“What do I do now?” John asked, his eyes still closed tightly.
The old man did a little more drawing on the piece of paper and spoke up. “You keep your eyes closed and walk farther down the road. Are you walking?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now you come to a tree on the side of the road. What kind of tree is it? What does it look like?”
John's face twisted as though he was straining to decide. “It's a big tree and there are shamrocks all over it. A lot of twisting roots and things, and a lot of leaves.”
The old man smiled. “That tree is your sex life. It means your sex life will be rich and full. You'll be ‘lucky in love,’ as the expression goes.”
I could feel my cheeks turn red and to my surprise I even saw John's face turn red, but that's a whole other story that I don't think he'll get around to telling you.
“Now keep walking down that road,” the old man ordered, seeming especially curious at this time. His voice built as though he was about to reach the point in the game that he himself liked best of all. He was writing away a mile a minute. “You're walking down the road and you come to a wall. The wall is as thick as eternity and it's made of stone. It stretches as high as eternity. It runs below the ground as deep as eternity. And it stretches as far to the left as eternity, and as far to the right as eternity. Can you see this wall?”
“Got it,” John admitted.
“What do you do with this wall blocking your road?” the old man asked.
I watched John's face get very serious. For a moment it seemed as though his expression was registering fear. His skin stretched and his jaw quivered, and a moment later it seemed taut with anger. I became very frightened that something horrible was happening to John, like he was on some kind of a crazy mushroom trip, overdosed on imagination. “John, what are you doing?” I asked. I watched as his mouth began to open, and the answer came out. “I'm throwing rocks at it.… I'm kicking it.… I'm trying to smash the wall, but I can't! I can't!” John almost cried!
“That is the wall of death,” the old man said, his voice starting to crumple, “and it means that when it comes time for you to die, you will fight against it with all your might. You will fight and you will struggle, and you will claw at it. You will do everything possible to escape it!” Suddenly the old man leaned back in his chair. His eyes closed, and I thought maybe he had died. Instead he started to snore. The paper he had been drawing upon fell to the floor and I scooped it up. John and I looked at it and we could practically feel the Pig-man had returned and was looking over our shoulders.
seven
I resent Lorraine saying that my cheeks turned red when it turned out that I had seen such a terrific Tree of Sex. Maybe my face was red, but it wasn't because of the guy saying I was going to be lucky in love. It was because it was getting a little hot in the house. Besides, I was the only one wearing a sweater. The old guy was just sitting there in a pair of dark, shiny trousers and a shirt that looked like it had been borrowed from a bus driver. The poor old guy had some fudge and energy, and there wasn't much else we could do right then and there. But no, Lorraine was just itching to get us into trouble, to get us more involved. She stood there making a big fuss over the man like a vampire actress waiting for a character she could really sink her teeth into. Finally he came out of his stupor and I asked the guy his name.
“What?” the old man asked, like I was just inquiring about the most absurd thing in the world.
“I said, ‘What's your name?’”
The old man looked like he was really straining his brain, and finally he whispered, “Gus.”
“What?” Lorraine asked.
“Gus,” he said again, this time more strongly. And suddenly he sat bolt upright in his chair, his eyes flickering with life. “I just had a vision,” he said.
“A what?” I asked.
“A vision,” he said. “Come closer. I can't keep straining my voice or it will disappear.”
Lorraine and I did as he asked.
“What vision?” Lorraine wanted to know.
The old man closed his eyes for a second as though rechecking his images. When he spoke he sounded like a desperate little boy. “I need you to help me,” he said. “I left something at the town house, and I need you to take me back there. My trunk, I need my black trunk.”
I could see Lorraine's face light up. Even my nostrils twitched as though I sensed an adventure.
“How can we take you?” Lorraine asked. “Shall we call a cab? Or go to Eddy and Victory and take the bus?”
“I've got wheels,” Gus said, sticking the rest of the fudge into his shirt pocket. He began to struggle with a dull-brown cardigan sweater, shoving his arms into the sleeves with excitement.
“Help me stand up,” he ordered, “and get me to the garage.”
Lorraine and I looked at each other, and this time we knew that unless we walked out of that house alone, just the two of us, and left the old guy there right that minute, we would end up getting so involved we could never let go until we knew his whole story. Lorraine made the decision for us as she moved quickly to one side of the old guy and I got on the other, and we became a pair of human crutches. We lifted him up onto his feet and then we started to walk him like a giant Barbie doll. Once we got him moving it seemed like his joints became greased and he was able to handle himself pretty well. We really only had to help him off the back porch to the yard. The garage doors looked like termite city, but when I flung them open there was a terrific beat-up canary-yellow old Studebaker convertible waiting inside.
