It seemed as though after I turned ten years old, the beatings became worse and more frequent. I don’t know if it was because he wasn’t getting the satisfaction he needed, or whatever it was made him do this just wasn’t working as well for him. I did know they were certainly getting more violent. Something was definitely making him angrier.
Perhaps it was the fact I would no longer cry when he hit me. Or maybe it was the fact I was getting bigger, stronger and harder to hurt. I taught myself to lock my eyes with his and give him cold, hard stares while he was hitting me. I wouldn’t allow myself to let out a sound during these sessions. Also, thanks to the steady teaching from Billy, I was getting more proficient at moving away from his punches so he couldn’t connect with as great a force as before. I wanted to fight him but something kept me from taking the chance.
As much as I wanted to get away from this existence forever, I only managed to run away once during my tenth year. I tried to avoid all the mistakes I had made during the past two years, but the police caught me again after only four days—and not because of any of my past reasons. This time I was caught completely off guard.
It was my fourth day without getting caught. I had finished a good day at the track where I made almost five dollars. I left Hazel Park at about three-thirty in the afternoon and, since Billy told me I could, rode my bike over to Billy’s house and parked it in his garage. Then I got on a bus and headed towards Hamtramck. I got off the bus at Holbrook and Mt. Elliott and started walking along Holbrook towards a diner I had been in once before. There were mostly apartment buildings and stores along both sides of the street. As I walked I could see the sign for the diner up ahead —Marty’s Diner—Eats—Good Food.
I was particularly grungy that day. It was my fourth day out and I hadn’t managed to find a way to get cleaned up at all. I guess when you’re ten years old you don’t even notice you might smell pretty bad to the people around you. I had enough money on me to buy some soup and a hot sandwich so I walked into the diner and sat down at one of the stools by the counter and looked at the menu posted on the wall. I knew what I wanted to order, but checked out the list anyway—Salisbury steak w/Onions—Liver and Onions—Red Hot Kielbasa w/Mashed Potatoes—Hot Turkey Sandwich w/Mashed Potatoes, etc.
The same guy who was in there the last time I came in was standing over by the window to the kitchen. He was about six feet tall with a large, bald head and a huge belly. His face was so red he looked like he was blushing. The red face contrasted with his thick dark brown and bushy mustache. His apron was filthy and covered with the greasy smears where he had wiped his hands on his mountainous belly.
He walked over to where I was sitting, stopped, looked at me kind of funny, and said, “What’ll it be, sonny?”
“I want a tomato soup, a hot turkey sandwich and a glass of milk.”
The guy added a few more grease stains as he wiped his hands on his apron. He leaned over the counter, looked me up and down and in a husky voice with what I assumed was a polish accent, asked, “You live around here?”
“Nope,” I answered. “I live over on the east side.”
“You got enough money to pay for the food?”
“Sure, see?”
I knew what I had ordered would cost a dollar-thirty-five, so I pulled out two one-dollar bills, set them on the counter and said, “I might want to get a piece of pie for dessert.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I can’t let you eat it in here, kid. You smell really bad and I don’t want my other customers to get up and leave because of the way you stink. So, why don’t you wait outside? I’ll make your food and put it in some containers so you can take it with you. Oh, and don’t come back in here any more unless you’re cleaned up better, you hear?”
I looked up at him and tried to think of something to say back to him, but no words found their way into my brain. I knew he was right, so I went outside and sat on the steps by the front door.
A few minutes later the guy came out and handed me a paper bag with the containers of food inside along with my change. I felt awkward about how dirty I was. I didn’t want to get the guy angry with me, so I walked a short way down the street, sat on some steps in front of an apartment building, opened the containers and started to eat. I could still see the front of the diner from where I was sitting.
After a few minutes I saw a cop car pull up in front of the diner. Two cops got out of the car and went inside. I didn’t think too much about it and just kept eating.
After a couple more minutes, the cops came back out and one of them got into the cruiser, and the other one started walking down the sidewalk in my direction. The cruiser slowly started to move towards me. I was starting to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and I wanted to run, but the cop who was walking was too close to me.
The first thing I noticed was how big this cop was—he must have been five or six inches taller than six feet because he would have towered over my father. Not only was he tall, he was big – not fat – just big. He walked up to me, put his foot on the steps next to me, leaned his elbow on his knee and in a friendly voice asked, “Hey kid, how’s the food?”
“It’s good,” I said and went on eating.
I could hear the leather of his belt and boots creak as he leaned on the step. Even the smell of the leather was noticeable. I didn’t look up at him at all but kept my eyes down and focused on my food. I could see the holster and gun out of the corner of my eye.
By now the cruiser had pulled up at the curb in front of me. The other cop was getting out of the car and coming to join his partner. Although he wasn’t quite as big as his partner, he still looked plenty big to me. He moved up to the steps and put his foot on one of the steps on the other side of me. His leather creaked and smelled the same as the other cop.
I was fast realizing I was about to get caught again, but I couldn’t figure out how these guys knew. They weren’t Detroit cops; they were Hamtramck cops. I wondered if this meant all the cops exchanged information with each other about runaway kids.
“What’s your name, kid?” the cop on my right asked.
“Roland,” I answered.
“Well, Roland, where do you live?” the other cop asked.
“Over by the State Fair Grounds,” I said as I kept my eyes down and just stared at my food.
Then the first cop asked, “What’re you doing in this part of town?”
“Just getting something to eat.”
The cops continued to ask questions until the one on my left said, “The owner of the diner called us because he said there was a real dirty, smelly kid ordering something to eat. He thought maybe you might be lost or something, so he gave us a call. Are you lost, Roland?”
I just kept my eyes down and said, “Nope.”
I already knew what was coming but I wasn’t ready to make it easy for them. I was surprised I wasn’t frightened. Instead, I found I was angry with myself for getting caught again so soon. I was angry because it was already late in the summer, so I probably wouldn’t get another chance to take off before the weather started to turn cold. I was angry because I realized I didn’t know how to keep from getting caught. I was angry because I knew I would have to endure the beatings at least until next spring or summer.
“Well, Roland,” the big cop said, “I think you better come with us while we figure out what a stinky kid from the east side is doing over here.” He had a smirk on his face as he winked at his partner.
The cops put me in the cruiser and took me to the police station. They made some phone calls and soon the Detroit cops came to get me. I was back home before dark that night.
I added, “Try to stay cleaner” to my mental list of things to do to keep from getting caught.
Life wasn’t entirely bad, however.
One of the genuine saving graces was the presence of my Aunt Dorothy in my life. She was my mother’s youngest sister and she lived in a small city just north of Detroit called Ferndale, which was in the Nine Mile Road and Woodward Avenue area. It was an easy, half-hour bike ride from my house to hers.
Aunt Dorothy wasn’t at all like my mother. In fact, she was nearly the exact opposite. While my mother was rigid, cold and unyielding, a person who never showed emotion or expressed her feelings to anyone, Aunt Dorothy wore her heart on her sleeve. She was a warm, open and gentle woman who wasn’t afraid to show her love for people. When she came into a room, or whenever you found yourself in her presence, an aura of kindness and peace seemed to surround her. She was in the perfect profession for someone with her way of relating to people — she was a nurse.
I learned to love her when I was very young because of how kind she was to me. Whenever my parents and I would go over to her house for a visit, she would always make sure I had fun things to do. Either she had saved the funny papers (that’s what we called the comic section of the newspaper—something my parents would never let me see at home), or there would be some new toy or game to play.
Since Aunt Dorothy’s daughter was only a year or so younger than me there was always a variety of books and magazines which would appeal to kids my age. My cousin’s name was Diane and she was okay to play with even though she was very quiet. She was also gentle like her mother.
Aunt Dorothy was married to a quiet, peaceful man, my Uncle Lisle. He was shorter and generally smaller in stature then Aunt Dorothy and seemed to always have a smile on his face. He treated Diane and his wife with great respect, gentleness and kindness.
It was always interesting to see my father and Uncle Lisle in the same room when we visited. Neither man had any understanding of the art of conversation. Their conversations were almost laughable.
“Good to see you again, Henry.”
“Yep, good to see you too, Lisle.”
Then there would be total silence for a few more minutes while they would rub their hands over the whiskers on their chins — scrape—scrape — or they would shift around in their chairs as they crossed one leg over the other, and then reverse their positions and cross the opposite leg — all the time rubbing their whisker stubble — scrape—scrape.
Then Uncle Lisle would say, “How’s work, Henry?”
My father would shift around some more in his chair, look up at the ceiling — scrape—scrape some more, and reply, “Oh, pretty good.”
There would be another lengthy, uncomfortable silence and then my father would say, “How’s work for you, Lisle?”
Uncle Lisle would think for a moment or two, rub his hands through his hair, cross his legs back and forth and finally reply, “Oh, pretty good.”
Then both men would sit quietly, listening to the women talk. That was as much idle conversation as either man could manage in one evening.
