In the Castle of the Flynns

We repeated overheard fragments of adult conversation, embellished them, improved them, stretched them to their proper size and gave them new form: fights became brawls, muggings became murders. A purse snatching became robbery at gunpoint. None of us had yet been allowed to go into the Freak House, and so it too became fodder for our imaginations: the “tallest man in the world” became ten feet tall, the fat lady had to be rolled into the park, the fire-eater farted flames. Matt said there was a child inside who was actually half-wolf, and my own contribution was the two-headed man, whom I claimed to have seen any number of times. I said he looked like Buster Crabbe, on both of his faces.

And on the hottest nights it seemed as if my entire world had conspired to show up at Riverview. I entered with my family and promptly ran into friends, neighbors, cousins, other uncles and aunts, schoolmates. Everyone had ride coupons they didn’t need: I had extras of the Ferris Wheel and the neighbors up the street always seemed to have extra coupons for the Greyhound or the Comet, and I never tired of riding them. But more than the free coupons, I learned to watch the crowd for familiar faces, to wait for the old creaking park to pull its little surprises on me.

To a child obsessed with his place in the world, Riverview sent me constant reminders that in fact I’d inherited a great tangle of family that could pop up anywhere, and that my neighborhood literally had no end. One night my uncles took me and I was delighted to see Grandma Dorsey and Aunt Ellen and her children; another time I was standing in line waiting to get on the Bobs when someone slapped me on the back of my head. I spun around to find my cousin Matt grinning at me.

On still another evening, an unearthly shadow seemed to fall upon me, only me of all the people standing in line for the most nightmarish coaster of them all, the Bobs: I turned to find my Aunt Teresa, now Sister Fidelity, beaming down at me. I was intimidated by the good sister, blood ties or no, not only by her billowy habit but by her lovely face as well, and I didn’t want any of the other kids to see me talking to a nun. I smiled and wished that I had a hole I could crawl into, or that her new assignment among the poor on the West Side could begin immediately. A few feet back, I could see two of my schoolmates, eyeballs bulging, their schoolboy assumption being that I had done something wrong and that a nun had come all the way to Riverview to bring me to justice. She asked me how my summer was going and then admitted that she didn’t like to ride a roller coaster by herself.

“If I die,” she said, “no one will be able to tell Grandma Dorsey.” I knew I would never die on a roller coaster, but I had no such confidence in the constitution of a nun, and so I allowed her to ride with me. We spent the minute-or-so of terror howling and laughing at one another. On the second hill I thought she’d lose her habit but it didn’t budge. After that, we went on the Tilt-O-Whirl and the Ferris Wheel and became fast friends.

Poised in the topmost car as the great Ferris Wheel took on a fresh load of passengers, nothing around us but a sky bleeding purple, we chatted, this nun just back from the Lord’s Missions in Guatemala and I, and for an adult she made incredible sense.

“This is my favorite place in the whole park, Danny, the top of the Ferris Wheel. From here you can see your whole life spread out down there. I can see where you live, and I can almost see my mother’s house over on Evergreen, and I can see the houses of all the people for miles.”

I agreed with her that this was a wonderful place, and she nodded happily, then surprised me with her next question.

“Do they make you feel like an oddball?”

“Who?” I asked but I knew who.

“Your family—well, mine, too. Our families, then. Do they make you feel a little strange?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I was unsure how to answer: she was an adult, after all, and Grandma Flynn had once said she was the smartest one on either side of the family, though the men had been unwilling to go so far.

“They make me feel like one of those poor souls in the freak show,” she said.

“Are they poor souls? Will they not go to heaven?”

She laughed. “Of course they will. Maybe sooner than a lot of us. Anyhow, we’re different from the rest of the family, you and I. I’m different because I became something … something not so strange but people don’t understand why a girl does it, and so they’ll never again treat me like a normal person. I’m not a member of the family anymore, I’m a nun. My first Christmas back home after taking my vows, my own brother Gerald was calling me ‘Sister’ like I’m some character out of the Lives of the Saints. I could have brained him.”

