“Hello,” she said to me.
I said, “Hi,” and stepped out of the way so she could go into the store. She wore her skirt shorter than the other girls. She was growing so fast that her clothes didn’t fit her. She went to one of the Catholic schools, Fourteen Holy Martyrs, on the other side of the B &O tracks. She didn’t go to St. Alphonsus, the Lithuanian school where I went, even though she had come over from Lithuania.
“What are you, some kind of Romeo?” Knucks said.
“What do you mean?”
“‘Hello?’ ‘Hi?’” He mocked both of us with his exaggerated tones. “I’d sure like to get into that,” he added.
He was a big guy who was always beating up other kids. His real name was Billy Hagen, and he lived just on the other side of the B &O bridge. They called it Pigtown up there too.
“How about you?” Knucks said.
“How about me, what?”
“Would you like to screw her?”
“Yeah,” I said in self-defense, though I was embarrassed to say it.
“What’s D.P. mean anyways?” Knucks asked.
“Displaced Person. It means her family got away from the Nazis and came to America.”
“How old is she?”
“Thirteen or fourteen.” I was guessing that she was my age. She was tall. She might have been older than that, but I didn’t think so because she was still in grammar school.
“Old enough to bleed,” Knucks said, then grinned.
The last part of it was usually “old enough to butcher.” I was not sure what that meant, but some of the older guys always said it about younger girls.
“When she comes out, you grab her and I’ll feel her up.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“Chicken.”
“Yeah, I’m chicken,” I said, and I left the corner. It was getting dark and my grandmother wanted me home.
“Buack, buack, buack,” he called after me, making the chicken sound from some gang movie. He called out the same sound, only louder, as I approached Cooper the Cop, who was standing on the corner of Bayard and Herkermer, swinging his club. His regular beat was on the other side of the tracks where Knucks lived and Birute went to school, but he spent a lot of time down on Bayard Street with us.
“What’s that noise all about?” Cooper asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
I looked back and saw Birute coming down the steps from Butler’s with an ice-cream cone. Knucks was saying something to her and she smiled. Then he started to follow her.
I turned the corner toward my grandmother’s house, which was across from the coal yard.
I thought about what Knucks said about getting into Ludka. I knew the dirtier words for that. I even knew the word intercourse I thought about it a lot but I figured I was too young for that. So was Birute. You were supposed to be married before you did that.
I stood on my grandmother’s scrubbed marble steps waiting for Ludka to turn the corner and come down so I could say hello again and see her smile. It was out of the way to her house, but it was the way she always came.
She didn’t come that time, and not ever again.
I had trouble sleeping that night because I was thinking about Birute and about what Knucks had said about her. She was pretty, beautiful maybe, but not like a movie star because she didn’t wear makeup. I wouldn’t mind having a girlfriend like her, but after “Buack, buack, buack,” what chance did I have? Maybe she didn’t come down Herkermer Street because she was embarrassed to know me.
In the middle of the night, I heard a police siren and the dogs in the backyards started to bark. They did that two or three times a week, usually when somebody walked down the alley.
I had a dream about Birute Ludka and me doing what Knucks said. When I awoke, I changed my jockey shorts and hoped my grandmother would wash them without seeing the stains.
On the way to school, a couple of girls on the trackless trolley were talking about a D.P. girl who was killed in the Carroll Park playground.
“What D.P. girl?” I asked.
“The tall one that lives on Carey Street,” one of them said. They were both wearing the white Seton High uniforms that made them look like nurses or waitresses.
“Birute?”
“No. Ludka something.”
My face went hot. She couldn’t be dead. But I thought about the police car in the middle of the night and the dogs barking.
“You know her?” one of the Seton girls asked.
“No,” I said. I had said hello to her, but I didn’t really know her.
I guess because she was Lithuanian, there was some talk in school about the murder. I didn’t join in, but I paid attention. One of the nuns asked me if I knew her since she lived in my neighborhood. I said that I didn’t. I was scared because of my dream, but also because of what Knucks had said: “Old enough to bleed.” I didn’t think that “old enough to butcher” meant murder though.
When I got off the No. 27 coming home, I walked up Carey Street and saw Knucks was sitting on a set of steps. As I approached, he got up. Then he walked along with me. “You didn’t see me talking to her,” he said.
“No,” I said. I did see him, though, and I saw him start to follow her.
“Keep it that way.”
“Sure,” I said. I turned at the corner and he walked up Carey Street toward the bridge.
I wondered what that was all about. It didn’t make sense until the police came to my grandmother’s door and asked to talk to me.
One was a police detective named Kastel. When my grandmother came downstairs, he talked to her in Lithuanian much better than I could. I had never seen him before, but the uniformed policeman with him was Girardi, who walked the neighborhood beat.
“Did you know Birute Ludka?” Kastel asked. He pronounced Birute better than anybody I had ever heard except my grandmother.
“Not very well,” I said.
My grandmother was wringing her hands in her handkerchief while Detective Kastel asked me questions. From time to time, he would explain something to her in Lithuanian. She understood some English but she could not speak it.
“But you knew her?”
“I always said hello.”
“Did you talk to her yesterday?”
“Just to say hello.” I was nervous as I answered his questions about where and when. I was particularly nervous when he asked if my name was Walter.
“Who was with you when you saw her?”
“Nobody,” I said. “I was just coming out of the store and she was going in.”
I didn’t want to talk about Knucks, but Cooper the Cop knew about it. I wanted to correct myself, but I didn’t. I could be in trouble for that, but if I told, I could be in bigger trouble with Knucks. Cooper would probably tell them anyway.
“You didn’t see her after that?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“And nobody was with you?”
“No,” I said. Old enough to bleed.
“I thought I saw you talking to some other boys on the corner,” Girardi said.
“No, sir,” I said. I knew he was fishing because I had only talked to Knucks. I would stick to my story unless Cooper, who was on the other corner, confronted me later.
“You hear anything about her?” Detective Kastel asked.
“On the No. 27 this morning. Some girls were saying she was murdered.”
“And raped,” Officer Girardi almost yelled at me.
“I didn’t hear about that,” I said. I wasn’t even sure what rape meant. I would look it up in the dictionary later.
“Did you see her last night?” Kastel said.
“No, sir.”
“Mister Butler says you left just before she came into his store.”
“I did,” I said. “It’s when I said hello.”
“Then what did you do?” Kastel asked.
“I went home.”
“You weren’t planning anything?” Girardi said.
“Nothing,” I said. Old enough to butcher.