Another wonderful playmate for me whenever I would go over to their house was their beautiful black cocker spaniel, Smokey. My parents really hated having animals around them, especially dogs. They usually complained to my aunt and uncle whenever we would be at their house, but Aunt Dorothy either just ignored their complaints or politely explained how important Smokey was to their family. My mother often asked her sister to put Smokey in another room while they were there, but Aunt Dorothy just commented in her gentle way how this was Smokey’s house too, and he had a right to be with them. Smokey wasn’t a barker or a dog that jumped up on people. He did bark whenever we would ring the front door bell, but he always stopped once we were in the house and got busy sniffing us to see who we were. He usually fell asleep once he got used to people arriving unless Diane and I were playing with him, and then he could make plenty of noise, which really irritated my parents.
Diane and I would invariably be asked to go into the kitchen to play with Smokey if we got too rambunctious.
Aunt Dorothy didn’t look at all like her other sisters. She was short and stout like they were, but she didn’t have the harsh, stern, cold look in her facial features like the others had. She seemed to ooze kindness. She wasn’t usually a hugger or a kisser, no one in my mother’s family was, but she never left any doubt she really loved you. When she looked into your eyes, you knew she would go out of her way to do whatever she could to help you.
It was in the spring when I rode my bike over to Aunt Dorothy’s house the day after my father had given me a particularly awful beating. I didn’t really give a lot of thought as to why I chose to do this other than I knew it was still too cold to try to run away again. I also knew I needed to do something which might give me the same feeling I would get when I did run away, and I knew whenever I was at her house I felt free and safe.
Their house was small like ours. From the outside, it looked almost the same. The inside was completely different, though. Their living room was much larger and had a lot more light coming in. They didn’t have a dining room, but instead, had a much larger kitchen where they ate their meals. The kitchen table was where most things happened in their house. They had their meals there; they read the paper there; if either Uncle Lisle or Aunt Dorothy had paperwork to do, that’s where it happened; they did jigsaw puzzles there, and Diane did her coloring and school work there. The table had metal legs and a metal top which was always covered with a patterned oilcloth. There were six matching chairs around the table. I never paid much attention to the rest of their house because the kitchen was where I always went whenever we were there visiting.
I had looked in the mirror at home that morning and saw I had two sizable bruises on my cheeks, my lower lip had a cut on it and my upper lip was swollen. When Aunt Dorothy answered my knock on her door she just looked at me, shook her head, took me by the hand and pulled me through the door into the house. She didn’t ask any questions or say anything.
Still holding my hand, she led me into the kitchen, pointed to one of the chairs at the kitchen table, poured me a glass of milk and put the cookie jar on the table. I could see she was upset by my appearance, but she never said a word. She went into her refrigerator, cracked some ice out of one of the trays and put some of the cubes into an ice-pouch.
“Just finish with your cookies and milk, then put this on your lower lip,” she said quietly as she patted me gently on the shoulder. “If your lip gets too cold, just switch the bag to the swelling on your upper lip.”
She pulled out one of the other chairs next to mine and sat down.
“After the ice has a chance to take some of that swelling down we’ll see if we need to put anything else on it. How about your cheeks? Are they painful? Do you need more ice for them?” she asked.
I shook my head no, broke off a piece of a cookie and dunked it in my milk. It was a chocolate-chip cookie—my favorite kind. I had to put small pieces into the corner of my mouth because I discovered my front teeth hurt and I couldn’t bite the cookie normally.
I kept dunking the pieces, which helped to make them more chewable—not that I wouldn’t have dunked them even if my teeth and lips weren’t sore. Those cookies dunked in milk were one of my favorite treats. I don’t ever remember a time when there weren’t chocolate-chip cookies at Aunt Dorothy’s house. The only time we ever had them at home was when Aunt Dorothy brought some over. It was another one of the contradictions about my parent’s rules – they wouldn’t make any cookies because they considered them to be against the church’s teachings, but my father would devour Aunt Dorothy’s cookies anytime they were around.
I ate a couple of the cookies and then put the ice-pouch on my lip. I didn’t realize how much the lip hurt until the ice began to numb it.
“When did this happen, Roland?” Aunt Dorothy asked with a look of concern and sorrow in her eyes. “Did he hit you with his fists?”
She didn’t ask how it happened – or who did it. In fact, it was the first time I realized she knew what was happening.
“Yes,” I mumbled through the ice-pouch, “It happened yesterday afternoon right before supper”.
I had never been at my Aunt’s house after one of my beatings, so I was nervous about whether she would want to talk about it. It was one thing to talk about it with Billy or for the people at the track to see the cuts and bruises. It was another thing to talk about it with my Aunt who I loved so much. I was also worried about what my parents would think if they knew I was talking to anyone about this. However, those worries were outweighed by the part of me which hoped she would ask questions. Perhaps it was the hope she could do something to change things.
Then Aunt Dorothy revealed something which was a huge surprise to me.
“Oh Roland”, she said as she dabbed away at the bruises on my cheeks with a cold, damp cloth, “I wish I knew how to help you. I’ve known this was happening for quite a while. Your mother and I have talked about it a few times, but she is convinced what your father is doing is right. I don’t know how your father was brought up, but your mother, myself, and all of our sisters and brothers were brought up with very strict parents. Your Grandpa and Grandma, my stepmother and father, believed that children needed to be sternly punished when they did wrong things. It all had to do with the way they were taught and treated when they were young.”
“Do my parents feel this way because of their church?” I asked.
“Yes, I think it does have a lot to do with the way your parents, especially your father, understand the Bible. I think he believes the Bible tells him he should be doing this to you. My father was also very strict as far as his religious beliefs, but neither of my parents ever punished us the way your father does you. We were spanked, and plenty often. Sometimes it was with a belt, or sometimes with a switch, especially if we were awfully bad. Most of the time, though, they would just put us across their knees and spank us with their hands on our behinds. Nevertheless, our parents never struck any of us with their fists, not even our brothers. The only place any of us were ever hit was on our behinds.”
I had never had the experience of talking about the way my parents were brought up. It was the first time – and to have it be with my Aunt Dorothy made it feel right. My parents never spoke about their lives as children. I had no idea how either of them was brought up. I had been on trips to visit my relatives to Holland, Michigan, where my mother grew up, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, my father’s hometown.
I know I felt good around my grandmother, my mother’s stepmother. Their real mother died not long after Aunt Dorothy was born. The grandmother I knew, married my grandfather and took over the raising of his children, all eight of them. He was a plumber and ran his business out of a large barn-like shop behind their house. One of his sons, my Uncle George, worked with him until grandpa died. Then Uncle George and his sons took over the business.
Whenever we would go to Holland to visit, Grandma would always make a fuss over me, making sure I had toys or games to play with, and plenty of good things to eat, especially breakfast cereals. In my house, there was only cream of wheat or Shredded Wheat. In grandma’s cupboard, there were always five or six different kinds from which to choose.
Visiting in Grand Rapids was a fun time for me also. When we went, we would go to my Uncle Bills’ house. He was one of four brothers. My Uncle Fred was the oldest—he lived in Grand Rapids, then my father, followed by my Uncle Sam who was an architect in California, and then the youngest brother, Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill lived with his wife, Dot, their two sons and one daughter. One of his sons, Willard, was the same age as me. His other son, Jimmy, was a couple of years younger. His daughter, Isla, was about three years older than Willard. I was completely enamored with her. When I was alone in my room at home, I used to imagine that I would be married to her some day.
They lived out in the open country outside of Grand Rapids so there was ample room for running around and playing. Willard and I would play catch most of the time and sometimes Jimmy and Isla would join us. Both Willard and Jimmy got into semi-pro baseball when they got out of high school, but neither continued with it and went to college instead.
Isla, on the other hand, did get into one of the first women’s professional softball leagues in the country and was recognized as one of the top women’s fast-pitch softball players. To me, she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. I followed her everywhere. I’m sure I was a pest, but she never stopped me from being her shadow and would even take my hand sometimes. I adored her.
Aunt Dorothy continued to quietly talk to me, “I don’t know how your father was treated by his father, but your mother believes he’s right in what he’s doing, and I haven’t been able to convince her otherwise. Your father believes all children are sinful and need to be punished regularly even if he doesn’t know whether you did anything wrong. He just assumes that since you are a child, and all children are sinful, you must have done something wrong, so he does this to punish you.”
As I was listening to her talk, I noticed I was on the verge of crying. Determined not to let that happen, I sat up straight and asked her, “Have you ever tried to get him to stop beating me up?”
Aunt Dorothy shook her head and took both of my hands into hers and said, “Your father is a very stubborn and domineering man. Not only does he believe children are terrible little sinners who need constant punishing, he believes women need to stay in their place. I have tried to talk with him a couple of times after I realized what he was doing to you, but he just told me to mind my own business— you were his son and he would raise you his way. He was quite angry with me for saying anything to him about it.”
“What about my mother? Have you ever talked to her about this?” I asked, hoping she would come up with a magical solution.
“I have talked with your mother many times—especially after she came to me with her fears when you started running away from home. She gets frightened when you disappear and has talked with me each time it happens. She worries about you getting enough to eat. She worries about where you’re sleeping. I know she worries about whether you’ll be safe. She knows there are many men who don’t have homes who are wandering the streets at night. There are also the hobos who come in and out on the freight trains and who set up camps down by the railroad tracks. She worries about what those people might do to a young boy like you.
However, I think her fear of your father is even greater than her worries over you, although she has told me he has never struck her. I couldn’t get her to stand up to him—but I have tried—several times. This again goes back to the way they understand the Bible. She told me she is his wife and must not interfere with him. She also doesn’t think he is doing anything wrong.”