“It's a honey, isn't it?” Gus asked.
“Oh, it's a honey,” I said.
From the look of the car, I almost expected to see a sign on the rear bumper saying “See if you can hit me.” And it was hard to tell which end was the front and which was the back.
“You can drive, can't you?” Gus wanted to know.
“Oh, sure,” I said.
“John!” Lorraine screeched, her eyes giving me a look like I was insane. “John, I think you should tell the truth.”
“I am telling the truth. Besides, this is no time to argue with your chauffeur. You know my father lets me drive the car.” Of course Lorraine and I both knew that my father only lets me back his car out of the driveway on certain occasions like when there's too much snow and he doesn't want to get his feet wet. But I always felt that if I really got my hands on a car I would be a natural driver. A driver's license is only a piece of paper, I've been known to utter. And the point was that Gus needed us. Of course there were probably about 30,000 other old people hobbling around on Staten Island who could have used us too, but I figured we had a certain responsibility to the old guy since we did crash into the house and make the poor guy cry.
I got behind the wheel and put the old guy next to me, and Lorraine sat in the death seat on the far right. I was thrilled when Gus actually gave me the key. I put it in the ignition and turned it. I couldn't help looking past Gus to Lorraine as the engine began to turn over. She had fear written all over her face as the piston chambers commenced their little explosions ordinarily known as starting. The clanking and coughing were earsplitting.
“Purrs like a kitten,” Gus sighed.
“Be careful, John,” Lorraine kept saying over and over again. “Be careful, be careful…”
Well I tell you, we had no trouble getting out of the driveway. I only stalled seven times, and before you knew it we were rolling down the hill toward Louis Street. Part of the way we were literally rolling because the engine had quit, but I finally managed to start the car and get the pistons crashing away again. Within five minutes I was driving like a pro and hardly ever swerved over the center line. I think any cop on Staten Island could have seen me drive by and thought I was at least twenty-five years old, with many years of driving experience behind me, and one thing I found out from pumping the accelerator straight off was that I would never get arrested for speeding. On a straightaway I tried to floo
r it, but it took a block before I hit twenty miles an hour.
“Lorraine, you can tell your facial capillaries to let the blood back into them,” I told her.
“Please be careful” was all she kept repeating.
“Do you mind if we put the top down?” I asked Gus.
“Love it,” he said.
“I don't think we should,” Lorraine advised.
I immediately pulled over and unsnapped the roof. I even knew enough to gas the engine while I pulled the little button, and wango! the roof leaped up into the air like a dragon opening its mouth. I could have sat there all day just watching that roof go up and down, seeing the plastic rear window fold into place. The motor that drove the roof made twice as much noise as the car engine, and I saw at least three people walking on the street stop and stare. To me it was like a fantasy coming true. I had always had a dream that I would be behind the wheel of a convertible driving up and down Victory Boulevard, and all the kids from school would be made to stand along the curb and applaud me as I drove up and down. In my dream I am usually in a Mercedes-Benz or a Rolls-Royce, but I figure a kid's got to start someplace.
I pulled back out into a lane of traffic. By the time I finished that maneuver I looked over and I thought Gus had dropped dead; instead he was sleeping. I thought it was terrific the way the old guy could catch a snooze whenever he felt like it. A couple of raindrops started to fall, but if anyone thought I was going to put the top back up on the car they were crazy. Besides, I saw there weren't enough clouds in the sky for it to really pour, but the wind sure picked up and the car started to swing in the breeze. Near the bottom of Victory Boulevard I had to make a sharp turn to the right. That's when Gus fell over and his head dropped right into Lorraine's lap. She let out a scream as though someone had just dropped a bucket of worms on her, and looked absolutely absurd trying to push him back up into a sitting position.
“Are you sure he isn't dead?” Lorraine gasped.
“No, he's snoring. Just listen hard.”
“John, where are we going?”
“Look, the town house is in St. George, right? He just wants to get some black trunk. Check the glove compartment.”
Lorraine pounded the glove compartment until it finally plopped open. She went through a pack of manuals and pamphlets until she found a registration. We were surprised to see it wasn't in Gus' name, but it would do. She read aloud. “Glenville, Parker, 107 Stuyvesant Place.”
“Oh, yeah, that's got to be right down by the museum. Do you remember in biology when Miss Bensen took the whole class down there to see all those stuffed birds of America?” I reminded her.
“John, it's raining,” Lorraine insisted on pointing out.
“It will be over in a minute.”
