Acre Under a Green Sky

Garry was in big trouble. He had filled his water pistol with his own urine, and then wandered the neighborhood for a few days looking for a suitable target. None appeared, so he shot Austin in the eyes. The big old dog cried out in pain, and Garry was deeply mortified. Unfortunately; or fortunately depending on your point of view, Mrs. Eagle saw Garry shoot her dog and after a visit to the vet, she called Garry's uncle, Chief Will Mosko. Garry was grounded for two weeks.

Everyone was acting a little crazy around this time. Danny had taken to crawling under the kitchen table with his books and falling asleep. The first time, it took hours to find him down there behind that floral curtain of oil cloth. There was quite a little panic.

Then, my mother and Mrs. Eagle had a bang-up fight on Mrs. Eagle's front yard. Mrs. Eagle had had her old claw-footed bathtub replaced with one of those new built-into-the-wall tubs. The old tub sat on her front yard filled with wall debris from the installation of the new tub. Throughout that night, Austin conscientiously moved the debris onto our porch. He must have made a hundred trips back and forth across Ledge Avenue. Austin was famous for scattering peoples' things around his considerable territory. It was not uncommon to get a phone call from Mrs. Jett or the Sisters McConnell or from as far away as Garry's house to say that our laundry basket had suddenly appeared on their back porch or yard. I knew that this handsome pile of garbage was a gift from Austin, but my mother didn't see it that way. She had not been feeling well, and she was enraged.

She marched right over to Mrs. Eagle's house and demanded that she clean the mess off our porch. Remember that Mrs. Eagle was a mannish woman with the muscular body of a boxer and an unmistakable moustache. Scraggly whiskers sprouted from her square jaw as well. It was hard to believe that this woman was the daughter of the exquisite old woman watching from her wheelchair on the porch. Mrs. Eagle refused to clean our porch. My mother went crazy. She raced across the street and grabbed an armful of the debris from our porch and carried it over to dump on Mrs. Eagle's yard. Mrs. Eagle withdrew into her house, and I was afraid for my mother. I was humiliated by her, too.

It seemed to me that the entire world had gathered on Mrs. Eagle's front yard around that cast iron, highly pregnant white tub with its little frog legs. Angel stood there with his mouth open and his shrunken tee shirt hiked up exposing his crater-like bellybutton. An open comic book dangled from his hand. Mrs. Jett was there adjusting her bifocals and fingering her dyed black curls; a sure fire guarantee that this scene would not go unreported throughout Waterstop. I wanted to die. I wanted my mother to die. I wanted "the bomb!"

My mother was making her second or third trip across the street when Mrs. Eagle appeared on her porch with her chicken hatchet. Old Lady Eagle begged my mother to go home, but my mother stood right up to the hatchet-wielding bulldog standing at the top of the porch steps.

"Come on, you hairy little hermaphrodite! Let's see what you got!"

Mrs. Eagle blew like a Fourth of July firecracker. She raised that hatchet up over her head and lunged at my mother. Everyone screamed. My mother was so startled she fell backward onto the ground. Had they been on equal ground, my mother would have been dead, but before Mrs. Eagle could reach the bottom porch step, Ron appeared on the porch and said with that golden salve of a voice, "What's going on here?"; and suddenly, as if by magic, Mrs. Eagle's temper was diffused.

Rod shooed us all away home with an eloquence of tone that made everyone want to thank him. The fact is we were being run off. My mother looked sick and ashamed. She took me by the shoulder and walked me across the street. Then she disappeared into her room again for the rest of the day.

Garry missed the "bathtub bout", as it came to be called; but he was waiting for me on our front porch the next morning in spite of having been grounded. Garry had ways –– ways nobody questioned anymore. My father joined us on the porch.

"Hey fellas, can I have a word with you guys?"

I swear that's what he said, and I knew this was not just another touch no one can feel. This was real, in spite of his use of words like "fellas", "guys", "buddies"; which had a false, tinny ring and was no more than a sad comment on his inability to relate to kids. The "boy" in my father had been strangled many years before I knew him; unlike Luka who perhaps never grew up.

My father sat down next to us on the stoop.

"Have you guys seen any activity around Luka's house? You know, like policemen searching the yard –– the bushes and so on?"

Garry and I exchanged a meaningful glance.

"Looking for the knife?" Garry said, "No."

"No," I echoed.

"So they've made no effort to find it? That you know of?"

"Nobody looked for it," I said, "Why?"

"It would be quite a prize if someone found it. Maybe one of the kids . . . "

"Nobody found it," I interrupted.

"I see. Have you looked?"

"Sure," Garry blurted out before I could stop him.

"In the yard, yeah. But we didn't find anything."

"So you have no idea where that knife could be?"

"Nope," Garry said.

"No idea," I said.

"That knife is important evidence in a murder investigation. If someone were to find it and keep it a secret, it could be very harmful to Luka. Do you understand?"

"We didn't find it," I said.

"We didn't," Garry added.

"And you haven't seen anyone looking for it, is that right?"

"Right," I said.

"Now, I need you guys to tell me about the picnic that day. Everything you remember about the picnic."

"You were there," Garry said, as if my father were trying to trick him.

"Yes, but I didn't get there until late. Around supper time. And besides, I'm sure you guys are far more observant than I am."

