All American Boy (10 page)

“Please! You must send someone! My grandfather! I need an ambulance!”

Regina looks over at Jorge, who just keeps on eating his beans.

Regina Day is a small woman, with a square face and fair complexion and compelling blue eyes. Crystal blue, as crystal as the glassware displayed throughout her house. Her features are what were once called
handsome
in a woman, and even the ravages of more than seven decades have not completely erased her handsomeness. She walks now with a slight stoop, and she winces occasionally from a sharp pinch of arthritis, mostly in her legs. But she still stands slightly taller than Luz, who is no more than five-foot-two.

She holds Luz in her arms as they watch the old man carried out of the house on a stretcher. They pack him into the ambulance and drive off, red lights flashing, the siren wailing. The setting sun casts long blue shadows of bare twisted trees across the street. The wind picks up. Bitter cold.

“You were supposed to watch him.” Luz's father is a tall, dark, scary man with deep-set black eyes. Regina is terrified of him. He looks like every man who has ever scared her in her life. He glares down at them and shakes his finger at the girl in Regina's arms. “He was an old man. He's had heart attacks before. You know that!”

“All he was doing was sitting on the couch,” Luz says, defending herself. Regina feels the girl's body stiffen.

The father yells at her in alternating languages. “You should have seen it coming!” Then something in Spanish. “You should have called a doctor!”

He spits on the ground and turns to walk away.

“Don't go, Papa!” Luz calls after him. “Come back and I will make dinner!”

“No, Luz, don't,” Regina says, holding the girl back.

Her father just keeps walking.

“Papa wants to drink,” Jorge says, watching him entranced.

Luz pulls out of Regina's arms and slaps her brother across the face. “Don't say that,” she scolds.

The boy doesn't cry. He just keeps staring after his father.

“Come stay with me tonight, Luz,” Regina offers.

“I can't. I have to watch Jorge.”

“Bring the boy. It will be delightful to have you both.”

Luz looks at her. “My father will be angry.”

“Yes,” Regina says, looking after the man. He turns a corner and disappears. “I imagine he will.”

“But we'll come,” the girl says, suddenly defiant. “What do you think, Jorge? Should we go spend the night with Mrs. Day?”

The boy nods.

Regina beams.

How pretty Luz is. Pretty like Rocky.

Strong like Rocky, too.

“We don't have to stay here,” Rocky had told her, one night in the dark. Papa was in the other room, blaring his radio, smashing bottles against the wall. “We can get out of here anytime we want,” Rocky said.

“But how?” Regina couldn't imagine leaving.

“We can
run away
, Regina. You've seen it in the movies. We can climb out our window at night and run away.”

“But where would we go?”

Rocky was looking at her swollen lip in the mirror. It was all purple and black, like a fat nightcrawler. “He'd never find us,” she said, her eyes in the mirror. “We'd go to the city. No one would ever find us there.”

Luz packs a small bag for herself and Jorge. Regina watches her, jubilant. They climb into Kyle's Trans Am, Jorge sitting on Regina's lap in the passenger seat.

“Is he too heavy for you?” Luz asks.

“Oh, no, not at all. He's just right.”

Luz smiles as she starts the engine. “I've never seen him take to anyone the way he's taken to you. Usually he is afraid. Shy.”

Regina lets the child kiss her powdered cheek.

Luz backs the car out of the driveway. A heavy blue darkness settles over Dogtown. The wind howls.

This is the bad part of town
. That's what Regina had always heard all of her life. Mormor said the dirty Eye-talians threw garbage in the street down here. Uncle Axel said whores did their business in the old factory tenements. Robert said pinko commie hippies burned the flag in public.

And this is where Walter came
—

“Walter.”

She sees him. There, ahead of them in the street.

A boy on a bicycle, pedaling as fast as his little legs can take him. Walter. Little Walter. And he's crying.

She turns. But he's not so little anymore. He's a man now, looking so much like Robert, standing there in Howard Greer's driveway, opening the passenger's door on his car to let a boy with orange hair slide inside.

