Chapter 5A

1951.

Summer.

"Well, that takes care of the McGraw Gang," Lash LaRue said with his cocky grin, each hand perched on one of two pearl-handled.45's at his side.

"Sure does," said Fuzzy St. John with an affirmative nod. He spit a wad of tobacco juice into the dusty street.

Lash LaRue tipped his hat to the pretty gal in the calico dress She beamed at him admiringly from the wooden sidewalk. Lash LaRue cocked his cocky, self assured head toward Fuzzy St. John.

"Let's get goin', Fuzzy," Lash LaRue said, and he and Fuzzy mounted their horses.

Their steeds reared up. Lash LaRue and Fuzzy spurred their horses and galloped outta town.

It was my ninth summer, pushing for my tenth year.

Things had changed. I knew it as I watched this absurdly outdated B-grade western for the third time, the first time being with Uncle Johnny when I was five years old. At ten I bid a fond but not reluctant farewell to Lash LaRue and Tex Ritter and Roy Rogers.

Martha Jane had graduated high school, on time and with high grades. She started college immediately that summer at the largest of the local campuses, Memphis State. She was determined to get her teacher's certification in less than four years. Meanwhile, my mom dated almost always on weekends, and since I gradually began spending every weekend with relatives, no one was needed to overwatch me. These were gray, uneventful days. I got bored every fifteen seconds.

Life had tragedy now. It had dire consequences, uncertainty, loneliness, nuclear warheads. On a daily basis I tracked every news story and photo of the Korean War, longing desperately to be old enough to lug a Leica camera and produce the dramatic photos I saw in "Life" magazine. What I saw in the reportage was a grim, idiotic war that destroyed my earlier illusions about the brand of heroism I had seen in the likes of "Wake Island" and "The Fighting Seabees." This vicious drama had a strange allure for me, and now, many years later, I suspect that my fascination with it was a sublimation of the emotional and sexual intensity of my relationship with Martha Jane. Our secret drama was enacted less and less frequently as the circumstances of our lives began to change.

Left more often to my own devices by my relatives on weekends, I searched the downtown movie houses for a potency of experience not found with the Bowery Boys or in Gene Kelly musicals. I would hit the Main Street cinemas as soon as they opened at eleven A.M., my pockets jingling with the movie money with which my relatives bribed me into conformity. They assumed I was watching Abbott and Costello or Johhny Mac Brown and Wild Bill Eliott. Instead, I sat tearfully absorbed in more than a dozen showings of the archly romantic "Cyrano de Bergerac". I was fascinated with the impressionistic Technicolor of "Moulin Rouge"; again and again I watched this moody film, empathizing strongly with Lautrec's pitiful infirmity and isolation.

My relatives, staunch stay-at-homes, had no idea these films existed until I told them what I'd seen--and then they seemed bewildered by a boy who would be so magnetically drawn to Bogart's sarcasm, William Holden's cynicism, or Brando's hostility. They were amazed when I told them I had spent an entire day in the same movie house watching over and over as a somber Robert Mitchum portrayed a deathobsessed army officer in "The Story of G.I. Joe", and a new actor by the name of Lee Marvin clenched his jaws and grumbled in "Eight Iron Men."

I saw Martha Jane on our front porch once or twice in the early summer. On July 4th we attended a big open-lawn picnic in the project and went to bed together while my mom and future step-dad went down to the waterfront to see fireworks. By August she had disappeared. Once I knocked on her front door, expecting her mother to answer. But no one did. My Mom didn't mention her. It seemed Martha Jane had been swallowed into nowhere. Knowing she was in summer classes, I assumed a break would occur soon, probably in September. She called our place now and then and we'd chat on the phone and she'd promise that things would be settled son, when she received her first on-the-job student teaching gig, and I went to a small celebration in her apartment the day she graduated. But by September I'd heard nothing.

Associating with others had eroded my confidence. My impression was that other kids regarded me as a little weird; I had a fatalistic attitude toward people and events. I was pessimistic and bored -- I'm certain I must have been a gloomy-gus to be avoided. Repression and criticism from Mom and relatives didn't help. By age ten, I was on a psychological downer.

I began to expect that life would either take people away from me, or me from them. Stepper and Uncle Robert was a case in point; Mom and all the dead of the war were others. When the Korean War started, my older cousin Josephine Louise's dad, my Uncle Lawrence, was called back to active service. He paid us a farewell visit in the early Fall. He smiled and saluted me when he left our house, bound for Fort Hood, Texas. By December he was killed in action.

My future step-dad had little interest in my activities. His name was Anthony. Mom called him Tony. He was a dark haired, virile, handsome man. I disliked him somewhat; he had a deep and relatively loud voice, very different from the softer voices of all the aunts around me, different from the breathy Italian quality of Uncle Johnny and Josephine Louise. By the end of that summer Tony started hanging around our apartment more often, as if we were already an official part of his own, very large Italian clan. He came over many mornings before opening the supermarket in our neighborhood and had breakfast with Mom and me while I prepared for school. Our interests never interlocked. He assumed I was interested in sports, in being a fireman or doctor when I grew up, and in playing with other boys. When he found out I wanted to be an artist or a cinematographer or a war correspondent, he was taken aback. His idea of art was limited to portraits of the saints. And war correspondents had an incredibly short life expectancy, Ernie Pyle being a case in point.

