I looked up to Barry mostly because he was sixteen, three years older than Nervous Harold and six years older than myself. Also, he owned both an Atari 2600 and a Colecovision, which seemed like wanton avarice to me who’d only recently come by a second hand Atari thanks to a college-bound cousin. And, supposedly, Barry could claim to owning the largest O gauge model train set lay-out in Northwest Indiana. I say "supposedly" because I wasn’t allowed in their basement and the basement windows were painted black so I couldn’t spy through them. "Check his pockets before he leaves," Barry said simply, then slammed the window shut. "Bust my f’n’ head. I oughta bust his f’n’ head while he’s sleeping," Nervous Harold sulked. "Check my pockets," I said, mock innocently. "I wonder what he meant by that?" Since I began associating with Nervous Harold earlier in the year when my mother finally allowed me to cross the street unsupervised, I’d been systematically stealing model car parts, hot wheels, several Star Wars and G.I. Joe figures from Nervous Harold. During one deliriously courageous afternoon I separated him from his favorite Star Wars toy, Yoda, and his fastest electric track racer. Not because I owned an electric track, I just didn’t want him to have it. He sprawled out on his stairs and I sat beside him. He took out a crumpled pack of Raleighs filched from his mother’s purse last week and shook out two stale, creased cigarettes. With trembling fingers he withdrew a box of matches from the same flannel pocket. After six attempts he managed to strike a match against the box and light our smokes. I followed my first inhale with a prolonged bout of cough and wheezing. "Shhh..." Nervous Harold’s wet, puckered mouth sprayed spittle. "If I get grounded off the Atari til I’m 25, I’m gonna run you over." "With what? Your wagon?" I pointed at the red Radio Flyer wagon parked outside the garage door. It double as his aluminum can transportation as well as his only means of wheeled locomotion. His equilibrium was such that he couldn’t ride a bicycle ten feet without tipping over or colliding with a telephone pole. When there were no cans to pull the five blocks to Zurzolo’s Recycling, Nervous Harold slowly wheeled himself up and down the block by sitting in the wagon with one foot hanging over, propelling himself along while he kept the handle bent back in his hand for steering. I’ve never seen anyone ride a wagon in such a fashion before or since. He resembled a cyborg slug without all the charisma. My dad, being less charitable, thought he looked like a retard and warned me against associating with him which is why I only hung out with Nervous Harold during the twenty three hours a day while Dad was at work or at the bar or sleeping. "I gotta get them cans to Zurzolo’s today," Nervous Harold muttered. "Hey! Can we bust some cans at your house?" I took a second draw from the cigarette. It still tasted like shit but at least I didn’t hack my lungs out this time. I watched the smoke curl out from my nostrils. I could get use to this, I thought. Cigarettes from Nervous Harold’s mom and a couple nips off my dad’s stashed pint of Smirnoff and I’d be set. I blew the smoke at Nervous Harold’s face. "Are you kidding? My dad’s sleeping. He’s gotta work tonight." "We ain’t gonna be that loud." "Tell that to your brother." "Damn. Damn. Damn. Darn. What good are you to have around? None. That’s what. I gotta get these cans busted and taken to Zurzolo’s before my ma gets back from work so she can take me to Woolsworth. They got a sweet 1968 Impala model I need to get. It’s sleek as hell and I need it." "What for? You’re only gonna mess it up." "Don’t say that." "It’s true. All your models you ever try to build always come out looking like Mad Max cars." His latest attempt at model building, a 1970 Pontiac GTO according to the box didn’t look much like anything except one of those anonymous cars you’d find in the center of the track once the dirt settled following an Illiana Speedway demolition derby. Glue opaqued windows kept the interior a mystery. Glue splotches pocked the body. All I could say about the engine was that it was located under the hood. He’d even managed to screw up the tires, giving the vehicle an off-kilter slouch. He kept the GTO in a clear plastic display case to keep the exposed glue from attracting dust. "At least I can