Three days later, on a beautiful May morning, Mr. McSwiggin conducted social studies class outside. Nicky thought this must be something Mr. McSwiggin picked up in college. Class outdoors. Nicky could not imagine a nun teacher from the good old days condoning such hippie-dippie nonsense.
So they sat on the hot, scratchy asphalt of the St. Peter’s playground. Nicky had to admit, the sun felt good, and the air smelled fresher than in the classroom. By the first week of May, the classroom stank of old bag lunches percolating in the heat—ancient salami, sour milk, long-forgotten tuna, banana skins.
Mr. McSwiggin sat cross-legged and faced the class. Just like a hippie at a sit-in. The topic was the Vietnam War. It was hotter news than ever. American troops had jumped from Vietnam into Cambodia. This set off a frenzy of protests, riots, and demonstrations all over the country. There was extra-big trouble on college campuses.
During a protest over the weekend at a college in Ohio, four students were shot and killed by National Guardsmen. A photograph of one of the dead students, facedown, blood trickling from under the corpse, was splashed across the front page of the Sunday Daily News. After church Nicky stared at the black-and-white picture and thought, “Roy is safer in Vietnam than this guy was in Ohio.” But Nicky preferred to tune out this brand of disturbing development. He flipped over the Daily News and read about the Yankees versus the Senators.
And while Mr. McSwiggin conducted his outdoor discussion on the topic of the Vietnam War, Nicky concentrated on the puffy white clouds scudding by. Nicky thought one of them looked like Donald Duck. Nicky looked at the cloud and remembered that Donald Duck and his sputtery grouchiness always made him tense.
Meanwhile, his classmates said the usual.
“We have never lost a war, and I don’t think we should lose one now.”
“We have no right to be there. It’s a civil war.”
“If we don’t stop them there, one thing will lead to another. I think it’s better we fight the communists in Vietnam than having to fight them in California.”
“If a neighbor’s house was on fire, and they asked you to help put it out, you’d help put out the fire, right?”
“Don’t you people understand? We’re the bad guys in this war.” This from Noreen Connolly, who wore a POW bracelet. The bracelets were all the rage that spring: silver-colored, each inscribed with the name of an actual prisoner of war.
Several boys in the class groaned when Noreen Connolly declared we were the bad guys.
Mr. McSwiggin jumped in. “For what it’s worth, I happen to think Noreen has a point.” He mentioned the My Lai massacre. It had been revealed in the news that a few years back, American troops had slaughtered an entire Vietnamese village of men, women, and children.
“Well, that’s really bad,” said Vinnie Bonura.
Nicky thought about the Yankees, then about stickball, then very deeply about Becky Hubbard. She sat a few feet from him. Her legs were folded neatly beneath her, her plaid uniform skirt just so, her knees pure white in the sunshine. Becky Hubbard’s eyes were lowered as she toyed with a lone dandelion that sprouted through a crack in the asphalt. Nicky noticed she had blond eyelashes. He watched Becky Hubbard’s delicate fingers touch the dandelion petals. He wished he could marry Becky Hubbard on the spot. He imagined her dressed in lacy, frilly white, clutching a bridal bouquet of dandelions. He wondered what she looked like in shorts.
During lunchtime, Nicky picked a seat by himself. This was his custom. He had no real friends at this school. He had transferred to St. Peter’s just the year before, after a boy was stabbed in the eye with a protractor at PS 19. After that, Mom and Dad agreed the public schools were unsafe, and somehow they scraped up the $100 tuition for parochial school. In his first year at St. Peter’s, Nicky had buddied around with another transfer, a quiet kid named George. George had not returned to St. Peter’s for seventh grade. Nicky didn’t care, because George liked the Mets and Eugene McCarthy. George was definitely not best-friend material. Now Nicky didn’t mix with the other kids, and that seemed to be fine with them. “A lone wolf,” Mom said, and Nicky liked that because it sounded way better than “a loser.”
Nicky ate lunch and eagerly returned to the daydream about Becky Hubbard. He gazed at the tooth marks in his salami sandwich and imagined what she might look like when she ran a brush along that yellow hair. He built an image of her blond eyelashes, her white knees. He wondered how she might appear at the beach.
The sound of a chair scraping made him look up.
Becky Hubbard stood at Nicky’s table, balancing her hot lunch tray. Nicky took this as a gift from God. Becky Hubbard appeared before him, at the precise moment he pictured her in a yellow polka-dot bikini.
