LITMIR.BIZ

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a crowd in the yard, a crowd of people like paper figures, the fireworks are being exploded in the grassy sand, pow!—but somehow too the whole yard is rattling, and the dead underneath it, and the fence full of sitters, eyerything rattling like mad like those varnished skeletal furnitures and the unfeeling cruel uncaring rattle of dry bones and especially the rattle of the window when Gerard said the ghosts had come (and later Cousin Noel, in Lynn, said he was the Phantome d’l’Opéra mwee hee hee ha ha, gliding off around the goldfish bowl and glazed fish picture over mahogany mountains in that dreary Lynn churchstreet home of his mother’s)—

       18

      AND YET DESPITE ALI THIS RACKETY GRAY when I grew to the grave maturity of 11 or 12 I saw, one crisp October morning, in the back Textile field, a great pitching performance by a husky strangely old looking 14-year-older, or 13,—a very heroic looking boy in the morning, I liked him and hero-worshipped him immediately but never hoped to rise high enough to meet him in those athletic scuffles of the windy fields (when hundreds of less important little kids make a crazy army benighted by individual twitchings in smaller but not less tremendous dramas, for instance that morning I rolled over in the grass and cut my right small finger, on a rock, with a scar that stays vivid and grows with me even now)—there was Scotty Boldieu on the high mound, king of the day, taking his signal from the catcher with a heavy sullen and insulting look of skepticism and native French Canadian Indian-like dumb calm—; the catcher was sending him nervous messages, one finger (fast ball), two fingers (curve), three fingers (drop), four fingers (walk him) (and Paul Boldieu had enough great control to walk em, as if unintentionally, never changing expression) (off the mound he may grin on the bench)— Paul turned aside the catcher’s signals (shake of head) with his French Canadian patient scorn, he just waited till the fingers three (signal for drop), settled back, looked to first base, spit, spit again in his glove and rub it in, pluck at the dust for his fingertips, bending thoughtfully but not slowly, chewing on his inside lip in far meditation (may be thinking about his mother who made him oatmeal and beans in the gloomy gray midwinter dawns of Lowell as he stood in the dank hall closet puttin on his overshoes), looks briefly to 2nd base with a frown from the memory of someone having reached there in the 2nd inning drat it (he sometimes said “Drat it!” in imitation of B movie Counts of England), now it’s the 8th inning and Scotty’s given up two hits, nobody beyond second base, he’s leading 8-0, he wants to strike out the batter and get into the ninth inning, he takes his time–I’m watching him with a bleeding hand, amazed–a great Grover C. Alexander of the sandlots blowing one of his greatest games—(later he was bought by the Boston Braves but went home to sit with his wife and mother-in-law in a bleak brown kitchen with a castiron stove covered with brass scrolls and a poem in a tile panel, and Catholic French Canadian calendars on the wall). —Now he winds up, leisurely, looking off towards third base and beyond even as he’s rearing back to throw with an easy, short, effortless motion, no fancy dan imitations and complications and phoniness, blam, he calmly surveys the huge golden sky all sparkle-blue rearing over the hedges and iron pickets of Textile Main Field and the great Merrimac Valley high airs of heaven shining in the commercial Saturday October morning of markets and delivery men, with one look of the eye Scotty has seen that, is in fact looking towards his house on Mammoth Road, at Cow Field–blam, he’s come around and thrown his drop home, perfect strike, kid swinging, thap in the catcher’s mitt, “You’re out,” end of the top of the 8th inning.

      Scotty’s already walking to the bench when the umpire’s called it—”Ha, ha,” they laugh on the bench knowing him so well, Scotty never fails. In the bottom of the 8th Scot comes to bat for his licks, wearing his pitching jacket, and swinging the bat around loosely in his powerful hands, without much effort, and again in short, unostentatious movements, pitcher throws in a perfect strike after 2 and 0 and Scotty promptly belts it clean-drop into left over the shortstop’s glove–he trots to first like Babe Ruth, he was always hitting neat singles, he didn’t want to run when he was pitching.

