Chapter XXI: Fly Like an Eagle

Chapter Twenty-One: Fly like an Eagle

In September 1980, the Yankees eliminated the Red Sox, John Lennon was starting over as a pop star, Billy Joel's Glass Houses was the album to have, and my father wouldn't let me watch Hill Street Blues on television. One episode of The Dukes of Hazzard and then it was off to my room. I watched The Empire Strikes Back so many times that I started to have sympathetic pains when Luke's hand was cut off by his father, Darth Vader. My 4^th grade teacher was merciless. Would school ever end?

Brooklyn and I had officially returned from Boston to live with my father. Our new house on the southeast corner of Elwyn and Lincoln was across the street from where we had lived with my mother when I was in 1^st grade. When a light was on in my old house's top floor, I could see a corner of the Winnie the Pooh mural she painted on my old walls.

As the summer ended, I clutched my little bag lunch to my chest and followed in step with the crowd of kids toward 4^th grade. Under changing foliage and in a dark mood after the Sox were eliminated, I walked the same two blocks east on Laurel, past Gentle Gena's house, to the intersection of South Street and Elwyn. I crossed South with the help of a crossing guard whom I had begun to resent. Bone Harbor Road began on the East side of South Street. Clough Field, an uneven all purpose field with a gravelly infield, sits at the northern edge of the South Street Cemetery. 5^th graders played baseball at Clough Field during gym class so a Gordy Clutcher home run to right field would land in the South Street Cemetery.

Underneath October skies, I met Kurt and Cristo at the corner of Clough Field to get into as much trouble as possible before the bell prompted us to form a line. Because Piper entered from the east, from Break Island Avenue, down a long willow canopied sidewalk, I rarely saw him. As the only student from the Boston area, wielding my accented swears like a knife, I became the Red Sox fan. My hat, handed down as it was from the immortal Dewey, became a prize I never expected. Though most were skeptical at first, they soon realized that the hat gave me special powers, a sixth sense to defend it, and thus it had to be authentic.

I was the first children ever to walk to school. The first New England October was mine. I was the first child to notice the shining graves across the hooking Harbor, or wonder what it was like to be dead. I was the first to discover how the field could be used for games. I claimed Clough Field. I claimed the swings and the long metal slide and the tire bridge. I had discovered this new land and it was mine. My hat was a planted flag for the Red Sox nation.

On the side of the big school building was a forty-foot brick wall. When I first I walked onto the playground for my first day of 4^th grade and discovered fifty kids throwing a racquetball against the wall and running around screaming trying to get the ball back, I thought I had entered Nirvana. The objective was to throw the ball against the wall and to catch it again. Simple? This was no small challenge when fifty other kids tried to catch it too. The game was Off The Wall and I claimed it as my own invention. Fifty kids couldn’t take the ball from me. I had an uncanny ability to know exactly where the ball would land. I could make it bounce over a hundred outstretched arms and a thousand fingers to where I stood quietly behind them all. Or I could put a spin on the ball with a snap of the wrist and then run to where it would suddenly zag off when it hit the ground, making everyone think I had attached a string to it. It was like I was born to play left field at Fenway Park, like balls deflecting off the Green Monster were, by design, destined for my hand. For a challenge, I would throw the racquetball so it would come down in the middle of everyone making it an even game, the prize going to the highest, most aggressive jumper. I then leapt over heads and hands, rising on shoulders to snap the little blue ball out of the sky. Then, before anyone knew it I had it, I’d throw the ball again and dart off to meet it up close to the wall. Then whip-zing back again way over everyone's heads, sweating and running with sharp eyes, brightly, reaching up to gather it in. Even Gordy Clutcher had to admit that Off The Wall was my game.

Then the inevitable morning came when a shock wave hit me from behind and knocked me down. The blue ball rolled away from me and the game continued. I looked from my bleeding palms at a blond haired kid with big white teeth, a pale round face, and eyes the color of the racquetball he was holding.

“Bettah watch yahself” he said.

I found out at attendance that his name was Mack Wynter.

When Jordan Wynter, technically a friend of my brother's, invited me and my brother to play Capture the Flag with him at the Jones Road Dump, I hardly knew that this same playground attacker was his half-brother. With other people around Mack wasn't so bad, but I avoided him anyway.

When I wasn't guarding the flag or actively trying to kill Vance, I was hiding in the woods with my camouflage coat and gun, awaiting the enemy to make a fatal mistake. On one such vigil I was buried beneath a layer of leaves that Kurt had gleefully dumped on my body. Of course I had to piss as soon as Kurt was out of sight so I lay there uncomfortably squirming, thinking of how to improve the Red Sox roster or what it would really take to be a Jedi Knight. As I repeated the times table for three, 3x1=3, 3x2=6, 3x3 =9, 3x4=?, I heard footsteps through the thicket of leaves. I had to piss so bad that no matter who it was, I was going to come out of hiding. If it was an enemy then I'd attack and if it was an ally then I'd get them to cover me back up with leaves as soon as I pissed. The footsteps slowed down as they approached. Had this lump of leaves in the middle of a clearing been too obvious a hiding location?

Mack came into view ten feet in front of me. He was limping through the tangled brush and branches. Mack was an enemy today and I would take pleasure in killing him since I felt nothing but hostility from him on the playground. I just needed to wait for him to turn around so I could throw a stick grenade. My bladder was expanding and pulsating like an inner tube. Mack looked around, his eyes scanned the tree line and the horizon, but he didn't look down. He leaned against a tree and pressed his head against the bark. He was breathing so heavily that I could hear his rasping coughs. What the hell? If he would just turn around then I could safely kill him and be done with it and I could piss. I wiggled my toes in my combat boots but it didn't help. Then Mack started to vomit next to the tree. Must've been something he ate, I thought. Those cafeteria French fries would pull the escape hatch one way or the other. Mack delivered another burst of stomach contents on the trunk of the tree. He then slumped forward so the tree held his weight and leaned there for many moments. I counted these moments individually because my bladder had expanded to occupy 5/4 (I was never good at fractions) of my body After a bloody age of leaning against the tree, Mack coughed a few times, spit onto the ground, and continued into the forest in the direction of the dump piles.

As soon as I no longer heard his footsteps I leapt out of my cocoon and clawed at my button fly camouflage pants until they opened and I was able to equalize the lakes and streams of New England with what I named Oggy Creek. I was so happy I hadn't pissed my pants that tears came to my eyes. I had a good fifteen minutes to wait until I was finished relieving myself, so I had some time to think. What had been wrong with Mack? The French fries were notoriously toxic but I'd never seen them reduce a nine-year old to a sagging husk so quickly. Mack wasn't just sick, he'd looked worn, like my grandparents, and beaten, like my father. His breathing had sounded like my old Guinea Pig, Lightning, when he came back from an extended journey into Ironbury looking like an old rag sock. Lighting died soon after his return. So did that mean...

“You're dead.”

This voice came out of nowhere and I pissed on my leg from surprise.

“You're dead. I got you.”

I turned around, still trying to maintain some modesty as the yellow river cascaded from my pants. There stood Bugsy Kindle in an elaborate woodland get-up, including branches and leaves and weeds actually lashed onto his legs and arms. I shook my head and tried to finish up what I was doing.

“No. I called time,” I said desperately.

“You can't do that. There is no time.”

“There is. I got sick.”

“You're dead,” insisted Bugsy.

“No. It isn't fair. I was fixing something.”

“If you aren't dead then I'll tell Jordan and you can't play anymore. Those are the rules, Oggy. I shot you and you're dead.”

This was hard to argue with. I changed my approach.

“Can't you just take me prisoner? I'll tell you were the flag is hidden.”

Bugsy thought this over for a moment.

“Tell me.”

“I can't.”

I was finally finished draining the bilge tank and felt ten pounds lighter. I buttoned up my pants.

“Why can't you tell me?” Bugsy asked.

“I'm dead. You killed me. Take me prisoner and I'll tell you.”

Bugsy considered this deal. The only thing better than killing someone was taking them prisoner and torturing them until they disclosed the location of the flag.

“Alright,” said Trevor, “I take you prisoner. Now where is the flag.”

“I ain't tellin'. Ha!”

“Then you're dead,” said Bugsy quickly. “I killed you.”

“You can't kill a prisoner,” I sang. “Those are the rules. And if you break the rules then I'll tell Jordan and you can't play. You can't play. “ I chanted and sang.

Bugsy cursed. “You tricked me. You lied.”

“Bugsy's a dummy and I'm not tellin' him where the flag is,” I sang as I danced around in a circle on the leaves.

Bugsy hit me on the back of the legs with his gun. I fell into the puddle of piss.

“Lets go, prisoner,” he said gleefully taking off his belt to lash my arms together.

Bugsy escorted me to his stockade. I actually had no idea where the flag was since I wasn't guarding it. For all I knew it was hidden in the North Church or else in Jordan's locker at the Junior High School. The game ended soon after when it was reported that Kurt had taken his team's flag and lit it on fire. Why he did this wasn't important to me since I had forgotten to pick up my wooden gun in the clearing where Bugsy had captured me. Though I searched for it, I could not find the gun in the gray shadows and shifting undergrowth. Instead, I stood until the sun had set over Greenfields and looked at the tree Mack had leaned against.

As Thanksgiving vacation approached with Christmas list delight, the teachers became somber and quiet like my father did when he caught me hiding my broccoli in the house plants. Our classmate Mack was sick, were the recess rumors.

“He's gotta stay away from those French fries,” I whispered to Piper, who did not smile back.

The teachers then explained what Leukemia was in a way that succeeded in scaring the students out of our minds. I can’t remember a single word my homeroom teacher said to us that morning, but I know half the class was convinced they had incurable cancer by the end of the hour. Cristo even complained so much about his belly that he had to be sent home.

I hid from the teacher's words, as I always did, by looking at the graffiti on my desktop and fantasizing about baseball. Everyone was subdued by the speech through our first class and into recess. Once outside, we shuffled slowly around the playground looking at the ground like a small army searching for gold flakes in the grass. In all its years, Bone Harbor had never seen more Will and Testaments as 4^th grade journal entries.

“I, Susan T. Crowley, do leave my big doll collection my sister Jenny who always liked them and will treat them real good and dress them up on Sundays like I used to.” “I, Harold S. Frink want my father to take my dog Lee for a walk each afternoon. He is a good dog.”

The teachers must have cried a harbor of tears at our bequeathing notes and last wishes. I, too, decided it was my fate to die of Leukemia and planned to leave C. Fisk, my favorite hamster, to my brother and all my baseball cards to Ted Williams, the Red Sox Hall of Fame left fielder. He would want them. I imagined Ted Williams visiting me on my deathbed and promising to take care of my Sox memorabilia until the Red Sox won a World Series.

These fantasies carried us safely to second recess, when our spirits rose and singles became pairs and pairs became groups and groups became teams until Gordy and Piper mercifully organized a kickball game. Maybe I won't die, I thought. Maybe just Mack would die. Mack and John Lennon. They were the chosen ones.

