New Moon (7 page)

“Like this,” he said, demonstrating how not to throw like a girl.
Then he gestured for me to loft the ball opposite where he was. I tried, but it went sideways, rolling down the street.

He tore after it, stopped it on the run and, after faking a side-arm throw, brought it back. “Up high,” he pointed.

I aimed it away from him; he sped down the sidewalk, leaped, caught it, and threw himself onto the hood of a parked car.

I wanted to be able to do this, yet I flubbed even the easier flips he lobbed my way.

Phil was Bill-Dave’s star athlete and leader of our club that included Freddie, Herbie, Davey, Ronnie, me, and Al. We eyed him for instructions. If the Bill-Dave was marching home in its orderly column he would signal a detour and we would surge behind him through bushes onto dirt, rejoining the main party on the other side of the loop. In tunnels we would answer his howls with our own, kids pretending to be Indians pretending to be animals. We bowed flamboyantly on each pass of Cleopatra’s needle, imitating Phil’s voodoo-sounding gibberish. Most of the other kids ignored us, but a few were provoked to rebut, a quick charge and shove or calling out “Dummies!” as we bowed.

Herbie brought a magnifying glass to school and used it to incinerate ants in the yard—a thrilling demonstration of the power of curved glass to pull the sun’s fire onto Earth. When Phil handed the death ray to me, everyone shouted to get the spider. I held the magnifier over it. Ambling along, it scurried, curled, and melted, squirming in a stream of smoke while my friends cheered. Then Billy burned the wings off a fly. I realized, in sudden consternation, we were imitating Bert’s Korean tortures.

For weeks afterwards I pictured that poor creature just going about his business, reduced to fragments and ash. It is a regret I still have, an unsquared issue between him and me, a stone in my heart. Yet boys do mindless things even as a cat claws apart the wings of a struggling bird.

When a bunch of us visited Phil’s apartment on 93rd Street he sassed his parents (mostly under his breath). His mother called out, “Hello.” Phil said, “Hello, ma’am,” and then, in a whisper to us,
“… idiotbrain.”

One afternoon, as we poured from the elevator into the apartment, Phil’s father intercepted him for introductions to adult company. “Good to meet you,” he said with exaggerated politeness, courteously shaking each hand. Then, in front of the grown-ups, he began shaking our hands too: “Good to meet you, Herbie. Good to meet you, Al. Good to meet you, Richie. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” At the conclusion of the charade we galloped into his room for games and comics.

Phil had a peerless collection of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Mickey Mouse, Tubby and Little Lulu, piles of Donald Ducks and Uncle Scrooges. I would grab a stack and shuffle through them, looking for ones I hadn’t read: Bugs and Elmer wrapped to a post with Indians around them, Bugs slicing carrots into a piggy bank, Mickey giving a bath to a yelping Pluto while water splashed all about.

It was an afternoon’s treat to lie akimbo against the furniture, silently zoning out, periodically exchanging fascicles, as we gorged on Wohlstetter cookies and ice cream. There was something about the images and blurbs that made them irresistible, especially when ingested with good food. They were so clean, simple, and bright. The trees were bushy, the carrot wedges tangerine orange, the lightning jagged gold, Donald’s eyes so wide, his aura so yellow, the snow so creamy.

Stories sprang up instantly: an old map with a bit of shoreline, a ship at sea, an iceberg, Crash!, black sky, green waves. Donald’s dream bubble had him sitting on the throne, “King of North America: The Viking Kid,” Olaf the Blue’s gold helmet resting snugly on his head. Lawyer Sharky—a dog dressed as a sleazy man with bifocals—was after the helmet too; he represented Azure Blue, eldest descendant of Olaf, and was claiming North America under a 792 law of Charlemagne. Phil looked over.

“Weirdo Charlemagne,” I said.

“Char-lee-mane,” Phil repeated deliberately. “Charleemane and Shoeless Joe and Minnie Minoso.”

“I’d give the State of California for a hamburger,” a famished Donald told Lawyer Sharky.

“I’d give the state of my underpants for your elixir,” Phil intoned, grabbing Al’s butter pecan.

“Hey,” snapped Al, grabbing the dish back.

Phil had a collection of water guns and rifles. We’d choose our weapons—the rifles contended for because they had greater range and capacity—and then conduct wholesale war, dashing about the apartment. Nothing close to that could ever happen at my home—hot hisses against light bulbs, soaked pillows as shields, everyone shoving for refills at the sink, snacks whenever you wanted.

