For Your Double-Plus Good, Fun Weekend Reading Pleasure

Harald and Pleasance Billings, read the engraved brass plaque on the mail box next to the steps. The wide wraparound porch accommodated several wicker settees, a maple Shaker rocking chair with embroidered cushions and wide, heavy looking earthenware planters plush with colorful flowers that Danny didn’t recognize. But the front door was closed and he noticed that as with all of these big houses down by the river and their cool, inviting porches, no one ever seemed to be on them. A decal in the right corner of the windowpane read “DAR”. Danny, in a clean shirt and freshly pressed khaki slacks hesitated, took a deep breath and pulled the screen door toward him. He tapped the brass knocker in the shape of a swan. A moment later Mrs. Billings’ coiffed head appeared at the window. She smiled and made a gesture for Danny to come around back.

Clearly, that was where the people in these homes did their living. A large flagstone patio came into view, surrounded by box hedges trimmed at sharp right angles to waist height, and populated with very heavy wooden lawn chairs, a table big enough for a party and a stone barbecue pit. Beyond that, a flower and vegetable garden covered an area the size of Danny’s whole backyard. The lawn sloped down in gentle waves and through the hanging branches of an old weeping willow, he could see silver glints from the still river. Someone was doing yard work by the boathouse at the water’s edge.
The back door was open, up a flight of stone steps and there was another DAR sticker on the glass pane. And a third, on the tailgate of their station wagon, parked on the gravel drive before a double-doored, carriage house garage, with a circular window in the loft.



“Hello, Mrs. Billings. Is Billy home?” Danny said, entering the kitchen.
“He’s at his tennis lesson, but he’ll be here, bah and bah. Come, wait inside. Would you like some lemonade?” she pulled a frosty pitcher from the refrigerator and poured him a glass. It wasn’t the syrupy kind his mother made, scooping it out of a frozen tube with a big spoon, this was ice water with slices of lemon floating in it. Danny took a sip. “It isn’t very sweet” he said. “Sugar won’t slake your thirst, Daniel,” she replied.

“It was such a pleasure, running into your mother at Lempert’s market," she said in her sing-song voice. "There used to be three farms in Meadowford, did you know that, Daniel? I’m so glad Mr. Lembert didn’t sell, they’ve had that land in the family for 200 years. It’s integral to the town, don’t you think so?”
“Yeah, I guess. They have good corn,” Danny replied. Mrs. Billings had suggested to his mom that Danny stop over to play with Billy. They hadn’t seen each other since pre-school she said, and this would be the perfect time to renew their friendship. His mother made him clip a tie to the collar of his button down shirt, but he pulled that off and stowed it in his pants pocket before he’d reached the end of his street.

“It’s a shame about Miss Dale”, said Mrs. Billings. “Her school was the cornerstone of the community for generations. I cried when they tore down that old Victorian house, and now they’re planning to erect what they call a ‘professional building’ in its place. It will cover the whole of the lot, no lawn at all, just a parking lot in back. Such an eyesore that will be.” Danny thought of the carved and painted wooden sign in the crabgrass lawn of the school. He could still see it so clearly in his mind, he could draw it from memory. Dr. Olden practiced out of an old house like Miss Dale’s, and the Savings Bank where his mother deposited an envelope every week. Mr. Doherty once kidded her about it, “Do they keep the cash in the fridge?”
“All of my daughters went there, and Billy, of course. Did you enjoy it, Daniel?”
He remembered it mostly as a place of mayhem and confusion. He preferred to play quietly at home or explore the woods behind the Estates. “Sure”, he said.
Danny, making more small talk, asked her if they would join the pool, when it was finished.
“Ah, that project!” She spoke word with a certain disdain.

