Lou

I like it in the wagon.

I sit against the back with my legs out straight and they just fit. I can feel all the little bumps in the sidewalk. Some of them make my teeth hit together. Only thing, I don’t like it if somebody sees us, because then I feel like a baby, being pulled, and my face gets hot. But there wasn’t hardly anyone around.

I was sorry Ralph struck out. He wants to be good at baseball and if you’re good you don’t strike out, so I was sorry, but he didn’t have to call Frazier Thomas a sissy. It wasn’t Frazier Thomas’s fault he struck out.

He was just mad.

But now he wasn’t anymore. We were going for bottles and you don’t have to be good at it, you just have to walk up and down.

It’s three blocks to the viaduct, then another three blocks to the vacant lot, and we were at the viaduct, so that’s halfway. It goes under the railroad tracks. It’s cooler in there and dark and the wagon is louder, echo-y.

“Hey,” I said, to hear my voice.

Ralph told me hush, we’ll be there soon, then Our Lady will help me walk again.

“Our Lady of Fatima, you mean?”

“Hush, little one, don’t cry.”

“I wasn’t crying.”

“Hush.”

He was bringing me to Fatima. So that’s how come he had to pull me, because I couldn’t walk. I looked at my crippled legs, out straight, my poor little crippled legs.

We saw this movie Thursday at school about Our Lady of Fatima, in the gym. They were showing it because of the Russians and their missiles. That was one of the things Mary warned the three children about, the children of Fatima, long ago. She told them everyone had to pray to get Russia to convert.

Or else.

So now it was coming true, what she warned about.

We were doing duck-and-cover drills all week. Some people were giggling and Sister got mad. She slapped me and Bridget Lewis and Marjorie O’Connor, hard, one at a time. I didn’t cry. I had tears but I didn’t cry. Neither did Bridget. But you should have heard Marjorie, like Sister threw acid in her face. It was embarrassing.

That was the best movie, though.

There was this music whenever Mary would appear. You couldn’t see her good, she was all cloudy, but they had this music going that gave me goose bumps, huge ones.

And I liked how nobody believed the children about Mary appearing but then at the end of the movie she did a miracle with the sun and then they believed all right, they believed like crazy. Everyone got down on their knees in the mud and a little boy threw away his crutches and stood up and walked, and an old blind lady started screaming she could see, she could see!

That was the best movie I ever saw. Or Ralph either, he said so.

“Hey, Ralph?”

“Yeah?”

“That movie at school?”

“What about it.”

“That was the best movie we ever saw, wasn’t it.”

“Just about.”

“You said it was the best.”

“Did I?”

“You said it was the best movie you ever saw.”

“Second best.”

“So what’s the best?”

“Angels in the Outfield.”

Baseball.

I started singing, quiet, “Immaculate Mary, our hearts are on fire...”