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Chapter 3
For most kids on Warren Street, the attraction to the Green Apartment Building had less to do with the building and more to do with the field behind it.
Five times the size of a single backyard, the field was completely unmonitored. Whoever owned the building didn’t live there, and whoever lived there didn’t care, so an after-school pick-up game with zero adult supervision could be counted on.
Being spring it was usually baseball, played with a yellow whiffle ball bat and a pink Spalding, which was softer than a hardball so you didn’t need a glove but it could still really fly.
Timothy arrived at the same time as Christy Vanderbeck, who lived in the house with the floral milk canister on the porch.
“We got Timothy!” Carl called, preemptively so as not to be stuck with the seven-year-old girl, but also because he and Timothy were friends. They usually played on the same team along with Mark Williams, a fairly well-coordinated third grader.
Carl, who was sometimes called Crazy Carl, was in 4th grade like Timothy, but was taller because he’d stayed back once. Or twice, no one was quite sure, maybe not even Carl’s parents.
“Okay, we’ll take Christy,” Robbie the other team captain said, “but we go first.”
Terms agreed upon, the game got off to a surprise start when Christy Vanderbeck defied expectations and made it onto first. The top of the first inning was short-lived however. Will from Washington Avenue struck out, then Robbie popped one up which Mark caught then tagged Christy waffling between bases.
The bottom of the inning looked promising. Timothy easily made it to first, then held at second when Mark did the same. You couldn’t actually stand on second, because it was a lopsided chunk of cinderblock permanently embedded in the field (neighborhood legend was that a dog was buried underneath, but no one had ever dug down to confirm.)
Crazy Carl could generally be counted on to bring runners home, but this came at a price, and today Carl had that certain look in his eye which helped reinforce his nickname.
“Don’t do it, Carl!” Mark pleaded from first, even though they were on the same team.
Will and Christy moved back, even Robbie moved back from the approximate location of the pitcher’s mound.
There’s the pitch. Crazy Carl connects. And it’s going, going…
Gone.
In this field, gone literally meant gone. The Green Apartment Building’s back forty was an overgrown dumping ground, great for finding rusting car parts and the like, but near impossible to find a lost Spalding when you needed to.
“You had to do that,” Mark said, while Carl ran the bases.
Both teams united in the search, six kids in weeds up to their waists. Will from Washington Avenue had kept his eye on the ball and had a vague idea of the vicinity, but it didn’t help much.
Catching sight of something in the dirt below, Timothy stooped to part the brambly thistle. It wasn’t the Spalding. It looked like a weird hammer at first, but rubbing off the caked-on mud with his fingers, Timothy couldn’t believe his luck.
It was a meat cleaver.
The edge was dull and chipped and looked like a tetanus shot waiting to happen. This was Timothy’s best find ever.
“You gonna keep that?” Mark asked, eyeing the prize in Timothy’s hands.
“Fuck yeah,” Timothy said.
“Is that a blood stain on it?”
A real blood stain would definitely be a bonus.
“Yeah,” Timothy said, “or brain juice or something.”
You couldn’t tell the rust from the dirt, much less blood from cranial fluid, but it was obvious that some homicidal maniac had concealed the cleaver in the tall grass after a killing spree. Even if a run-of-the-mill butcher had flung it into the field for some unknown reason in a moment of hysteria, the history of the cleaver had to be grisly.
The only thing Timothy had to figure was how to keep possession of the cleaver and play ball at the same time. This proved not to be an issue as the other kids started giving up the search and heading home, including Robbie, who took his yellow plastic bat with him.
This left Timothy, Mark, and Crazy Carl hanging out with no game to play, but not ready to jump ship. They headed down the embankment to Tannery Brook, the neighborhood stream which flowed alongside the field, separating the Green Apartment Building’s property from the rest of the yards on the block.
Chucking rocks into the brook was a reliable diversion when there was nothing else to do and, after Carl and Mark finished examining Timothy’s meat cleaver, this is more-or-less what they did.
“Eww, what’s that?” Carl said.