Mrs Billings explained that Meadowford had been a small, quiet town, a solid Republican town since they’d settled there and the mayor and the town council had always worked together smoothly and rationally, for the good of the community but those days were over, now that the town had grown so rapidly.
“After the war, so many Italians and Irish and Poles moved here from Irvington and Newark and — even Yonkers. Understandably so. Then developers bought up the old farmlands and the woods and— ah, some people turned a nice profit, indeed, but they all vote Democrat, don’t you know. Ah, the town has changed, Daniel, and not for the better, not for the better,” she said with palpable melancholy. “St. Michaels once had a tiny plot on Elm, now they’ve filled the block. I do believe they have more land than First Presbyterian, now.” Danny sensed from the way she said it that she new exactly how much land they had, down to the last square inch. First Presbyterian was the centerpiece of the town, situated on a high knoll across from Memorial Park, overlooking the river. Its white spire and massive clock, which struck on the hour and the half hour, was visible from any spot downtown.
“And now, we have them voting for municipal pools and new, metered parking lots for the train station and zoning their businesses willeh-nilleh, in the town proper. They’re floating bonds like they were paper boats! It’s changing the face, why, the very texture of Meadowford.”
Mrs. Billings patted imaginary wrinkles out of the folds of her dress as her exasperation slowly waned. “And where does your family hail from?” she asked him brightly, after a moment.

Danny explained that his family was Czech, but Protestants, and they moved to Meadowford from E. 77th street in Manhattan. “Yes? By the park?” she asked.
He thought for a second. There was a strip of grass and trees near the expressway. “Uh huh. Next to the river,” he said.
“Ah.”
“Did you vote for Goldwater?” Danny said. He didn’t remember seeing many Goldwater signs in the lawns of these houses, near downtown. “My parents voted for Goldwater.”
“Ah. Well. Yes. Anything to pluck that misbegotten, reprobate, Johnson from the Office. That… polecat.” Mrs. Billings was originally from Virginia and she still had something of an accent, and a colorful way of speaking. “But we must chose our candidates more wisely, in future. We could have done better, so much better, I’m sure. Now, look here”, she said guiding Danny to a framed black and white photograph hanging in the festooned hallway.

It was a picture of a beaming Mrs. Billings in a cocktail dress standing next to a man in a dark suit, with slicked hair, both of them saying ‘cheese’.
“Now, Dick Nixon, there’s a man who should have been President, and a fine one he would have been, indeed. Yes. I campaigned for him in 1960, and that was a close race, ah, it was, Daniel. He came to speak at our club, before the election,” she said with a faraway look. “A man with such charisma. Such presence! He thanked me— and the other ladies— personally, you see. Now, people made such a fuss over Jack Kennedy’s good looks, and he did have a certain boyish charm about him, may God rest his soul, but I tell you, Richard Nixon is a handsome man.”

Danny squinted at the photograph.
“Perhaps not as photogenic as the Kennedy boys, no, but, in person, a very handsome man.”
“What’s this?” he said, pointing to an old oil painting hanging next to the photos.
“Ah. That is my great, great, great grandaddy, Nathanael Broadhead. He fought under Washington in the Continental Army. Wounded at Valley Forge,” she said with pride and reverence.

She continued down the corridor, showing him pictures and framed newspaper clippings and trophies from the tennis club. One photo in particular caught his attention: A ballroom, at the club no doubt, where Billy, in a dark blazer danced with a white gloved girl a foot taller than he. In the background, Danny spotted Teal, holding a visibly awkward young man at arm’s length, her hand laid gently on his shoulder. He studied the image, recording every detail but he kept glancing nonetheless back at the oil painting of a stern man in brown jacket and breeches, holding a piebald horse by the reins. The real deal.

Outside, the ratcheting sound of a push mower stopped and shortly, Mr. Billings came into the house. In stark counterpoint to Mrs. Billings’ volubility, Mr. Billings was as taciturn a man as Danny ever met. He sat at the kitchen table, a tall, thin man in a pale blue tennis shirt, paint-spattered cotton duck trousers and a pair of white bucks, grass stained and worn so thin, Danny could see the imprint of each toe in the soft leather. He was eating a bowl of cereal— even though it was mid-afternoon— with no enthusiasm at all, a cigarette smoking itself in a cut glass ashtray on the table next to his right arm. Between bites, which he chewed methodically, he would take a drag from the cigarette.
At that moment, Billy Billings came in through the back door in tennis whites and dropped his racket absently on a chair in the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of lemonade and downed it in one long swallow.

