KooKooLand (10 page)

Took the brats fishing. I'll wake you up early to fry the mackerel. Love, Jimmy.

He raced me to the car. I lost.

Virginia grabbed the backseat of the Pontiac and I got stuck with the front. Sylvester wedged himself under my seat and began to meow like he was going to get a distemper shot.

We were off. I prayed to God that the mackerel knew we were coming and were heading for the deep water.

Jimmy's Claw lunged over and pinched my scrawny arm. I yelped.

“I've got a big surprise,” he crooned. “Guess where we're going first?”

I tried to ignore my stinging arm.

“Benson's Wild Animal Farm?” I blurted out hopefully.

“Hell no,” Jimmy said. “Who wants to see Bambi in captivity looking miserable when you can see him happy and running free in the woods?”

Free until you blow his brains out or shoot his mother, I thought.

“Guess again,” Jimmy said.

He looked in the rearview mirror at Virginia.

“You too, teen-rager, what do you think?”

Virginia shrugged and picked at her cuticles.

“Are we going to Dunkin' Donuts for coffee?” she mumbled. Coffee and Pepsi were her favorite food products, chased down with a cancer stick when Jimmy wasn't around.

“No, dummkopf.” Jimmy laughed, lighting a cancer stick of his own. “You girls aren't too swift, you know that?”

A sly grin spread across his face and the smoke poured out of it.

“How we gonna go fishing without the canoe?” he hinted.

It was only then that I realized Jimmy's canoe was not strapped to the roof of the car. Usually it was tied up there year-round 'cause fishing season led to deer hunting season which led to duck hunting season which led back to fishing season. It didn't matter if we were going to the drive-in or to some cousin's fancy Greek wedding. The canoe was up there.

The only time it wasn't was if we were headed to the Combat Zone. Jimmy was always afraid some lowlife there would swipe it.

“We're going to the Combat Zone!” I sang out, picturing a fun day of cannoli and maybe a Charlie Chaplin movie.

“Wrong again, dum-dum. Not when the mackerel are running like a nigger
from the KKK. No, we're going fishing all right, but not in the canoe. We're going in . . .”

He made a sound like a drumroll.

“. . . our brand-new motorboat.”

“You bought another boat?” Virginia exclaimed, looking PO'd. I suspected she was mad he'd blown a wad on a boat when he still gave her only a twenty-five-cent allowance.

“A canoe and a motorboat do not serve the same purpose,” he lectured her. “With a canoe you can get into narrow places all quiet like an Injun, but with a motorboat you can go way far out into the deep ocean. We can get even more mackerel.”

I wanted to hurl myself from the moving car.

I suddenly thought about the Project Snitch. If she found out we now owned a motorboat as well as a racehorse I felt certain we'd be thrown out.

But Jimmy said he knew how to take care of snitches. Then he did his trumpet imitation the rest of the way to Hank's.

The motorboat was lying in Hank's parking lot. It was about twelve feet long and pretty beat up. Jimmy had already painted on the name he had given it. I craned my neck to read the words, since the boat was upside down.

“
Aristotle Onassis
,” Jimmy announced. “She's called the
Aristotle Onassis
.”

Hank came out of the store.

“You goddamn Greeks are always late,” he barked.

“How the hell would you know?” Jimmy shot back. “You goddamn Polacks can't tell time.”

Hank scowled at him but proceeded to help Jimmy load the
Aristotle Onassis
onto the roof of our car.

“The motor's a little tricky,” I heard Hank say. “You gotta pull the string just so or you could end up flooding it.”

“So you sold me a Thanksgiving special, a frickin' turkey, is that what you're sayin'?”

“I don't sell any goddamn turkeys, you cheap Greek. This is a good little motor. I coulda sold it for double, but you jewed me down.”

“If we get stuck out on the water, I'm gonna frickin' kill you. I'm gonna wrap that string around your frickin' Adam's apple.”

“Try it and I'll wrap my meat hooks around your throat.”

“The only thing those meat hooks know how to hold is a greasy kielbasa.”

“Christ, I oughta have my head examined for doing business with a greaseball.”

“You oughta have your kookoo coconut examined anyway, you crazy Polack.”

