VINNY WAS AN ORPHAN for many years ere his father came back, got his mother out of some tub-washing strait, reunited the children from various orphanages, and re-formed his home and family in the tenements of Moody–Lucky Bergerac was his name, a heavy drinker, cause of his early downfalls as well as Old Jack O Diamonds, got a job repairing rollercoasters at Lakeview Park– what a wild house, the tenement screeched– Vinny’s mother was called Charlotte, but we pronounced it Charlie, “Hey Charlie,” Vinny thus addressed his own mother in a wild scream. Vinny was thin and skinny boyish, very clean featured and handsome, high voiced, excited, affectionate, always laughing or smiling, always swearing like a son of a bitch, “Jesus Crise goddam it Charlie what the fuck you want me to do sit in this fucking goddam bath tub all goddam day—” his father Lucky outdid him unbelievably, the only eloquence he had was curses, “Jey-sas Crise gawd damn ballbreaking sonofabitch if I ain’t an old piece of shit but you look like a goddam fat ass old cow tonight Charlie …” and at this compliment Charlie would screech with joy–you never heard such a wild screech, her eyes used to blaze out with the intensity of white fire, she was crazy as all get out, the first time I saw her she was standing on a chair fixing a bulb and Vinny rushed up and looked under her dress (he was 13) and yelled “O Jey-sas Crise what a nice ass you got Ma!” and she screeched and whacks him one on the head, a house of joy. Me and G.J. and Lousy and Scotty used to sit in that house all day.
“Jey-sas Crise what a maniac!”
“Is he crazy— you know what he did? He stuck his finger up his ass and said Woo Woo—”
“He came fifteen comes, no kiddin, he jumped around jacking himself off all that whole day–the 920 club was on the radio, Charlie was at work–Zaza the madman.”
This tenement was located across the street from the Pawtucketville Social Club, an organization intended to be some kind of meeting place for speeches about Franco-American matters but was just a huge roaring saloon and bowling alley and pool table with a meetingroom always locked. My father that year was running the bowling alley, great cardgames of the night we imitated all day in Vinny’s house with whist for Wing cigarettes. (I was the only one who didn’t smoke, Vinny used to smoke two cigarettes at a time and inhale deep as he could.) We didn’t give a shit about no Doctor Sax.
Great big bullshitters, friends of Lucky’s, grown men, would come in and regale us with fantastic lies and stories —we screamed at them “What a bullshitter, geez, I never– is he a bullshitter!” Everything we said was put this way, “Oh is my old man gonna kick the shit out of me if he ever finds out about those helmets we stole, G.J.”
“Ah fuckit, Zagg–helmets is helmets, my old man’s in the grave and no one’s the worse for it.” At 11 or 12 G.J. was so Greekly tragic he could talk like that–words of woe and wisdom poured from his childly dewy glooms. He was the opposite of crackbrained angel joy Vinny. Scotty just watched or bit his inner lip in far away silence (thinking about that game he pitched, or Sunday he’s got to go to Nashua with his mother to see Uncle Julien and Aunt Yvonne (Mon Mononcle Julien, Ma Matante Yvonne)— Lousy is spitting, silently, whitely, neatly, just a little dew froth of symbolic spit, clean enough to wash your eyeballs in–which I had to do when he got sore and his aim was champion in the gang.—Spitting out the window, and turns to giggle with a laugh in the joke general, slapping his knees softly, rushing over to me or G.J. half kneeling on the floor to whisper a confidential observation of glee, sometimes G.J. would respond by grabbing him by the hair and dragging him around the room, “Ooh this fuckin Lousy has just told me the dirtiest–is he–Ooh is he got dirty thoughts— Ooh, would I love to kick his ass–allow me, gentlemen, stand back, to kick the ass of Lauzon Cave-In in his means, lookout Slave don’t desist! or try to run! frup, gluck, aye, haye!” he’s screaming as Lousy suddenly squeezes his balls to break the hair hold. Lousy is the sneakiest most impossible to wrastle snake—(Snake!)—in the world–
When we turned the subject to gloom and evil (dark and dirty and dying), we talked of the death of Zap Plouffe, Gene’s and Joe’s kid brother our age (with those backstore stories maybe told by malicious mothers who hated the Plouffes and especially the dying melancholy old man in his dark house). Zap’s foot was dragged under a milk wagon, he caught infection and died, I first met Zap on a crazy screaming night about the third after we’d moved from Centralville to Pawtucketville (1932) on my porch (Phebe), he came rollerskating up on the porch with his long teeth and prognathic jaw of the Plouffes, he was the first Pawtucketville boy to talk to me… And the screams in the nightfall street of play!–
“Mon nom cest Zap Plouffe mué—je rests au coin dans maison la”—(my name it is Zap Plouffe me–I live on the corner in the house there).
Not long after, G.J. moved in across the street, with dolorous furnitures from the Greek slums of Market Street where you hear the wails of Oriental Greek records on Sunday afternoon and smell the honey and the almond. “Zap’s ghost is in that goddam park,” G.J. said, and never walked home across the field, instead went Riverside-Sarah or Gershom-Sarah, Phebe (where he lived all those years) was the center of those two prongs.
The Park is in the middle, Moody’s across the bottom.
So I began to see the ghost of Zap Plouffe mixed with other shrouds when I walked home from Destouches’ brown store with my Shadow in my arm. I wanted to face my duty–I had learned to stop crying in Centralville and I was determined not to start crying in Pawtucketville (in Centralville it was Ste. Therese and her turning plaster head, the crouching Jesus, visions of French or Catholic or Family Ghosts that swarmed in corners and open closet doors in mid sleep night, and the funerals all around, the wreaths on old wood white door with paint cracking, you know some old gray ash-faced dead ghost is waxing his profile to candlelight and suffocating flowers in the broon-gloom of dead relatives kneeling in a chant and the son of the house is wearing a black suit Ah Me! and the tears of mothers and sisters and frightened humans of the grave, the tears flowing in the kitchen and by the sewing machine upstairs, and when one dies–three will die) … (two more will die, who will it be, what phantom is pursuing you?). Doctor Sax had knowledge of death … but he was a mad fool of power, a Faustian man, no true Faustian’s afraid of the dark–only Fellaheen–and Gothic Stone Cathedral Catholic of Bats and Bach Organs in the Blue Mid Night Mists of Skull, Blood, Dust, Iron, Rain burrowing into earth to snake antique.
As the rain hit the windowpane, and apples swelled on the limb, I lay in my white sheets reading with cat and candy bar … that’s where all these things were born.