Mickey Mantle and Carl’s Green Goop
I
No matter how fast I got to my locker and got down to the lunchroom, Roman was already through the line sitting at our table eating. Except this Monday he wasn’t. Our table was empty. Maybe he had to stay after class to work on a project. Something didn’t feel right though.
I went through the line and got my two slices of pizza, grabbed a Dew at the pop machines, and went to our table to eat, hoping that Roman would show.
Half the lunch period had passed and still no Roman. Maybe he was just sick.
Maybe I’d misunderstood and his reunion back in Iowa was more than a weekend event. That’s what I wanted to believe, but what I really thought was maybe Johnny and his thugs had jumped Roman when he had gotten back or even before school. I’d played cards with Johnny on Friday, won sixty-seven bucks as a matter of fact. Nothing was said. Johnny had ample time to take care of the problem at the top of his shit list over the rest of the weekend though. I looked over at their table trying to get a read on their faces. Johnny was loud and obnoxious, but that was normal. There were no fingers pointing or looks of contentment. Still something didn’t feel right.
After lunch I asked a couple of Sally’s friends if they had seen Roman.
Two of them had Roman in their British Literature class second hour. Roman was not there either.
I decided before the last bell rang that I would drive over to Roman’s place after school, but when I got to my car Sally was waiting on me. She looked hot let me tell you, wearing a short mini-skirt and a shirt that was obviously a couple sizes to small.
“I thought you had cheerleading after school?”
The evil smile was back. “I do but I wanted to give you a surprise instead.”
“Okay?” I still had no idea where this was going.
“I’m ready,” she said still with the grin of Satan’s daughter.
“Ready?” I asked.
“My parents aren’t home until five or six.”
Now I got the idea.
Finally.
“I was going to check on Roman…” I stopped in mid sentence as her smile faded and those naughty eyes were replaced with anger, “…never mind, he’s just down with the flu or something.”
At her house, we never made it past the living room. She had me naked in a couple of seconds and she was still throwing off her clothes. I knocked over a plant on their coffee table on my way down to the floor.
“Don’t you think we should go to your room at least?”
“No, right here,” she said in between breaths and kisses.
God she was hot. I’d seen her naked of course several times, but this was different. This was the time. We went on with the fondling and kissing for several minutes. I put the rubber on.
37
“Go ahead,” she said.
I heard nothing more beautiful in my entire life.
“Oh shit,” she screamed, pushing me off to the side. She started gathering her clothes off the floor and couch.
“What the hell’s wrong?” I said.
“My dad’s home, didn’t you hear him pull up the driveway? We’ve only got a couple of seconds.” With that Sally darted to the bathroom, running with clothes in arms like she had just done a small load of laundry.
Where the hell am I supposed to go, I thought. No time. I started to dress throwing on my boxers even though I still had the condom on. I had one leg in my jeans and went for the other but lost my balance and fell over the coffee table. I heard the back door open. I jumped to my feet sliding my second leg in my jeans.
I zipped up and buckled my belt. The plant was still lying sideways on the floor next to the table. Sally’s father was walking through the kitchen. I set the plant back up. What else? My shoes were still by the front door. I ran over and forced my feet in without tying them. I scuffed as I walked trying to get the back of the shoe to go over my heel. There, got it. That’s it right? Your shirt dumb ass.
After I popped my head through the neck hole, I picked up one of the magazines lying on the coffee table and pretended to be in deep thought. Sally’s father walked into the living room.
“Hey there Tony,” Sally’s dad said, happy to see me. “What are you doing here?”
You mean who am I doing?
“Sally’s cheerleading practice got canceled so she asked if I wanted to go to the mall with her. She had to come home and change I guess. You know women,”
I said with a confident smile.
“What are you reading there?” he asked.
The truth was I didn’t even know. I turned over the cover.
“Cosmopolitan?”
There was a confused look on her father’s face. My confidence was fading.
We continued to small talk. I was barely listening, just enough to respond or nod. I just wanted out of there. I still had that damn condom on and it was slimy and uncomfortable. He continued to talk, telling me about his new golf clubs that he got for a heck of deal. My eyes wandered from his eyes to around the room, to the way Sally ran off for the bathroom. Did I forget something? The floor! I looked down and there it was. The condom wrapper. An empty condom wrapper at that. He noticed I wasn’t paying close attention and began to look around the room also. I took a step forward and covered the wrapper with my foot. Sally came back into the room in a different outfit thank God.
I did a pivot turn so I didn’t step off the wrapper. I was sweating now and my stomach hurt. My crotch itched badly. I don’t know which was worse, trying to stay on the wrapper or the discomfort of the condom.
“So, you ready to go to the mall?” I said shooting a stern eyebrow-lifting gesture at her.
That was stupid. I can’t go anywhere until her father leaves the room because of the fuckin’ wrapper under my foot.
38
“Yeah let’s go,” she said.