At home, I learned from a dictionary that Leukemia is “Any group of neoplastic diseases of the blood-forming organs resulting in an abnormal increase in the production of Leukocytes, often accompanied by anemia and enlargement of the lymph nodes, spleen and liver. Often fatal.”

Words like 'Neoplastic' and 'Leukocytes' gripped me with their esoteric meanings, their Greek prefixes and roots. How could a nine-year old defeat those words? The victim had a simple name like Mack. He was a boy. His heart pumped blood. His lungs breathed air. How could these simple one-syllable words defend themselves against three syllable ones? It wasn't fair! He wasn't Luke Skywalker!

I lived as close to Mack as I did to Kurt, but didn’t see him unless Jordan invited me in to play computer games after Capture The Flag or if my father pressured me into a visit. Mack was absent from school for half of December. When he returned his skin was green. If I called him transparent or translucent or diaphanous would that have made him stronger? Had I defined him with words like stubborn or prideful or arrogant instead of pale and blond and mean would that make him bigger than leukemia? I wanted to help, but what three syllable words can replace thin and bald and sick in the mind of a nine-year-old? Sacrifice?

The Major League Baseball Players Union went on strike in 1981 and split season in half. The Sox went 30-26 and finished in fifth place during the first half of the season, and went 29-23 finishing in third place in the second half. It was a total waste. For the second year in a row only two players hit over .300. Jerry Remy (.307) and Carney Lansford (.336). To make matters worse two of my favorite players, Carlton Fisk and Fred Lynn, had left the team in the preceding winter. Their contracts had been mailed two days late so the Sox were forced to trade them away to Chicago and California. It was heartbreaking to know that Pudge Fisk would wear a White Sox uniform in life though he was on my bedroom wall in a Red Sox uniform. Yaz never got traded. Williams never got traded. Something about a player being able to play for another team was very dishonest to me. It would be like my mother getting remarried. Inconceivable!

I was forced to spend another winter knowing Gary Allenson, no more than a bat boy compared to Carlton Fisk, would be the starting catcher in 1982. At least Carl Yastrzemski wasn't going anywhere. I could count on Yaz. Dewey's hat fit a little better now. 1982 would be the year he kept his promise, I thought. All my will was directed to this one prize.

Off The Wall was transformed into a game called Spread Eagle in 5^th grade. Spread Eagle had one variation. If Cristo, for example, attempted to catch the ball but dropped it, Ogden, for example, could pick it up and whip it at Cristo as hard as he could until Cristo touched the wall. If Cristo touched the wall without being hit then the game resumed. Cristo was safe. If Cristo was hit by the ball before he got to the wall then he had to stand spread eagle facing the wall while Ogden, Mack, Kurt, Tweak, Bugsy, Alister, Evan and everyone else stood ten feet away and drilled him with the ball in his back, head, legs, butt, hands. Cristo had to stand and take it. This left Cristo sore and mad and not wanting to play for any reason except to catch Ogden's error, hit him and cheer while fifty other kids, including himself, threw the ball at Ogden's defenseless back.

Spread Eagle was a workshop in humiliation with anywhere from two and fifteen grudge matches actively seeking resolution. Most players were too timid to catch the ball and just hovered around like vultures until someone brave enough to try to catch the ball dropped it. Then the vultures would swoop in, grab the ball up, and zing it at the other kid's retreating flanks. Oh, the game was non-stop fun, let me tell you. Some real jokers, like Cristo, would pretend they were going to catch the ball before stepping aside at the last second so the ball would hit someone behind them who thought they were safe. But there wasn't a square inch of safe territory on the playground.

I stopped playing because Spread Eagle left everyone filled with hate or petty cunning. I longed for games of stickball and hide and seek played under the Ironbury street lights.

Sadly, Spread Eagle was like a game of Go Fish between old women compared to the other game going on at the same time on the playing field: Smear the Queer. Smear the Queer was by far the most violent game since Christians fought Roman-bred lions. STQ was like football except without the petty detail of a ball. The game would start when someone called, “Last one to the fence is it!” as recess began. All the boys charged to the fence and left one kid (always the slowest, usually Cristo) standing in the middle of a field. Twenty or thirty kids would then try to get from one end of the field to the other when Cristo called out, “Smeah thah Queah!” Cristo would eventually tackle another kid (usually the second slowest and weakest, someone like Jethro Simpleton). Then the two would team up to tackle a more speedy runner like Evan Squidly to strengthen their side. Then the three would go after two more kids or they would gang up on the strongest of the whole pack, Napper Monahan, and drag him down like a brave elephant in the Savannah. Then the five of them would go after whoever they wanted until maybe Gordy Clutcher and Mason Felix stood exhausted (remember they had run across the field ten or twenty times by now) by the fence, preparing to get by a pack of 18 or 28. Smeared is exactly what happened. Twenty kids, crazed with blood lust, near sickness from the French fries, converged on one or two tired, gasping warriors, who were only left because they were so fast and cunning at first. Now they were like Giraffes with a spear in their neck, still standing but staring defeat and death in fifty sets of eyes. The pack would cry out “Smeah thah Queah!” as the signal for them to run a suicide mission. A few rare and beautiful moments one of those two Christians, usually Gordy, would escape the lion pack somehow, tearing clothes, kicking, elbowing, knocking teeth out, cutting back, driving to the other side no matter what the cost. This desperate passage demanded an artist of movement. It was like watching a kick-off return go the distance without a single blocker. Everyone was against Gordy and still he tried to break through. I found myself hoping he would make it.

More frequently the lone runner was smothered and punished. The look in his panicked eyes as the lions circled for the kill must be what a castaway in the ocean looks like just as he is about to go under the waves. It was a mixture of resignation and invitation, of one at peace with their fate having seen it happen to so many others and having fought for so long.

Mack Wynter returned to Bone Harbor in the 5th grade spring, 1992. His pale skin hung from his face. He wore a blonde wig. The first day he was back I was playing first base in a kickball game. Mack kicked the ball and ran toward me. Piper threw me the ball in time and I caught it. Suddenly I was thrown to the ground and dropped the ball.

“You're out,” I yelled as I rubbed my elbow.

“You dropped the ball, Ugly. I'm safe. Wanna fight?”

“Fine, Smurfhead. You're safe.”

Mack pushed me to the ground again.

“I'll tell” I said.

“Go ahead, Smurfhole. I'll kick you.” was his response.

From then on, Mack pointed out my big ears and dirty clothes mercilessly and jeered me when I was ganged up on. He was extra rough in Smear the Queer even though people were afraid to tackle him. I looked in my dictionary, but found nothing to indicate Leukemia changed people into assholes.

Mack was in and out of 5th grade. Tucker Weeks said he went to the hospital. Cristo said he was dying so he had to stay home. Kurt said he was already dead. Summer finally arrived and I prayed Mack would move to another country. But he didn't. He played on the Pic N Pay Little League team meaning I got to be called “Ugly” every other day of the summer. The Red Sox finished the '82 season in third place with a record of 89-73. The third place finish is amazing considering for the third straight year only two players, Jim Rice (.309) and Carney Lansford (.301) hit over .300. I had to wait one more year for a Red Sox World Championship and Mack had one year left to live.

When he returned in the winter of 1983, Mack received special treatment from the 6^th grade teachers and bragged about it on the playground. He didn't even have to write a letter to Soviet General Secretary, Yuri Andropov, asking for World Peace! My letter went something like this:

“Dear Yuri Andropov, my name is Ogden Bleacher. I live in Bone Harbor, New Hampshire. I love the Boston Red Sox baseball team. They are winners. They will win the World Series this year. Please do not blow up America because then Dewey won't win. You can kill Mack Wynter, though. I hate him. Thanks. Ogden Bleacher. P.S. Red Sox #1”

For reasons that screamed favoritism, Mack had been able to visit the Red Sox spring training facility in Winter Haven Florida. He gloated over baseballs signed by the entire 1982 Red Sox Team. He showed Cristo, Kurt, and me pictures of him playing catch with Jim Rice and Dwight Evans. Kurt said that he wouldn't play catch with a bunch of bench bums even if he had a chance. Mack punched him in the arm. Kurt punched Mack in the head. Mack punched me in the back of the neck. Kurt ran home. I ran home. I had to rock myself to sleep clutching Dewey's hat. Why was Mack so lucky, I thought. What did he do to deserve such an honor? Dewey promised me, not Mack, that the Sox would win the Series. I wanted to be Mack.

But Mack didn’t play as hard anymore in our Off The Wall games ( I had organized a small band of OTW loyalists) or Smear the Queer slaughters. His weakness put him along side oval-faced Cristo, whose right calf muscle had never developed, so he was left with a skeletal bone for a right leg and ran like he had no leg at all. Mack's wig, like my beloved Red Sox hat, was constantly being stolen from him by Alister Konig and Cuffy Broot. To get Cuffy and Alister off my back I invented the Bald Eagle nickname for Mack. This particular insult got lots of laughs that left Mack clenching his fists and jaw in humiliation while we pointed and heckled. As long as the bullies laughed, I was safe.

The winter of 1983 saw record snowfalls in Bone Harbor. I wandered the blizzard white playground, giddy because I had received the 1982 Red Sox complete set baseball cards for Christmas. Nothing could be better! This was my final year at Bone Harbor, and I was a little nostalgic. I had always imagined celebrating the Red Sox victory at the Bone Harbor assembly hall. Several teachers were Red Sox fans and enchanted me with stories of the 1975 series, that of Tiant, Bill “The Spaceman” Lee, Fisk's game-winning home run, and even Dewey.

“Of course I remember Dwight Evans! Dewey made a great catch in Game Six. I remember my heart almost stopped. Sure. In the top of the tenth inning he robbed Morgan of what was probably a two-run home run near the Pesky Pole. That catch was as dramatic as the one Willie Mays made over his shoulder back in the '55 series. Evans even threw out the guy on first base on the same play. Sure, I remember Dewey. Fisk never would've won that game without Dewey's catch.”

Now this was history. Dewey, Morgan, Pesky, Mays, Fisk. This was real history! These were real men! Why couldn't I just sit around talking about the Red Sox all day? I'd be a straight A student. Then the teacher sent me out to recess, which got me thinking: were the Junior High School teachers really sadistic enough to deny us a daily recess? Why even go to school if I couldn't run around for two hours? Wasn't that the whole point?

Since the asphalt was covered with glazed ice, Off The Wall was months away. The snow banks were piled high where Piper played King Of The Hill (the winter variety of Smear The Queer). Cuffy Broot gave Cristo whitewashes until his nose bled. All was well with the world.

Suddenly, an ice ball exploded on my right hand, followed by a hulk of a body on my back. Like road kill in the desert, I was suddenly surrounded by legs. Cristo stood on the edge of the circle and screamed, “Kick his butt. Kick that smelly kid's head. Kick his butt!” I instinctively grabbed my hat, which half the playground wanted to burn, and so took punches to my face. Who was punching me?

“Dewey! Help!” I called.

“He ain't gonna help you, moron.”