My lips had gone past the stage of being numb and were starting to hurt from being so cold. I took the ice pouch off and set it on the table.
Aunt Dorothy bent down and gently placed her hands on the sides of my face. She tilted my head and looked closely at my lip. She straightened up and stood with her hands on her hips, smiled and said, “I’ll be right back, Roland. I want to get some special salve from the bathroom to put on that lip to help it heal.”
She left the room as I sat quietly at the table. I was thinking about getting another cookie, but my milk was gone and I didn’t want to just help myself without asking first. I thought about all the things Aunt Dorothy had just told me and wondered how I was ever going to find a way to cause my parents to change. I loved the way I was feeling with my aunt. I was tempted to ask her if I could come and live with them, when she came back into the room holding a small jar of salve and what looked like Mercurochrome. I was sure glad it wasn’t iodine since that’s what my mother always used on cuts or scrapes.
She took her finger and dabbed a little of the salve on my cut lower lip. She looked at my face carefully and said, “I don’t think you need any more medicine. Your lower lip is the only place where you have a cut. The bruises and the swelling will get better on their own, I’m sure.”
“I think I’ll just have to keep running away until I finally figure out how to keep from getting caught all the time,” I said as she got up from the table.
“I do understand why you feel it’s your only choice right now,” she said, looking at me, her eyes filled with concern, “but you can’t imagine how frightened your mother and I are when you do. We’re so afraid you’ll be hurt out on the streets all by yourself. There are a lot of not-so-nice people living on the streets.”
“I haven’t seen any people who act like they want to do anything to me. In fact, the people I meet are good to me and have helped me a lot,” I explained. Of course, I was thinking mostly of Billy and the people at the track. “Plus, I’m learning how to take care of myself too. My friend, Billy is teaching me how to fight.”
“My dear little Roland, I just wish there was some other way for you to cope with all this, but I don’t know what to say to make it easier for you.”
She took my face in her hands again and looked into my eyes with concern. “Try not to lick that salve on your lip if you can help it, okay? I don’t believe what your father is doing to you is right. It isn’t. It’s wrong. But there really isn’t anything I can think of which will make him stop—I’ve tried—with both of them. But they won’t listen.”
“I know, Aunt Dorothy,” I said rubbing my fingers over the salve and wincing, “but maybe sometimes I could come over here and play with Smokey and Diane if it gets bad at home, okay?”
She smiled and nodded her head, her eyes filling with tears.
I left a few minutes later and started to ride over to the track. How I wished I could have been her child instead.
It was one of the slowest days I had seen in all the time I’d been working at the bowling alley. Billy and I were spending most of the time just hanging around in back of the lanes, smoking. Most of the other guys working were doing the same. There were a couple of guys working with bowlers, but the rest of us were just hanging around.
We sat there smoking and waiting for some business on our alleys. Billy was drinking a chocolate coke he got earlier from the food counter. We normally weren’t allowed to get anything from the counter but the boss had gone out and the woman behind the counter would sneak them for us whenever it wasn’t too busy.
“Billy,” I said leaning back against the wall behind me with my eyes closed, “what do I have to do to get into the State Fair Dukes gang?”
Billy looked like he was half asleep. He turned his head a little bit and glanced at me sideways, “You have to fight a couple of the guys and steal a few cartons of cigarettes,” he muttered.
He said it like it was no big deal. By contrast, my heart leaped into my throat when he told me what I had to do — fight two of the Dukes and steal cigarettes? I was not feeling anywhere near as relaxed as he was right about then. I had no idea I’d have to do anything like that.
“I don’t think I’m ready yet — aren’t those guys a lot bigger than me — and I don’t know how to steal stuff? Do I have to rob a store or something? Do I have to win the fights, or do I just have to get into a fight with these guys?”
The questions were rolling off my tongue faster than I could think them. I knew I would need to be one of the Dukes if I expected to have any chance of surviving on the streets full time. From what Billy had told me, the Dukes really looked out for each other. I knew once I was living on the streets all the time, I would need places and people I could depend upon. The hobos, perverts and other street people were always around, but since I had found ways to stay off the streets at night, they hadn’t bothered me.
Billy was still sitting with his eyes closed, his arms folded across his chest, his legs spread out in front of him, and his cigarette dangling out of his mouth as he said, “Don’t worry about it, Van. You can handle it. You don’t know it yet, but you fight a lot better than some of the guys in the Dukes who are three or four years older than you.”
“You really think so?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ll talk to Bob Morton. He’s the leader of the Dukes. I’ll tell him about you. I’ll tell him you’re a good fighter. I’ll ask him to pick a couple of guys I think you can handle.”
I knew I was getting stronger and smarter all the time. Even though the only people I had fought were the kid at the hockey rink and Billy, I was learning how to keep my mind on what I was doing. There were lots of times now when I could do things to completely catch Billy off guard. I was able to get him down faster and more frequently. I also could tell he wasn’t faking it when it happened. He’d be surprised, but also a little pissed. He’d show it by the way he retaliated when we’d start practicing again — he’d have me on the ground so fast I didn’t know how I got there.
I took a slow drag on my cigarette and leaned forward, wrapping my arms around my legs. I looked back at Billy and asked, “But won’t the guys I fight get pissed if I do win a fight with them? I don’t want to be making enemies in the Dukes.”
Billy shook his head and said, “Nah. Morton doesn’t let the fight go on for long. He just wants to be sure you can fight and aren’t afraid to fight, that’s all.”
“Okay, but what about the guys I fight?”
“Don’t worry about them. They know what this fight is about.”
I’m not sure I was convinced. We sat daydreaming for quite awhile. I don’t know where Billy’s mind was wandering, but mine was extremely busy with street-fighting two of the Dukes and stealing cartons of cigarettes.
“What about stealing cigarettes? Can you show me what to do?” I asked.
“Yeah. I steal cigarettes all the time for my old man and me. There are lots of places where you can do it and not get caught if you know what you’re doing. Meet me tonight and I’ll show you one of the stores I’ve robbed before. Can you get out?”
“What time?”
“About nine o’clock.”
“Yeah, my parents have their choir practice tonight and they don’t get home until around eleven,” I said as I smiled with nervous anticipation. My stomach was doing flip-flops I was so excited. Getting caught on the streets as a runaway kid would be a lot different than getting caught robbing a store.
The thought of robbing a store brought with it an entirely new set of fears and anxiety.
At close to eight-fifteen that night I left my house and rode my bike over to Billy’s house where we had decided to meet. It seemed to take forever to get through dinner and wait for my parents to leave for their church choir practice. It felt like the clock was just creeping along. I think it was more trepidation than it was excitement. All I had been doing since I left the bowling alley after work was think about what I was going to be doing later. I had no idea what it would be like to rob a store. Becoming a thief had never crossed my mind as something that would be necessary. I always had enough money on me to buy what I needed, or I would get food out of the Victory Gardens.
Billy was waiting for me in front of his house when I rode up.
“Put your bike in my back yard. We’re going to stay in the alleys tonight,” he said as he quietly led the way around the side of his house and out his back gate to the alley.
It wasn’t quite dark yet so we could see where we were going. I noticed that the alleys in his neighborhood were much dirtier than they were where I lived. Garbage cans were turned over. Dogs were scrounging around in some of them. I heard some cats yowling but didn’t see them. There was one place where garbage was spread all over the pavement. There were several, huge, black, hairy rats scurrying around in all the mess. We could hear them squeaking at each other. When they heard us approaching, they stopped eating, stood their ground and stared at us with their beady, little eyes. After we took a few more steps, they thankfully darted off in every direction but ours, and disappeared.
We kept walking at a fast clip as we worked our way from one alley to another, all the time leading us closer to the Seven Mile Road area and several blocks away from the street where Billy lived. Every time we came to a place where we had to cross over a street or move from one block to another, we would stop and peek around the corner of a garage to make sure there weren’t any people or cars in sight, and also to check for any police cruisers patrolling around. It was getting more difficult to spot the cops when they were cruising. They weren’t riding in well-marked police cars as often—now they were using these big, black sedans—they might have been Cadillacs or Buicks or some other make of car that was big. We called them Black Mariahs. I don’t know why—that’s just what the guys called them. There would usually be one guy in a cop uniform driving, and three other cops in plain clothes—two in back and one in front.
The darkness of the night was settling in. There were no streetlights in the alleys so it was getting harder to see where we were going. We slowed down so that we wouldn’t trip over something or make any noise.
“Just remember that we can’t talk any louder than a whisper from here on,” Billy said into my ear. “You never know when someone might be getting into a car in their garage or bringing something out to a garbage can by the alley.”
I just nodded my head so he would know I heard him, plus I was too scared to try to say anything.
“We don’t want anyone to remember seeing or hearing a couple of kids in the alleys tonight,” he said.
We must have been sneaking through the alleys for at least thirty or forty minutes. We kept getting closer and closer to the area along Seven Mile Road where there were several stores. Most of the stores in this area closed by six o’clock in the evening, but some of the smaller grocery and confectionery stores stayed open until eight-thirty or nine. We came down an alleyway which intersected with another alley that ran behind the stores. There was an area off to our left that had a bunch of bushes growing next to a tall wooden fence. Billy seemed to slink between the back of the bushes and the fence, then motioned for me to follow him. I followed Billy’s lead and hunkered down on the ground next to him.
