One Year Short

ONE YEAR SHORT

by

BILL MARSHALL

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Bill Marshall

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Chapter One

John Everett won the Connecticut Lottery at fifty-five. Ten million it was. We all thought John was a lucky bastard. He croaked a year later from an aortic aneurism that blew up in his chest during a five mile run. His wife and kids got most of the ten million. My friend Sal said they were lucky. Shirley Everett and the kids didn’t think so, but then they weren’t Sal Vitagliano. I generally don’t like clichés, but this one seems to fit, especially for the Everetts: ‘life can turn on a dime.’ I'll bet they'd rather have John around than the ten million. Maybe not. John was a rage-a-holic. I was fifty six years old when John bought the farm, so-to-speak. I'm sixty-seven now. I didn't hear anyone blame his death on his age. If he was eighty...maybe, but he wasn't.

I didn’t blame being indoctrinated into the Catholic Church when I was seven on being seven years old. I blamed that on bad luck, or family tradition if you prefer. Some traditions are better than others. I have blamed things on my genes, though, like having to settle for short girls. Not that there is anything wrong with short girls. My father was 5’7 and my mother was 5’1, and so it simply wasn't in the genetic deck that I play basketball or date the likes of Rebecca Lobo. But, hey, hope sprang eternal until I stopped growing at eighteen. Both my mother and father are gone; my father to cancer at 67 and my mother to that same aneurism that got John Everett. She was 87 and luckier than John. She wasn’t a runner or a rage-a-holic.

Today, with all its correctness of speech, I could be described as vertically challenged thanks to that gene, but back in the day of bad speech, I was a shrimp. I liked shrimp better. It was more to the point and far less ambiguous and condescending. People said what they thought. No beating around the bush. The days of bad speech were easier. No one had to monitor their words. The times are more Orwellian now. I called my friends Stanley Polomski a polak, and Sal Vitagliano a wop. I thought nothing of it. They were my friends. Stan was proud of being Polish and Sal and I were proud of being Italian. Sure, there were jokes, but we thought they were funny without feeling guilty about laughing. Why did the woman drive her car over the wop? She needed a grease job. See! Maybe not. I was eight years old when I heard it. In addition to being Italian, Sal was also retarded. Well…maybe not retarded, but he didn’t take well to learning things that didn’t interest him. What interested Sal were automobiles. He’s now the largest car dealer in Jersey. Once a month he drives by Jersey City’s Snyder High School in his Mercedes and flips it the bird. He never bothered to get his G.E.D.. Didn’t see the sense in it. At thirty he was making more money than the President of Princeton. Sal likes telling me that. Sal likes telling everyone that.

Sal and I were born in Jersey City in 1945. Like near-beer, we were near-boomers. My father was a sailor, Sal’s was a cop. Cops wouldn’t be called pigs for another twenty years. You might ask what a sailor was doing in Jersey City in 1945, and to be honest I don’t know if he was there or not. You’d think I'd know, but I don’t. What I do know is that I had lots of aunts and uncles on my mother’s side to fill in for him, but I don’t really know that either...the filling in for dad part. It was told to me, just as I was told my father was there. Dolly, my mother’s lifelong nickname, had eight brothers and sisters and all were married except for Uncle Henry. I think Uncle Henry was queer. That’s what we called gay people back then. We also said they were light in the loafers. Queer means odd, but that's not how we used it. I never saw Uncle Henry with a woman, but then I never saw him with a man either. He did have a relationship with Jim Beam, however. I liked Uncle Henry. He always gave me a five spot for my birthday. Five bucks was a tidy sum back then. But what I liked best about Uncle Henry was his sense of humor. He was a funny guy and a good man, light in the loafers or not.

I’m not big on regrets, but I do regret not having any memories before the age of four. That’s why I don’t know whether my father was in Jersey or not when I was born. I have to trust what I was told. Somehow it doesn’t seem right. I feel gypped, like God was fucking with me…and you, too, I guess. Why not turn the lights on at day one? Why wait four years? It seems a waste, and I’m still trying to figure out the reason for it. I’d even settle for two years of black-out, but four? Come on! All that unconditional loving and hugging and kissing and raspberries and all of it heaped on me with no expectations, and I have nothing to show for it except maybe a stable psyche. I guess that’s not too shabby an exchange. No memory for a stable psyche. But, there were no guarantees of that either.

My Polish friend, Stan Polomski, lost out on both accounts…no memory and a psyche as stable as Michael J. Fox. We called him crazy Stan. I learned to swear from crazy Stan. I was five, I think, when I launched my first F-bomb. It landed in the ears of one of the neighborhood mothers, who dutifully rang-up my mother, who dutifully took one of my father’s belts to my ass. Things were like that back in the day. It didn’t stop me from dropping F-bombs, but it did create a certain level of selectivity as to whose ears I dropped them into. Back then neighborhoods were like living in Orwells’ 1984. As he said in the book, There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. The government has replaced neighbors in looking out for us. Well...not really looking out for us, watching us.

