KooKooLand (7 page)

If you ask me, she meant to kill herself and your father, Shirley insisted. Papou drove her to drink. Drove her right off that road and into a ditch.

I gnawed off another hunk of hamburger. When I glanced back up, I saw YaYa's smile drop off her face. I didn't have to turn around to know why.

Papou Nick had just walked through the door.

I
wanted to run and hide under the bar.

Ever since I could remember, Papou scared the daylights out of me.

He's the toughest S-O-B going, Jimmy bragged, and nobody, not even Hank, would argue with him.

The person Papou most reminded me of was Edward G. Robinson in those gangster movies, except Papou was built like a boxer, not a shrimp like Robinson. You could easily picture him saying, “Go ahead, plug the guy,” and not feeling bad about it for a second.

Once Papou had almost drowned Jimmy, and I was afraid he might try to do the same to me. Jimmy told Virginia and me the Almost-Drowned Story a lot to keep us in line.

The story went like this: Jimmy had been sickly as a baby and was crying all the time. When company came over Papou would hide him in a laundry basket in a tree 'cause Greek boys weren't supposed to bawl like babies. One day when Jimmy wouldn't stop bawling, Papou told YaYa to yank him outta the tree and stick him in the car. They drove to Salisbury Beach and Jimmy cried the whole way there. He cried from the car to the beach and he cried on the beach in the penicillin sunshine. Papou grabbed little Jimmy and ran toward the water. YaYa screamed and ran after them, but Papou told her to get the hell back to the blanket. He charged into the icy Atlantic ocean that would turn your feet into Popsicles in a lick. He held Jimmy under the water until he stopped his damn blubbering.

A Greek baptism, that's what Jimmy called it. He'd had the usual kind in the Greek Church, but this was the one Jimmy felt did him the most good. It toughened him up and after that he wasn't sickly at all. Well, except for that one time when he had a bellyache and Papou said he was faking and sent him to school and his appendix burst. But that could happen to anybody. That was just bad luck. Norris Luck.

Papou never had to give Jimmy a Greek baptism again, but he once gave one to Jimmy's cat. He threw the sickly cat into the canal and said it would sink
or swim. It swam and found its way back home and lived a few more years. And that was proof that the almost-drowning cure really worked. It worked for animals as well as people.

Still that didn't mean I wanted it tried out on me the next time I got an earache. It was bad enough having Jimmy pour hot olive oil in my ear. I sure as hell didn't want him throwing me off the Amoskeag Bridge as well.

Not unless Susan ran out of Hank's and jumped in the Merrimack River to save me. Then I guessed it would be worth it.

“Hey you! Eat up! Kids are starving in Greece!”

Papou's voice made me jump. He was glaring down at me.

I jammed the rest of my hamburger in my mouth and tried not to choke on it. The last thing I wanted was Papou force-feeding me the way he had done with Virginia when she was little and wouldn't eat her scrambled eggs.

YaYa leaned down and kissed my meat-stuffed cheek that looked like Squirmy the hamster's. Then she hung up her apron and went home to fry some mackerel that Jimmy had brought for Papou's supper.

A new shift was coming in and the place was getting more crowded. Jimmy lit another Lucky Strike and Papou lit a cigar that was even bigger than Hank's. I took a bite of watermelon and spit the seeds onto the floor, trying to hit the ones that I'd already spit with the ones I was spitting. Then I tried to see how far I could stick my tongue down the neck of the Orange Crush bottle without getting it stuck.

Jimmy and Papou began talking about this horse and that horse and whether the horse Jimmy had bought oughta be hopped up or not.

Shirley said Jimmy and Papou were two of a kind.

Con artists. Operators. Flimflammers.

They were always cooking up scams. In one scam, Papou would call Tarzan the bookie from a phone booth to place a bet on a horse. Jimmy would be in the next booth getting the early results of the same race Papou was betting on from a guy he knew who worked at the track. Past posting, they called it. Cheating and stealing is more like it, Shirley said.

Nobody would've suspected Papou of pulling a fast one like that.

Everybody looks up to the old man, Jimmy would say. Even the Greek priests in their goofy hats.