“Now Billy,” said his mother, “You put that away right now and come welcome your guest. I’ve been entertaining him in your absence.”
Billy took up the racket by its wooden press and hung it on a coat rack next to the door.
“Hi Danny”, he said shaking his hand, “Let’s go.”

“She tell you about old Broadhead?” he asked as they walked back to the boathouse. “He chopped off his own toe with an ax, cutting firewood.”

The clapboard boathouse was narrow, cramped and musty. A long sculling hull with Choate and Princeton decals on the side was slung in the rafters. Oars and paddles leaned against the walls and a pair of canoes filled the space on the floor. Billy laid two paddles across the seat of one of the canoes, its hull shaped by a myriad of thin ribs of bent wood.

“Here, help me with this, “ Billy said, grabbing a handhold. Danny took the other end. “Don’t drag it!” Billy said. “It’s canvas.” They lifted the canoe, which was heavier than it looked and eased it into the river below. Billy held it steady as Danny scrambled into the front then Billy hopped in back, with practiced ease.

They paddled slowly up the placid river, along its loops and turns, passing many yards like the Billings’, some to Danny’s astonishment, even longer and wider. Danny had only seen these homes from the street and marveled at the opulence their stately facades and sculpted hedges concealed. He saw badminton courts and trampolines, intricate flower beds that were staggeringly beautiful and pampered lawns like the lush fairways of country clubs, spied in brief flashes through the trees. He suddenly understood Mrs. Billings disdain for the municipal pool project: who needed a pool when you lived in this world?

They passed under the stone bridge by the clay courts and idled in an eddy there, in the shade, the pock-pock of long rallies as regular as a metronome echoing under the bridge. Billy waved his paddle to the tennis pro, who waved his racket in response.

“Your mom’s nice,” said Danny.
“Don’t get on her bad side,” replied Billy. “So, you’re going to be a Young Republican, too?”
Danny was nonplussed.
“You didn’t know?” Billy said, “I thought you knew. That’s why my mom brought you over. She’s organizing the Young Republicans Club, her idea, uh, for the future. I thought your parents told you.”
“What do we do?”, Danny wondered.
“Heck if I know. But they’ll be parties and outings, I’m sure. Probably trips to the legislature in Trenton. Maybe even a visit to Washington.”
That sounded swell to Danny. To be part of a team. A team that took good care of you.

Billy pushed off the stone arch with the tip of his paddle and then held it straight down in the water. The canoe swung around in the slow current and they let it guide them smoothly back toward home.

That was the second time he saw Teal. They drifted under a low branch that hung out over the river, laying dappled shade on the olive drab water. Slanting rays of light filtered through the leaves, some piercing the opaque surface an inch or two, revealing a school of minnows circling near the bank but most reflecting off in sharp points that dazzled and mesmerized. Danny looked up, and through the curtain of light, made visible by the muggy mist and swarms of small bugs, there she was. Across the river on the Priddy’s back lawn, as luxuriant as the others, enveloped in a peachy glow, the low sun illuminating the translucent fuzz on her long, slender legs under a pair of raspberry shorts, practicing baton tosses. She launched it in the air, end over end and twirled in place, her rose gold hair spinning horizontal, to catch the falling baton behind her back. It bounced on its rubber end piece and tumbled in the grass. Undaunted, she bent to pick it up and tried again, and again until once, she caught it and leaned forward into a curtsey, head to the ground. The tips of her hair brushed the grass then she straightened, whipping it back in an arc, her arms out wide overhead. She held the pose, her right leg behind the left, then began again.

Danny looked up at the low hanging branch above the canoe. Suddenly, he sprung to his feet, gripping the gunwales for stability and cried out, much louder than he needed to, “Watch this!” He jumped up, caught the branch and pulled himself up, throwing Billy and the canoe sideways. Billy quickly back paddled to keep from swamping. “Hey!” he shouted.
Danny had intended to perform a swift muscle-up, as he would on the swing set in his backyard, but the branch was irregular and considerably thicker than a steel tube. He found himself frozen, halfway into a pullup, his hands slipping on the bark. One after the other, he slapped his arms up and over, to his his elbows then, hanging like that, began an awkward sideways swinging until he got a leg up. Finally, exhausted, he pulled himself all the way and straddled the thick branch. Billy maneuvered the canoe beneath him. “What now, genius?” Billy said.

