Alligator Candy (6 page)

I fashioned myself as leader of the adventure club. One day I convened my legion to excavate a knothole that, I imagined, housed a giant lost diamond. You could see the diamond down there, I said, if you backed up and stood in the right spot. My friends Michael, Kevin, and Robbie elbowed each other for a look, and claimed they saw it—the glimmer of light reflecting off the crystalline shard. The fact that the glimmer was actually coming from an old sandwich bag didn't faze us; it was a diamond if we said it was.

The explorations didn't come without risk, which made our capers all the more exciting. We could plummet out of trees, eat a rotten kumquat, fall into the lake. But we never heard any mention of words like liability and lawsuit from the teachers; everything was fair game. Most of the danger came in the form of fire ants, nasty little red stingers that burn when they bite. The fire ants were everywhere, scurrying over one another in giant gray mounds of sand that dotted the fields and the bases of trees like camouflaged land mines. Once, I slid down a slide right into a huge pile of ants, much to the delight of my friends. But the teachers kept bottles of calamine lotion on their shelves, and the pasty, cool swabs on my skin made everything okay.

If the teachers were giving me special attention because of Jon's murder, I wasn't aware. No one ever said anything or asked how I was doing, not that I expected them to or even desired this. They treated me like a bomb they didn't know how to defuse, so they just left me alone. I made it relatively easy for them. Despite what had happened, I was generally a fun-loving and easygoing kid, eager to entertain if not be a bit precocious. Sometimes I'd lash out, throwing a tantrum that the teachers seemed to regard as something to be expressed, not contained. Rather than telling me to stop, they would hand me a hammer and a block of wood and tell me to go get out my anger. So there I would be, standing outside the brown round pod, banging a hammer against the wood until someone told me to come back inside.

Eventually I learned my own coping technique on the schoolyard. It started after kids would come up to me and repeat rumors they had heard about how Jon had been killed. Because I still didn't know the whole story, I had no idea what to believe. Even the most outlandish suggestions could be true. They said he had been cut up and put in a pickle jar, and that he had been shot with bows and arrows. At first, I would just stand there not knowing how to respond. I pictured a boy in a pickle jar, like something out of a
Flat Stanley
children's book, and it didn't make sense.

I took solace telling myself they were wrong. My mind clung to the sparse details that I'd retained: he'd been hit in the head, suffocated, that was that. Everything else was just a lie, some crazy rumors that filled my classmates' heads. Perhaps I actually took the time to respond to them at first, insisting that, no, you're wrong, nothing like that happened to him. But my responses were not convincing enough, because the rumors, as the months went on, kept resurfacing. Finally, I'd had enough, and decided to simply shut down completely in these moments and act like I couldn't hear them.

In that silent space, the world around me would blur and fade—the sounds, the colors, the trees. I was just walking through a thick translucent jelly, isolated, alone. I didn't want pity, my stomach turned at the very thought. To be pitied was to be denigrated; to be singled out as “different.” I wanted disregard. I wanted to be just like every other kid around me, seemingly unburdened and intact. I didn't want to be the star of a crime drama; a murder mystery that was fueling all kinds of conversations in the homes of my friends. Every day, on my way to school and back, I would pass the woods where Jon had disappeared. And at some point, a thought occurred to me: perhaps if I hadn't asked Jon for the alligator candy, he would never have gone that day, and he would still be alive.

A
NDY GREW
a giant afro. Even for the midseventies, it was impressive, especially on a white Jewish teenager in the suburbs. The hairdo struck me as an architectural marvel, and I used to watch him tend to it in the mirror of our bathroom. It started out long and wet, but then he'd have at it with his wide black hair pick, flicking and snapping over and over and over again until it dried into a frizzy, dark dome that, if it possessed self-luminescence, would have passed for one of those party lights at Spencer Gifts.

Afros seemed to be everywhere in those days, from Sly Stone and Dr. J to the cast of
Welcome Back, Kotter
. For Andy, the Jewfro was all about the music it conjured, jazz and funk, and his passion for playing the trumpet. Day and night, I'd hear him behind his closed door, practicing scales on his horn. Before long, there were other skinny, white, nerdy funksters in our house, pushing around the living room furniture so they could practice together.