"The food was good," Garry said.

"Yeah? What did you have?"

Garry started going on about the food, while I was being sucked back to that day. Graduation Day.

On that day nearly two weeks ago, everyone in town was bound together by Waterstop High School. You were either going to graduate from Waterstop High School that day, or you had already graduated from Waterstop High School, or you were going to graduate from Waterstop High School sometime down the road. That many-windowed, red brick building with the stone pillars flanking the double doors and the statue of William Penn in front incubated the hopes and dreams of the entire town. Every voice had or would echo through those stone-tiled halls. Every name was or would be carved on the tops of those flip-top desks. Notes passed there. Spit balls flew and stuck to the blackboards. First loves bloomed. First cars vroomed. Everyone's first date, first kiss, first heartbreak was nursed along in the Waterstop High School. And so every hand that had ever clapped the chalk dust out of erasers would come together to clap for this new crop of graduates; the sons and daughters of sons and daughters of sons and daughters of Waterstop High School. It was a big day.

Wooden folding chairs were set up in rows on the front lawn facing the entrance which served as a dais for the ceremony that morning. The chairs were reserved for the Class of '55 and their families while the rest of the town spilled out onto the streets surrounding the school. Every car in town had been washed for the event. The smell of clothes ironing filled the air. The town barber would take the next three days off. And the State Liquor Store was sold out of gin.

My father had graduated from Waterstop High School, but he pretended to have no feeling for it; insisting we go because "it's good for business". I wanted to stay at home and help Luka and Gwen and the others set up their back yard for the all-day picnic they had every year; one of the many in town that day. The actual graduation ceremony was a painful bore, but we endured it.

Luka's back yard was no wider than the house, but it went all the way back to the Anderson property. It was here in Luka's back yard that we made forts from all the discarded Christmas trees in the neighborhood. And one winter, he helped us make the world's biggest igloo. One ancient apple tree stood with thick gnarly branches close enough to the ground for even the little kids to reach. Its fruit was bitter, but it was close to the house and provided the only shade in summer. The rest of the yard was flat with a rusty swing set and seesaw about midway back. It was a yard where grass was just a memory; littered with inner tubes, an old car seat, a playpen without a pad on the bottom, and the hundred and one things children play with in the wilderness of their own back yard.

Closer to the house was a long wooden picnic table with attached backless seats that trip you up getting in and out. It was weathered gray from years of exposure, and it creaked when you sat on it. But more stable lawn furniture appeared from porches and yards all over the neighborhood for the picnic. And large galvanized trash cans full of ice and frigid, dripping bottles of soda pop and beer stood at attention up against the enclosed back porch. The "hard stuff" was made available in the kitchen just inside the back door. A large cinder block pit was improvised for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, and three charcoal grills materialized for hamburgers and chicken and ribs. There was potato salad and a caldron of Mrs. Moskowitz' pork and beans; the best pork and beans God ever made, and German coleslaw, and the Sisters McConnell brought huge tomatoes and lettuce to garnish the burgers and a variety of salads made right out of the garden that morning, and Mrs. Jett's lamb kabobs and stuffed cabbage, and this is just some of the menu Garry outlined for my father on our front stoop that morning.

We told my father about Luka taking us one by one by the wrists and swinging us round and round until our feet left the ground and we flew at arms length above the ground. And about how he stopped swinging us after letting go of Marilyn's one arm and how she twirled like a kite stuck on a power line until he could set her right. About how she cried, and how wonderful it was, and he had to sit there on the ground and hold her and pet her until she stopped crying. And about how little Jeff, who was holding her baton for her, started doing Jerry Lewis with the baton twirling. And she got so mad she grabbed the baton and ran into the house and didn't come back out for hours.

And we told him about how grown-ups climbed up into the apple tree like kids and laid out on branches with their bottles of beer and drinks. And how we got plates of food for them. And how Luka finally got them down from there with the garden hose, and everybody was taking off their clothes and getting sprayed with the hose. And how when Luka asked my mother what she wanted to drink, she said, "I think I'll start with an Old Fashioned and get more contemporary as the day goes on," and how Luka laughed so hard he got pickle juice up his nose. And Mrs. Eagle called the police a few times because she said we were making too much noise but everyone knew it was because Estelle wouldn't have that woman on her property. And Luka talked to the police and invited Mrs. Eagle over anyway, but she said, "Estelle is a foolish old woman," and stormed back into her house and the cops laughed behind her back and had some food. And Luka was riding Garry's bicycle up the seesaw; then down again when it teetered. Garry thought that was great. And everyone danced to the radio. Even Angel danced.

"No kidding. I wish I'd seen that."

"Yeah," Garry said, "And he was dancing with your wife."

"God, I wish I'd been there. How'd they do?"

"Great!" Garry said, as if any of it meant anything.

And then, my father looked at me as if I were the only person on Earth and said, "Did you have a good time, son?"

"It was okay."

"Just okay?"

"It was okay –– all right!"

Why did he have to be like that in front of Garry? How I hated loving him and wanting his love! He should have known better than to reach out to me in front of my best friend. What could he expect but to be shot down. I know now that it was not our feeling for each other that frightened and infuriated me. It was the intensity of the feeling.