pitcher’s mound. He held the bat like a toothpick in his powerful right hand.
The Jugger backed up, and the Frenchman kept coming. The plate umpire ran after him and tried to hold him back. The Frenchman swatted him with his left forearm, knocking him to the ground as he gained the rubber.
“Frog, eh?” and he threw a punch at Jugger, who tried to block it by putting his pitching hand in front of his face. The fist drove on through to the face. There was a sickening sound of bone snapping like a branch, and Jugger toppled to the ground. His face turned pale and he was too weak to get out of the way of the bat that smashed against his head and outstretched arms.
The Jugger never threw a baseball again. The arm never responded to surgery and it hung crooked all his life. The skull fracture dimmed his vision and caused his thinking to slip a few beats. Sometimes, he spoke slowly and slurred his words.
The Frenchman was to be tried for assault, but he made a run for the border and was never seen again.
“I’m sorry you’re sad, Sully. You shouldn’t have to be sad. Kids should never be sad. Things happen in life. That’s what my father says. It’s the way God wants things. We can’t always know why these things happen, my father says, but they just do. Like accidents. So don’t be sad, Sully. You’re just a kid. I don’t ever like to see kids sad. I was watching from my window one day and I saw Mr. Callahan come into the Park looking for his kids. When they saw him coming they started running away and he was stumbling and staggering and swearing at them. He yelled at them to stop and the little girl, the pretty little one with the curly, black hair, how old isshee, Sully?” he slurred.
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe nine?”
“Well, she stopped and came back even though her brothers kept yelling at her to get away. Mr. Callahan’s face was red as a beet, Sully, and he hauls off and whacks her right across the face three or four times. Oh, Sully, I was so sad when I saw that. I wanted to go down to the Park and kill him. But I didn’t do anything because my father sent me to my room for drinking too much wine.” He laughed a high-pitched, giddy laugh. “That’s why I drink down here and hide my bottles. Once I’m drunk there’s nothing he can do about it. Sometimes I sleep it off on the bench and sneak in the house before the sun comes up. Hey, you know a real funny thing? I took Miss Feeney’s key once and had a set made by Willie Shapiro up at the Lake. You know some nights when it’s real cold I sleep in this Box. I just prop up the cover to get a little air and I have my wine and I lie there thinking about the old days.
“You know, Sully, I can lie right here in this Box and look up at my house. I watch my father’s shadow in the parlor, walking up and down, up and down, until he gets tired of waiting for me and he goes to bed. That’s a nice feeling for me, Sully. I put one over on him. Do you know what I mean, Sully? Have some more wine.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, Jugger. Thanks.” I swallowed off another mouthful and I was feeling a little heady.
“That will make you feel better, Sull. It kind of covers the pain. It always does for me. You’re not sad now are you, Sull?”
“No, I feel better, Jugger. I guess Miss Feeney’s dying is just one of those accidents like your father said.”
The word father was like pressing an alarm button as the cracked, cackle of a voice cut through the high grass and bushes of Jugger’s backyard and tripped on down the hill and over the fence to the Park where we sat huddled on the Green Box.
“Francis. Fran-Cis. Frannncis.” The paper-thin cackle roamed the night.
“Ssssssh, don’t say anything. Just stay still, Sully. That’s my father. He wants me home. But I’m not going home. I’ve got plenty of wine and I’m going to sleep in the Box for a while and look up at the stars. That’s when I have my best dreams.”
“Francis. Fran-Cis. Frannncis.” The eerie cadence continued hovering first over the Park and then drifting off in the night as the back door of Jugger’s house slammed shut.
“He’s gone.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks for the wine and the talk, Jug. I really appreciate it. I feel better.”
“Do ya, Sull?”
“Honest. I really do.”
“Good. Sull, you won’t tell anybody about the keys and the wine and the Green Box will ya?”
“Course not, Jug. That’s our secret. Between us. Shake.” And we shook hands on something that was ours and nobody else’s, and knowing that made me feel good.
CHAPTER THREE
The war was no longer being fought on the back lot of Warner Brothers or Paramount. And it was becoming more than “The Movietone News” we saw twice a week as Stretch got taller, and the break-ins to the theater included, sometimes, a dozen kids. We sat there, cheering and thumping the leather cushions, as U-Boats, munitions factories, cities, and airfields blew into pieces and aircraft—German and Japanese—exploded in mid-air and plummeted into the North Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. Tracer bullets directed us from belly gunner to target, sandwiched between the two movies—Cagney killed and danced—and Veronica Lake squinted behind a curtain of silken, blond hair that covered one side of her face. Dana Andrews was captured by the Japanese and tortured in Tokyo, while Bing Crosby and Risё Stevens tried to save the souls of young boys through songs and baseball. Barry Fitzgerald narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to all of it.
Our immediate battleground was the Park, Gardner, Pearl, Jewett and Fayette Streets. My father and quiet but friendly Mr. Morton, who lived on Jewett across the street from my Park friends—the McQueeney boys—became air raid wardens. At night I would kneel by the parlor window with my heart pounding as my father dared the black veil of night. Mr. Morton would inch over the dark streets, crouching behind bush and tree and lamppost until he would appear halfway down Gardner Street hill and slip up, commando style, behind my father, who was carrying a fire extinguisher in watchful anticipation of German bombers. No one ever really told us that there would have been a fuel problem somewhere across the Atlantic so we all waited to be featured in Movietone News the following week.
My father and Mr. Morton, helmeted and intrepid, patrolled our street, yelling to an errant neighbor to shut the light off and tuck in the black window covering. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” Mr. Morton would chide. My father, gentle and kind by nature, would just shift, embarrassed, from one foot to another.
The blackout secure, my father would come in at eleven o’clock, his military tour over for another night and we would have hot chocolate. My father, who never swore, would say to my mother, “Gor-ram-it, Rose, Charlie Morton is a great guy until he puts that helmet on and then he thinks he’s George Patton. Gor-ram-it, it’s embarrassing.”
One day as I stood by the Green Box waiting for Miss Feeney to open it and pass out the cards and board game to the gamblers, and the baseball gear to the rest of us, I looked up to the sidewalk beside Jugger Casey’s house. My mother was standing there talking to Bessie O’Leary, who we were all convinced was a real, live witch. My mother was dabbing at her eyes with a blue apron. I froze for a moment. Who was dead or hurt? My father – I knew it was my father. He had a heart attack. Oh, God, why? Why did my father have to die? I felt sick and numb as I passed the catcher’s mask to Stretch and ran up the hill to my mother, who was discreetly blowing her nose into the apron.
“Bill, we’ve had some bad news. Your cousin Jackie has been killed in action. On Saipan. My sister’s boy,” my mother said, as she turned back to the witch.
I had never seen Bessie this close up before. Most of the time she was looking out her windows, the curtains pulled back just enough so she could see us, and we could see her. I backed away, more intent on Bessie O’Leary than on my cousin Jackie’s death.
“Yes,” my mother went on, “my sister died when he was only a three year old. That’s when the father went sour. We don’t know where he is. Bill, go get your bike and ride over to Nana’s house. Your cousin Evelyn called to tell