I was not going to blow it this time. I had failed to look for Sputnik. I wasn’t going to fail with Scooper Dooper.
I didn’t even bother to eat the lunch Eloda had put out for me. I grabbed a five-dollar bill from my cigar box savings bank and headed for the West End on my bike.
The day was typical August in the Delaware Valley: hot, humid. I was in such a hurry and so preoccupied with my mission that I failed to notice I was riding west on Oak Street—until I was within half a block of Oak and Cherry. The Corner. Simultaneously I U-turned and mashed the back pedal. My tires flew out. The left pedal raked the asphalt and pinned my ankle to the street. Car brakes screamed. I looked up…into the distinctive bullet-nose grille of a Studebaker. I righted myself, flung a “Sorry!” at the horrified driver and hightailed it out of there. Someone in heavy shoes was chasing me…thumping…No…it was my heart.
I didn’t slow down till I hit Marshall, then headed west again. Within a block or two, the thumping went away. I took deep breaths. I welcomed the warm smother of the day. I reentered the sanctuary of my mission.
I couldn’t pretend to understand all the “proxy” stuff Boo Boo had talked about. She was proving to be much more complex than the jolly giant I had first known in the yard. But the “love bridge”—that was a different story. That I understood. That I believed in.
I parked my bike in front of Scooper Dooper. I pushed open the screen door. The bell tinkled—and things began to change. Yes, it was me walking into the ice cream shop. Me moving toward the long white counter. Me passing between the bright steel-banded Formica tables, some empty, some with customers digging into their treats. Me standing before the squad of topless tubs. Me, yes…but not only me. Something else, a presence as ethereal as I imagined an angel’s to be, was beside me. Was in me. Like on a party telephone line, someone else was there—here—looking through my eyes, gazing at the frosty mounds, the flavors in all their colors.
“Banana split, please,” I said to the man in the white teardrop-shaped paper cap.
I recited the list, slowly, carefully: all three scoops chocolate…wet nuts…hot fudge…extra whipped cream…
“Pineapple?” he said.
“No!” I said. “Cherries. Four.”
He gave me a look but he did it. I got the sense that he was about to charge me extra for all the customizing, but as he planted the last cherry in the whipped cream, he stepped back to see what he had done. His admiring smile began at the banana split and shifted over to me. I almost said It’s not for me. With a show of reverence, or maybe envy, he pushed the masterpiece across the counter. “Eighty cents,” he said.
A mother and two little kids were just getting up from a window table. I hustled toward it.
“Miss…” The counter man was calling.
I turned.
He was pointing. “Your ankle.”
I looked. Blood was seeping through my sock. Bike spill. Studebaker. I grabbed napkins from the dispenser on a vacant table and stuffed them into my sock and practically ran to the table by the window.
I sat. I closed my eyes. I settled myself down. I whispered, “Okay, Boo Boo. Here we go.” When I opened my eyes, again I sensed it wasn’t just me looking out through them.
I did not plunge in as I would have if I were eating only for myself. I took it slow. I started with a cherry. I held it in my mouth. I closed my eyes. I held it there…held it there…hoping Boo Boo was tasting, savoring. When my teeth finally crushed that first cherry and the juice exploded in my mouth, I imagined I heard Boo Boo give a quick peep of delight.
Spoonful by spoonful, savor by savor, I received the masterpiece. I may have broken the world record for Slowest Eating of a Banana Split. I spaced out the remaining three cherries, the last one being the last thing of all into my—into her—mouth. As I wiped my lips with a napkin, I was not just pretending I could feel Boo Boo smiling. I was believing it. I was sold.
Proxy.
Sisters.
I’m gonna be out!
I raced homeward, my front tire barely skimming the steamy face of Marshall Street. Every muscle in my body was twitching, pulling toward Boo Boo like a dog on a leash. I wanted to crash into her arms, tell her I did my job, ask her if it worked. And then, clattering over the railroad tracks, the problem hit me: I wouldn’t be seeing her until ten o’clock next morning.
I couldn’t imagine waiting that long. As I pumped up the long town-top hill, I toyed with the idea of visiting her cell. I had never used my privileges so recklessly before, but I doubted the guards would deny the warden’s daughter. A screaming ambulance racing past me brought me to my senses: How long would I be grounded after my father found out? I scotched the idea.
A single demonstrator—BURN BAKER—was braving the heat outside the prison. As I hoisted my bike up the front steps, a flashing squad car went racing down the wall-side alley. I leaned out from the tiny, grassy plateau. Uniforms were dashing across Marshall Street; lights were flashing. What was happening? Had Baker escaped?
Inside, Mrs. Butterfield said nothing, but her face followed me with an expression I could not read. Her glasses were off. A crowd of people, some in uniform, some not, filled my father’s office. They all seemed to be talking at once. I could feel urgency. Turmoil. Distress.
As I mounted the stairs to the apartment, solo words rose like bubbles from the boil of voices. But only one stuck to my ear: “hanged.” That was all I needed to hear. By the time I hit the top step, Marvin Edward Baker’s own words completed the picture: I ain’t never goin’ to Rockview.
I raced back down. I almost veered right and out the door to shout at the demonstrator: You can go home now! But I didn’t. I ran straight to Mrs. Butterfield, gushing, “He did it, didn’t he? He said he would and he did it!”
She blinked. She put her glasses on as if to better see me. She seemed confused. “Who?” she said.
“Marvin Edward Baker!” My stomach pressed into the front edge of her desk. I may have been yelling. “He said, ‘I ain’t never goin’ to Rockview.’ And he ain’t! He’s not! He hanged himself! Right?”
Mrs. Butterfield took her time digesting my information. She removed her glasses. She placed them carefully on her desk. She positioned them precisely in a way that seemed important to her. When her face came back up to me, there was a smile on it, but it wasn’t happy.
“It wasn’t Mr. Baker,” she said. And for the first time ever, the formal Mrs. Butterfield pronounced an inmate’s yard name. “It was Boo Boo.”