Becky Hubbard cased the room. The only empty seat in view was the one across from Nicky. Becky Hubbard set down her tray. She sat. She smoothed a paper napkin onto her lap. She dug a stainless-steel fork into the cafeteria meat loaf.
Becky Hubbard chewed and gazed with great boredom to the left.
She chewed and gazed with greater boredom to the right.
Nicky peeked at Becky Hubbard over his salami sandwich. He prayed those spearmint eyes would focus straight ahead, at him, just for an instant. He watched her pick at the cafeteria meat loaf and thought she was a portrait of shyness and daintiness and incredible beauty.
When Becky Hubbard reached for her milk carton, her eyes flickered briefly across Nicky’s face.
Nicky was transformed. He forgot about everything. He gulped the hunk of salami in his mouth and said, “That was a real nice thing, having class outside.”
“What?” said Becky Hubbard. She speared a green bean and examined it.
“A real nice day,” Nicky said.
“What is this?” Becky Hubbard said, making a face at the oddly shaped green bean.
Nicky sweated. This was his longest conversation ever with a girl. A historic record breaker.
He said, “I noticed you like dandelions.”
“What?”
“They are weeds, you know.”
“Really,” Becky Hubbard said flatly.
Her eyes—such a color!—began to focus at something over his shoulder, on a point way across the cafeteria.
Nicky said, “That was an interesting discussion about the war today.”
“Yeah,” Becky Hubbard said. She looked into her meat loaf. “I really like Mr. McSwiggin.”
This was a sign, a warning, a flashing light—and Nicky didn’t see it. She was one of Them. Becky Hubbard said she liked Mr. McSwiggin. Mr. McSwiggin, the hippie. Looking back, Nicky missed many signs. Becky Hubbard had worn a STOP THE WAR button on her winter coat. During the class photo, she was one of the girls who flashed the peace sign. Nicky should have known. Not one of Us. But he missed the warnings. He was over his head, bobbing in the warm waters of a real-life conversation with the great Becky Hubbard. Nicky drank in the spearmint eyes, the yellow hair, the tender lips. He felt his chest fill with something glorious, and he ceased thinking altogether.
Nicky tried to come up with a grand quotation, something big and dramatic, old movie stuff, profound words that would sweep Becky Hubbard off her feet. All he could produce on short notice was, “My brother is over there, you know. In the war right now. We’re quite proud of him.”
And Becky Hubbard fixed her spearmint eyes on him and said, “Oh, your brother is a baby killer. How nice. You must be proud. I wonder how many babies he killed today?”
After school, Mom took Nicky to Dr. Rosenbaum, the dentist. Nicky needed a molar pulled. It was that kind of day for Nicky.
During the bus ride to the dentist’s office and in the unbearable tension of the waiting room, Nicky worked to forget all about the Becky Hubbard incident. He wondered how many days, how many years, had to pass before he would no longer see the disgust in her eyes or hear the slashing hate in her voice. He was too young to know he could awake in the middle of the night thirty years later, wincing, seeing her and hearing her.
Nicky vowed to be careful, starting right then and there. The world was divided into Us and Them. Nicky should have known Becky Hubbard was one of Them. He would not get fooled again.
As he tasted Dr. Rosenbaum’s fingers in his mouth, Nicky wondered where this dentist stood. With Us or with Them?
And the nurse who handed over those frightful silver pliers. Us? Them?
When Mom paid the bill, Dr. Rosenbaum’s receptionist advised them to avoid Columbus Circle if they were walking.
“There’s a major demonstration going on over there now and traffic isn’t moving at all,” the receptionist said. She was young and pretty. Her hair was long and straight and blond. She wore blue eye shadow and a bright yellow dress with a crazy geometric pattern.
Nicky guessed, “Them.”
Gums throbbing, Nicky studied the old, shaky man in the waiting room. The man had a fedora in his lap. Nicky thought, “For sure, one of Us.”
Mom and Nicky walked toward the bus down quiet back streets. Mom looped her arm across Nicky’s shoulder.
“I hate to see you in pain,” Mom said.
Nicky thought, “And you only know about the yanked tooth.”
