And after that, I went out to explore the great metropolis of Marysville, New York.
Terrific.
Here are the stats for stupid Marysville:
Eight beat-up stores and a bar out front of where we were living.
Four blocks of houses as tiny and beat up as ours.
Twelve blocks of houses that had grass out front, a lot with bikes lying on their lawns like their kids were too stupid to know that anyone could walk off with them.
Big trees along all the streets.
Eighteen houses with flags outside.
Twenty-four sprinklers going.
Fourteen people out on the stoops, sitting a round because there wasn't any boring thing else to do in boring Marysville. Two who waved at me. One with a transistor radio on—except it was the stupid Mets and not the Yankees.
Two dogs asleep on their porches. One barked. One looked like it was too hot to think of chasing me, even though he knew I didn't belong.
A girl rode by on a bike with a basket on the handlebars. She looked at me like the dogs did, and then went on. Probably she knew I didn't belong too.
I hate this town.
I hate that we had to come here.
I decided to take a left, then go back to The Dump along another block so people didn't think I was lost or something. And so I turned the corner and looked down the street. There was the girl again, putting her bike in a rack and getting ready to head up into this brick building that was trying to look a whole lot more important than it should because no matter how important it looked it was still in stupid Marysville.
I crossed the street like I'd done it a million times before. It was shadowy under the maples in front of the building.
The girl saw me coming. She reached into the basket and pulled out a chain with pink plastic all around it. She looped it around the bike and the rack and clicked it all together and spun the combination lock before I had crossed the curb. Then she looked up.
I pointed to the chain. "Is that because of me?" I said.
"Should it be?" she said.
I looked over the bike. "Not for this piece of junk," I said. "And if it wasn't a piece of junk and I did want it, a pink chain wouldn't stop me."
She turned and picked up the books from the basket. "Is there something you do want?"
"Not in this town."
Her eyes narrowed. She held her books close to her—like my mother with her plants. And then I knew something.
This is what I knew: I was sounding like Lucas when he was being the biggest jerk he could be, which was usually just before he beat me up.
I was sounding like Lucas.
"You must have just moved here," she said.
I decided I wouldn't be Lucas.
"A few hours ago," I said. I put my hands in my pockets and sort of leaned back into the air. Cool and casual.
But I was too late.
"That's a shame," she said. "But maybe you'll get run over and I won't have to chain my bike anymore. Now I'm going up into the library." She started to talk really slow. "A library is a place where they keep books. You probably have never been in one." She pointed to the street. "Go over there and walk down the broken white line with your eyes closed, and we'll see what happens."
"I've been in plenty of libraries before," I said.
She smiled—and it wasn't the kind of smile that said I love you—and she skipped up the six marble steps toward the marble entrance. You know how much I was hoping she would trip on the top step and scatter her books everywhere and she'd look at me like I had to come help her and I wouldn't but maybe I would?
But she didn't trip. She went in.
And so what if I've never been in a library before? So what? I could have gone into any library I wanted to, if I wanted to. But I never did, because I didn't want to. You think she's been to Yankee Stadium like I have? You think Joe Pepitone's jacket is hanging up in her basement?
I climbed the six steps—and she didn't see me trip on the top one, so it didn't matter. I pushed open the glass door and went in.
It was dark inside. And cool. And quiet. And maybe stupid Marysville was a dump, but this place wasn't. The marble outside led to marble inside, and when you walked, your footsteps echoed, even if you had sneakers on. People were sitting around long tables with green-shaded lamps, reading newspapers and magazines. Past the tables was a desk where a woman with her glasses on a chain looped around her neck was working as if she didn't know how dumb glasses look when you've got them on a chain looped around your neck. And past her started the shelves, where I figured the stuck-up girl with the bike was, picking out a new stack of books to put into her basket and take back to her pretty little Marysville house.
Suddenly I wasn't sure I wanted her to see me.
So when I saw another staircase—marble again—circling up to the next floor, I took it. Its steps were smooth and worn, as if lots of people like the girl with the bike had been climbing up here for lots of years. Even the brass banister shone bright from all the hands that had run along it.
So what if everyone in stupid Marysville comes into the stupid library every stupid day? So what?
I got to the top and into this big open room with not much. There was a painting on the wall, a guy with a rifle across his chest looking as if he was having a vision or something. And in the middle of the room, there was this square table with a glass case on top. And that was it. All that space, and that was it. If my father had this space, he'd fill it with tools and boards and a drill press and a lathe and cans and stuff before you could spit twice. There'd be sawdust on the floor, cobwebs on the ceiling, and the smell of iron and machine oil everywhere.
I went over to the table to see how come it was the only lousy thing in the whole lousy room.
And right away, I knew why.
Underneath the glass was this book. A huge book. A huge, huge book. Its pages were longer than a good-size baseball bat. I'm not lying. And on the whole page, there was only one picture. Of a bird.
I couldn't take my eyes off it.
