Archives for November 9, 2013

Part 3

Chapter 80

 

 

 

 

            Hank, Ron, and Robin sat in a circle on the floor around a coffee table smoking a joint in their apartment. It was very good pot, the kind with a golden tinge and a deep resin, which blackened the sides of the white Zig-zag in which it was rolled. They were listening to a new album from The Eagles. Hank bought it from the music store where he worked.

            Robin stopped smoking halfway through the joint and sipped white wine from a delicately shaped pink glass that was shaped like a large V. She held it in both hands and grinned as she stared at their faces and listened to the music.

            Ron rolled another joint as soon as they had finished the first. Hank said, “I can’t, man. I have to go to work.”

            Robin smiled to herself and wished that they could get rid of him. It had been Ron’s idea to have him live with them. It allowed them to afford a much nicer apartment, but she didn’t like Hank and she hated the loss of privacy.

            Ron lit the second joint and Hank walked on his toes to his room where he put on his shoes and walked down the stairs from their second floor apartment, got into his tan VW and was gone.

            This was their third apartment together. The first had been when they decided to live together and spent a summer in Rahway, staying in Warren Lashly’s room while he was in Greece. Then they moved to Elizabeth and had a place that Robin loved in Bayway, but Ron hated it and found this place and convinced her to have Hank live with them. It was a nice apartment. Robin loved living with Hank’s two cats, Leni and Bob. She was going to school in New York City and working full time in Westfield. Her days were long and busy and she liked it that way. It made the weekends seem like so much more of a pleasure.

            Ron was working an insurance scam that paid him $5000 a year, and was going to school at a State College. As he smoked the joint, he stroked the side of her face with the backs of the fingers of his left hand. Then he dipped his finger into her glass and coated her lips with the sweet, dry wine. He put down the joint and kissed her.

            Robin moved into his lap and curled her arms around his neck. He felt the press of her breasts against his chest. The kiss was long. She gazed into his green eyes and saw them tinged with the red that came from the smoke. Then she stood up and slid her panties down as he watched her. She was wearing a light cotton summer dress that was loose and covered in small flowers. She straddled his lap, undid his belt, pulled down his zipper, found him hard and slid him into her. His hands squeezed her cheeks as she bobbed up and down like a happy cork on the ocean.

            Then they heard the door open and heard footsteps on the stairs. Abruptly, she pulled off of him, picked up her panties and hurried into their bedroom while Ron fumbled with his pants. Hank didn’t come back into the living room but went to his room, picked up the check that he had forgotten and left the apartment again without a word.

            Ron found her sitting on the bed.

            “This isn’t working, Ron.”

            “I know.”

            “This is what you wanted. This is what you created. Fix it.”

            “How do you want me to fix it?”

            She fixed him with a hard stare. “Get rid of him or help me find my own place.”

            Ron’s face looked hurt. His long brown hair was covering his right eye and he lifted it back over his ear. “You would want to live somewhere without me?”

            Robin thought, how could he be so smart and at the same time so dense? She enunciated very clearly and spoke slowly in a very small voice. “No, Ron but I’m unhappy. You promised that if I was unhappy that I wouldn’t have to stick with it. When you were unhappy in Elizabeth, we moved, didn’t we?”

            “He’s been my friend for a long time. I can’t just kick him out.”

            “Do you love me?”

            “You know I love you.”

            “Do you like seeing me unhappy?”

            “I didn’t know that you were unhappy.”

            “Then you haven’t been paying attention.”

            Robin knew that last thing would stick in his head. He hated the idea that he might be missing something. She watched his eyes flicker and saw his brain working.

            “Can we wait until after the semester is over?”

            “Maybe you can. I can’t.”

            Ron reached out for her, but she pulled away and got off the bed. “I’m really not in the mood right now, Ron.” She grinned to herself. Leaving him flustered like this was fun and he never saw her doing it until it was too late. “I’m taking a ride down to see my mother.”

            Ron nodded. She knew that he wouldn’t want to go with her there. Let him think about what she had said a little bit.

            Robin still wasn’t back when Hank came home from work. Ron had two rolled joints waiting. Hank made himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t ask where Robin was. He didn’t realize that he had almost walked in on them.

            Halfway through the first joint, Ron said, “Hank, we gotta move.”

            “Where do you want to go?” said Hank.

            “It’s not where exactly. Robin and I need to be alone. This just isn’t working anymore. It isn’t natural. It isn’t fair to her.”

            Hank stopped smoking the joint and lit a cigarette. Ron lit one too. “So it’s her idea?”

            Ron tried to look him in the eye. He said, “No, it’s our idea.”

            They heard the front door open and shut and heard Robin on the stairs. The cats ran to greet her, tails up straight. They heard her talking to the cats on the stairs.

            “Robin, can you come in here a minute?”

            She came into the room, smelled the pot and said, “Give me a few minutes.”

            Ron said, “I was just telling Hank that we needed to live alone.”

            Ron and Hank looked at each other as they waited. Their friendship had been long and strong. Hank was not doing well. He’d stopped confiding his feelings to Ron after he realized that Ron shared everything that he said with Robin. Hank understood that she wanted him gone. They’d lived together almost a year. They had both tried, but there was no place for them to connect other than Ron and she wanted him for herself. Ron’s face showed Hank that he just wanted to get this over with.

            Robin put on the light flowered dress and took her panties off. Ron was going to go to sleep a happy boy tonight. He’d listened to her.

            Hank said, “It’ll take me a while to find a new place.”

            Robin slid down next to Ron and parted her thighs slightly. She touched his arm. “How long do you think it will take, Hank?” She tried to say it gently. She knew she was being impatient and that she had let it go on too long and that now what was becoming haste had really been pent up frustration.

            “I don’t know yet. I’ll look around. I’ll keep to myself until then.”

            Ron felt a pang but Robin squeezed his arm ever so promisingly.

            Hank got up and put his cigarettes into the breast pocket of his button down shirt. “Goodnight.”

            Ron and Robin exchanged a grin when he was gone. She said, “I didn’t think that you’d do it that fast.”

            Ron put his head down. “You said that you’d live somewhere else.”

 

Chapter 81

 

            The radio was playing Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Elton John sang, “Maybe you’ll get a replacement. There’s plenty like me to be found. Mongrels who ain’t got a penny, sniffing for tidbits like you…”

            The music escalated and his voice rose. Ron thought about his class. He’d been reading Keats. He’d typed out a verse from Ode to a Nightingale and taped it over his desk on the wall. He wondered what Keats would have thought of the song. He wouldn’t have known about the Wizard of Oz.

            Now the radio was playing Desperado and Ron rode along on the sound of the vocal and its simple words. He wasn’t getting any younger either. He was almost twenty-four and still didn’t have a degree.

            Like it always was, the parking lot was packed. Ron searched up and down the long rows of cars and finally would up rolling slowly along next to a student who was on the way back to her car. The walk to the class was a long one and Ron slung his book bag over his shoulder and walked quickly. He liked to move at a good pace and especially liked blowing passed people who were meandering.

            The class was on the top floor of a large square brick building. He settled into his desk and waited.  The professor was a short, heavy-set man with very curly hair. His name was Grant Pritchard and his reputation for being a good history teacher was accurate. The class waited while he set up the projector.

            “Abraham Zapruder purchased a Bell and Howell Zoomatic camera in November of 1962.  The camera was relatively new and he didn’t use it much. This was the original cartridge that came with the film. The first twenty five feet of the film are family shots that were taken on his patio.”

            Ron thought about the sheet that Rocky used to hang in their basement apartment so that they could watch the videos that he took with his camera. Then he shoved those memories away, like he always did.

            “He told his family that he was bringing his camera to work that day so that he could film the president’s motorcade. It was quite by chance that he was there and the record that he made was a coincidence that has provided the most valid argument to date about the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. We’re going to watch that film, which until recently has not been available to the public.”

            Ron had seen the Zapruder film a few years ago in Quimpy’s garage apartment. It was Quimpy who had first told him about an author named Mark Lane. Quimpy had told him about Harold Weisberg’s Whitewash and Josiah Thompson’s Six Seconds in Dallas. Ron read all three books and knew where Grant Pritchard was going.

            “At the time of the assassination, Zapruder screamed to his secretary, ‘They killed him. They killed him.’ Later he was heard saying, ‘I know he’s dead. I saw his head explode like a firecracker. It’s the worst thing that I have ever seen.”

            Ron remembered the part of the film where Kennedy’s head exploded and a flash could be seen coming from the front of his brain when the bullet struck. He wasn’t sure that he ever wanted to see it again.

            Pritchard stopped speaking and ran the film. The classroom was dark and silent. When the bullet hit Kennedy, he heard gasps coming from his classmates. Pritchard stopped the film and then ran it back to the seconds after Kennedy’s car emerged from in back of a sign. He painstakingly went through each frame, showing Kennedy grabbing both hands to his throat. Jacqueline was reaching for him. He slumped against her shoulder and then the shot blew his brains all over the back seat of the car and her. She tried to crawl out of the back of the limousine and a Secret Service agent climbed on the trunk of the car. The flowers that she had been carrying flew into the air.  She fell onto the backseat floor of the car, which was now speeding off.

            “This is what truly happened to our President,” said Pritchard. “Seeing this film makes it impossible to believe that the President was shot from the rear, where Oswald is said to have been. The question is why the government of the United States has kept these frames of the film a secret for the last ten years and why they covered up the assassination of the President of The United States.”

            When the class was over, Ron stayed behind to talk with Pritchard. He told the professor about the books that he had read and that how his friend had been researching the assassination for more than eight years now.

            “Would you be interested in doing some work for the Assassination Information Bureau?”

            Ron thought about that. He was pursuing a degree in English. This wasn’t going to have anything to do with that. He was going to have to think about supplementing his income now that he and Robin were getting rid of Hank. That was also going to take some time, but Ron found himself nodding and saying, “Yeah, I’d like that a lot. The more people that know the better our chances of knowing what happened are going to be.”

            “There’s a lot more information out there now than there was back in the ‘60’s,” said Pritchard. I’d like you to familiarize yourself with some of it. There will be a meeting of those who are going to work with the Bureau this Saturday night at my house.”

            Ron looked at the list of books that Pritchard had given to him. There was one by Sylvan Fox. There was a book by Jessie Curry whose name and face Ron would never forget. It was entitled His Personal JFK File. The Assassination of JFK, the Reasons Why was a book written by Albert Newman. A Citizens Dissent: Mark Lane Responds to Defenders of the Warren Commission. Ron’s eyes scanned the list. He didn’t have time to read all of these. He wondered if he should just forget this idea and go back to his literature and poetry and the things that he had decided to do with his life.

 

Chapter 82

 

            Paulo DeFreio sat his class in a circle. They were reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.  It was a strange story. Hans Castorp had gone to visit his cousin in a sanatorium that was designed for people who had tuberculosis. They had found symptoms of the disease on his lungs and he’d been invited to stay for the cure. He was falling in love with a Russian girl.

            Ron’s mind whirled. He was in love with a Russian girl. Robin Ravelka was unmistakably Russian. Ron felt like Hans. Kennedy faded away. Herman Greenfield Horvack sat in the circle too.  So did Anthony Fiangelo. And Victor Strauss.  They read and they understood. Herman was in charge of the school’s literary magazine. Paulo DeFreio was the advisor. Ron’s finger followed along as he read.
His other classes included a seminar in the American Presidency and a Creative Writing class and a study of Western Drama. His Creative Writing teacher had recently published an article in Playboy. Ron thought that he was a lucky, self-centered, consumptive prick. The prick liked the way that Ron wrote and thought. Paulo DeFreio did as well, but he was experienced enough to dangle his approval and then withhold it.

            DeFreio conducted close examination of the text, in some instances going line by line to point out nuances and help his students to see the way that the writer created a portrait. Ron was having trouble concentrating on The Magic Mountain. It was indeed a Mountain of a book with many long reveries that happened when Castorp lay bundled under blankets  on his outdoor balcony, inhaling the cold, crisp mountain air that led him to dream. Ron’s mind kept wandering back to Grant Pritchard’s class and the Zapruder film and then it took a shift.

            He’d been home with his mother and was watching an episode of Firing Line. It had been six or so years ago. Ron’s fascination with William F. Buckley Jr. had been something that he kept secret. His college friends would dismiss Buckley as a tight assed right winger who had defended racist points of view during the Civil Rights Movement, supported the unjust war in Viet Nam and literally looked down his nose at most people. Ron never mentioned his like of Buckley to his high school friends, who already thought that he was an alien that they had to tolerate. His pool hall buddies would not have had the slightest idea who Buckley was nor would they have cared, but Ron did like him. It was the only TV program that he ever watched with an open dictionary sitting next to him on the floor.

            Buckley was interviewing Mark Lane who had written Rush to Judgment. Lane and he had jousted over the larger questions of trust and Lane had thanked Buckley for a favorable review of his book in Buckley’s magazine The National Review. He remembered two things that Buckley had said. The first was that the Right wished that Oswald had been a Communist agent sent by Moscow and that the Left wanted Oswald to be a southern racist. The second thing was that he cared much less about who killed Kennedy than the fact that Kennedy was dead. Wasn’t there a place where Ron believed that also? Then he remembered that Buckley also had supported the release of the autopsy photographs. He came back from his reverie to find the class staring at him.

            “Ron,” said DeFreio, “you seem to be lost in thought.”

            Ron blushed. “I am. I’m sorry. I apologize.”

            DeFreio bristled quietly. He’d told Ron what he’d thought of him as a special student. He’d smoked pot with Ron at his house in Montclair. Paulo expected him to try to contribute to the class or at least to give it his attention.

            DeFreio asked patiently, “What do you think Mann means by the tempo of experience?”