Peeking through a gap in the leaves, he saw Teal immobile, watching. There was a smaller branch, about the same girth as the climbing ropes in the school gymnasium, hanging veritically, probably fractured in a storm. Encouraged, Danny grabbed hold and testing it with a couple sharp pulls, he launched out into the void with a Tarzan yell. His weight pulled him down so that he had to raise his feet in order to avoid Billy’s head.
“Watch it!” Billy said with some annoyance. Where did this act of bravado come from, all of a sudden?

Danny swung out to apogee and slowly, his body rolling towards the shore, he came swinging back, the branch creaking and snapping, so low now his feet glanced the canoe. Billy held on tight. As Danny reascended in his pendulum flight, the branch suddenly gave way and he fell into the river, a few feet from the bank. “Godammit!” Danny cried. He hadn’t meant to, it just came out. Billy wiped stray drops from his face and stared bullets at Danny who, soaking wet, held his arms at his shoulders, the water up to his waist. “I’m stuck,” he said, “I can’t pull my feet out of the muck.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Billy.
“Bring the canoe over here. I need something to push off of.”
Billy deftly piloted the canoe into the shallows between Danny and the shore. Danny held one side of the canoe while Billy leaned to the other. Danny slowly pulled his right leg up. It suddenly released and he stumbled back, gripping the canoe.
“You’re not gonna throw me in too”, warned Billy.
“S’awright, I got it,” said Danny and he shimmied the other foot free. “Aw, it got my shoe!” he said. Billy glared at him, “Well?”

Danny tried to fish it out of the mud with his toes but finally just bent over and pulled it put. He started to place it in the canoe, but Billy said, “Oh, no you don’t. You’ll get mud in the canoe. You can walk back.” So Danny waded over to the bank and scrambled up, stopping to rinse his shoes in the murky water. He walked the bank all the way to the Billings yard with Billy paddling the canoe slowly beside him. Danny shot a glance over at Teal. Her yard was empty. He hoped she hadn’t seen that last part.

When it was time to leave, Danny stood outside the door, dripping on the stone steps. “I’m all wet,” he said by way of apology.
Mr. Billings was back in the kitchen, slowly eating a piece of dry toast. Danny noticed his odd habit of stopping periodically throughout the day to eat something although he didn’t seem to enjoy it.
Mr. Billings, sensing Danny’s query, offered: “Blood sugar.” Danny nodded, unsure.

“You’ll be going to Junior Cotillion next year, won’t you, Daniel?” asked Mrs. Billings. “Billy will be, and the Hayes and the Wilson boys. Everyone. You’ll have the opportunity to dance with those lovely Gibson girls, and the Priddys. It’s a wonderful good time.”
“Cotillion?” he exclaimed, “That’s for girls!”
“Oh no, Daniel,” Mrs Billings corrected him, “that’s how we’ll make a gentleman of you.”
Billy guffawed, “If you can keep from showing off. And your mouth shut.”
Mr. Billings looked up from his toast and said, in a rare fit of loquacity, “William, we do not mock a man for his foibles,” and continued chewing.
On his way down the steps, Danny stopped and turned. “Mrs. Billings? Did George Washington really cross the river in Meadowford?”
“Ah, yes, he did. Indeed!” she said, and that settled it for Danny.

Danny walked home glowing. He was dizzy with his first sip from this bright, burnished chalice of class and distinction, so entirely removed from the rawness of his day-to-day life and hidden like a treasure until now, only blocks away from his lowly Estates. It was a place where he was not only treated as a valued equal but could freely orbit the enchanting world of Teal and, to top it all off, Mr. Billings had called him a man! Not a boy, not a kid, not even a ‘little man’. With foibles. He made two mental notes: to ask his mother to sign him up for Junior Cotillion, and to pull down the heavy dictionary from the bookshelf in his sisters’ bedroom and look up the word “foible”.

