Leon Uris (4 page)

PAWTUCKET, RHODE ISLAND
LATE 1950
s
TO LATE 1960
s

Henry Tomtree’s junkyard occupied a full block in a semi-derelict industrial zone. Long past its heyday. Stacks of crushed autos and chopped-up tires mingled with the new pop harvests of soft drink and beer bottles, broken glass bins, plastic, and the junk dealer’s mainstay—baled-up old newspapers and magazines.

“A cacophony of smells,” Henry would note, breathing in the fumes from the fuel trucks, smoke from a nearby landfill, and oil from the grease pits. Every night the garbage truck fleet parked in a nearby lot, the sky maddened with the mean wings and frenzied yowls of seagulls.

When Henry discovered Mo’s true worth, the two entered a life-long relationship which was to be carried on by their sons, Thornton Tomtree and Darnell Jefferson.

Moses and his family lived in Pawtucket, a very decent lower-middle-class city. It had a little less of everything, except for the Pawtucket Red Sox.

Henry Tomtree lived a few blocks from Mo in Providence, which was considered to be middlemiddle. Providence was a good-sized little city, lovely to look at as it rippled up and down the hills to the
sea. Houses seemed newly painted, and the town was filled with educational facilities and boasted a strong cultural life, so as to be a kitchen community for both New York and Boston.

Twenty miles down the bay preened Newport, which ranged from tourist all the way to upperupper. Setting aside the beach town aspects, and other summer garnishments, Newport was a worldclass port of yacht racing. Here, the main thoroughfare was named America’s Cup Way after the trophy won by Yankee sailors for over a century.

Moses Jefferson’s American ancestry went back further than Henry’s and even further than many of the mansion owners of Newport.

Mo’s family originally came from a Portuguese colony in the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. They were never completely slaves but made their livelihood servicing the hundreds of ships plying the Atlantic routes. Mo’s wife, Ruby, continued to clean houses for a few years after he began to work for Tomtree. Oftentimes, she had to leave little Darnell with his daddy at the yard.

Thornton Tomtree was a shy lad. Hanging out at the yard was his main form of recreation. As Darnell grew to waddle around on his own, Henry was in an endless checkers war with Mo. No one knows the exact number of boards they went through until Ruby gave her husband a wooden one for his birthday.

Throughout grammar school Thornton’s attraction to the yard increased. He’d pillage everything before it went to the crusher or was shipped out: instrument panels, washing machine motors, boat props, lawn mowers, and more used fan belts than GM would need in a year.

In the inner-inner area of the yard stood a warehouse where the good stuff was stored: stained-glass windows from derelict mansions, statuary, copper
hardware, scrolled woods, once gleaming banister rails.

Inch by inch Thornton and his little helper, Darnell, pushed things around in this warehouse, so he was able to establish a work bench.

When Thornton was eleven and Darnell merely nine, Moses and Henry put up a basketball hoop. In the beginning the two daddies had a notion they were more skilled than their sons. The notion was quickly dispelled by Darnell, and there was a swift return to their checkers.

An unmentionable thing drew Darnell to the yard: stacks of old
Playboy
magazines. Darnell got a whooping when Ruby found one under her son’s mattress, but that didn’t deter him. He thought there was something strange about the magazine—strange as well as invigorating. All the women in the photographs were white women, and none of them had pubic hair. Darnell long believed that this was normal. Years later at a midnight skinny-dipping party, he realized that
all
women, black and white, had pubic hair. That was about the time the magazine took a courageous position and flat-out showed it.

Darnell Jefferson was a born point guard and remained one: quick, graceful, deceptive, and cool, momma, cool. He had a face full of sunshine and was blessed with a silk tongue.

Thornton Tomtree grew gangly like his father, with a permanent aura of nerdiness about him, although he was wiry and very strong from slinging bales of newsprint and handling scrap metal. It seemed early that shaping Thornton’s personality—or lack of it—would become a lifetime mission for Darnell.

They went their separate ways to school and were pushed into different social circles, but always they rushed to return to the yard where their joint kingdom lay.