Through the crazed shouts I recognized Mack’s voice on me, swearing and cursing, but since my face was in the snow I couldn’t see him. For five minutes, Mack punched my ear liberally while the circle cheered and screamed. Brooklyn was in High School by now, but probably wouldn't have done anything to help me. Cristo jumped up and down while his eyes stayed on the lookout for threats. Kurt was probably hoping I would fight back, but I didn’t. I didn't even struggle. All the macho talk in Ironbury, the secret Ninja training, the three Aikido lessons, the brutally violent video games, a hundred A-Team episodes, and several covertly viewed R rated Clint Eastwood movies had amounted to nothing. The media had not created a monster after all. I was just a lamb in a hooded Red Sox sweatshirt. I just wanted to protect my hat. My moment of truth had come and I just curled up and tried not to lose an eye. I almost felt like I deserved it.

Eventually, a teacher broke the fight up and I was left with a bloody lip and nose. Mack nursed a bloody fist from when he accidentally punched the asphalt. We stood in front of a teacher who wanted answers. I was whimpering as I dumped the snow out of my hat and put it back on. Our noses were running with little kid sniffing and huffing and snuffling and wiping snot on our sleeves. Behind the teacher, Cristo limped away. I watched passively as Napper Monahan ran up and punched Cristo in the back of the head. Cristo collapsed and a pig pile quickly formed on his splayed body. I could see his lips moving but I heard nothing and didn't care.

“He hit me,” I argued, “and I didn't do nothin'.”

“Is fighting a way to solve our problems Mack?” the teacher asked.

Mack answered, “Ask Mr. Red Sox here if he's gonna call me Bald Eagle anymore.”

“Ogden? Are you going to call Mack names?”

I shook my head.

“Hell no. I'm not gonna talk to him ever again. I hate him!”

Mack shrugged and blew his nose on the ground.

“I guess fighting worked.”

The teachers blamed me because it was assumed Mack was innocent. Once again Mack skated by on his illness. So I washed blackboards for two days and took out trash after school. Everything would change when the Sox won. My day was coming. Dewey had promised.

A few weeks later Mack approached me on the playground where I hid in one of the metal satellites playing with my Luke Skywalker and Yoda action figures.

“Do or do not; there is no try,” I said in my Yoda voice.

“But it's so hard master. I have doubts,” said Luke. “He's my father. How can I fight him?”

“Yes. Decide this, you must. Fail, you can not,” said Yoda somberly.

Mack rapped on the metal with the same knuckles that had hit my mouth. I hid the figures in my pockets with my bazooka gum and Red Sox ring.

“What do you want, Smurfhole? You gonna hit me again?”

“No. I don't want to fight. Here.”

He handed me a baseball card autographed by Glenn Hoffman. I tried to hide my disappointment. Hoffman was a bum. Dwight Evans, on the other hand, had had a breakthrough year for the Sox in 1982. Dewey played every game of the year. He posted an incredible 609 at bats, led the Sox in Runs (122), Hits (178), Doubles (37), Triples (7), Home Runs (32), RBI (98), Strikeouts (125!) and Walks (112). Hoffman was twenty-three years old and his career was essentially over. At best he would be a minor league batting coach. Why couldn't Mack have given me a card autographed by Dewey? But, even though Hoffman had batted .209 as a starting shortstop for the Sox and greatly hurt their postseason chances, the autographed card was a piece of greatness.

“Thanks. Wow! Hoffman is the best shortstop since Petrocelli,” I lied. A paper bag could field better than Hoffman.

“I thought you might want it. I can get you more when I go down to Winter Haven next month. Can we be friends? I don't want to fight. Just don't call me bald eagle.”

“I didn't mean it. I just say it so Napper and Cuffy will stop hitting me. You want some gum?”

“Yeah.”

I pulled out a warm piece of Bazooka Joe gum and gave it to Mack.

“I'm saving the points to buy the x-ray glasses. They're cool.”

Mack unwrapped the and asked, “What do you call a hot dog eating contest?”

“What?”

“A foot long race.”

I'd heard that joke before, but it was still funny. We both laughed. Mack handed me the Bazooka Joe points and I put it and the treasured card in my back pocket before squirming out of the metal satellite. I was getting a little big for the hole and had to wiggle down the ladder. Just as I got to the ground, Cuffy Broot came up and swatted my hat off my head. He picked it up off the ground. He was bigger than me and was partly why I hid in the satellite.

“Give it back,” I said.

“No, douche bag.”

“Give it!”

“What're you gonna do?”

“Give it. It's Dewey's. He gave it to me.”

I was trying not to show how much I cared about it because that only seemed to make things worse. If I pretended I didn't care about it then no one would even have tried to take it. But it was my hat!

“Dewey gave me that.”

“So.”

“So he wants it back when I play Left field for the Sox.”

“Sure. And I'm gonna be a Quarterback for the Patriots. You idiot. You really want it back?”

Cuffy had an ugly look in his eye. I wished I had taken more than two Aikido lessons.

“Yeah. Give it here.”

While Mack and I watched, Cuffy turned my hat upside down and slowly spit into the cap. His spit was red from a hot ball he'd been eating.

“There. Put it on.”

Spit was just spit. Part of keeping my playground pride was not showing any disgust. I turned the hat over and put it on my head, smiling.

“Gross. You're a scrub. Scrub boy. Hey, Oggy is a scrub boy. Oggy is a scrub boy.”

As Cuffy danced and chanted this inventive poem, Mack edged closer to him. He waited until Cuffy turned away to tell others that I was a scrub boy. Then Mack leaned back to gather all of his weight and punched Cuffy in the jaw. Cuffy collapsed in a puddle.

“If you fight Oggy, then you fight me,” announced Mack to my amazement.

When he recovered, Cuffy saw the fire in Mack's eyes and decided against a fight. No one had seen it happen anyway.

“Lucky shot, baldy. I'll see you and your little friend later. I hope you both die!”

Cuffy ran away over the snow to go pounce on helpless Cristo.

“Wynn? What are you doing? You can't hit him like that. I don't care if he spits in my hat. At least I got it back.”

Mack sucked his bleeding knuckle.

“You can't let kids walk all over you, Oggy. You have to stand up to them.”

“I don't want to. It does no good.”

“He left didn't he?”

I looked to where a crowd had gathered around Cuffy as he shoved snow down Cristo's pants.

“I guess. But everything'll change when the Sox win this year. Cuffy won't pick on me anymore.”

“Until they do you gotta be like Yoda. Fight back. You can't live in fear.”

“Sure I can.”

“That's no way to live, Oggy.”

I wiped the spit from my hat onto the side of the satellite and asked, “What other way is there?”

This wasn't my last encounter with Cuffy and it wasn't Mack's last fight.

There was another boy named Tucker Weeks who hassled Mack as sixth grade ended. Who knows what Tucker’s problem was. He was probably just a punk with a twisted mind. I used to think Tucker was the most accident-prone kid on the planet coming up with a broken limb at least twice a year but no one knew where the hate came from. Finally Mack challenged Tucker to a fight to end the daily torment once and for all.

A Fight. Even today those words bring out the blood lust. Who doesn't love a fight? Better than a random fight is a challenged fight, a fight with a schedule. Oh! A fight in Elementary School was a million times better than the pay per view substitutes. Everyone knows this. There were no referees and no rules, no teachers and no adults. Just pure anger and dread and hate to be vented in the woods and asphalt lots of puberty. The joy of going to a fight. “A fight!” Everyone would come. It was irresistible. After the bell and school bus goodbyes and notes passed, trinkets traded:

“Come on there’s a fight.”

“Who’s fighting?”

“Tweak and Wynn.”

For the fight, I went go with the crowd, followed or led to the edge of the nearby Smear The Queer field, to a grove of scrawny Birch trees. Cristo and I jumped on each other like puppies. So happy were we that we shadow boxed each other. We cheered and shouted. The shoe was on the other foot now and I got to be the one in the circle punching the air and crying for blood like those who had circled Mack and me. There was something so primitive about a fight that it made me want to run naked in the woods and hump the earth. It made me want to spear a hog and climb trees and howl. Life has never been as exciting, as focused, as driven as when I was on my way to watch a fight in 6^th grade.

The warriors, Mack and Tweak circled each other while we screamed for blood. Then the fight turned fast and violent as neither warrior bent down in surrender like I had. They traded punches, but Mack lacked the violent anger that fueled Tucker and soon ended up on one knee on the frozen ground, Tucker rode on his back and punched his pale head and neck. Slowly, Mack’s simple red and white wool hat fell to the ground. He wasn’t wearing his wig so his bald head was exposed to the spring cold and Tucker's sharp punches. The crowd howled. Mack’s face slowly drooped low to the ground but he didn't give up all together. His boxed shaped skull with the strange dents and curves that our hair hides was bare now in the circle of trees, the tightening vice of faces. Cristo cried, “Look at his dented bald skull. Look!”

To the right eyes, these images are reflected in the gold bronze of his plaque. Mack's eyes were pinched shut (goodbye blue sky) and tears ran down his cheek. His nose was an ever running faucet of clear mucus dripping into the boot trampled snow. His mouth broke open and his bright white teeth hung from his diseased red gums. More punches to his soft skull were followed by more gleeful cheers. Mack was on his hands and knees and Tucker was kicking him, screaming for surrender, punching Mack’s head. I was breathless. Then an unearthly wail oozed out of Mack’s lips, like an animal caught in a trap and finally knowing it is doomed and alone. He cried out in fear and pain knowing no help would come. And no help came to Mack. Set a child loose in a candy store and see if he chooses to stop eating. Did I cry with Mack? Did I help? No. I laughed. Kurt laughed and held his belly. Cristo pointed and laughed in triumph, as though he had something to do with Mack's defeat. We all laughed at him and felt like we were the ones punching him and keeping him down.

We watched, the circle closing, fists punching, noses running, all of us shouting for blood and Mack’s cry turned into a plea like a baby for its mother and the kids in the circle hooted and laughed at the broken spirit and the bruised skin. We laughed at the anger because we didn’t think it hurt or maybe because we were just glad it wasn’t us. Why else would we laugh? It was thrilling and rare to see someone crushed into the snowy mud.

Finally, Tucker gave up. His knuckles were swollen and he was frothing at the mouth. He gave Mack one final kick and stood back to rest. Mack had not surrendered. He had not fallen below one knee in the mud. He got up and held his head in his trembling hands. Then he turned without a word and ran through Clough Field, past the grazing sheep, and to his home on Richards Avenue. Moments later Tucker bolted toward his house near the Whiffle Ball courts. The crowd broke up with dazed irregularity. It was like we had just finished kissing the family dog and now realized that it was something we should be ashamed of, but it was too late, so the only thing was to get out of sight.

Cristo and I started to walk in the direction of Laverdier's drug store when I noticed Mack’s hat lying in the snow. I looked at the red and white snow cap for a moment wondering what I should do. I was compelled to pick it up, but as I approached it Cristo punched me in the arm.

“Let’s go kid. Forget the hat. The line for Donkey Kong gonna be ten people long”

This was true. Donkey Kong was the hottest game around now and if I didn't get there first I'd have to wait while half a dozen amateurs shot their own captured spacecraft out of the air. Kurt already had a block head start. The fifty cents I had saved by stealing a half pint of milk at lunch time would last an hour, provided I did well in the Monkey Round.

