Billy Goat Hill Read online

  Unlike real bobsleds, our cardboard bobsleds have no runners, no brakes and no steering mechanism. Directional control is minimal. You can shift the weight of your body by leaning left or right, or you can alternately drag your left or right foot, using them as rudimentary rudders—but only if you wear boots or at least hitops, lest you lose the meat off your ankles. Neither procedure does much to help steer. Mostly there is only one direction—down. And once you start down, with no brakes, there is no stopping. The most important objective is to stay on the cardboard while keeping the cardboard on the run. I have developed and perfected my technique, but the truth is, cardboard sliding is far more art than science.

  The Crippler is the longest, steepest, most dangerous run on Billy Goat Hill. Many of the kids refuse to try it at all. It got its name when an out of town boy foolishly made a headfirst run and ended up on a permanent wheelchair ride. The Crippler runs a course of about 350 feet with a total vertical drop of nearly 200 feet. What makes it dangerous are the jagged rocks, century plants, prickly pear cactus, tree stumps, rusted-out car bodies and assorted other debris that have been dumped down the incline by people too lazy or too cheap to haul their discards to the city dump. It’s a sharply tilted minefield of natural and man-made hazards, any one of which holds disaster for the slider unfortunate enough to veer off course. The Crippler is the best of the myriad runs that mark the variant slopes of Billy Goat Hill. You couldn’t design a better ride if you tried—the perfect dare for young boys bucking for manhood.

  It is almost 2:30 when Luke and I make it to the top of Billy Goat Hill. Luke plops down on a rock next to me, catching his breath. “We should have brought Mac with us to help tow the box up the hill.”

  Luke often comes up with good ideas after the fact. I don’t say anything.

  With a razor knife I have indefinitely borrowed from Sal’s, our neighborhood liquor store, I trim up the water heater box to form a bottom, two sides, and a front. It looks like a square-nosed canoe with its back end cut off. I am not planning to use my feet as rudders, if I can help it.

  Luke and I drag the canoe over to the top of the Crippler and find a good spot to sit and wait for the other kids to show up. I am surprised that none of them are here yet, especially Gooey, although it is common knowledge that his mom often has to throw cold water on him to wake him up for school. I try not to think about the reckless stunt awaiting me.

  The low clouds hanging over the City of Angels this night are a disappointment—no stars to tickle my imagination, no Dippers to trace, no moon to make faces at. It is almost cool enough for long sleeves, but we are sweating after lugging the water heater box up the hill. We take our jackets off and let the night air cool us down. I look at Luke in his sneakers, blue jeans, and horizontal striped T-shirt, and realize that except for his red hair and my blond hair, he is the spitting image of me. We are a couple of matching goslings astray from the goose. I tug his Dodgers cap down over his eyes again. He swings and misses again.

  We are still buzzing from the excitement of seeing our first big league baseball game, the first game of the Los Angeles, by way of Brooklyn, Dodgers. Seeing the game hadn’t been easy. Without Lucinda’s permission and with no tickets in hand, Luke and I, a pair of pikers with a plan, ventured across Los Angeles by city bus and stole like rats up a gangplank into the Coliseum. Rattis Gangplankis. It has a nice ring to it. That or something like it is probably what my teacher, Mrs. Barr, would call us. She aspires to be a Professor of Latin at UCLA and often practices her gobbledygook on our class. Even the Catholic kids who are used to hearing Latin at mass think she is weird. I like her, though.

  Luke has been jabbering about the game all day. “Man, I’ve never seen so many people in one place before. That Coliseum is huge, huh?”

  “Yeah, it’s colossal. It sure was lucky Davenport forgot to touch third base, because when Mays knocked in Kirkland the game would have been tied up.”

  Luke rolls his eyes. “What a pity for the Giants.”

  “Yeah, the Dodgers rule.”

  Luke nods and yawns. “I used to like the Chicago Cubs best, but now we have our own team. Who’s your favorite player?”

  “Come on, Luke, you know the answer to that one—the one and only Duke Snider, the greatest player in the game today.”

  “I like Charlie Neal the best. When I grow up I want to play second base just like Charlie Neal.”