            “I think that he means that our minds control the speed at which we experience time. I think that he means that some experiences repeat on us, like indigestion and that others are treasured and enhanced by the way that we feel about them and remember them.”

            “And how do you see that portrayed in the novel?”

            “I think that love makes him stupid and is ruining his life. He treasures an x-ray of her lungs as a token of her love for him.”

            “Did it occur to you that Mann might be using a form of satire?”

            Ron laughed.  “I don’t find a nook that’s more than 700 pages long to be particularly funny.”

            The class chuckled and DeFreio laughed along with them. He said in his best European accented voice, “Not everything is meant to be gulped down and chugged like beer. Some books are meant to be sniffed, sipped, and rolled around in the mouth before swallowing. You might think of it as a glass of brandy that is meant to last all night.”

            “Ok,” said Ron. “I’ll try not to chug it.”

            After the class ended a small group of them went for coffee. DeFreio went along with them and they seat around a table in the student center.

            Herman Horvack was an emaciated blonde with a prematurely receding hairline. He had a love of decadence which he touted as the savior of the culture. “The magazine is almost ready to be proofed,” he said.

            “Bring it by my office and I’ll take a last look at it when you have it ready,” said DeFreio. “Ron, can I bum a cigarette?”

            It amused Ron that DeFreio refused to buy his own pack but always bummed smokes. He handed it to him and as DeFreio lit one, he said, “So what has your mind wandering?”

            Another Fiangelo quipped, “Either drugs or some girl would be my bet.”

            Herman looked at Ron, “You’ve got to stop smoking that crap. It clouds your brain.”

            “It helps me to write,” said Ron. “I can block everything else out when I smoke.”

            “You only think that it helps you. If you stopped doing it, you would remember your dreams better and they are a more fertile reservoir.” Hovack’s newest form of decadence was denial of any intoxicants of any kind. He talked about it before. Ron thought that it sounded boring. He justified his thinking by telling himself that Horvack had no girlfriend.

            “Actually I was thinking about the Kennedy Assassination.”

            “I truly believe that there is no more trite a subject upon which to waste your reveries,” said Herman.

            Fiangelo said, “It’s all a crock of shit.” Fiangelo had been scrambled in Viet Nam. There was an undercurrent of violence in much of what he said and his typical line of dismissal was that the topic was a crock.

            Victor Strauss looked over at Ron. “Why were you thinking about that?”

            Ron shrugged. “I don’t know. Grant Pritchard showed the Zapruder film in his class and I’m thinking about doing some work with the Assassination Information Bureau.”

            “A crock of shit,” said Fiangelo.

            “Did you think that about the Pentagon Papers too?” said Ron.

            “What I thought about them was that not fucking one of my friends was any less dead by knowing that we were fucked in the ass for having to go there. It didn’t get one person home safely. So yeah, it was a crock of shit too.”

            Victor Strauss said, “But the assassination might make for a good science fiction story.”

            Ron had no desire to write science fiction or prose of any kind. He hated writing essays. He was a poet. “So Herm,” Ron called Horvack Herm because he knew that it pissed him off. “Did any of my stuff make the magazine?”

            DeFreio and Horvack exchanged a grin. “You know that I’m not supposed to tell you that.”

            “Careful Herman,” said Fiangelo. “He’ll let Robin bite you again.”

            That brought laughter from everyone. Robin found Herman Greenfield Horvack incredibly pretentious. During one of his one way lectures on the aesthetics of decadence, she has casually taken his hand and sunk her teeth into it while he was in mid-sentence. Herman had recoiled and now referred to Robin as “the little savage.”

           

 

Chapter 83

            Robin let Ron sleep in. The night before, she had urged him to pound into her and met his need with the hot, frenzied thrusts of her hips. She’d slept on the wet spot that they’d created. She woke him with kisses between his shoulder blades. She brought him breakfast. “Do you know what you’re going to read?”

            Ron felt his sleepy haze slowly disappear. “Yeah, I have about fifteen things.” He paused and watched her bite into a fig. Her teeth were sharp and fingers caressed the skin as she chewed in small bites. “Is there something special that you want to hear me read?”

            “Leni’s poem.”

            Ron smiled. “Ok, I’ll read that first.”

            Ron was scheduled to do three sets. There was a rock band a comedian and him. He was paid twenty-five dollars. He stared out at the audience. There were more than sixty people. “This is a poem that I wrote about a cat who comes and goes as she pleases. The problem is that she is a black cat and causes people to have odd reactions.” Ron smiled. “We spend quiet time together, sometimes.” He glanced at Robin. “Sometimes” was their favorite word. It meant that sometimes I want to sleep with you. Sometimes I want you to leave me alone. Sometimes you make me angry. Sometimes I want to hurt you. She smiled up at him from her chair. He wasn’t sure what they had communicated, only what he felt.

            He read Leni’s poem.

“A piece of cheese, very small, turned up on its end and stuck to the floor

            Attracted a black cat with licked white paws.”

Ron smiled and paused to let the image sink in. “Raw chopped meat excited her more. She made sounds that I was attracted to.”

Ron blinked and heard Leni purr. “It sounded friendly, and I wanted to stay, so I gave her some more cheese.”

 He pictured the kitchen where this had happened. He was barefoot, standing at the sink with a paring knife and a cutting board. “She licked it. She liked it.” His eyes searched for Robin and she was grinning for him. “More than the first piece she had seen.”

 Ron stared out at his audience and tried to gather them all in. “I was ecstatic. I had made a friend that I could keep and tell her so, out loud. She would agree and nod her head and make such friendly sounds.” He had them. It was the erotic and playful nature of his words.

Ron took a breath, searched for Robin’s eyes and said, “I dropped some bread, and she gave it a clout, raised her head, licked her chin, turned around and walked out.” Ron quietly shuffled the pages to let them know that the poem was over and then he heard applause.

            It was a long night. Ron had to read some things twice. He read stories a prose poem and ad-libbed an ending so that he had something new to read. But he saved one for the last set.

            “This is a poem that I wrote in honor of the films of Federico Fellini. I don’t know why I have called him Fellinea in the poem except that the syllables sounded right coming out of my mouth.” Ron read.

            “Fellinea wake, come close and hear. Your mind’s been rented for another year. To beat your breast and dance around with the confetti streamers of a priestly clown.” Ron saw the dance. He felt the dance. He breathed. “Life is a child that sucks and leaves life grown older, depleted and meek. Life in days worn cold and thin. Fellinea see? I’ve come home again.”

            Ron had read this poem for the first time in a class he took at the New School for Social Research. His instructor, Adam Fitzgerald, was about to have poems published in The New Yorker. He smiled condescendingly and told Ron that his poem had a lot of life in it.

            Ron felt and afterglow of excitement as he and Robin drove home. “So what did you think?”

“I thought you were great except I thought that they made you read too long. You read for almost two hours.”

            Ron laughed. “I know. Kind of strange to be on the bill with a rock band and a comedian.”

            Robin took his hand. “I think it was kind of a tribute to you that you were able to hold your own.” She slid his hand under her long suede skirt and between her legs. She knew that he enjoyed playing with her as he drove, and tonight she was proud of him and wanted to make him very happy.

            Ron was feeling on top of the world. Maybe he had really, finally found his place in the world again. He hadn’t felt this good since he played football. Then Robin moved his hand away and reached down and lowered his zipper. He popped right out and she giggled. She liked looking at it. Every once in a while she stroked it just once. She liked it when he got this hard. He would do anything that she told him to do.

 

Chapter 84

            Ron went back to school with yet another doctor’s note for an elevator pass. Brother Kelly said, “What seems to be the difficulty this time Tuck?”

            “I had my knee drained, Brother. The doctor is hoping that this will be the end of the problems with it.”

            Brother Kelly was not smiling when he said, “We are all hoping that will be the case Mr. Tuck. I see that you have been missing lots of school. You are probably way behind in all of your subjects.”

            “Yes, Brother.”

            “Keep your head down and your mouth shut and do your work, Mr. Tuck.”

            Things were decidedly different at the school. The Brothers were based in Ireland and they were in a foul mood. The students had been cooped up in their houses for days. It just didn’t seem right to allow them to go outside and play while the country was in mourning, but now it was time to get back to work and get on with life, such as it was.

            Brother O’Shea greeted Ron by showing him the last quiz that he had taken. Ron stared at the 59 that was written and red and circled at the top of the page. “You didn’t expect that I had forgotten about this, did you Mr. Tuck?”

            Ron blurted, “I forgot about it, Brother.”

            “Let’s see if I can help you remember then. Hands or cheeks?”

            Ron looked at him with a confused expression that turned his face into a question mark. O’Shea pulled the strap from inside the cord that bound his cassock at the waist.. He closed his eyes when he heard the hiss. The smack of the belt turned his left hand white hot and then cold and numb. He teetered back and forth on his feet and watched this time as the strap came down on the palm of his right hand. He yelped when it struck. His palms were sweating profusely as he tried to rub feeling back into them on the sides of his pants.

            “You’ll be ready to take the quiz that you missed tomorrow,” said O’Shea.

            “Brother, I’m not prepared.”

            O’Shea looked down at the red circled 59 on the quiz until he was sure that the boy saw him looking at it and was now looking at it too. “You’ve already demonstrated that, haven’t you Mr. Tuck?”

            “Yes, Brother.”

            Ron was having trouble gripping his pencil and he could feel the blood rushing in his ears which also felt hot and red. To make things worse, he didn’t understand any of what O’Shea was talking about. He was saying that if you did the same thing to either side of the equation that the equation remained the same and that by manipulating both sides that you could solve the equation.

            Between classes Bob Foster said, “We’re all screwed now.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “They’re pissed off about Kennedy.”

            The motorcade and the drums and the bagpipes and the endless repetitions of Oswald being shot seemed to have happened in another world, a place where he felt loved and safe and ate cookies. In Latin, Brother Delban ran through endless declensions on nouns. They were boring and his mind wandered. He was lost in a reverie about being able to run and feeling unstoppable when he heard his name being said like it was being repeated. It startled him and the class laughed. 

            Brother Delban said, “Well, not only are you not here very often Mr. Tuck. It seems that when you are here do don’t feel the need to grace us with your attention. Delban rapped his knuckles down on the top of Ron’s head and said, “Pay” the knuckles raised and came down again, “attention” there were two more raps. His hands had just stopped hurting and know there was a throbbing pain at the top of his head. He rubbed it with his palm and tried to concentrate better.

 

            Chapter 85

            Ron awoke from the anesthetic with an immobilizer on his leg and it made him want to scream. He’d thought that somehow, because it was this new kind of surgery, that his leg would finally be free and that he would be able to walk. The hospital bed’s side rails had been pulled up and he needed to urinate. He pressed the buzzer. Celeste walked into the room. She looked radiant.

            Ron said, “I need to get out of this bed.”

            Celeste just nodded and lowered the side rail. She helped him to stand. He tried not to put too much weight on her as he hobbled. The immobilizer actually helped with his balance. Celeste said, “I’ll give you some privacy,”

            Celeste convinced the doctor that he could go back to her house after he’d urinated.

            The ride to Celeste’s house was slow and a bit painful. Ron felt every bump in the road shoot through his leg like a knife. Celeste tried to drive carefully as they squeaked back to her house.

Ron was quiet and stared out the window. It had been a never ending battle and he seemed to lose each one. Each time they went into one of his knees, he felt like he lost a little more. He could feel the dark cloud of it around him. Three surgeries were too many intrusions.

Celeste debated how to tell him what Dr. Fulack had said privately to her. She knew some of his history with knees bit this was the first time that she was experiencing it with him. She got him downstairs and brought him a plastic container that he could use to urinate. The look of sheer disgust that crossed his face when she showed it to him, told her that something deeper was going on with him. She gave him a pain pill. Ron grimaced at the sight of it.

“It doesn’t hurt right now.”

“And you want to keep it that way. The best thing to do is to stay ahead of the pain.”

“I’ll put up with the pain if I can get well faster,” said Ron.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other, Ron.”

“What do you mean?”

Ron shrugged. “They told me that the sooner I got off of the pain meds, the sooner I could get out of the hospital the last two times.”

Now it was Celeste’s turn to feel disgusted. The level of medical care that he had been given was slightly and she meant only slightly better than he would have gotten as a side of beef in a butcher shop. “That just isn’t true and they shouldn’t have told you that. I can’t believe that a doctor really said that to you.”

“A lot of things that I have been told about my knees are hard to believe. Did I ever tell you that I don’t think that I really needed the second surgery?”

Celeste looked a little shocked. “Why do you think that?”

“Well, I hurt it playing football up in Glen Ridge when I was a senior in high school. Up until then my right knee had been my good knee. The same doctor who did the left one, examined it and just scheduled the surgery. He never tried anything else. There were no x-rays. Nothing. Cutting it was his first option.”

“That’s what surgeons do, Ron. They solve problems by cutting and repairing. At least some of them do.”

“Is Fulack like that?”

Now was the time to tell him. “Ron, he told me that when you heal, he’s going to talk to you about having a total knee reconstruction.”

Ron felt his world spinning like he was on some fiendish amusement park ride. “Doesn’t that mean that they cut my knee out?”

“That’s over simplified, but essentially yes, that’s what it means.”

“I’m not doing it.” His voice was cold and the tone final. “I’ve had enough.”

“The doctor said that the deterioration of your knee is pretty bad. You are bone on bone and there is a lot of arthritis.”

“I’m thirty-three years old,” said Ron. “Arthritis?”

“It’s the repeated insults to your knees,” she said. She was speaking clinically now and Ron noted the change in her voice. It sounded professional. He didn’t like it.

“These fucking surgeries have taken something away from me each time that I’ve had one. I don’t trust them. I don’t trust doctors. I think they do it more for the money than they do to really help anyone.”

“They aren’t all like that.” She tried to sound sympathetic but she could see that it didn’t penetrate.