As I suspected, Mack's health improved after the fight with Tucker. The human body, I theorized, thrived on conflict and pain. What else could explain my relative health after getting beat up on seven hundred consecutive days? If the sixth grade class worked hard enough we could kick Mack's ass on a rotational basis and keep him alive for a hundred years.

Those Little Leaguers who wanted a drink of water in the summer of 1983 had to get it from a cement cylinder behind the visitor's dugout. Mack's peach fuzz hair returned for Little League tryouts. He now had dozens of baseballs and baseball cards signed by members of the Boston Red Sox. He still protected me so after Little League games I played catch with Mack. Occasionally, Kurt and I would invite him for a pick-up game at the Little League field, which put me in a position of choosing who was my “best” friend. Despite being a Yankees fan, Kurt was healthy and nice and had two beautiful sisters named Kell and Beau, and he gave me unlimited free quarters. Mack was ill tempered, bald, sick and selfish, but he liked the Red Sox and had an older brother who liked cool computer games. It was a tough choice, but I favored Kurt.

Kurt and I were the Local Union 1947 pitcher/catcher team. Mack pitched for a team sponsored by Pic 'n' Pay, where Cristo and Erin bagged bread in High School. Piper Skinski played short stop and pitched for a team sponsored by a car dealership. Cristo played left bench for Ricci lumber supply company.

After Pic 'n' Pay convincingly beat Local, on the strength of Mack's pitching and hitting, Mack got the winning game ball and a ride on his teammates' shoulders and a trophy at the Little League Picnic at Great Island Common. I got nothing but a charred hot dog and a second place ribbon that might as well have said, “Nice try, Loser!” on it.

The Red Sox provided me no relief as they lost 84 games in a dismal 6^th place '83 season. Dennis Eckersley sported a 9-13 record with a ridiculous 5.61 ERA. As punishment, I pelted Eck's poster with a racquetball until my father told me to stop. Newcomer Bruce Hurst went 12-12 and Oil Can Boyd, who looked and pitched like the love child of Michael Jackson and Sammy Davis Jr., went 4-8. Closer Bob Stanley saved a respectable thirty-three games in relief, but managed to lose ten games, three more than starter Bob Ojeda. Reliever Mark Clear lost five games and could be counted on giving up at least one or two runs in the important middle innings he was supposed to be protecting. And dear old Doug Bird demonstrated why some thirty-three year olds should be selling insurance or running a car wash instead of pitching relief, as he led the team with a 6.65 ERA. With a bullpen like that it was no surprise that John Tudor had nine no decisions. For the fourth straight year, only two Red Sox batters, Wade Boggs (.361 in a breakout year) and Jim Rice (.305), averaged over a 30% success rate at the plate. To win the World Series

The low point came on July 4^th, as Kurt and I raided his father's washing machines for quarters to buy poppers and firecrackers and candy bars and Moe's subs. Just when I thought everything was greasy, New York Yankees pitcher, Dave Righetti, threw a 4-0 no-hitter against the Red Sox.

The high point of the season was Yaz Day at Fenway park. I was lucky enough to get two 8 dollar grandstand tickets with my mother and was one of the privileged 35,000 fans who cheered as Carl Yastrzemski jogged a final time around the perimeter of Fenway Park. Not since Ted Williams retired in 1960 had a Red Sox player been so respected for the term of his service. Part of me was thanking Yaz for twenty-three years of dedication to Boston sports and part of me was begging him to stay. The Sox were 20 games out of first place with Yaz. How bad would they be without him? Who could possibly take his place at first base or as a designated hitter? Reid Nichols? Dave Stapleton? I wanted a World Championship right now and any taxi driver could tell you it wasn't going to happen with Dave Stapleton at first base. How much longer would I have to wait?

To further my suffering, Mack would ride by my house on his bicycle waving the Little League trophy at my window and shouting, “Does the 'L' on your hat stand for 'loser'?” while I cringed and clawed at Carlton Fisk's poster. Pudge's jock-strap could hit more home runs than Gary Allenson and run twice as fast, but he was putting up all-star numbers for the White Sox now. As I entered Junior High School, the White Sox won the American League West division, but the Baltimore Orioles whipped them in the American League Championship before going on to beat the Phillies in the World Series.

The world was changing. Mike Easler was brought in be the designated hitter. Rich Gedman won exclusive rights to the catching position after Gary Allenson proved he couldn't catch a cold. The spunky Marty Barrett edged out old-timer Jerry Remy at second base. Between Jackie Gutierrez and Glenn Hoffman at short stop the Sox still had middle infield problems and Dave Stapleton was still the Commodore 64 of all first baseman. Still, nearly all the pieces were in place for the Big Win.

An era was ending too. Kurt’s parents split up in the summer of 1983 and Kurt, like the Dodgers, migrated to California with his mother and two sisters. First California had taken Fred Lynn from me and now my best friend was following him. What next? Pete Rose, Yaz, Johnny Bench and Gaylord Perry, names I couldn't imagine missing from the box scores, all retired in September. Hall & Oates eclipsed Air Supply as the pop duo stars. Flashdance made it cool for girls to want to be welders (and strippers). The Jedi had returned victorious, and The Road Warrior made me want to attach firearms to my father's car. I patiently awaited the day when my father would go to Boston with his girlfriend so I could start a brothel with two dozen stripper/welders from Riversook. Tom Cruise had made it look so simple and profitable. I was convinced of two things as I adjusted to 7^th grade passing periods and puberty:

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1) Ronald Reagan was definitely going to destroy the world before I convinced my father to get MTV.

2) With a few key acquisitions, 1984 would be the year the Red Sox won the World Series. I prayed to Yaz, Dewey and Fisk (My Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost) to deliver the Red Sox to greatness before Mack died. Were they so cruel as to deny him that happiness?

When Mack and I started seventh grade at the Bone Harbor Junior High School he had a bald head and I had a brand new pair of jeans that I would not wash or change for the first one hundred and days of the school year. I saw no point in taking perfectly good jeans and washing them since Cuffy Broot would just spit on them the next day. Better to keep them filthy and save time. Oh, and Pres. Ronald Reagan spent more money on soon-to-be-obsolete nuclear warheads than had ever been spent on anything ever. This pushed the evil Russians (whose Emperor had long ago stopped wearing clothes) into an arms race they couldn't win. Millions died of starvation in Ethiopia and Europe, but kids in Bone Harbor had more fast food booths at the Fox Run Mall than we could get through in a lifetime. Horray for America! Some other petty things like AIDS and Crack Cocaine kept interrupting my TV programming, but I didn't pay much attention. Why should I? Since we now owned a VCR, I figured I could just record the news and watch it when I was more interested. I mean, what did the first space shuttle launch have to do with me? And given a choice between a sexy Go-Go's video and watching, say, Yuri Andropov pound a lectern and promise merciless retaliation against my country, I had to go with The Go-Go's. If the apocalypse was just around the corner, and most pundits claimed it was, then I might as well get my kicks while I still could. Hey, I could always become Mad Max.

Meanwhile, Mack and I sat at the same table of outcasts in the cavernous Jr. High cafeteria. Evan The Squid was there because we were the only people who didn't beat him up when he solved a math problem. JoJo Locke was naturally ostracized because he was tall and wore glasses. Austin Pace had a speech impediment that made him sound like he was drunk. Jethro Simpleton simply had no idea what was going on at any given time during the day. Jethro had no hobbies, no remarkable gifts, like being able to accurately spit, no special talent for academics, no hot older sister and no musical talent. He wasn't even ugly enough to make fun of. He was just a shadow and it often took a day or two to realize he had been absent from school. Jethro joined the Navy after he dropped out of High School but was discharged during Basic training. Depending on which rumor I chose to believe, Jethro either became a prison guard in upstate New Hampshire or else was in prison for stealing a car.

Cristo was just Cristo, a step away from being banished from town. Would you hang out with anyone with the last name Patanikolous? I didn't think so. Cristo was a permanent cripple with only one calf muscle, a smelly Greek wearing giant Celtics shirts to cover his fat rolls, acid washed jeans and penny loafers with no socks.

As for me, I had not taken my Red Sox hat off for four straight years nor had I changed my jeans in four months. I have a picture of myself in black and white striped shorts and a grey mesh sleeveless shirt that looked like it was stolen directly from Michael Jackson's clothes hamper. My gangly legs and arms and wispy mustache screamed “Village People Loyalist” to whomever was listening. I had not showered voluntarily in nearly a decade, ever since the trash compactor scene in Star Wars made me terrified of enclosed watery compartments. I was the school's biggest Red Sox fan, yet the Red Sox had not won a World Series since 1918, which may as well have been during the last ice age. My devotion linked me to their failure (and I hoped to their future success.) Thanks to my sadistic mother, I also wore garish braces and a set of headgear that would've made Joseph Mengele say, “Wait a second. Let's think about what we're doing here, perhaps show some mercy. I mean, how much pain can the boy take?” These braces cut my lips so that the acne on my neck was also chronically smeared with blood as well as allergy induced snot. The fact I awoke every morning, took my headgear off, engaged two little elastic bands on my braces so I would be assured another day of headaches and acute mouth pain, tugged on my ragged, skin tight jeans over my skid-marked underwear, donned a stained Red Sox hooded sweatshirt, popped zits in the bathroom, and sneezed for ten straight minutes, yet still went to school, should have earned me a medal--But it didn't.

Lastly, Mack was 14, bald, had Leukemia, and would sooner punch you than give you half a Ring Ding He only wore his nylon wig when he had obvious bruises on his skull, and it was impossible to say if it made him look worse or better. Ours was a table of geeks and scrubs, a circle of misfits that the general studentry mocked, and who were chronically picking up our notebooks off the hallway floor or else fleeing a bully down the street, or sitting alone in a dark corner of the gymnasium while sweaty-palmed young couples shuffled to a Cindy Lauper song and nervously locked braces, or else hiding outside the gymnasium window wearing a Ninja suit and carrying a set of throwing knives.

We solidified our untouchable social status by writing a 'Constitution' that defined the offices and responsibilities of those who sat at the misfit table. I still have the official printed copy with our serious signatures. Yes, there is Cristo Patanikolous, The Secretary of The Table. Ogden Bleacher, Officer In Charge Of Clean Up. Austin Pace: Vice President of French Fries. JoJo Locke: Assistant Secretary of Lunch Trays. Mack Wynter: President of Milk Cartons. Michael Jackson was made an Honorary Master of Entertainment. By October, Jethro had been impeached and removed from his Ketchup Master position because of a history of neglect.

I could go on, but I think I'll leave the horror stories to Stephen King. There just isn't time to describe how ill-prepared I was for society. You'll just have to trust me.

One December day, Mack found me hiding behind the Little League snack shop. Brody Stone and Cuffy Broot were on the hunt and I meant not to be caught.

“You know what just happened?” Mack asked with a grin.

“You Smurfed your mom?” I whispered.

“Better. It's the best!”

“Shush! Stoney will hear us. He's out there somewhere. I can smell him. Cuffy said he was gonna kill me.”

“I don't care,” said Mack. “I just kissed Karen Simpson. No shit. She kissed me so hard, Oggy. For no reason. It was so good!”

