KooKooLand (16 page)

“Look at these poor little things,” Virginia moaned. “I wish I could smuggle one home. It could live in our bedroom.”

I bent down to inspect the kittens and the runtiest one dug its claws into my earlobe.

“Goddamn sonofabitch!” I cried out, already failing in my efforts to be a good Catholic.

“Quit swearing,” Virginia hissed. “Daddy will moider you.”

The truth was, Jimmy was the one who had taught me to swear in the first place. One Christmas Eve when he was half-lit he had coached me to sing Christmas carols with swearwords.

Deck the halls with boughs of bullshit.

Fa la la la la . . .
na fas skata.

Na fas skata,
he had said, laughing, was Greek for “eat shit.”

He insisted we were gonna sing the song together for YaYa on Christmas. But, when I started to belt it out the next day, it was a whole different tune.

“Girls don't curse,” he snapped, “unless they're no-good whores. Any daughter of mine talks like a no-good whore, I'll cut out her tongue. I'll murder her.”

He didn't say
moider.
He wasn't kidding around.

While he was chewing me out, one thing kept going through my head.

Na fas skata! Na fas skata! Na fas skata!

And that's what I felt like saying now—to Jimmy, to Victory Bound, to Aunt Hazel, to that mean little kitten.

But I knew better and kept my trap shut.

I dabbed at my ear to see how bad it was bleeding. There was only a smear of blood, so at least I wasn't bleeding to death. I did, however, begin to consider the possibility of cat scratch fever.

“You shouldn't have put your face so close, dummkopf,” Virginia said.

“You'll smuggle one of them home over my dead body,” I replied, and got the hell away from those goddamn kittens.

I stomped down to the other end of the barn, navigating an obstacle course of horseshit. This racetrack, I decided, was even crummier than the other ones Jimmy hung around. Everything was encased in mud and dried shit. The entire time I'd been here, I'd been flapping my arms to keep away the horseflies. They were big as Jimmy's thumb and gave a nasty bite.

Finally, I spotted a flyswatter hanging on a nail and decided to play a game. A killing game. How many of those sonofabitches could I murder, not moider? How many could I smack the living life out of?

And, oh boy, that's when I started to have fun. I zigzagged around the place killing horseflies like it was an Olympic event and I was going for the gold. I kept score as the body count mounted. Twenty . . . thirty . . . thirty-five. I was going for a new world record. I even whacked one on my leg before it could get me. It hurt, but I didn't give a shit.

“Die, die, you sonofabitch,” I said to the horsefly.

Finally, I heard Jimmy call out to me.

“Hey, pip-squeak, let's go for a dunk. That is, unless you want to bunk down here for the night with Victory Bound.”

I threw down the flyswatter and ran to Jimmy, leaping over the piles of horseshit.

I was so glad to be getting out of there I jumped up and kissed him.

I
rode Jimmy all the way to shore.

The water was so cold I couldn't feel my hands wrapped around his suntanned neck or my feet hooked around his muscled thighs. We rode through seaweed that got all tangled around our legs. It felt like a killer octopus, but I didn't care. Well, I almost didn't.

“I'm a man-of-war and you're my first mate!” Jimmy shouted as his wiry body sliced through the choppy sea with me on board.

We shot past other kids on their flimsy Styrofoam boards and swerved around their fathers with their potbellies and flabby, lobster-red arms.

I sailed on Jimmy until goose bumps covered my entire body and my teeth were chattering like Squirmy's.

“Race you to the blanket!” Jimmy finally called out, dumping me off his back. He charged out of the water and I staggered after him.

He drew a line in the sand with his big toe and I stood behind it.

“Ready, set, fire!”

I tore away from the starting line.

He gave me my usual head start. I dug my frozen feet into the sand and pumped my frozen arms. I heard Jimmy's breath gaining on me and pushed harder. My lungs felt like two ice-water balloons about to burst.

Our horse blanket was just a few strides away. I was beating him this time, I was. I glanced back with a triumphant smile and he went flying by me.

“Sayonara, dum-dum.”