“I know this is your profession but they’re my knees.” Ron paused. “Can I tell you how I really feel?”

“Of course.” She saw that his eyes had grown darker. The brooding look on his face made him sound angry, like he was spitting out the words. His face looked hard and almost cruel.

“Doctors are no different from mechanics or carpenters. You hire them to do a job, but they work for you. You tell them what you want, not the other way around.”

Celeste almost felt slapped. Then she saw that what he said came from pain and bad experiences. She wanted to reach out and stroke his face, but something told her that touching him wouldn’t be a good idea right now.

Chapter 76

 

            Ron was having difficulty driving. He stretched his encased leg out across the hump in the middle of the floor of the squeak-mobile. He tried to work the pedals for the gas and break with his left leg but he was unaccustomed to using his left leg and it caused his body to be at an angle that had him staring almost out the driver’s side window rather than through the windshield. His leg was throbbing and the squeaking of the car seemed to announce him as damaged goods. He definitely could not drive on the highway like this and decided that he had no option other than to go to Celeste’s house.

            Then he pictured Angel being frightened by the way that he looked and Anna holding it against him and taking it out on Celeste. He pulled his car over to the side of the road and unstrapped the Velcro that was holding the immobilizer in place. He reseated himself and drove home, painfully. He reattached the immobilizer and found that the stairs that had so difficult when he had previously hurt his knee, were now manageable, one step at a time.

            He lay on his bed and took off the immobilizer and his pants. The sight of his knee caused a grimace to wash over him. It was swollen to the point of looking distorted. He limped into the kitchen for some ice and then dialed Celeste.

            “Where are you?” she said.

            “I’m home.”

            Her voice sounded hurt. “I thought that you were coming for dinner. Angel has been sitting by the window waiting and listening for you.”

            “I know. I didn’t want to frighten her.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I got hurt at practice. There was an accident and I hurt my leg.”

            Ron expected this to be greeted by anger. It wasn’t that he thought that Celeste was anything like his mother, but it was what he was used to.

            “How badly are you hurt?”

            “I don’t know. I’ll give a day or so and see what happens with the swelling.”

            “I’m coming down there,” said Celeste.

            “It’s late,” said Ron. “What about Angel?”

            “There are plenty of people here to take care of Angel. You didn’t eat dinner did you?”

            “No.”

            “I’ll bring you some food. Stay off of it until I get there.”

            Ron felt himself smiling for the first time since the injury occurred. She wanted to take care of him. Ron rolled a joint and smoked it while he waited for her. He did not think about calling his mother’s house. He would have to take off from work tomorrow. His book bag was still in the car and he needed to prepare assignments that he could leave for his students. His mind whirled. He didn’t need the book bag. He could tell them what he wanted them to do. It would be simple. He’d assign a vocabulary lesson to each of his freshman classes. It would require them to write something that they had to turn in at the end of the class and so it would be easy for the substitute. He had Sam’s home phone number.

            It took Celeste about an hour to gather the things that she needed and a plate of food. Anna’s mother said, “What happened to him?”

            “He had an accident at football practice. He’s had two knee surgeries already Mom. This could be bad.”

            Anna was different in an emergency than she was in everyday things. Her nursing training kicked in and that part of her brain worked quickly and logically. “Make sure you bring him something for the pain. Call me when you get there.”

            Celeste smiled and kissed her mother’s fleshy cheek. She looked more worn than she usually did.

            She knew it was bad the minute she saw the knee. The swelling was much more pronounced above the knee than it was below the knee but she could feel the heat there too and the softness of the flesh told her that there was fluid buildup below the knee cap as well.

            Ron didn’t own a bed. What he did have was a mattress and box spring that were on the floor. It made getting up much more difficult. The high that he felt from the joint along with Celeste rubbing and squeezing his thigh caused him to have an erection. They both laughed when they saw it sticking up. She took it out of his underwear and said, “You just lie back and relax. It will make you feel better.” Ron obeyed and closed his eyes as she stroked him.

 

Chapter 77

 

            Dan Rather was reporting that there was going to be a news conference conducted by the Dallas County District Attorney that would provide every shred of evidence that they had gathered in their case against Lee Oswald. Ron was thankful that Rather at least left the Harvey out. He couldn’t help but picture Jimmy Stewart talking to his imaginary friend Harvey who was a gigantic rabbit in a movie that he half remembered.

            “This evidence was gathered largely by the Dallas police department which has done an excellent job on this with the help of some of the federal agencies. I’m going to go through the evidence piece by piece for you. Number one some of this you will already know and some you won’t, I don’t think. As all of you know there are a number of witnesses who saw the person on the sixth floor of the book store building. Then there is the window from which he was looking out. Inside this window there were a number of bookcases and packages piled up, hiding someone who was at the window from people on the same floor looking in. There were some boxes in back of the bookcases where the person was apparently sitting because he was seen from that window. On this box that the defendant was sitting on, a palm print was found and was identified as his. The three ejected shells were found right by the box. The shells were of an odd caliber and found to fit the gun that was lying on the floor. The gun was hidden on this same floor behind some boxes and bookcases. As you know the gun was found to have been purchased through a mail order house under an assumed name, Hidell, and mailed to a post office box here in Dallas. On his person was a pocketbook and in that pocketbook was found identification with the same name on it. Pictures were found. Pictures were found of the defendant with this gun and a pistol on his holster. Oswald was brought to Dallas from Irving by a neighbor. Usually on Monday but this time he came home a day early and returned the next day and said that Oswald was carrying a package under his arm. He told his neighbor that it was window shades. The wife said that he had the gun the night before ad that it was missing that morning after he left.”

            Ron felt his face harden. He had the gun. They had pictures of him with the gun. He brought the gun to work. Ron was glad that he was dead. He was glad that the police had him killed by their friend. The District Attorney went on to say that immediately after the assassination, a police officer had tried to arrest him but that the manager had said that he was alright, that he worked in the building. The District Attorney continued saying that after all of the other employees had been identified, a description of Oswald, who was no longer in the building, went out. Then Oswald was seen on a bus, laughing very loudly and saying that the president had been shot. He then got off the bus and caught a taxi. He went to his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes hurriedly and left. As he left, three witnesses said they saw a police officer, Officer Tippet, motion to him and say something to him. He walked up to the car and the police officer got out of the car and Oswald shot him three times and killed him.

            He was just a madman, thought Ron. He half expected to hear that drool had been running out of his mouth after he killed the cop. He was then seen walking across a vacant lot and reloading his pistol. One of the witnesses reported seeing him go into the Texas Theatre. He was approached the movie theater and one of the arresting officers reported that he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger but that the gun hadn’t been reloaded properly and that the shell didn’t come out. Ron almost smiled. He had been too stupid to load the gun right. The District Attorney then corrected himself and said that Oswald had placed the gun to Officer Mac Donald’s head when it jammed. There was some confusion about whether the gun had misfired or whether the officer had prevented him from pulling the trigger. Henry Wade, the District Attorney, had then given the press all of the information that they had collected in their case against Oswald. Then Dan Rather showed the film of Oswald being shot again. Ron wanted him shot over and over. He wanted him to suffer the way that he was suffering and the rest of the country was suffering over this thing, this horrible thing that he’d done. Rather concluded, “It’s been that kind of day in grim, shamed Dallas.”

            Ron slept on the sofa-bed. The light from the TV illuminated the room. Marjorie hadn’t come there but she’d called and said that she would be there sometime on Monday. It was a national day of mourning. Everything was closed. Dorothy sat in her parlor smoking. She couldn’t bring herself to sleep in the same room as her third husband for one more night.

            There had been times when she had thought about asking Marjorie to just let Ronald live with her, but she wasn’t sure that she had the energy for him. And Marjorie would never have agreed. There were few things that she couldn’t impose upon Marjorie. One was to stop asking questions about who her father had been and what had happened to him. The other would be to ask her to give up Ronald.

            Dorothy’s first husband had been Mickey Fairmount. He was a boxer and she was twenty and wanting to escape the drudgery of caring for the young brothers and sisters that her father and weak mother were imposing upon her. She wanted out and she wanted better.

            Mickey took her travelling with him. She met Jack Dempsey and George Bellows and Sugar Ray Robinson, who had the audacity to stare at the shimmy of her hips and lick his lips.  Mickey was a lightweight and he took a lot of punches before he was able to use his hammer of a right hand to end a fight. Dorothy was excited by the sheer power of his masculinity and then she saw it decline and he started losing his eyesight. He only hit her once and it was out of frustration, but his blow had broken two of her ribs and sent her to a hospital. She had kept her mouth shut and sent herself flowers and when she was released, she left him. The cigarette smoke wafted over to encase the Chinese man who was sitting by the pond with his ever hopeful fishing rod extended. She’d used nail polish to coat his fishing line in gold. It was just the right shade, a dulled burnish that fit with the muted surroundings.

            Frank Hess had been another story altogether. She loved her second husband with a passion that caused her to accept whatever it took just to be close to him. Then the egotistical son-of-a-bitch had gotten himself killed.  She lit another cigarette. This Kennedy thing had gotten to her in an unexpected way. Sure, she understood politics, but she understood it in a way that she could work it to her advantage. Frank had taught her that. He always told her that it was just a game about power and that power meant currency.  That was his word, currency. She’d asked Frank if he didn’t just mean money. “There’s lots of kinds of money, Dot,” had been his answer. Frank was a gangster. She knew that. He had girlfriends and she knew that. The life that he showed her was an answer to her dreams and she knew that as well.

            The procession came out of a gate that went passed Lafayette Park where a crowd had been waiting for several hours. Some of them had waited all night to file passed the President’s coffin and then they came here. The lonely procession carrying Jacqueline Kennedy, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy who stepped out of the black limousine. She wore a veil of heavy mourning and they wore formal mourning coats. She knelt. They stood. None of them tarried there.

            A military guard brought the casket out to the east front. Behind the flag bearers walked two priests. The band played Hail to the Chief as the casket emerged. Ron felt his heart fill. That song was followed by a mournful version of Let Freedom Ring. The brothers and widow returned to their car. Robert was holding her hand. Ted walked a pace behind them. The sound of the hooves of the seven horse drawn caisson dominated. It was followed by a rider-less black horse. Then there were just muted drums. The procession made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, which Ron heard called the Avenue of the Presidents for the first time. Then he could hear the drums and the hooves. The picture never changed. The casket was draped in an American flag. The caisson rolled smoothly. The pace was excruciating and Ron wanted to turn away but couldn’t. Then there were the sounds of coordinated boots marching. It blended with the hooves and the drums and the bells that now intoned with mournful remark. Then there were commands and a snap to of swords and guns was heard moving crisply from one position to the next. The bagpipes of the Black Watch drowned it all out in an eerie song of death.

            The brothers and widow followed along behind on foot. They were followed by other members of the family and then President Johnson. Ron wanted to gag when he heard him called that. Dignitaries followed in no particular order. These were heads of state who had come to pay respect from their countries. Queen Fredrica of Greece was the only other woman who was scheduled to walk in the procession.

 

Chapter 78

 

            Dr. Wilson Fulack was the first person that Celeste thought might be a good idea. After a night of ice, Ron made it downstairs with the immobilizer on his leg and then unstrapped it when he got into his red Ford. The ride up wasn’t horrible although pressing on the break caused him to wince and the position required of his leg caused it to throb by the time he got onto the parkway.  At least there wouldn’t be any braking for a while. It was smooth shot to Bergen County.

            Ron reapplied the immobilizer in front of Celeste’s house. She’d heard squeak and was out the door before he got himself out of the car. She walked over and said, “Can we take your car?”

            “Sure.” Ron had never sat in the passenger seat before and it felt strange. The squeaks seemed louder. The ride seemed bumpier.  It was a short ride to Fulack’s office.

            The doctor removed the immobilizer and asked, “Where did you get this?”

            “I’m a football coach,” said Ron. “We have a couple of them in case of emergencies.”

            “This is an old style and the wrong size, but I have something that will help you.”

            Ron knew what was coming and he wasn’t disappointed. Fulack pressed and twisted and bent his knee and Ron could not help but cry out.

            “When did you have this open knee?”

            Ron stared at the zipper on his right leg. The memories that it brought back were brutal. “When I was nineteen, that’s fourteen years ago.”

            “And the other leg?”

            “The year before when I was eighteen.”

            “Things have changed quite a bit since then. We rarely cut into knees like this anymore, unless it’s a torn ligament or a reconstruction. Were they meniscus tears in both knees?”

            “Yes,” said Ron, “but they also found bone chips and a benign tumor in my left knee.”

            “Alright,” said Fulack. “I want to do an arthrogram of your knee. There is quite a bit of swelling so it will be necessary to do an aspiration first. Then we will inject the knee with a dye and use a fluoroscope to get a good look at it.”

            Ron wanted to scream. He knew what an aspiration was. He had been subjected to more than twenty of them before surgery was done on his left leg. They were excruciating. He must have gone pale because Celeste said, “Will you be numbing his knee first?”

            Dr. Fulack chuckled. “Of course. Why would anyone aspirate a knee without numbing it first?”

            Ron stayed silent and Celeste spoke. “His was done repeatedly without anesthetic.”

            “Well, surely we don’t do that anymore.”

            Ron felt a sense of relief. Fulack walked to his phone and buzzed his nurse. The procedure was scheduled for the next day.

            “Were you hurt on the job, Ron?”

            “We were at football practice.”

            “Are you a paid coach?”

            “Yes, I get a stipend.”

            “You’ll want to file a workman’s comp case then.”

            “What does that mean?”

            Celeste and Fulack exchanged a look. “If you are hurt at work you are entitled to compensation. Make sure that you have filed an accident report. It will all be paid for by your employer Ron.”

            Ron felt fear. Suppose they fired him for getting hurt? Suppose they took away his honors class? “I’m not sure I want to do that.”