He grinned and swooned and laughed, spinning down the Parrot Drive only a few feet from where his water fountain would soon stand. I crept out from behind the Little League snack house.

“I bet she didn't kiss as good as your mom did last night!” I yelled as Mack disappeared around Richard Avenue.

I didn’t know what else to say. I’d never so much as spoken to one of the girls in school. Kissing a girl, I had decided, was far less likely to occur than me playing major league baseball for the Red Sox. In fact, the two were mutually exclusive. Baseball was a profession, much like the priesthood, that demanded total celibacy. This was a sacrifice I was willing to make. My complete concentration and devotion was needed to help the Red Sox win the World Series. Their ultimate victory was the only thing that mattered to me. School, girls, and money were all meaningless accessories to a World Championship pennant. Twinkies and foil wrapped cupcakes and Sugar Daddy caramel pops were just carrots to move the mule. I meant to end the 65 year drought since the last Big Win. Each morning I tied my Boston Red Sox shoelaces and buttoned up my Red Sox nylon warm up jacket and straightened the cord around the hood of my Red Sox sweatshirt and knew with total certainty that the 1984 season would bring me this long awaited prize. I didn't need girls like Chrissy Jenkins with her long brown hair and Madonna buttons and puffy stickers of Van Halen on her Trapper Keeper. I didn't need her sometimes sexy polka dot skirt, spied through the crack between the fire exit doors at the PJHS sponsored Christmas dances held in the gym. I didn't need to have my father drive me and my girlfriend to the mall and give me ten dollars for pretzels and pizza and movie tickets. I didn't need any Valentine hearts or candy promises or lipstick kisses on tenderly wrapped love notes. All I needed were the cold shadows behind the building where I could mutter to myself, “Evans hits a long fly ball to Left. This should be extra bases. Ogilve looks up. It's in the net! Evans hits his second home run of the night to give the Sox a four run lead.” I didn't need anyone but Dewey.

Someone suddenly pulled my arm behind my back and asked, “You think you're smarter than me? Beg for mercy, Oggy. Beg!” It was Stoney.

“Please! Mercy! You're the best, Stoney. Mercy!”

“Louder!”

“Mercy!”

Cindy Phillips walked by with Chrissy Jenkins. I tried to hide my face.

“Say hi to your girlfriend, Oggy,” said Stoney as he pulled my underwear into a place it should never go.

As Spring elbowed out the Winter of '84, Mack missed more than just Sex Ed. class. He missed the epic battle between me and Jethro Simpleton to see who could have the greasiest hair. I won this contest by rubbing limp French fries on my head. He missed brutal fights between Napper and Cuffy. He missed gym class dodge ball and frog dissection and African Geography. He missed seeing Alister push Evan down the main staircase. He missed the look of bewildered horror on Austin's face as the lunch monitor accused him of dropping the stink bomb in the cafeteria when everyone knew it was Tucker Weeks. He missed the chance to sing “Say, Say, Say” the Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson duet for a music credit. He missed a humorous reenactment of Michael Jackson's unfortunate mishap on a Pepsi commercial stage. Ted Tully was minding his own business at his locker, straightening his photo of the sexy Heather Locklear, when Cuffy Broot tossed a match onto Ted's head. Mack also missed a truly humiliating moment when Buddy Huggington told me that Cindy Phillips had told him I was “rad”.

“Go on, Tiger!” He said encouragingly. “She really likes you. And she's pretty.”

“What should I say?” I asked as my posture improved.

“Just tell her you want to eat her Smurf out. Girls love that!”

“Are you sure? I could invite her to go see Return of The Jedi again. It's still playing at the Jerry Lewis. I really like it when the Luke helps his dad.”

“Return of the Jedi? That's for little kids. We're in 7^th grade, Oggy. We're teenagers. That little peach is ready to be picked. She wants you.”

He pet me on the head and gave me an encouraging punch to the arm. Good old Huggy! Looking out for his friend!

Why would he lie to me, I thought. He was the one with girls hanging all over him. He would know what they like, right? He was the chick guru. So one morning I wore my Red Sox bat tie over my mesh polo shirt and put a dab of after-shave on my neck. I made sure all the pieces of celery were out of my braces and walked down Elwyn Ave. to the narrow walkway leading to Cindy's love. Not even Cuffy's spit could dampen my spirits. The super-hot Cindy Phillips liked me. She thought I was rad! She had even told Huggy! I was about to become a man.

Without going to much into details, lets just say that in the history of Junior High Schools there has never been a more embarrassed 7^th grader. Choosing the cafeteria as the location for my stage was my first mistake. My second mistake was approaching Cindy when she was sitting next to Chrissy, Cindy, and a new 8^th grade girl, Darcy Devins, who was equally Madonna-licious, but who was far beyond my grasp. Technically, my first mistake was trusting Buddy, because Cindy Phillips recoiled in naked loathing when I slid in between her and Cindy. Imagine my surprise that my request to “Eat her Smurf out” went over like yelling “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater. What with the forthcoming verbal attacks, the squirted ketchup, the hurled French fries, the indiscriminate wedgie, and the hyena-like laugh of the knowing Buddy, I barely made it back to my own safety table of banded misfits, where even Jethro shuffled down the bench from me so as not to be associated with me. Well, I thought at the time, at least the Red Sox are going to win this year. It can't get much worse.

I suppose Mack's illness had its benefits: While the misfit table received a grand total of 6 valentines from our mothers, Mack got a big pink heart with the names and best wishes of as many kids who couldn't get out of signing it.

Time blundered on. As Spring Training started in Winter Haven, I brought Mack's homework to his Richards Ave. house and watched MTV while he did the complex math and science worksheets from his living room couch.

“Just say you were sick, Wynn. It's Homo-work. Nobody cares where East Germany is. They're all just Commies over there. My brother says we should Nuke 'em all. Isn't that funny? I'm not going to do the Europe map. It's dumb. Say, do you really think Madonna is really a virgin?”

Mack ignored my question and continued coloring in the Eastern Block states of Europe. “You would do this stuff if you were me.”

“I don't do it now. Why start? I'd screw Madonna's Smurf. Would you?”

Mack glanced at the TV screen where sexy Madonna was prancing around.

“Yeah. She's a wicked babe.”

I asked, “You know what Karen Simpson was wearing today?”

“Your mom's underwear?”

“Nope. She had these stretchy pants on. Like saran wrap. So hot. Her boobs are huge!”

I held my arms out in front of me like I was carrying two invisible watermelons.

“I got a boner right in Social Studies class. Can you believe it?”

Mack stopped coloring.

“Like sweat pants? Her pants?”

“No. They were shiny and tight. David Lee Roth wears them in that video. The one with the hot chicks.”

Mack's mouth hung open so I could see strange discoloration on his tongue. “Karen was wearing those? No, she wasn't.”

Mack coughed into a napkin, squinting. Then he spit something into a plastic bucket. His face looked strange with no eyebrows. I decided not much else was worse than losing your eyebrows. Braces were bad, but no eyebrows? Ouch.

“She was too. It was awesome! She was wicked hot. And during Science class she bent over and I could see her ass. She did it on purpose. Her ass is nice. I'd hump her and Madonna at the same time.”

“Shut up,” said Mack as he coughed something up again from his lungs. His eyes had yellow crusty clumps in the corners that I remembered from my brother's dying guinea pig. Mack tried to wipe these out as I demonstrated with my hands what Karen's ass looked like as seen through her stretchy pants.

“She didn't show you her ass. No way,” Mack insisted.

“She did. And I saw her after class in the hall. She was totally looking at my package. I heard she got laid on that picnic table by the JFK.”

Mack nodded gravely. “I heard that too. She's a babe. I kissed her once,” he said with a sigh.

“She wants me. I'd do her Smurf so hard. Her and Madonna.”

“What about Heather Locklear?” asked Mack.

This was an absurd question. It was like asking if I would sleep with Christy Brinkley or Bo Derek or Brooke Shields or Vanity.

“Duh. Karen's pants were so tight. I heard Napper call them spandex. Have you ever heard of spandex? You should have seen her ass. It was like that blow up sex doll I found in your dad's closet.”

He laughed. “I saw your mom's Smurf,” He coughed.

“I'd pour a bottle of baby oil on Karen,” I said, “and just hump her all wet. Like in Flashdance.”

“I poured a bottle...”

Mack paused to cough up something from his chest again. His hand searched for the small plastic bucket by the couch. He found it and then he spit what was in his mouth into the bucket. He then lay back panting.

“You were saying you'd pour something somewhere?” I prompted.

Mack was dozing off. Now he opened his hairless eyes and rubbed his head with long fingers.

“Huh?”

“You poured a bottle of baby oil on my mom? Is that what you were going to say?”

“Yeah. I did that.”

“You humped my mom?”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Mack mumbled as he fell asleep. I crept out as a John Cougar Mellencamp video began. Fortunately, I now had convinced my father to rent the cable box, so I could watch MTV any time I wanted. Life was good..

Mack lived on the couch, watching the tulip beds get covered with plowed snow in January and then watching the snow melt in the April rains. When the tulips along his front walk started to poke through the soil again, Mack talked about seeing some professional baseball players is Florida and bragged about getting their autograBHHS.

“You didn't get any because you are a loser,” he advised me.

After giving Mack his homework, I would sit on Mack's back porch, near the empty driveway basketball court, and wondered silently why he didn’t just get up and exercise a little so whatever was weak in him would get strong. It worked for Hulk Hogan. All he needed was a challenge like the fight with Tucker Weeks, or at least a little exercise, some pushups and sit-ups, and he would be playing Whiffle ball again.

The Sox managed to lose seven consecutive games to start the 1984 season 3-9. Not the best way to begin a Championship season, but I still believed. I visited Mack less and less frequently, choosing rather to throw a racquetball off the side of Bone Harbor School, the old Off The Wall grounds where I towered over the 4^th grade ghosts who shuffled along the damp grass sniffling and dreaming of candy and milk and monsters. I whipped the blue racquetball against the wall and impressed the 6^th grade ghosts with my natural fielding skills. Mack could hardly hold his head up, let alone play Off The Wall.

When the Sox weren't televised, I biked to his house to deliver more assignments and then sat watching MTV while he napped. For me to neglect a lab report or two was expected, but Mack had actually liked to do the work. The sight of two weeks worth of unfinished French homework next to his couch hinted at a shift for the worse. I had to remind him to do some of the work and soon began to dread our visits. I even bullied my way through my own homework as an excuse that I was too busy to visit.

The Red Sox, I was certain, were going to win the World Series, but Mack was wasting away. He stubbornly refused to do the sit-up, push-up exercise routine I had proscribed. Nor did the selfish ass have any sympathy for my tales of daily torture at the hands of Brody and Alister Konig and Cuffy. The benefit of a bodyguard, I explained, could only be enjoyed if said bodyguard wasn't dying of Leukemia. Otherwise the bullies doubled their abuse. Mack didn't seem to be too concerned with my troubles. It was like the whole world revolved around him or something.

