KooKooLand (23 page)

“I don't wanna waste any more of your ammo,” she replied. “You always say I'm a lousy shot.”

“You are. You're both lousy shots. You got none of my genes, that's for sure.”

I heard Virginia mutter, “I hope not,” under her breath.

I gave her a look and quickly went back to scorekeeping.

Jimmy beat Boozer like he always did. Boozer said I was probably fixing the score 'cause I was Jimmy's daughter.

“I'm no scammer. He won fair and square,” I insisted.

Boozer said next time he'd keep score himself.

Jimmy plopped the fattest rat into a burlap bag.

“Give this to May. You'll really get a rise outta her.”

“Oh boy,” said Boozer, forgetting all about losing. “I know just where to put it.”

“Where?” asked Jimmy.

“Under her pillow,” Boozer laughed. He began to sing one of Shirley's favorite songs.

Sweet dreams of you

Every night I go through . . .

“I'd give anything to see the look on her kisser,” said Jimmy as he threw the rat into the backseat next to where I was sitting. I scrunched closer to Virginia.

The ride back to Boozer's seemed to take forever even though Jimmy was hauling ass. He slugged on his highball and talked about other times he was so loaded he couldn't remember driving home.

“Even half-cocked, I got the instincts of a homing pigeon,” he insisted.

“What do you think would happen if you got a homing pigeon drunk?” asked Boozer. “Would it still be able to find its way home?”

“A homing pigeon wouldn't drink booze, numbskull.”

“You could prop open its beak and pour some down its throat,” suggested Boozer.

“Why waste good booze on a frickin' pigeon?” asked Jimmy.

Finally, we got to Boozer's.

Boozer stumbled out of the car.

“Hand me the bag,” he said to me.

I froze.

“What're you, deaf?” asked Jimmy.

Actually, I was only half-deaf due to the ringing in my ears.

“Or maybe you're a fraidy cat,” taunted Jimmy. “A fraidy cat of a little rat. Fraidy cat. Fraidy cat.”

“I am not,” I snapped. I grabbed the bag and quickly shoved it at Boozer.

Boozer took his good-looking time before taking the rat from me. He had a crooked little smile on his face. I could see he was enjoying making me squirm. Jimmy's gun was right next to me and I felt like shooting his crooked lips right off his face. Unlike with the dump rats, I didn't think I'd miss.

Finally, Boozer took the rat and brought it into the house.

When we got home I wanted to take a bath, but Jimmy said it was too goddamn late. So I lay in my top bunk listening to Squirmy Two's angry chattering and still smelling the stink of the dump in my hair. I prayed to God to make the smell disappear by morning. I didn't want my new fourth-grade teacher getting a whiff of me and sticking me in the back row with the morons.

Virginia was in the same boat. Tomorrow was her first day of high school and I knew she wanted to make a good impression even though she acted like she didn't give a flying you-know-what. Her voice wafted up from the bottom bunk.

“I stink,” she moaned.

“No you don't,” I said, trying to make her feel better. “It's just me.”

“A
nd what did you do over your summer vacation?”

Miss Morrissey was smiling at me and I was smiling back, trying to ignore Billy from the Projects who was picking his schnoz with his new pencil and rubbing his boogers on my desk.

“I went to Old Orchard Beach,” I replied sweetly, knowing better than to include
Blood Feast
, rat shooting, or the Combat Zone in my answer. “My dad raced me on the beach and taught me how to ride the waves.”

“He sounds like a very nice father. What does he do for a living?”

“He does landscaping at the North End,” I chirped. “I help him sometimes. I took care of Hank Piasecny's lawn. He owns a gun shop. He's loaded.”

Miss Morrissey frowned and I knew I'd gotten a bit carried away.

“Well, I'm glad you got some fresh air. Being outdoors is very important, children. President Kennedy wants us all to be active, healthy Americans.”

I nodded and smiled without showing any of my Dracula teeth.

I already knew Miss Morrissey was big on healthy stuff. Virginia had had her for a teacher when she was in fourth grade and had given me the lowdown.

“Please stand, children,” she ordered us that first morning. Then she started reeling off a list of breakfast foods. “Juice or fruit? Eggs or cereal? Ham, bacon, or sausage? Toast or English muffin? Milk or cottage cheese?”