***

His Hush Puppies squished with every step. He wished he hadn’t walked to the Billings; he’d be home already and in dry clothes. He took a shortcut down Van Buren, looking for a yard he could cut through to Franklin, but each one was cyclone-fenced, hedged or both. No one was around, neither in the street nor in the yards so maybe he could take a chance, but the people on Van Buren didn’t know him and he didn’t relish a confrontation with an irate homeowner. They didn’t seem so friendly, around here. So, resigned to take this route rather than double back, he continued down to the end of the street where a log barrier stopped cars from driving through the playground.

The sun was low in the sky and with the glare and the lengthening shadows, he didn’t notice until it was too late that Tony DiGiovanni, one of the parochial school boys, was tailing him; for how long, he did not know. That’s it, he thought, next house with a low fence… Danny glanced over his left shoulder with forced nonchalance and discovered that Jimmy Dolan was also tagging along, about 10 yards back on the opposite sidewalk, looking pleased with himself. The hair stood up on the back of Danny’s neck. A vein in his temple started to pound. He picked up his pace, scanning the yards for any clear path to Franklin he could make a dash for. But he was luckless.

There were sounds from the playground now: a dribbling basketball, the thump of the backboard, shouts and cries. He rushed forward hoping to find safety in the crowd, not running which would make him look weak, but still booking it, his shoes going suck-a-suck-a-suck like a failing pump. He passed the barrier. Rapid steps behind him: Jimmy Dolan, making up the distance. He swerved quickly through some trees and saw two negroes from Lincoln Terrace on the basketball court. Ravenel White and Lovey Brown whose little sister Sharinda was in  his class. They called her Shari. She got all A’s and B’s. He slowed a little, breathing easier, and stepped out of the woods onto the grassy spot near the swings and the shuffleboard courts that nobody ever used except the girls sometimes, for hopscotch and jump rope.

“Well, looka what the Deej dragged in,” said Wally.
Danny cringed and stopped short, Tony DiGiovanni right behind him. He hadn’t seen Wally in the deepening shadows that swallowed the playground. He heard Jimmy Dolan trot to a stop, catching his breath.
Wally slid off the swing he was lounging on, smoking cigarettes. He sauntered confidently over to where Danny stood, followed by two more parochial school boys. This was not the nervous Wally he’d stood down in the woods by the pool. He’d got his usual swagger back, now that his gang surrounded him. Surrounded Danny.

“There’s somebody here wants to see you. He’s been just waiting and waiting for the chance.”
Vinny finally showed himself from the top of the high sliding board and shouted “Oh boy, the Benny’s come to visit!” He stomped down the slide, sheet metal booming under the flapping soles of his ratty Chuck Taylors. The dirty and frayed gauze bandage taped to his forehead looked as if it hadn’t been changed since the day he got his stitches. A dark spot of dried blood had soaked through, giving him a third eye. Both of his regular eyes had shiners of black and yellow.

“Remember me?” he said, with malice.
“Yeah, I do. You’re that dope looks like a raccoon with a V in his forehead,” Danny said. “V for Vinny, so you won’t forget.”

Jimmy Dolan laughed out loud behind him. Danny saw some of the other boys crack a grin. But Vinny saw only red. He went into a rage. He came at Danny, head down with his arms flailing, like a spastic bull. Danny leaned forward and stuck his arm straight out, palm flat, smack onto the fast-coming forehead. It knocked him back a step. Vinny bounced backwards onto his rear end yelling “Owww!” He held his head between his palms like he was trying to pull it off his neck and rocked back and forth on the ground, “Oww, oww, oww…” Fresh blood seeped through the filthy bandage.

Wally moved in and threw a big roundhouse at Danny’s face. Danny pulled his fists up close to his head, like his father showed him and stepped into the punch. Wally hit him on the shoulder then took another swing that landed on his forearm. It hurt. But not as much as it would have on his nose. Wally’s punches were mean, like the rest of him. They came fast and they stung but they weren’t meaty, they didn’t rock you. Danny’s arm hurt Wally’s fist too. He stepped back and shook out his fingers. 