My father and I went to a pizza dinner and Cheers viewing at his house each week, but it was a subdued celebration. The smell of a body eating itself was present everywhere in the house, as were the canisters of oxygen and baggies of syringes. I chewed my pepperoni pizza quietly in the corner and counted the minutes until I could go home to watch The A Team thwart drug dealing terrorists in exotic locations.

Warm May arrived with tulip bulbs pushing through the loam and robins singing a promise of victory in the trees. The Red Sox were five games below .500, but I knew they would rebound. At least I had something to occupy my thoughts while 7^th grade finished up. It hadn't been the best year of school, but it wasn't the worst. I met Erin in a percussion class and it turned out we were the only two people to really appreciate Three's Company comedy. Cristo seemed to be shrinking. Jethro just managed to pass his Science class. Austin finally got a grip on his speech impediment. Evan got caught with a beer at school and spent the opening weeks of the Sox season in after-school detention. Not exactly over-achievers, but we were doing better than Yuri Andropov, who had taken the last train to Siberia in February and was replaced by Konstantin Chernenko.

I biked over to Mack's house with a folder of Social Studies homework asking him to comment on the Soviet Union's decision to boycott the upcoming summer Olympics. Jordan was playing basketball in the driveway and I approached him with a gesture for the ball.

“Where's the beef?” I asked with a smile.

Without a word he rolled the ball into the garage. Our relationships had been strained since I clearly favored Mack's company over his. There was no way to explain that I now felt it was my duty to visit Mack and sit with him rather than play with his new Macintosh computer games or shoot basketball in the driveway. There was nothing I could do, but Jordan didn't care, He walked into the back yard. Mack's mother let me into the house, and I sat on chair in the living room with my hands across my lap. His mother brought me lemonade with ice cubes and a marshmallow square.

“Mack's resting,” she said. “He'll be up soon. How have you been, Ogden? I saw your name in the Bone Harbor Herald. Congratulations.”

I cringed as I realized she must have seen the hideous picture of the Junior High School Cross Country Track team. In the photo, I looked both skeletal and fat, horribly unattractive, gangly kneed, hopelessly befuddled, my Red Sox hat tugged down over my eyes, and weedy hair sprouting out in disarray. With my headgear strapped over my face to expose all of my crooked teeth, I looked exactly like a Special Olympics team member who had inadvertently wandered into the camera frame during a hunt for food. As part of the bitter irony that is my life, I had to deliver this damning picture to all the customers on my paper route and then fight them for money come Friday as they mocked my appearance. Freddy Krueger could not have planned worse torture. I wanted to just die.

I had decided to try cross country track since I spent most of my days running to school or else being chased through the forest by bullies or dogs. More often than not, I outran everyone. Cross Country Track, I reasoned, could also be considered training for the Baseball season. The final reason I gave Cristo when he made fun of me was that the track girls wore spandex running tights. I showed up for practice and was given a tank top and a schedule of meets. Our weekly assignment, handed down by Coach Basil Richardson, was to run around Break Island. More often than not I went home and watched MTV instead of running the six miles around the island. Running was supposed to be fun, I thought. What was fun about running six miles on the concrete through Break Island? Nothing, that's what. As for the actual races, I was struck by the complete insanity of running with a pack of boys in tank tops through a strange forest, gasping for breath, tripping on roots, pleading for water and an end to the misery. And I learned too late that the girl's team ran at completely different times so depriving me of a chance to watch their spandex wrapped tails bounce through the forest.

“I've been OK, Mrs. Wynter,” I said. The fact that Mrs.Wynter no longer shared the same last name as Mack was a legal loophole I didn't grasp. “I'm on the cross country track team. We run a lot.”

“I bet it keeps you in shape.”

Shape? I didn't know I needed to make any special effort to stay in shape. I thought that once you were born and lived for about sixteen years you were permanently molded. Old people, like my grandparents and Ronald Reagan, had simply always looked like they had been locked in a sauna for fifteen years. That was their 'shape'. Health, getting out of bed without shoulder and back pain, taking a shit without great effort and rectal bleeding, not limping up stairs, the ability to read road signs, and other benefits of youth, I considered a lifetime guarantee. Then again, maybe Mack's mother was talking about the fruity shape of Karen Simpson's ass as she sprinted down a wooded trail during practice.

“I guess,” I said.

I sat bashfully in a stiff chair looking out the window so I didn’t have to look at Mack on the couch where he lay covered with a wool blanket. His skinny arms were crossed on top of his chest, touching each other like gently kissing eels. His flesh was the color and texture of old bed linen with blue- green veins showing underneath. His once thick neck was chicken thin and his head looked too big to be supported. His jaw and cheeks appeared sharp without the normal layer of fat around them. In his nostrils were tubes connected to an oxygen tank near his head. His slow breathing sounded like when I sucked the dregs of a root beer float with a straw from the bottom of a mug at the A&W Drive up window in Marshford.

Green buds bloomed on the trees swaying outside in the Fenway-like temperatures, sunny, full of promise and deliverance. Thirteen-year-old Baseball tryouts were forthcoming, and I held an invisible baseball in my hand snapping my wrist and guiding the ball home. Wade Boggs was the new Red Sox third baseman and everyone knew he was going to break Joe Diamggio's 56 game hitting streak and then lead the Red Sox to a World Championship. I wanted to go study the Red Sox magazine back at my house. Sheep grazed in the corner yard. What was I doing in this diseased place? Mack woke up and drank some soda from a glass using a straw. He held his skeletal hand to his forehead, frowning and spoke to the ceiling.

“I brought you some homework, Mack. Mr. Donut wants us to write something about something. I forget.” I put the folder on the coffee table, covering dozens of unfinished assignments.

“I’m just getting smaller and smaller, Oggy. I think I’m gonna disappear one day. I'm so weak, Oggy.”

He lifted his blanket so I could see his skinny legs.

“Have you been doing those Push-ups?” I asked. “I'm telling you, do a few today and a few more tomorrow. Pretty soon you'll be hitting balls out of the Central Little League Field.”

Never mind that since we no longer played at The Central Little League Field.

“I was reading a book,” I added, “that said you can cure yourself and even levitate if you concentrate hard. Ninjas focus their Tu Mo and can dodge bullets. I swear.”

Mack laughed and coughed up something from his lungs. Then he turned the oxygen on, wheezing, sucking at that root beer float. He ignored my encouragement.

“God, Oggy. I’m only thirteen years old. Isn’t that too young? Shouldn’t I be able to live longer? I want to go back to school. I want to travel. I want a girlfriend. Can’t I have those things? I want them so bad. It’s so unfair. Why do you get them and I don't?”

I didn't bother mentioning that I wanted none of those things. I only wanted the Red Sox to win.

Mack swore and ran his palm over his head again.

“I'm sorry,” he mumbled quietly. “I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

I stared at the rug with a cold glass of iced tea in my hands. Mack's baseball scrapbooks lay on the coffee table. The book was open to yellowed headlines from the Bone Harbor Herald, “Wynter carries Pic 'n' Pay over Local 1947.” The scrapbook included autograBHHS and baseball cards from Jim Rice and Bob Stanley, pictured from the Red Sox in Spring training in Winter Haven, Florida and scholastic awards from Bone Harbor. Would I be allowed to see the Red Sox in Winter Haven if I got Leukemia, I wondered. One could hope. I breathed through my nose. I was certain that after ten push-ups he would be on his way to recovery. Just ten. But the coward wouldn't even try one.

“I don’t want to die, Oggy. Not now. Not yet. I don’t want it.”

Mack cried weakly with the oxygen tank pushing air into his lungs, giving some life to his body. He knew the Allied and Axis powers of W.W.II and African Geography and Algebra because he had studied so hard but the knowledge didn't help. I didn’t think he would die. I thought he just had a bad cold. If he would just do a couple push-ups and get his baseball glove from under the closet then he would get better. What was the big deal? He was only 13 and he was using an oxygen tank. Was it that serious?

I sat and frowned until he stopped crying. He made an embarrassed joke about being so scared and apologized for being a 'sissy'. When he was breathing evenly again I leaned closer and asked, “Where are my baseball cards?”

“Huh?”

“The baseball cards you stole. The '82 Sox. Where did you hide them?”

“I didn't take them, Oggy.”

His lie infuriated me. Here he was shaking hands with the Grim Reaper and denying he stole my baseball cards.

“I know you stole them, Mack. It's OK. But there was an Oil Can Boyd card in there and he's wicked good. It's gonna be worth a million dollars one day. Where did you put it?”

“Oggy,” Mack coughed, “I didn't take the cards.”

“Wynn,” I said shortly. “I know you took them. Just admit it. You wanted to get revenge against me and Flash, but you got yours back and now I want mine back.”

It's hardly worth mentioning, but this was a reference to a minor neighborhood scandal involving me, Kurt, and Mack's unoccupied bedroom. All I have to say in my defense is that 13 is an evil age. Straying from the path of complete conformity brings swift punishment, but so does not straying from the path of complete conformity. Every decision is a matter of life or death. You're screwed either way. Thus, Kurt and I found ourselves in Mack's house one afternoon putting baseball cards that were not ours into our pockets. Was it my choice? No, not in my opinion. It was kind of like going to Junior High School; you don't know why you go, but you find yourself there every morning for 8 straight months. You just accept your fate. We all know that public schools don't train kids to choose. This applies equally to careers and crime. Naturally, we were caught with the loot and endured the typical punishments. A few months later, baseball cards vanished from my 1982 Red Sox team set. Though I couldn't prove it, Mack was obviously the thief. I meant to get those cards back before he kicked off.

I said again, “Just give them back. You got all of yours back. Please. I won't tell anyone.”

Mack tried to sit up, possibly to take a swing at me, but was too weak. He started to cough and didn't stop until he put the oxygen mask on. I couldn't believe the coward was still denying it.

Then his mother came in and lured me outside with a piece of pie. Mack was already half asleep, his voice mumbling out to the hazy world. “Sorry. Sorry.”

Forgetting my bike at Mack's house, I ran down to Leary Field to watch the High School baseball team practice and look for spare change under the wooden bleachers. I'd been hearing a lot of Sox talk about this Clemens kid from Texas. He pitched the blazes out of the ball in Spring Training, but the clever managers were waiting to debut him so he would have to wait an extra year for free agency arbitration. Other questions presented themselves: Would Boggs break the hitting record? Would Dewey Evans finally be moved up in the line-up? He deserved it.

Evan Squidly slithered from the shadows beneath the wooden bleachers.

“Come here,” he said.

I edged away from him. My own presence in the dark underside of the baseball complex was a given, but Evan lived way over by Prescott Park. He didn't belong here.

“What are you doing down there, Squid?” I asked nervously. “Spankin' your monkey?”

“Come here,” he said with a sinister grin. “I want to show you something.”

He then looked suspiciously over his shoulder. I could already hear my father say, “Ogden, I had an interesting conversation with Evan Squidly's parents today. Do you have anything you want to tell me?”

“I've gotta go,” I said. “I have to do the dishes.”

I hadn't done the dishes since my father started ordering pizza and Chinese food for dinner back in 1981. Evan held his hand out.

“Look what I found in the Newberry's bathroom.”