Andy named his band Rhythm and began getting gigs around town. Every weekend, we'd pile into our station wagon and head for Shakey's Pizza Parlor, where Rhythm had a regular show. The station wagon was the perfect roadie vehicle. It was roomy enough to cart the instruments and, for a reason that escaped me, had a mushroom decal by the gas tank. Andy made a point of letting me help the band set up.

As Andy and the band made their way through Dixieland songs, heavyset Southerners—men in trucker hats, women in plaid shirts—would swill their pitchers of beer and hit the dance floor. At some point, Andy would lead a few contests for the kids in the crowd. I went onstage for a balloon-blowing competition, but, shamefully, broke into tears when another kid popped his balloon first.

Shakey's led to Andy's best gig: being the house band at Tampa Stadium, the seventy-two-thousand-seat arena where the Rowdies soccer team played. Soccer was huge at the time, especially in the years before Tampa got a pro football team, and I'd dart between seeing Rodney Marsh play Pelé on the field and seeing Andy play a song by the group Chicago. Andy became just as famous at shul, where he was the designated shofar blower on the high holidays, the yarmulke pinned precariously to his Jewfro as he held the
tekiah gedolah
—the longest note of the service—for what seemed like forever.

Throughout it all, Andy and I seldom, if ever, discussed Jon. We were acclimating from being three brothers to two. He still had a little brother, and I still had a big one. But we knew who was missing in the middle, just like Jon's missing name on the sidewalk in front of our house. But this downsizing became a quiet, personal conundrum for me every time some new person I met asked me how many siblings I had. The question swirled inside my head for years: Should I say one or two brothers? Should I say I
had
two brothers but now I have one?

If I say “one,” then that erases Jon's existence, as if he never had been here. And saying “one” raised questions. People wondered why Andy and I were so far apart in age: eight and half years. It seemed suspicious. Some asked if I was a mistake. But even that was better than having to tell them the truth that I still didn't fully understand: I had two brothers but one was dead.

“How'd he die?”

He was killed.

“How?”

He was murdered.

“How? Why? What happened?”

And so on. The questions were too much for me to deal with, so I decided it was better not to deal with them at all. “I have one brother,” I'd say, even though it felt like a lie.

Given our disparity in ages, it was hard, as a child, to know what Andy was struggling with at the time. Though we didn't talk about this, we felt it. We shared a sense of unspoken fraternity, an incredible love and closeness, like two guys who'd returned from the front lines of some invisible war. Though Jon's absence wasn't articulated, I felt it every time I walked down toward Andy's room at the end of the hall. He'd be in there with the door locked, listening to music on his headphones or playing drums. As I knocked persistently at the door, I'd cast a glance to my right into Jon's old bedroom. Though my mom was using it as her office, I could still feel Jon's presence there.

All else that was left of Jon's were a few items that he had saved in a small brown wooden box in his closet. In private moments, I would stand on a chair and pull the box from the shelf, unlocking the gold clasp and slowly opening it. The box smelled nutty and musty. Inside was a small black plastic water pistol, a few dollar bills, a spool of caps for a cap gun, and an audiotape that Jon had made with his friend.

One day I finally got the nerve to put the tape into the cassette deck and press Play. I sat on the carpet, listening and watching the tape spin, recalling the days I'd spend there with him playing with the flight book. The two black capstans spun the tape along, as I waited with anticipation. Then I heard the hiss of the tape, and the sound of a voice: “Oh yeah,” it said. The voice was high pitched, almost girly, perhaps made when he was much younger. The voice sang some incomprehensible words, then said “bye.” Then came a click and some hiss, and another voice: now a boy's voice affecting the deep tones of an adult. “Hello, this is Howard Cosell down in New York City,” Jon said, “and Underdog has just been fatally hurt.”

Underdog
was our favorite cartoon. It chronicled the adventures of an ordinary pooch with a secret superpower identity, Underdog. He would fight battles against the villainous Simon Bar Sinister, an evil doctor with a greenish head shaped like a decaying tooth. His girlfriend was the comely canine reporter, Sweet Polly Purebread. Jon was enacting his own episode in which Underdog finds trouble and gets interviewed by the famous sportscaster. He went on as the voice of Cosell. “May I have a word with you, Underdog?” he asked the wounded hero.