            “Your employer carries insurance, Ron. They’ll expect it.”

 

Chapter 79

            Luigi Vena sang Ave Maria in the church and underneath it the gritty voice of Cardinal Cushing could be heard praying in Latin. A group of priests with white lace tops covering their cassocks assisted. When it came time to read the gospel, a commentator in hushed tones, who was not Cronkite, told the people watching that this was the most solemn part of the mass and that all would stand in respect for the word of God. Ron wondered why he said that. The consecration was the most important part of the Mass. Ron felt Catholic.

             The commentator translated. “As we offer our fruits and praise to God, we pray to God for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the servant of God, that he may be given everlasting rest.”

            The Communion precession began with his widow and brothers and then other moved up and opened their mouths and extended their tongues to receive the sacrament. They read passages from scripture that Kennedy loved and then the procession continued out of the church to Arlington National Cemetery, but first the Cardinal sprinkled holy water over the coffin and kissed the flag that draped it. Ron burst into tears when Kennedy’s three year old son saluted the casket of his father. It was explained that the children were deemed too young to attend the burial and that this is where they would say goodbye to their father. The tears were hot on his face and he didn’t try to wipe them away. He mouthed the words to the song that the band played. “Praise him all creatures here below. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” St Mathews Cathedral was bathed in sunlight that contrasted with the black bunting that was draped over the door.

             Then the tolling of bells and the distinct command to “Present arms.” The muffled drums began again as the caisson began to slowly roll. They moved down Rhode Island Avenue. People in overcoats lined the streets on both sides. Most of the women wore hats. Many of the men, in the fashion change popularized by Kennedy, did not. The funeral dirge moaned. The white gravestones of the cemetery stood in endless rows. The camera pulled back to show its proximity to the Lincoln Memorial and the Potomac River.

            When the caisson was pulled to a stop, a band played, “Hail to the Chief.” Ron could almost feel the chill in the air as the brass notes rang out over the graves. Was there such a thing as another world? Was there an awareness? Ron wondered if this wasn’t what people did because, like him, they didn’t know what else to do. That song was followed by the Star Spangled Banner. Ron thought that it sounded proudly defiant. Everyone was standing still although Jacqueline seemed to be wavering just a bit. Ron wondered how much she was expected to take.

            The bagpipes of the United States Air Force Bagpipe Contingent moaned and wailed as the men marched over the hill. They accompanied the casket as it was removed from the caisson. They carried it what seemed like a long way. Ron admired their strength and endurance and it caused him to look at his knee. Through his pants, it seemed just like the other. Jets in multiple combinations of threes flew over the grave. There were places for just a few people to sit while others stood in back of them. More jets flew overhead drowning out the voice of the commentator. The voice of Cardinal Cushing, in its rasping tone, invoked a blessing upon the grave. The flag had been stretched taunt over the casket during the blessing and now it was folded and music played again. The folds were precise and practiced. The flag changed hands many times and each time it was saluted before it was accepted. The music rose in a crescendo and Ron felt like he was watching a spectacle.  It was a live and real spectacle, but that was what it was. Jacqueline, holding the folded flag under her arm, lit the flame. Holding her hand, Robert Kennedy led her away. The commentator’s simple statement was, “Now the president belongs to the ages.”

 

End of Part 2

 

Chapter 71

            Cronkite reported that Evangelist Billy Graham had a premonition that something awful was going to happen to Kennedy in Dallas and had tried to reach him and warn him not to go. It did not occur to Ron how convenient that was to say afterwards. He had been taken to see Billy Graham in Madison Square Garden with Rocky and Marjorie. His mother had urged him to go forward and declare himself as saved, but he didn’t. Now he wished that he had.

            Then Cronkite said that a small blonde boy followed by two pretty girls had plucked hibiscus blossoms and laid them in the doorway to a home where Kennedy used when he was in Florida. Things like that were happening all over the country. Ron felt bitter that he had to stay here, but did admit that his leg was feeling better today, and it was cold out and raining anyway.

            The TV scene shifted to Washington DC, where a reporter named Herman said that while the Secret Service knew, and President Kennedy knew, that it was impossible to protect him in a motorcade through a large city with thousands of windows, that if it had been raining it Dallas, if the rain had lasted just one more hour, that the president would have been underneath the large, plastic protective bubble that would have saved his life. They said that the Secret Service had always urged the President to use the bubble but that it liked to be seen by the people. Ron felt another wave of anguish wash over him. Maybe if he had listened, none of this would happen. Why would anyone want to be seen by the people in Texas? The reporters discussed the love that Kennedy had for going beyond rope lines to shake hands and let the people of America feel as close to him as possible and how his predecessor, President Eisenhower did not share that view and more often than not acceded to the wishes of the military. Ron felt anger mixed with his grief. Were they trying to say that the President had brought this on himself?”

            Then Cronkite was back. Ron wondered how long it had been since Walter Cronkite had slept. He reported that people were gathered in front of the White House and were silently standing and watching dignitaries file in to pay their last respects to the President, who was now lying in state in the East Room. A man said that he was trying to picture JFK as the way that he was, a hero and an inspiration to people and that he just couldn’t see him anymore. He was a tough looking man with a hard face and yet it was creasing and tears were running out of his eyes as he spoke. Ron had never seen so many men cry in his life. It made him feel better that he couldn’t control his tears. Then a Black man who was smartly dressed and wearing a tight brimmed hat like Ron saw his father sometimes wearing said that he had no words to describe his feelings and that the White House now seemed empty and that no one could fill it the way that JFK had. Ron felt himself nodding. Certainly it couldn’t be filled by a guy from Texas of all places. It was then that the thought occurred to him that maybe Texas had wanted their guy to be President and that maybe Texas had put Oswald up to it. Reporters were saying that the downpour of rain had driven most of the people standing across the street from the White House away but that large numbers of people had stood there all night just staring at the floodlit north portico.

            Almost on cue the scene shifted to Texas. Police Chief Jessie Curry was surrounded by a group of reporters in the hallway. He was asked a lot of questions about how he knew that Oswald was the man and how Oswald had been apprehended and about whether Oswald had a lawyer. Ron didn’t quite understand the answers and he could care less if Oswald had a lawyer. The scene shifted to Cronkite who said that Oswald’s mother had stated that her son was a good boy and that she was willing to pay for a lawyer. Cronkite added that Lee Harvey Oswald had been the youngest of three sons that Mrs. Oswald had raised on her own after the death of her husband. He died shortly after Oswald was born. Ron thought that they were saying that somehow the birth of Oswald had caused his father’s death. The grim thought that hit him next was that they were saying that it was because Oswald had been raised without a father’s influence, that this was one of the causes for what he had done. Why did they always make everything about broken homes? Did that mean that somehow he would grow up to do something awful because his parents had been divorced? Isn’t that what the cops had implied when he was caught with the knife? That he was damaged goods. He looked down at his knee. Well, they were right about one thing. That was for sure.

            Cronkite then shifted the scene back to Dallas and Captain Glen King of the Dallas Police force said that a man who had been an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald had his house searched and that he had been invited in to be interrogated by police and that the interrogation was happening at that moment. He then said that the Dallas Police Force was asking that anyone who had been in the vicinity of the assassination and had taken pictures of it to please turn all of those pictures into the Dallas police department at the request of the FBI. King refused to identify the man who was being interrogated. Then a bombshell. Oswald had been interrogated by the FBI two weeks prior to the assassination. Ron wanted to scream. They had him and then they let him go?

            Cronkite then reported that John Kennedy’s body was now lying in state in the East Room of the White House and that the casket was resting on the same structure that had been used to hold Abraham Lincoln’s casket after he had been assassinated. He then said that Jaqueline Kennedy had informed reporters that she had told her children, Caroline, age six, and John, age three, that their father had died.

 

Chapter 72

            Celeste said, “I have a friend named Ricky, but everyone calls him Bottles. He’s a bartender and he could get us the alcohol for the reception at wholesale and he knows somebody who can tend bar.”

            “That sounds great,” said Ron.

            “There’s a catch,” said Celeste. “He’s my first husband’s best friend.”

            Ron grinned into the pillow. He’d told her some about Robin and now he wanted to hear about Alex. “Tell me more about Alex.”

            Celeste hesitated. Ron was surely one of the stranger people that she’d ever met. He wanted to know everything. She’d expected him to ask her to handle it, and he’d surprised her again. “Alex was exciting. Life was one long, large party and he changed the games often enough so that I was always interested.”

            “What do you mean?” she could hear in Ron’s vice that he was grinning into the pillow.

            “In our first apartment, we had a large room. It was in Kearny and we had this great apartment and instead of a living room we had these board games set up everywhere. Friends were always there and we moved from one board game to the other and then we’d go out and play softball and go to one or two or three of the bars and come back and play the games until Alex passed out.”

            “Didn’t that get boring?”

            Celeste hesitated. Should she really tell him the truth? Did she know what the truth was? “No it didn’t get boring because he kept changing things and he was so talented and big time people recognized his talent, but he couldn’t help submarining himself.” Celeste found that she was breathing easily into the phone as she told him these things. She knew that whatever she said, he would not think any less of her. What a strange feeling that was. It was almost disconcerting and she understood why women were attracted to Ron and then ran away from him. She understood in that instant that he would never stop. There would always be a probing and a searching and a next question and maybe more questions than she was ready for.

            “I think that you loved him,” said Ron.

            “I’m sure that I did.”

            “Did he love you?”

            Now that was a question that she hadn’t expected. She felt her heart beat a little faster. “I think that he thought that he did.”

            “Robin said that about me. What does it mean?”

            Danger signs blinked in back of her eyes. What was he searching for now? “It means that love has got to be more than just in your head and in your imagination.”

            Ron felt a jolt. He let it pass through him and then he whispered, “I know.” There was a silence and while it wasn’t comfortable, it was necessary. The quiet electric hum of the phone lines between them, and the intimacy that it created, flowed. “I think that we can really love each other.” He said finally.

            The words washed through her stronger than a blow of cocaine, which she loved.

 

Chapter 73

 

            On the evening of the second day, it occurred to Ron that Jesus had been crucified on a Friday. He felt like he was observing John Kennedy’s descent into hell. Some miniscule insanely-faithed part of him, dreamed of resurrection.

            From Dallas, Captain Will Fritz, chief of detectives, announced that they had the case cinched but would not go into details. Brook Benton reported that Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife and mother had been up in the jail to see him. Ron wondered if they called him Lee Harvey. Had he really gone through life being called Lee Harvey? The route that Oswald would be soon taken from an upper floor to the garage on the ground floor in order to be transferred to the county jail was broadcast.

            The scene shifted back to a view of the White House and Cronkite’s voice  said that John Kennedy’s son, who the President referred to as John John, and who would be three on Monday the day of his father’s funeral, was reportedly walking through the halls of the White House saying, “ I don’t have anyone to play with.” Cronkite said that he was reported to have said that his father had been killed by a bad man.  Then it was back to Brook Benton and Captain Will Fritz was described as one of the most astute law enforcement officials in the south west. He wore glasses and a white cowboy hat. He said that he felt very confident that he had his man in both the killings of the president and the killing of Officer Tippet. Ron hated the look of him and hated that he equated the killing of John Kennedy with the killing of some Texas cop.

            Cronkite finally signed off saying that tonight there would be a memorial concert in honor of the president that was being performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. He also announced that coverage of these events would continue nonstop through the President’s funeral on Monday.

            When Ron woke up on Sunday morning his leg felt much better. He walked to the bathroom without a limp for the first time that he could remember he was actually able to urinate while standing up. Ron wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t seen his mother since Friday afternoon. She tended to stay away from him when he was sick. He didn’t take this as a lack of love on her part, rather he felt that she was letting him heal and didn’t like seeing him injured. He would tell his aunt to call her today and say that he wasn’t limping anymore.

            Back at the TV, Ron heard Harry Reasoner say that they were shifting away from the coverage in Washington to go to Dallas, where Lee Harvey Oswald was being moved to the county jail. Turmoil was breaking loose and the report was that Oswald had been shot. An ambulance pulled into the garage, Oswald was wheeled out on a stretcher. The reporter said that he was ashen and unconscious and not moving. They had to wait while the armored truck that was supposed to transport Oswald was moved out of the way. People climbed into the back of the ambulance with Oswald. There was shouting and the newsmen were being cordoned off away from the actual place where the ambulance sat idling.

            Then the scene shifted back to New York and Reasoner said, “We have re-racked that video tape that shows that whole scene of confusion. We will now roll it and you can see it as it happened.” It was dark and a bit confused and two men led Oswald out when suddenly a man who was described as wearing a black hat and a brown coat rushed forward and shot Oswald in the stomach. Ron stared in numb horror. What was happening? Was the world completely crazy? He felt frightened. Ron heard the reporter say over and over again, “Oswald has been shot, Oswald has been shot!” Then Reasoner was there again and said they were going back to Dallas for live coverage. The reporter asked a man in a police uniform how many shots had been fired. The man said, “One shot.” The reporter asked if the man was known to him and he said, “Yes, he is.” The reporter said that he knew that the officer could not divulge the name but would he tell them what business the man was in. The policeman answered, “I’d rather not say.”

            Abruptly, the scene shifted back to Washington and Jacqueline Kennedy was standing dressed in black with a black veil over her face. Her daughter Caroline was on her left and her son John was on her right. The casket was being loaded onto a caisson. They carried it out as band music played a mournful brass song that seemed to blare and echo in the halls of the building as the honor guard carried out the body of President Kennedy. Dorothy came into the room and sat down next to Ron.

            “Someone shot Oswald.”

            “I knew they would. They were never letting him out of Dallas alive.”

            “It’s just crazy. I don’t know how I feel. I’m glad that he’d dead but Texas is just a bad place. They’re all crazy.”