Regina leans down to whisper into Jorge's ear. “Do you see that young man there? The one in the driveway of that house?”

Jorge follows the direction of her finger but says nothing.

“That's my son,” Regina tells him.

“Really, Mrs. Day?” Luz asks, overhearing. “Is that really your son?”

“Yes. That's Walter.”

“What is your son doing in Brown's Mill? I thought he had moved to the city.”

“He's come back.”

Luz makes a little laugh. “And he lives here in
this
neighborhood?”

“There's nothing shameful about Dogtown, Luz,” Regina insists. “I used to think there was, but I was wrong.”

They pass onto Main Street, leaving the swamps behind.

“But I was wrong,” Regina repeats.

7

ALL AMERICAN BOY

It's the summer of tall ships, fifes and drums, and flags flapping from every house—and Wally Day has just been named this year's All American Boy.

“Can you turn this way a little? Yeah, that's it. Say cheese!”

The photographer from the
Brown's Mill Reminder
snaps his camera, Wally blinking from the flash. Around his shoulder his father's arm feels heavy and damp. The temperature outside is steadily ratcheting up into the nineties but Captain Day is nonetheless in full uniform, and Wally's in a long-sleeved shirt with a clip-on blue necktie. After all, it's not every day that one is named All American Boy by the American Legion.

“You must be very proud of your son,” the photographer says.

Captain Day's face glows as brightly as his buttons. “You bet I am.”

“How's it feel to be asked to lead the Fourth of July parade, Wally?” the photographer asks, snapping another shot.

“It feels great,” Wally says.

His eyes move over to the kitchen, where his mother is watching from the doorway. She wasn't asked to be in the picture. Wally feels bad about that but says nothing. She doesn't seem to mind.

“Is that it then?” Captain Day asks.

“I think so,” the photographer tells him. “Until the parade.”

“Don't you want a picture of the certificate?” Captain Day lifts the piece of paper that officially names Wally the town's All American Boy. “
For excellence in academic achievement and extraordinary devotion to community and nation
,” he reads.

“Good idea,” the photographer says, snapping a picture of Wally's father holding the certificate. “You know what they say about the apple not falling far from the tree.”

Captain Day beams.

Wally feels as if he'll pass out from the heat. “May I take the tie off now?”

“Go ahead,” the photographer tells him, being escorted to the door by Captain Day. “We'll have you on the front page of next week's paper, Wally.”

The boy unclips his tie, popping open the shirt button that's been cutting off his windpipe.

“We'll put this in our scrapbook,” his mother says, finally coming out of the kitchen. She lifts the certificate from the table to gaze at it. Wally can see his name written in calligraphy beneath stark black letters that read
ALL AMERICAN BOY.

“Scrapbook?” his father barks, returning to the room and startling his wife. “We'll do no such thing. We'll frame it! Hang it on the wall! This is the
American Legion
, for God's sake, Regina. We're not going to hide it away in a scrapbook.”

Wally blushes. His father takes the certificate from her and hands it to his son. Looking down at it, Wally feels his face burn.

“May I change my clothes now and go over to Freddie's?” he asks.

His father tousles his hair. “Of course, Wally.”

The boy carries the certificate to his room and stuffs it into the top drawer of his dresser. He hopes his father doesn't have it framed. It's not that Wally isn't proud of it. He is. He just doesn't want to have to look at it.

He changes out of his starched shirt and wool pants. His skin feels clammy. He pulls on a pair of plaid shorts and a T-shirt.

He's late. He told Josephine he'd be at her house by noon.

“I'm going to Freddie's,” he says, coming back into the living room.

“Another softball game?” his father asks.

“Yup.”

“Okay, son. Hit a homer for me!”

“Will do!”

The screen door slams behind him.

Of course, there's no softball game. There's
never
a softball game when Wally tells his father there is.

Instead, he's heading to see Josephine Leopold, who's eighty-seven years old, and who, in her day, had been a great actress. She had trod the boards, as she put it, with all of the greats: Mrs. Fiske, Mrs. Campbell, and all three of the Barrymores.