“Ugh,” Jon replied as Underdog.

Then he slipped back into his announcer's voice. “This is Howard Cosell going to Sweet Polly Purebread.”

“Hey,” Jon said in Polly's squeaky voice, “this is Sweet Polly Purebread, and Underdog has just been killed. Oh yeah yeah yeah. And Simon Bar Sinister has just conquered the world.” Then Jon's voice vanished and was replaced by an electromagnetic hiss.

D
AD TALKED
with the chimps. It was the highlight of our trips to Busch Gardens, the Africa-themed amusement park near our house. The chimpanzees inhabited a large, open play area around the middle of the park. They lazed on giant fake boulders and swung from tire swings. My dad would step up to the rock wall surrounding the chimps and open his mouth wide, baring his teeth and widening his eyes. The chimps wouldn't pay attention at first. But then, after hearing his convincing clicking sounds, one or two would casually take notice.

As my dad twisted his face and mouth, the chimps actually began to mimic and respond to his gestures—cackling and gaping as if they were conversing with a bushy faced uncle. Jolly tourists in matching T-shirts and hats would also take notice, wandering over with their fried lunch to watch the man with long black hair and black beard chattering with the chimps. They assumed my dad was an employee of Busch Gardens—some monkey expert putting on an afternoon show. I knew better, that my dad was drawing from his anthropological expertise to have a little fun and entertain his kid.

I wasn't aware, not consciously anyway, of how Jon's death was affecting my mom and dad. As much as they may have discussed grief and suffering with each other and with their peers, we didn't talk about Jon much with one another. Or at least he wasn't being discussed very often with me. I sensed that even uttering Jon's name was too painful between us, too real, too raw. There was one time when my mom and I were discussing Jon, and I watched as my dad quietly stood up and left the room. I didn't feel rejected or hurt, I just felt curious and confused, struggling to understand what was going through his head. The word
murdered
was never mentioned. If anything, we would use the word
died
, as if not mentioning the
M
-word would somehow make it less difficult.

I had no idea how Jon's murder had transformed the way my father parented me. My dad had been through a sort of mirror experience of loss and suffering, losing his father when he was nine, and then losing his eleven-year-old son when he was a father. I didn't know what regrets he harbored, what guilt he carried. I had no idea how he had spent most of his years as a father before I was born, working long hours as a rising professor, studying and writing while his sons Jon and Andy grew. I knew they'd had their special times together, hiking through the mountains and foothills of Tucson. But I didn't realize how one way he coped with Jon's death was by making up for lost time with me.

Busch Gardens was a big part of this. Though we didn't have a lot of money, he got season passes for us, and we went almost every weekend. Sometimes we'd spend a long day there, riding the flume and eating pretzels while tourists waited in long lines for free Busch beer at the Hospitality House. Other times we'd just go to ride the Skyride, my favorite attraction, which would carry us along quietly in a cart high above the park, and then come home. We also started going to watch sports, getting season tickets for the Rowdies and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who'd entered the National Football League in 1976. Or we'd go off to the schoolyard to fly a kite, or toss the football around in the back. My dad, like my mom, lived passionately and with great humor. He gave big hugs and loved eating, danced as Tevye in a synagogue production of
Fiddler on the Roof
. He always had the capacity to feel and express tremendous joy.

The headaches, though, were still striking him at random. Once, we were at a showing of
Clash of the Titans
when I heard his measured breathing and saw his face droop down, tears rolling from his eyes. When he said we had to go, I understood.

My dad's master's program in applied anthropology had begun in full force in the fall of 1974, less than a year after Jon's death, and, as the department chair, it kept him busy in the months to come. For me, trips to the Anthropology Department were the ultimate adventure. I saw halls full of people with long hair and jeans like my dad, passionate, intelligent grown-ups with great senses of humor. Dad's office door was covered in newspaper clippings and cartoons, including
Doonesbury
and R. Crumb comics. The room was thick with cigarette smoke, as students came and went.