I’munna kill you,” he said through gritted teeth.

Danny lowered his fists. He wanted to rub his forearm but he wouldn’t give Wally that satisfaction. Instead, he brought his guard back up and took a determined lunge toward Wally, making a little bob to the left, which was lesson two. When he saw his chance, he would aim for a spot at the back of Wally’s brain pan and drive his fist with all his might, right at that spot, hard and true. Lesson three.

Wally’s eyes grew big. He wasn’t expecting a fair fight. He moved back on his heels and brought his fists up to his chest. Danny circled, took a half step back, getting ready to strike, then bumped into something and threw his arms out to catch his balance. Deej or Dolan, he never knew which, had sneaked up behind him on all fours. Wally leapt forward and pushed Danny’s chest with a great two-handed shove. He went up and over, landing hard on the shuffleboard court, knocking the wind out of him.

 Seeing stars and gasping for breath, Danny couldn’t move. Wally stepped up and gave him a kick in the side. Danny struggled in a panic to fill his lungs. He knew that breath would come, he couldn’t rush it, but he tried anyway. Wally kicked him again and again and there was nothing he could do to stop him. Some of the others joined in, kicking his shoulders and legs but thankfully they put no weight behind their kicks, like their heart wasn’t in it. Not like Wally, whom Danny was sure would break his ribs.
Danny flailed on his back like a haddock, sucking air, not even trying to fend off the blows. Just as he wondered why they hadn’t kicked him in the head yet, he felt Wally’s sneaker bounce off his skull, above his right ear. Danny heard a crunch, saw a bright flash and thought he had cracked it. But then he saw Wally, blurry through tearing eyes, hopping on one foot, holding the other with both hands, shouting obscenities.

Danny was finally able to take a few shallow breaths. He rolled onto his side, tucking his head under his arms, in case more kicks were forthcoming. It hurt to lift his arms. It hurt to breathe the air he had been praying for. He wheezed and winced with each tiny gulp. His heart beat like a drum and bugle corps march at half-time. His head ached and pounded.
He stayed like that for a tensed seconds, expecting the beating to start up again, but instead he heard Vinny’s annoying rat voice.

“You’re soaked through, Benny. Are you a pissah? Did Chrissy teach you that?” He heard the sound of a zipper. “What’s a little more?” And Danny felt the hot liquid stream across his back. His shirt stuck to his skin and he felt rivulets trace across his ribcage and spatter on the cement. The acrid smell and the bald indignity of it made him start to heave. Some of the boys gasped. He heard them move away in twos and threes. “Enjoy”, Vinny said, zipping up.

Vinny helped Wally hobble away. Danny lay there for a while, his fists cramped shut over his face, stewing in hot anger and…
Slowly, steadily he forced his breathing to stabilize in a standoff between pain and relief.

“You awright?” Ravenel White stood over him, basketball wedged between his right arm and his hip. He bent down, extending his left, offering Danny an arm up.
“Why he call you a Jewboy?” he said.
“What?”, said Danny, pulling at his oxford shirt so hard that buttons popped off. He yanked it up, despite the stabbing pain, over his head and threw it into the woods. Purple bruises were starting to show on his ribs. He gingerly tested the bumps on his head.
“He called you ‘Benny’, thassa jew name, innit?”, said Lovey, looking over Ravenel’s shoulder.
“No. I dunno,” said Danny stiffly, “It’s just a name for retards from Bayonne.”
“He cu-ray-ZEE,” said Ravenel. “You a tuff kid.”
“Man,” said Danny.
“Huh?”
“I’m a man.”
“Dassright,” said Ravenel, flashing a big smile. “You a man.”

Danny stumbled home, shirtless into the darkening evening.

When he got to Henry, the streetlights where coming on, casting a sick greenish light as they heated up. As he reached his driveway, Mrs. Doherty stared at him through the screen, aghast, framed in the yellow glow of her front door. Danny raised a painful arm in greeting. “Uh huh. Wally beat me up, again. Maybe give his mother a ring?” he said and walked up to his porch. He just didn’t care.