VII
Eight-forty. They’re not back. I’m in luck. Heart still beating like the Bonsal Blues’ snare drum. I had seen a lot, too much, and I needed to sort it all out, because something was not right. Did I really see what I remembered seeing in the barber shop window? The Hessian buttons. My lucky button. They’re all there, in my pocket. That smoky image from the clock tower. I looked up the street to see if anyone’s shadow appeared. Nothing. I should have never gone to the tower with Doolan. I wished I had never found my lucky coin, button, whatever it is. Why don’t I throw them all away and forget it ever happened?
I turned the TV back on. Bottom of the ninth and the Phillies down 9-4. The post-game show came on and it was nothing more than a blur and buzz of jabbering. I can give you almost any National Leaguer’s batting average, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t have the answer to this puzzle.
Back in the kitchen I got another glass of cold water as the Blues band wound down for the night with "Stars and Stripes Forever." I like that song. Who was that old man with no head? I finished my water and walked back to the porch. Something was on TV, but it was just noise and pictures.
The man on Lupton Street, I knew he was real. I’d seen him around town. He talked about Red Bank Battlefield. I knew the place, in the little town called National Park, right by the river. My parents took me and my friends there all the time when we were little. We ran up and down the trenches and climbed into the gated memorial we called the "monkey cage." We climbed on the cannon and pretended to fire it at the ships in the river. Red Bank. R Bank. Of course.
My parents’ car pulled into the driveway, and a minute or two later I heard the back screen door slam shut. "Hello, you home?" Dad called. I walked into the kitchen.
"Have fun?" I asked as Mom put a couple of paper bags on the counter.
"You’re a drip of sweat," she said. "Why don’t you rinse off your face?"
Dad chimed in before I could get to the sink to rinse off. "So they lost again, huh, what was it, 9-4?"
"Yeah. 9-4."
"So what’s Callison hitting?"
I stuck my face under the tap and let cool water run down my cheeks and over my forehead."
"Not there!" Mom scolded. "I meant the bathroom."
"I think about .290. Not quite .300" I answered Dad.
"Ugh!" said Mom. "My clean sink."
"Watch the whole game? Did they leave men on base?" Dad asked.
"Pretty much. A few."
There was a brief lull while I hand-toweled my face. It felt a little cooler, but only for a moment.
"Did you buy anything at Sears?" I asked, mainly to be polite.
"Hottest damn night of the year, and what did we look at, ovens. I think you get the best deals this time of the year, you know?" Dad was always looking for a deal. "Couldn’t make up our mind though. It’s good to keep ‘em guessing."
Another lull while Dad popped open a beer. I let the question blurt out.
"Dad, didn’t you take German when you were in high school?"
"Got a B, son. You thinking of taking it?"
"Maybe. Dad, do you know what S-W-E-I means?"
"You mean the word, swei? Why sure, two. It’s the number two. You know, eins, swei, drei, fiere, funf, sechs, seben ... "
Two, I thought. R Bank 2 Crown Pt.
"Why do you ask?" he said as he sipped his beer.
"Oh, just something I heard on TV or something." It was a lie, but just a little one. "I’m kind of tired tonight, mind if I go to bed?"
"No, go right ahead. Don’t forget, trash day’s tomorrow."
"Sure. Night."
I walked up the stairs slowly, like I was tired, but I know I couldn’t go right to sleep. The temperature rose with each ascending step to my room, where it must’ve been 80. Not a breeze or even a wisp of air through the windows, which had been propped open with boards since the night the counterweights gave way. I flopped on my bed and thought.
Two, two, two, it keeps popping up everywhere, I thought. My lucky coin, which ended up twice in my hands. The town clock, yeah I knew we were up there at two in the afternoon, but it could have gotten jammed up 15 minutes later, or 10 minutes, or even a minute. Why did it happen to happen at exactly two? And the railroad signal, showing two lights when it’s usually three? Those railroad lights, I think they spook me the most. Like someone’s eyes. What are they trying to tell me?
The old man sent me to Soldier’s Field, so I went, and then that shadow in the barber shop, I know it was him, he says Red Bank 2, what was it, Crown Pt.
Clothes still on, I fell asleep, but not soundly. The air was still muggy and heavy when I woke up. I turned my head toward my clock radio, and the dial showed -- of course -- 2 a.m. I smiled. No coincidences here. I’ll go crazy if I don’t find out what’s going on.
The day I lost my lucky coin in the clock tower, Doolan gave me a piece of paper, the one had taken from the clock tower. Where is it?
I crept off my bed slowly so I wouldn’t wake my parents and tiptoed to my bureau. Silently, I pulled open the second drawer, thinking I must’ve stuffed the paper under my shirts. I ran my hand back and forth. Nothing. I heard Dad snore. That was good; it masks any sound I might make.
I quietly closed the drawer and, just as slowly, opened the third. My searching fingers found the paper, and I slid it out. Must be it. I tiptoed over to my desk, carrying it like it was a vial of nitroglycerin, and set it down, listening for a snoring sound from my parents’ room. I was lucky, the buzz saw was still at it. I flipped on the lamp, coughing at the same time to mask the sound.
The paper looked like it had been torn from an old notebook. It was yellowed, splattered with oil and covered with script from a fountain pen. Most of the words made no sense because the ink had run and smeared many, if not most, of the words.
I stared at the letters, five maybe 10 minutes. Hoping to cipher a clue of what the scrap said, I held it up to the light. All of the answer I could have wanted came only too soon: Under the ink, oil stains and dirt were watermarks forming the outline of two human skulls, each cocked slightly sideways, each bearing a menacing grin that made my stomach turn. The eyes seemed to peer at me from the page as the bony images around them became more pronounced. I put the paper back down on the desk and promised myself I would look at it tomorrow, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining this. I slid a magazine on top of it, flipped off the lamp and stumbled to the bathroom to get a drink of water before going back to bed.
As I lay there, the skull images with their peering eyes seemed etched inside my eyelids. I felt my knees knocking and my hands shaking. Desperate to chase away the sight, I turned my thoughts to baseball, mentally listing, team by team, player by player, batting averages and ERAs. The ploy worked until dawn encroached and, totally exhausted, I fell asleep.