I felt myself shaking from both fear and excitement. I reached into my pocket for a cigarette – I needed something to help me stop shaking.
Billy reached out his arm and stopped me while he shook his head no and leaned over to whisper in my ear.
“We don’t want to attract any attention. We’re too close to the stores, and sometimes the owners will come out into the alley to dump trash or bring empty boxes. They’d be able to smell the smoke, or see the glow when you took a drag,” he whispered. He made the “be quiet” sign with his index finger to his lips.
We sat and waited for what seemed an eternity. When we first got there, I could only see one store much further down the alley that had any lights showing in the back. Those lights went out several minutes ago. The rest of the buildings were dark and they were all in deep shadow. There were garbage cans, stacks of cardboard boxes and some wooden crates lying behind the stores. Further down the alley I could make out a couple of old cars parked across the alley from the backs of the stores. I wondered if they were abandoned or if someone was going to be coming out of a store door and get into them. It was completely quiet except for the sound of the occasional car driving on Seven Mile road in front of the stores.
Still we sat and we waited. Billy had his knees bent up with his arms around them and his head down on his arms. I wondered if he was just resting or if he had fallen asleep—he was so quiet. I knew that I couldn’t ask him, so I just continued to wait, watch and wonder what was next.
A good fifteen or twenty minutes later Billy raised his head, looked over at the backs of the stores, then signaled me to get up and follow him. He moved quickly across the alley until he was standing with his back pressed against one of the stores. Then, as quietly as I have ever seen him move, he crept along the backs of the buildings until he stopped next to the back door of one of the stores halfway down the block. I crept along behind him. I noticed how he was watching where he put his feet so he wouldn’t step on something that could make noise. I did the same. He put his finger to his lips again so I knew to be still. We stood there listening, barely breathing, as we kept looking up and down the alley. I couldn’t hear or see anything. It was dead quiet.
Billy moved slowly along the wall until he was next to the back window. He carefully looked into the window and then came back by the door. He reached into the back of his pants and pulled out one of the longest, largest screwdrivers I had ever seen. It must have been at least a foot long and the tip looked like it was designed for screw heads the size of quarters. He slipped the tip of the screwdriver into the wood next to the door handle and carefully moved some of the wood from around the latch. He wasn’t removing the wood; he was just sort of squeezing it back away from the metal part of the latch. He barely made a sound as he pushed away at the wood until I could see the latch becoming exposed. The wood was hardly damaged at all — he just kept working the screwdriver blade further along the metal part of the latch. Then he pushed the screwdriver alongside the place where the end of the latch went into the frame of the door. He grabbed the door handle with his left hand and pulled on it as he levered the screwdriver against the latch. The door came open without a sound.
Billy looked carefully up and down the alley behind the stores. I followed his eyes but didn’t see a thing. It was completely dark and quiet. He stepped inside the door and signaled me to wait. We stood without moving a muscle for a minute or two. Then Billy motioned for me to step inside, and after making sure that we could open the door from the inside, he closed the door quietly behind me.
Again, we waited. I noticed that as we stood there my eyes slowly began to adjust to the increased darkness at the back of the store and I could begin to make out the counters and shelves from the light coming in through the windows in the front. When a car would drive by, the headlights would light up the front area for just a split second, and then it would get dark again. There must have been a streetlight close by because the front window never did get completely dark.
I could feel my knees knocking together. It felt as though I couldn’t move an inch without falling flat on my face. It wasn’t warm out at all, but sweat was pouring down my face and burning my eyes. My shirt was sticking to my body. I felt like I had to go to the bathroom both ways. At first I was puzzled by the rushing, pounding noise in my ears, but then I realized it was the sound of my own heart thumping away at a mile-a-minute.
Billy pointed to a counter along the right side of the store and signaled for me to follow him. We hunkered down low so we would be below the top of the counter as we slipped out from between the aisle shelves and crept towards the backside of the counter. Once we squatted down low behind the counter, he pointed up to the wall behind the counter where there were several shelves full of cigarette cartons. He held up six fingers, pointed again, and nodded his head as a signal for me to get the cigarettes off the shelf. They were up above the top of the counter so I would have to stand up to get them. I kept looking out at the front windows to see if anyone was walking by. I was also wondering whether it would be possible for the driver of a passing car to see me if I stood up.
Billy pointed and nodded again, this time with a look of “hurry-up” on his face. I took another look up at the shelves and decided that if I used both hands I could get three cartons in each hand with one grab. Straight up from where I was crouched was a stack of Lucky Strikes and a stack of Camels—the Lucky Strikes would be my right-hand grab, and the Camels my left. I took one further quick look out the front windows, lined up my targets, stood and reached out to grab the cigarette cartons.
My hands were not anywhere near as large as I imagined they were and they were shaking as if they weren’t attached to my arms. All six cartons of cigarettes went tumbling out of my hands and onto the floor next to Billy. He looked like he wanted to kill me as he motioned for me to pick them up and stuff them into my shirt. I tried, but I was so shaky that I couldn’t get them all to fit. Billy took two of the cartons and put them inside his shirt.
We quietly crept out from behind the counter and headed for the back door. Billy opened the door just a crack and peeked out in one direction. Then he slowly stuck his head out the door, looked in the other direction, and then signaled me to follow him. He shut the door behind us and checked to be sure it latched and was locked. He stopped and pushed at the wood around the latch with the screwdriver blade. After a minute or so, the door looked as though it hadn’t been damaged. Finally, we sidled along the backs of the stores quickly, quietly, staying in the dark shadow as we worked our way back to the same group of bushes where we had hid in originally.
We waited again in the bushes until we were sure there was no activity around us and my heart started to slow back down to normal. Then we headed back into the alley behind the houses and made our way back to his house without either one of us saying a word.
Once we were in his backyard again, Billy took the two cartons of cigarettes out of his shirt and gave them to me. He leaned close to me and whispered in my ear, “Take these home and find some place to hide them where no one will find them. Keep them hidden until after you’ve had your two fights. I’ll let you know when.”
He poked me in my upper arm as he walked away toward his back door, climbed the stairs, opened the door and slipped inside. I figured out how to get all six cartons inside my shirt so they wouldn’t fall out, climbed on my bike and headed for home. I decided to ride only in alleys as my mind raced with thoughts about — What would I do if my parents got home before I did? — Where was I going to hide the cigarettes before they showed up? — What if the cops spotted me now? — Was Billy mad at me for dropping the cigarettes? I was sure I had never been so frightened before in my life, despite some of the things I had already experienced.
I did make it home without anyone seeing me and before my parents returned. I decided how one of the boxes in the garage I guessed hadn’t been opened by anyone in a long time would be where I would hide the cigarettes. I didn’t know what time it was but I knew I had to hurry. I opened the side garage door, spotted the box within my reach on the back wall shelf. When I went to open the box I could see it was covered with a heavy layer of dust. The box was half filled with what looked like old clothes or rags. I slipped the cartons out of my shirt and slid them under the clothes, closed the box, and went into the house.
I got undressed and had just crawled into bed when I heard my parent’s car pull into the driveway.
I fell asleep staring at the ceiling and thinking about how I still had to have two fights with State Fair Dukes gang members.
It was about two weeks later on a Monday that Billy came to me while we were at the bowling alley and said, “Okay, Van. Bob Morton has set it up for you to fight a couple of our guys. It’s going to be this Friday after dark. You need to meet me at the Sugar Bowl.”
“Uh, okay, yeah, sure,’ I mumbled as I felt my entire body begin to tighten up like the skin on a drum. I knew this would be happening eventually, but after two weeks without anything being said about it, the feeling of trepidation had begun to fade away. And now the moment was back into reality. It had become imminent. I heard those words and the adrenalin started to flow at once.
Billy must have seen my body tense up because he looked at me with a questioning glance and said, “You’re not chickening out are you? You better not be after I’ve gone to Morton to set it all up.”
I could see that Billy was right on the edge of being ticked off—he had the same look in his eyes I had seen when some customer would give him a hard time about the way he was setting his pins.
“No-no, I’m not chickening out, don’t worry,” I replied. “I guess I was just surprised to know that it’s going to be this week. Can we do some practice fights together before then?”
“Yeah, I was going to show you some of the tricks that both these guys use, anyway. We can practice every day if you want.”
The guys I would be fighting were three or four years older than me. They had both been members of the State Fair Dukes for a couple of years. One of them was called “Crazy Jimmy” because he was known for acting like a maniac whenever he would get in a fight.
“Crazy Jimmy will all of a sudden start jumping around and swinging his arms all over the place right in the middle of a fight,” Billy explained. “He’ll be kicking out with his legs and his eyes will start rolling around in his head and he’ll be screaming like a stupid monkey. It looks really dumb, but it works great so long as it isn’t somebody Jimmy fought before.”
Billy started laughing and jumping around to show me how Crazy Jimmy would act.
“The other guy would drop his arms and back away trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with Jimmy, and Jimmy’d go flying at the guy and have him down before he knew what hit him,” Billy said.