I blinked here and gave myself away.

“You want to call me that too, don’t you? When I’m home with my family, I’m Teresa. Aunt Teresa to you.”

“What does Uncle Gerald call you now?”

“Nothing. He’s afraid to call me ‘Teresa’ and he knows I’ll do him an injury if he calls me ‘Sister’ again. He always was a little slow,” she said under her breath, but I heard her anyway.

“And you’re different because they can’t quite bring themselves to treat you like any other small boy. You’re a special problem for them, and they’re going to treat you like one. Just don’t take it to heart. Don’t think you’re a special problem. None of it is anyone’s fault, that’s the thing to remember.” I must have shown some reaction to this mention of fault, for she turned toward me, but she had misunderstood. “They all … they all mean well. You’re a lucky boy to have so many people love you. Just don’t let them drive you crazy.”

“I won’t.” We’d begun our slow descent now, and she was quiet for a moment. “Are they nice? The people there?”

“The people? In Guatemala, you mean? Oh, sure, they are, they’re grand. You’d like them—they’re like the Irish.” This seemed to strike her as a fine joke, and she put her head back and laughed, and I found myself chuckling along with her.

When the ride was finished, she patted me on the head and asked after Grandma Flynn.

“She’s fine,” I said without thinking.

“Oh, Lord, no, I’m sure she’s not fine. She’s lost her daughter, and they were great friends, your mother and Mrs. Flynn, great friends. Be very good for her.”

“I will.”

She nodded, then looked away in distraction, and I remembered that she had lost a brother. After a moment she fished a half-dollar out of some secret compartment in her habit.

“You’re a nice boy, Danny. I enjoyed our rides together.”

“Me, too, Sis … Aunt Teresa.”

“Well done. Here.” She handed me the fifty-cent piece, made a brisk turn on her heel, and walked off, tall and handsome and self-assured, ignoring the many curious faces that took a moment to gawk at her. My Uncle Tom had once remarked with a rueful note that it was “too bad that one became a nun.” Uncle Mike had simply said, “Yeah, what a waste,” and though I didn’t understand what either of them meant, I knew I liked her, too.

In Riverview I entered a tiny porthole into the adult world. I was a watcher of people, I studied strangers the way I eavesdropped on my uncles, and the rickety old park rewarded me with dark glimpses into the behavior of the species. I saw fights there between older boys and once between two very drunken men outside the beer garden. They were both fat, both bleeding from scalp cuts that exaggerated their injuries and made the scene wonderfully lurid. The police came rushing over from the little police station inside the park and collared them both. As they pulled the men away, someone clapped, whether for the action of the police or the quality of the fisticuffs, I wasn’t sure.

There were other tensions in the park. I always stopped to watch at the place where you tried to make a man in a cage fall into a tub of water by hitting a target with a thrown ball. The men within the little cage were usually black, the ones outside were white, sometimes cocky young ones with good aim, but usually older men, sweating, grunting drunks. The black men sat on little perches like dark-skinned birds and laughed at the efforts of their tormentors. The more the men threw and missed, the angrier they became, muttering threats and racial epithets at the black men, who responded with loud doubts about the white men’s manhood. Once as I watched this little two-headed rite of racist hostility, my grandmother grabbed my arm and yanked me away. Behind me I heard my uncles chuckling at the scene, then a loud shout as one of the black men went into the drink.

On a humid night toward the end of that first summer, I was patrolling with my cousin Matt when we came upon a scene that struck me as something from a movie. Two groups of young men had come upon one another, four or five on a side. One group included my uncles, Tom and Mike, and a pair of their friends. The other group was led by Philly Clark. Perhaps someone had put a shoulder into someone else in the crowded midway, perhaps there had been a choice remark tossed over a shoulder. Something had already happened, I couldn’t tell what, but it was clear from the way the men had formed a pair of facing lines, and from the way they all watched Philly and my Uncle Tom, that these young men all expected trouble.