Then came the training of Thornton Tomtree, unlikely basketball player. Darnell ran hours of films, depicting how the great centers of the game operated as a hub.

Darnell snapped the ball to him a hundred times a day until his reflexes and coordination were brought to their limits.

“Catch the ball! Pass to the open man!”

“How about me getting some shooting time?”

“You ain’t no shooter, Thornton. Them that can, does. You are a trench warrior. You’re a white maypole with guys hanging all over you. But you are junkyard strong. Plant your ass under the basket and disembowel anyone who tries to get
your
rebound.”

Thornton Tomtree was awkward, not dumb. Once he understood the niche Darnell was creating for him, he studied the complexity and possibilities of the game and his particular value.

Darnell invited kids into the yard for pickup games which were nonstop verbal assaults on his student, to move his feet, leap, dunk.

By the end of the summer Darnell had created a player out of bits and pieces. His strength was under the basket, elbow and knee land. Only one problem. The two were going to different high schools.

Thornton changed his address from his home to the junkyard, which allowed him to transfer to Pawtucket High.

There were only two white boys trying out for the team, and they became the target of bad intent. At six foot three, Thornton was a nice-sized center for a small school. He closed his ears to the jiving. His physical strength tested and proved, Thornton became a legitimate second-string player. Darnell Jefferson’s “Frankenstein.”

Competence on the basketball court was a hard earned
grace. Less difficult was Thornton’s quick mastery of all the school’s curriculum in math and science.

Darnell drilled him in social skills, particularly girls. In time he joined Darnell in reading old
Playboy
s in the yard.

“How come white women don’t have pussies?” Darnell wondered.

“I never saw a pussy,” Thornton said. “Do your women?”

“Oh, hell yes, but they’ve never had a picture of a black lady in
Playboy
.”

These sessions ended more quickly than Darnell wished. Thornton would always end with a sigh and a shake of his head and make for his workbench.

Without saying it aloud, or even knowing it, Darnell was becoming an intricate part of Thornton’s ability to function in the outside world. Darnell preferred shooting baskets,
Playboy
, fishing and pussyspeak, but Thornton’s enormous devotion to the workbench lured Darnell in. An electronic ding dong of some sort was explained as a Rube Goldberg-type invention. As he learned enough just through proximity and contact, his large vocabulary became punctuated with scientific terms.

A new day of science wizardry was arriving, and Thornton Tomtree was at home with it. Thornton’s ding-dong invention was a kind of computer which he called the Bulldog. He never shared the secret of Bulldog City with Darnell, or anyone.

Thornton tweaked the curiosity of the technical colleges that loomed large in the region. He established contact with MIT and played complex physics games. Whatever the Bulldog could do, it seemed to mop up the opposition of renowned institutions.

When Thornton Tomtree graduated Pawtucket High, they named a science medal after him. But it was a bad day for the odd couple. Thornton would leave for college, and Darnell had two more years to go at Pawtucket High.

For a time it was feared he would be drafted for Vietnam, but he was given an exemption as an only son.

On a late summer’s night in Newport, a thousand and one tourists strolled up the street looking at curios, and another thousand and one across the road strolled down the street looking at curios. Macho sailors, who manned the yachts of the rich, partied. Petitioners looked over Brown University, which had an open night for applicants. In the drawing rooms of the great mansions, string quartets played for charity at a thousand dollars a pop.

Thornton parked the junkyard pickup truck in Darnell’s driveway and waited on the porch swing for him to come home from a date.

“Darnell.”

“Yo, Thornton?”

“Yeah, how’d you make out?”

“Not too bad, I guess but those Jamaican girls have an agenda that has something to do with American passports. So, what’s going on?”

“You haven’t been in the shop most of the summer,” Thornton said.

“All right,” Darnell said, seating himself opposite on a rocker. “I mean, you’re going your own way. I hear my daddy talk about all the schools after you. MIT, Harvard, Carnegie Tech. How many scholarships have you been offered? They’ve got you mistaken for a quarterback.”

“Well, what’s that got to do with our friendship?”