He threw himself down on the blanket and I threw myself down a few miserable seconds later. I lay there gasping and spitting out seawater and snot.

Shirley wrapped a towel around me.

“Can't you let her win once?” I heard her whisper to Jimmy.

He snorted with laughter.

“You don't know diddly-squat about raising brats, do you? I'm building her competitive spirit. You need that in this world so nobody pulls anything over on you. If I didn't have it, all the other hunters would be outgunning me. If Jack
Dempsey didn't have it, he wouldn't be world champ. If Victory Bound didn't have it, he wouldn't be tearing up his stall and headed for the winner's circle. You catch my drift?”

“Yes,” said Shirley. “I catch your drift.”

“I'll race you again right now,” I blurted out.

Lucky for me, Jimmy didn't take me up on it or I really might've burst a lung.

“Nah, kiddo, I gotta do some handicapping.”

He bopped me on the head.

“But you almost had me that time.”

I began to shiver and Shirley rubbed me with the towel.

After a while she warned Jimmy it was getting late.

“We got plenty of time,” he insisted. “Plenty of goddamn time. This is the best time of day. Look how beautiful it is with the sun going down and the sky like a painting by Winslow Homer and all the ding-dong tourists gone off to stuff their faces with fried clams. We got our own private beach here like millionaires.”

He gestured from one end of the empty beach to the other. Then he turned his attention back to the
Racing Form
. Shirley, Virginia, and I wrapped our damp towels tighter around ourselves and turned our backs to the stinging wind.

Virginia buried her nose in
1984
—a book that Jimmy had insisted she read to get a better understanding of the police state that would soon be facing us.

I drew a picture of Susan in the sand. She had shells for eyes and seaweed hair and a big, half-moon smile like the moon rising in the cloudy sky above us.

Jimmy sat with his arm draped around Shirley. They studied the
Racing Form
and discussed which horses were a sure thing for the daily double and how they were going to box the trifecta.

Shirley strained to catch the Red Sox score on a distant radio and Jimmy told her to quit daydreaming.

Finally, Jimmy checked the waterproof Bulova that he had gotten from Uncle Barney. Beads of moisture were clouding up its face, so he had to squint to read the time.

“Jesus Christ, why didn't you tell me it was so late?” he barked at Shirley.

“I
did
say something.”

“No you didn't.”

“I thought I did. . . .”

“You weren't thinking, dummkopf. You weren't thinking at all.”

He shook out the blanket and got sand all over us.

We raced back to the apartment.

Jimmy took a shower while Shirley threw together mackerel sandwiches for them to eat on the way and highballs to wash them down.

Shirley sprayed herself all over with Off 'cause someone at work had told her Maine mosquitoes would eat you alive. She offered to spray Jimmy too when he got out of the shower, but he said he wasn't worried about any puny skeeters.

“They really go for me,” Shirley said. “My blood must be sweeter than yours.”

“They go after females 'cause they smell weakness. You never hear a hunter bellyaching about mosquitoes. If we did, we'd be laughed outta the woods.”

He went to get his binoculars and Shirley slipped Virginia and me each a fin—our entire vacation money. We were allowed to cross the street to buy Pepsis and Ring Dings at the dumpy East Grand Market, but that was it.

On the way out, Jimmy told us to finish up all the mackerel 'cause it was starting to stink. Then he warned us not to open the door to anybody 'cause it could be the Boston Strangler. I locked the door behind them. Jimmy scratched on the door like a madman, and they were off to make a killing.

A
s soon as they were gone, Virginia teased her hair, put on short shorts, and drew some raccoon circles around her eyes with Shirley's eyebrow pencil.

“We're only going across the street,” I said. “Not to Hollywood.”

“They won't be back for hours,” drawled Virginia. “I'm going to the main drag and I can't leave you alone, so you're coming with me.”

My throat tightened up like the Strangler had his mitts wrapped around it.

“What if they find out?” I squeaked.

“They're not going to find out—not unless some little snitch snitches.”

“I'm not a little snitch. I'm not some goddamn snitch.”

“Watch your mouth. And put on long pants so the mosquitoes don't eat you alive.”