We moved closer ’til we could see the angry faces—some were angry, though a tall thin guy behind Philly looked nervous, and my Uncle Mike simply looked like a man who has found himself in an unpleasant situation out of his control. In truth these two groups had faced each other before over other matters. From opposite ends of the neighborhood, they viewed each other as rivals, for jobs, for girls, for status. Matters usually crested during the summer, for both groups fielded baseball teams that faced each other in the various men’s leagues in the parks. There had been individual fights, and at least one group effort.

I had heard Philly Clark’s name in my grandmother’s house. My uncles talked about him and my grandmother had called him a “hooligan.” From what little I’d been given, I pieced together that there was trouble between Philly and Uncle Tom, part but not all of it over a girl. At that time, I knew no more about her. More than this, they detested each other. Philly was tall and handsome, had been a star athlete at Lane Tech and, it was said, was well-connected, and not only because his father was a precinct captain.

Now, he stood just a couple of feet from my uncle, head thrust forward belligerently. He was speaking to Tom, pointing to emphasize his words, and his finger seemed to come within touching distance of my uncle’s face. Tom stood back on his heels and looked up at him—he was four or five inches shorter than Philly. He had an oddly satisfied look on his face, as though the whole scene was amusing him. If it was, he was alone in his amusement.

“Oh, boy,” I heard Matt say. “They’re gonna fight!” We moved closer so that I could make out some of Philly’s words.

“I stay away from what’s yours, you keep away from what’s mine, you got that?”When my uncle said nothing, Philly poked him in the chest with the finger. “You got that?”

Tom ignored the finger. “How can she be yours if she’s with me? Answer me that, Philly.”

“She ain’t gonna be with you, not ever, not if you want to live a long time. You got that?” Philly jabbed him again with the finger, and I thought he might throw a punch. My uncle just took a half-step back and looked at Philly’s hand.

“You tired of that finger?” Tom asked. He sounded very calm. “You tired of that nice shirt, those slacks, those fancy shoes?”

“Oh, tough guy, I’m terrified,” Philly said with a mirthless smile.

“No, you’re the tough guy, everybody shits green ink when you walk by, but if you don’t step aside and let me pass, I’ll give you enough trouble to last you for a while.”

“I can take you, Flynn.”

“What’re you, sixteen, Philly? You still think the girls like a guy who can knock somebody around. Now get out of my way or you’re gonna wish you had.”

A long moment passed as Philly considered whether to take things up a notch. People can smell a street fight coming, and a small crowd had formed around my uncles and the other men.

“I kicked your ass before, Flynn,” Philly said so that he could be heard over the park noises.

“Long time ago. Ancient history, kid stuff. And you never wanted to fight me in a ring.” Tom grinned at him. “Tony Zale gave Graziano a rematch, Philly.”

“Oh, you’ll get a rematch all right,” Philly said, but he was moving away, giving Tom a path.

My uncle walked straight ahead, looking neither left nor right, and his group followed him.

“Just remember what I said, Flynn,” Philly said to my uncle’s departing back. Then he and the others broke into a little circle, chattering all at once. One of them was patting Philly on the back, but I could see Philly Clark’s eyes, and I saw that the big handsome man in the good clothes had lost face.

Later that night as we walked the two blocks to my grandparents’ house, my uncles muttered to one another about the incident and I kept a respectful silence. Uncle Mike was urging Tom to be cautious.

“Watch your back door with that guy,” I heard him say.

Tom’s voice was so low I almost missed his answer. “I ain’t worried about Philly. Jesus, Mike, I was overseas, people tried to kill me over there, for Christ’s sake. What’s that punk gonna do to me?”

“Just be careful, is all I’m telling you.”

“I got no interest in a beef with Philly Clark. I couldn’t care less if I can take him or he puts my lights out. I just wanta take his girl away.”

Uncle Mike growled in irritation and seemed to give up. I thought that made it my turn, so just as we reached our house, I tossed in my two cents’ worth.