Evan was probably loitering in the J.J. Newberry's bathroom for the same reason anyone would: to eat stolen Twinkies. But he had found some kind of cigarette, which he now held in the palm of his hand.

“You wanna get high?” he asked ominously.

Nancy Reagan and the withered chimp she called her husband had warned me about these situations. Just when life looked desperate and grey, one of Satan's slaves would pressure me to smoke a joint that had been found in the bathroom of a financially unstable downtown business.

“Come on, Oggy. Ya scared? It's just Weed.”

This was exactly like the commercials. Now, how was I supposed to reply? “Sure, why not? Fahk yeah? Of course, dude? Light it up, man?” Then I remembered...

“No, Squid. I've got a heart problem. The nurse said I can't ever smoke or else I'll have a stroke.”

Evan shrugged and made a face as he sniffed the joint.

“Do you have any matches?”

That weekend my father helped carry Mack up to his own room. I pretended to wash the floor so I wouldn't have to go over with him. This whole Mack thing was getting out of hand. What about me? What about the 13-10 Sox?

A little over a week later I was reluctantly getting ready to go to the pizza dinner at Mack's house. Even the prospect of pepperoni pizza didn't overshadow Mack's cheese colored skin and root beer float breathing, but I had already mopped the floor and cleaned my room and took the trash out. There was nothing left to do except pretend to read until Magnum P.I. came on. Then the phone rang. I prayed Mack would cancel and give me a chance to go play Whiffle Ball with Cristo and JoJo and watch the Red Sox play the Royals on television. I also hoped the call wasn't Evan inquiring about what I was doing and if I wanted to “check out something cool”. “Something cool” was a grab-bag with anything from a dried dog skin to a crack pipe made out of a Habitrail tube.

I was carrying an empty laundry basket around the living room, for no particular reason, when I heard the resigned, sad tone of my father’s voice saying, “I’ll tell him” into the receiver.

I knew what had happened before being told. I had feared it all along, but my father had mastered the language of grief long before this and his expression alone divulged the tragedy. I set my eyes hard on his in an exchange of misery and said softly,

“The Red Sox lost again didn’t they,” I asked sadly. “I knew it. Ojeda is killing us!”

My father approached me and said, “No, Ogden. Mack Wynter just passed away. He’s dead.”

I dropped the laundry basket. Dead? Mack? Impossible.

“What? What are you talking about? He lives right over there,” I gestured in the direction of Richards Avenue. We’re going to have pizza with him in ten minutes. Remember? Pizza?”

My dad hugged me hard. I wondered silently if we would still be eating pizza. I especially liked pepperoni. But Mack's mother would probably want to cancel the dinner. Once again someone was pissing in my milk bowl.

Later that day I learned the Red Sox had lost to the Royals. Ojeda, that bum, was now 4-4. In related news the blighter Dennis Eckersley had been traded to the Chicago Cubs for outfielder Mike Brumley and first baseman Billy Buckner. Finally, the Sox would have a reliable replacement for Yaz.

For Mack's funeral, held during a string of 8 consecutive losses by the Sox, my father told me I had to change my jeans. I argued that since I had worn them for over 150 consecutive days this was out of the question. It was bad luck for the Red Sox to change them and since the Sox were currently 3 games below .500, they needed all the luck I could give them.

“I'm not going to debate with you, Ogden. You'll change them.”

I pointed to my Red Sox hat. “But it'll jinx the Sox. I've got to wear my jeans until they win. This is their year!”

“You've been saying that for four years, Ogden. Grandpa has been saying that since 1918. Do you plan to wear your jeans for another 66 years?”

This went without saying. Of course I was going to wear them for another 60 years. Why not?

“Because you blow your nose on them, Ogden. They stink. They're torn to pieces. They hardly fit you. I can see your underwear. Ogden, you will not wear them in my house for another day. After you graduate High School you can do what you want.”

This argument sounded exactly like one I had watched on an episode of The Brady Bunch. Those Bradys were really in touch with a young man's troubles. Now, what had Peter said in response to his father's ultimatum?

“Maybe I'll leave right now, Dad. Maybe I'll go live in the Leary Field dugout. It's got a water fountain and I can lick the grease off the fan vents over the fried dough machine. I could do it. I'll do it right now.”

Then my father got angry and ordered me to change my jeans. I explained that he was making a mockery of Mack's funeral because Mack had only known me in my jeans. It was my tribute to him to wear the same jeans. Could he not see my side of the situation? No. My father did not accept this defense and, after a brief struggle, I was forced to wear a pair of maroon corduroy pants that were three inches too short for me and that rubbed my crotch raw. They were abominable. I hadn't worn them since 1976.

“You can't be serious, Dad. I look like a girl. I could wade to Marshford and not get these pants wet.”

“You'll wear them out of respect for Mack's family. No one wants to see your underwear through those torn jeans. They should be burned. You’re lucky I'll let you wear that hat.”

“Respect? Wynn was the one who tore those jeans when he pushed me down the hospital hill last winter. Remember? Wynn was the one who squirted ketchup on me and stained the pants. And Wynn was the one who tore the back pocket off during Flag Football. I disrespect his memory by wearing these stupid homo pants. They hurt me and they look like a homo.”

I was approaching tears. The Sox were floundering. A transvestite was the current MTV darling. Reagan was supplying half of the world with weapons and the other half with drugs. ABBA was gone. Couldn’t my father see there were more important things going on in the world?

“At least you don't blow your nose on them. At least they're clean.”

“That's because I haven't worn then since we lived with Mom. That was in Maine! In Nineteen-Seventy-Six. Yaz was still playing left field then. I’ve grown two feet. Look!”

“So what are you saying, Ogden? We have a washing machine too. It's right in the bathroom. Should I draw you a map? You can read directions on the detergent box as well as I can. Or do you want a new pair of dungarees?”

I shuddered at this incredibly unhip term. Dungarees? Who used the word dungarees? Uncool people, that's who. Parents who called waterproof boots 'Rubbers'. Ugh.

“I just don't want to wear these pants. They bite the bag.”

“Well, you aren't going to Mack's funeral in those filthy dungarees. And toxic waste couldn’t clean those stains out of them.”

“Fine. I don't want to go to the funeral. Wynn wouldn't want me to. Dewey wouldn't want me to go.”

My father threw his hands up, walked out of the house and slammed the door. I took off the corduroy's and threw them in the trash. Then I put my own comfortable jeans back on. It was true that my jeans were so filthy that they could stand up on their own. In fact, if I topped them off with a Red Sox sweatshirt, I could send my jeans to school for me and probably get away with it. But they fit like second skin and were unquestionably my precious own. Besides, my streak of consecutive days wearing my jeans was the only remaining social commodity, now that I was no longer “The dirty friend of that dying kid.”

The announcement was made at the Junior High School, spoiling an otherwise glorious final three weeks in class. A moment of silence followed. Four-hundred 14 and 15 year old boys and girls bowed their heads thinking about death and life and what European Geography had to do with either. Cristo rubbed himself through his pants in English Class. Jethro sat in the office getting a late pass. Evan sat on the second floor toilets scratching a swear word in the door. JoJo yawned. Erin sat chewing his pencil in Biology. Piper stood in the Gym with a basketball tucked under his arm. Buddy took the moment of silence to grope Chrissy Jenkins. Kurt lived in Pakistan and was among the last to learn of Mack's death. The moment of silence was filled with wandering thoughts of sex, baseball, acne, and Madonna.. Did Becky like me? Did Johnny think I was cute? When did hair start growing down there? How many hours would I have to work at the Ye Old Car Wash to pay for a new Camero? Was it true that I would be addicted to pot after the first time I smoked it? Would 1984 really be the year for the Red Sox?

I got an erection for no reason at all.

Tucker Weeks, the raven-haired kid who beat Mack so badly two years earlier, went berserk during the moment of silence and broke a chair on a classmate's head. Cristo said he did it to get out of school because he knew he could get away with it. The incident was noted among our lunch table and entered into our meetings minutes. Since we had no contingency for the death of a founding member our constitution was soon abandoned to chaos and anarchy. We each contributed a pile of French fries to an area where Mack once sat, but they kept disappearing. We started to throw away our own lunch trays and get our own Ketchup. Cristo ate three ice cream sandwiches, an action that had been clearly outlawed by our constitution, and twice I caught Jethro stealing from Mack's French fry tribute pile. Before 7^th grade was over, Mack had become a ghost like Kurt. Mack “Wynn” Wynter was someone we had known but couldn't remember what he looked like. The stories we told about Mack expanded and contracted until our own lies, instead of Mack himself, became the subject.

Even though I didn't make it to Mack's funeral, but instead sat in the Leary Field dugout bouncing rocks off the concrete, Mack bequeathed me all his baseball cards and cherished memorabilia. The trophies and autograBHHS and baseball cards were delivered that June. I browsed Mack's effects, the assorted cards placed neatly in tight plastic envelopes, the photo books and shoe boxes full of baseball trinkets, but couldn't locate the cards he had stolen from my 1982 Red Sox team set. I did find a single page of lined paper stuck between two sheets of plastic among the All Star team rosters and football team photos and hockey game ticket stubs. In the solitude of my room, as Yaz and Fisk and Dewey watched, I pulled the note out and read what was written in a neatly printed script.

April 19, 1984

Red Sox lost today They got swept by Texas at Fenway. That makes seven straight losses. They are the worst team in the league. Why can't they win? Pain less today. Am definitely getting better. Doctor Lewis says there is still a chance for remission. Need to plan what to do once I can go outside again. So many things for Spring. Need to make up for lost time on this couch coughing. Tell my family I love them. They have tried so hard and it was with their help that I got better. School seems stupid now except for the girls. I want to be near one of them. I don’t care who. I want to screw. It’ll be so good to be outside again. My muscles will get stronger and I can play catch with Oggy and get on a team if there is still time. I want to play in the 14-15 year old league. Then what? Then I’ll take a bus to the middle of nowhere just to see what it is like. I’ve wasted so much time! I want to see a ball game in every stadium. Kids will be jumping off the Sagamore River Bridge this summer. I’ll do that once I can go out. It’ll be good to not be so tired and weak all the time. Even now I want to run outside, but I know I’m too weak. I need to be patient like the doctor says or I won’t get better. I want to play the guitar and drive a car down the California coast and go to Mexico and Alaska. I want to travel and really live and not waste a minute pretending or fighting. There are so many things I’ll do when I get better. If I’m patient I can just do them. I can’t wait. I swear the tragedy isn’t when people fail, it is when people don’t even try. That is what makes me mad.

The unsigned page had been torn from a ringed notebook. The date was about a month before Mack had died. I carefully hid the page, making sure no torn tab of paper was lost, and put the folder away with the rest of Mack's baseball cards. I had my own card collection, purchased mostly with stolen quarters and Christmas money. That summer, I tried to make Mack's baseball card collection mine. I tried to touch them like they were mine and sort them like they were mine. I tried. Mack had given the cards to me and he wasn't going to get them back, but I could not consider them mine. I thought about giving the boxes away, but decided Mack had wanted me to hold onto them for him. I decided I was just keeping the cards safe until Mack returned for them.

