CHAPTER SEVEN Salvatore Buttaci

BIKE WRECKED

by

Salvatore Buttaci
 

No, I’ve never in all my seventy-one years been shipwrecked. Hey, that was just a story. You know, made up. It’s the writer’s way of telling whopping lies without fear of putdowns by the righteous that never fib or invent tales, who see what’s there and report precisely what they see. Writers can satisfy their inner need to turn reality on its ear, paint elephant’s chartreuse, invite space aliens to dinner, spend vicarious hours in the skin of someone else that may or may not have ever existed. We can jot down the timbre of their angry or happy or quiet voices. We can paint their moments with words we’ve mixed on palettes of language. And like children we relish that bad-boy/bad-girl flutter in our bellies when we tell some big “lie.” Or we write a first-person story in which we are cold-blooded murderers on the prowl, killing and bagging the young and the old in large canvas Glad bags which we drag to and bury in our basements. We lie and we kill and we blow up universes and we break the hearts of our characters.

No, my body never turned cold-blue in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. I never kissed a woman so passionately the damn ship we were on exploded us into the frigid waters. I never could have held on to that wooden cork floating there hours and hours under a vicious sun. I don’t know anyone name Mariella. And if I was ever adrift, I’m not now. Hey, I found love! My Sharon keeps me safe, far from the perils out there.
But I was bike-wrecked when I was about thirteen. Does that count for anything? I can still remember that long-ago day in the summer of 1954. My parents had given me a new blue Schwinn bicycle for Christmas, even though I had asked for a red one, but they were my parents and knew better, I guess, because it turned out I preferred the midnight blue to the hot red of my dreams.
We lived in Richmond Hill, New York. In Queens. I was a seventh grader at St. Benedict Labaré Catholic School. I had a nun named Sister Rita Damien. That’s another story. The bike. I am telling you about how it got wrecked and so did I.
Richmond Hill was a quiet community. I had friends like Joey Minogue, Johnny Reichling, Fran Delahanty––good Irish pals for this Sicilian American. We were all like brothers. We played stickball, baseball, and touch football on the street and at the park.
We all delivered groceries for the neighbors in our wagons or on our bikes. For me it was a red wagon I tugged along to the A & P, hoping to make a few dollars on a Saturday, and using the money to buy strawberry malteds or green grapes or even a pair of boxing gloves. We could all use the money back then because the allowances we got from our parents lacked any real purchasing power. Maybe if I still had those two quarters I got every week I could make a killing on the silver market, but I spent them on strawberry
malteds, green––Anyway, I needed a bike so I could deliver groceries like a thirteen year old, not drag a red wagon like “See Dick run” in the reading books we had to read in first grade.
Did I mention how Joey, Johnny, and Fran laughed their heads off each time I showed up at the A & P? Oh, yeah. Maybe laugh is too kind a word. Roll over on the sidewalk, holding their sides, would be a better description of how they held me up to ridicule.
What could I say? I agreed with them. I was pathetic. I looked like a teen still living the glory days of babyhood.
“Ah, get a bike!” Minogue would yell out as I pulled my little wagon.
“Yeah, yeah,” I’d reply, waving him away with my other hand.
Then Delahanty would chime in. “Look at de wed pweety wagon!” and Reichling who was always quick to tell me how Minogue and Delahanty were two jerks stunted in childhood, brainless, stupid beyond words, would call out from his steps across from our house on S.E. 13th: “Your baby sister know you robbed her wagon?”
So it was a jubilee at our home Christmas morn. I was happy Jesus had been born nearly 2,000 years before, but I was even happier being the proud owner of my own bicycle. It seemed to give a true meaning to Christmas. Jesus was born to save mankind and Papa saved me by getting me my own bike. When I saw that blue roadster leaning against the living room wall near the tree, I began babbling to my parents that I’d be good forever. I’d do my homework everyday. I’d stop hitting my little sister when she spit at me. Of course, they were promises made in the duress of ecstasy and my good parents never held me to any of them except whacking my sister’s backside whenever she stood there working up a spit to spew at my trousers.
Ok, ok. The bike-wreck. Get to the point, right? Well, the point is we do dumb things when we are young. Of course, we think we’re so smart. We know everything. Grownups don’t know what they’re saying. We may still be afraid of the dark a little, but not of the light. We tell them all we’re old enough to do anything. And we get angry when they laugh. We have to grow to adulthood before we see the obvious cause of their laughter. Us!