“Are you gonna have a fight with that guy, Uncle Tom?”

They both spun around and Uncle Mike looked irritated.

“You’re not supposed to listen to our conversations,” he said, but Uncle Tom looked amused.

“How’s he supposed to do that, huh? We’re both jawin’ away like he’s not here. He supposed to put gumballs in his ears, or what?”

He paused at the broken gate, hands in his pockets, looking calm and confident. “No. I don’t fight with street trash no more, I’m retired, like Joe Louis. That guy gives me any lip, I’ll sic you and your cousin Matt on him.” He shot a quick grin at me and then led me into the house. My grandmother, after her perfunctory mutterings about how late they’d kept me out, put me into bed. I was exhilarated by what I had seen, and bothered by it as well, with its hint of potential danger for yet another of my loved ones, and the one I already prized most. I went to sleep that night daydreaming about a heroic encounter between my uncle and Philly Clark, and in my version, the big man in the fancy clothes took a fearful drubbing from my uncle to the cheers of hundreds of onlookers.

A later version, edited and refined many times, had my uncle lying temporarily stunned on the ground as I administered an incredible beating to his assailant.

Uncle, Hero, and Film Critic

I was baffled that my uncle had an enemy, that any adult would harbor hostile feelings for him. The moment that Tom had broken the news to me about my parents, he had moved into the center of my universe. This was no dramatic shift in my feelings: he’d long occupied a spot just behind my parents in my pantheon of adult heroes. It was a natural spot for him: my father had been a quiet, reserved man uncomfortable with noise and childish craziness. My father worked two jobs and had little time of his own, but Tom had been a frequent visitor to our house. Tom was outgoing and charming, and what was more amazing than anything else, he seemed to find me good company. “He’s found another little boy to play with,” my Aunt Anne kidded. Early on, before I understood the concepts of family and relatives, I was fond of telling anyone who would listen that my uncle was “my special friend.”

None of this changed when I moved into my grandparents’ home. I looked forward to the moment when Tom returned from work, and though he never showed irritation with me, I know that I followed him through the house like a stray dog, assaulted him with my questions and news of my day, and hung on him like a second skin.

He worked at the Borden Dairy in what was always called “The Old Neighborhood,” over near Grandma Dorsey’s flat. Once Grandpa Flynn took me to visit him at work and he gave me little bottles of chocolate and strawberry milk. In the evenings he went out with his friends or with my grandfather, sometimes to watch a fight or a ballgame at one of the countless taverns in the neighborhood—there seemed to be one on every corner, adults apparently drank their way through life—and at other times I knew he was going out, inexplicably, with girls.

His personal routine and habits fascinated me: he listened to music a great deal, sang when he was working on a task around Grandma’s house or drying the dishes for my grandmother, and at times I caught him talking to the singers on Grandma’s yellow radio: “Sing it, Frank, show ’em how it’s done,” he’d say to Sinatra. “Ah, you’re beautiful, Peggy,” I heard him tell Peggy Lee, and then he caught me watching from the next room, and grinned. “She gives me fever, kid,” he told me, and I was embarrassed. And when Rosemary Clooney invited him to “Come on to My House,” he’d laugh. “Oh, I’ll come to your house, all right, Rosie.”

Sometimes at night my grandparents would turn on the big GE in the living room and listen to the Barn Dance or Tennessee Ernie. “You’re turning into a couple of old hillbillies,” he’d tell them, laughing, but he liked the fiddle music and the sad songs, and after my many hours listening to Grandpa’s Irish music, his songs of lost loves and country, I could hear the similarities and thought it was all Irish music. Tom even sang along with some of these country singers. He’d get serious when the girl singers sang their sad stories: “I’d take care of you, Honey,” he’d say.

I felt sorry for the sad girls, I wished they could meet my uncle. He didn’t have anyone special that I could see, and after the incident at Riverview I shared Uncle Mike’s hope that Tom would forget about the unnamed girl I’d heard them talking about. Whoever she was, she meant trouble for him, one way or the other.