“Look who's talking,” I said, eyeing Virginia's shorts, which barely covered her keister.

“I'm fourteen. I can do what I want when Hitler's not around,” Virginia replied as she bit the price tag off a padded bra. I couldn't imagine where she got the money to buy the new bra and the short shorts. I hoped she wasn't sneaking money out of Shirley's purse since that would make it harder for me to hide my own occasional stealing.

Then I remembered my stealing days were over. I was a good Catholic now. Supposedly.

I put on my plaid pedal pushers and stuck the money Shirley had given me deep in my sneaker.

Virginia and I held our breath and sprayed each other with Off.

I turned on the outside light to see if the Boston Strangler was hiding out there. Mosquitoes immediately began to swarm around the light. Otherwise, the coast was clear.

We were about to head out the door when Virginia froze.

“Oh, crap. We forgot about the mackerel.”

“I'm gonna puke if I have to eat any more smelly mackerel,” I wailed.

“Maybe Sylvester will eat it,” Virginia said.

We brought the mackerel over to the cupboard where Sylvester was still hiding, but he only scrunched farther back into the cupboard.

“Poor baby. I know just how you feel,” Virginia purred.

She wrapped up the mackerel in some aluminum foil and dropped it in her purse.

“The Polish eagles will eat it,” she said. “They eat garbage.”

“Good thinking, Einstein,” I replied.

We headed for the main drag, smelling a little fishy.

I glanced behind me several times to see if the Boston Strangler was following us. Virginia told me to quit yapping about the Strangler. I was ruining all of her F-U-N. Besides, she said, whoever the nutcase was, she didn't think he'd be leaving the Boston area and hanging out in Vacationland. Wackos didn't take vacations. They were too busy chopping up their nagging mothers and collecting stuffed birds like Norman Bates in
Psycho
.

Suddenly it occurred to me that Jimmy collected stuffed birds like Norman Bates. There was a glassy-eyed mallard on the TV and a pair of black ducks above the couch.

And Jimmy fought with YaYa all the time. Once he even shoved her down when she told him he wouldn't amount to a hill of beans.

A terrifying thought raced through my mind: What if my father was the Boston Strangler?

I weighed the evidence.

He liked to prowl around Boston. He sometimes stayed out all night when Shirley was working. He loved watching women get their tongues yanked out. And what about those bloodstains in the trunk of his car? How could I be sure they were from moose meat and not from some pretty, long-haired secretary who was asking for it by living alone with no man to protect her?

Even Tina had once said her mother thought Jimmy was a maniac and wouldn't let Tina go anywhere in the car with us. Maybe he really was a maniac. How could I know for sure?

Another thought popped into my head and fought off the other thoughts. Maniacs didn't have children! Norman Bates didn't! The Sadist didn't! Fuad Ramses didn't!

I told myself I was safe. Maniacs weren't fathers and fathers weren't maniacs. I chanted that four times 'cause four was my lucky number. I crossed my fingers and crossed my eyes to make it stick.

I kept my fingers crossed until we hit the main drag.

And then I forgot all about maniacs. Forgot about Jimmy.

The place was lit up like a frickin' Christmas tree. Rides were blinking and twirling and plunging and people were screaming in fear but nobody was bleeding or dying.

Virginia took some of my money and bought me a string of tickets as long as my scrawny arm. Then she told me to scram and meet her later at an arcade she had already scoped out.

“Have F-U-N, kiddo, and don't talk to any goddamn maniacs,” she said as she hurried off.

I went on the scariest rides first.

I went on the Mighty Mouse roller coaster, the Jack-and-Jill slide, and the Noah's Ark fun house. I went on the world's biggest Ferris wheel and the world's fastest merry-go-round. I rode the bumper cars and rammed as many dummkopfs as I could.

I played pinball and skee-ball and had my fortune told by a lady who said I'd be rich beyond my wildest dreams, which I took to mean Victory Bound would win for sure.

I played ringtoss, hoping to win a giant giraffe, but settled for a lobster key chain instead.

I ate pizza, french fries, saltwater taffy, cotton candy, a candy apple, and a cashew bar.