“Kid you big Marine!”—our greetings at the door.
“Come on boy, my brother Jimmy wants to see something about you—”
“What?”
“Oh”—trying to look unconcerned, with heavy tragic eyes falling—“he’s nothing, you babe. Come!”
He explodes laughing “Hee!” He squeezes my knee, we sit facing, hard iron racks enclose my knee as we sleek teeth at each other in the continuation of the Eediboy Marines burlying down the planks of the bridge—I feel like saying “I know about the party, Ye Boy” but I dont want to disappoint his big believing heart—We look at each other, old friends. “Come on you lad. Hat! Coat! Less go!”
We bend to the blizzard, go up Moody—Suddenly the moon wheels pale in a crack of penetrative clouds—“Look, the moon!” I cry—“Iddyboy you still believe that man in the moon with the basket of twigs?”
“Those black shapes not eyes! Not a basket of twigs, a bundle!.—It’s wood—du bois—Your eye dont believe what you see? It’s you moon, kiddo Ti Janny, all the hopeful people knows that!”
“Pourquoi un homme dans la lune? Weyondonc!” (Why a man in the moon? Come on!)
“Ey, ey,” ominous to stop, leaning hand on knee, “dont talk like that—it’s true weyondonc. You’re afraid you? You’s crazy? Ah? Tu crais pas? You dont believe? On your birthday? Dont you do believe?” Iddyboy who in church on Sundays stood straight as a post in front pews of Sainte Jeanne d’Arc turning bulging red faces when loud noises disturbed the silent priest in his silent altar—Iddyboy wanted no pretense in this world.
“It’s not true all that!”—firm atheistic adolescent denials I make.
“Non non non! A man in the moon needs that bundle of wood!” he says angrily—shudders hugely in his mighty chest—“Ah gee-boy!”—simple-minded, without alteration sprung from the blood of the pure paisans of the North, the noises issuing from his throat the refined gutturals of an eloquence to tell—“Me I believe in Le Bon Dieu, Jacky”—palm up—“He bless me, make me, save me—” He takes my arm, friendly—“Hey!” he yells suddenly remembering the swishy sissy girl of Gershom Avenue who flew along the kiddie sidewalks of dust red ridden dusk flapping his behind with one dainty wink at the hole in the sky, Iddyboy says “I’m So So Su Su that kid there we see flashipott arouns—I’m a sissy boy too!” and he wiggles off with his powerful butt like iron cannons in coat storms and minces with his nail of a finger in the cold night—He comes back, puts his arm around me again, laughs, conducts me up the street and to the party believing in me—says, loud so you can hear two blocks up, “Argh, we are good friends, ey?”—he shakes me, makes me see love in Heaven, makes me ope my stupidness and innocence eyes—his cheeks rich, red, hotnecked to go and sleek up the world through his happy teeth—“See, you babe?”
28
We climb the steps of the little bungalow, there’s just a kitchen light inside, we go in, Jimmy his older brother is smiling at us from the middle of the linoleum—There’s a kitchen, livingroom, diningroom, one extra bedroom made by the childless young couple into a rumpus type room—Strange silence—
“Take off your coat and rubbers Jack,” they both instruct me. I do so.
Out of the rumpus room comes a great shriek of voices “Happy Birthday!!!” My father bursts out, followed by my mother from another room, Bloodworth and Maggie from another, my sister Nin behind, Jimmy’s wife Jeannette, Lousy, Taffy Truman, Ed Eno, others—a swim of faces in my eternity—the house roars. “Wheee!” fiendishly shouting Jimmy is opening a quart of whisky, pushing it at me—I take a burning swig to roars—A great cake emerges, with candles—The opening festivities—I blow them out—Cheers! We’re standing yelling eating cake in the kitchen—
“Give the guest of honor a big piece there! Put some weight on him for next fall!”—laughter, a girl’s screech of delight from beyond, I’ve had no time to say hello to Ma or Pa or Maggie in the crowd excitement, the too-much world—I see Iddyboy trying to be social like in movies the cake in his big paw laughing with Martha Alberge his girl and he lets out a big explosive Phnu! of laughter that kicks in his big battering-ram belly and blasts up his throat and out comes spewing a streamer of snivel all over the cake—nobody sees, he falls, kneels on the floor, holds his belly laughing—His fantastic brother Jimmy is screaming excitedly some dirty joke, my father is doing the same thing near the stove, the house-top shivers maniacally in the great now-howling swept-over blizzard, heat beats at the windows, I grab Maggie by the waist, I yell—Door opens, fresh arrivers—red shouting faces turn to it as new people fall in. Roars of approval, applauses, raisings of bottles—“Oh Ti Jean,” my Ma is shouting in my ear, “there was supposed to be millions of your school friends here tonight!—Ti Nin fixed you a grand party—not half of em came—you shoulda seen the list she made with Maggie—”
“Maggie too?”