  The conversation is helping keep my mind off the Crippler.

  I look at Luke and chuckle a little to myself. He’s thinking about being as good as Charlie Neal, and he can’t even catch or throw well enough to play catch with me yet. Actually, I’m not much better than he is, and before too long he’ll probably be a better ball player than me. I doubt he’ll ever be as good a cardboard slider, though.

  I love talking baseball with Luke, although sometimes it leads to arguments.

  “You know what’s weird, Luke?”

  “Nuh uh.” His eyes droop as he pulls his coat over himself like a blanket.

  “Hank Sauer hit two home runs for the Giants and he only lives a couple of miles from the Coliseum. Sauer should be playing for the Dodgers.”

  Luke nods again, but I doubt that he is listening. A minute later his eyelids slip shut and his mouth falls open. His chest slowly expands and contracts with the well-paced rhythm of sleep. My faithful understudy is officially off duty. I pull his cap down softly over his eyes. He doesn’t swing at me.

  My Howdy Doody watch reads 2:45 as I lean back against the same rock Luke is nuzzling. He is snoring in his typical cat purring way. I rest my head on the rock and gaze up at the clouded charcoal sky. Deep and dark, the expanse appears to swell like the ocean. I watch from my weed-covered crow’s-nest, alert for whales, or the welcoming twinkle of a lighthouse, or maybe even pirates. Off to the southwest, a billow of low-hanging clouds radiates like a giant efflorescent night flower enchanted with the nocturnal glow of downtown Los Angeles.

  I sit unafraid in the dark, watching over Luke and partnering with the sky for a while. Luke’s snoring seems to call the crickets to song, and soon a soothing chorus of nature’s music surrounds me. He’s breathing.

  As I often do, I begin to think about poor Matthew again—he only lived fifty-five days. The memory makes my eyes water. I wish again that I had heard him cough or choke, something, anything that might have brought me running. A big brother is supposed to protect his little brothers.

  How can a happy, healthy baby just stop breathing in the middle of an innocent nap? I don’t get it. I don’t think I ever will.

  We are all badly wounded, but no one more deeply than Lucinda. Overcome by the anguish of losing her baby, she has taken refuge in a long, sad silence. Earl is messed up pretty bad, too. He took off not long after Matthew died. In a way, Lucinda is also gone, except her kind of gone is worse. It’s right there for you to see.

  I do understand one thing, though—Lucinda’s pain. Now she works all of the time, and when she is home she cleans. All the time cleaning. I think she does it to keep her mind off of Matthew, and maybe to keep her mind off of hating God so much. I heard her tell Earl she hated God. Earl just grunted and didn’t say anything back to her.

  I don’t hate God for anything. How can I hate someone I don’t even know? I give the sky a longing glance.

  Things didn’t start out all that bad for Luke and me. We don’t have much, more than some. But it isn’t material things we miss. Sometimes I think it would be better if there had been no love at all. To have it and lose it is worse than never having it in the first place.

  Before the bad things happened, there was some good. Our parents were together and happy, so I believed; though Earl drank too much and Lucinda would never be nominated for mother of the year. But we were a family, and in that family is where I belonged. I felt safe. When Matthew died the family seemed to the with him. I wish I could feel safe again.

  My father will come back some day. He knows the way home. Lucinda is t
he lost one, and I have to try to help her the only way I can, by seeing to it that Luke and I look out for each other. I must take better care of Luke than I did Matthew.

  Sitting here next to Luke, I close my eyes and see myself standing at the trailhead to a vast wilderness, the netherworld of my remaining childhood. The path leads straight into that tricky darkness, but I see no other route. I am scared, but I must go forward into the unknown and take whatever comes. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Well, I sure hope things don’t get worse.

  Loneliness sets me adrift on thoughts of my father. Where are you, Earl? For a second my spirit seems pulled skyward, and I vaguely sense something stir within me, a small comforting sent from afar, perhaps. But it’s not enough. I want more. My arms wrap around me in a self-consoling hug, and remembering the last time I saw him, I begin to smile inside.

