Diabolical geniuses that they are, the school honchos decide that we need another air raid drill to keep alert. We gotta be prepared for when the Russians drop the bomb on us. Sixth period, just when I’m thinking, hallelujah, pre-algebra’s in my rearview mirror for another twenty-three hours, a siren starts an ear-splitting wail. Miss Camden points to the corny poster on the wall—Bert the Turtle, who knows just what to do when the A-bomb explodes in our schoolyard, which is to pull into his shell. That would save him, all right.
So I’m smashed under my desk inhaling chalk dust on the floor. Bet they don’t do the Bert the Turtle thing at the College. They take flying building chunks and oozing radiation like real men.
As if the A-bomb isn’t scary enough, everybody’s freaked out about polio. Infantile paralysis. Brrr, just the name freezes my bones. Yesterday Amy Lynn said, “I’d rather die than be flat on my back in an iron lung all the rest of my life.” And that reminds me of Connor saying he’d rather be dead than red. So now, I have four choices: bombed out, dead, red, or locked into one of those giant metal tubes that breathes for me, and the only thing outside the iron lung is my head looking at double mirrors so I can read a book propped up behind me. How the heck do you turn the page?
No contest: I’d rather be red.
Which might explain why Connor’s started ditching me at school.
I walk home by myself and hole up in my room. It’s my thirteenth birthday, the year of my bar mitzvah, and nobody remembers, not even the parents, who were there when I came screaming into the world. They don’t worry about stuff like polio or pinko propaganda. They worry about the school desegregation thing in Topeka that the Supreme Court is dragging its feet on, and whether peasants in Mongolia have enough rice in their bowls, and can the Rosenbergs escape the electric chair in, yikes, fifty-eight days? Plus, they’re too busy with the hot battle over who’s more disloyal, the loyalty oath signers or the stubborn refusers.
Happy birthday to me.
I’m feeling so sorry for myself that I get down my old Mickey Mantle memos. Right, I didn’t have the guts to burn them and dissolve the ashes in Clorox.
From the desk of
IRWIN RAFNER, Ph.D.’s son Marty
DATE: October 5, 1951
TO: Mickey Mantle
First Series ever televised, Yankees and Giants. Man, I saw it happen, fifth inning, Game 2. Mays leads off for the Giants and pops a fly to center. You and DiMaggio both run for it. He’s old. He shoulda let you have it, but I guess he got greedy in his last Series, and next thing I see is you decked out. What happened out there? Did you trip over your own big feet? Don’t feel bad. I do that a lot, ’cause my feet are growing faster than the rest of me. I’m betting you didn’t trip. Here’s my theory. You saw the Yankee Clipper sailing full speed ahead under that ball, and you slammed on your brakes. Man, I thought you died out there when they carried you off on a stretcher, but I heard on the radio a minute ago that it’s only a torn knee. I’m breathing a lot easier now, in case you were worried.
Your friend,
MARTY
If only things were that terrific two seasons later. Last week I heard Mickey say on the radio, “I’ll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do.”
Well, they’re turning Mantle down flat because of that bum knee. Here’s the kicker, though. The army took the Giants’ star rookie from that ’51 season—Willie Mays, who popped the fly that ended up tearing Mantle’s knee ligaments. Guess Mays got what was coming to him.
Boy, am I ever in a crummy brussels-sprouts-and-beets mood.
There’s a loud knock on my door, followed by an even louder, higher one.
“Yeah, what?” I mutter.
Mom and Dad burst into my room full of smiles. Seems the Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott of Oxbow Road have called a truce in honor of my birthday.
Mom yanks me off my bed and smothers me with wet kisses. “Did you think we’d forget about your thirteenth birthday, Marty? Not a chance in the world.” Dad reaches across her to pat my back and says, “I’ve made a dinner reservation at the Peach Tree in Newton for the four of us.”
Four? Including Amy Lynn?
Mom pinches my arm, but not hard. “Get dressed. Connor will be here in fifteen minutes.”
Connor. Aw, man.