afford to buy a model. You wear the same shorts every day." "You’d be better off buying shorts cause your models suck." "This one’s gonna be different. You’ll see." We stubbed out our cigarettes. There really wasn’t much else to say. I knew I’d pushed Nervous Harold as far as I could without causing a hissy fit. "You wanna play a game?" He asked. "Sure. On Atari or Coleco?" "No, you know you’re not allowed inside. It’s a game me and Barry came up with." I shrugged. Since my first encounters with Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and Dig Dug, games involving fresh air and imagination had lost a lot of its charm for me, with the exception of swatting lightning bugs with wiffle ball bats. That never got old. "All right. Lay down in the grass and close your eyes." "What?" "Trust me." "What the hell kind of game is this?" "Me and Barry play it all the time. It’s fun." If Barry had a hand in creating the game, that was good enough for me. He didn’t strike me as the sort of sixteen year-old who would waste his time with idle nonsense. Not when there were so many video games to play and model trains to run. I laid down in the grass, stared up at the clear blue sky. We were upwind of Amoco refinery today and the pollution wasn’t quite so thick. It seemed I could see a mile high. "Close your eyes," Nervous Harold said. "I am." "No peeking." "I ain’t, goddammit." Nervous Harold hunkered down, pressed his ass against my face and farted. I immediately went spastic, slapping and kicking the ground. Nervous Harold let off my face. His face was scarlet. He was laughing so hard he wasn’t really laughing at all, just trying to suck air. "What’s wrong with you, man?" "I got you. I got you." "You son of a bitch. Now it’s my turn. Get on the grass." I didn’t have to fart but I’d shit on him before I’d allow this outrage to go without retaliation. "No way," Nervous Harold said. "That’s not how the game’s played." "New rules." We can’t change the rules mid-game." "Why the hell not?" "Because that’s how Larry made the rules. Besides, I think I’m gonna go inside. They got a Three Stooges marathon on channel 48." "Fine." "You heard my brother, though. You gotta turn out your pockets. Make sure you ain’t up to any more thieving." "I’m wearing shorts. I ain’t got no pockets. Idiot." Nervous Harold entered his house in triumph. I crossed the street and walked the half block home with my head hung in shame, watching my ratty sneakers eat up the cracked sidewalk. Getting outsmarted by a borderline retard didn’t sit well with me. It left a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak.
Stooges marathon provided I wouldn’t have to sit through any episodes featuring Shemp. With one television in the house, it didn’t matter what I wanted to watch. This time of day, Mom would be firmly entrenched on the couch watching All My Children or General Hospital or One Life To Live, the three stooges for middle-aged women. Rather than eye gouging or noggin knocking, however, the shows concentrated mostly on adultery and characters taking turns surviving near death experiences so they could lie, fashionably bandaged, in hospital beds plotting their revenge. Revenge. I considered the word as I sat on the lone swing dangling from the lopsided swing set. My shoes rubbed the twin trenches worn into the ashy dirt beneath me. I imagined what my dad would say if he found out I got duped into taking a face full of ass by a drooling dullard. Likely he’d ask what I did to get him back. Shamefully I didn’t have an answer. Nor could I point to the trinkets and crap I’d stolen from Nervous Harold as vindication. Having been a bookie for twenty years before I was born, Dad didn’t mind crooks so much, but he hated a thief. The answer popped into my head so suddenly, I was off the swing set and halfway across the street before I had the details finalized. I arrived at Nervous Harold’s house through the back alley. I scampered up the wobbly aluminum garbage cans and peered over the privacy fence. No movement in the yard and back porch. More than likely he was eyeball deep in the trio’s knuckle-headed misadventures. I glanced around, making sure there were no curious neighbors looking to involve themselves in my scheme. I fingered the latched up and opened the back gate. I slid along the side of the garage, hyper aware of my surroundings. My head buzzed