He was all alone, and he looked like he was falling out of the sky and into this cold green sea. His wings were back, his tail feathers were back, and his neck was pulled around as if he was trying to turn but couldn't. His eye was round and bright and afraid, and his beak was open a little bit, probably because he was trying to suck in some air before he crashed into the water. The sky around him was dark, like the air was too heavy to fly in.
This bird was falling and there wasn't a single thing in the world that cared at all.
It was the most terrifying picture I had ever seen.
The most beautiful.
I leaned down onto the glass, close to the bird. I think I started to breathe a little bit more quickly, since the glass fogged up and I had to wipe the wet away. But I couldn't help it. Dang, he was so alone. He was so scared.
The wings were wide and white, and they swooped back into sharp rays. And between these, the tail feathers were even sharper, and they narrowed and narrowed, like scissors. All the layers of his feathers trembled, and I could almost see the air rushing past them. I held my hand as if I had a pencil in it and drew on the glass case, over the tail feathers. They were so sharp. If my hand had shaken even a tiny bit, it would have ruined the whole picture. I drew over the ridges of the wings, and the neck, and the long beak. And then, at the end, I drew the round and terrified eye.
On the table beside the display case was a printed card. I put it in my back pocket.
When I got home, Mom had brought two hot dogs back from the diner, wrapped in aluminum foil and filled with ketchup and mustard and pickle relish and sauerkraut like in Yankee Stadium, and I know because I've been to Yankee Stadium, which you might remember. She was moving around the boxes and still cleaning in the kitchen, and we could hear my father downstairs clanking away at his tools and swearing that Mr. Big Bucks Ballard wasn't going to get away with being such a freaking cheapskate and what did they take him fo
r? Some kind of a jerk?
Well, he wasn't some kind of a jerk, he said when he came back upstairs.
He wasn't some kind of a jerk, he said when he told me and my brother to carry all our stuff upstairs and sort it out, which I ended up doing by myself because my brother wouldn't.
He wasn't some kind of a jerk, he said when he hollered up at us to cut out the wrestling and turn out the light and go to sleep—which hadn't really been wrestling but my brother trying to find out where I'd put the jacket, which he still didn't know belonged to Joe Pepitone and which he didn't really want anyway so he wasn't half trying.
That night, I lay in the dark and drew the falling bird in the air: the wings, the tail feathers, the long beak. The eye. I drew them all again and again and again, trying to feel the wind through the feathers, wondering how whoever drew it had made it feel that way.
I fell asleep.
The terrified eye.
On Sunday, as soon as I woke up, I could tell it was going to be one of those days where the temperature is so high that you wonder how anything can still be alive. It was hardly morning, but already the room was sweating hot. If there had been curtains, they would have hung like they were dead.
When I came downstairs, Mom was already in the kitchen, sweating, trying to keep the pancakes warm in an oven that only kind of worked, and sizzling bacon in the frying pan over the one burner that lit, and scrambling eggs in the bowl next to the frying pan, and timing it all so that when Dad came down he could eat the pancakes and bacon, and then the scrambled eggs cooked in the bacon grease and he wouldn't have anything to complain about. I guess Mom figured it was worth the sweat.
I went outside so that I wouldn't throw off the timing. Everything was white and glarey. The sun wasn't up that far, but you still had to squint, and the light gave everything that kind of droopy feeling that lets you know this is going to be a long and slow and drippy day and you better think about finding a pool someplace and how that first cold plunge is going to feel great.
Not that stupid Marysville would even think of having a pool.
I waited by the back door as the sun got hotter, staring at the hard-packed dirt of the backyard, wondering how even the few patches of crabgrass were still alive. I waited until after my father had eaten and gone off somewhere with Ernie Eco. I waited until after my brother came down and ate the rest of the pancakes and then went off somewhere, probably with whoever he could find who had a police record. Then I went inside. My mother was folding a wad of newspaper and putting it under the wobbly kitchen table.
"You've been in the sun," she said.
I nodded. "It's already pretty hot out."
"Can I scramble you some eggs?"
I shook my head. "I can do it." I broke two eggs into the frying pan. The bacon grease was still hot, and the eggs began frying up pretty quick.
"Do you think you're going to be happy here?" she said.
I watched the eggs start to turn white. "I guess," I said. "Here as anywhere. How about you?"
"Me?" she said. "Here as anywhere." She got up from underneath the kitchen table.
I'm not lying when I say that Hollywood actresses would kill for my mother's smile. You think Elizabeth Taylor can smile? If you saw my mother's smile, you wouldn't even let Elizabeth Taylor in the same room.
If Joe Pepitone saw my mother's smile, he would give up baseball for her. That's how beautiful her smile is.
She put some toast on for the two of us, and I searched through all the boxes still stacked in the kitchen until I found some strawberry jam, and by then the egg yolks were too hard but who cares and we each had one and split the toast and we sat there quiet in the heat, me looking up to watch her smile and wondering how I could ever draw it, it was that beautiful.
I felt my hand trying to figure out how to do it. But it was like trying to draw the feathers of the bird. It didn't feel like my fingers were going the way they should. I knew my fingers weren't going the way they should.