“Sure! Oh Jacky”—mournfully gripping me, flushed, her best cotton dress, white ribbon in her hair, she adjusts my T-shirt under the huge hot idiotboy sweater, “it’s an awful storm, the radio’s saying it’s the biggest in years—” Then gleefully: “Sssst gimme a big kiss and hug, and hey shh dont tell nobody but here’s a five spot I’m slippin you aye?—tiens—that’s for your seventeenth birthday take in a good show and a big spree on ice cream, invite Maggie to come with you—Ah pet?”
“Boo hoo hee ha ha!” Jimmy Bissonette let out his mad maniac laugh you could hear three blocks away soaring over the blabbers and hubbubings, I stared in amazement, they’d told me this man many a night in wild Lowell afterhours’d challenge anyman to have a bigger one that he had and show how he could shove seven or eight or nine or ten quarters off a table with his piece, all amid roaring laughters of wildparty Canadians of lake cottage clubs in crazy lurid summer with ivy blue moon on the lake or winter when the piano music, smoke, shouting and leaping took place behind bleak shutters and pale reeds creak in stiff ice (the unused divingboard)—to bets, screeches, Tolstoyan hurrahs and huzzahs of revel night—Jimmy insane for girls—on strong squat legs he rushed with wildsweat joy around the wooden bars of Moody, in clubs at spectral orange houseparties with telegraph wires outside the bay window (Ford Street, Cheever Street)—his ears stuck out—he raced anxiously—his feet rapidly scissored fast little steps—you’d see just the proud raised head the bursting gargling eediboy joy then the long-waist body underneath pumped along by whirring feet . . . spats sometimes, lost Saturday nights of French Canadian ecstasy—
And there’s my father, in the press he’s only roared, coughed, shouted his own partying words from behind knotted groups of the kitchen—he’s in this big new brown suit, his face is dark and almost brick red, his collar wilting, necktie raggedly hopelessly rattysnarled and twisted at his tortured sweaty neck—“Ha ha dont give me that stuff Maggie!” arms around her squeezing her, patting her behind “I know you never showed them the way to wear a bathingsuit I sure am sure you should of!” (Huge cough)—the which Maggie weathers unblinking like detonations—At the windows watchers Aw and OO the storm—
“Gonna be a pippin.”
“Look at those big thick flakes falling straight down. Sure sign.”
“Yeah with a high wind comin up always means a big whopper—”
“Well let’s have a little song someone!—Hey Jimmy sing em your horse song your dirty song!”
“A high school party! Take it easy! Moo hoo hoo hwee ha ha!”
Vinny, G.J., Scotty show up, in big coats, scarfs, with girls, late—the storm—Friends of the family pour in whooping, snow flakes, bottles—the party’s wild. Charley Bloodworth’s three buddies Red Moran, Hal Quinn and Taffy Truman from the Highlands grimly sit in a corner, the French Canadians yell in French, the boys hear it with rat-tat-tat disbelief, composts and rim-posts, jabberous, impossible—my father yelling “Okay let’s talk English so we can chat with Bloody and the boys here—buncha ballplaye
rs you know—say Red, wasnt your father the old Jim Hogan that had that meat market up on whattayacallit Square off Westford Street, you know the one I mean—”
“No,” shouting back, “no Mister Duluoz it’s an old relative of ours had that store—Luke Moran not Hogan—”
“I remember him—had that little store a few years earlier near West Street—old Maria was his wife—he had jews harps hanging on his wall—Years we traded there. Centreville.”
“I dont know who that is—“Red’s skeptical. “No—”
They cant come to an understanding who Red’s father is—Taffy Truman the great young pitcher sits, hands closely joined, waits.
Beside him Harold Quinn the hero of Bloodworth’s breed and hill, I’d seen him calf-bulgant on second base in dusty Twi League eves on South Common, the crack of the bat, ball skitters in rough patch grass of second base, Harold Quinn’s stepped over and scooped it up with an authoritative glove, has swept it off to first quickly beginning a double play, hustles back to his keystone sack, taps it with a cleated foot, waits, the runner slides to him in field dust clouds, he clombs up the low throw in his glove for the downward unassuming putout tap on the fellow’s shoulder, pulls back his left foot turnaway from kicking spikes, spits silently between teeth as the dust starts spreading, his little spit spurt hangs in midair, falling into the dust, the man is OUT—Beside him Red Moran bends forward in his chair holding a small strawhat toy from the rattles of the party—
Bang, crash, all my Lowell raving wild.
29
Heat generates to the ceiling. Vapor in the windows. The wild windows of other houses and Saturday night parties shining the spilling molten hot gold of real life. I’m sweating, the big athletic sweater is killing me, making me hot, wetfaced, sad at my own party. In the kitchen the older folks are already half in the bag, rounds of nips, drinking songs; in the rumpus the youngsters start a post office game with gleeful couples running into the cold dark blizzard windowed unheated parlor to neck. Maggie is the star. Bloodworth, Moran, Quinn, Truman, Lousy even, everybody’s rushing her in and out of the parlor for passionate kisses—my face burns with jealousy. I rush her in when the spin-bottle points at us—
“You’re kissin Bloodworth like mad tonight.”