“What you need to do is make your move as soon as he starts his crazy stuff. He’s usually not looking at you when he’s acting nuts, and he’s figuring that you’ll be confused about what he’s doing, so that’s the time for you to get him down.”
The other guy I only knew as Bobby. Bobby was a good-looking guy who always had a bunch of girls around him whenever you would see him around the school or the playground. He was pretty short—not much taller than me.
Billy explained that Bobby’s little fighting secret was that as soon as he could he would go for the other guy’s balls. Billy also showed me that Bobby did something before he would make that move. “Every time I’ve seem Bobby in a fight, he always does exactly the same thing,” Billy said. “I like this trick. I use it myself sometimes. Stand in front of me like we’re fighting. Now watch me.”
Billy started to dance around like we were getting ready to start throwing punches. Then he looked over my shoulder, got a scared look on his face and his eyes got as wide as saucers. Instinctively, I turned my head to see what was behind me. The next thing I knew Billy had his hand between my legs and my hands dropped down to stop him.
“You see,” said Billy as he moved away from me, “the only difference is that Bobby’ll grab the guys balls and start squeezing and twisting as hard as he can. Most guys will grab for Bobby’s hands like you did and drop to their knees. Bobby’d lock his fists together and come straight up under their chin, and down they’d go, ready for a quick drop-kick to one of their body parts.”
“Cripes, I said, “that sounds really vicious to me.”
“It is. I’m amazed he hasn’t broken some guys neck yet. You need to know that as soon as you see him look over your shoulder, that’s when you make your move.”
Billy and I practiced these two tricks over and over again so I would know exactly what to do by Friday.
“Just remember,” Billy said. “Don’t lose your focus. Watch every move they make. Don’t forget that both these guys might figure you know about their tricks and pull something different on you. You’re good, just get them down before they try any tricks, okay?”
It was good Billy and I practiced every day that week, because it seemed as though Friday arrived much sooner than usual. When I left home in the morning for school, I told my mother I would be needed at the bowling alley later than usual because of a special tournament and wouldn’t be home for dinner. My mother wasn’t pleased with the idea and wanted me to be home for dinner, but my father overruled her saying we could use the extra money. When I made my sandwich for lunch, I made an extra one so I would have something to eat later that afternoon.
The Sugar Bowl was a small confectionery store on the corner of State Fair and Cardoni. It had a soda fountain counter where you could buy sundaes, banana splits, malted milk shakes, sodas, plain or flavored cokes, sandwiches, hot dogs and hamburgers. There were some booths along one wall of the store and more along the windows facing the street, as well as the stools at the soda fountain counter. There was another counter on the other wall where a variety of cigarettes, cigars, pipes, tobacco and candy were for sale.
The State Fair Dukes had been using the Sugar Bowl as their hangout for at least four or five years. The owner of the Sugar Bowl, Mr. Hanson, didn’t have a problem with the Dukes hanging out there as long as they kept buying things and didn’t bother any of the other customers from the neighborhood. He wouldn’t let any of the gang loaf around in the booths unless they were drinking coffee or sodas or having something to eat. If someone finished what they were eating or drinking and didn’t buy any more, Mr. Hanson would kick them out and they had to stay outside. If any of the Dukes were in the booths and a regular customer wanted to sit there, Mr. Hanson would make the guys move.
It was a popular neighborhood store and was always busy. The gang members knew they had to do what Mr. Hanson said because if they gave him a bad time he wouldn’t let them be anywhere near the place. He also knew where most of the gang members lived and knew many of their parents. The people from the neighborhood who came into the store had known most of the guys and girls that hung out there since they were little kids. Even though it was a gang hangout, the customers knew they wouldn’t be bothered.
Most of the time there were just guys hanging around the Sugar Bowl, but the Dukes also had their Duchesses. These were usually girlfriends of the gang members and were easily identifiable by their black jackets with “SFD” lettered across the back right under a skull and crossbones emblem, the same jackets as the guys wore. It was a rare happening to go by the Sugar Bowl anytime in the afternoon after school until it closed at nine at night, when there wouldn’t be a group of guys and girls inside or gathered around the front and side of the building talking, smoking and goofing around. Some of the guys would be having fake fights, while others just leaned against the building watching cars go by, talking and just looking cool. The guys who had girlfriends would usually be necking around the back of the building.
When our shift was done at the bowling alley, Billy came up to me and said, “Hey, I’ll see you later at the Sugar Bowl. I’m gonna go home and eat and then I’ll head over there.”
“Okay,” I said, “I already told my parents that I’d be working late here, so I’ll just hang around here until it starts to get dark. I brought an extra sandwich, but I don’t feel much like eating anything.”
Billy looked at me and I knew he could see that I was nervous and scared, but he just grinned at me and said, “Don’t worry, Van, you’ll be okay. This’ll be easier than a lot of the fights you and I have had over the past few months. You’re gonna surprise the hell out of those guys.”
I just nodded my head and tried to smile back at him, but the smile got stuck somewhere in my fear.
He started out, then turned back and called out, “Don’t forget to bring the cigarettes.”
He looked at me again and said, “Don’t let them know you’re scared.”
Fortunately, I remembered about the cigarettes on my parent’s choir night. I took the cigarettes out of the box in the garage and wrapped the cartons up in some old rags that were in the same box, then put it all in a smaller cardboard box. I tied the box to my bike with some rope and rode over to the bowling alley. There was a small storage area behind the building filled with some old boards and boxes. That stuff hadn’t been moved for ages, so I thought it would be a good place to stash the cigarettes. I worried about rain or rats, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do with them.
I went and sat down in the dark along the wall in the back of the bowling alley and began to think about all the things Billy had taught me about fighting these two guys. I knew I was still a kid, but I also knew I had been fighting with Billy for a long time. I was good and I was smart.
I closed my eyes and started to picture the fights in my mind. I was able to see myself doing exactly what I had been taught. I couldn’t picture Jimmy’s face because I didn’t know him, but in the movie I was playing in my head, I did get the advantage over him right away. Since I knew what Bobby looked like, I was able to visualize getting him down with no trouble. After doing this for a little while, I realized I wasn’t as scared as I was earlier.
When it was starting to get dark, I went out the back door of the bowling alley. I got the cigarettes from where I hid them. They were still fine—no critters had chewed away at them. I tied the box onto the handlebars of my bike and started out for the Sugar Bowl.
I leaned my bike against the side of the Sugar Bowl building, untied the box with the cigarettes, put it under my arm and walked in the front door. I tried to swagger like I had seen Billy do when he walked, but I wasn’t sure I managed to make it look convincing. There was lots of conversation going on as I entered. All the stools at the soda fountain were filled with guys in black State Fair Dukes jackets and black peg pants. Once I stepped in the door, all the conversation stopped. They just looked at me without any expression on their faces. One of the guys was Billy. The booths along the front and side of the store were also filled with guys and a few girls. It was deadly quiet as they looked me over.
I stood just inside the front door, and using all the strength I could muster to not show how scared I was, let my eyes travel over each of the faces looking back at me. Billy was sitting at one of the stools and when my eyes came to him, I nodded. He nodded back but didn’t say a word. I let myself look around at each of the others while I was hoping no one would see my knees shaking. After what seemed like an eternity of being scrutinized by the gang, the people in the booths went back to talking among themselves.
One of the guys sitting at the counter stood up and walked over to where I was standing. He was about a head taller than me and was built like an army tank—this was one big guy. He wasn’t fat or especially tall—he was just big. He had blond hair that was long on the sides and back. He was wearing a regular man’s hat so he looked like a movie gangster to me. His face gave the impression of being round although his jaw was square. He had a couple of small scars—one alongside his lip and another over his right eye. When I looked at his eyes, I got a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. It felt like he was shooting steel barbs out of them into my brain. There was no expression coming from them other than cold hardness. I could see his jaw jumping on one side of his face as he glared at me. He had a chartreuse-colored shirt under his black jacket. His pants were pegged very tight around his ankles and very wide around his knees. He had a long chain running from his belt and into one of his pockets. His hands were in his pockets. I forced myself to keep looking into his eyes even though I desperately wanted to look away.
“Are you Van Buren?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Whatcha got in the box, Van Buren?” he said as he took one hand out of his pocket and pointed at the box under my arm.
“Some cigarettes,” I answered. I couldn’t believe the sound of my voice. It came out so high-pitched it sounded like a girl.
I said it again, this time clearing my throat and lowering my voice, “Some cigarettes.”
“I heard you the first time, Van Buren. Are they for me?”
“I guess so. Are you Bob Morton?” I asked.
He gave a slow nod and continued looking at me with a smirk on his face.
I handed him the box, then put both hands in my pockets so he wouldn’t see them shaking.
He took the box, looked in it then handed it to one of the guys sitting in the booth along the front window.
“Here you go, Fred,” he said. “Divvy these up to everybody.”
Fred took the cartons out of the box, opened two of them and held up some packs of each kind of cigarette.
“Who wants Luckies?” he called out. “Who wants Camels?”
The rest of the guys and girls started yelling out either Luckies or Camels as Fred tossed the packs out to them. There was a lot of laughing and yelling while that was going on. Some of the guys were jumping up and snaring extra packs as Fred tried to throw them to other guys. The level of horseplay and cursing was rapidly increasing.