      I saw him thus in the morning, his name was Boldieu, it immediately stuck in my mind with Beaulieu–street where I learned to cry and be scared of the dark and of my brother for many years (till almost 10)—this proved to me all my life wasn’t black.

      Scotty, named that for his thrift among 5¢ candy bars and 11¢ movies, sat in that wrinkly tar doorway with G.J., Lousy and me–and Vinny.

       19

      VINNY WAS AN ORPHAN for many years ere his father came back, got his mother out of some tub-washing strait, reunited the children from various orphanages, and re-formed his home and family in the tenements of Moody–Lucky Bergerac was his name, a heavy drinker, cause of his early downfalls as well as Old Jack O Diamonds, got a job repairing rollercoasters at Lakeview Park– what a wild house, the tenement screeched– Vinny’s mother was called Charlotte, but we pronounced it Charlie, “Hey Charlie,” Vinny thus addressed his own mother in a wild scream. Vinny was thin and skinny boyish, very clean featured and handsome, high voiced, excited, affectionate, always laughing or smiling, always swearing like a son of a bitch, “Jesus Crise goddam it Charlie what the fuck you want me to do sit in this fucking goddam bath tub all goddam day—” his father Lucky outdid him unbelievably, the only eloquence he had was curses, “Jey-sas Crise gawd damn ballbreaking sonofabitch if I ain’t an old piece of shit but you look like a goddam fat ass old cow tonight Charlie …” and at this compliment Charlie would screech with joy–you never heard such a wild screech, her eyes used to blaze out with the intensity of white fire, she was crazy as all get out, the first time I saw her she was standing on a chair fixing a bulb and Vinny rushed up and looked under her dress (he was 13) and yelled “O Jey-sas Crise what a nice ass you got Ma!” and she screeched and whacks him one on the head, a house of joy. Me and G.J. and Lousy and Scotty used to sit in that house all day.

      “Jey-sas Crise what a maniac!”

      “Is he crazy— you know what he did? He stuck his finger up his ass and said Woo Woo—”

      “He came fifteen comes, no kiddin, he jumped around jacking himself off all that whole day–the 920 club was on the radio, Charlie was at work–Zaza the madman.”

      This tenement was located across the street from the Pawtucketville Social Club, an organization intended to be some kind of meeting place for speeches about Franco-American matters but was just a huge roaring saloon and bowling alley and pool table with a meetingroom always locked. My father that year was running the bowling alley, great cardgames of the night we imitated all day in Vinny’s house with whist for Wing cigarettes. (I was the only one who didn’t smoke, Vinny used to smoke two cigarettes at a time and inhale deep as he could.) We didn’t give a shit about no Doctor Sax.

      Great big bullshitters, friends of Lucky’s, grown men, would come in and regale us with fantastic lies and stories —we screamed at them “What a bullshitter, geez, I never– is he a bullshitter!” Everything we said was put this way, “Oh is my old man gonna kick the shit out of me if he ever finds out about those helmets we stole, G.J.”

      “Ah fuckit, Zagg–helmets is helmets, my old man’s in the grave and no one’s the worse for it.” At 11 or 12 G.J. was so Greekly tragic he could talk like that–words of woe and wisdom poured from his childly dewy glooms. He was the opposite of crackbrained angel joy Vinny. Scotty just watched or bit his inner lip in far away silence (thinking about that game he pitched, or Sunday he’s got to go to Nashua with his mother to see Uncle Julien and Aunt Yvonne (Mon Mononcle Julien, Ma Matante Yvonne)— Lousy is spitting, silently, whitely, neatly, just a little dew froth of symbolic spit, clean enough to wash your eyeballs in–which I had to do when he got sore and his aim was champion in the gang.—Spitting out the window, and turns to giggle with a laugh in the joke general, slapping his knees softly, rushing over to me or G.J. half kneeling on the floor to whisper a confidential observation of glee, sometimes G.J. would respond by grabbing him by the hair and dragging him around the room, “Ooh this fuckin Lousy has just told me the dirtiest–is he–Ooh is he got dirty thoughts— Ooh, would I love to kick his ass–allow me, gentlemen, stand back, to kick the ass of Lauzon Cave-In in his means, lookout Slave don’t desist!

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