The Greek priests in their goofy hats admired Papou 'cause even though he had become an American wheeler-dealer who rubbed shoulders with a heavyweight champ, he still respected the ways of the old country. Even though he'd taught himself to read, write, and speak English—with no banana-peddler
accent, Jimmy boasted—he still sent his sons to Greek school. And even though he'd changed his last name to something Yankees could pronounce, he'd kept every ounce of his Greek pride.

Most of all, though, Jimmy said the priests loved Papou because he greased their wheels. I couldn't picture Papou, who always dressed like a big shot, sprawled under a car greasing some priest's car, but then Jimmy had explained that wheel greasing was when you paid somebody to do stuff for you.

What did he pay the priests to do? I'd asked.

Get him into heaven, dum-dum.

Lucky for me, Papou had also done a little wheel greasing on my behalf. The year before, at the start of third grade, my new teacher, Miss Rogers, had stuck me in the back row and acted like she didn't know I was alive. At first, I'd tried some wheel greasing on my own. I spent some of my tooth fairy dough on the biggest, reddest apple I could find at the Temple Market. I blew on it and polished it with my sleeve until it was bright and shiny.

Miss Rogers took it from me like it was Snow White's poison apple.

I told myself maybe she wasn't a fruit lover. Or maybe she would've preferred a slice of cool watermelon instead.

But in my gut I knew it was because she had seen the name of the street I lived on. Ahern Street. One of the project streets.

“Those snooty teachers treat all the project kids like they're juvenile delinquents,” Virginia had informed me as she was forging Jimmy's signature on an excuse note to cover the fact that she had played hooky.

“Not me,” I argued. “I'm always the teacher's pet.”

“That's 'cause you're a brownnoser and an egghead like Daddy says.”

“And you're a crook and a cheater like Daddy.”

“Hey, it's 'cause of me you're teacher's pet. Don't you forget it.”

I couldn't argue with that. Virginia had taught me everything I knew. Before I was even in first grade, she had drilled me in reading, spelling, adding, subtracting. She'd also made me memorize the names of all the countries on the globe YaYa had given us so we'd know where the hell Greece was. Virginia didn't go in much for school herself, but she taught me stuff to amuse herself, just like she trained Squirmy to stand on his hind legs and eat feta cheese from her lips. Jimmy thought it was great that I had learned to read so early 'cause then I could slack off for the first few years. Plus, he was crazy about reading himself. He liked World War II stories and
The Call of the Wild
and Orwell's
1984
'cause he said Big Brother was breathing down our frickin' necks.

But it was tough to show off your reading skills if no one ever called
on you. And that's how it was in Miss Rogers' third-grade class, until one day I came home from school blubbering to Shirley about it and then Jimmy came home and asked what all the blubbering was about. When Shirley gave him the lowdown, he turned as red as that poisoned apple I had given Miss Rogers.

“I'll go pop that old biddy in the breadbasket!” he shouted, and started to head for the door.

“No, Daddy,” I pleaded, “I'll get expelled.”

“Have a drink first,” Shirley suggested, trying to calm him down. “It's happy hour.” She handed him the highball she already had waiting for him.

Jimmy took a slug of the highball and reconsidered his options. He mentioned something about popping the old biddy's kneecaps. He said he knew some dago gangsters in Revere who would do it for him, for nothing too, if they heard somebody had even looked at one of his kids sideways.

That sounded better to me. Unlike with Jimmy doing something himself, I didn't see how the dago gangsters could be traced to me. But then it occurred to me what if the dagos were squealers? What if they got caught and squealed and maybe I'd be seen as an accomplice and end up in the slammer along with them?

Right about then Papou called with a tip on a horse. Jimmy started ranting about the old biddy and the dago gangsters and Papou cut him off. Papou said forget the dagos, he knew what to do, he'd take care of it.

The next day an alkie from the beer joint, clean-shaven and dressed in one of Papou's fancy suits, delivered a whole case of Orange Crush to my classroom. Then he lugged in a case of grape soda and a box filled with Fig Newtons and Lorna Doones and some party hats left over from the big wingding Papou threw every year for all the alkies. Then he handed Miss Rogers a note and a red rose.