If crazy Stan had remembered those first three or four years he would have had some insight into his rocky foundation. His mother was crazier than crazy Stan. I remember Stan saying she was Irish, but that, in and of itself, does not explain Mary Polomski. She looked like Lucille Ball, but with the temper of Jackie Gleason when he was about to send Audrey Meadows to the moon. Mary was the Queen of the F-bombers, and she could care less into whose ears they landed. It was usually us kids. Sal’s father, the cop, went over once to talk with her about it. He wore his uniform in case she didn't know he was a cop. It was a short visit and he never went back. Some people you just want to stay clear of. F-bombs as far as I know never killed anyone, so why put yourself out. Although I couldn’t swear to it, I think Sal’s father learned that lesson after his visit with crazy Mary. Sal said his father called her a fucking loon, so I guess he wasn’t immune to F-bombs either. Maybe the tendency to F-bomb is contagious.

If I had to pigeon-hole my family into a socio-economic group I’d say we were probably poor. I never felt poor. I’m not sure any kid thinks they’re poor, especially if they are having fun and can boast of at least one PB&J sandwich a day. The things adults think of never entered my kid mind. Things were what they were, but I gradually learned the difference between a Studebaker and a Cadillac. My Uncle Louis drove a Cadillac, but he was a doctor and lived on the other side of town. Dr. Louis was the only one of my mother’s sisters and brothers that went to college. He was the oldest male and that’s how it was in Italian families. Uncle Louis was the only child grandpa Peter – a 5'1" shrimp- could afford to send to the ivory tower. Grandpa Peter was shorter than my mother. Where I lived, a tar shingled duplex across from the city bus garage, all the cars were get-me-from-point-A-to-point-B models. There were no power brakes or power steering on my neighborhood cars. I slammed my finger in Uncle Louie’s Caddy door once. I nearly lost it, or so it seemed. Uncle Louie stitched it up on the spot. He said it would sting. Liar. I still have the scar. It’s on my bird finger. After that I thought Cadillacs were dangerous and always thought of them when I flipped the bird. I never got hurt in my parent’s Pontiac or in the Vitagliano’s Chevy. Funny how a kid’s mind works. I don’t remember having as much confusion as a kid as I did when I was no longer a kid. I’m pretty squared away now, though. I think. At least that’s what my shrink tells me.

Cars didn’t have seat belts in 1950. They didn’t have baby seats either. I didn’t ask, but I suspect my mother just held me to her breast on the drive home from the hospital. I doubt she tossed me in the back seat. It didn’t bother me none…I guess. I don’t remember, remember. For all I know she could have lashed me to the roof of the car, but that would be more Mary Polomski’s style than my mother’s. The Polomskis drove a Studebaker. To this day I don’t know if they named my parents' Pontiac after the Indian, or the city in Michigan that was named after the Indian. Old habits die hard. I’m referring to Native Americans when I say Indian. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m sixty-seven and have had to go through many language shifts in my life.

I don’t remember being afraid of things when I was a kid in Jersey City. I don’t remember my parents being afraid of things either. Be careful isn’t a phrase that has plowed furrows into my psyche like it has today. We had those clip-on roller skates that you tightened onto your shoes with a skate key. They didn’t work on sneakers. You needed a leather sole. The only protection from falls was our clothing and our skin. Our parents must have felt skin was expendable, I guess, and we all lost a bunch of it and survived. I hated Iodine. It was red and burned like hell, but then some egghead invented Mercurochrome, which didn’t burn at all. It was red, too, and probably carcinogenic. I’ll bet Iodine wouldn’t have burned as much if was blue.

Bikes were one speed and the brakes were in the pedals. Push back on the pedal and the bike would stop on a dime. Simple, yet effective. My first bike was a second-hand Schwinn with chain guard, fenders and handle grip streamers. Santa Claus gave it to me for my fifth Christmas, which was really my first Christmas because I can’t remember my first four. I’m sure I was conscious for my third and fourth Christmas, but my hippocampus was still under-developed. That’s the part of the brain responsible for transferring short term memory to the long term locker, at least that’s what our eggheads tell us. It’s a good thing we’re not born with under-developed hearts instead of under developed hippocampuses. I’d rather live to be sixty-six without remembering my first four years than remember my first four years and die of a heart attack at five. But, that’s just me. I wonder what made God choose the Hippocampus as a memory transfer. I think about things like that.

