CHAPTER 15

Tuckahoe

“Company E! Up! Upstairs! Bedtime! Upstairs! Companies E, D & C!” Hordes stampeded the grand central staircase, the kitchen stairs, the back library stairs. They poured through all doors into the dormitories in the east and west wings on the third floor. Line up in your underwear, wait your turn behind thirty strange kids, pee, wash hands and face, brush teeth, stand at attention by your footboard, watch for the Colonel’s signal, slice of the cane, put on pajamas, everyone all at once. Slice of the cane, climb into bed.

One night as we all stood at attention, this kid Irving Weiss came sauntering in humming to himself, lost in thought. Shorty blew his whistle, then yelled at the top of his lungs: “Wrecking crew! Wrecking crew!”

The kid looked up and the guys swarmed. “Get him! Get Irving!” They came from all sides, tall and short, bruisers and weaklings, piling on, a tangle of legs and windmilling arms. Isn’t somebody going to help him? I thought. Whoever’s in charge? I stood by my bed and scanned the room for Beiderman, Miss Beaufort, somebody, anybody. Then I saw Colonel Anderson by the door observing. After a while the Colonel gave the nod to Shorty. “OK, all off,” Shorty said. Irving’s pants were missing. He sat dazed on the floor in his skivvies. Lights out until morning.

Up! Up! March! March!

I kept moving toward every other Sunday, holding the pure inviolable image of my mother in my heart. I would pass through each day of the week and then pass through them again, and she would come to me, and this time she would take me home.

After school I waited and waited on the baseball field, but no one picked me for his team. No one even knew me, what position I was good at, or that I was clever, and yet I felt like everyone was looking at me. Shame spread up my neck like a rash. I had to get away, so I ran off the field and kept going, my long legs taking me far. I ran up the road past the auto shed. I ran past the chicken coops and the potato fields. I ran until my chest hurt and my lungs were about to explode and I had to stop. When I caught my breath, I entered the cool dark of the barn.

Inside the quiet cathedral, I calmed down. I liked the smell of horseshit and hay, the animal sweat. I touched one of the worn leather harnesses and tried to figure out the purpose for each of the iron tools hanging on the rough wall. I felt better in the barn. A dray horse nickered and tossed his mane. It was Playboy. I went to his stall halfway down the muddy alley. His nostrils were huge up close. I reached up and stroked his silky hide. He was warm. I dragged my fingers through his mane. Playboy looked at me with one eye and I looked back. I felt like he knew me. I could have curled up on the straw next to the gentle animal and drifted off to sleep. I stroked his neck instead and held onto the peaceful feeling until a twig snapped down the alley and Playboy stomped his hoof. A high-pitched laugh ricocheted off the rafters and I froze. Shorty Lapidus. I knew it. Then a smaller boy’s squeaky voice: “A dime! You promised!” I ducked into the empty stall next to Playboy’s and hid behind a bale of hay. “A nickel. That’s it,” said Shorty. “I’m not doin’ it,” said the small voice. “You’re doin’ it, alright.” A thud. The clank of a belt buckle. “Ow!” Grunting and crying. I covered my ears but the sound came through my fingers. “Shut up.” A strange feeling in my dick. “Almost,” said Shorty in a strangled voice. Thrashing, clanking, a slapping sound. A flash of bare ass. Drawn-out groans, and then silence. “Pull your pants up, homo. Pansy! Fairy. Faggot,” Shorty said.

“Gimme my nickel,” the squeaky voice said.

“When I’m good and ready.”

“You swore!”

“You rat me out,” said Shorty, “you know where I’m gonna stick your frickin’ nickel?”

They walked out of the barn like it was nothing. I was trembling and my face burned with shame once again. Why? I hadn’t done anything. It wasn’t me. I didn’t want to be seen, not by them or near them. I counted to sixty. One-twenty. One-eighty. Two-forty. Three hundred and I slipped out like a burglar, ducked behind a stand of trees, made a looping detour through the chicken coops, and finally, because I had nowhere else to go, I trudged up the steps of the big brick building smack into a fat white stomach in a stiff shirt.

“Son, why aren’t you upstairs?” Without the megaphone, Piggy Rosenthal’s voice was kind and gentle. I told him I was new and I’d gotten lost. I didn’t mention the barn. He said he’d heard I was new and he patted my hair and asked if I understood what happened to boys who were tardy. No, I said, I didn’t know what happened. He nodded in sympathy and then slapped me across the face. I was so shocked, I didn’t cry. “Next time I’ll do it with my fist,” he said.

Upstairs, Shorty was already in the center aisle of Company E blowing on his whistle. Had he seen me at all? I was no snitch. I wouldn’t rat out the creep. I stood in line and took a pee and washed up and brushed my teeth. Then I walked the plank floor back to my bed.

“Wrecking crew! Wrecking crew!” Not again. Get him! Who? Aronson! Get Clyde Aronson! Do you know what happens to boys who are tardy? Had Shorty seen see me in the barn? You know where I’m gonna stick your frickin nickel? “Wrecking crew!” Don’t break my glasses. Not my glasses! I threw up an elbow and blocked my face.

Harry ran toward me yelling, “Brudder! Brudder!”

“Stay back, Harry,” I warned.

I woke up smelling my mother’s cold cream. Nurse Flanagan leaning in with an ice pack. Soft bosom in white cotton.

“The ‘H’ ain’t so terrible,” Jesse Hoffman said.

“Where am I? Why are you here?” I said.

“Who do you think hauled you in?”

I smiled. Jesse handed over my wire-rimmed spectacles. They’d survived in one piece.

“Look, I made it through this shithole so far,” Hoffman said. “You will too. I’m leaving, though.”

“You’re leaving?” I immediately regretted the plaintive tone in my voice.

“It’s my birthday next month,” Jesse said.

“So?” I said angrily. I felt the loss too keenly.

“Tell him, Flanny. See, all boys turning nine in 1924 leave Company E and move up to Company D on the first day of 1925.”

“That’s right,” said Nurse Flanagan. “That’s how it works.”

So Jesse was only going to the other wing, moving to another dormitory and not really leaving at all, just as I must have known I wasn’t leaving anytime soon. I bit the corners of my mouth to try to keep from smiling too much. A million beatings were nothing compared to the possibility of friendship.