There is plenty of room on the step, but Mary Lane is crowding Mimi. She’s trying to talk her into giving her some of her grape Popsicle. She’s always asking you for some of whatever you got.
She tells Mimi, “They don’t let greedy girls into the convent, ya know. That’s their number one rule. They even got a sign posted out front that says no selfish brats allowed. You better gimme some of that before it’s too late.”
I’m watching Mimi struggling to crack the melting Popsicle in two, when Artie Latour taps my shoulder and points up the block. Uncle Paulie is coming toward us on his way to work at at the Beer’n Bowl. His head is down like it always is and he’s whistling Pop Goes the Weasel, which is his all-time favorite song.
My sister gets the oddest look on her face when she sees our uncle coming our way. She looks sorta… guilty? She must be feeling bad about making him a half-wit, but she’s never seemed remorseful before. I always thought she knew that in a funny kinda way she saved him.
When he gets in front of where we’re hanging out, Uncle Paulie stops and stares with his mouth open. He’s wearing blue jeans and a white shirt that’s got Jerbak’s embroidered above the pocket in gold. He’s got a load of freckles on his pretzel-skinny arms, but he’s not bad-looking elsewhere. You can tell he’s related to us. To Troo anyway. His hair is thick red, but our uncle’s starts back farther so you can also tell he is related to Peggy Sure, who also has one heck of a forehead.
Mary Lane, who can pick a Popsicle clean faster than a piranha fish, hands over the leftover stick to him and says, “Don’t spend it all in one place,” when my uncle shoves it in with the other ones that are making his back pocket bulge.
Troo says, “Bone sware, Uncle Paulie.”
That’s a new one on me. Maybe where she’s been sneaking off to is the library to move herself up on the Bookworm ladder and get extra instruction from Mrs. Kambowski in the language of love. I’ve already lost track of her two times this week during the day and once in the middle of the night. (Sorry, Daddy. I’m trying my hardest, but as you know, your Trooper can be so darn slippery.)
“Ooo la la, Leeze,” our uncle says back to Troo and that’s just great, real great. Now I have to say, “Hi,” not because I want to, I just don’t want him to get mad at me.
Even though Uncle Paulie does not seem like the same rancid person he used to be before the accident, somewhere inside of him he still could be. He used to be a bookie. (This is not somebody who works at the Finney Library. This is somebody who gambles for a living and wants as many people as he can get to do it, too.) Ethel told me that in the old days my uncle had the worst temper. He wasn’t a nice brother to Mother, and Granny went meek around him. He hurt other people, too. He broke a man’s leg in half when the guy didn’t vigorously pay what he owed on a gambling bet. Then he took advantage of the man’s wife all the way down to the skin. He was gonna go to jail for doing that, but his brain getting damaged in the crash saved the day. So that’s why, if ya ask me, our uncle owes a big merci beaucoup to Mademoiselle Troo for playing peek-a-boo with Daddy on the way home from the game.
Wendy Latour announces loud in her froggy voice, “You in gutter, Paulie.”
“Wendy!” I’m shocked. I can’t ever remember her saying something mean like that. “That’s not a nice thing to tell somebody when they’re down on their luck,” I say, shaking my finger at her. “Say you’re sorry.”
“Thorry, Thally, thorry, thorry, thorry.”
Artie leans in close to me. “Just so ya know, she wasn’t being rude. My mom’s been takin’ her up to the bowling alley every Monday afternoon. Mom thinks if your uncle can do that job settin’ pins then maybe Wendy can someday, too. He’s been showin’ her the ropes.”
Uncle Paulie grins at Wendy and says, “Balls, balls, gutter balls,” and walks off toward North Avenue to punch his time clock.
He’ll be up at Jerbak’s late. ’Til after three in the morning if business is hopping. I’ve heard him when I’m lying awake in bed waiting for the dawn to come. As a shortcut, Uncle Paulie takes the alley behind our house back to Granny’s. Pop Goes the Weasel sure sounds a lot different when you listen to it in the dead of night. Maybe I was wrong about Greasy Al. It coulda been our uncle who scratched on our bedroom window that night smelling like pepperoni. They serve pizza at the bowling alley and sometimes Uncle Paulie does some really creepy things. (I saw him bury something in Granny’s backyard once. I’m dying to know what, but I’m too much of a coward to go dig it up.)
“So… what yous wanna do?” Willie O’Hara asks us.
Troo grumbles, “Put you on a slow boat to China.”
She’s got a bone to pick with him because Mimi Latour is his girlfriend now instead of her. I know this is another not-charitable way to feel, but I would have to agree with Willie’s choice this time around. Mimi is much easier to work with. She reminds me of a piece of Play-Doh. Troo is more like a stone. A boulder. The Rocky Mountains.
O’Hara tries again. “Ya wanna play kick the can?”
Troo throws down a loogie that lands an inch away from Willie’s sneaker. “Red light, green light.”
All of us know that unless she gets her way, she will make sure we have a cruddy game of kick the can, so we all just say, “Red light, green light’s good.”
Willie asks, “My way or yours?”
A coupla summers ago we let him show us how they play this game in Brooklyn, where they call it Ghost in the Graveyard. In his version, instead of us hiding and the ghost looking for us, the ghost hides and we go looking for him. I like Willie’s way more, so I speak up and say, “Vliet Street rules” because I know Troo will be her stubborn self and say, “Naw, let’s play the Flatbush rules,” and she doesn’t let me down.
“Okay, Ghooost in the Graveyard it is,” I say, doing my spooky imitation to get everybody in the mood. “The steps are the entrance to the cemetery like alwaaays.”
A coupla other kids have wandered over from the playground the way I wished they would. I don’t know all their names except for the boy with ringworm. Everybody calls him Yul now. His real name is Peter Von Knappen. He was my boyfriend before I liked Henry, so I hope his hair grows back someday.
Willie O’Hara throws his heftiness around and says, “Guess I’ll be it.”
Troo hops up off the step and goes toe-to-toe with him, or as close as she can get. “Guess again, lard butt. I challenge you.”
After Willie told that great Polack joke, I was pretty sure she would challenge him. Like a lotta other things that go on around here, this never happened when we lived out in the country. By the time we’d walk over to somebody else’s farm, we’d be too worn out to see who can jump from the top of the silo without breaking their leg or try to milk a cow blindfolded, but these challenges happen all the time in the neighborhood. One kid goes up against another kid to determine who’s the best at something. Anything. You can get challenged to steal pumpkins in October out of old man Moriarity’s garden or to say the Stations of the Cross in under half an hour. Sometimes the challenges can even be death defying. Like who can run in front of a car without getting hit or hold your breath and then blow on your thumbs until you faint and smash your head on the sidewalk. One time Timmy Maddox challenged Howie Teske to play something he called Rushing Roulette with his father’s gun and ended up getting shot in the elbow.