I woke up one summer Saturday with a yen to ride my bicycle as far away as I could pedal. I didn’t tell my mother or my father. Maybe I said, “I’m going to the A & P to earn some money.” Or I said, “It’s a nice day. I’m gonna ride to the park.” Or maybe I snuck out the door without saying anything.
It was a hot day. I knew I’d have to stop a few times to buy a Pepsi and cool off, so I put about three dollars in my pocket, then went back to my dresser where I hid change in my
sock bank under my boxer shorts. I took another two dollars, figuring I’d be not only thirsty but hungry too and would want to buy a sandwich someplace. And off I went that late morning for parts unknown.
I rode my blue Schwinn to Lefferts Boulevard, then on to Atlantic Avenue, which was as wide and trafficky as any huge New York City street I had seen. Riding in the same direction as the traffic, I had to keep as close to the parked cars as I could because the moving cars behind me were leaning on their horns as they passed me. Some even cursed out their window. But I kept riding. What was I to do? Ride on the sidewalk? Hit a pedestrian?
Richmond Hill behind me now, I pedaled down Jamaica, New York, streets. Not a pleasant neighborhood. As noisy as my street was dead-quiet. Old women rested fat arms on pillows set on window ledges and watched the action in the street. Children everywhere yelled and screamed. Several kids had turned on a water hydrant and everybody got in line for a cool shower. Nearby a policeman stood smoking a cigarette.
Either he saw them and ignored them, or he was a blind policeman waiting for his seeing-eye dog to come around the corner.
I took all this in as my aching legs kept pedaling that bike of mine. With one hand I held the handlebar; with the other I massaged my thighs, trying to work out what was coming: a painful charley horse, a muscle cramp I feared would toss me from my bike and get it wrecked or worse even than that, get me wrecked. Killed. So I eased up on the pedaling and steered myself to the sidewalk where I rested my blue roadrunner against a dead tree
And bending down worked at digging life back into my legs.
Of all the stops I could’ve made, I made this one, right on the corner where about seven loud-mouthed young guys stood around in their black leather jackets. They had motorcycles standing still on their kickstands. I saw that they were all wearing the same black jackets with the same words written across the back: ATLANTIC AZTECS. I wasn’t so young I didn’t know they were all in a gang. I knew all about the movie The Wild Ones with Brando. I knew in our city you went to the movies to see gangs, but here in Jamaica, they were in person, scarier than on the big screen. Louder. Tougher.
I did my best not to look at them except peripherally, which made me look sneaky. Afraid. Just what gangs love. Their prey is always the frightened and the weak. And I was both. I was thirteen. Far from home. Shaking in my Keds. I dreamed of growing into a fine young man one day, but somehow that dream was unraveling. For the first time since my brother Alfonso lowered me by my arms one night into a cemetery, I feared for my life. This time, though, the enemy had skin and bone and thick muscles and probably lethal weapons. The dead couldn’t hurt me; now it looked as if I’d be joining those harmless spirits in that old cemetery near home.
I turned towards my bicycle. Behind me they were still yapping away about this broad, that broad, the cops, their big bikes. I touched the handlebars like somebody in a nightmare who knows they’ll be glue on the soles of his shoes or the bike will turn to a ponderously heavy block of granite or those monsters he ran out of breath escaping will suddenly affix hairy, taloned claws to his neck and squeeze.
“Hey!”
I heard it, but I kept my hands gripping the handlebars. I did not turn around.
“Hey! Deaf kid! Talkin’ to you!”
I set my bicycle off its tilt, away from the tree. Still I pretended I did not hear him.
Then I felt his hand pull my shoulder around so I’d face him. He had a face that could scare the big Marlon, send him weeping on his big bike out of town forever, his wild ones trailing behind his scared ass. He dipped his badly shaven face into mine. I could feel the heat of his dark eyes boring into mine. His mouth, a twist of thin lips, parted to speak, showing yellow, crooked teeth. Two of them, fangs like Bela Lugosi wore in that famous vampire classic. And his breath. How much beer did he have to drink to smell like that?
Papa drank a bottle of Schaefer beer every night and never smelled like this animal.
Now he was using both claws to yank me by two sides of my collar, right into his face.
It was senseless for me to strain my head, my bod, back away from him.
Now the others formed a circle around me, my fallen bicycle, and the Bela look-alike.
“Give the kid a shot in the teeth!” one of them said. “He’s a wise ass. A good shot, Carmine.”
“Yeah, man,” said another, “make him wet his pants!”