A blob of green foam was seen floating its way down the brook. You’d sometimes find an old beer can or something bobbing along, but a foamy blob was something new.
The boys commenced pelting the blob until it dissipated along with the mystery of whatever had caused it. The throwing of rocks slowed to a lazier pace once again.
When Timothy noticed someone walking up the sidewalk toward the Green Apartment Building he looked to see if it was the prostitute, but it was someone else who lived in the building, a guy with blonde feathered hair.
Timothy had seen this guy plenty of times before. He had kind of a well-groomed appearance, which seemed a little out-of-place in the otherwise dodgy apartment building.
“That guy’s a queer,” Carl said.
“How do you know?” Mark asked.
“My dad says so,” Carl said, “he says that guy’s a queer.”
If Crazy Carl had called the guy anything else, a dick or a fuck face, Timothy wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But it was that word, queer, and the hateful way Carl spat it out. It sent nervous adrenaline coursing through Timothy’s spinal column, made his forehead start to sweat.
From a distance of fifty feet or so, the guy with the feathered hair looked over when he saw the three boys staring at him. Maybe he even smiled.
“Fucking queer,” Mark said, not loud enough for the guy to hear at this distance.
Timothy waited maybe a beat too long, then added:
“Yeah.”
He felt like if he didn’t agree on some level, he’d be lumped in with this guy they were calling a queer. But he still couldn’t bring himself to use that particular word, or even any other curse words at the moment, which was unusual since deploying a few choice curse words usually brought him so much pleasure.
The guy disappeared into the Green Apartment Building.
Carl and Mark went back to throwing stones into the brook.
“Well, I guess I gotta go home,” Timothy said, picking his meat cleaver up off the ground.
“Okay, see’ya,” the other boys said.
Timothy didn’t really feel like going home just yet. But for the moment, he didn’t much feel like hanging out here either.
# # #
Timothy’s mom and Cathryn were inside cooking dinner so did not notice Timothy burying the meat cleaver beneath the forsythia in the backyard.
When Timothy went inside, he washed up and set the table as usual. Timothy’s mom insisted on eating at the dining room table every night. That’s how you kept a family together, she said.
Timothy’s mom sat at the head of the table, where his dad used to sit. Cathryn sat at the opposite head of the table, where Timothy’s mom used to sit.
This left Timothy on the side, same as always. Sometimes he felt like a spectator at a tennis match, watching the adult conversation being lobbed back and forth.
Tonight, Timothy’s mom was quiet at first, distant.
“Is it Greg again?” Cathryn asked her, already frustrated by whatever was not being mentioned.
Timothy’s mom waved her hand slightly, not wanting to talk about it. She took up the big slotted spoon and served the meat and noodles.
Meat and noodles was something you could count on at least once a week. It was cheap, easy to make, and there was always enough for a growing boy to have second helpings.
“I can go in there and talk to him,” Cathryn said.
Timothy’s mom kind of laughed slightly at the suggestion and waved her hand again.
“Five more months,” she said.
This wasn’t the first time this subject had come up and been quickly dropped at the dinner table.
Timothy’s mom worked as a secretary for a law firm uptown. From what Timothy could piece together, there seemed to be an ongoing situation with this Greg guy, one of the lawyers at the firm.
Timothy had met Greg once before. He was actually super friendly to Timothy. Evidently, he was a little too super friendly with Timothy’s mom, and this was the issue.
His mom was currently doing a night course at SUNY a couple of nights a week. In five months, she’d get her paralegal certificate, find a new firm to work for, and start bringing home more money. That was the plan, anyway.
Meanwhile, though his mom went to great lengths not to mention it directly, Timothy knew they had barely enough money coming in. His mom would be keeping her current job.
“So,” his mom said to Timothy, changing the topic, “anything interesting happen today?”
Timothy figured neither the morning errand for the prostitute nor finding the rusty meat cleaver would go over well at the dinner table.
“Not really,” he said.
“Nothing? Not even anything at school?”