            “His wife looks beautiful,” said Dorothy. She was holding a cup of coffee in her hands and staring at the TV. She put her coffee down and lit a cigarette.

            Jacqueline Kennedy walked to the casket and kneeled and kissed it while Caroline held the hem of the flag that was draping it. John wasn’t with them. The reporter said that she was saying her last goodbye for today.

            “Why are they putting her through this?” Aunt Dot. “With everybody watching this way?”

            “They don’t know any better,” she answered.

            “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of it.”

            “She’s numb. She isn’t feeling anything right now. Her grief will really come later. I was her age when your Uncle Charlie died. He just went out one morning and then his brother called me and told me that he was dead.”

            “How did he die?”

            Dorothy drew in on her cigarette and said as she exhaled, “He had a cerebral hemorrhage?” This of course wasn’t true but she had, over the years, made it true by repeating it and not varying from it. If she ever told anyone the truth it would probably be Ronald, but he was still too young and if she told him now, he would tell his mother and she would start in again with questions and wanting to know what had happened to her father.

            Then they were showing the footage of Oswald being shot and Dorothy thought that they led him right into it like he was an animal that was about to be slaughtered, but that was how it was down there.

            “Will you tell my mom that my knee feels better?”

            Dorothy looked at him and laughed in spite of the situation. “You mean tell her that it’s safe to come out now?”

            Ron laughed too, then he felt bad for laughing while people were being shot and kissing caskets and losing their father. “She just gets upset when anything bad happens to me.”

            “I’ll fix you some lunch,” said Dorothy. “Do you want to try to come to the table and eat it?”

            “Yes.”

            When Ron got back to the TV, it was two thirty in the afternoon. Cronkite was back. Ron wondered if he hadn’t been there on Sunday morning because he went to church. Church seemed very far away right now. Walter Cronkite reported that Lee Harvey Oswald was dead and that he had died in a room that was just ten feet from the room where President Kennedy had died. Cronkite said that he was taken down by a single bullet. Cronkite said that the man who shot Oswald had been identified as Jack Rubenstein who was known in Dallas as Jack Ruby. He had moved to Dallas from Chicago and ran two nightclubs there. He was fifty-two years old and was balding with black hair. Dallas police were reporting that they would charge him with the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

            The scene shifted back to Washington and a reporter said in a subdued voice that just as Walter Cronkite had just reported that word was coming through to people in the Capital Plaza, many of whom had transistor radios and that a cheer had gone up from the far right hand side of the plaza. Ron didn’t feel like cheering but wondered if he should.

            Then they were back in the studio and Dan Rather was showing a picture of Jack Ruby who had moved to Dallas from Chicago in 1948, and left his real name behind. He said that they were going to run a film that had been taken by George Phoenix who was a camera man. Rather directed the audience to pay particular attention to a man on the right, in the lower right hand corner who was wearing a black hat. Ron wondered why all the policemen down there wore white cowboy hats.

            Rather narrated the scene as they showed it slow motion. Ron felt sick to his stomach. Then Cronkite was back saying that here was an associated press still photograph of Oswald just a split second before he was shot. Ruby’s hat looked gray with a black headband, Ron thought. He guessed that things just got confused in the heat of the moment.

 

           

 

 

Chapter 74

            Practice was going smoothly. Ron was standing next to Artie Harris when James Fitzpatrick knocked Kirk Hammerfield off balance and he staggered and crashed into the back of Ron’s legs. Ron never saw it coming or even heard it. He was concentrating on a chart that Steve Ferry had given them on new line splits for the upcoming game with the Ghosts.

            Ron heard the pop before he hit the ground. His face was in the grass. Electric shocks were shooting up his leg. His mind screamed, “Not again! Not again!” Everyone crowded around Coach Tuck who lay on the ground and tried not to cry or scream or move. It was his right knee. The one on which he had the second surgery. How could this be happening again?

            Steve Ferry blew his whistle and hurried over to see what had happened. He looked at Artie. “Was he doing something stupid?”

            Artie shook his head. “No, it was an accident. We were just standing here.”

            “Can you stand up, Ron?” said Ferry.

            “I’m not sure,” said Ron. His entire leg was throbbing with that all too familiar pain. Ron wanted to pound his head into the grass. He felt Artie and Steve left him up between them. The two brawny men accomplished this with ease. Ron weighed 175 pounds but he was a solid 175 and it wasn’t that easy to just lift him that way.

            When they got him into the coaches’ room, Artie said “I’ve got something here that will help you.” He produced an immobilizer and fitted it to Ron’s leg outside of his pants. “This will keep you from aggravating it further until you can get to a doctor.”

            “Maybe I won’t need a doctor.”

            Artie looked into his eyes. “I heard it, Ronnie. I was standing right there.”

 

 

           

Chapter 75

            “This is Walter Cronkite back in our CBS newsroom in New York. Lee Harvey Oswald the twenty-four year old, Marxist, pro-Castroite, which the Dallas police said they had a cinched case against, accused assassin of President Kennedy, was himself shot to death in Dallas an hour and a half ago.”

            Ron saw the photograph in his mind. The still picture taken just before it all happened. One policeman, wearing a white hat and on his right, had his arm held open. The other policeman was gripping his left arm. The gun got stuck right into his ribs. He was confused. It looked so brutal.

            Ron’s attention drifted back to the TV. Cronkite was saying that Rubenstein or Ruby as he was known in Dallas had no expressed political affiliations. Cronkite shifted to an interview that Dan Rather was conducting with a comedian who had been employed by Jack Ruby. The comedian said that he was a good guy who had always done right by him. Rather asked what kind of place the Carousel club was and the Comedian said that it was a nightclub that employed five or six exotic dancers. For a moment, involuntarily, Ron tried to picture exotic dancers. Then the comedian said that he had seen Lee Oswald in the Carousel Cub’s audience about eight or nine days ago. The Comedian, who was also an MC, was doing a memory exercise and he asked for audience participation. He remembered Oswald because he had participated. Rather asked if Oswald had been seen talking to Jack Ruby and the Comedian said that was fairly certain that Jack never knew that he was in the club. The Comedian said that he was sure that Jack Ruby carried a gun in a bag that he carried with him, regularly. He’d seen it once. It was small and short-nosed. Bill Demar said, “He carried it with him because he had the money.”

            Rather asked, “Do you ever recall seeing any unsavory characters around the club?
“No,” the man who was now described as an Entertainer and MC for Jack Ruby.

            The scene shifted to Washington and the large crowd of people who had been waiting were allowed to file passed the coffin, two abreast One of the soldiers who stood guard was wearing a green beret and the significance of his headpiece was described. The paintings that hung from the walls were described as being done by an aide to General Washington. They depicted four events that led up to the formation of the federal government. Ron felt his chest swell with pride. His country. His history. The line of people was endless. It was reported that for the next six to eight hours that the people would have a chance to say good-bye to their president by following this path. It was an endlessly mournful progression. People’s hearts brought them there and they just kept coming. It felt like the outpouring of a sea. They had to change the plans to close the doors to the Capitol Rotunda and the White House announced that the doors would remain open as long as there were people waiting to say goodbye. A flag draped the coffin. The honor guard could not help but stand at attention, even though they were allowed to stand at ease. The crowd advanced slowly like small people with large hearts. Together, everything about them was large. It was reported that President Eisenhower had worn a black armband yesterday in honor of his successor.

            Then Cronkite sent the coverage back to Dallas and Dan Rather reported that there was yet a different angle to show the shooting of Oswald and ran that tape. It was like they couldn’t get enough of seeing him shot over and over and Ron wondered if there was some solace in seeing him killed again and again. Rather reported that more and more comments were coming in from friends of Jack Rubenstein and that they were all shocked by the event and that Jack Ruby had been able to shoot anyone. It was also reported that Rubenstein was known to many on the Dallas police force. Rather said that the truth seemed to be that Ruby was so well known to the Dallas police that no one thought anything of him being there. Ruby had been around the police station each day for the last several days offering to give reporters free drinks if they came to one of his clubs. Then Cronkite reported that Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police Department was now saying that with the death of Oswald the case of the assassination of President Kennedy was now closed. Cronkite reported that the death of Oswald came almost exactly forty-eight hours after Kennedy’s assassination and that it happened while eulogies were being said over the casket of the late President as it lay in state in the Capitol rotunda.

            The scene shifted back and showed that the endless line of mourners was continuing to wait for their chance to pay last respects to Kennedy and that the line was flanked by blue uniformed policeman who stood at parade rest. So many people thought Ron and they all loved him. He could not grasp how so much love could be mixed with such a violent act. He felt the sadness and grief welling up inside of him again and tried to force it back. Ron wondered if they were mourning the TV images that had led them to believe that they knew this man or if they were mourning the loss of hope that he seemed to embody. Cronkite was now reporting that numerous threats against various officials in Dallas were coming in from all over the country. Most notably there had been anonymous threats sent to the mayor of Dallas and to members of the Dallas police force who had been shown on TV and to a lawyer who had defended Jack Ruby at a time before the killings.  He had said on TV that if asked, he would defend Jack Rubenstein.

Chapter 66

 

            It was a seven on seven drill, something that was done for the linemen to improve the crispness of their timing and to learn to move like a unit. Ron was running the drill with Artie Harris but he felt that the holes were opening too slowly. Finally he handed the center a ball and said, “Oh my count, snap it back to me.” The players looked confused. Artie looked confused. “I’m going to run through the holes, don’t tackle me,” said Ron.

            He stood in a shotgun position that would roughly mimic how far behind the line the running back would be. He would wait a beat to simulate the handoff, and then he would run through the hole. He felt the rush of adrenaline rush through him as he ran and planted and cut up into the hole. The play got crisper. He did it again and again. Bodies were flying around him, he loved it! He’d forgotten what this felt like. He had been sure that he would never feel it again.

            When the drill ended, the coaches gave the team a water break. Artie came over and said out of the side of his mouth, “You’re fucking crazy.”

            Ron nodded and grinned. “So they tell me.”

            “God-damned craziest, animal, English teacher I ever met.”

            Ron laughed and felt his chest swell.

            In the coaches’ room, Artie said to Paul Pamenteri, gesturing at Ron, “This maniac was taking the ball up through the holes in a seven on seven.”

            Paul looked up at Ron in disbelief, “What for?”

            “I think that it improves our timing,” said Ron.

            “I can’t afford to have you getting hurt,” said Steve Ferry.

            Ron nodded. He had almost felt unstoppable, but maybe they were right. He couldn’t afford him getting hurt either.

            Ron showered and changed back into his street clothes and walked down to the teachers’ room where he’d left his book bag. Larry Viola was there and he was working some scissors on a piece of cloth.

            “Hi Larry.”

            “Hey Ron, what do you think?”

            Larry draped what Ron now saw was a sheet over his head. He had been cutting out eyeholes.

            “What’s that for?”

            Larry beamed excitedly. “I convinced Brother Howard to let me try my pre-game rally idea. This is going to be for when we play East Side.”

            Ron eyes got larger. “What do you mean?”

            “They’re known as the Ghosts, so when their bus pulls in, I’m going to be there with a group that I get together to help me and we’ll be wearing these.”

            “You can’t do that,” hollered Ron.

            “Brother said I could try it out. I have his permission.”

            “Larry, do something else.”

            “Why?”

            “Paterson East Side is basically an all-Black and Hispanic school.”

            “So?”

            “Are you fucking crazy? They are going to come to an all-White suburban school and be met by a group of people with sheets over their heads?”

            “They won’t take it that way.”

            “They sure the fuck will and they’ll never get off the bus and they’ll go to the newspapers and you will be so screwed that you won’t even know what hit you.”

            “Well, I’m doing it. It’s all in good fun. They’re the Ghosts.”

            “And you’re a moron.”

            “Fuck you. I don’t need your approval.”

            Ron was in a quandary. When he had gone to Brother O’Malley before, the results had been brutal. If he went to Brother Howard about this, Larry Vila could be in serious trouble. Why were these things finding him? He’d just wanted to change and go to see Celeste and Angel but now here he was stuck with this mess. Larry couldn’t be that naïve to think that he could do something like that, could he? He was a history teacher for Christ’s sake.

            Ron saw Brother Howard walking back to his office puffing his after dinner cigar. He sighed and put the book bag down. Damn that thing was heavy. “Brother can I have a moment?”

            Brother Howard smiled and said, “Sure Ron, come on in.”

            Ron sat in the office as Brother Howard turned the lights on and slide down in back of his desk. “How was practice?”

            “We’re getting better.”

            “Are your classes going well?”

            “Yes, Brother. I’m enjoying them.”

            Brother Howard looked perplexed. Classes were going well. Practice had been good. He hoped that Ron wasn’t going to need time off or worse still have found a new job and need to leave them. “How can I help you Mr. Tuck?”

            “Brother, I know about the pep rallies that you gave Larry Viola permission to organize.”

            “Alright.” He puffed his cigar and scarped the ash into the ashtray. This wasn’t going to be some foolish thing about coaches being above all of this was it? No, Tuck didn’t seem like the type.

            “Brother he’s planning to have kids wear sheets over their heads when we play East Side.”

            Brother Howard’s laugh was more like a guffaw. “You’re joking right?”

            “I wish that I was. He’s in the faculty room now, cutting eyeholes into sheets.”

            Howard guffawed again. “Well, he can’t do that.”

            “I tried to tell him Brother but I honestly don’t think that he believes that it is a problem.”

            “Why don’t you just go on home now, and I’ll casually wander in to see what’s going on. We’ll keep this conversation to ourselves.”

            Ron felt relief. “Thank you Brother.”

 

 

            It was about eight o’clock in the evening when Celeste carried Angel, straight from her bath, down into the basement. She still wore a diaper at night, and she was wearing a lilac nightgown. She crawled into his arms with her brown eyes filled with wonder and wrapped her very small and fragile arms around Ron’s neck. Celeste slid in next to them and entwined her feet with Ron’s feet.

