Twentieth Century Limited Book One - Age of Heroes. Jan David Blais
noticing how good I was, which was not all that great, if you really need to know. Most of my hits were chipped to the opposite field, and I did not have what they called sure hands, tending to close my eyes on hard grounders hit at me. But what I lacked in ability I made up in desire and, of course, there was nothing about the game I didn’t know. I had my own Official Major League Baseball Rule Book and could tell you how many innings for an official game, the height of the mound, the score of a forfeit, and so on.
Our games started by catching the bat, then you and the other captain went hand over hand up the handle and around your head three times and you got first pick. We played ball all summer, all the time, mostly with a dirty, scuffed ball. The cover would fall off and you’d wind it with friction tape and douse it with baby powder which left a slippery, sweet-smelling ball for a few innings. Long fouls to right landed in the street bordering the lot, where every fifty feet or so there was a long, narrow opening in the curb perfectly located to swallow a well-hit ball. Once in a rare while somebody showed up with a new ball, birthday present or paper route money. A taped ball was no big deal but a new ball in the sewer called for retrieval measures involving a crowbar, rope, a flashlight, and one very unhappy player. Lot rules – that miserable job fell to the fielder if it was his error that let the ball get into the street. Next came the hitter, who complained don’t blame me for a good hit. As a last resort and the usual result, the ball’s owner. Not fair, but realistic.
One day we were short a player when Genie Sullivan didn’t show. About the third inning this tubby kid, Murph, who thought he was hot stuff, shouted, “Benny!” I looked around and saw a slim boy with dark curly hair approaching. I’d had never seen him before. “You’re on their side!” Murph yelled, pointing at me. The kids snickered as the new kid made his way to right field where the weakest fielder was put because fewest balls were hit that way. It turned out Benny was not very good, in fact he was awful. Balls hit right at him he missed. One fly went through his glove and got him in the face. He didn’t know what to do with the bat either, holding his hands exactly wrong. Though I joined in ragging this newcomer I pitied him. Too close to home, much too close.
Benny lived the next street over from the lot. His last name was Kaplan, and his family just moved from New York. As the summer went on we became good friends. He never showed up at the lot again, and I learned his lack of ability was matched only by his lack of interest. When we played together there was rarely anybody else around, which made me wonder if he had many friends. I always went to his house, for some reason he seemed reluctant to come to mine though once in a while he did.
His father had a job downtown which he left for every day in a suit and tie. Mr. Kaplan spoke in an accent different from our Canadians but he also mixed in foreign words. Benny’s house was bigger than ours with a giant oak in the back yard. One day his father built a platform, nailing planks together in the crook of the limbs then bracing it with two-by-fours. “Not too many nails,” he warned, “we do not want to damage the tree.” We spent a lot of time there playing ship or spy, games of imagination and high ground. One rainy day we dragged a tent up there but Benny’s parents wouldn’t let us stay overnight because he walked in his sleep.
Their house was dark, with old pictures and a strange object I’d never seen before, a silver candle holder with a bunch of branches, plus other things they used on Friday nights. Saturday mornings he went to religious school he called “schul.” He was studying for his “Bar Mitzvah” which sounded a lot like Confirmation. He let me try on the beanie he wore to schul. During the week he went to Sennott Street School. Benny was my first public school friend. He was also the first Jew I had ever known.
We didn’t talk about my Church or his either, which he called “Temple.” Why not, I don’t know, since I was proud of my religion. Though maybe that was it. My world was so comfortable I saw no need to explore outside it. When you live in a house whose rooms are perfect in every way, what is the use of windows? But actually, I was curious how these normal-looking people could believe in anything as odd as the Jewish religion, especially considering their ancestors killed Our Lord and Savior. How could they act so calm since without the sacraments they would never get to see God? Somehow, though, it didn’t seem right to question Benny. He wouldn’t have a good answer and I didn’t want to embarrass my new friend.
Everyone in Benny’s family read a lot, even his father. There were books all over the house, plus a newspaper with strange lettering he said was Yiddish. They had a lot of pictures in the living room and he said, yes these are my relatives but most of them are dead, killed by the Nazis. He told me many Nazis were Catholics, which made me angry. I knew Catholics wouldn’t kill old people and children, but he said sure they did. My mother said it wasn’t as simple as that, and when it came to cruelty the Nazis had nothing on the British.
One day I was having lunch at Benny’s house. As his mother set my sandwich down she stared at me. “Paul, how do you come by those eyes?” she asked, “whose child are you?” What a peculiar thing to say. I started to explain about my family, but she smiled then said something even weirder. “Those dark eyes, Paul. You are one of us.”
I’D BETTER SAY SOMETHING about my brother Jim. To start with, he got all the attention. My father made a big deal out of him getting his name in the paper after a game. My father had left sixth grade for the family farm, dispatched to the U.S. a year later to work in the mills and send money home. With no childhood of his own, he was making up for it with a double dose for number one son, crafting with favors and praise the boy he always wanted to be.
Jim lived without boundaries. He thought he could do anything, anytime, and with my father behind him, he was right. Girls called him at home. I know because I sometimes answered the phone. He’d flash a roll of bills at me, always a five on the outside, despite no after-school job and an allowance not nearly big enough for everything he bought. His closet was full of clothes and was always telling me, shape up, Paul, if you want to get anywhere you’ve got to look sharp. The kids he hung around with, a couple of them owned cars and they spent a lot of time cruising. He bragged, the day he got his license he’d have one too.
Jim owned the world, talking loud and getting into fights at school, which bothered my mother tremendously. She kept her distance, as if she feared Jim’s wild energy. My parents had struck a deal. Jim was my father’s domain, Catherine my mother’s. So far from my father’s idea of what a boy should be, I fell into my mother’s sphere of influence, though in reality I was invisible, the family Switzerland. This had advantages, for bad as it made me feel, it gave me space to enjoy my solitary, orderly pastimes. I envied Jim’s easy athleticism, his confidence and good looks, and though I would have liked his companionship, he had no time for me. Our paths diverged as we became more of what we were, ever more different.
One day in August my father called from work. He’d forgotten his lunch, would I bring it to him? He had something to show me too. I found the bag in the fridge and set out for his shop, wondering what was up. Passing my school I thought that in less than a month I’d be entering fifth grade. I didn’t consider myself a big shot, though I stood first in my class and had a stellar reputation with the nuns that helped me not at all with my friends. What I excelled in, they cared nothing about. Grades didn’t mean that much to me, either. They came so easily I didn’t see the point, but I sensed if you’re going to spend that much time on anything, you might as well do it right. This practical approach would carry me along until I figured out what I was doing, more or less.
I proceeded downhill along Manton Avenue past Clift’s Variety, provisioner of picture card gum and comic books, past Virgilio’s where I had my first slice of flat bread with tomato and melted cheese in a greasy wrapper that later became such a big deal, past the dry cleaners, past Francoeur’s where I watched myself watching myself watching myself from a high leather chair, the spring shearing producing summer’s crewcut, past the tap rooms, their sweet, dank odor spilling onto the sidewalk, open early every day though later on Sunday for sad-eyed men and women on stools hunched over their drinks. But not my father. Not even a quickie on the way home. He had class.
You approached the brick building that was my father’s shop by a steep driveway angled between two mill buildings, one abandoned, the other with only a few cars outside. It always thrilled me to see