You were supposed to have had one from each food group. If you had, you could sit your ass down. If not, you had to remain standing and tell Miss Morrissey where you had screwed up. By the third day of school, everybody had got the hang of it and just sat their ass down even if they'd had a Devil Dog for breakfast. All except for Billy from the Projects.

“I had coffee and a jelly doughnut,” he told Miss Morrissey every day, even though it sent her into a conniption fit.

“Just sit down, for cripes' sake,” I whispered to him on day three.

“Mind your beeswax,” he shot back, “or I'll beat you up.”

“You try any baloney this year,” I hissed, “and my father'll beat
you
up.”

Billy from the Projects suddenly looked like he was quaking in his Buster
Browns. Everybody in the projects knew Jimmy had punched a punk that summer and threatened him with his .22. The punk had been carving his initials into the tree in front of our house—one of the only elm trees left in Elmwood Gardens—and Jimmy had to teach him a lesson 'cause the boy had no goddamn respect for the great outdoors.

Billy from the Projects sat his ass down from then on and pretended he'd had a healthy breakfast.

But it wasn't just breakfast Miss Morrissey got on our case about. We were supposed to be in bed by eight thirty and sleep with the window open. And on Mondays she asked if we'd changed our underpants.

Before the first week was out I'd decided Miss Morrissey was pretty dippy.

But I didn't care 'cause at least she liked me. Papou didn't even have to grease her wheels with a case of Orange Crush. Once she heard from my third-grade teacher that I wasn't a dummkopf, she wouldn't leave me alone. She kept me after school to hang her holiday decorations and to listen to her stories about the glorious cruise she took to Cuba before the evil Commies took it over.

And fourth grade didn't turn out to be so hard after all. I could usually do my homework in under ten minutes. I'd time myself with Jimmy's stopwatch and kept a running list of my times.

One night Shirley watched me breeze through my homework. She said she wished she coulda followed the principal's advice at the end of the previous year and skipped me a grade. But Jimmy had told the buttinsky principal that when a horse is going good that's no time to bump him up in class. I might get all shook up and lose my appetite like Victory Bound when he was moved to another track. Hell no, Jimmy had said. He wanted to keep me back with my class.

“No Caspar Milquetoast pencil-pushing do-gooder is going to tell me how to run my own family,” Jimmy had said to Shirley when they returned from the meeting with the principal. “Who's the boss around here anyway—me or him?”

“You are. You're the boss,” Shirley had replied stiffly.

“Really? Gee, you don't sound too convincing.”

“You're the boss!” Shirley had repeated, trying to sound more enthusiastic.

“Wow—what a performance. Give Ava Gardner here an Academy Award.”

“Jimmy, please, don't start—”

“Start what? I'm not starting anything. I'm just trying to get the facts straight. I'm trying to see where I stand in this family. 'Cause you seem to think another man knows better about raising my kid than I do.”

“You know best, Jimmy. You always know best.”

“That's right. Just like the TV show—
Father Knows Best
. And don't you forget it.”

Then he turned to me.

“See what you did? You're always causing trouble around here. If it wasn't for you, things would be smooth sailing.”

“I'm sorry,” I mumbled, not sure what I was apologizing for.

“Now you've made me late,” Jimmy barked, and took off for the track.

“Thank God for the horses,” Shirley groaned as she poured herself a highball. I stuffed my mouth with Chuckles and we snuck on a Red Sox game. Watching forbidden baseball with Shirley had turned me into a fan too.

But, unfortunately, Jimmy's luck with the horses turned that fall. Victory Bound ran one more good race and then came up lame. Everybody told Jimmy the horse should be sent to the glue factory, but Jimmy said Victory Bound had so much goddamn heart he might come back. Shirley told me that the horse was eating us out of house and home. She had to work longer hours to try to pay for him. Most of the time she wasn't even home before I left for school.

Jimmy worked longer hours too, at the bookie joint. He started making bigger bets, looking to make a killing so he could buy another racehorse. He pictured a whole stable of Victory Bounds running under the Norris banner. Then if one was going bad, the others could help make up for it. He explained it all to me and it made sense.

