She shut off the vacuum long enough to shout down the hall at me, but I pretended not to hear. Then I heard her footsteps coming to my room. She didn’t share my literary convictions, so Spillane went under the bed and out came a book called Touchdown Trouble—sports stories were more to Mom’s approval. She rapped on the door and followed that in.
She leaned on the doorjamb and glared. “Go and meet some of the kids in the neighborhood,” she said. “You’ll never make friends sitting in here with your nose in a book.”
“I don’t want to meet anybody.” I threw my book facedown on the rumpled bedspread.
“You don’t mean that. Go on outside.”
“One more chapter?”
“You can finish the chapter you’re on. That’s all.”
More arguments would just start a fight, so I read until she finished vacuuming and jumped me again. “I thought I told you to go outside.”
“You did. I’m going.” Then I stomped down the stairs into a cold, cloudy Anchorage June.
The only kids out and about in the neighborhood were three little girls playing on a rusty swing set. I roamed down the block away from the dreary apartment building and onto a street full of small houses. Mom was right. I wanted, perhaps desperately, to have friends, but meeting strangers seemed like a much-too-difficult way to do it. These people already had friends and lives. They didn’t need me.
How did a guy make friends? I was born with all mine, or they rolled into town and took up with the rest of the kids in school. I came from a place where friends were the kids you grew up with, like brothers and sisters almost, some you loved, some you hated, but, at sometime or another, you played with them all. Back home was too far away now, so I put it out of my mind.
I daydreamed I was playing tight end for a football team and trying to win the big one all by myself. My team was the underdog, and rain had turned the field to mud. I scooped up a fumble and ran, dodging, twisting, and turning through the stumbling tacklers of the other team.
Out of nowhere, a real football soared by me, nearly beaning me just before it bounced off the hood of a Plymouth station wagon. I stumbled after the ball and carried it back to a gang of kids in the middle of the street.
“Wanna play some touch?” a tall skinny teenager asked. “We need another guy.”
“Sure,” I said, a little nervous.
I was tall for my age, so the two teams argued over who deserved most to benefit from my obvious size and possible skill. I ended up with a short boy with a pug nose they called Macek and his bigmouthed pal, Taylor. I told them I could play tight end, which from my book-only experience meant I ran down the field and caught passes for touchdowns.
We formed a three-cornered huddle. Taylor squinted like a tough guy. “You catch a pass?” he asked.
“You bet. Just get it to me,” I answered with a line right out of Touchdown Trouble.
“Good, ’cause we’re three touchdowns behind.”
Taylor puffed up. “Okay, do a quick block and sprint down the middle of the street.”
For the first time in my life I took my place on the line of scrimmage. The skinny teenager lined up across from me and when Taylor said “HIKE!” he tried to push me over, but I moved to the side and dashed down the street, turning just in time to see the ball sail far to my left and once more bounce off a car.
Back in the huddle, Taylor glared at me like I was supposed to catch anything he threw. “Sorry,” I said.
Little pug nose chimed in. “Get it to him this time, Taylor. I’ll block.”
I never got a look at the ball that hit me in the back of the head, and on the next play Taylor never saw the tag that got him before he could move. He stood panting in the huddle. His face was flushed bright red behind a spatter of freckles.
“You guys gotta block this time,” he growled.
“Yeah,” said Macek, “throw me the ball.”
Once more we gained no yards but I got my block, paying for it with scraped knees. The kid named Taylor growled some more, “You guys aren’t trying. We can beat these guys.”
We only allowed the skinny high schooler and his team two more touchdowns before parents started appearing at the doors of the houses calling the boys home. Soon, only Macek, Taylor, and I stood awkwardly in the middle of the street.
Macek was short and stocky with a brown crew cut. Taylor was nearly as tall as I was, with a pile of red hair to match his freckles. “So, you just move here or something?” he asked.
“Yeah, from Ninilchik, down on the peninsula.”
“You’re from Chickenshit?” Macek said. He laughed.
I laughed, too. “No, Na-nil-chik!”
“My dad took me fishin’ there once,” Taylor said. “It’s out in the boonies. I caught lots of king salmon there.”
“In the boonies with the loonies!” Macek added. Only he laughed this time and I winced.
I tried to picture Taylor on the banks of the Ninilchik River in a sweatshirt and hip boots, trudging out from his dad’s camper with a salmon rod in his hand. Maybe last summer, Harry and I had sold him some of the lures we salvaged from the snags in the river. Maybe we’d go this summer, Taylor and his dad and me, and I could show them where to catch the big ones and the places where the snags could steal your hooks.
“Where do you live now?” Macek asked.
“Hollywood Arms, those big green apartments across Hollywood Drive. We’re on the top floor.”
“Now there’s a dump for you. My dad calls it the ghetto.”
I was surprised at him talking that way, even if I didn’t know exactly what a ghetto was. “It’s not like I get to choose where I live.”
“Yeah, well you better watch out. ’Cause them people got nothin’ and they’ll rob ya blind. That’s what my dad says.”
Taylor jumped to my defense. “Your dad just says that. He’s never even been in those apartments.”
“Yeah and he wouldn’t be either.”
“You’re a jerk,” Taylor said, “and your dad doesn’t know crap.”
“Sure he does. He knows you!” Macek said. He was chomping on a wad of bubblegum and the juice bubbled out when he talked. He laughed.
“I know you are but what am I?” Taylor returned.
“Where do you guys live?” I asked, interrupting their silly argument.
“Mr. Know-It-All lives way down past the shopping center, and I live right there,” said Taylor, pointing to a blue house with a garage and chain-link fence. “Heck, we lived in the Spruce Tree Courts when we first moved here, and it was just as bad as the Arms. My dad kept having to go yell at the neighbors to quit playin’ their music so loud. He’d have kicked their butts if they had the guts to fight him.”
Silently, I thanked Taylor for getting me out of that one. I’d never had to fight a total stranger before, even though Macek didn’t look like he would be much of a fight. It would be a fearful sort of encounter without any kind of relationship to fall back on when it was over. I always thought