Miss Rogers got all giddy like the lady at the office when Jimmy gave her that Mickey Mouse lighter.

Miss Rogers asked me to read Papou's note out loud to the class. It said we should have a nice party on him and work hard and mind our wonderful teacher and he signed it Mr. Nick Norris, owner of Nick's Cafe. I noticed he had left out the Ringside part.

That very day Miss Rogers moved me to a seat in the front row and from then on it was smooth sailing. In June when I took home my final report card, there were nothing but As on it for the whole year.

Jimmy brought the report card to the beer joint and passed it around to the alkies and they had a round to celebrate.

He told them I was smart all right, but I should cut loose more. Live a little 'cause life was short and before I knew it I'd be grown up like them and life would be closing in around me. Life would be suffocating the life out of me.

It doesn't last, he lamented. The good old days are over before you know it and all you're left with is a bunch of bad new days.

I'll drink to that, one of the alkies had said. And they all downed another.

Jimmy and Papou were going on about the good old days right now. They had gotten off the subject of hosses and were starting in on boxers. The half-blind alkies were all ears even though most of them had heard the stories before. They sipped their beers and listened quietly like they were in church.

I drained my Orange Crush and leaned in closer so I wouldn't miss a word either.

Jimmy and Papou entertained us with stories about all the fighters Papou had managed. Fighters with funny names like the Cereal Kid, who was crazy about cornflakes. And the Fighting Bricklayer, who was built like a brick outhouse. And Kid Billodeaux, who had broken his hand logging and couldn't make a fist, so he would slap the other guy silly instead of punching him. And Red Conrad, who'd gotten some disease as a kid and had a gimpy leg and would limp around the ring.

We all laughed at the image of a boxer with a funny limp, as if we were seeing a Charlie Chaplin movie play out right before our eyes.

At long last Jimmy brought up Red's brother Norman. The Wilton Wraith. Papou's greatest fighter. One measly fight away from a title shot. A guy who would fight King Kong, he was that game. A guy who had almost gotten himself and Papou and Papou's little cut man Jimmy killed by some dago gangsters when he wouldn't take a dive like he was supposed to. Papou kept throwing the towel in the ring to get the ref to stop the fight, but crazy Norman kept kicking it out before the ref could see it. Finally Papou went over and threw the towel right on the ref's head and told him he was about as blind as Helen Frickin' Keller.

The half-blind alkies split a gut and I split a gut and then somebody asked what the hell happened to Norman, where the hell was he now.

Jimmy said Norman was still out in Wilton, but he had himself a new profession. He'd shoot a bunch of deer and sell them for a C-note to the New
Yorkers who drove up wanting to look like Great White Hunters but who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

How come Norman never got his title shot? asked another alkie who must've been so drunk the last time he heard the story that he forgot the answer.

Ah, he got clobbered by Sammy Slaughter, Papou said. Got clobbered by a nigger.

F
inally, Jimmy said we had to get the hell out of there.

But that didn't mean I was going to get to go home.

Papou had given Jimmy a tip on a horse and it looked like a sure thing. So Jimmy drove on over to the bookie joint.

He parked outside and began to do some last-minute arithmetic on the
Racing Form
. I stared out the half-open window at the bookie joint. From the outside, it looked like a real rattrap. But I figured that must just be a cover. I imagined it was like those speakeasies in the TV show
The Roaring 20's
. Gangsters would do a secret knock on the door of some crappy building and a guard would peer out a window and see if you were a cool customer or a copper. If you were a cool customer, it was open sesame. Behind the crappy door, people would be playing roulette and rolling snake eyes and there would be rolls of cabbage as big as heads of cabbage and I figured some guy who was flush might give a cute little pip-squeak like me a fin for good luck.

Jimmy finished doing his math and opened the door.

“Can't I come in?” I begged, pinching the eagle on Jimmy's arm. “You take me in the beer joint and I'm not even twenty-one.”

“The bookie joint's different, dum-dum. No broads allowed.”

I never saw many ladies in the beer joint either. Now and then you'd spot a lady rumhead getting plastered.