“Hey, Fred, you asshole, who taught you how to throw?” someone yelled.
“Fred, you fuckin’ shithead, you threw me a Lucky, I wanted a Camel,” someone else called out.
“Hey, Fred, you threw my pack to Jack—gimme another one, goddammit.”
“Go to hell—take your goddam cigarettes and shut the fuck up,” Fred yelled back good-naturedly.
Bob Morton stood watching the activity and then looked back at me.
“You want to get into the Dukes?” he asked.
I nodded.
All the cigarettes had been distributed. The gang had settled back down and were watching us and listening to what we were saying.
“Do you think you’re good enough?” Morton asked.
I nodded.
“You ready to prove it?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey Cross and Dunlap,” Morton called out, “You think Van Buren here can take you guys?”
One of the guys in the booth by the window laughed and said, “No way, Morton, he’s just a punk kid!”
I looked at this guy but I didn’t recognize him. I was thinking that he might be Crazy Jimmy.
“Yeah, he don’t stand a chance,” said the guy sitting right across from him.
That guy was Bobby because I recognized him from around school. He was sitting with a pretty, dark-haired girl and had his arm around her. They were both smoking and grinning.
Bobby leaned over to the girl, and just loud enough for me to hear, said, “Don’t worry, baby, this kid can’t hurt me. Look at him, he’s just a punk!” Then he pulled her close and kissed her long and hard on the mouth.
Morton moved over next to me, put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Let’s go do this thing, Van Buren. Let’s go see how good you are. C’mon Cross. You too, Dunlap. Let’s see what this Van Buren kid here can do!”
With his arm still over my shoulders, Morton turned me around, reached out, pulled the door open, and walked me out. The rest of the gang all got up and in one big group of black-jacketed kids, followed us out the door.
The John Marshall grade school was across State Fair Road from the Sugar Bowl. We all walked across the street and down the side street beside the school and into the playground area behind the school. The entire playground was fenced in. There was an entrance at the back of the school. Just beyond the back entrance was a large alcove that was used mostly for storing trash containers. There were no windows on the building inside that area, and neighborhood kids would go back there and play handball against the walls. With the exception of the opening to the alcove, the interior area was enclosed by three solid walls two stories high. This area couldn’t be seen from the street and was dark at night. That’s where Bob Morton led me. The rest of the gang followed along.
Once we were inside the alcove, the gang members formed a circle around Bob Morton and me. It was possible to see quite well once our eyes got accustomed to the dark. The gang soon stopped their chatter and became very quiet.
“Okay, Van Buren,” Morton said, “Let’s do this. Cross, get over here. You go first.”
Strangely, I realized my nervousness had vanished. My legs weren’t shaking any more and I felt relaxed and confident. I took my hands out of my pockets and thought about the visualizations I had earlier at the bowling alley. I could feel my shoulders and arms relaxing and the circle of gang members seem to fade into a blur.
Morton stepped back into the circle while the first guy who called me a punk kid when we were in the Sugar Bowl took off his SFD jacket and stepped into the center of the circle. This was Crazy Jimmy. He wasn’t much taller than I was and he was quite skinny. He had wild red hair and his eyes seemed to be dancing around in his head—he seemed to be looking everywhere except at me. He had on a white tee shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up in one sleeve. The other sleeve was also rolled up to his shoulder. He had on black peg pants and stomper shoes. He put his fists up in a boxing pose and began to dance from one foot to the other. He started mumbling something in a singsong pattern I couldn’t hear. His eyes were still looking everywhere but at me.
Suddenly I dove at him, got my left arm across his skinny chest, swung my right leg behind his legs and threw all my weight against his chest. He went right down on his back. However, my momentum was so great he was able to grab my arm and pull me down on top of him. While he held onto my arm with one hand, he started hitting me hard on the side of my face with his other hand. That hurt.
The next thought I had was what Billy had taught me — you couldn’t win fights rolling around on the ground.
I realized that my left leg was between Jimmy’s legs, so just as he was getting ready to hit me again, I used my free arm and pushed up against his chest, kicked up quickly with my left knee and got him hard in his crotch. He let out a yell, let go of my arm and reached for his crotch. I jumped up and while he was still on the ground, aimed a kick at his head.
Bob Morton had come up behind me while we were fighting. He reached out, grabbed me around the chest from behind, pulled me away and said, “That’s it. Good fight, both of you.”
Crazy Jimmy Cross jumped up and started toward me with his fists closed. He reached back with his arm to throw a punch when Morton jumped between us and yelled, “Back off, Cross. The fight’s over. Get back in the circle.”
Cross looked at me with a sneer on his face and asked, “What’s your name, kid?”
“Van Buren,” I answered.
Cross nodded his head, turned and walked back into the circle between one of the guys and Bobby. He whispered something in the guy’s ear. Then he turned to Bobby, whispered to him, grinned and elbowed Bobby in the ribs.
Bobby looked at him, then looked over at me, nodded and grinned back at Cross.
Morton looked at me and asked, “You ready, Van Buren?”
I nodded.
Morton said, “Let’s go Bobby.”
After seeing the quick interchange between Cross, Bobby and the other guy, I was expecting something to happen fast, but I didn’t know what.
Bobby started moving to his left around the inside of the circle of gang members. I kept turning so I could stay focused straight on to him. As I was watching Bobby’s face, someone behind me stuck their foot in between my legs. Just as I felt the person’s hand in the small of my back pushing me forward and tripping me at the same time, Bobby was diving in with his hand in a claw shape reaching to grab my crotch.
The person behind me had pushed me just hard enough that I started to fall forward. I got my feet untangled so I wouldn’t trip and let my momentum carry far enough to Bobby’s side so I could avoid his clutching hand. I felt his hand slip off my thigh as I stuck my elbow out and caught him hard on his chin and mouth. Both of Bobby’s hands went up to his face. I felt like I was flying as I drove my shoulder into Bobby’s chest and pushed him backwards as hard as I could. He had clasped his hands together into a large ball of fist and brought them down onto the back of my neck. I saw stars in my eyes but I kept driving forward hoping to get him off balance. The circle broke apart as I kept driving forward with my shoulder while Bobby was backpedaling and pounding away at the back of my neck. I dropped my other hand and started beating on his kidneys. I kept trying to butt my head against Bobby’s chin, but he kept me from doing so with his pummeling on my head and neck. We slammed into the wall of the building and I could hear the breath fly out of Bobby’s lungs.
Just as I felt the blows to my head weaken a bit, Morton yelled, “Okay. Stop!”
He was running towards us to break us apart. I kept banging away at Bobby’s kidneys as I managed to get in one good head-butt before Morton got between us, and pulled me away. I felt the sweat running off my face and felt tears running out of my eyes. I knew I wasn’t crying. What I didn’t know was what had happened.
The place where I was—the zone I was in—began to leave me and reality came roaring back like a freight train going full speed. My hands were shaking, my heart was pumping so hard I could hear it inside my head and feel it inside my chest. It sounded like someone was pounding a drum inside my body. My knees were shaking so bad I worried that I might not be able to keep standing. I watched as Bobby stood rubbing his back, wiping blood off his mouth and chin, while nodding his head at me. He wasn’t smiling, but I could see there was no bitterness in his eyes. There was what looked like a hint of approval in them.
Morton put his arm over my shoulders again and said to the gang, “Okay. Van Buren here is now a member of the Dukes. That means he’s one of us. He gets the same protection as the rest of us. Anybody has a problem with that has to talk to me about it, okay?”
I watched as a few heads nodded. As the gang started to move away from the area, Morton added, “Cross, you and Bobby hang around for a minute. Billy, you too.”
I watched as the other gang members started to screw around as they left, laughing and throwing fake punches at each other. There was plenty of conversation going on but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Cross and Bobby were standing together and whispering. Billy came walking up and pretended to throw a punch at my stomach. I jerked my stomach away and looked at him. A look passed between us that told me he was feeling good about his protégé. He didn’t smile or say anything, but I knew he approved.
Morton still had his arm over my shoulders and called out to the other guys, “C’mere you guys.”
Cross and Bobby came over and stood across from Billy, Morton and me.
“Do either of you guys have any plans on jumping your new brother, Van Buren?” he asked with a voice that I found to be frightening, even though he was speaking quietly. “You seem to be a little pissed off, Cross. You got any plans like that, Jimmy?”
Bobby shook his head and looked at me without any animosity.
However, I could see the tension in Cross’s face and shoulders. He looked at Morton, then at me. I may never know what went through his mind right then, it might have been fear of Bob Morton—it might have been being resolved to my being in the gang, but slowly his face relaxed and his shoulders seemed to sag down.
“No, man,” he said, looking right at me. “I was pissed because you got me so fast and you’re just a kid. But you’re a good fighter. I still think I could take you, but you’re in the gang, so I won’t mess with you.”
I nodded at him.
Cross reached his hand over to where his t-shirt was rolled up with the cigarette pack in it, took out the pack, shook it so that a couple of the cigarettes popped out, and held the pack out to me.
I took one, and as he took one out for himself, I reached into my pocket for some matches, lit the match, and then cupped the flame as Cross leaned forward to light his cigarette.