  He said I was shooting up faster than July corn. We wrestled on the grass in front of the house, Mac barking and playfully nipping at my feet. Earl tickled my ribs and tossed me up in the air so high I could see all kinds of stuff scattered on the porch roof. And I couldn’t stop laughing because everything was so great, even with his whisky breath blowing right in my face. I miss him more than I ever let on to Luke.

  Why did he leave us, God? An ache in my chest closes the door on those thoughts. I guess some things can’t be comforted.

  Gooey’s goading me to run the Crippler in the dark, to put my cardboard where my mouth is, has coiled my nerves up tight. As I look toward the night heavens, the tension slowly dissolves in a wash of fantasy—me and Duke Snider taking batting practice, shooting the breeze, slowly gearing up to rip the hide off of anything dumb enough to be low and away.

  What would it be like to be Duke Snider’s son?

  A small break in the clouds appears directly overhead just in time for me to see a shooting star through the opening. Shooting stars are wondrous things. Hey, maybe it’s Sputnik? After a moment I reject the notion. No satellite would be big enough for me to see without a telescope.

  I lie here next to Luke feeling oddly content for the moment. A red flashing light wanders across the opening in the clouds. Nothing more than a common airplane. Or could it be—a Russian spy plane?

  I think about our next-door neighbor, Carl the baker. Carl is famous for sitting on his front porch drinking beer and warning the neighbors about the dangers of communism. He calls them rotten Ruskies, cowardly commies, or just plain dirty reds, and he claims they are out to take over America. Sometimes he curses out loud and mutters that the only good thing about the commies is that they make decent rye bread. His mournful complaining grows louder and louder with each bottle of beer. Finally, after ten or twelve empties—which he calls dead soldiers—are lined up in a row on his porch rail, he launches into a medley of his favorite flag-waving songs. His deep, baritone voice, reminiscent of Tennessee Ernie Ford, booms throughout the neighborhood.

  Eventually, his wife convinces him to come inside and go to bed, after which she hastily makes the sign of the cross, collects up the beer bottles, and closes the drapes in her front window.

  We think old Carl is terrific entertainment, but his behavior must embarrass his poor wife. There is something different about her. I don’t even know her name, but I do know she is patient with Carl and very kind-hearted. When she heard about Matthew, she left flowers and a sympathy card with a picture of Jesus on it on our front porch. The only time I ever saw Earl break down and cry was when he brought the flowers and the Jesus card in the house and gave them to Lucinda. I sat next to him on the couch, and he let me hold his hand for a while.

  The hole in the clouds suddenly gets bigger, and I begin to play connect the dots with the stars. Luke continues harmonizing with the cricket choir while Duke Snider comforts my heart with whispers of baseball inside my head.

  The cardboard canoe sits poised at the top of the Crippler thirty feet from where Luke and I nestle together in the dark. I can just make out its shape. My watch now says 3 a.m., and I allow myself to believe Gooey and his friends aren’t going to show up. I did show up though, and that’s all that matters to me.

  Baloney! I am glad they didn’t show up!

  It’s funny though, as I sit here with my thoughts, I start to wonder if I really have the guts to make the slide in the gloom of night. But if I do it now, no one will see. Nobody will believe me. Even if I wake Luke up to watch, he doesn’t qualify as a reliable witness on account of his being my brother.

  Gosh…do I really want to go down the Crippler in the dark? It’s nutty! So this is why Gooey calls me poco loco: a little bit crazy. He’s right. I seriously contemplate getting in the canoe and shoving off, until a picture of me stretched out on top of a cactus patch like an Indian guru painfully prostrated on a bed of nails flashes through my mind.

  How about them Dodgers.

  Wow! Another shooting star descends into nothingness. The next time I see Carl I’m going to tell him I saw the Russian’s Sputnik over Billy Goat Hill. That ought to make him sing. I smile and chuckle to myself. Could I get Carl to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”? I picture myself sitting side by side with Duke Snider in the Dodgers’ dugout.

