“Nick,” I said.
“Tell him to get up on the balls of his feet. Your jab’s no good unless your weight is already forward. You box?” he said.
“A little. I had rheumatic fever in first grade.”
He flicked his cigarette away and combed his hair, his eyes on Nick.
Later, I told Nick what Frank had said about getting up on the balls of his feet.
“He ought to know what he’s talking about. He’s a sponsor for the Golden Gloves,” Nick said.
“What’s a dyke?” I said.
“A guy with a male and a female organ. At least I think,” Nick replied.
“Stay away from that guy,” I said.
“You worry too much,” Nick said. He grinned from ear to ear, his dun-colored crew cut spiked with sweat, his throat beaded with dirt rings.
Nick wasn’t afraid of anything.
The park was an island, a neutral ground, sandwiched between a respectable neighborhood of one-story tree-shaded brick homes and, three blocks away, another neighborhood where the houses were wood-frame and peeling, the yards bare, the early sun like a dust-veiled egg yolk. My mother and I lived in the neighborhood of bare yards. Our neighbors took pride in their lack of schooling, raised their children as livestock, and shot stray cats or dogs with BB guns. After I threw my morning paper route, I always headed straight for the park.
The park contained not only a baseball diamond and elevated plank seats shaded by live oak trees, but also a fountain and cement wading pool, tetherball poles, picnic tables and barbecue pits. The Popsicle truck arrived daily at 3:00 p.m., ringing with music, and on Monday nights there was a free outdoor movie.
For Nick and me, the park’s green borders had been the edges of Eden, and no evil should have been able to penetrate them. But I heard stories about events that took place in the park after the field lights had blackened and cooled, when Negroes or Mexicans came into the park to fight white kids with chains, switchblades, and sometimes zip guns. One morning I saw Terry Anne on her knees, trying to scrub a horsetail of tiny red dots off the stucco wall of the park house with bleach and soap.
“What’s that, Terry Anne?” I asked.
“Don’t you or Nick hang around here after the park closes,” she said. There was anger and recrimination in her voice.
“We don’t,” I replied.
She dropped her scrub brush in a bucket. A gray bar of industrial-strength Lava soap churned to the surface. Her face was hot when she looked up at me. “I saw Nick get in Frank Wallace’s car yesterday. I want both you boys in my office before noon,” she said.
“Why are you so mad?” I said.
But she resumed scrubbing the wall, working the bristles hard into the stucco, her jaw as tight as a drumhead.
Three hours later, in her office, she read us the riot act. Nick listened passively, his eyes looking innocently upward at the walls, the ceiling, the top shelves where Terry Anne kept all her board games and leather-craft tools. “Are you hearing me?” she said.
“I’m gonna fight in the Gloves. I’m gonna fight Angel Morales,” Nick said.
“Angel Morales will kill you,” Terry Anne said.
“I can kick Angel’s butt. Frank says I can,” Nick replied.
Terry Anne’s mouth was pinched, her face without color, her hands balled into fists on top of her desk blotter. “Frank Wallace does nothing for anyone unless there’s something in it for Frank Wallace. But maybe you’ll have to find that out on your own,” she said.
“What does it mean ‘to turn somebody around’?” I asked.
“What? What did you say?” she said.
Outside, Nick punched me on the arm. “Are you crazy? Why’d you ask her that?” he said.
“Frank said he tried to turn her around. I didn’t know what that meant,” I replied.
“You do now.” Then he shook his head and grinned. “You’re an innocent guy, Charlie. That’s why I’m always gonna look out for you.”