“Put the top up.”
“Then nobody can see us.”
“John, you're crazy.”
I took a quick glance in the backseat because sub-liminally I had noticed a lot of junk on the floor. There were some tools, loose papers, and ripped shopping bags. I also saw the handle of an umbrella.
“Use the umbrella,” I ordered, “the umbrella on the backseat.”
Lorraine looked at me as though I had just told her to eat a cockroach. “I'm not going to use an umbrella in a convertible just because you don't want to put the top up.”
“Then get wet,” I suggested.
“John, this is insane,” she babbled as she turned and reached over to grab the umbrella. “You are going to get the old man wet and he'll die of pneumonia.”
“It's going to stop any minute.”
“John, I feel ridiculous,” she said emphatically, as she pressed the little button near the umbrella handle and it opened up its huge black ribbed form.
“Look at the people look now,” I pointed out.
“Oh, they're looking all right,” Lorraine bellowed over the engine. I had to swerve again quickly to the left and Gus' head fell forward again and crashed into Lorraine's lap. She was quite a sight trying to right him with one hand. And then I had to make a right, so his head came flying over and crashed onto my shoulder.
“John, if you don't turn more carefully, you're going to break his neck.”
Suddenly a black cat came running out into the road in front of us and I smashed on the brakes. I stopped just in time and the cat moved slightly to the right of the front fender and stared at us as though it needed a quick visit to an exorcist.
“John, I just know this is an omen,” Lorraine said.
“Lorraine, please keep your omens to yourself while I'm driving. This road isn't exactly a picnic.”
“Ah, my old town,” Gus said suddenly, his head lifting up off my shoulder. “Can you smell that fresh sea air?” Lorraine and I looked at the speaking old head between us. By this time we were heading down Hyatt Street and could see the Statue of Liberty and New York Bay. Also right in front of us was Borough Hall, and beyond that the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. There were also a couple of wild bars right there where all the Coast Guard guys and shipyard workers get drunk and beat each other up so you read about it the next day in the Staten Island Advance.
“Turn down there,” Gus ordered.
“You got it,” I said. I tugged at the wheel and made a sharp tangent from the left lane to the right, causing a chorus of burnt rubber to be chanted by a couple of cars that were close behind me.
“That's my boy!” Gus said a couple times, slapping my knee. “That's my boy! This calls for a piece of fudge!” He reached into his shirt pocket and passed each of us a piece. He pushed three pieces into his mouth and began to chew like a trouper. Gus was beginning to get so excited it seemed the old-man part of him was just leaping out of his body, leaving behind a youngster. He was really beginning to remind us of the Pigman now. He was singing away, “La, la, la, la, la.” Before you knew it the old guy had Lorraine and me joining in with him. The old Studebaker kept coughing out its chug-a-lug-lug, and we tried to keep our singing to the beat of the pistons. “La, la, la, la, la.” He didn't even complain that it was raining and all we had was an umbrella up. I suppose it was right about that second that I decided this old guy was really turning out to be all right.
“Okay, quick!” the old guy ordered, “shoot this corner like a whip.”
I figured that meant turn again. Now we were on Stuyvesant Place. The Studebaker seemed to bend around the corner at the same angle as our bodies rather than lift itself on two wheels like an ordinary car would. Now the street turned into the only section on Staten Island that really looked sophisticated. A bunch of town houses all in a row, most of them looking like they could use some good sandblasting. They were packed next to each other like sardines in a can, and a lot of them had wrought-iron bars on the lower floors because there are a lot of crooks who run around the St. George area. The favorite sport of the kids on Staten Island is breaking and entering, and their second-favorite sport is beating up kids from New Jersey.
The rain had stopped and the street was covered with a smoking mist rising from the asphalt. It made me feel I was driving through an old movie. I was the romantic detective with a cigarette butt hanging from my lip, and Lorraine was my nosy girl Friday who was along for the ride. If only we had helped the Pigman this way, maybe the terrible things that happened to him wouldn't have happened.
“Brakes!” the old guy yelled. “Brakes!”
I slid to a perfect stop in front of 107 Stuyvesant Place. There was the town house, five stories of dark stone that looked like a private sanatorium for indigent berserk persons.
“Oh, my God, look what they did to her,” Gus said sadly.
There were boards and “Condemned” signs covering everything, and it took a while to get used to the sight. To tell the truth I was expecting the old guy to break down crying. But the three of us got out and he just leaned against the car shaking a mean fist at the house. Lorraine and I didn't know what to say. We thought it was best to let Gus have his little reverie, and then we could be on ou
r way again.