“But mostly Miss Le Gallienne,” Josephine told him.

“Who's she?”

Josephine's rheumy yellow eyes had narrowed in outrage. “Why, Eva Le Gallienne was the greatest actress ever in American theater! Don't start with me about Kit Cornell! Or Helen Hayes.
Hah!
Miss Le Gallienne had more talent in her pinky finger than any of the rest of them had in their whole bodies!”

Wally smiles as he pedals his bike down Washington Avenue, thinking of her. Josephine's become this
presence
to him, this big, colorful, commanding presence that fills up his mind. When he's with her, it's like she takes up all the space, sucks the air out of the room. When he thinks about her, he's got no room left to think about anything else, no room for any other foolish little inconsequential thoughts that might—

“Hey, watch it, kid!”

He has to slam on his brakes to stop his bike from zooming right out into traffic. The light's changed to red at the busy Washington and Fisk Drive intersection. He waits impatiently. A Camaro full of teenagers rolls up next to him. The kids are all singing along with the radio:
Life is a rock
—
but the radio rolled me
—
got to turn it up looooouder
—so
my DJ told me
…

One of the girls looks over at Wally on his bike. He recognizes her from the grade ahead of him in school. She smiles at him. He blushes, turning away.

The light changes and he makes a dash across the street, quickly zigzagging down Gate Road. It's ten after twelve. Josephine doesn't like to be kept waiting. He rides straight through a game of soft-ball some boys are playing in the street in front of her house.

“If you want to succeed as an actor,” she calls from the front door, “it's best to be on time for auditions.”

She fills up the entire door frame. She's a tall woman, at least six feet, with broad shoulders and short red hair. Wally figures she must dye it that color. It's red almost the color of a fire engine.

“I'm sorry, Josephine. There was some guy at my house taking pictures.”

“Pictures?”

“Yeah. I was named All American Boy.”

She grunts, stepping aside so he can enter the house. “And what does that mean?”

Wally sighs. “That I get good grades, I guess. And I'm president of my class.” He pauses. “And I'm patriotic.”

“How do they know that? Are you out there waving a flag for some bicentennial pep rally?”

“No.”

“What a useless honor,” she sniffs. “What will you ever do with it? How can it ever help you?”

He shrugs.

“I assume your father was very pleased,” she says, folding her arms over her chest. She's wearing a long red housecoat, fastened at the throat with a safety pin.

“I guess it
is
kind of stupid,” Wally says.

“Who would want to be All American anything? If I'd had my way I'd be living in Paris. This country had its chance in the 1930s. We might have become a nation with a conscience, with values, ideals. But instead what do we do? We hound men to death for their political beliefs. Our highest elected official is forced out of office for criminality. The land of the free. Hah! I've never heard of anything so absurd.”

Wally sits down on her sofa, looking up at her. “I'm going to have to lead the Fourth of July parade on Saturday.”

“You poor child.” She places a hand over her heart, feigning weakness. “How will you
ever
get through it?”

“The photographer said I'll be on the front page of the paper.”

She shudders. “It must have been
quite
the morning at your house.”

Wally smiles. “It was. My father put on his naval uniform and everything.”

“And he let you leave all that flag-waving so you could come here and study to be an actor?”

Wally sighs. “He doesn't know that I'm here.”

She glares down at him. “You're playing baseball or something silly like that.”

“Yeah.” Outside he can hear the whoops and shouts of the boys playing softball in the street.

It's been three months. Three glorious months since he met her. For his final grade in his civics class, Wally had chosen to write an essay about Josephine. His assignment had been to write about someone interesting, someone who's had an interesting career or done interesting things with their life. Quite naturally, Wally's teacher assumed he would choose his father, but instead the boy selected old Josephine Leopold, the retired actress and eccentric recluse who people whispered was a Communist. Wally had long heard the stories about her. She lived in the house where she'd been born some eight decades earlier, before starting out on a career that took her from Brown's Mill to Broadway to Paris and finally all the way to Moscow.