LEONARD KRIEGEL
99
threw himselfout ofa third floor window. He was very old, in his eighties, and
he landed in the tree in the backyard under which we boys used to test our
summertime courage in game after game of "knucks ." Our bleeding
knuckles , his broken body . It took them an hour to get him down . We stood
underneath the tree, the silence and his opened eyes and rhythmic heavy
breathing an even greater accusation than screams would have been. They
brought him to Montefiore Hospital.
It
took him four days to die . We talked
about his suicide for the rest of that summer. Crazy Lester shimmied up the
tree and cut a ridge where the old man's head had nestled in the branches.
I am seven years old. The game is hide-and-seek and I am running
breathlessly . The johnny pump at the bottom of the hill on Rochambeau
Avenue is home base . I swing around the block, run up Bainbridge Avenue,
wave to the owner of the liquor store with the giant black clock on its front,
then turn past Mr. Levy 's candy store , climb the iron fence, carefully avoiding
the spikes , and drop into the lot . I prowl through the rocks , momentarily
forgetting the game ofhide-and-seek as I hunt for Indians. The April air is soft
and pleasant . Aware of the imminent danger of capture, I eye the rooftop of
the Bainbridge Avenue stores. I would like to climb onto the roof by
shimmying up the waterpipe running above the ditch , the way my cousin Leo
and his friends do. But I am afraid . No one has climbed the roof before he is
nine. A broken glass bottle lies nestled against the side of a rock. I kick it. The
burnished metal is beautiful , the barrel exploding into concentric circles that
testify to the validity of the future . I am afraid to snatch it up, afraid it will
disappear in a puffofsmoke . Finally, I seize it . I hold it in my right hand and
point it at the four
0'
clock sun and squeeze the trigger. I stroke the burnished
metal. Then I run through the lot , waving the gun in the air. I climb the
fence, then move rapidly through the yard, taking the iron flight of stairs that
leads
to
the corridor to Rochambeau Avenue three steps at a time. I guiltily
eye the minister's garden with its giant yellow tulips , then emerge into the
Rochambeau Avenue sunlight , howling my good fortune in the direction of
the hydrant.
Events outdistance me. I will not feel the envy of my friends today.
Butch's brother has been run over by a laundry truck . He followed Butch
across the street, darting between two parked cars. Butch is
it.
His job is to
ferret us out.
Fortune turns sour. I hold the gun in my hand, ashamed of my
new-found wealth . A man kneels over Ira's blanket-covered body in the
middle of the street . A cop stands above him. The kneeling man is bald and
his fingers rack his scalp like pincers on a bowling ball . He sobs, rocks back and