We finished breakfast, then cleaned up together. Afterward we unpacked all the dishes and pots and dry food and stuff and put everything away. (I carried out the box of broken dishes without unwrapping them.) By then, it was almost 150 degrees in the kitchen, but when we looked around, everything was settled just the way she wanted it, and when I said, "I don't think I've ever been in a room where you could fry eggs while holding them in your hand," she went over to the sink, filled a glass full of cold water, turned, and—I'm not lying—threw the whole thing all over me.
She did.
Then she smiled again and started to laugh, and I started to laugh, and I took another glass and filled it up and she said "Douggie, you better not—" and then I threw the water over her and she laughed even louder until she started to snort and then we both laughed even harder and she filled her glass again and I filled my glass again and before long everything was dripping and it wasn't because of the humidity.
Then my father came home with Ernie Eco. Walked into the wet kitchen.
My mother looked at him, then opened a cabinet door and pulled down the Change Jar. She handed me four quarters and told me that we needed a gallon of milk—which we really didn't need but I'm not stupid. I left through the back door, crossed the hard-packed dirt, and was gone before whatever happened happened.
***
That night, I heard everything through the cardboard walls. The Dump wasn't a wreck like he said. And so what if Ernie Eco saw it? So what?
I lay in the dark, the criminal snores of my brother honking in the bunk beneath me, and I thought of my mother's sweet smile. Maybe she could take me to Yankee Stadium.
I felt my fingers moving again, trying to get that smile right.
I went back to the library on Monday, a little while after my father swore himself out of the house and headed off to the Ballard Paper Mill, where he was going to let Mr. Big Bucks Ballard know he wasn't some kind of a jerk. When my mother told him that maybe he shouldn't say anything and he should be happy to have a job, he said something to her that you don't need to hear but that I heard fine, since the walls in The Dump are, like I said, cardboard.
So I got to the library way too early because it was still dark inside, and I sat on the marble steps to wait, since what else do you think I'm going to do in stupid Marysville, New York? I mean, it wasn't like Horace Clarke was around to bat with.
So I guess I waited most of the morning. When people walked by, they'd look at me like I didn't belong there. You know what that feels like after a while?
I'm not lying, if Joe Pepitone had walked by, he would have stopped. He would have sat down next to me on the stupid steps and we would have talked about the season, like pals. Just talking. How maybe the season wasn't going as good as he wanted. How maybe he'd only had thirteen home runs last year, but so what? He had thirty-one the year before that. And even though he wasn't playing as many games this year, he'd probably get way past thirteen. Stuff like that.
And then someone would notice that Joe Pepitone was sitting on the steps of the library with me, and the news would spread all around stupid Marysville, and people like the girl with the stupid pink chain would start to gather and they'd all look at me and wish they were sitting on the steps with Joe Pepitone. And then Joe Pepitone would say, "Hey, Doug, it's getting crowded around here. What say we go someplace and throw a few?" And we'd get up and walk through the crowd, and the girl with the stupid bike would have to back away and everyone would look at us and they'd wish they were the ones walking someplace with Joe Pepitone to throw a few.
So I waited on the library steps.
But Joe Pepitone didn't come.
The girl with the bike did.
I looked at her. "You going to the library again?" I said.
"No," she said, "I'm not going to the library again. What are you doing here?"
"What does it look like?"
"It looks like you're waiting for the library to open."
"That's right." I leaned back agains
t the stairs. Pretty cool, like before.
She got off the bike and flipped down the kickstand. "Do you think I can trust you?" she said.
I wondered if this was supposed to be a trick.
"Sure," I said. Kind of slowly. Probably not so cool.
"Then watch this for me."
She walked down the block. I leaned forward and saw her turn into a store. After a minute, she came out with two Cokes in her hand. She walked back and handed me one. It was so cold, there was still ice on the outside of the bottle, and frozen air came out of the open top like fog.
She sat down next to me. "You didn't steal my bike," she said.
"This piece of junk?"
"You know, you might have to wait a long time," she said.
"Where did you get these?"
"My father owns Spicer's Deli."
"So you just went in and told him to give you two Cokes and he gave them to you?"
"No, I didn't just go in and tell him to give me two Cokes. I asked for a Coke for me and a Coke for the skinny thug sitting on the library steps."
"The skinny thug?" I looked around. "Is someone else here?"
"The library is only open on Saturdays," she said. "And since today is Monday, you're going to be here for a while. So I felt sorry for you and got you a Coke."
"How do you know it's only open on Saturdays?"
She looked at me like I was visiting from Planet ZX-15. "Most people can tell when they read the sign posted on the door that says the library is open only on Saturdays."
I took a sip of the Coke. "I didn't see the sign," I said. "And what kind of a library is only open on Saturdays?"
"Why do you care?" she said.
I pulled the card from the display case out of my pocket and showed her.
"'Arctic Tern,'" she read aloud. "You want to see an Arctic tern? Wouldn't it be a whole lot more likely to find one in, say, a zoo?"
"A painting of one," I said, and took another sip of the Coke.
"That's not how you drink a really cold Coke," she said.