They went on and on like that. If you didn't know better, you'd think they hated each other's guts. But apparently they didn't. In fact, Jimmy said he was closer to Hank than to his own brothers, one of whom was a wimp music teacher who didn't know a rifle from a baton and the other who had moved out to KooKooLand and was black as a nigger from baking in the sun.

Susan came out of the store. She walked right up to me.

I held my breath. I stood up straighter.

“Well, hello again,” she said.

She was wearing a funny little smile.

“Your father's a real shipping magnate now.”

I thought it must be a figure of speech. I thought she must mean he was drawn to the sea like a magnet.

“Yes,” I agreed. “He loves the sea.”

Susan motioned to Jimmy and Hank.

“They're a real pair,” she said. Then she added, “You hang in there. Don't let them drive you too nuts out there on the water, OK?”

It was then I realized that Hank was coming with us. A millionaire was coming fishing with us in our crappy little boat, the
Aristotle Onassis.

“Are you coming too?” I asked. My voice sounded all high-pitched and squeaky like somebody was strangling my Adam's apple with his meat hooks.

“Being trapped at sea with the two of them might drive
me
nuts,” she whispered to me, laughing.

Jimmy finished tying the boat on the roof and Hank dropped the Johnson outboard motor into the trunk.

Jimmy took the pancakes out of his tackle box and slipped them to Hank.

“Maybe these'll put a smile on your sad-sack kisser,” he said.

Hank snatched the pancakes and shoved them in his pocket.

“Announce it to the whole goddamn world, why don't you,” he hissed.

“Relax,” crooned Jimmy. “What're you, a yellowbelly? Afraid the fuzz are gonna come get you?”

Susan looked upset when she saw the pancakes. She turned and started to go back inside. Hank grabbed her arm and said some things. Susan got all frozen-looking. I heard him say something that began with “And tell your goddamn mother . . .”

Whatever it was he wanted her to say, Susan didn't want to do it, I could see that.

I strained to hear more.

Jimmy told me to get my damn keister in the car.

I climbed in the back next to Virginia, who had her hand under the seat and was petting Sylvester.

“What kind of nosy little buttinsky are you?” Jimmy snarled at me. “You don't stand there listening to people's family business.”

I looked down, feeling my face get all hot.

I was a nosy little buttinsky and now Susan probably hated my guts.

Hank got into the front seat.

I glanced out the window, hoping to wave good-bye to Susan, but she had already gone inside.

“She's stubborn, just like her goddamn mother,” Hank said to Jimmy. “Doris screwed her up, that's for sure.”

Jimmy just said, “Screw Doris. We're going fishing.”

He gunned the engine and headed for the coast.

We got there in record time.

“Forty minutes and change,” said Jimmy, checking his phony Bulova as we pulled into a patch of mud near the bait shack.

Sylvester had been quiet the whole way, but sensing he was about to head out to sea, he began to meow.

Hank nearly choked on his beer.

“Is there a goddamn cat in here?”

“Yeah, that's Sylvester,” Jimmy said. “I've taken him out in the canoe before. He loves it.”

“Maybe you can take a cat in a canoe,” Hank shot back, “but you can't take him in a motorboat. The sound of the motor's gonna spook him. He could jump ship.”

“So? He knows how to swim,” Jimmy said proudly. “I taught him when he was a kitten.”

“You taught the cat to swim?”

“Yeah, I threw him in the kids' wading pool. Sink or swim. They learn real fast.”

Hank drained his beer and tossed the bottle on the floor. It rolled under the seat toward Sylvester and he meowed louder.

“He yowls 'cause he's not cut like a sissy cat,” explained Jimmy.

“For Chrissake, why can't you get yourself a goddamn dog like every other guy?” demanded Hank. “A cat's no good for hunting. It can't pick up a scent or retrieve a duck.”

“I don't need Lassie to help me find a goddamn duck when it drops. I can find it myself unlike the ding-dong judges and crooked cops hanging around your joint who call themselves hunters but can't find their own ding-dong to take a piss.”

Hank split a gut.

“Anyway,” Jimmy added, “cats are smarter than dogs. Dogs would wag their asses and follow you into the devil's rumpus room. Cats are sharp enough to be suspicious of people.”