with the familiar alertness I began cultivating the first time I slipped into my pocket a Star Wars action figure that didn’t belong to me. Nervous Harold’s prized Radio Flyer wagon sat next to the garage door. I pulled my shorts down, eased out my penis and pissed in the wagon. Still not feeling as though the scales of justice were properly balanced in my favor, I tipped the fifty five gallon drum of crushed cans at an angle and rolled it to the back gate. The shifting cans made a racket, but nothing that I figured could be heard over the television’s "nyuk nyuk nyuks" and Nervous Harold’s moronic laughter. Opening the gate, I wrestled the drum into the alley. With the gate shut behind me, I rolled the drum to the fringes of the Greek’s yard and upended the whole thing. A Revell 1968 Impala model’s worth of busted cans cascaded into the weeds of the Greek’s property. It sounded like an avalanche down the side of Mount Pudlo’s Tavern. The drum made a satisfying hollow booming sound when I bounced it down the alley. Nervous Harold’s back door slammed open. The height of the privacy fence protected me for the moment but I knew my advantage was short-lived. I sprinted down the alley never looking back. I cut through Robert Blanco’s yard, reaching the driveway of my home inside a minute of liberating Nervous Harold’s beer can horde. Mom laid on the couch like a skink sunning itself on a rock. On the television some guy with a bad perm who could have been related to the curly-haired stooge laid in a hospital bed, groaning in melodramatic agony and cursing his mortal enemies. "Whatcha been doing?" Mom asked. "You smell like Strohs." I opened my mouth but caught myself. I couldn’t tell her I was busting cans with Nervous Harold. I needed plausible deniability in case his mother called Mom accusing me of dumping his cans and pissing in his wagon. His frigid, sour-puss mother called my house at least once a week accusing me of outlandish crimes, half of which I was entirely innocent of perpetrating. "I was at the park." "Doing what?" "Playing football." "With a beer can?" "No. It was with a football. There were beer cans around though. On the field." "Who were you playing with? Pudlo’s touch football league?" "No. Some kids. Southern Baptists, I think. With the yellow school buses." "You don’t need to be hanging out with those snake handlers." "Sorry, Mom." Rock solid alibi in place, I entered my room and sat on the floor. Ten minutes crawled by without a ringing telephone. I brought out the pilfered Star Wars toys and lined them in front of me. I made Greedo fart on Han Solo’s face. Then Han Solo drew his blaster and shot Greedo right in the eye. The green bastard deserved no less. Eventually Dad woke up and ate dinner before he left for his second job, janitoring at the engineering trailers at Amoco refinery. Only then did I breathe easy. I intended to avoid Nervous Harold the entire next day. I planned to rebuild my Vietnamese prison camp beneath the shadow of the elm tree in the backyard. The stick and mud construction were used to torture G.I. Joe action figures unfortunate enough to break off their thumbs in combat against Cobra and their Star Wars’ Mos Eisley terrorist cells. VA hospitals didn’t exist here. Soldiers unable to hold weapons and perform their patriotic duties were sacrificed to the slant-eyed architects of suffering. Mom scuttled any hopes for a peaceful afternoon eviscerating Airbourne’s rubberband guts and torching his feet with a cigarette lighter. "I need you to run to White Hen pantry and get me a bottle of diet Pepsi and a pack of Vantage. I wrote the cashier a note." "Can I get a Coke?" "No, you got grape soda in the fridge." "How about a Butterfinger?" "No, you don’t need it. There’s some cheese and crackers in the cabinet." Goddam. To hear her tell it, I didn’t need much of anything in this life; just a can of generic grape soda and some stale cheese and crackers and I was good to go. I didn’t mind so much running errands for Mom. I’d been fetching her smokes since I learned to walk. I just had a bad feeling, regardless which route I took to the convenience store, I’d get intercepted by Nervous Harold and have to listen to him bitch about the Greek usurpation of his aluminum cans. Sure enough, I didn’t get halfway down the block before Nervous Harold wheeled out of the driveway in that ridiculous