In order to make a big killing, Jimmy needed to come up with more dough to bet. Uncle Barney had a bunch of air conditioners and Jimmy thought he could move them, no problem. Virginia and I helped Jimmy carry the heavy boxes up to our bedroom as he barked orders at us to “keep her steady” and “steer to the left” as if each air conditioner were a World War II battleship. He stacked the boxes up to the ceiling.

But it turned out Jimmy couldn't move any of those air conditioners. Instead, after a few weeks he decided to take one to a pawnshop. He lured me to go along by saying he'd be stopping at Hank's old house on the way back. Hank had asked Jimmy to trim a few trees there before the frost set in. Jimmy said Susan might be home visiting from college for the weekend. He told me Susan had been made head of her school newspaper and had a poem that was going to be published in a book. I couldn't wait to congratulate her. I decided it was the perfect time to give her the snow globe instead of waiting till Christmas.

On the way to the pawnshop Jimmy seemed down in the dumps. He said he was glad I had come along 'cause he wanted some company. He felt Shirley
was abandoning him 'cause she worked so goddamn much. He said Virginia was a dopey teen-rager with her head in the clouds and he was afraid she was turning boy crazy on him. He said I was the only female in the family he could rely on and it was a damn shame I hadn't been a boy.

The whole conversation made me down in the dumps too. I was glad when we arrived at our destination, and leapt out of the car so fast Jimmy didn't even have to tell me to “Hop to it, Dracula.”

The pawnshop was crammed to the gills with junk. The owner seemed to know Jimmy pretty well.

“You crazy Greek,” he laughed. “Who the hell's gonna buy an air conditioner in October?”

“Smart people. People who don't wanna get soaked buying one in June, that's who,” replied Jimmy. “Just take a look at it, you cheap Frog.” He had lugged the sample specimen into the shop and was prying open the box. “It's brand spanking new, unlike most of the crap you got in this fleabag joint.”

“I'm tellin' ya, they won't sell till summer and I got no place to store 'em.”

“All right, dummkopf,” Jimmy said with a shrug, closing the box back up. “I got other customers who want these babies. I was doin' you a favor, givin' you the first shot.”

“What I could really use right now is more of those fancy old Christmas ornaments. You got any more of those?” asked the pawnshop owner.

I froze.

Jimmy saw my face and offered a quick explanation.

“I found some ornaments at the North End. Some mucky-muck was throwin' 'em out.”

“Why would a mucky-muck be throwing out fancy Christmas ornaments?” I blurted out.

“How the hell should I know? Rich people got more stuff than they know what to do with, while the rest of us are scraping by.”

“How come you didn't keep those North End ornaments for us since ours got stolen?” I fired back, trying to catch him in a big fat lie.

“Because I found 'em
before
ours got swiped and we didn't need any more frickin' Christmas ornaments. Now let's go,” he snapped, lifting the air conditioner off the counter.

“Sorry,” said the pawnshop owner.

“Yeah, thanks for nothing,” replied Jimmy.

On the way to Hank's old house Jimmy tried to butter me up.

“I bet I know what you'd like. A nice, thick, coffee milk shake.”

“Oh boy,” I mumbled.

We headed over to Cremeland, which was a hop, skip, and a jump from the Valley Street jail. As we drove past the jail I wondered if the lard-ass cops were ever gonna nab Jimmy or if, like he always boasted, he was just too goddamn smart for them.

At Cremeland, Jimmy sent me up to the window to buy a coffee milk shake. As usual, we had to share and he drank most of it. But this time I didn't care 'cause I had a stomachache. I felt like puking into the milk shake and passing it back to him.

When we got to Hank's old house it was dark and empty. Susan was nowhere around. I wondered whether she was ever supposed to be there. I wondered whether Jimmy had concocted the whole thing about her being there just to get me to go along.

As I watched him trim the trees, swaying on his rickety old ladder, I imagined him falling and breaking his frickin' neck and me being free at last, free at last.

When we got home, I helped him lug the air conditioner back up to my bedroom. He shoved it on top of the other air conditioners and then took off for the track. I climbed up on my wobbly bunk bed and lay down. I balanced the snow globe on my forehead and scrunched my eyes closed as tight as I could. I was hoping Susan could feel me thinking about her, or that I could read her mind like the swami I had once seen at a county fair. I was hoping to see what the future had in store for us.