CHAPTER 35

Tuckahoe

Why didn’t we object? Why didn’t we rise up and challenge the authorities? I couldn’t understand it. Why didn’t we band together against the supervisors? “We’d get kicked out,” said Chick. “And then where would we go?” “Maybe one day,” Jesse said.

I was waiting for it. I felt it coming, all the while my hatred of authority, of monitors and supervisors, of rules and regimentation, infiltrated every atom of my flesh and blood and spirit. These were the circumstances that organized my world-view.

Things were different for Harry. The longer Harry stayed at the H, the more chaotic he became. He no longer complained about beatings to Mama, but he was often caught fighting with other kids. He talked back to teachers, goofed off in class, and sometimes went AWOL. Bull Pushkin, the juniors’ supervisor, offered to train Harry to box, to give him an outlet. Bull’s nickname fit him well. He was stocky and muscular with an aggressive style. Bull hated nothing more than stopping a fight. He loved sports of all kinds and coached kids at baseball, basketball, wrestling, and boxing. He liked to be thought of as a pal. Which was a bunch of bull, if you asked me. He’d egg Harry on, be his booster, and then match Harry with bigger kids and watch those kids beat the crap out of my brother. I despised the man, but he was the one supervisor Harry trusted, for a time. Harry craved attention and Bull gave it to him.

In the spring we built the Bare Ass dam as usual, with many close calls but luckily no prisoners taken during construction. One summer’s day, our paradise complete, a bunch of Homeboys were splashing around, cannonballing from a rocky precipice. I chose to lounge on the bank just upstream, fishing with a rod I fashioned from a green branch. All of a sudden Cheesie called out “Cheese it!” and everybody scrambled out of the water, except for Harry. He’d taught himself to swim just as he had taught himself to roller skate and ride a bike, but now he’d caught his foot between two stones and was wedged in tight. He grabbed onto a clump of swamp grass and called, “Brudder, help me, Clyde, don’t leave me here!” And I was thinking, shit, what if I fall in, I’m the one who can’t swim and the water’s high, but I braced myself on the bank and reached in for Harry to grab hold of my fishing rod, which snapped in half, so I waded in just a few inches and grabbed a hold of Harry’s hand, coaching him to gently turn his foot and meanwhile, I hear “Cheese it! Cheese it!” and the sound of keys jangling— Piggy Rosenthal, it sounded like. The leaves started trembling like there was a rhino thundering through the trees just as Harry’s foot came loose and he stumbled onto the bank and we ran for it. I hauled ass being lean and lanky, whereas Harry had a pugilist’s body, solid and muscular, handsome and strong but not fleet, which may have been why Harry loved wheels, roller skates, cars, motorcycles. Had to have wheels, he loved wheels and he loved boxing, and the jailor’s keys jangled louder scaring the shit out of the birds and rabbits, and out of the woods came not Piggy, but Bull Pushkin. I figured when Bull saw his little protégé he’d calm down. But no, he started yelling. I couldn’t leave Harry there. I hid behind a bush to make sure the motherfucker didn’t kill my brother. I was wearing pants but Harry was bare-assed, trembling, his trousers still in a ball under his arm, and I heard a crack! It was Bull Pushkin’s fist connecting with Harry’s skull. Harry fell back onto his ass crying, and Bull pulled him up and started screaming into Harry’s poor hurt ear about insubordination and Harry, holding his head, said, “But Bull, I was only swimming, is that a crime?” and Bull said, “Mr. Pushkin to you, boy. Put your clothes on, boy, don’t just stand there.” I ducked in and out of the shadows behind Harry following Bull down the path and back over the aqueduct, and I saw Harry put his hand to the side of his head and then look at his hand, and there was blood on it. Bull had ruptured Harry’s eardrum. He was deaf in that ear from then on. It would keep him out of the service in the world war we didn’t know was coming. Harry never, ever told the story the way it happened. When asked about his hearing over the years, he always said he ruptured his eardrum straining too hard on the toilet.

Lying awake at night during that time, in the early 1930s, when I wasn’t imagining building the dam, or going over in my mind the next steps for whatever I was making in wood shop, or plans for an editorial or the landscape I was painting in art class, I thought about how was I going to get back at the Colonel and that fat-fuck Piggy, and that two-faced son-of-a-bitch Bull Pushkin. There had to be a way. There were more of us than there were of them. If we sat on our asses, nothing would change. We had to take action. Action was everything. I went to sleep thinking about it.