Radio Flyer wagon, his foot thumping the cement every five seconds. My instincts called for me to outrun him. I wouldn’t even have to run, just walk briskly. Such an action would only confirm my guilt. So I waited the five minutes, hands on hips, smirk on my face. I noticed when he rolled up the stench of Strohs and piss had joined forces to form a perfect imitation of a freshly opened can of Old Style beer wafting from the wagon. "Guess what I got yesterday." Nervous Harold matched my smirk with a grin of his own. "Anally raped?" "No, I did not. Think along the lines of car models." "Herpes." "Why say that stuff when you know I got the ‘68 Impala model?" "Hmmm. So you managed to take the cans in?" "No. My mom bought it for me." "That’s nice of her." Usually her idea of kindness was throwing a Tombstone pizza in the oven before locking herself in her bedroom for three hours. "As you may all ready know, the Greek got a hold of my cans." "No. How would I know that?" Nervous Harold’s face scrunched up like a fist as it often did when he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right passive/aggressive words to express himself. "I was watching the Three Stooges yesterday after I farted in your face. It was the one where they were bakers. I heard this loud crash and I knew right away it was my cans. So I ran outside and all my cans were in the Greek’s yard. I missed the pie fight and everything." "Did you get your cans back?" "How could I? They were in the Greek’s yard." "Just go in there and get them." "Not when they’re in his yard. I’m not a thief like some people I know." "Yeah. Never trust a Greek." "I was thinking about a certain Polack I know." "Hey, don’t blame me. The cans weren’t in my yard." "Yeah, that’s the part I can’t figure out." "Well, you keep thinking on it. I gotta go to the store and get my mom a pack of cigarettes." "Get me some, too." "Let’s see some money." "I ain’t got none. I spent the last of it cause I had to get some gloss blue and flat black paint. Someone left the caps off my other paint and they dried up." "I guess you think that’s my fault too, eh?" "I’m not saying it is. I’m not saying it ain’t." "Maybe it was the Greek." "I don’t see how he could have done it. It don’t matter though if you let me have a couple cigarettes out of the pack. I gave you some yesterday." "You gave me one and it was as stale as your jokes." "Well, give me one then." "And then what do I tell my mom when she asks how come the pack’s open and one cig is missing?" "Tell her they sold it to you that way." "I’m not giving you a cigarette." Nervous Harold pouted. "I’ll remember that next time you come over and ask for a cup of Kool-Aid." We left it at that. I continued on my way to White Hen. Nervous Harold returned home to work on his ‘68 Impala. He promised it would be the crown jewel of his collection, an emerald among a long row of petrified dog shit. At White Hen I passed Mom’s note to the cashier. She eyeballed me trying to decide if the note was authentic or if I was a ten year-old with excellent penmanship and a hankering for nicotine. While she phoned my mother to verify the request, I jammed two Butterfinger candy bars into my pocket. Three days passed before Nervous Harold emerged from his house. I was in my backyard hunched over my newly constructed prison camp. I’d severed Flint’s thumbless hands with an exacto knife and cauterized the wounds with matches. I trussed him up with yarn and suspended him over a pit of mud which I pretended was full of gook piss and feces. I glanced up from my work and noticed Nervous Harold across the street, jumping around and waving. Christ, I thought. I ain’t got time for his shenanigans. I still had Shipwreck and Roadblock left to torture and interrogate. When he saw me looking his way, he began gesticulating vehemently. "Come here, come here." "Goddam," I sighed. The G.I. Joes were locked tight in their stick cages. They weren’t going anywhere, even if they still possessed thumbs. I left them to their dread and followed Nervous Harold back to his house. The whole way back he didn’t talk so much as make pronouncements. "Wait til you see this. You’re gonna love it. You ain’t gonna believe this. It’s the best thing I ever done in my life. It’s better than I ever could have possibly dreamed." I hated seeing him so happy. I waited on the back stairs while he rushed