            A surge of the need to provide and protect rushed through Ron’s body with one of the most delightful jolts that he’d ever felt. Angel purred like a cat and put her small hands up against each of his ears and leaned in to kiss him. Ron felt his spirit soar. She was magical at this moment.

            Celeste watched the love affair with a warm and heartfelt smile. She wished with everything had she had inside of her that this had been his baby, and would be his child.

            Angel nestled between them and wiggled her body from one to the other and then drifted off to a contented sleep. Celeste and Ron gazed into each other’s eyes and smiled.

 

Chapter 67

            Ron was standing in the main office, on the first floor of Jersey Catholic. He’d never been here before. The female clerk said, “What is it?” Her tone wasn’t hostile, just businesslike.

            “I need an elevator pass,” said Ron. He offered up the note from the doctor’s prescription pad.

            She read it. Ron watched her hands and then her face. “One moment.” Her tone was clipped and she turned away from the counter to prepare the pass. Elevators were reserved for faculty and those students who had incurred some form of injury that would grant them a temporary privilege. Anyone requiring that privilege on a continual basis was not considered for admission.

            Brother Kelly was the school principal. He made it a point of delivering each elevator pass personally. The elevators were old and elegant and Kelly wished to keep their usage to a minimum. “What seems to be the problem with you, Ronald Tuck?” Kelly glanced down at the card to be sure of the name as he spoke it.

            “I hurt my knee. The doctor says that I shouldn’t climb stairs.”

            “And how did you hurt your knee?”

            “I’m on the football team,” said Ron.

            Kelly handed Ron the signed pass. “Let’s hope your recovery is speedy, Ronald Tuck.”

            The elevators had steel grates that slid closed and Ron stood towards the back trying not to be conspicuous as he rode up to his floor. Teaches got on and then got off. Some of them eyed him suspiciously. Ron fought the urge to hold up his pass each time one of them looked at him.

            In the class, he found that the position into which one piece desk molded him was uncomfortable. He could bend it far enough to put his foot on the floor but after a few minutes it began to throb. He tried sliding down and extending his legs until they straightened. Then that became uncomfortable and he tried sitting up again. It was this progression of positions that filled his next few hours.

Because he had missed three days of school, he was behind with everything. As his assignments mounted, so did his sense of panic. By lunchtime, he was depressed and anxious. He got into the elevator while some students walked quickly passed him. He could hear their feet going down the stairs quickly, the way that he used to be able to go down the stairs. In the lunchroom, he tried to avoid being jostled. Dr. Polino had wrapped his knee in an ace bandage, but when he’d tried to do it, it had creases. All of the sliding down and straightening had made the creases worse and now they dug into the back of his knee. They made it sore and impossible for him to think about anything other than his knee.

When Brother Delban asked him to conjugate the verb to carry, Ron explained that he had been absent. Delban walked over to him and rapped his knuckles down on top of Ron’s head. He recited the first three variations of the verb, accenting each part of the recitation with a rap on the top of Ron’s head with his knuckle. Ron closed his eyes and waited for Delban to finish. Now there was a throb on the top of his head, and he fought the urge to rub it. He stared at the clock, wishing that by some miracle it would move more quickly, but it didn’t.

By the time he climbed the stairs to his apartment, his leg was throbbing and the knee had swollen up again and was hot. With some effort, he got his shoes off and pulled his pants down and unwrapped the badly creased ace bandage. His leg felt better after he took the bandage off, like it could breathe. Why did everything that the doctor told him to do make his knee hurt worse?

Ron tried to think of something to look forward to, but he couldn’t. The tension of this was building inside of him and he had no way to get it out. He lay on his bed and turned on the radio. The End of the World was playing. He closed his eyes as Blue Velvet played and then he was asleep.

 

Chapter 68

Celeste and Ron were talking on the telephone. “We should start looking for places to have the reception,” she said.

“Isn’t it too soon for that?”

“Some people book these things a year in advance,” said Celeste.

“Why?”

“They just do. There’s a lot to consider. Ron, I have something to tell you.”

“OK.”

“I’m going to have my marriage annulled.”

“How can you do that? I thought you could only do that if you hadn’t had sex.”

“In the Catholic Church you can do it if one of the people tries to avoid having children.” Andrew Canigliaro had surely qualified for that. The problem was that there was now a baby and he had accepted the responsibility to contribute to her support. But Celeste was willing to trade. She would allow him unsupervised visitation if he agreed to the annulment.

“Are we just going to have like a cookie cutter wedding?” said Ron.

            “I hope not. I think that we can do better than that.”

            “I do too. I think it’s why I have always hated weddings.”

            “We’ll make ours special and memorable,” said Celeste.

            “I think so too.” Ron thought and felt and spoke. “I don’t blame anyone for having doubts about us.” He stopped and smiled and then laughed. “That’s not really true.” He heard The Rolling Stones in his head and Mick Jagger singing those words. Ron said, “I said that and then I heard that Rolling Stones song that begins I’m a leaping screaming monkey. All my friends are junkies, but that’s not really true. Do you remember that song?”

            “I remember it. Why did you think about that?”

            “Just because of the words I guess. I’m not sure. Things pop in and out of my head all the time.”

            “I don’t blame them for doubting, but I wish they could be more kind about it.”

            “My dad’s been ok,” said Ron hopefully. “The only thing is that I’m not sure if it’s just because he doesn’t care enough about what happens.”

            Celeste heard that and it caused a ripple to pass through her. She knew that her parents cared, didn’t she? She felt herself drawn to his voice when he spoke again.

            “Part of me is like him. I used to think that part was cool and strong.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “When you can put yourself in a place where nobody can get to you.”

            “I never wanted to be in that kind of place,” said Celeste. Another ripple. Was that as honest as she could be? “Maybe I did, a little, but I like people.”

            “So, my mom wants to have the ceremony at her church.”

            “Ron, there has to be a priest. There just does.”

            “I thought about that. There’s a guy that I teach with. He’s from my old neighborhood. Maybe he would do it. He’s Italian. They could do it together, Protestant and Catholic.”

            “I need to get the annulment for him to be able to do that.”

            “I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” said Ron.

            They listened to each other breathe for a while. It was comforting.

           

 

Chapter 69

            It was a twist to the right that caused the pop to happen again. He pressed his foot down when he felt it and thought that maybe it had popped back into place. Somehow he had told himself that his knee was just out of place and could pop back at any time. He smiled as he felt the jolt. He’d seen things like that on TV where an arm or leg could just be popped back into place. Maybe that was what was happening. He wished very hard for that to be what was happening.

            His first step felt spongy. But at least he felt stable. Maybe that was it. A few moments later he felt it starting to swell and reached down and felt the heat coming from it.

            It went on like that for several weeks. Ron was now being given a hard time about the elevator pass and told that he would have to renew it every week and that he would have to produce a new note from the doctor each time that it had to be renewed. Life had changed dramatically. There were few days that went by without him getting slapped for one thing of the other.

            He told Coach Peters that he was going to have to leave the team.

            “That knee hasn’t gotten any better?”

            “No Coach, it seems to be getting worse.”

            “Tuck, you know you have to want it to get better.” The coach eyed him with an unsympathetic gaze. Injury was weakness and when a player couldn’t respond, Peters never lost the feeling that it was at least in part due to a lack of desire, a lack of toughness.

            “I do want it to get better, Coach. Football was the best thing about my life and now it’s gone.”

            “Clear out your locker then, Tuck.”

            Ron felt slapped again. That was it? Just clear out your locker?

            “Make sure that you’ve turned everything in. We have records of everything that we issued to you.”

            That was so not how anyone who was on the team was spoken to. Ron felt the distance. The team had moved on. The coach had moved on. He was no longer a part of it. He sat in front of his locker and tried to sort everything out. When it was empty, a locker room felt like a deserted hovel. There were only a few things there that belonged to him. He didn’t want them anymore and threw them into the garbage.

            The limp home was now something that he was used to. It was weird how the pain became more manageable as he became accustomed to it. He replayed the scene in his mind. He felt like the discarded soda bottle that he saw lying in an alley. Then an anger rose up in him and he thought to himself that he really didn’t need the team or football or anything.

            His knee was tapped for the first time in late November. It was a Friday. He was being taken to his Aunt Dottie’s house. The rules were absolutely no stairs, no walking, he was to keep his knee elevated and stay off it completely. The doctor gave him a set of crutches. Somehow they felt comforting. They were proof of his injury. They would tell everyone that he hadn’t been faking or had wanted to not get better. There would be another few days away from school.

            The trip home took him passed Jersey Catholic and Ron was shocked to see that the school was being dismissed. Marjorie was driving the Chevy that reminded her of Rocky. Ron slid down in the seat as they passed the school. He didn’t want anyone to see him.

            “I wonder why school is being let out?”

            Marjorie didn’t answer. The doctor’s visit had been expensive. She felt shaken by the size of the needles that the doctor had inserted into his leg. She knew that he must be in pain, although Dr. Polino said that he’d given him a cortisone shot and that in a few days that his knee should feel a lot better and that the swelling would go down for good.

            When they were a safe distance from the school, Ron reached out and turned on the radio. Instead of music he heard the announcer say, “At this point there is no way to know how badly the President has been injured. There are reports that he was hit in his head. To repeat, shots were fired at President John Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas about forty five minutes ago. There are reports of multiple injuries. The President is believed to be among those who have been injured. Texas Governor John Connelly is also believed to be among the injured. The President and Governor Connelly have been taken to Parkland Hospital. Defense Forces have been placed on alert.”

            Ron turned to his mother but she didn’t seem to be reacting. “Do you think that he’ll be alright?”

            “I’m sure that he will,” said Marjorie. “Those people are trained to take care of him.” Marjorie was only half listening. She was worried about the bill and what George was going to say.

            Dorothy had the back room all prepared for him. The crutches were of no use in her house and so Ron left them in the kitchen and limped slowly back down the long hall to his Uncle’s room.  Dorothy had pulled out the sofa bed and added extra pillows for his knee.

            “I’m going to fix you a plate of cookies and get you some milk,” said his aunt.

            Ron tried to smile. The feel of her apartment was comforting and no one was going to holler at him or slap him here. Dorothy turned on the TV as she left to get the cookies and milk.

            Ron saw Walter Cronkite in his shirt sleeves. There were people moving around in back of him. Everyone looked tense and nervous and busy. The scene shifted to a larger room and in back of a scene of milling and crying people, Ron heard that there were unconfirmed reports that the President was dead. He sat up bolt straight in the bed. His knee didn’t seem to mind. He blotted out everything else in the room and stared hard at the TV. The camera shifted back to Cronkite who reported that President Kennedy was receiving blood transfusions in the emergency room. That must mean that he was still alive! Ron hoped with all his might that everything w aging to be ok. Then a voice from off camera said that there was a rumor that was circulating that the President was dead. Ron felt his mind go numb and waited to hear what Cronkite said. Until Walter Cronkite said it, it wasn’t true and rumors were just rumors. Then there was another report from the hospital itself that said one of the doctors was now reporting that President Kennedy was dead. Ron felt his eyes welling up with tears. Then Cronkite said that Father Hubert had been called into the operating room to administer the sacrament of last rites to the President. Then Cronkite said that there was a twenty five year old man who had been taken into custody at the scene, he interrupted himself to say that correspondent Dan Rather was now confirming reports that the President was dead. Tears were streaming down Ron’s face as his aunt walked back into the room with the cookies and milk. She placed them on the table and sat down with Ron to watch.

            The TV showed pictures of the ball room where President Kennedy was scheduled to speak. People were praying. Cronkite said that Vice President Lyndon Johnson had not been seen at Parkland but that there were unconfirmed reports that he had been wounded slightly in his arm. Ron thought, why couldn’t they have killed him instead? His aunt was sitting hunched forward with her hands clasped. Marjorie had gone back to work as soon as she dropped Ron off. He was worried about her because her face had that tense look that it seemed to always have now. Then Ron realized that his Aunt Dottie was praying. He had never seen her pray before. Cronkite reported that some four hundred police officers in Dallas had been called in on their day off because there had been reports that there might be trouble in Dallas. Instantly, Ron hated Texas and everyone who was from there. Cronkite reported that it had only been in late October when United Nations Ambassador Stevenson had been assaulted in Dallas. Ron thought, why does anyone go there? Why don’t we just stay the fuck out of Texas altogether? Then Cronkite said it. It was official. The President had died thirty-eight minutes earlier. Cronkite took off his glasses took a deep breath and appeared to be crying. Ron cried too. His Aunt Dottie cried. They sat staring at the TV in disbelief, tears rolling down their faces. Cronkite gathered himself and said, Lyndon Johnson would be sworn in as the thirty-sixth President of the United States shortly.

            Ron watched the TV endlessly. He couldn’t stop. A man who had been there with his son and was waving to the President and the President was waving back and then he was shot and the man saw the expression on his face and then he was shot again and he was gone down into the limousine. Ron cried again. Four years ago, before Rocky left, before George intruded, they had taken him to a rally at the Newark Mosque to see JFK.  Kennedy was late. They waited endlessly.  Just when Marjorie was saying that she had to go to work at seven am, he was there. He was tan, he was filled with a light that seemed to shine from him. Ron was transfixed. Understanding what he said seemed less important than being able to have been there. Now he was dead. People were talking about watching him die. There were pictures of his wife and then a photo was released inside of an airplane. Johnson looked flabby and old and grisly.  Jacqueline Kennedy looked like she didn’t really know where she was or what was happening.