Phil said that since Jessie, the stubby, growling proprietor of our candy shop who looked like Iggy from
Little Lulu,
was a crook, it was okay to steal from him. In the commotion around the counter Phil had no trouble making off with several packs from under Jessie’s overtaxed eye.

We watched our friend, not wanting to miss his sly feint while “Iggy” was distracted: up his ladder, counting change, or barking at some kid—he was barely tall enough to see above his own cash register. It was easy as punch, but only Phil had the panache.

One day our leader announced he was going to steal a whole box, an unprecedented ante. We waited outside for him, expecting it to be a bluff, also not wanting to be implicated in a major felony. After a suspenseful span Phil appeared like Bugs Bunny with a mother lode of carrots, the treasure clutched under his shirt: dozens of unopened packs straight from the manufacturer. We spent lunch period tearing open our booty, divvying it up. Of course, Phil got to keep the best ones—and I still don’t know how he did it.

In spring of ’52 wrapped baseball bundles replaced Flash Gordon packs. As usual Phil led the way—he already knew the names of most of the players on the Major League teams. At first, ordinary men seemed a letdown after outer-space landscapes and court interiors, but the insignias, a Tiger or Cub or Cardinal birds in the corner of a card, and the solid colored backgrounds—yellows, oranges, and blues—transcended the athletes. They had the bubblegum dust and lost aroma of newly minted amulets, as they recalled game boards and museum crests.

Every day we competed for prizes from each others’ stashes in
duels and tourneys. Kids crowded around the action, shouting, bumping in communion. We mainly “flipped”—the first person putting down a random pattern of heads and tails by floating his cards from a waist-level position, and the second trying to match the combination on the ground—the cards themselves at stake.

It was a suspenseful business, watching a lemon Gene Woodling or red-orange Turk Lown flutter in the air, front and back alternating, one of which would land upright. Four tails was a hard combination to match. Three tails and a head gave a bit of room for error. Two of each was ideal but no guarantee against an unlikely streak of one’s own. If I got to within a card of matching, a pin cushion of nerves watched the final spin. If it showed the right face, I felt a jolt of delight as I reached down and scooped up the jackpot, gathering and neatening the cards, fitting them into my handy cube and wrapping it back under its rubber band.

Flipping was mostly luck, but there must have been skill involved—card angle and height of drop, pressure of hold, jimmy and trajectory of release—because the same kids regularly won. Or perhaps they had mastered Gyro Gearloose’s telekinesis and could send brainwaves to alter spin.

In another contest, with flicks of the wrist we sailed cards up to and against a wall in rotations of two or more players. Anyone who landed a card on any part of another got his own back plus the one he “covered.” This
was
a game of finesse like tiddlywinks or pick-up-sticks. As card after card travelled with our distinctive spin rates over a landscape left by prior cards, we stared intently, trying to put mental english on the flight. A perfect shot covered an indisputable portion of a card on the ground. Others were too tantalizing to judge from afar, so we kneeled on the ground in serious adjudication, trying to figure out if certain cards were actually touching or just close.

In the spring of 1952 Phil debuted punchball at lunchtime in the schoolyard. With his fist he whacked the Spaldeen high off the fence above the wall, scattering pigeons: it was a home run, circle the bases unchallenged. I swung at the pinky and set it skipping along the ground. Phil shoved me so hard toward the wall (first base) I
stumbled, but the ball rolled away, and I got all the way to the pile of coats at second, just ahead of the tag. “Way to go, Towers!”

That Saturday Daddy responded to my tales of the week with a taxi ride downtown. At his advertising account, a store called Miller’s Sporting Goods, he bought Jonny and me gloves, a bat, and hardballs. The next morning, he took us to Central Park where we found an open area. After setting his hat down for home plate, he pivoted my arms with the bat to demonstrate correct form, then lobbed pitches to me.

Gradually I smacked the ball sharper and farther, as my brother ran after my hits and brought them back. Then Jon took a turn with the bat. After that, Daddy set both of us at a distance and floated the ball in the air, calling out my name. I turned and somehow it landed in my glove. “You’re a natural!” he shouted.