Cats were also easier to hide, since the projects didn't allow pets. But Jimmy didn't say that. He just asked Hank a simple question.

“C'mon, if it came down to it, who would you rather be? Top Cat, who's a wheeler-dealer, or goddamn Huckleberry Hound, who goes around sniffing petunias?”

“I don't wanna be either one,” snapped Hank. “They're goddamn cartoon characters.”

“Cats have spunk. Dogs are droolers. That's all I'm saying.”

Hank was fed up. His bulbous nose was becoming all pink and veiny.

“I'm not going in any goddamn boat with a yowling tomcat, you crazy greaseball.”

Jimmy suddenly started laughing his head off.

“Cool your keister. I was never really gonna take him. I just wanted to get a rise out of you. I wanted to get that Huckleberry Hounddog look off your kisser.”

Hank's expression darkened.

“I'm never going hunting or fishing with you again,” he barked.

“You say that every goddamn time,” said Jimmy.

“Well, this time I goddamn mean it.”

“Well, then it's my goddamn lucky day.”

“Just get the goddamn bait.”

And that's how it went. We finally got the goddamn boat in the goddamn water and Hank showed Jimmy how to pull the goddamn string so as not to flood the goddamn motor and we went out for some goddamn mackerel.

Sylvester watched us shove off. Virginia had made him a bed out of Jimmy's smelly old shirt.

“Poor Sylvester,” she whispered to me.

I thought it was his goddamn lucky day. This was one time I would've rather parked my keister in the car. I didn't want to be trapped in that floating rust bucket with a goddamn greaseball and a goddamn Polack and no place to pee.

But all that changed once we got out onto the open sea. The cool salt air smacked me in the kisser and it felt good. The brine shot up my nose and into my brain and flushed out all the worried thoughts that were stuck in there like crusty boogers. Blue was all around me and I felt happy. Dolphins jumped out of the water to greet us. I saw bobbing seagulls, and laughed when Hank shouted in my ear that they were Polish eagles. Jimmy said they were dumb and dirty like Polacks and tried to run them over. He was going too fast, but I didn't care 'cause there were no poky old ladies or pissed-off truckies to crash into.

Virginia grabbed my elbow if I leaned out too far and tried not to get her Keds soaked from the water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat.

Jimmy dropped anchor in just the right spot in that whole big ocean. We caught fish after fish—except Virginia, who never wanted to kill a fly and said she'd rather watch. I forgot they were mackerel, and just had so much goddamn fun. I reeled them in as fast as Jimmy and Hank could bait my hook. Heard them flopping around in the wet burlap bag at my feet and pulled up another one.

I didn't even mind when Jimmy and Hank cracked open the whiskey and warm beer and started telling their old stories about being in the merchant marine. Stories about sailing under the same captain, E. J. Christianson, who was a good skipper and never talked down to his men. I learned about what Jimmy called “the Religion of the Sea,” and pretended that I, too, could one day join the merchant marine, join the brotherhood of men, even though I was just a goddamn girl.

We fished until the burlap bag couldn't hold any more.

Then we filled the bottom of the boat.

And even Hank didn't look so sad anymore.

I was sorry when Jimmy pulled anchor and we headed back to shore.

Sylvester was glad to see us. He got a mackerel head for staying in the car all afternoon without spraying.

Virginia and I snuck off and peed behind the bait shack, keeping a lookout for one another.

When we came back, Jimmy and Hank were having a contest to see who could gut the most fish fastest. Jimmy won, but Hank said Jimmy cheated 'cause he took the best knife.

On the way home, Hank bought each of us a mug of A&W root beer, even though Jimmy said that Virginia and I could share. Hank told him to quit being a cheap Greek where his kids were concerned and I thought that sounded like good advice. I imagined Hank was my father and Susan was my sister and we never had to share a root beer unless we wanted to, with two straws, for fun.

Finally, we dropped Hank back off at his store. I was hoping to see Susan again and brag about how many fish I caught, but she was long gone.

When we got back to the projects, we went door-to-door passing out the mackerel. All the mothers were tickled pink to get them. They had something besides Rice-A-Roni to put on their tables that night, something to feed their nine or eleven or thirteen kids.