One morning at breakfast as I ate my oatmeal, he sat at the other side of our tiny kitchen table, reading a newspaper article to my mother who was working at the sink. He was mildly agitated about a report on small business regulation. He read until he came to a word in the article that made him stop.

"What is that word?" he asked irritably, squinting at the page. "Why do they have to use words this long in newspapers?"

"Ask Speedy," Mom said. So he handed me the paper and pointed at the word. "What's that word say?" he asked me.

Chewing oatmeal, I glanced at the word quickly and announced, "Antidisestablishmentarianism."

He sat back in amazement. "Well, damn," he breathed. "How'd he know a big word like that?"

"I don't know," Mom answered absently. "He just does. I think his Uncle Johnny taught him to read from the comics."

"The comics?" he echoed, dumbfounded. He reached for his coffee cup. "Damn," he breathed again.

In my isolation, movies became my life. I devoured them like popcorn and soda. I saw three or four films each weekend. If new ones hadn't opened I'd frequent the rerun joints and the town's single art film outlet in town. My relatives didn't mind, as it kept me out of their hair all weekend, didn't cost much for a child's admission (twelve cents in those days), and Uncle Johnny was getting a little too old and arthritic to escort me all over town the way he did when I was younger.

Truly, I enjoyed the freedom of doing mostly as I pleased. Relatives knew I was smart enough to find my way around town; the downtown movie houses were a short walk from the restaurant. But the art film outlet was far out in the eastern part of town. With my usual brazenness I allowed folks to assume that I never traveled that far out of the way. But one Saturday I took the Number 10 bus all the way to the Ritz theater to see "Cyrano de Bergerac." I was so affected by the film that I stayed inside and watched it again, then again, then a fourth time. The movie was longer than most, so that when I left the theater I discovered I was just in time to catch the last inbound Number 10, which stopped running by ten PM.

It was nearly eleven when I arrived at Aunt Frances' house and let myself in. Entering by the long, unlighted, high-ceiling front hall, I assumed everyone was asleep. But Aunt Frances was waiting up for me in her long white nightgown on the living room sofa.

"Where the hell have *you* been?" she demanded as I walked into the room.

I knew from long experience that the best tactic for handling Aunt Frances under these circumstances was to appear unfazed and keep on grinning.

I answered, "The movies."

"You trying to give your Aunt Frances a heart attack? Huh? You want your poor old Aunt Frances to have a heart attack? What kind of movie they let you into that last till this time of night?"

"Cyrano de Bergerac," I said.

"Syrup what?" She squinted hard.

"Cyrano de Bergerac," I repeated. I sat sideways on one of the ornate dining chairs in the room and slipped my arm around the back of the chair. I smiled and batted my eyelids.

"Don't give me that look. What kinda movie is this, uh, Cereal di Hajiback?"

"It's French."

"It's what? It's fresh?"

"French, Aunt Frances. French."

We both looked up as Uncle Johnny appeared in the doorway leading to the bedrooms. His hair mussed, his eyes squinting in the light, he scratched his tummy over his pajamas.

Aunt Frances huffed, "Look, Johnny. He walks in like nothing happened. You see him, Johnny? Look at him."

Uncle Johnny mumbled drowsily, "You home?"

"I'm here, " I said. "I'm okay."

Uncle Johnny said, "It's late, Speedy."

"I know."

"You okay? You shouldn't stay out so late. You had us worried."

"I'm fine."

"Mm. Have any trouble?"

"No. I didn't."

He yawned. "How'd you get here this time of night? Walk?"

"The Number 10 Bus."

"Oh." He yawned again. "Well, you be careful out there. You oughtta call us next time." Another yawn. "Take care of yourself out there, now. We don't want nothin' to happen to you. Memphis ain't as safe as it used to be."

"Yes, sir. I'll be careful from now on. I'm sorry."

"Mm. Well, all right." Yawn again. "Good night, Frances." He walked back into the dark.

Aunt Frances called after him, "That's all you have to say? Johhny?"

"Good night, Frances," Uncle Johnny said, disappearing.

"I'll be damn," she muttered incredulously, settling back into the sofa. "Two of a kind, you two. Listen, you're too young to be watchin' French movies at eleven o'clock at night."

"How old do I have to be?"

"Seven years old is too young!"

"I'm not seven years old, Aunt Frances, I'm ten."

"Ten? You ain't no ten years old. What kinda movie is this? Is Clark Gable in this movie?"

"No. Jose Ferrer."

"Who?"

"Jose Ferrer."

"Never heard of 'im. What's somebody named Jose doin' in a French picture show?"

I leaned forward and peered at her. "Aunt Frances, are you sure you're not asleep?"

"Of course I'm not asleep. I look asleep?"

"Well, the things you're asking and saying to me don't make much sense."

"How'm I supposed to make sense with you talkin' French, or whatever it is?"

I rose from the chair and bent down to her and kissed her on the cheek--a surefire technique for calming her down. Poor Aunt Frances, who had not been anywhere except to work and church and bed since the 1920's, had no idea how the world had changed.