like. I would talk to him—but not with him—and he would smile and smile, until I had to fight the urge to punch him myself.
One day he followed me for six blocks, away from our rat-infested enclave and into what everyone called the business district. That’s where Harold Ruddy ran his shoe shop and George Huff owned his motor and electrical repair business.
More about them later, too.
And there was an establishment that, even now, seemed incongruous to the neighborhood. It was a watch and clock shop.
No, it wasn’t one of those fancy boutiques you see today, selling high-priced Swiss wristwatches and antique ormolu clocks. This one was a hole-in-the-wall. It was a run-down flea trap packed floor to ceiling with clocks and machinery and shelves holding boxes of parts and just plain stuff.
Inside that shop lived a hunchback gnome who also smiled all the time.
His name was Raphaele Buccinelli, but everyone called him Mr. Buck.
He was almost eighty when I first met him, and though it was quite a few decades ago, I still can hear his gravelly voice casting out bits of wisdom that have stuck with me like glue.
Walking past his storefront, door wide open to whatever insects hadn’t deserted the neighborhood for better lodgings, I would yell, “Hey, Mr. Buck, come on outside. It’s a beautiful day.”
From inside the smiling ogre would call back.
“Berto, if I do that people will see me sitting in the sun, half-asleep. They will say ‘poor old man’ and think there is nothing to be had here, and they will continue on down the street. No, Berto, I stay inside. Then people will think I’m busy, and they will think I am good.”
He was right.
I found that out when I opened my practice many years later.
On this particular day, accompanied as I was by Paolo the human puppy, I called out, “Can we come in, Mr. Buck?”
Above the whir of motors and grinding wheels, I heard, “Yes, come in, come in.”
I turned to Paolo.
“Mr. Buck is the man who makes clocks. Do your mama and papa have a clock?”
By this time we had worked out a system of headshakes and body motions on his part to eliminate the agony of his speech. He quickly nodded, and we walked in.
Mr. Buck was in his workshop in the back.
We walked through the poorly lit room containing clocks on shelves, clocks hanging on the walls, and more clocks standing up against the walls.
We reached the cramped workroom, where tools of all shapes and sizes hung neatly from hooks on pegboard. I also recognized small lathes, pliers of all descriptions, inscribers, and more. Permeating the air was the mixed scent of machine oil and the distinct aroma of sweat and body odor that only the old exude.
I know that scent well now.
“Ciao, Berto! Who is your friend?”
When he spoke at length his Italian was different, an accent Papa later told me was Neapolitan. And there was something else I did not then perceive.
Before I knew it, Paolo had walked over to the old man, who was not much taller than he.
“Pup-puh-puh-paaaolo.”
The watchmaker looked long and hard at the boy. Then he bent down and effortlessly picked up Paolo and sat him on a stool.
“Hello, Paolo. Listen, listen to the measure of life.”
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
Oh yes, how could I have forgotten? The store literally vibrated from the army of escape mechanisms releasing gears powered by springs and pendulums, all tapping out in crazy-quilt cacophony the rhythm of existence.
Mr. Buck took the innards of a mantle clock from his workbench, set it in a brace, and put its pendulum in motion. We watched as each swing moved levers that in turn moved gears moving other gears moving more gears and finally the hands.
Paolo’s eyes gleamed with an excitement I’d never seen before. He turned to the old clockmaker.
“T-t-t-t-tick-t-tock?”