Now that was scary because for awhile now I hoped to do just that, once I found a little diner where I could order a ham and cheese sandwich, a Pepsi, and maybe some fries, after I chained my Schwinn outside and locked it the way Papa told me. “Don’t trust the other kids,” he had said. “They’ll rob your bike and I won’t buy another one!” What would Papa say now about these kids? Big kids out of high school, most without diplomas. I wish Papa were here, I kept telling myself. He’d straighten them out.
Carmine’s face was part red from sunburn and part red from a temper he so easily lost because of me.
Then he pushed me down on the ground, made a big-deal motion of cleaning his hands on his pants as if I were something dirty. I thought, it should be me cleaning my hands off,
you pig! But of course I didn’t say anything. The sidewalk was hot enough to fry potatoes, but I stayed there. Once in a movie I saw a guy punched to the floor and he struggled to get up on his feet when the antagonist kicked him down with “Did I tell you to stand up?” Which is the kind of film dialogue these wild ones were probably well-versed in, so to avoid getting pushed down or socked down again, I lay a little crumpled on the ground, a few inches from my blue Schwinn.
“A Schwinn,” one of them said. “A rich kid, huh?” Then he walked to where I was lying and gave me a hard kick in the leg with his black western boot. I winced so he kicked me again. This time the other leg. “Your daddy got money, kid?” I shook my head. He kicked me one more time. Carmine raised his hand and the kicker took a few steps back and faded in the clump of black jackets.
Now Carmine face contorted again as if in pain. Wasn’t that supposed to be my face contorting in pain? “We could kill you. You know that?” he asked me in an almost gentle voice. “Take nothing to do.” Then he withdrew a stiletto he popped open and held it under my chin. The sun shone down the silver length of the blade. I blinked. Tightened the muscles in my neck. Somewhere inside me my little voice got away into the summer air and said, “Please! Please!”
Which started the wild ones’ glee club: “Please! Please! Please!” and it embarrassed me because I didn’t think I sounded like a little frightened girl on the school playground. I didn’t mean to sound that way. This was the best I could muster. I did not want to feel the point of that stiletto puncture my throat and start me bleeding to death. This was no joke.
“I could slice you up like a turkey. This sharp friend of mine could make your pretty bike a widow. Or we could burn you to a crisp. Like bacon.”
Meanwhile another one of them stepped forward, long chain wrapped around his huge hands. “Maybe we don’t stab the boy,” he said. “What you say, Carmine, we beat him to death with my trusty chain?”
Keep it up. Keep it up, I thought to myself, and you will definitely have me wet my pants. Then I’ll be so ashamed you could either stab me with the stiletto or beat my brains and break my bones with your trusty chain.
“You ready to die, little rich boy?” asked the chain wielder. “Then we’ll dump your dead body in the East River. You won’t have to worry about swimming. You can float.”
This little drama starring the wild ones and the innocent boy with a bike attracted a small gathering of people. Finally the drama and the growing audience attracted the attention of a policeman who walked over to where I was now sitting on the ground.
He bent down and offered me his hand. “What the hell’s going on here?” he said, not to me but to Carmine and his side kicker. “How many times I tell you keep off these streets? Go show off your leather jackets at a fashion show. Get yourselves cleaned up so you look human. Ain’t gonna happen on my watch. Next time I get some help and haul your wild asses to the precinct.”
“You okay, son?”
I nodded, then brushed off my pants, and lifted my bicycle from where it had been lying in wait for our escape.
The policeman had saved my life. Maybe they were going to kill me. Maybe they weren’t but it could’ve gone either way, and I’ve never been very good at guessing games.
“They hit you? You could tell me.”
I shook my head. “They were just talking to me,” I said. “About…about my Schwinn bike. That’s all.”
He took a pad from his back pocket. A pen from his shirt. “Did they lay a hand on you?”
“No, they were just fooling around, saying how they like my bicycle.”
“What’s your name, son? And where do you live?”
I told the officer. He jotted it down in his pad. Then he said he’d put the bike in the back seat and I could ride up front with him, all the way home to Richmond Hill. It was getting late. The sun would be out of sight before I could possibly reach home, especially since my legs were killing me from the kickings. I was sure tomorrow I’d be black and blue, but I’d be alive to ride my bike another day. But only around the neighborhood where life was a little boring but definitely safe.
Sitting in the front seat with the policeman, I looked out the window and Carmine was smiling at me. “Hey, kid,” he said, “next time you’re in Jamaica, look me up. I’ll take you for a ride on my Harley. You’re ok.” And the other wild ones waved at the police car as it disappeared down Atlantic Avenue where the Atlantic Aztecs lived.