“Uh, don’t you want to show your father that thing you were talking about?” I opened my eyes widely.
She just stood there. The wheels were turning but nothing was coming out of her mouth. I knew she had gotten an “A” on a paper she wrote for Brit. Lit.
Hopefully she had brought it home with her. Hopefully it was in her bag upstairs in the room.
“You know the paper you wrote,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, come upstairs, daddy, I want to show you this.”
Sally’s dad walked by me and patted me on the back. I did my pivot turn once again so I could turn and face him.
“Man, Tony, you’re soaked and your cheeks are flushed. Are you feeling all right?”
Think quick, dumb ass.
“I’ve got PE last hour and we got timed in the mile today. I’m just a little out of shape, I guess.”
“You better get after it, baseball’s coming sooner than you think,” he said smiling again.
The two of them walked up the stairs. Thank Christ. I picked up the condom wrapper and stuck it in my pocket. I had to get out of there and quick.
The condom was driving me nuts. I heard Sally and her father talking about the paper and what a good job she had done. Home free. They came back down the stairs.
I opened the door and let Sally go before me. I started out the doorway until her father saw the tag on the back of my shirt.
“You know you have your shirt on inside out, Tony?” This time there was no smile. “Cheeks flushed, sweating, and nervous. I didn’t get off the boat yesterday son. I think it’s better you go on without Sally.”
I nodded—the only thing I could do really—and walked to my car.
II
I drove off heading for home. I steered the Pinto with one hand and pulled off the troublesome condom with the other. It was no easy task, but well worth it.
I rolled down my window and threw the semi-used rubber out. My crotch was still uncomfortable. Not only was the itching sensation getting worse, the condom felt like something cold and dead. The worst part wasn’t the condom though. It was the fact that I had been waiting for this since the middle of the summer, thought about at least three times a day, and when the moment finally arrived and I didn’t finish the deal, it almost hurt. Physically I mean. I’ve heard people refer to it as blue balls. Once you get going and just stop, it can’t be healthy. I wasn’t about to finish the job myself, especially driving the Pinto. But I could’ve and probably should’ve for my physical well-being. I guessed I would just have to suffer through it. Blue balls. Yeah blue balls was right.
Halfway home I turned the Pinto around back south, not to Sally’s, but to Roman’s. In the excitement and then let down, I had forgotten he wasn’t at school 39
and I was still worried about him. Changing my focus would also help my predicament down below, I supposed.
I pulled up in front of 25 Kingdom. This time I didn’t hesitate to walk up to the porch and the front door. I knocked hard. No answer. Rang the doorbell several times. Nothing. No footsteps or movement from the inside. The shades on the front window were up so I looked in, cupping my eyes with my hands to fight the glare. Inside it was dark, too dark to see anything. I knocked again on the door this time saying it was me, Tony. I turned the doorknob but it was locked.
I heard a voice from across the street. “Over here.”
The house directly across the street was 26, the one I mentioned earlier, and on its front porch stood Roman, waving his left arm. He held his right arm oddly, in a position like it was in a cast. I walked over.
It was dark inside the house. Very dark at first, but my eyes slowly adjusted to the lighting. The floor was wood, an orange couch sat in front of me, and the walls were wallpapered with some sort of green and brown plant shapes.
Going through the front door not only got me into the house, it warped me back to the seventies. I looked around the room for a lamp or even a light bulb on the ceiling, but there was neither. To my left were a couple of lit candles and Roman sat behind them next to somebody else. I could hear a radio, but the volume was turned way down. A talk radio show came from the speakers. The room smelled like vanilla.
“Hey there fella, have a seat if it suits ya,” said the person sitting next to Roman.
That voice and choice of words was unmistakable. I had heard it a thousand times at The Tavern.
“Carl?” I asked already knowing the answer. I sat down feeling more comfortable about the situation.
“Carl ’tis,” he said back.
“Shit, I didn’t know you lived here. I didn’t even know you two knew each other.”
“Ah yes. Lived here for twenty ought years now I guess. But I always know my neighbors, even the new ones or the ones that are just passing by,” Carl said.
A small bowl sat over a flame—almost like some sort of Bunsen burner—
directly in front of Roman and Carl. In the bowl boiled a thick green liquid, and from it I could see the fumes rise as smoke. Roman held his right arm over the smoke. I could see the cuts running from his elbow to his forearm. Carl held onto Roman’s right hand, both holding Roman’s arm up over the boiling green stuff and steadying it so he could dab in some kind of lotion into its cuts. Carl used only his fingertips over the cuts, smooth and soft. Roman still grimaced.
“We’re just fixing up your friend here. I borrowed this remedy in Thailand some years ago,” Carl said.
“What the hell happened to you anyhow?” I asked.
Roman’s teeth gritted tighter every time Carl applied the ointment. He talked with his lips tight like a ventriloquist. “People back home aren’t as friendly as they are here Tony.”
40
“You got jumped?” I asked again.
“You could say that.”
