Twentieth Century Limited Book One - Age of Heroes. Jan David Blais
batch. Jonathan leads off. “There’s that Christ-killer comment again. Gus, he’s old enough to know better.”
“He’s just repeating what he’s been told. That was the Church’s position for centuries.”
“I’m sorry but I have zero tolerance on this subject.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but a child is exposed to many things. You’ll agree Paul was no anti-Semite, in fact for a long time he was a great friend of Israel.”
“That’s true. Well, at least he’s made his first Jewish friend. I guess that’s a start.”
“You know, I identify with that Benny – he couldn’t care less about sports. I felt the same at his age, though I always followed the Red Sox. But Paul’s interest was personal, he wanted desperately to play the game.”
“Doesn’t sound like he was that good at it. His brother was the athlete. Siblings can be so different. My brother and I, you’d never know we were related.”
“I had five, and four sisters. Remember Cabbage Patch Kids? No two alike.”
* * * * * * *
IN FIFTH GRADE religious study remained the big deal, as we were preparing to become soldiers of Christ. I had decided to take Maurice as my confirmation name. But a second focus had emerged. This year’s teacher, Sister Mary Francis, sensed that God wasn’t the only one who’d hold us accountable for what we knew. Geography, my favorite, continued putting flesh on the dry bones of History (sorry, Gus – this was before I met you), every map, every new country a treasure. And what a relief to set the math tables aside and work on real-life problems. How I would use any of this I had no clue, but it was dawning on me that learning for its own sake might be a good thing.
Well into April and sooty snow lingered in the corners of our schoolyard. One Monday morning we were summoned to the auditorium, the whole school. Assemblies were special occasions, for a movie when we’d sold enough raffle tickets for St. Teresa to meet its diocesan quota, for example. But this morning there was no screen, no projector. The principal, Sister Superior, Philomena of God, was on the stage along with Father Donnelly.
“Children, I have very sad news.” She looked even grimmer than usual. “Your classmate Eugene Sullivan has died. He has drowned.” A hush fell over the hall. Genie Sullivan! Impossible! “His body was found in the Woonosquatucket River this morning.”
Genie was in my grade, one of my special friends. Just Saturday, a bunch of us went down to Merino to see if the field was getting dry enough for tryouts. Now I remembered... he was missing from class today, his name read off as absent.
Sister Philomena paused. “Father Donnelly will now lead us in the rosary, for the repose of Eugene’s soul.” Father Donnelly said you never know when your time is coming so be ready. I hoped Genie was ready, but who’s to know? How can you be sure, yourself? We pulled out our rosaries... the five sorrowful mysteries, of course.
The funeral was Thursday. There was a closed coffin at the wake which, this being my first one, I learned was unusual. They said Genie’s body was bloated from being in the river and smelled very bad. They put his picture on top of the casket in a gold frame. Next day, the church was packed. Many times I have heard the Dies Irae sung magnificently, but our young voices on that sad morning echo in my memory. Candles flickered, like Genie’s life. The incense rose to greet his soul. It was hard to think we would never see our friend again, not until we met him in heaven. After Mass we went back to school. It was a long time before we laughed again.
These days much of the news was about Korea. At night we gathered around the television as John Cameron Swayze invited us to sit back, light up, join the Camel News Caravan and watch the war. I liked the attack planes best, Skyraiders, screaming over the tree-tops, dropping those tumbling canisters then you’d see this tremendous ball of flame and oily smoke on the ground. That was napalm, and it killed everything it touched. The color pictures in Life gave you an idea how hot it was. Once in a while you’d see a picture of some North Korean burned to a crisp. Good thing it wasn’t anybody who mattered, Jim said, like an American. This bothered me, though I couldn’t say exactly why.
I was older now and my scrapbook was a thing of the past. For my eleventh birthday I was given a camera, a Sears Tower Special I carried everywhere. Film was so expensive I mostly practiced, framing shots and capturing action, panning for cars to blur the background and give the impression of great speed. The pictures I did take, the best ones, I put in a photo album, sliding the corners into triangular pockets I glued to the coarse black paper. I’d write a caption, just like in the Bulletin but in white ink – what was happening, when it happened and so on. I had already staked out a windowless corner of our cellar for the darkroom my father promised to build me.
Television brought the war close. That remote part of the world was important, we were told, because there we were up against the evil of atheistic Communism. Russia had the A-bomb and we couldn’t trust them not to use it. Then there were the Chinese hordes. To me all this was confusing and troubling. How could my country, my home, be attacked? How, if we were as powerful as everyone said and under God’s special protection?
We practiced against the blinding flash that could come any moment. Without warning the school siren would sound, like a fire drill but an uninterrupted wail. We’d drop everything and dive under our desks, covering our heads with our hands. Not until the all-clear, a series of short blasts, would we crawl out again. Some kids thought it was a joke, a fun way to break up the day, but I knew better – I’d seen it on TV. If a little napalm did that to a person, what would an A-bomb do? Or an H-bomb if Russia ever got one of those! I showed my father ads for bomb shelters but he wasn’t interested. That’s what a basement’s for, he said, and anyway, when your number’s up, it’s up.
Civil defense, spiritual defense. Extra prayers Pius XII himself wrote for the conversion of Russia. Strange as it seems, we came to love our enemy. The day our prayers were answered, Russia would be like us and nobody’d have to worry about being annihilated. A couple of nights a week our church had special Novenas to Our Lady of Fatima who possessed a special power for this perilous time. Let my father scoff, I knew my next breath could be my last.
Not everything was so serious, of course. During recess, roughhousing was the name of the game. Picture cards were big, too. From our knees we’d sail them up against the school wall, beat up cards only – you never saw one with crisp edges and corners, still smelling of pink gum. A few were off limits, Williams and DiMaggio and Musial. If only we’d known enough to keep them! Johnny Wyrostek, Eddie Waitkus, that kind of card you saw everywhere, also football cards which were inferior even when brand new.
We collected everything, traded everything. Superman and Batman were the most common comic books, The Heap the oddest. Pepsi caps with state outlines under the cork, Hoodsie lids with movie stars covered by peel-off wax paper (girls collected these) and foil from chewing gum you’d roll up, trying for the biggest ball. It was a sad day the grocery began selling aluminum wrap, debasing an important collecting art. Some improvement!
Horse chestnuts were the best. Dangled from a shoelace, five whacks for you, five for the opponent, then back and forth until one of them breaks. Legend has it, one time two nuts exploded at the same time but nobody I knew ever saw that happen. Squeeze the lemon, needless to say girls were excluded, and while there was no reason they couldn’t compete in horse chestnuts or picture cards, they’d no sooner be seen doing that than a boy jump rope.
By this time a light fuzz had appeared on my upper lip and chin. I figured in a couple of years I’d be shaving. Jim started when he was twelve. I’d also developed little brown hairs on my chest like my father who had a lot of those and darker, also on his shoulders and back which he liked to show off when we went swimming at Scarborough or Olivo’s near the my parents’ friends’ house in South County. One day I came home pretty scraped up, I don’t recall why, and after taking a bath and drying off my mother put ointment on the bruises. I noticed her inspecting my chest, then she reached out and traced something with the back of her fingernails against my chest and stomach.
“Have