Chapter 5
He left the school but instead of driving west to pick up the parkway and head home, he drove north towards an older home. He stopped at the four corners that marked the first school that he’d ever attended, Elliott Street School. It was a three story brick and concrete place that was it was filled with spray painted graffiti now, and there was trash in front of the doors. It looked deserted. It was an old building whose last real renovation had been completed in 1905. Ron got out of his car and walked to one of the entrances that he remembered. This was where they were dismissed from when he had shop. It was right here that he’d fought Paul Peterson and had pushed his face into the dirt and made him lick the sidewalk with his tongue while kids stood around and laughed. A guard approached Ron as he stood in the vestibule looking at the metal cages that surrounded the staircase.
“What you lookin’ for?” said the short man with a broad chest and a cigar stub stuck in the side of his mouth.
“I used to go to school here,” said Ron.
“Not, no more,” said the janitor/security person.
“Can I see the gym? said Ron.
“What you want there?”
“I want to see the balcony and the indoor track that wrapped around it.”
“We don’t run no sight seein’ tours, you know man.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” said Ron. “I’m teaching down the street. I loved this place.”
“Ain’t too many people lovin it now, Mister Teaching Down the Street”
“Yeah, I know. It’s Friday. I just cashed my first paycheck ever for teaching anyone anything and I was right here.”
The security officer looked him up and down. He did look like a teacher. He was harmless and the man thought that with the broom in his hand and the knife in his pocket he wasn’t frightened. If he didn’t show the guy around, he would be sweeping the floor and suppose this guy knew somebody. “Come on then,” he said. “Ain’t no one been up in that balcony for 10 years. It’s all condemned. But I’ll take you up there.”
Upon entering, Ron could immediately hear Mr. Kloss’s voice intoning the names of the relay teams. “Army, Navy, Notre Dame, and Cal.” Ron could fly and he could kick and hit and throw and when he didn’t miss school cause of his asthma, he could make Mr. Kloss smile with his agility and strength. “Why are you absent so much, Tuck?”
“I get sick.”
“Getting sick is a weakness, boy. You can’t afford to get sick in a foxhole.”
“I’m gonna suspend you from safety patrol for two weeks, Ron. You’re sick too much.”
“Yes Sir, Mr. Kloss. I won’t get sick anymore. Can I have my belt back after that? It was a single shoulder around the waist strap that Ron had bleached so that it was bone white.
“We’ll see what happens,” said Mr. Kloss.
Ron liked the hot chocolate that the safety patrol got on cold mornings and that the girls in the home economics class that’s served them. There was Elaine Tadeo and the way she smiled and put a second marshmallow in his cup. Later that year, Ron had thrown rocks at her to prove to his friends that he didn’t really like her, but when the black kids from Broadway Junior had come up there looking for the pretty Italian girls, Ron went home at lunch and came back with a butcher knife, ready to keep anyone who came near to Elaine far away. He’d gotten caught right outside the iron mesh grated window. His mother had called the school frantic that a knife was missing. The cops had told Ron that he would be in trouble at Broadway Junior and they sent him down the street. Ron looked at the window where he’s hit the softball further than anyone except Paul Peterson, who he’d made lick the sidewalk. He flushed and went down the stairs and back to his car.
Halleck Street was a shambles. He and Rich had played stickball here everyday . This was where he’d first played football. This was where he’d told the rest of the team to line and throw him the ball and try to stop him. He ran hard and they had shied away. He knew what it was like to crash into a body or to have one crash into you and he longed for it. Now it was broken rubble, like the ruins he read about in Rome and Greece.
He was up on Rich’s door and knocking at it before he realized that he was there. There were bars on the windows and the small Italian woman was hunched over in back of the bolted door.
“It’s Ron Tuck,” he said.
She opened the door with a huge smile. “Ronald, how wonderful to see you. Come in, come in!”
“Mrs. D’Orio, I really didn’t think that you were still here.”
“We don’t give up easily, Ronald. How is your mother?”
Ron put his head down respectfully. This woman had fed him on more nights that he could remember and when she came out into the back yard and had asked if Ron wanted to stay for dinner, he had always shouted a triumphant ‘Yes.”
Now her place looked worn and torn up and used passed the point where it should have been left alone. Wallpaper hung in puffed peels in the hallway. The kitchen looked like something was crawling in it. The smells were old and not fresh and clean the way that Ron remembered them. The rooms were dark and small and Ron had remembered almost feeling like he was in the country when he’d been at the D’Orio house. She was now old and scared and Ron wondered how Richie could have ever let this happen. She seemed to have a lump on her back that was stretched over an old sweater and a plaid housedress with a raveled hem. Her lips were shaking.
“My mother is good. I was just in the neighborhood, Mrs. D’Orio.”
“Can you stay and have dinner, Ron”
“No, Ma’am, I got to be getting back now”
“Have you seen my Richie? You’re always welcome here Ronald.”
“No, Ma’am, but please give him my best.”
Ron turned and walked away from the place.
“Come back anytime, Ronald.”
He didn’t answer. He drove down to where Halleck Street met Broadway and then north towards Belleville.
Ron looked for his building. The gas station across the street was gone and the diner had been demolished. His basement apartment stood in back of an 8 foot high chain link fence with razor wire that ran along the top of it. It was a battle zone and no place for his memories.