Once I saw him break into a jitterbug to Grandma’s big yellow kitchen radio. They’d told me about his dancing—Aunt Anne told me he was the best dancer in the neighborhood. “Oh, he’s grand,” Grandma agreed. The dancing part made me uneasy. It was one thing to sing in the kitchen, but I wasn’t sure a boy was supposed to like dancing, let alone excel at it. But it was fascinating to watch him and, in the end, I decided that if Uncle Tom liked it, there had to be something in it. I tried it myself once, alone in the kitchen with the music, and fell over one of the kitchen chairs. Grateful that I’d had no audience, I decided it wasn’t for me.

It was also through his example that I learned the rewards of reading in the bathroom. He was fond of reading in the bathtub—no, that doesn’t come close to it: he was unable to get into the tub without a paper or magazine. Once when my grandmother upbraided him for the time he took in the tub—“You’ll get pneumonia,” was one of her arguments, “You’ll get your death of cold,” and, “It’s bad for your skin to soak so long in warm water,” were others—I heard him play his black ace: he told her that this was the result of Korea.

“I sat up there on that hill, Ma, and I thought about getting out of there like anybody else, and I thought about you, Ma, and I wanted to be warm and clean someplace, I wanted to be home. But the thing I kept thinking about was a hot bath. A hot bath. And I promised myself I’d never hurry through one again—just in case … you know, in case I get sent back to Korea.”

“Oh, God forbid!” she muttered, but she left him alone after that.

Also—and predictably—he read on the toilet. I learned this one morning on his day off, the morning that was to keep him forever associated in my mind with blood. I was in the living room rifling through my box of lead soldiers trying to find enough men with heads to make a squad and he emerged from the bathroom looking like a leper. Tiny pieces of tissue were stuck to his face and blood seeped through each one. He seemed unmoved by this predicament.

“Hey, Butch. You got some comics around, don’t you?”

I must have been staring, for he repeated the question and I responded with another.

“What happened to your face?”

“What? Nothing happened to me … Oh.” He laughed, a short little bark. “I cut myself shaving. It’s nothing. Some day you’ll be able to shave and then you’ll get all these little cuts on your face.”

“Do they hurt?”

“No, but if I’m not careful, I could lose enough blood to die.”

“You could?”

“Nah, I’m just kidding.” He surveyed the living room for a moment and a tiny patch of bloody tissue came loose and fluttered down to the floor like the last red leaf of autumn. If I close my eyes I can still see him coming out with a dozen patched cuts, looking like something out of an old Ed Wood movie—The Bleeding Men from Outer Space, perhaps, or Attack of the People with Open Sores.

“So how ’bout some comics? Man needs some reading material when he sits on the throne.”

“He does?”

“Sure. Some things you should never be in a hurry for. Going to the can is one of them.”

“They’re by my bed.” In the tiny half-room at the front of the house where I slept, I had just enough room for my bed, a small dresser, a toybox and two cardboard cartons, one for my soldiers and the other for my comics. I had hundreds, I bought them constantly or people bought them for me and I never threw them away: at the Certified on the corner of Barry and Leavitt they sold old ones without covers, three comics to a pack for a dime.

I had Archie and Walt Disney comics, Superman and Blackhawk and the occasional bloodthirsty war comic like G.I. Comics, horror comics I didn’t even understand and nearly fifty Classics Illustrated—all purchased by my grandmother lest Archie and Jughead cause an atrophy of my young brain.

Tom disappeared with his leprous face into my room for several minutes and I heard him exclaiming at my collection. He emerged with the Classics Illustrated version of “Ivanhoe” and told me he could be found “in the library.” From that day on, I seldom spent more than five minutes in the bathroom without one of my comics, his purloined habit becoming my custom for life and occasioning many fierce debates between me and my grandparents, who contended that I now took half an hour to do thirty seconds’ business.

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