            Dorothy had switched the channel over to NBC. Robert Abernathy was reporting on the return of the President’s body, along with the garish presence of the new man who thought that he was the president. There were a couple thousand people waiting. Many were members of Congress. Ron watched the mostly dark screen that showed the blinking lights of the plane’s arrival. Somehow those lights seemed sacred and important. Then the plane was visible and the words The United States of America could be seen lettered along the side of it. A row of small windows were visible underneath the words but nothing could be seen from them. Diplomats and Cabinet officers waited for the arrival. Ron believed with all his heart that they waited to be in the presence of that person who had been John Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson, in his mind, was merely a passenger. It was so very dark as the honor guard walked up to the plane. Ron was alone now. It was late. Everyone else had gone to bed. Then he heard a shuffling and Dorothy came in. She sat down without saying anything.

            “I just can’t sleep, Aunt Dot.”

            “Me either,” she said.

            They moved a special piece of apparatus out to accommodate the coffin. The men struggled to remove the casket. Each jostle felt almost like a slap. The dark brown casket glistened in the dark and Ron felt that it must be that light that he had seen, the light in back of the words that had listened to and read. They reported that it was a bronze casket.

            “This is so bad,”

            “It almost reminds me of the war,” said Dorothy.

            A Navy ambulance arrived to transport the casket. JFK had always been Navy. It was fitting. No one knew exactly where the body would be taken. One report said that it would be flown directly by helicopter to the White House. Another said that it was going to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

             “How many times have you seen this now?” said Dorothy.

            “I don’t know, a few. It just seems wrong to stop watching.”

            And then Robert was there and he was holding her hand and helping her down. Ron watched it for the third time. It wasn’t going to be any different but it right to be here right now. She got into the ambulance with the casket. One man in a military navy hat was opening the door. People were milling around.

            “She’s lucky to be alive,” said Dorothy.

            “I bet she doesn’t feel lucky,” said Ron.

            Dorothy felt a twinge and stared at him. At this moment he seemed much older than he was.

            People moved in formation as the ambulance drove away. Then they showed Lyndon Johnson and his wife who was called Lady Bird. They looked like vultures to Ron as they walked out from the plane. People were shaking his hand. Ron felt anger. The congressman and cabinet members advanced. They were there to greet him. They hadn’t come to see if anything was left of the light that he had seen and knew was still there. Only his wife and brother still saw it. But Ron had seen it. His Aunt Dottie has seen it too. Then Johnson came to a group of microphones to speak. Ron didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Ron closed his eyes and didn’t want to listen.

            When he opened them, a man with short brown hair and a bruise over his left eye requested assistance. He said that he hadn’t been charged with any crime and that he was requesting legal representation. He said that he’d been hit by a policeman. Ron lay there and watched. His knee was an afterthought.

It was reported that a rifle with a telescopic site had been found in the Texas School Book Depository. There were three spent cartridges and one shell left in the chamber.

            Oswald was just wearing a t-shirt now and he said, “I’m a patsy.”

            Ron didn’t know what that meant but he hated the sight of Oswald.

 

Chapter 70

            “What is it about death that is so intriguing?” Ron Tuck looked out at his class. “That was one of the themes that Poe wrote about almost endlessly. In last night’s story, he used the word ‘House’ in several different ways. For instance. There is an actual crack in the physical structure of the house. The word house here can also be used to represent the word family. It was once considered that a family could be identified by the word house which actually referred to its bloodlines and the branches of its family. On top of that, the house in this story seems to have the attributes of a character in the story. The way that Poe explores all of this and wraps it into a story is the use of an extended metaphor.” He turned and wrote that on the board. His students took notes. “What is an extended metaphor?”

             He watched while his students turned to the back of the book and looked up the meaning. Mark Simon, who was always the first to raise his hand when Ron asked questions like this, shot his hand into the air. Ron waited. Slowly two more hand raised and then a fourth hand went into the air. Ron smiled. Patience and silence were two of the things that he had learned could serve a teacher very well in the classroom. It was learning to trust the power of the room. Then it hit him. The house and the classroom shared a power.

            “When you read this story again tonight,” he paused and waited for their reaction, the groan was audible. “I want you to pay particular attention to Poe’s description of the house and compare it with his description of Roderick Usher. However, in Usher you will see evidence of the House of Usher, meaning the entirety of his family line. I want you to find examples of this and to also find five vocabulary words that you think will be of use to you.” The class wrote down the assignment. Ron was pleased with them and he showed it. “From what I see in this classroom, college level work is not going to be a problem. I see smart and capable students who are ready to do their study.”

            Back in the teacher’s room, Father Tom Orecchio was smoking a cigarette. Ron slid in across from him and said, “Tom, I’m getting married.”

            Orecchio exhaled and said, “Congratulations.”

            “I was wondering if you are allowed to do an ecumenical service?”

            Because he was not affiliated with a parish, Tom didn’t get a lot of call to do weddings and baptisms. They were easy money and most always went to the parish priests. Sometimes, a family member would ask, but they would expect that it would be done for nothing, or at the family discount as they called it. “Sure, I can pretty, much do any fucking thing that I want,” said father Tom. He was fond of cursing and enjoyed the reactions that people had to hearing the word fuck come from a man in a collar.

            “Well, here’s the thing. I was a convert and really I’m not the best Catholic in the world.”

            Orecchio laughed. “No, really? You’ve got to be shitting me,” His receding red hair and freckles led the students to believe that he had a diabolical side to him. He had come to the priesthood late. He was almost forty years old when he was ordained. But he had been stupid and gone on a diet of grapefruit in order to lose weight for his big day. Something had gone wrong and now his kidneys had stopped working. Every third day he went for dialysis and the sessions left him worn old, cold inside, and cranky. He’d had dialysis that morning and was in no mood for bullshit.

            “Celeste is Italian and it would mean a lot to her family to have a priest there.”

            “Sure, why not.”

            “Where’s the wedding going to be?”

            Ron swallowed. He knew this part wasn’t going to go over well. “The Glen Ridge Congregational Church.”

            “You’re
fucking kidding.”

            “That’s where my family moved to when we left the old neighborhood.”

            “You must have fit in really well there, Ronnie.”

            It never ceased to surprise Ron that people from Newark always slipped into calling him Ronnie. He hated the name Ronnie and when he went to college he made sure that people knew him as Ron. “Not so well, no.”

           

Chapter 61

            It was a warm Saturday evening late in October. Ron was taking a walk up to Elwood Park to see if any of his friends were around.  He was amazed at the reactions that people had to him playing on the upper level team. They seemed to look at him differently. He basked in the glow of it but not as much as he loved to play. He was as happy as he could remember being in a so long. He hadn’t been slapped since the football season had started. His grades had improved. He was even passing French and Latin and Algebra, although the last was much in need of improvement and he hoped that somehow it would just begin to click for him.

            The days were shorter now and it was dark early, but the streetlights that ringed the park created a twilight that allowed you to see. There was a large group of guys and they were playing football. Ron knew that he wasn’t allowed in these kinds of games anymore. It was against the team rules, but he wanted to play. He wanted be unstoppable and with these guys, he could still run with the ball.

            He was invited into the game and quickly said yes. He’d dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt. If he had been honest with himself, he would have admitted that this was why he had come here. It was a seven on seven game. Ron was playing his position on defense, he was a linebacker. When his team had the ball, he was in the backfield.

            On the sixth play of the game, he caught a short pass and pivoted the way that he had learned from Richie. The fake worked and he raced up the sidelines and scored. The elation sent waves of euphoria racing through him.

            Instead of kicking the ball to the other team, these kids threw it.  Ron was lined up on the left. The ball spiraled down the middle of the field. When it got higher than the lights, it couldn’t be seen. Ron raced to where he thought it would land and then it was coming down and bouncing and Larry Bonet picked it and ran up the middle of the field. Ron cut in towards him and lunged. As he lunged he planted his foot, the way that he did when he was wearing cleats. But he was wearing sneakers and they slipped and the lunge came up short and he felt his arm curl to grab Larry’s hip, but there was no force behind it.

Ron bounced off harmlessly and hit the ground hard. The pop that he heard was followed by electric jolts of pain. He’d never felt a pop in his body before. He tried to jump up and run after they play. He got to his feet, the adrenalin rushing through him, and ran. On the second step, her heard the pop again and went down hard, rolling and clutching at his left knee.

            He tried to get to his feet but he was having trouble straightening his leg. It seemed to be bent like a dog’s leg and he couldn’t manage to straighten it out. He tried to take a step, but his leg wouldn’t move. He stood there with a helpless look of pain and embarrassment. “I don’t think that I can play anymore tonight,” he said.

            His immediate problem was how to move. He couldn’t just stand there in the middle of the field. He needed to get home and look at his knee, but he couldn’t take a step.

            Larry Bonet and Phillip Rolandelli, helped him to a car that was parked alongside of the park. He felt some relief when he leaned against it. Maybe if he just stood there until the throbbing went away, everything would be alright.

            Ron felt his knee swelling. He looked down and to his horror it was pressing out against his jeans. They seemed trapped by the swollen knee. Ron leaned over and tried to pull the jeans down. Another wave of electric shocked rushed through him. This was bad. This was really bad. He watched the guys play a while longer and then the game broke up and the kids started home.

            Ron found that if he pressed down on his toes when he tried to hobble that he could propel himself forward. Maybe if he had a stick, something to lean on when he stepped he could make it.

            The six blocks he needed to cover to get to their apartment took over an hour. Once he sat down to rest on a porch, but the effort that it took to get back onto his feet convinced him that he shouldn’t do that anymore. He was sweating profusely. The pain just wouldn’t stop. When he reached the apartment he was shaking with the effort that it took to take a single step.

            His mind went into shock when he looked at the steps. How the fuck was he supposed to manage them? He had an idea. He placed both hands on the railing and hopped on his good leg. The jolt squeezed tears out of his eyes. He had another idea. He sat on the steps, bent his arms and used them to raise his body to the next step. On his ass, he managed the two flights of stairs. The hallway of the apartment was dark. Ron could see the glow of the television coming from the living room. He hobbled slowly to his room.

            Marjorie heard the noise and said, “Is that you Ronald?”

            Ron tried to make his voice sound normal. “Yeah Mom.”

            “Come in here a moment.”

            “I can’t,”

            “What do you mean, you can’t?”

            “I fell. I’m having trouble walking. I think I did something to my leg.”

            “Well, take your time. I want to talk to you.”

            Marjorie had seen Ron come home bruised before. He always tried to hide his bumps and bruises so that Marjorie wouldn’t get angry with him. She waited.

            Ron tried to take a couple of steps, but he had used all of his energy to get home and then to get up the stairs.

            Marjorie heard it in his voice when he half cried, “I can’t.”

            Marjorie and George left their TV program and the light went on in the hallway. Ron stood there hunched over. He was leaning against the wall and his left legs wasn’t touching the ground.

            Marjorie gasped when she got closer. He was drenched in sweat. His hair was matted to his head. He had been crying. George moved towards him and Ron felt his supporting bulk. George said, “Just lean on me.” Ron could smell the beer on George’s breath as he half carried him into the living room. They laid him on the couch.

            Marjorie said, “What did you do to yourself?”

            “I don’t know. I tripped in the park.”

            She suspected immediately. “Were you playing football?”

            Ron shrugged.

            “Don’t you get enough of football all week long? Now look at what you’ve done.”

            Ron felt guilty, but angry too. Other kids’ mothers felt sorry for them when they got hurt. His mother took it as something that he had done to himself to hurt her.

            George showed him how to use a kitchen chair to lean on when he tried to move. He would lean against the back of it and then slide it forward across the wooden floor, but it didn’t work on the stained, shaggy white rug. “I’m going to bed,” said Ron.

            “Well I hope it’s better in the morning,” said Marjorie.

            Ron slid his chair down the hallway and made it to his bedroom. When he finally got his jeans off, he saw that his left knee was twice the size of his right knee and it was hot to the touch.

            Ron had trouble sleeping. Each time he turned in his sleep, the pain woke him up.  In the middle of the night he sat up and rubbed his palms up and down the sides of his knee. It seemed ever larger and hotter. Ron knew that he was in trouble. He’d never been hurt like this before. The closest thing was when he fell from the top of a chain link fence and his right ankle had bounced up from the ground and been impaled on one of the twisted bottom ends of the fence. He’d hidden that one from his mother and still had a deep scar.

            Why had he done it? How could he have been this stupid? Now he might have ruined everything.

            The next morning was no better. They set him in the living room with his knee propped up on his chair and George covered it with an ice bag. Ron felt helpless. The least little thing that he tried to do was an ordeal.  Trying to stand on one leg and urinate was impossible. He felt humiliated when he sat on the bowl to pee. He assured Marjorie and George that he was fine and they were to George’s mother’s house for dinner, promising to bring him a plate home for him. At least he’d gotten out of that.

            Ron tried to do homework, but his mind would not allow him to concentrate. What was going to happen to him? What was wrong with his knee? How much trouble was he in? The questions tormented him as much as the pain.

            After two ice bags, the swelling went down a bit and Ron was elated. Maybe it was going to be ok. He’d heard about sprained knees. Maybe that was what he had done. But in his ears, he could still hear that sickening pop.

            On Sunday night, Marjorie said, “I don’t think that you can go to school tomorrow. I’m going to have to find some way to get you to the doctor. Of course I don’t know how I’m going to do that and I might lose my job, but I’m glad that you had fun playing football.” She spit the word football out like she hated it.

            Ron kept the ice on his knee all night long. He listened to the radio, hiding it under his pillow and pressing his ear down to the music. Puff the Magic Dragon and You Don’t Have to be a Baby to Cry filtered up into him. He heard Louie Louie at least four times and still didn’t understand what the words meant. Every two hours, he used the chair and limped down the hall as quietly as he could and refilled the ice bag. 

Marjorie thought she heard him each time but was too angry at him for getting hurt to get out of bed. He wasn’t supposed to get hurt and now she’d seen him hurt over and over. Was that the joy of being a mother?

