Jesus Out to Sea

The next day, after school, when I was raking leaves in the yard, Vernon used his slingshot to shoot me in the back with a marble. I felt the pain go into the bone like a cold chisel.

“Got a crick?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said mindlessly, squeezing my shoulders back, my eyes shut.

“How about some hair of the dog that bit you?” he said, fishing another marble out of his shirt pocket.

“You screwed with Benny Siegel, Vernon. He’s going to stuff you in a toilet bowl,” I said.

“Yeah? Who is Benny Sea Gull?”

“Ask your old man. Oh, I forgot. He can’t read, either.”

Vernon’s fist came out of the sky and knocked me to the ground. I felt my breath go out of my chest as though it were being sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner. Through the kitchen window, I could see my mother washing dishes, her face bent down toward the sink. Vernon unbuckled my belt, worked the top button loose on my jeans, and pulled them off my legs, dragging me through the dust. The clouds, trees, garage, alleyway, even the dog dumps spun in circles around me. Vernon pulled one of my pants legs inside out and used it to blow his nose.

Benny and his girlfriend did not show up at my house that night. I called the Shamrock Hotel and asked for his room.

“There’s no one registered here by that name,” the clerk said.

“Has he checked out?”

There was a pause. “We have no record of a guest with that name. I’m sorry. Thank you for calling the Shamrock,” the clerk said, and hung up.

The next day at recess I saw Sister Felicie sitting on a stone bench under a live oak in a garden behind the church. Her black habit was spangled with sunlight, and her beads lay across her open palm as though the wind had robbed her of her concentration. Her face looked like ceramic, polished, faintly pink, not quite real. She smelled of soap or perhaps shampoo in her close-cropped hair, which was covered with a skullcap and veil that must have been unbearable in the summer months.

“You’re supposed to be on the playground, Charlie,” she said.

“I told Benny Siegel what Mr. Dunlop did to you. He promised to help. But he didn’t show up last night,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Benny is a gangster. Nick and I have been teaching him yo-yo tricks. He built a casino in Nevada.”

“I’m convinced you’ll be a great writer one day,” she said, and for the first time in weeks she smiled. “You’re a good boy, Charlie. I may not see you again, at least for a while. But you’ll be in my prayers.”

“Not see you?”

“Run along now. Don’t hang out with too many gangsters.”

She patted me on top of the head, then touched my cheek.

Benny had shown Nick and me color photographs of the resort hotel and gambling casino he had built in the desert. He also showed us a picture of him and his girlfriend building a snowman in front of a log cabin in West Montana. In the photograph she was smiling and looked much younger, somehow innocent among evergreens that rang with winter light. She wore a fluffy pink sweater and knee-high boots stitched with Christmas designs.

I kept wanting to believe Benny would call or come by, but he didn’t. I dreamed about a building in a desert, its exterior scrolled with neon, a grassy pond on one side of it where flamingos stood in the water, arching their necks, pecking at the insects in their feathers.

I put away my Cheerio yo-yo and no longer listened to ball games at Buffalo Stadium. I refused to eat, without understanding why, threw my lunch in a garbage can on the way to school, and fantasized about hurting Vernon Dunlop.

“We’ll set fire to his house,” Nick said.

“Serious?” I said, looking up from the box of shoes we were shining in his garage.

“It’s a thought,” he replied.

“What if somebody gets killed?”

“That’s the breaks when you’re white trash,” Nick said. He grinned, his face full of play. He had a burr haircut and the overhead light reflected on his scalp. Nick was a good boxer, swallowed his blood in a fight, and never let anyone know when he was hurt. Secretly I always wished I was as tough as he was.

He and I had a shoeshine route. We collected shoes from all over the neighborhood and shined them for ten cents a pair, using only one color polish—brown; home delivery was free.