Morton watched this with a sharp eye and said, “Okay, let’s go back to the Bowl.”
As a member of the Dukes, I was rapidly discovering the multitude of protections available to me. In one instance, one of the guy’s parents got drunk and kicked him out of his house. One of the other guys had him over for supper the same night and another guy sneaked him into his house so he had a place to sleep.
Another time a couple of the gang members were attacked by a small group of older kids from another neighborhood. That same night, ten of us went to the neighborhood where those guys hung out and settled the score.
The good thing for me was how it was looking more realistic for me to find a way to live away from home and be reasonably safe.
Even though a good portion of my focus was on developing plans to leave home permanently, my musical life also continued to move forward. After Mrs. Wolpert stopped coming to give me lessons, I continued to practice every day while my mother kept looking for another teacher. The only book I had to work from was the one Mrs. Wolpert had given me before she left—the 52 Studies for the Piano book. I had taught myself several of the pieces in the book, managed to keep up with all my scales, plus the Hanon and Czerny exercises. I could tell I was continuing to improve, primarily because I knew I wasn’t just a little kid playing notes any longer. I was beginning to hear and feel the music in the pieces. Some of the newer pieces I learned were written in minor keys and I became more aware of the emotions I would feel as I played them. This was especially true with pieces which sounded sad or romantic.
One day later in the summer, my mother came into the living room where I was practicing. She stood near the opening to the dining room nervously wiping her hands on her apron. “I think I’ve found a teacher looking for piano students. Her name is Miss Thomas and according to Mrs. Saunders, she is one of the best piano teachers in the entire city of Detroit.”
My mother rarely had discussions with me and I could see how she was chafing with the unnaturalness of having an actual conversation with me.
“Is Charlie going to take lessons from her?” I asked.
“They don’t know yet, because Miss Thomas doesn’t take a new student unless they do an audition with her first.”
I watched as my mother’s face became blotchier while her hands kept nervously fussing with either her apron or her skirt.
“I just finished talking on the phone with Mrs. Saunders and Charlie is going to audition next week. Mrs. Saunders asked Miss Thomas if she would be willing to have another student audition in addition to Charlie. She said Miss Thomas wanted to know more about you before she would say yes or no, and asked me to call her directly. Would you like me to do that?”
She must have been exceptionally nervous because she never asks me first—she normally just tells me what she’s going to do.
It had been several months since Mrs. Wolpert stopped coming and when my mother asked that question, I suddenly realized I didn’t know how to answer her. I thought about how much I was enjoying my practices when I didn’t have to worry about whether my teacher would like what I did. The only person I truly had to please was myself. There wasn’t any pressure, and I liked that. However, as I looked at my mother and saw her anxiety, I began thinking about whether I would get in trouble if I said no. I realized I wasn’t going to be able to make up my mind for sure, so I just nodded my head and turned back to continue my practice. Before I turned away, I could see a brief smile form on my mother’s face as she turned to go back into the dining room. I could hear her dialing the phone as I started to play.
Later that same day my mother came into my room and said, “Miss Thomas will give you an audition.” She looked at a note in her hand. “She said you should learn the Prelude and Fugue Number 1 from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavichord. The audition will be next month. I’ll be going downtown tomorrow and I’ll go the music store and get the music so you can start practicing.”
There were a couple of little Bach pieces in the 52 Studies book I had fun learning, but the Prelude and Fugue were an entirely different world for me.
I was enthralled with this music. The Prelude was beautiful. I learned later that Gounod used this Prelude when he wrote the famous Ave Maria. The Fugue was a lot harder to learn, but it was also beautiful.
Right after I got the music and started learning the notes, I went over to Charlie Saunder’s house to see what he was learning. Miss Thomas had asked him to play a Mozart piece, but his audition would not be on the same day as mine. Charlie’s mother, who was an excellent pianist herself, although she readily admitted she didn’t have the patience to be a teacher, took the time to show me how to find the subject in the Fugue.
“Roland, have you ever seen music for a choir at church, where the voices are written on separate lines, the soprano line, the alto line, the tenor and the bass?” she asked.
Although I had only seen choir music when I had tried to play some of it, I said, “Yes, the soprano is on top and it’s usually the melody, right?”
“That’s right. The only difference is with piano fugues, although they also have the different voices, the melody, or the subject, moves around the voices. It doesn’t stay in just the soprano. The trick in playing a fugue is the pianist has to use his fingers to bring out the subject, no matter which voice has it.”
Mrs. Saunders sat down at her piano and played the subject of the fugue I was learning.
“You have to bring the subject out as the predominant part regardless of which voice it’s in,” she explained. “The subject might be in the upper notes of the right hand, in the lower notes of the same hand, or in the upper or lower notes of the left hand. The tricky part is all your fingers are going to be playing other notes at the same time as the subject. You have to make sure the listener can hear the subject over the other notes. This means the fingers that are playing the subject have to be working harder than the fingers playing the other notes. Do you understand?”
She played the first part of the fugue and explained what was happening as she played. Even though there were a lot of notes being played at once, I could hear the subject moving around to the different voices.
When I got home and started to practice the fugue, I learned right away how challenging it would be. After a couple of hours I was starting to get the hang of it. It was fun and exciting to be playing more difficult music.
========================================
The day of the audition with Miss Thomas finally arrived. Although I had enjoyed learning the Bach pieces, the idea of having a teacher again was still bothering me a great deal. I liked learning music on my own and loved the sense of freedom which came with not having to worry about a teacher’s approval.
My mother made me wear my Sunday suit to the audition. I hated wearing it. I looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy in it. I would much rather be wearing peg pants, loose shirts and the State Fair Dukes black jacket.
About a week after I had the two fights and was a member of the Dukes, Billy took me downtown and showed me how to panhandle. We went downtown on three different afternoons. We both wore our worst looking overalls, torn old shirts, made sure we had dirty hands and faces, then walked along Woodward Avenue where the big stores were located. We walked back and forth in front of the J. L. Hudson Company’s front entrances and asked people going in and out of the store if they could loan us ten cents for some food.
Over the course of the three days, I managed to accumulate almost twelve dollars in nickels, dimes and quarters. I even got a couple of people to give me dollar bills. We took the money, went to another store in the area, and bought my first pair of peg pants, a green shirt, a black jacket and a pair of square-toed shoes—the stompers. I was a couple of dollars short, but Billy loaned me the money. The mother of one of the Duchesses would sew on the letters, “S. F. D.” and the emblem of the skull and crossbones.
I didn’t dare keep those clothes at home, so I stashed them at Freddie Shaw’s house. His parents didn’t seem to have a problem with his being in the gang. Every morning on my way to school I would stop at Freddie’s house and change into my gang clothes.
Not only did I have to wear my Sunday suit for the audition, I had to take two buses to get to Miss Thomas’ house on the west side of Detroit. I felt like some little sissy wearing the suit and was ready to start a fight with anyone who even looked at me. I just kept my head down and avoided making eye contact with the other passengers on the buses. I found I began to do something else I had never done before—I began to play the Bach pieces in my mind. I hadn’t memorized them completely at that point, but I was still able to hear them in my head and play the notes with my fingers on the top of my legs as I sat on the bus.
After almost an hour of travel, I arrived at the corner where I had to get off the bus. It would be a walk of several more blocks to get to her street. When I arrived at her street, I looked at the sheet of paper where my mother had written the address, and after reading the number of the first house on the block I knew her house would be further down the street.
The neighborhood was different from any others I had seen. There were many mature trees along the street. The houses were huge and had large, perfectly groomed front lawns. There were beautiful hedges bordering the lawns in front of almost every house. Almost all of the houses were built with brick, and from what I could see walking down the street, the backyards were expansive with garages that had two, sometimes three doors. The street was much wider than the streets around my house. There was a large grassy boulevard area down the middle of it filled with trees and shrubs. I didn’t see any kids around which was very different from the neighborhoods around my house. There were always noisy kids on bikes and scooters, or playing ball in the streets. This street was so quiet it was almost eerie.
About three blocks further on I came to her house. It was a two-story brick house with a porch running all along the front. There was an iron gate by the sidewalk and hedges all around the lawn. Colorful flowers in pots were hanging from above the railings around the front porch. There were flowers along the walkway leading to the porch. It was a covered porch and there were cushioned rocking chairs, a few straight chairs, a reclining chair, small tables and a porch swing over to one side of the porch. The windows on the porch went from just above the floor to the ceiling.
I knocked on the door. I waited a couple of minutes but no one answered. I looked for a doorbell, but there wasn’t one. I looked up and saw that there was a brass knocker shaped like a horse’s head on the door. I picked up the handle of the knocker and rapped it a few times.
The door opened and a well-dressed, short, stout, elderly, gray-haired woman stood looking at me. Her eyes moved quickly up and down as though wondering what this boy in a fancy suit was doing on her front porch.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“I’m here for my audition with Miss Thomas,” I answered.
“Oh,” she said, “she’s in the studio around in back. Just follow the walkway next to the house. You’ll see the garage. Go past the garage. Her studio is around in back. You can’t miss it.” She nodded to me and shut the door.