As soon as Daddy said those words, I had magical abilities. I imagined that I could run down everything, so I did. I grabbed the next ball in the tip of the webbing while tumbling, clutching it high over my head. “A real natural!” he announced with a delighted grin. “You’ve got the coordination of a pro.” It was as if I had been anointed by a baseball jinni. Only three days earlier I had been lunging and missing. Now I
was Phil
.

Thereafter I embraced the knitted spheroid and its vectors of flight and ricochet. I played as often as I could—in the schoolyard, at group, on weekends. Nothing before had been as much fun or as real. I loved running at full speed, snaring a hit or toss. When no one was around to play, I lobbed a hardball or Spaldeen as high as I could in the air and caught it where it came back down, or I bounced it off a wall and snared its caroms.

That year Mommy became pregnant again and stayed in bed all spring. One morning I straggled into the kitchen in my PJs and was startled to find Nanny squeezing half-oranges into a pitcher from the whirling juice-maker. I had been told I would never see her again. I ran up and threw my arms around her.

Soon after Nanny’s return we moved to a bigger apartment across the hall. Daddy had to hold Mommy up and walk her a step at a
time. Now we lived in 6B overlooking 96th Street’s boulevard. Jon and I still shared a room and there was a nursery behind the kitchen for the baby.

Late one night Mommy left for the hospital and came back several days later with a sister named Deborah. Nanny kissed us goodbye shortly afterwards and never returned. Her macabre landscape faded;
in absentia
she became a numinous being, vast and sepulchral as life itself.

One afternoon we strolled to the corner of 96th and Central Park where we met a young pretty lady named Bridey. The famous Fifth Avenue wind whipped at our jackets and blew newspapers past like missiles. Bridey held a little hat on with her hand, and Jon and I bounced a ball while she answered my mother’s questions in a brogue. A month later she moved in as our new nurse.

From the day I picked Gil McDougald as my favorite player from a card of a friendly pixie face gazing at far-off sky, I became a Yankee fan and joined Phil in a pact of loyalty.

When I told Uncle Paul about this new thing, he bought me a Yankee history in which I acquainted myself with prior seasons. That opened a legacy as primeval as the Egyptian tombs and labyrinthine as Jessie’s cave. I started at the beginning when they were the Highlanders, then went through eras of Babe Ruth, Herb Pennock, Bill Dickey, Waite Hoyt, Joe Gordon, Joe DiMaggio, and Old Reliable, Tommy Henrich. None of those players were still around, but their photos were pinstriped heirlooms out of which the 1952 squad took the field. Allie Reynolds and Vic Raschi pitched; Yogi Berra was their catcher, Charlie Silvera his alternate; Joe Collins played first, spelled by Johnny Mize; Billy Martin was at second, Phil Rizzuto at short, McDougald at third backed by Bobby Brown. Gene Woodling, Mickey Mantle, and Hank Bauer started in the outfield, Irv Noren and Bob Cerv filling in.

These were my ikons, their names indelible. They were fighting Cleveland for first place, the same Indians they had been battling for years. Casey Stengel was the manager. A savvy old-timer who had not been successful with other teams, he surprised the baseball world by leading the Yanks to the pennant in 1949 as they beat the
Red Sox in the last two meetings of the season to prevail by a single game. They edged out Detroit, Cleveland, and Boston in 1950. Then in 1951 they ran away from the Indians, and Rookie of the Year Gil McDougald hit a grand slam against the crosstown Giants in the World Series. That was all before my time, the prologue to 1952.

Daddy pulled his old Philco from the back of a closet, a red plastic box with a big square battery. I carried it around the house and on walks, trying not to miss an inning. Now I had a daily narrative of games, a pennant race, to keep me company. Mel Allen’s voice called me into a parallel world: “That ball is going, going, gone!”—pure consummation, the home run that ended discourse in speechless sound, the player who hit it elevated to temporary adulation.

I hurried upstairs from the Bill-Dave wagon, heart beating, to catch the endings of games, though sometimes Bert put the Yankees on the wagon radio. (In the early 1950s only rare Yankee games were on Channel 11, but these were monumental affairs, from pregame home-run contests to postgame interviews.)

A victory by the Yanks would wash out all other sadnesses and disappointments. Like a fairy’s wand it would enhance and color the day, giving it a rhapsodic spark. I would become happier, friendlier, more cooperative, even more attentive in class. Likewise, if the Yanks lost, everything would become glummer and drearier; I would turn sullen and inward. This dance of Yankee highs and lows was a reliable mood-barometer throughout my childhood.