Mom and Nicky passed three construction workers pouring concrete for a new stretch of sidewalk. Nicky was nuts about fresh concrete. It reminded him of cake batter. As they walked by, he watched the creamy stuff ripple out and he didn’t feel a thing. Oozing concrete had lost its charm on this day. Nicky blamed Becky Hubbard for stealing his innocence.
Nicky turned away from the fresh concrete and saw two young men walking in their direction. The boys were about Roy’s age. They made a lot of noise. Mom tightened her grip on Nicky’s shoulder.
One of the boys was tall and slim, with bushy muttonchop sideburns. The latest hippie style. He was neatly dressed in a buttondown shirt, clean jeans, and white sneakers. He carried a sign attached to a two-by-four. A peace symbol the size of a large pizza was spray-painted, in a fuzzy purple design, onto the sign. The boy leaned the sign on his shoulder like a rifle as he walked.
The other boy was short and skinny. His wild mane of hair hung past his shoulders. This boy wore a sloppy red bandanna around his forehead, a tie-dyed T-shirt, tattered blue jeans, and leather sandals. The two young men bounced along, grinning, talking loudly, gesturing with their hands. They acted like two boys on their way to a party.
“Them,” Nicky thought with disgust.
The young men reached Mom and Nicky. Mom clutched Nicky tighter.
The tall, neat boy waved his sign at them. The short, sloppy boy pumped his fist at them. The two boys chanted in harmony, “One, two, three, four—we don’t want your goddamn war!”
“My, God,” Mom said as the boys laughed and hooted and slapped hands. Bubbling with energy, they continued on their way.
“Don’t look at them,” Mom said, hurrying Nicky along.
Tools clattered, husky voices swore, and Nicky and Mom turned toward the commotion. The construction workers had seen the whole thing, and they dropped their shovels and hoes and were headed toward the two young men. The construction men, known around New York in those days as hard hats, did not look friendly.
“HEY! Hey, Tiny Tim!” one of the hard hats hollered.
The tall boy and the short boy heard the noises, saw what was happening, and tried to get going, walking faster and faster, just short of running. The hard hats swarmed down on them like linebackers.
“What do you want?” the short boy said, trying to be challenging. But the boys knew they were in trouble. You could see it in their eyes. The construction workers were twice their age. But they were thick, muscled men who labored all day outdoors, lifting heavy things. And these muscular hard hats were ticked off.
They went straight to work, “You got some goddamn fresh mouth,” one of the construction men said. Another said, “You need to learn some respect,” and he slapped the tall boy’s peace sign to the sidewalk.
The boy did not think before he blurted, “Asshole.”
The construction man leered and skillfully feinted with his right fist; the boy flinched; the construction man’s left fist jabbed squarely into the boy’s lips. The punch was just like in the movies, except for the wet, meaty sound of the blow, the cracking of teeth, the spurt of blood, the wail of the tall young man as he crumpled to his knees, the construction worker shaking his cut knuckles.
“Let’s get out of here,” Mom said. “This is terrible.”
“Yeah,” said Nicky, who in truth desperately wanted to stay and watch the two hippies get beaten by the hard hats—Them pummeled by Us.
“Mom, please walk slow. Because of my tooth.”
Two other hard hats surrounded the short, long-haired boy. The boy blubbered, “Wait, now wait …”
One construction man said, “So, get him, Bill.”
Bill clasped a large hand around the short boy’s skinny throat. A sandal slipped off. The boy’s long hair swung wildly. Bill growled through clenched teeth, “Hey, Tiny Tim, what do you call this? What’s this supposed to mean?”
Nicky saw what was eating the hard hats. It was the boy’s jeans. Sewn onto the seat of the jeans was an American flag. The flag was affixed squarely in the center of the boy’s bony butt. As if the implication of this weren’t enough, the American flag was upside down.
“I fought under this flag. I saw good buddies die for this flag,” Bill said in a low, angry voice.
Bill folded the boy onto the pavement. He tried to tear the flag from the pants, but the flag was sewn on tight. It didn’t budge. Bill yanked hard on the flag. This merely lifted the short boy, flag still attached to his pants, off the pavement. Bill tried to shake the flag loose. His construction hat fell off and clattered on the street.
Before Mom led him around the corner, Nicky looked back. Bill had a boot planted on the boy’s back and was pulling on the flag with two hands. Nicky heard a ripping sound.
“Mom,” Nicky said as they walked toward the bus. “Mrs. Furbish really scares me.”