  I am a dreamer. I love to dream. Dreaming is like delicious medicine, it’s tasty and good for you. Some people claim they can go back to sleep and finish a dream if they wake up in the middle of it. Well, I can do something even better than that. I can actually decide about what I want to dream and then dream it, almost like picking out a movie before going to the theater. Sometimes my dreams don’t turn out exactly the way I plan, though. For example, if I intend to take flight on a magic carpet, I might find myself soaring above the clouds on a braided throw rug with floppy pelican wings. It is a matter of concentration.

  Before Earl left, I rarely had nightmares—even my monsters would crack jokes. But I don’t seem to have good dreams as much anymore. Sometimes I wonder if something is broken inside of me.

  When I do have a good dream, it’s often about playing ball with my teammate Duke Snider. I am always the youngest professional baseball player in history, and I always play for the Dodgers. Any position I feel like playing is always fine with the team, and we always win the game in the ninth inning with me on base and Duke smashing an awesome game winning homer.

  I concentrate on making a picture of a ballpark in my mind. I can hear the announcer reading the starting line up. As I walk out of the dugout onto the field, I look up to see Earl in the stands, drunk, but clapping enthusiastically. Luke and the crickets drone on as soothing as a cradlesong and soon, I too am fast asleep—dreaming.

  I have no idea how much my life is about to change.

  eals Stadium San Francisco. It’s windy and colder than a well digger’s behind. We’re in the top of the ninth with two outs, and we are down by one run. I’m pumped up, ready to explode toward second base, but holding a cautious lead off first. Duke Snider is at the plate with a count of two and one. His confidence is enough for both of us. I scan for the sign…Duke is swinging away. I visualize a hanging curveball and wonder if Duke is thinking the same. The pitcher stares in to the catcher, nods, and grinds his back foot hard on the rubber. He goes into his stretch, gives me a look, and then fires the ball…

  From somewhere deep within my dull slumber a jarring rumble begins. My neck muscles tense and jerk, banging my head against the rock backrest that Luke and I have been sharing. Confusion reigns as a cloud of choking dust blows over me. For a dizzy second I think I’ve been picked off, caught leaning the wrong way, dust flying in a desperate lunge back to first base. What the heck? That’s not supposed to happen! Stop the dream!

  Lights lambaste my face, overwhelming my sleepy eyes. One arm goes up to ward off the brightness while the other slaps futilely at the smothering dust. My ears itch and my entire body vibrates from a bombarding roar. Luke is awake too, his fingernails like talons digging hard into my thigh. I know I am screaming, but the sound is swallowed up in a terrible
thunder.

  Dust billows away as a jet-black tire wrapped around a gleaming silver wheel stabs out at me on a long chrome fork no doubt belonging to the devil himself. The tire stops about an inch from the toes of my well-worn sneakers, which now appear like the witch’s feet did sticking out from under the house that fell on her in The Wizard of Oz. And she was dead!

  Luke’s feet snap back under his thighs in a flash. Defenseless against this unimaginable intrusion, we huddle together quivering. Playing possum except for my eyes, I scan the periphery and count sixteen choppers belonging to a gang of murderous gargoyles known to us locals as Satan’s Slaves. I have a powerful urge to pee as Custer’s ghost, thorny with arrows, smiling sympathetically, looms out of the thickening background.

  The last Harley quits dieseling and chokes itself mute. The chorus of crickets is already halfway to San Bernardino County. Now the silence is deafening.

  “Well, well, well…this here is what you call an unexpected complication. It appears we’ve got ourselves a couple of party crashers!” the gang’s leader barks.

  He reminds me of the drawings of Stone Age cavemen that I studied last year in second grade. Except this brute wears classic biker togs—black engineer boots, greasy blue jeans, no shirt, a silver-studded black leather belt with a matching scabbard sheathing a Buck knife as long as my arm, and a black leather jacket. A red bandanna tied around his head somehow fails to keep his oily black hair out of his eyes.

  I catch myself staring at the ugliest scar I’ve ever seen. A puffy groove of recent origin slashes from above his left eye, across the bridge of his nose, under his right eye, and down his cheek where it finally hooks under his right earlobe. The scar makes his beard part in a funny way. No, not funny, scary. I am trembling.

  “My name’s Scar!”

  I blink uncontrollably. “Uh huh.”