“Well, we got to pick out what report we’re doing for the Bicentennial project,” he offered.
The country was turning 200 in three months, and everyone was going batty about it.
“Yes? And what did you decide on?”
“Well, I wanted to do something about the Burning of Kingston,” he said.
Most Kingstonians knew the basic story, that the British had burned the town down during the Revolution. The subject was of particular interest to Timothy, since it was their neighborhood that had been torched.
“That seems like a good idea,” his mom said, “you know a bit about that already.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Timothy said, “but Mrs. Brenner won’t let me do it.”
“No?”
“She said I need to do something of national importance.”
It seemed absolutely ridiculous to Timothy that here they were, living in a town that was actually affected by the Revolution, but Mrs. Brenner wasn’t even teaching about it because it wasn’t in their state-sanctioned social studies textbook.
“Well, she probably just wants you to challenge yourself and research something you don’t already know about,” his mom said. “So what did you choose?”
“The Boston Tea Party,” Timothy said, with slight resignation.
“Could be interesting,” Cathryn said, trying to add a hopeful note to the conversation.
“I guess so,” Timothy said. “Maybe I’ll dress up like an Indian.”
“There you go,” his mom said. Then she turned to Cathryn. “How about you, anything interesting happen at work today?”
“Not unless you find a clearance sale on rock salt interesting,” she replied.
Cathryn worked part-time as a cashier in a hardware store in the shopping plaza. Both she and Timothy’s mom viewed the job as inane, but harmless and necessary, seeing as every extra penny was necessary to keep the household afloat without a male breadwinner.
Most nights Timothy would be content to make his single conversational offering at the dinner table. But tonight they were only halfway through the meal and had seemingly run out of things to talk about, so he piped up again.
“Brandon Phillips brought a toner drum for show-n-tell today.”
“What’s a toner drum?” Cathryn asked.
He proceeded to describe, to the best of his recollection, cylinders and toner and how a photocopier worked.
“We have one of those at the office,” Timothy’s mom said. “I’ve always wondered how it worked.”
The table got quiet again. Having already ruled out other of the day’s events as inappropriate for the dinner table, Timothy tucked into his meat and noodles.
He’d contributed two somewhat interesting topics on a night when both his mom and Cathryn had come up with nothing. He’d take this as a win in the adult conversation department and leave it at that.
# # #
Thank God there was no Group tonight so they could all just relax in their own living room.
Mom, Cathryn, and Oscar took up most of the pink sofa, so Timothy propped himself up on a pillow on the floor. The pillow still smelled of Patchouli from the night before, but he didn’t feel like going upstairs to get his beanbag chair.
Timothy flipped through the TV Guide, but it was Wednesday night, so it was a foregone conclusion they’d be watching The Bionic Woman.
“I like her hair,” Cathryn said during the opening sequence.
Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman, had hair that was straight on top but somehow cascaded into perfect waves as it broke around her shoulders.
Timothy supposed he liked the Bionic Man better, but he still kinda liked the Bionic Woman because she was, you know, bionic.
“A woman needs to have bionic legs to run faster than a man,” Timothy’s mom observed.
Timothy thought on this a moment.
“Technically, Steve Austin could probably still run faster than her, if he could run faster than her before they both got bionic legs.”
His mom shrugged, not eager to argue the point.
One thing they all agreed on was that both shows would be way more interesting if you could actually see Steve or Jaime outrunning a car instead of running in slow motion, as if slo-mo somehow conveyed superhuman speed, which was patently ridiculous when you thought about it.
Anyway, like 50 million other families across America, conversation died down shortly after the opening credits, eyes fixed on the unfolding drama, despite the outmoded picture quality of the last black-and-white TV set on Warren Street.
There was a promise in the air to replace the old black-and-white with a new color one, once Timothy’s mom became a paralegal.
Yes, definitely a clue as to where this is going!
‘You couldn’t tell the rust from the dirt, much less blood from cranial fluid, but it was obvious that some homicidal maniac had concealed the cleaver in the tall grass after a killing spree.’
Hahahaha! so good.