Getting back to bikes and skates and fear… none of us kids wore protection. I’m talking body armor, here. I see kids today and they all look like Robocop whenever they board a wheeled vehicle. Maybe they fall more today. But then, maybe they fall more because all of their joints are encumbered by hard plastic. You always saw a kid riding shotgun on the handlebars back then. It was easy on a one speed Schwinn with fenders on the tires. You can’t do that on a carbon fiber Cannondale. I know. I ride one now. We used to call them English bikes. They had skinny tires, no fenders and only three gears. We thought they were fruity (gay is the word today) and we wouldn’t be caught dead riding one. Actually, given the choice of dying or riding an English…

My Schwinn was black, and even though the tag on the bike said ‘from Santa’, I saw my father painting it a week before Christmas. Kids today would be disappointed getting a used bike for Christmas. Not me. Anyway, dad and the bike were in the basement of our duplex and I don’t think he saw me. How I knew not to let the cat out of the bag I can’t tell you. But, some small voice in my head must have told me not to ruin Dad’s anticipated pleasure of surprising me on Christmas morning. The fifth Christmas, which was really my first, was the beginning of Santa’s execution. It was an inhumanely slow process. Poor Santa. It would have been better to just put a bullet in his head and get it over with. Same with the tooth fairy. As my brain got better at figuring things out Santa and the tooth fairy slowly faded from existence. I miss them. They gave me stuff and made the world a little magical. Maybe that’s why Harry Potter is so popular today. The process of growing up robs us of our magic. We should put a stop to it.

I think part of Mary Polomski’s madness had something to do with fear, fear of losing crazy Stan to the Grim Reaper. I remember giving crazy Stan a ride home from P.S. #30 (Public School) on the handlebars of my Schwinn. This was when we were in the third grade and I was strong enough to do it. Stan wanted me to drop him off at his corner, but his house was only the fourth house up on the right, so I kept going. Crazy Mary, sitting on the stoop smoking a Lucky Strike, saw us coming and bolted toward us. Her red hair and crazed expression made it look like her head was on fire.

Oh my God! Oh my God, she screamed. Get the fuck off those handlebars, Stanley. You’ll get yourself killed.

All my eyes could see was her fiery red hair and blazing blue eyes coming at me like a banshee. Crazy Mary was a little woman, but wiry and tough like steak gristle you can’t bite through.

Stanley was screaming too. I told you to let me off at the corner, you fuck. He said it over and over as though it was a mantra that would save him from crazy Mary. I slammed down on the brakes and crazy Stan jumped off before crazy Mary could get to his ear. Stan’s right ear was half again the size of his left ear from crazy Mary’s constant pulling on it. Poor Stan could never be safe enough from crazy Mary. She ran right by me and my Schwinn yelling, I’m going to rip that ear off your fucking head if I catch you. Crazy Stan kept up his mantra of, I told you to let me off at the corner, you fuck. The F-bombs always flew when crazy Mary went after Crazy Stan.

The Nickleland twins, Amy and Nancy, shared the Polomski’s duplex. It couldn’t have been a worse match-up. We called them the nuns. Nancy was mother superior and Amy was the supplicant. They were the same age as crazy Stan and I, but seemed ancient. Maybe that was because they were so Catholic and never sinned. I was always sinning, especially when I hit puberty. Amy and Nancy, on the other hand, were pure, like snowflakes that fall through the clean air of a wilderness. They looked like snowflakes too; platinum hair and white northern European skin. They were allergic to the sun, or so it seemed. They rarely exposed their skin to it.

I liked the Nickleland twins. They were mysterious in their level of religious devotion. I don’t think I was devoted to anything at that age. It was Nancy who told me that I was probably going to burn in hell for all eternity. I didn’t know how long eternity was, but for some reason that comforted me, even though I believed in hell. I found the Church to be mind numbingly boring and could envision nothing more dreadful than spending eternity, however long it might be, worshiping God in a church the size of...I don't know...Gotham City. Hell had to be more interesting, and who knows, maybe Nancy and Amy might trip up and join me there. Temptation is everywhere when you are a kid... an adult too, I guess.

The Nickleland twins were present during the Polomski handlebar incident. They are fast walkers and were not far behind us when crazy Mary came at Stan. The first thing they did was cover their ears to protect their souls, I assume, from crazy Mary’s F-bombs. If they could have performed the sign of the cross and covered their ears simultaneously they would have. If I was them I would have chosen the sign of the cross. But, hey, that’s just me.

They walked past the scene in lock step, hands over ears and heads tilted toward heaven. They looked so saintly with so much sin swirling around them. They seemed so…noble. Better than me…you know. It didn’t hurt that they were also very, very pretty. I hadn’t really noticed their prettiness until that moment. None of us had girlfriends at eight, but we boys were, at this age, beginning to notice that there was something exotic about them. I wondered if the Nickleland twins thought there was something exotic about Stan and me, or if they only assigned the exotic to God. I’ll have more to say about Nancy and Amy later. It was the handlebar incident that brought them to mind now.