MY PARENTS KISS

Rabindranath Tagore, the renowned Indian poet (1861-1941), once wrote, “The greatest gift a father could give his children is to love their mother.” How true!

The photo features my parents on the occasion of my father’s 80th Birthday. Mama is kissing Papa. It is a July 05th of celebration, too happy to even contemplate the sad fact it would be his last. In less than a year he would succumb to cancer and be lost to us.

My mother remained so brave during those last four months. She’d sit at his hospital bedside, hold his hand, talk about how, if it was God’s Will, he would soon be healed, but it wasn’t to be. One April morning, like some liberated bird, he flew away from us, from those end days of pain and hopelessness. It left a huge emptiness in all of us, particularly my mother.

“He was the only man I ever dated,” she said. “The minute I saw him that first time on that cobblestone street I fell in love with him.”

We had heard the story so often we’d lost count, but the two of them loved retelling it.

“Your mother was seventeen,” Papa said, beaming. “I was twenty-five, back to my Sicilian hometown from America for a little visit, and on a walk one day I saw her.”

“Love at first sight?” my sister Joanie asked, and Papa laughed.

“I don’t know for sure. Her cheeks were so rosy red I figured, ‘Why wear so much rouge!’ but then, mentioning that to my older brother John, I was told it was her natural color. Before we knew it, January came and with it our marriage.”

Nowadays children consider themselves lucky if their parents shower them with electronic toys, and even if they rarely spend time together, they accept it as a small price to pay for that new computer or huge bedroom TV, or I-pad. For me and my brothers and sisters, it was not a question of great expectations where gifts were concerned. We were not destitute, but my father often worked two jobs to support us. My mother stayed home and raised our large family. She was always there for us. We never were victims of a latchkey childhood. And the few times we heard our parents argue I can count on half my hand. Nor did they ever burden us with family finances. They believed their children should enjoy the few carefree days of youth. “Plenty of time later on,” Papa said, “for serious worrying. For now, make the best of these young years.”

My siblings and I were so blessed! Not only did our parents love us, they deeply loved each other. One evening after dinner my father asked us at table (Mama was in the kitchen), “Do you know how much I love your mother?” We looked at one another. Was this one of Papa’s parables? The ones he told quite often to teach us some profound wisdom. We all shook our heads. Papa smiled and continued. “I’d give her my right arm!”

Anna looked at me. I looked at Joanie. Joanie looked at Sarah. Sarah looked at Frankie. Frankie looked at Alphonse. We all took turns looking at one another. Finally Sarah asked, “Your arm?” And Papa said emphatically, “Yes! My right arm!”

I sat there thinking, who in the world would go that far to show love? I imagined Papa with one arm, doing his best to weld planes singlehandedly, a man who, even with one arm, could smile and look life in the face with hope and joy.

Papa repeated it, “I’d give that woman my right arm!” and we realized he was waiting for one of us, all of us, to ask the big question, “Why?” Finally we all asked it, almost simultaneously, “Why?”

Papa stood up for dramatic effect. “Because your mother would give both her arms for me!” When he sat down again, we could see how his dark brown eyes had grown misty. From his back pocket he withdrew a white handkerchief and dabbed his eyes.

I looked to the kitchen where Mama had heard what Papa said and was smiling.

Were we kids blessed? Perhaps in our self-absorbed childhoods we never gave such blessings much thought, but now in our older age, we know without doubt how much God loved us. He gave us loving parents to raise. Parents who demonstrated good example, who loved God, who placed their children first. “Ma,” I once asked her when I was in 8th grade, “how come we have new Tom McAnn shoes and you and Papa have holes on the bottom of yours?” She did not hesitate to reply. “New shoes for you so when you get there, people will be impressed with you. Papa and me, we’re already there!”

Were we kids blessed? Papa taught us to believe in ourselves and never leave a task unfinished. He taught us to give it our all, to do the best we could. Mama taught us to believe in God with all our mind and soul and body. She taught us to accept God’s Will in all things. “Even if you don’t understand the mysteries in this life, accept them. God will explain them all to you if you do His Will and reach Heaven.”

Though I had wandered several years from the fold, placing my own pride too many steps ahead of my reliance on God, at last my mother’s prayers for my return were answered. I came back to Him, placed myself in the palm of His hand, and said, “Whatever You want of me, I will do.”

Papa and Mama are both gone now. I picture them two flowers in God’s heavenly garden, two souls white as snow, two citizens of Crystal City. With them my sisters Jenny and Anna, my brothers Frank and Alphonse--all of them waiting for me, Joanie, and Sarah, the rest of their children, to join them one day in Paradise.

I know love never dies. In this temporal world it is governed by time and place, but in God’s Kingdom, that love will go on and on in a Happy Reunion of parents and children.

Thanks to Papa and Mama I enjoy a wondrous peace!

HE NAMED ME “WIND”
(A Miltonic Sonnet)

When you poets take your pens to name me,
Identify with words misnomers weak
As wings of flies, you fail in your technique.
Invisible power you feel is key
To settling on just what my name should be.
Creative minds who write those labels seek
Personified names, but your quest is bleak.
It’s difficult to bridle what is free.
I roar through woods and city streets unseen,
And woe to what or who stands in my way.
The force I wield can level all that dare
To challenge me. I am headstrong and mean,
So potent only God do I obey.
He named me “wind.” My fury do beware!