“Aint we sposed to, dope? That’s the rules.”
“Yeah but he enjoys it—you enjoy it—”
“So?”
“So—I feel—” I grab her, shivering; she fights out. “Never mind.”
“Old jealous. Let’s go back—”
“Why right away?”
“Cause—I’m cold in here—Lissen! They’re laughin!” And she rushes back into the heated rooms, I follow emptily reaching. Alternately cold and hot, the next time we hit the parlor she flies into my arms and bites my lips and I feel tears in my ears, wet—“Oh Jack, love me tonight! All those fellers are after me!—that Jimmy felt me up—”
“Dont let em!”
“Oh you lunkhead—” Hugging herself at the whited windows. “Look the blizzard has put a sheet of snow on the pane—God I wonder if my father had to go out and work in this muck—I oughta call home—Maybe Roy’s car’ll be stuck—“In my arms, curled, brooding:—“Did you hear about one of the Clancy triplets dying gee it was one of those things a sore throat and she died within a day—I could tell you a lot about it but it’s really heartbreaking so let’s forget about it—”
“You always follow the bad news around South Lowell always always.”
“I’m just so skeered somethin’ll happen to my family—Did you hear about Eddie Coledana too? You know Eddie he’s in the hospital a freight elevator fell from the fourth floor in the Suffolk Knitting Mills Company where he was a weaver, something went wrong, the elevator was falling the freight in it fell on top of him isnt that awful? Oh why do I think of it now at your party?”
“Maggie—Maggie—”
“How’s the kid?”—in my ear—“Love of my life—”
“Am I, honest?—what would I have done if you hadnt come to my party—”
“Are you mad?”
“No—nah.”
“—that’s the question before the house. Oh,” sighing, “I guess I’m just a scatterbrain.” Voluptuously gloomy in my hopeless arms. I’m afraid to say any more to bore her. Wild, everybody talking to me, through human mazes all night I try to struggle to her—knowing that I’m losing her now—Lousy has me by the arm trying to cheer me up; he’s beginning to see; I feel his love for me, man to man, boy to boy, “Aw Jack, easy you babe, easy—you know dont you that I’m still saying that was the best dinner I ever had up your house Sunday, ah?—why it even beats the hamburgers you made last summer—Just for me! You goodhearted Jack! I came in the house, you woke up, you put a half-pounda butter in the frying pan, big pats of meat, zzzt, big smokes, onions, katchup—zeet? The greatest cook in the world!”
Together we watch Maggie rushing off into the parlor with Bloodworth, Red Moran pulling her the other way—I feel like sawing those boys through a crack in the Scotch wood of the Irish Revolutionary doorjamb—
“It’s all right, Zagg, she’s a young foolish girl having a big time—I didnt kiss her I laughed—I laughed! Hee hee! Just a girl, Zagg, just a girl. Next week we down our parafanelyers for a little training, right?—baseball! Things are dishing out! Iddyboy our faithful pal will be catcher, Kid Babe Sam me on third base—just like as always, nothing changes you babe!”
“Demand your rights!” yells Scotty joining us, in the middle of the room we stand wound-in-arms touching heads.
“Scot on third—G.J. the magnificent on the mound—a great season of funny games!—All’s well!”
Gus joins us—“Zagg I dont wanta say anything but Maggie Cassidy just sat on my hand and wouldnt get off, I tell you I was never so embarrassed in all my life I swear on my mother’s name—and she wouldnt budge! And that huge Emil Blooah your father he sure does look at a girl’s ass when she walks away but all the time when she’s sittin on his lap he’s tweaking her chin and saying jokes you know? Zagg what could he do?—he’d kill a girl just by laying on top of her—You shoulda seen how huge his eyes popped! I was scared for Maggie. I warn you Zagg, Frank Merriwell your arch foe has slipped me a couple bucks not to tell you this—”
Lousy: “When this party is over, my friendlies, I’m goin home, you know how the bed feels.” In my ear whispering: “Pauline’s deeply in love with you, Jack, no shit! She’s been raving about you every time I see why even yesterday in my spare as I came in the room she ask me if I wasnt gonna do my homework, I said part of it—Boy I never touched my books for the rest of the period. Asking questions here and there—She even said I laugh like you, I talk like you, the same motions. She said if you ever get fatter she is too. Honest Jack she’s even talking about the future. She’s going to marry you and everything you possibly can think of. I’m not supposed to say this according to what she says. She asks me a lot of questions. She asks me if you have any other girlfriends. She dont mention Maggie. To make it look good on her side I said ‘No’ in a slow voice—I wish I had a whole day to myself so I could tell you all what she says. Listen you sneaking rat what did you tell Pauline that first Sunday you went up to her house—last November after the game—Dont say nothing face to face? Well I know different, she says to me ‘Oh I know something about you,’ she said, ‘you should be ashamed—’ Give the full details—Ah? confess what you said!” I’d told her about Lousy and I demonstrating that first kiss. “So long you sneaking Belgium Babe! I’m going to dream up some black angels in my nice white pillow now you babe—What a storm for sleep!”