Feed the Fires

Burn and Bright

Watch the Day

Turn into Night

Sing the Youthsong

With your kin

That's the Tale

Of young Mack Wynn

The Timewraiths departed alone and satisfied for their secret haunts while I pedaled east from Mack's green water fountain, passing the millpond and then between Gordy's ice covered Basketball courts and Leary field, where Mack never got to play. I didn't get enough speed to coast up the hill, so I had to quickly downshift to reach the frosty Elwyn Avenue. There I was alone. The abundant neighborhood pets were snug in their winter nests. I entered the garage through the window and then opened the electric door to put my bike away. Lying by the snow shovels was a cracked Whiffle ball. Along with deflated footballs and scuffed baseballs and Nerf basketballs, there were about a half dozen Whiffle balls around the garage and in the closets of my house. I picked this one up and cradled it lightly in my fingers.

What else happened, Oggy? You don't have to go to bed yet. Why don't you come down to the dump. The fire is so high now. Come and enjoy your work.

The Red Sox went 86-76 and finished in 4^th place the year Mack died. Mike Easler put up unbelievable numbers in 1984. His .313 batting average was the second highest on the team. He slugged 27 home runs and almost 100 RBIs. I even copied his wide batting stance during late season whiffle ball games when I hit lefty for the challenge. Center fielder, Tony Armas, hit 43 home runs, the most by any Sox player in my memory, while Dewey slugged 32 homers as part of an outfield that, along with Jim Rice, drove in 349 runs and hit 103 combined home runs. Pretty Smurfy! Rich Gedman was developing into a solid catcher. Dave Stapleton sucked royally at first base, but because Dennis Eckersley started the season with an ERA over 5.00 and was told to pack his bags, veteran first baseman, Bill Buckner picked up the slack I liked Buckner's mustache because it reminded me of Dewey's and he swung a pretty mean club. Cristo and I agreed that because of historic Lefty batter success in Fenway (see Yaz, Ted Williams, Fisk, Ruth), Buckner was destined for greatness. He couldn't hit or field any worse than Stapleton, after all. Barrett and Boggs filled out the infield and hit over .300 apiece. Thanks to Easler, the Sox finally had three players with batting averages over .300. The reign of terror by shortstop Glenn 'Mister .205' Hoffman ended in 1983. Jackie Gutierrez played there in '84 and was the runt of the offense hitting a measly .263.

So why did the Sox finish 18 games behind the future champion Detroit Tigers? Because the pitchers combined for an ERA of 4.18 and the offense combined for only 4.72 runs per game. Three starting pitchers, Bruce Hurst, Bob Ojeda and Oil Can Boyd, went 12-12 each. Mike Brown went 1-8 with an ERA of 6.85 and thus earned the honor of having his baseball card burned by hundreds of Red Sox fans. Even Bob Stanley, a relief pitcher mind you, managed to lose 10 games for the second year in a row. He could not be counted on as a closer and a closer was exactly what the Sox needed most, someone who could shut the opposition down in the top or bottom of the ninth inning, someone like Rollie Fingers.The Sox had mastered the art of losing by 1984. When Armas was hitting home runs, Mike Brown was pitching, and when Oil Can Boyd was throwing good strikes then Jim Rice was hitting into inning ending double plays.

Then, before I'd even gotten the song “Footloose” out of my head, the cruel summer ended and Cristo and I were looking sadly at our homeroom assignments taped to the front of the Junior High school.

“I can't believe I've got homeroom with Mrs. Singer again,” I pouted. “Do you know how many times she sent me to the office last year?”

“No,” said Cristo, “but I know how many times your mom sent me to the office last year.”

“We've got five more years of school left? This sucks. Five years ago we were starting third grade. We were little kids. Back then I even thought you were cool.”

“I though your mom was cool,” said Cristo.

“I bet JoJo doesn't have to put up with this crap at Plumsook Junior High. It's bogus.”

Nick was just about to say something about my mom when a pack of button clad girls appeared near the bike rack and started to walk up the cement sidewalk. In the confusion that followed, I pushed Cristo off the low staircase into a shrub before gathering my greasy hair into a clump and stuffing it under my Sox hat. I tucked my Pac-Man shirt into my calf length Hawaiian shorts. Why, I thought, hadn't I worn my cool Red Sox bat tie? When I really needed to look sharp, I was caught off guard. This was my chance to make myself known, to impress the girls like I'd imagined doing in my late night fantasies. Karen and Kelly and Chrissy approached with a new girl, who had a gorgeous helmet of strawberry blonde hair and freckles and wore a Rick Springfield T-shirt. As they all gathered around the homeroom list, I stood to one side and pretended to inspect the concrete foundation for cracks, but really mustering my nerve. While Cristo was struggling in the bushes, I turned and literally flashed a smile, as the sun reflected off my torturous braces. The girls, except for the new girl, laughed at my tube socks and mesh shirt. It was obvious why they were in a position to laugh at moi. Kelly was wearing a stylish “Frankie Says Wear Condoms” T-shirt and a flashed a Cyndi Lauper button on her tastefully frayed denim jacket. Karen's hair was bound together not only with a corded headband, but she also had a tuft tied with a scrap of black mesh. She sported enough makeup for three beauty queens and also wore a “Howard Jones Pop Prince” pin on her Rick Springfield T-shirt. Chrissy was the freshest one of them all with two pairs of neon leg warmers worn over her jeans, a torn “The Cure Rocks” sweatshirt, a gumball necklace and a gorgeous David Lee Roth temporary tattoo on her cheek. It was like MTV had come to life right in Bone Harbor. I could have died from desire!

The new girl tilted her two-foot high perm and looked at my crotch. Maybe my luck was changing.

“Hey,” I mumbled. “I'm going to this school. I'm in eighth grade since I just got through with seventh. I'm stoked.”

This comment struck me as impossibly stupid. What else was I doing in front of the Junior High School checking a list of homeroom assignments two weeks before class started? Was I just making sure all the kids in the phone book were accounted for, perhaps? And why else would I be in eighth grade unless I had passed seventh. Stupid! Stupid!

“You were friends with Mack Wynter, weren't you?” she asked.

I was amazed. Did she have mental telepathy? I swear I'd never seen this girl before, but she knew something about me. My heart started to breakdance.

“Yes. Wynn died last spring. He stole my baseball cards.”

“I'm sorry.”

What was she sorry about? Had she killed him?

“Is that kid alright?” asked the red-headed angel about Cristo. She was wearing a “Beat it!” Michael Jackson button on her jacket with M.J. doing a toe stand. Could she be more perfect?

“Sure. It's just Sticky. My name's Sticky,” I punched myself in the head. “I mean Ogden. Most people call me Oggy because it's my nickname. People say I look like Ricky Schroder on Silver Spoons.”

This introduction hardly wowed them. Instead, they giggled and pointed at my crotch.

“Your fly is down,” the cutie said. Then she asked, “Are you wearing Red Sox underwear?”

Horror of horrors! The Velcro fly of my Hawaiian shorts was completely open. It had become harder and harder to get the Velcro to stick together after a mishap on the Sagamore River Bridge. Indeed, I was wearing Red Sox boxer shorts and the fact that the new girl now knew this secret gave me with a feeling of suicidal embarrassment.

I spun around to re-Velcro my fly, stepped off the stone steps and fell onto Cristo's back as he crawled out of the bushes. A brief struggle ensued and accusations were traded, but in the end we both got to our feet. I managed to get the flap of my shorts partly closed, but it was too late. The girls were walking away, perfectly shaped, clean, stylishly dressed in lace frilled Chic jeans and nylon Bonjour jackets.

“Look what you made me do, Sticky. Have some respect for yourself.”

“I had some respect for your mother,” he said as he stood up.

“Do you know the name of that girl?” I asked pointing. “The babe with the Rick Springfield shirt?”

“Karen? You know her. She's the one who called you a disgusting loser.”

“No, the other Rick Springfield shirt. The one that said 'Stud Muffin'“

Cristo nodded. “Oh, that girl. She isn't new. That's Rose something. She was around last year. She runs track.”

I slapped him across the face.

“No, she doesn't. Idiot. I run track and I'd remember those legs. She isn't on the team.”

Cristo gave me a punch to the kidney area.

“You're the idiot. She runs track for the High School. She's like the Tina Turner of track. Faster than a Roger Clemens fastball.”

The rookie Clemens won nine games in 1984 and had permanently endeared himself to me by passing out pre-signed cards to kids standing by the players parking lot. His wife was a cute little Texas doll and it was clear he was a gamer with a blazing fastball.

“Really? Rose is her name?”

“I swear on your mom's stinky Smurf.”

We both stood silently next to the bushes and watched Rose and her perfumed gang walk in the direction of Downtown.

“You know those mother jokes got old back in fourth grade when Eddie Murphy was saying them.”

“But your mom's Smurf hasn’t gotten old.”

Then I pushed Cristo’s head into the ground until he asked for mercy.

8^th Grade was barely two weeks old when the Yankees defeated the Red Sox 7-1, dropping Boston to 16.5 games out of first place (with 16 games remaining), eliminating them from Playoff contention just as they had done in 1980. Michael Jackson's “Thriller” played every ten minutes on MTV, especially at Halloween, and Prince, not Blondie, was WHEB's Featured artist of the month. I started wearing glacier glasses at night and masturbating to Madonna and ZZ Top videos. I dreamed Rose would come to my bed and kiss me on the mouth. I watched for her in the Junior High hallways, but could never find the right opportunity to talk to her. My father's girlfriend insisted I wear the new pair of stone-washed jeans that she bought at the Mall. Some genetic sense of fashion made me resist, so she and my father ganged up on me and stripped my jeans off me, then destroyed them. The only thing I had left was my Red Sox hat.

Back in the garage, I gripped the whiffle ball with the holes turned in and threw a perfect curve ball to the other end of the garage. The ball broke at the invisible batter’s shoulder into the strike zone. It was unhittable except by someone like Gordy Clutcher, who knew how to back off of curveballs. It was a game winner, the kind of pitch the Red Sox needed in Game Six and I could almost hear the crowd erupt as the Red Sox became World Champions. Knight Strikes out. The Red Sox win! The sharp and unnatural motion hurt my shoulder and I wondered why I ever played baseball in the first place. All it had done was bring me pain.

Why don't you sort Wynn's baseball cards? Maybe you'll find the answer to Game Six.

“I'm tired, Bullwhip. My eyes are sore from watching the screen. You know, you're breaking my balls with this every night. When am I going to see some results?”

Better watch yourself, Oggy. A man who gets lippy might find himself on the business end of an elbow. Don't forget where you come from.

I slipped into the house and up into my room, creeping quietly past my father's door.

“Where have you been?” he asked from his bed.

Again, When was the more appropriate question.

I mumbled something about Justin and ants and Mack.

“What?”

“Nowhere. Just out. Downtown.”

“Good night.”

I closed my door and climbed into bed with Twain and Darcy's sock under my pillow and my Sox's cap on my head. There would be no vaseline tonight. I wasn't in the mood. I turned the radio on hoping for some old tunes from 1984 but all I could find was the latest song from Salt-n-Pepa. It seemed that talking about sex was as close as I would ever get.