Our neighborhood revolved around P.S. #30. I think most neighborhoods back then had the schools as its centerpiece. That all changed for the larger cities when busing got voted in. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized how odd and unimaginative Jersey City was in naming its schools. I was shocked when I learned that schools in other cities had names instead of numbers. Maybe Jersey City asked an accountant to name them. I don’t know. What makes a school interesting are the kids that walk through its doors. It’s not the teachers, it’s the kids. It’s not the shape of the building either. P.S. #30 was a three story brick square. The little kids were on the bottom and the 8th graders were on the top. There were no middle schools back then and us little kids wanted to be like the big kids. The big kids were cool, but, as I later experienced, they were all scared to death about leaving a place where they were top of the mountain to go to a place where they all had to start over and become little shits again. By implementing middle schools our educators unwittingly traumatized us kids one extra time. Grown-ups can be pretty stupid, or as they say today, intellectually challenged.

Sal, crazy Stan and I were inseparable. Sal was a tough guy and a problem for the teachers. Stan was…well…crazy. And I guess you could say that I was the noticer. I noticed things that didn’t seem to enter the minds of my friends. They weren’t always things that I noticed. Sometimes they were rules, the shoulds and should nots, and sometimes they were ideas, like if God loves us then why does he send so many of us to hell. I wouldn’t send someone I loved to hell, and I’m an imperfection or so I have been told. Sal always said, who gives a shit, whenever I brought up stuff like that. Like I said before, Sal wasn’t interested in things he wasn’t interested in. If I asked him to explain what a carburetor does he would leave my mind wallowing in a pool of crankcase oil.

P.S. #30 didn’t ever ask us what we were interested in. P.S. #28 or #16 probably didn’t either. If they had asked the Nickleland twins they would have shipped them two blocks over to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception parochial school. They would have looked even cuter in those plaid skirts and knee socks, and it would have kept them free from sin just a little longer. I never did figure out what interested Henry, a little fella whose last name I long ago forgot. He was a skinny little bespectacled boy who was a walking bull’s eye for all those that puffed up by deflating others. We called them bullies back then, too. I’d have to include Sal in this group. I was about Henry’s size, but that was where the similarities ended. He was quiet, a poor student, wore glasses, was as pale as the Nickleland twins, and threw a ball like them. In 1953 this was enough to doom little Henry to a childhood of taunts, ridicule and worse. He reminded me of Mr. Peepers for those of you who watched TV back in the fifties. Wally Cox was Mr. Peepers. Great typecasting.

At the time no one recognized it, but Henry was very brave. The trouble was, his bravery showed itself as a complete unwillingness to cry. That was a big mistake in a world that didn’t tolerate differences. Henry was punched and hit and slapped for no other purpose than to see who could be the first to make him cry. I felt bad for Henry, but was impotent to do anything about it. The harassment was too pervasive for a small third grader to stop, but I was able to convince Sal to leave him alone. We do what we can do.

During recess at P.S. #30 in Jersey City the girls jumped rope, while the boys played stick ball on the black macadam playground. P.S. #30 didn’t have any grass. I don't remember minding that they didn't have grass. Henry was always the catcher, as no one else wanted to stand behind the batter and risk getting hit by the broom handle that was used as our bat. As clumsy as he was Henry was quite adept at avoiding getting whacked in the head. Johnny Vitano, who is now serving 25 to life at the Rahway State Penitentiary, decided it was time someone got Henry to cry. I could hear the contact out in left field, but Braveheart Henry refused to cry. He ran from home plate and I followed him into the school, where he went directly to the lavatory. It was there he began to cry and it was there he asked me never to tell. I never did. Henry has been with me for nearly sixty years now and although I don’t remember his last name I consider him to be one of my greatest teachers in the art of compassion. It was as if he simply popped into my life for that one purpose. No one else remembers Henry. Does that mean he only existed for me? Henry Braveheart Peepers, the boy that wouldn’t cry, a pop-in teacher.

Chapter Two

Being brought up Catholic wasn’t anything like it must have been for the Nickleland twins. There were Catholics and then there were CATHOLICS. I was a Catholic. Sure, I didn’t bite down on the little round wafer, and sure, I went to confession on Saturday, but I was pretty good at being in the Now way before being in the Now was fashionable. So was Sal. Crazy Stan had a problem, though. His problem was called crazy Mary. He worried that she was lurking around every corner, hiding behind every door, and knew his every act. It was a little like how Nancy and Amy Nickleland thought about God. I suppose I was a good Catholic without knowing I was a good Catholic. If you know what Jesus said in his sermon on the mount then you know pretty much how I lived my life. What I sucked at was all the rules the holy guys shackled to the sermon. I hated fish as much as I hated dentists. I never