“Everything,” Darnell said. “Man, you’re in solo land. A couple of years of college and we’ll need a translator to be able to speak to each other. Hey, man, you’re going to take off like a rocket. You and I just ran out of time and space. I mean, we can always be friends. Good friends, but you’re going north and south and I’m heading east and west.”

“I’ve made a decision,” Thornton said. “I’m not taking a scholarship. I’m not going to college. Why should I spend four years learning something I already know? My time would be better spent continuing to develop the Bulldog.”

“What the fuck you talking about?”

“I’m not going to college.”

“Your daddy know?”

“My daddy’s smart,” Thornton said. “He looked me over like he was bidding on ten tons of metal and asked me if I knew what I was doing. He trusts my judgment.”

“Because Henry didn’t need a college education to run a junkyard,” Darnell shot back.

“He needed more. He was born with stuff you don’t learn in school. Don’t you get it, Darnell? You’ll be at Pawtucket for two more years and I’ll be at the yard.”

“I’m not married to you, man.”

“No, but you’re the only person in the world I want helping me. The Bulldog is going to do some awesome things, once I figure it all out.”

Darnell stopped the rocking chair.

“I thought you would be really happy about this,” Thornton muttered.

“It seems to be about you and what you want,” Darnell answered. “What about me? So, let’s go a couple years down the road. I’ll be heading for college. Columbia Law School. They have encouraged me to come to them first for a basketball scholarship.
Like man, we’re talking New York City.”

“I hate stupidity,” Thornton said in disgust. “I mean, I truly hate stupidity. Look at me. Four left feet. I can still catch the ball and pass the open man. How come you can’t smell shit in a cow barn?”

“Columbia is no barn. Get used to it.”

“So waste your life for a law degree and end up as the house darky for one of the insurance companies. Everyone’s looking for darkies, especially point guard darkies. You are the dream minority package, Darnell.”

“Why are you doing this, Thornton?”

“By the time you pass the bar, the Bulldog computer will be the standard of its field. And you’ll have bupkas. That’s Jewish for zero.”

“Let’s just talk about putting leverage on each other,” Darnell said. “Hey, man, you’re arrogant. I’ve got my own life. What do you want me to be? Your little nigger boy?”

“Maybe you don’t get it, Darnell. I’m going to the top. I need somebody out there in front of me to take care of things so I can stay at my workbench.”

“That’s arrogant.”

“Is it? I live in a funny world that has me in its grip. I’m past most mathematicians in the world. It’s something I didn’t learn. It’s just there. But when I look into a mirror, I see ugly. I see this broken clay statue with fingers missing and a shoulder missing and a leg missing. I am incomplete, and there is nothing I can do about it. You’re the only real friend I have or probably will ever have. Maybe, going to the yard day after day this summer, alone, I maybe got scared without you.”

Oh, Tomtree, Darnell thought. In the middle of a game he’d read Thornton’s eyes on the court. The guy would be working on a physics problem. The pretty little cheerleaders in their pretty flaming red
satin shorts way up on their sweet little black and white legs. Thornton’s head was somewhere else while they were cheering him. He was always so far away, most folks were afraid to speak to him, to interrupt that siren song that Thornton alone heard.

It had not been all that great a summer for Darnell, bikinis notwithstanding. Too much of the uniqueness and lore of the junkyard had invaded his being over the years. He’d missed Thornton. Thought he was free of him at first, but ended up lonely for him. Why? What he wants from me, Darnell thought, was to be a junkyard dog’s junkyard dog.

“So, you want me to come in with you the minute I graduate high school? I don’t know business. I don’t know how money works. I don’t know nothing.”

“Yes, you do, Darnell. You’ve got instincts about…people…and that’s number one. Nobody in this state is smarter than you.”

“It’s a small state.”

“Well, if we went in together, you could still go to one of the colleges around Providence.”

“I’m going to Columbia.”

Thornton left the porch fuming and harangued the pickup truck into starting.

Darnell turned at the slam of the screen door to see his daddy shuffle out.

“Sorry, I overheard,” Mo said.

“That be okay, Daddy.”

“You’ve got two years of high school left. That gives you all the time in the world to make up your mind.”

“What are you thinking, Daddy?”