By morning Ron said and showed that he could walk without the chair. He limped and he was tentative, but he was improved. “Mom, just let me stay home today, no doctor, you go to work. George was right. The ice is working.”

George had long since left for work. What Ron was offering made the day simple. It was routine. “Ok, but I need to call your father.”

Ron was watching a rerun of The People’s Choice when the phone rang. He liked that Cleo the dog talked. He wanted to see the mayor’s daughter without her clothes. Absently, he was stroking his penis when the phone rang.

“Ronald?”

His erection dissipated in an eye blink. “Hi Dad.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Ron closed his eyes. Now he needed to pee. “I was stupid. I got hurt because I was stupid again.”

“That’s how you learn,” said Harry. “How bad is it?”

“I’ve been putting ice on it. I can almost walk now. It hurts but it’s going to be ok.”

“I’ll call you later. Try not to be stupid again.”

Ron flushed at the admonishment. “OK.”

The receiver clicked. Ron looked back up at the screen to see the Mayor’s daughter walk away with her hips wiggling. He began to stroke it again.

 

 

Chapter 62

 

“Edger Allen Poe was way ahead of his time. So far ahead and so sophisticated that it took his country decades to really catch up to what he was doing. In France, he was loved and respected. Not here. He suffered from what he believed were certain demons inside of him and his stories always seem like an attempt at expiation.”

Ron turned to the chalkboard and wrote to expiate in block letters on the board. “What does this word mean?”

Mark Simon carried a pocket dictionary with his books. He fished it out of his bag and thumbed through pages. Ron saw him and waited. Other students tuned to a dictionary that was in the back of their literature books, but Ron doubted that they would find it there. Mark said, “To atone for as in atoning for one’s crimes.”

Ron smiled. “That’s right. Now after you read tonight’s story, I want you to give me a paragraph that discusses the connection between The Black Cat and expiation.” Ron knew that they had probably read the story before. He had been surprised to see it included in the book. It was something that was usually taught in middle school or perhaps ninth grade. It was a warm up to The Fall of The House of Usher. He gave them the writing assignment to assure that they would read and not try to rely on their younger memories of the story

.

Ron waited outside of Brother Todd O’Malley’s office. It was his prep and he had been given something shockingly disturbing in one of his freshman classes. A student, a rather strange, short and stocky kid named Carl Flack had signed his name in blood on his quiz. Then he’d announced it to the class as he walked his paper up and handed it in. Ron looked at the paper. The penmanship was good and perfectly in red was his name, written in blood. He had pricked his finger and managed to squeeze up a bubble of blood that he dipped his pen into as he worked the letters.

Brother O’Malley was a giant of a man. He stood six feet and six inches tall and weighed over three hundred pounds. He was in charge of disciple. His size, his demeanor, and his baritone voice made him feel imposing.

“How can I help you, Mr. Tuck?”

Brother O’Malley sat in back of his desk. He did not invite Ron to sit. Ron sat anyway and opened his large book bag. He extracted the quiz carefully. He had placed it between two blank sheets of paper. “A student, a freshman named Carl Flack, handed in this quiz and announced to the class that he had signed it in blood.” Ron extended the paper.

O’Malley’s eyes darkened as he took it. “I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before,” said O’Malley.

“I haven’t either,” said Ron.

“Are you sure that it’s blood”

“Either it is or this kid has one heck of an imagination, Brother.”

Brother Todd O’Malley said flatly, “A diseased imagination.”

Ron’s mind flashed on Poe, but he wasn’t teaching Poe in this class.

“Let’s take a walk,” said Brother O’Malley. He stood heavily, and together they walked to the main office where he looked up the location of Carl Flack’s locker. Ron stashed his book bag in back of the counter and quietly followed O’Malley who was carrying a large ring of keys and his clipboard.

When O’Malley opened Flack’s locker, the disgusted look on his face caused its lines to deepen and become a menacing scowl. Hanging in Flack’s locker, on the hooks that were designed for coats or sweaters, were three strings. From each dangled a freshly amputated rabbit’s foot. He opened the door wider for Ron to see.

The color drained from Ron’s face when he looked. There was something seriously wrong with this kid. O’Malley shut the door without disturbing anything. He’d expected to find some kind of substance, but not this. He felt the anger rising in his massive body. Ron followed him to Flack’s class.

O’Malley opened the door without knocking, stood in the doorway silently. He’d looked at a picture of Flack when he found the location of the locker. Slowly his eyes panned the room. Students fidgeted and put their heads down. The teacher stopped speaking and stood frozen in the center of the class, half turned to the chalkboard. O’Malley’s eyes found Flack. He walked towards him, his long black habit swaying like the motion of a moving battleship. He towered over Flack’s desk. “What have you done?” rumbled the baritone voice.

Carl Flack tried to escape but he tripped and fell to the floor. Calmly O’Malley reached down, grabbed his heel and dragged him out of the classroom, holding his leg in the air.

Ron stood with his mouth open as O’Malley silently dragged the boy, still sprawled on his back, down the hallway to his office. He wasn’t invited to follow.

 

Chapter 63

 

On Monday night, Ron told Marjorie that his leg felt better and that he wanted to go to school. “Did you talk to your father?”

“He called. He told me to try not to be so stupid.”

“That sounds like him,” said Marjorie. She always pumped Ron for information about his conversations with his father. He always resisted, but she knew how to wear him down. Harry didn’t have the ability to express emotions like most people. He was uncomfortable with intimacy. He’d built walls around what was important to him for a very long time. Marjorie had been fool enough to think that she was inside those walls and that he trusted her. Now she knew that Harry wasn’t capable of trusting anyone. He had a good heart but he was short on trust and set in his ways. “No football practice.”

“I have to show up, but I’ll tell them that I’m hurt.”

“Will they know how you got hurt?”

“No.”

“Will you tell them?”

Instinctively Ron sensed the danger in the question. It invited conspiratorial confidence, but Ron didn’t trust it. There were always consequences. “Yes,” he lied.

Ron stood in front of Coach Peters in the coaches’ office.

“How did you hurt your leg?”

Ron had stripped off his shoes and pants but left his underwear and shirt on when he went to see the coach. He knew that Peters would want to see the knee. The day’s walking and the lack of ice had caused it to swell noticeably and it was warm to the touch.

“I fell.”

“What were you doing when you fell?”

“I was in the park running sprints, coach.”

“Were you alone?”

Coach Peters suspected that the answer wasn’t true but he wanted to know if any of his other players were involved. “No coach, I was with some friends.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“No, coach.”

“Looks to me like it should be looked at. I can’t have you practice on that leg, Ronnie.”

Ron felt the ease of relief flow through him. Coach Peters would never have called him Ronnie if he was pissed.

 

Chapter 64

Reading the paragraphs that his students had written about Poe, Ron was surprised that they seemed incapable of separating the actions of the author from the actions of the main character. They write about Poe’s cruelty to animals and about how guilt had driven Poe to write the story as a confession.

Ron was feeling pretty guilty himself. The sight of Carl Flack being dragged down the hallway and then the notice in his mailbox to remove him from the class  lists and determine a grade for the work that he’d down so far, left Ron feeling that he had done the wrong thing. At Our Lady of the Forlorn, Ron would have talked to the student. He would have had input into what happened. But his girls would never have acted this way.

Mark Simon had written, “Poe is trying to expiate his thoughts by revealing them and turning them into something better than they were.” Ron smiled. Well at least he’d gotten the difference between author and character.

When the phone rang, Ron expected it to be Celeste, but Elena, one of his former and best students said, “Hello, Mr. Tuck, it’s Elena Rodriguez.”

Ron felt his face break into an immediate smile.

“I hope that I haven’t reached you at a bad time, have I?”

“Not at all Elena. I’m just reading essays. I could use a break.”

“Are they as good as our essays used to be?”

Ron laughed. There was no reason to tell her that these boys had been better prepared than her classmates had been. That was surely true but she didn’t need to hear it. What was also true was that they were nowhere near as sensitive as his girls were. “I don’t think that anything will quite touch me the way that you girls did,” said Ron. It was an honest response and it avoided hurting her feelings.

“Mr. Tuck, I need advice.”

Ron’s mind flashed on when she had called him from a bathroom with a boyfriend waiting in the next room and wanting to have sex with her and her asking him what she should do. Ron laughed in his best teasing way. “I think that you’re old enough to make that decision for yourself now, Elena.”

He could feel the girl blush right through the phone. She laughed. “Not about that, Mr. Tuck. I have that figured out. I can’t believe that I did that and that I was actually able to look you in the eyes for the rest of the year.”

“It was fine Elena. How can I help you?”

“I hate it here, Mr. Tuck. I never knew what racism really was until I got to Princeton.”

Ron face grew troubled. His mind flashed on his old friend Sister Bernadette who had accused Ron of setting his students up for failure because he wanted to be special by making them be more special. “Tell me what’s going on Elena.”

“They look down on the scholarship students. They keep us in our own dorm. They treat us like we are charity cases who need to remember how lucky we are to be here. One of my classmates actually said that her tuition was so high because she was also paying off my tuition.”

“How are your grades?”

“My grades are fine. It’s the people who suck. It’s Americans who suck.”

“Come on Elena. I’m American and so are you.”

“I’m Puerto Rican, Mr. Tuck, and the more I learn about what was done to my country the more I hate being American.”

“Maria, if you lower yourself to that, they win.”

“They already won and they want to make sure that I know it and never forget it.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I called you.”

“Elena you are succeeding academically. You are too tough to let prejudice stop you at this point in your life.”

“You don’t know what it’s like here. They look at you like you are a lower life form, someone who should be waiting on them in a restaurant if you are lucky enough to have a job. They don’t care how smart you are. They want you to know that you will never be as good as they are.”

“Elena, do you have friends?”

“Sure I do. I have the other scholarship students who live with me and eat with me and who go to classes with me and also get treated like shit.”

Ron hesitated. He wasn’t sure what to say to her. He didn’t doubt her voracity but he didn’t want her to be weak. “Elena?”

“Yes?”

“Stop whining.” He knew that she must feel like he’d slapped her in the face. “You’re there to get an education and maybe this is part of your education. Did you think that it was going to be easy to change the world?”

Her voice seemed to shrink. “No.”

“You’re letting it get to you.”

Her voice got stronger again. “Of course I am. I’m human and I’m sensitive and I don’t want to be treated this way.”

“You’re Puerto Rican and you’re from Newark. You’ve seen more of life than they have. You haven’t been sheltered.”

“Believe it or not I was sheltered from this until now.”

“So you want to give up. You want to have come all this way just to give up?”

            “No, I don’t want to give up.”

            “Then stop whining and get on with it.”

            They talked for a few more minutes, but he could tell that she wanted to hang up the phone now. She didn’t ask any questions about his life and so he never told her that he was getting married. It was harder to get back to his papers after the phone call. Was it possible that Bernadette had been right?

 

Chapter 65

            The doctor’s office was in an old home that had a fireplace that had been stoned shut. There was a perimeter of chairs that had varying degrees of comfort. Marjorie was thumbing a magazine. Ron was staring at each aspect of the room and rubbing his hands along his jean covered thighs. Most of the people were old and sat patiently. It seemed incongruous when someone was there alone. Everybody went to the doctor’s office with someone.

            The wait seemed to go on forever. People judged how many others were in front of them by surveying who was seated in the room when they arrived. There were pocket doors that led into Dr. Polino’s office. His desk was visible each time they opened. There was a second door through which patients left. The examining room was off to his right and just had an open arch between it and the front, conference room. The office smelled of antiseptic alcohol.

            Dr. Polino treated Ron when he had asthma attacks. Ron used to go to a doctor who had been one of Rocky’s family. He liked Doctor Merck, but that was just something else that changed when Rocky left them. “So what seems to be the problem Ronald?”

            “I hurt my knee.”

            “How did that happen?”

            “I was playing football. I landed wrong.”

            “Let’s take a look at it.”

            Ron pulled down his pants while Marjorie waited in the conference room. She didn’t want to see his swollen knee again. It made her start to cry.

            The doctor probed and bent and twisted Ron’s leg. He could feel it starting to swell again. The doctor was making it worse. Ron winced and when he couldn’t help it, he yelped. His eyes were involuntarily fixed on the distant figure of Marjorie and he watched her, after each yelp had passed, recovering from it.

            “You have what we call a hot knee, Ronald. It’s swollen and there is fluid that has built up inside of it. Sometimes, with rest and elevation, it can heal itself. Other times the fluid needs to be drawn out.”

            “Ok,” said Ron.

            “You can get dressed now.” Dr. Polino walked to his desk, sat down and took out his prescription pad. He was pretty certain that the knee was going to need to be drained, but there was a chance of reabsorption because he was so young.

            When Ron was dressed, Marjorie came out of the corner of the conference room and sat in one of the chairs facing Dr. Polino’s desk. Ron limped over and sat in the other chair. His knee had felt so much better before he came here. “This will help the swelling to go down. I need to see him again in two weeks. Until then I want Ron,” Polino turned from Marjorie and directed his words to Ron. “Until then, no strenuous activity, no sports and you are to sleep with a pillow under your knee. Avoid stairs whenever you can. Do not take gym.”

            Ron felt like each statement was a punch in his stomach. “What about school?” said Marjorie.

            “Keep him home for the next few days. That knee really needs to stay elevated if it had any chance of draining. Ronald, use ice whenever it feels hot.”

            For the next three days, Ron felt like he was living in a cocoon that brought him back to a time when he was happy. There was no homework. There was no time to go to bed or to wake up. There were morning TV programs that he’d almost forgotten had existed. As the swelling went down and his range of motion improved, his hopes soared. Football players had injuries, but they got better. Even the great Frank Gifford had been knocked out of commission for a season. Maybe everything was going to be ok.