inside. The blue fifty five gallon drum was back in its accustomed place. Nervous Harold returned before I could check the drum’s contents. In his trembling hands, he held the finished 1968 Impala. "Your brother put it together for you." I was reminded of this moment several years later when I solved the Rubik’s Cube and my father accused me of peeling off the stickers. Of course I peeled off some stickers, but couldn’t he have believed I solved the puzzle legitimately? I could see the pride and high spirits drain from Nervous Harold’s face and puddle in his shoes. The Impala looked as though it rolled off the assembly line this morning. It’s red contours gleamed. There was not so much as a misaligned decal to be found. Not a gluey fingerprint on any surface. The chrome bumpers twinkled in the sunlight. The flawless windows revealed tastefully painted upholstery. The engine looked like an engine rather than a pile of parts fused together with eight ounces of glue. "I did this," Nervous Harold growled. "Sure you did." "I did, asshole. I took my time and patience. Not like some jerks who criticize cause they’re too poor and can’t afford models." "All right, Harold. Let me look at it." I reached a hand out. He pulled the model away. "You see with your eyes not your hands." I felt the rage hook into me and spin my head like a top. It was that quick. I knew what I was going to do before I did it. "All right, then. Bring it down so I can look at it with my eyes." With shaky hands he lowered the Impala to eye level. My hand lashed out like a striking cobra. I struck the bottom of his hand, knocking the car out of his grasp. It rotated in the air, seeming to hover so long I felt certain he’d be able to catch it before gravity latched on to it. But he only stood there, abject horror dawning on his ugly, pimply face. We were close enough and I slapped his hand hard enough, the model could have landed on the grass incurring minimal damage. Our karma being what it was, the Impala detonated against the concrete, coming apart spectacularly like Lord Hummungus’s vehicle colliding with Mad Max’s eighteen wheeler at the climax of Road Warrior. Wheels bounded off splintered axles. Gloss blue shocks leapt from the flat black chassis. The impact separated chassis from body, ejecting the engine in multi-colored pieces; pistons, transmission, alternator, pieces I had no names for and little idea what purpose they served scattered like fretful insects. Even the interior blew apart, the seats clattering against the stairs like thrown dice. We stood there, silently, an entire minute surveying the absolute destruction. Nothing remained bonded to the automotive politic. It was all a pile of plastic rubble that gladdened my heart to see despite the tears flowing freely down Nervous Harold’s bumpy cheeks. This is what you get for farting on me, I wanted to scream in his idiot face. This is what you get for belittling me. This is what you get for acting like I’m not good enough to come in your house and play Atari and Colecovision and see your brother’s model railroad. Nervous Harold’s lips quivered. He opened his mouth to damn me but only an inchoate whimper dribbled out of the hole in his head. "Don’t blame this on me," I said coldly. "I can’t help it if you’re too clumsy to hold a model straight." His watery eyes swam up and regarded me with incomprehension. But I knew. I was an evil kid. I felt no remorse. His misery only provoked elation. My desire to distance myself from responsibility stemmed only from fear of corporal punishment which usually involved my father and his leather belt. All ready, I half-believed Nervous Harold simply lost his handle on the model and dropped it to the cement. "I’m gonna tell Mom what you done." "Tell the bitch whatever you want. I’m sure she’ll wanna know how you like to sit on people’s faces. And how you’re too retarded to hold an Impala that your brother built." "I built it. And you knocked it out of my hand." "I guess your mom will believe what you tell her and my mom will believe what I tell her. And, oh yeah, the reason your wagon smells like Old Style is because I pissed all over it." "I know. I saw you." I left him crying over the scrap pile, gathering bits of Impala to his scrawny chest. I came home and studied my prisoners trapped in their little barbaric cages. Tomorrow they’d have plenty more company. |