As I walked alongside the house and looked towards the backyard, I saw a large stone building which I presumed was the garage. I had never seen a garage like this one. It was a two-story building with three large doors in the front. One of the doors was open, but there was no vehicle in the bay. The building was longer than I expected for a garage. Of course, the garages I was used to seeing were tiny frame structures just big enough for a car and not much else. This garage was larger than my own home. The walkway alongside the garage was made out of slabs of slate and there were flowers and hedges along the edges. The backyard was spectacular. It was huge. There were large trees all along the borders of the yard, with hedges, flowerbeds, and beautifully manicured lawn areas with wooden and cement benches scattered about. Some of the gardens had cement statuary in among the colorful flowers.
As I followed the path to the back of the garage, I began to hear amazing piano music coming from inside. I didn’t know what the music was, but the playing was something beyond anything I had ever heard before, even on the radio. It sounded dramatic, powerful and romantic all at the same time. I rounded the corner of the garage and stood for a moment listening to the piano. There were two large open windows on either side of a red-painted center door. As I passed the first window, I could see a woman seated at a grand piano looking intense as she played. I knocked on the door and the music stopped.
The door opened and a tall, slim, beautiful, dark-skinned woman wearing a long flowing dress stood smiling at me.
She reached out her hand to me. “Hello, you must be Roland.”
For a moment, I was speechless. The woman was strikingly beautiful. The first thought that ran through my mind was how she reminded me of a pin-up picture one of the guys at the Sugar Bowl had tacked up on the wall above the booths. I don’t know who was in that picture, but Miss Thomas bore an interesting resemblance to whoever it was. She spoke with the softest, smoothest voice I had ever heard. I almost missed her words because of a slight, lilting accent. Her skin was the color of coffee with cream in it. Her face looked like it had been chiseled out of a precious stone. Her eyes were a dark brownish-green that reminded me of a jade-colored plate that I saw in the china-cupboard at my grandmother’s house. Her brightly colored flower-patterned dress was short-sleeved and one of her long, light-brown, graceful arms was still reaching towards me to shake my hand. I’m sure my mouth was hanging open as I gazed at the woman. A thought of Mrs. Wolpert flashed through my mind and I felt a sudden, but certain joy that she was no longer my teacher.
I took her extended hand and shook it. “Y-yes, Ma’am. I’m h-here for my audition. A-are you M-miss Thomas?” I had never stuttered before in my life.
Her smile grew larger as she held my hand and drew me through the door into the room. She gestured toward a straight chair next to a side window on my right. “It’s very nice to meet you, Roland. Please come in and have a seat while we talk for a couple of minutes.”
I set my music on one of the piano benches and went to the chair.
The room was large and there were two baby-grand pianos sitting side-by-side in the middle of the room that were angled, so when you were at the piano, you could see out of the windows into the backyard.
There was a couch on the wall to my left, a desk and chair next to the chair where I was sitting, several plants in the windows and a bouquet of flowers on a small table next to the couch. There were piano lamps on each of the pianos, as well as lamps on the desk, table and next to the couch. A larger table and chairs were near the back wall of the room. There was a closed door at the back of the room as well.
Miss Thomas pulled the chair out by her desk, sat down,and asked, “Did you have any trouble getting here, Roland?”
“No, Ma’am. I had to take two buses, but it wasn’t hard to find. What was the music you were playing when I came back here?” I blurted. “That was so beautiful.”
She leaned forward. The look on her face made me feel as though she was happy that I asked. “Thank you. That was by Johannes Brahms. It’s called Rhapsody in g. What did you like about it?”
I could barely keep my eyes on her face. I felt so shy all of a sudden. “I liked the way it made me feel. It made me feel excited, happy and sad all at the same time.”
Miss Thomas leaned back in her chair with a pleased smile. “Good for you! Perhaps that’s precisely what Mr. Brahms had in mind when he wrote it. I know that when I play it I feel the same way. Not only does it make me feel excited in a good way, I also feel a little sadness sometimes too. It’s also an invigorating piece to play. I’m so pleased to hear someone your age talk about music making you feel something. I think your mother said you were ten years old, is that right?”
(NOTE: Here’s a video of the Brahms Rhapsody in G minor op. 79 no. 2, being played by Citlalli Guevara. This is what Miss Thomas was playing as I walked up to the studio.)
I don’t think Miss Thomas had any inclination as to how excited I was to not only be hearing someone praise something I said or felt, but also how entranced I was by her voice and her accent. When she spoke her accent made me think of someone singing—there was so much more variation in the tones than I was used to hearing. Her voice was sweet and husky at the same time. It made me think of melted butter for some reason. My levels of curiosity were growing rapidly. I wanted to know everything about her.
“Yes, Ma’am, I was ten in January.”
Miss Thomas took a small notepad from the top of her desk and wrote something in it.
“When did you start to learn the piano?”
“I think I was either five or six years old.”
She again wrote on her pad and followed with, “Did you have a piano teacher, or did you learn from one of your parents?”
“I started with my mother for about a year. She’s a church organist.
After that, I had a teacher, Mrs. Wolpert, but she got arrested about a year ago because she was a German. I started teaching myself after that.”
After hearing about Mrs. Wolpert being arrested, Miss Thomas’ expression changed dramatically. She looked shocked, surprised, sad and perhaps a bit angry. I got the feeling that she was going to say something more about that, but after a moment, Miss Thomas smiled and asked, “Did you bring any of the music that you were learning on your own?”
I picked up the 52 Pieces book from the piano bench and stood by her side at the desk. I showed her some of the pieces I had learned and she nodded her head and said, “Mm-hmm” a few times as she looked at them. She looked at me and smiled as she handed me back the book. “I think I asked you to prepare a Bach Prelude and Fugue for today. Are you ready to play them for me?”
I nodded.
Miss Thomas pointed to the piano nearest the front of the room. “Good. Why don’t you sit at this piano and warm up with some scales or exercises while I run upstairs for a minute, alright?”
It took me more than a couple of minutes to get used to the touch on her piano. The keys felt so different under my fingers. The piano at home, and the one at school, were older upright-type pianos with an easy action. Miss Thomas’ piano took more strength in my fingers to push down the keys. Once I got used to the action I began to enjoy the beautiful tone quality of the piano. As I played some scales, the room seemed to fill with a full sound I found hard to believe was being made by me.
Miss Thomas came back into the room, stood behind me and listened for a moment. “That sounds good, Roland. I like how evenly you play your scales. That’s excellent. Are your fingers warmed up enough to play the Bach?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
She picked up the chair by her desk and brought it over to the piano. “Good, I’d like you to play the Prelude first, and then go right on and play the Fugue. I know you haven’t had enough time to memorize them, so I’ll sit here and turn the pages for you.”
(Here’s a video of the Bach Prelude in C No. 1 from The Well-Tempered Clavichord)
(And here’s another video of the Bach Fugue. See if you can figure out the subject of the Fugue as it’s repeated…)
The pieces went well. I didn’t make any mistakes and even though I thought I’d be nervous, the sound of the music on her piano allowed me to forget this was an audition. I found I was hearing the music differently than I had during the time I practiced these pieces at home.
Miss Thomas was looking at me and smiling openly. Her eyes were glittering with what I hoped was approval as she nodded her head. “That was lovely, Roland—well done. You brought out the fugue subject clearly. How did you know to do that?”
I explained how Charlie Saunder’s mother had told me about it.
“Let’s try something,” she said as she moved the desk chair back and sat at the other piano. “You play the Prelude again and I’ll play something along with you on this piano. Let yourself hear how the two pieces go together and play the piece the way it makes you feel. You may start whenever you’re ready.”
As I played the Bach Prelude, Miss Thomas played the Ave Maria that was written by Charles Gounod. As we played together, the music began to fill me and I found I was making subtle changes to the dynamics of the Prelude to match the mood of her Ave Maria. The room filled with the sound of our playing. I didn’t have to look at the music, in fact my eyes were closed some of the time. When we were done, I felt completely drained. I never realized I could be playing something so beautiful. At that moment, I hoped she wouldn’t ask me a question because I wanted to start crying.
I looked over to the other piano. Miss Thomas was sitting with her hands in her lap and her eyes were closed. After a moment, she opened her eyes, looked at me and began to smile. “Thank you, Roland, that was beautifully done. I am delighted with how you changed your interpretation of the piece to match what I was playing. You did that perfectly.”
She stood and walked over to her desk and picked up a small book and leafed through some pages. “Roland, I would be pleased to accept you as one of my students. I only teach ten students and you would be my youngest. Would you be willing to practice for one hour every day and come here for a one-hour lesson once a week?”
“I already practice for two hours every day,” I replied boastfully.
Miss Thomas laughed, then asked for my home phone number, explaining that she would have to call my mother and make the arrangements for which day and time, and to get me started on some new music.
I felt the same sense of excitement that I would feel when I rode my bike away from the house each time I ran away. My feelings of trepidation over having a piano teacher had vanished. I did pause for a moment as I pondered what I would do about piano lessons when I ran away again. I immediately put those thoughts away because I knew I wouldn’t be trying again until at least the next summer. I could worry about it later. At that moment I could only focus on how fascinated I was with Miss Thomas, how much I was looking forward to having her teach me, and how I was already striving to do the work necessary to please her.
(Here’s another video of the Gounod Ave Maria as it is played with the Bach Prelude. This is an arrangement for solo piano.)