“Christ, I thought you were havin’ a tough time of it here with the lunch thing and then the Jack and Brunno incident.”
Roman just smiled.
“Five more minutes’ll do ya fine there,” Carl said continuing to put the goop on Roman’s injuries.
As I watched Carl a couple of things crossed my mind. The immediate thing of course was the scene in front of me. I couldn’t help but reminded of a hog roast with Roman’s arm being hung over a smoke pit, and Carl every few minutes basting it like a concerned chef. The subtle thing was that Carl seemed to know exactly what he was doing, like some ancient medicine man at night using his fire in front of his teepee for light. Except there was no campfire, only candles, and I was somewhat sure that Carl was not a Native American. Not a hundred percent sure, but almost.
Carl put a lid on the Bunsen burner fire and immediately the green liquid quit boiling. He moved the bowl aside and began to wrap Roman’s arm with gauze. After a few turns the deal was over.
“There,” he said. “Good as new in less than a day.
“I appreciate it,” Roman said.
“No worries my friend, you would have done the same for me,” Carl said.
“Say Tony, you want a brew?”
“No thanks, Carl.”
Roman stood up and exchanged goodbyes with Carl, thanking him again. I followed Roman across the street to his house. We stopped at the sidewalk just beside the Pinto.
“So you gonna be at school tomorrow?” I asked.
“I’ll be there for sure tomorrow,” Roman responded. “Thanks for worrying about me Tony.”
“I wasn’t really worried, I just knew there had to be a good reason for you not being at school.”
That was bullshit though. I was worried.
I opened my car door and got in. I turned the key but the Pinto made an awful noise like bullets were ricocheting in the engine, and smoke began to roll out from under the hood. I shook my head.
“Shut it down,” Roman said walking over to my door. “Has it done this before?
“No, unfortunately this is a new one,” I said.
“Help me push it up to the garage.”
So me and Roman pushed the piece of shit up the driveway. The driveway had a slight incline but it wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle even with Roman having only one working arm. The garage was only about fifty feet from the road.
We stopped at the garage door.
“Let’s leave it here. I have to move some things out of the way for it to fit,” Roman said.
41
Roman looked at me with that shit-eatin’ grin of his. He was still breathing heavy from pushing the car, but the wheels were turning in his head, I could almost see them behind his eyes, turning a lot faster than mine for sure and probably everyone else’s for that matter. Turbo-charged wheels I imagined.
“I’m not going to work tonight. I think I can fix it,” Roman said.
“You know how to work on cars?” I said.
Roman was still smiling. “I’ve never worked on them before but I’ve read several books on the subject.”
“Books huh? What the hell do I have to lose? The next stop for this piece of shit is the junkyard anyway. Besides I gotta drive somethin’ and I sure as hell don’t have the money for another car.”
“Leave it here then. I’ll see what I can do later.”
“You got a phone? I’ll see if Pick can swing by and give me a lift.”
“Sure come on in.”
We went back down the driveway to the porch and the front door. If I live a thousand years I’ll never forget what was inside. The front room was halfway like I imagined. Clean and organized, hardwood floor polished to perfection, not a speck of dust anywhere. To my left was a twin size bed neatly made, not a wrinkle to be found. A couple of large stacks of books lay on the floor stacked as high as I was tall. Although the books were of different sizes, not one edge stuck out further than the rest. No TV. No stereo. Just books, hundreds of ’em.
“I haven’t read those yet,” Roman said as he gestured for me to come and see the other room.
The bathroom was tiny. It was neat, but it was hard to believe somebody got a toilet, tub, and sink to fit in a space that small. Anyway, he opened a door to another room. It was dark until Roman pulled on a thin chain hanging from the ceiling. This room was small as well but not like the bathroom. There wasn’t a lot of room because of what filled it. Six bookcases lined the room, from wall to wall, both length and width wise. They were as high as the ceiling and leaving just enough space between them for one person to walk at a time. Roman had his own personal library. It didn’t take me long to notice that the books were in alphabetical order by title. The bookcases were stained a dark maroon-looking color, dusted and polished to the point of being able to see my reflection. The last thing I noticed was the wallpaper, which wasn’t wallpaper at all. I went over to look at it closer. It was baseball players side by side. No, it was baseball cards.
Each one laminated and stuck to the wall somehow, covering every inch. For the first time in a long time, maybe my entire life, I had nothing to say.
Roman turned out the light and we went back into the main room. The walls were covered with more cards from top to bottom. I then understood why I didn’t notice them at first. The trim on the cards was all the same in each room.
The front room was black and blue trim; the library was the same maroon as the bookcases.
“These are complete sets aren’t they?’ I asked in amazement.
“Sixty-six years worth. My grandfather starting putting complete sets together in his twenties. By the time I was born you could buy the complete set and that’s what my father did for me, just like his father for him,” Roman said.
42
“It’s amazing. Beautiful I mean. It’s like having the history of baseball everywhere you look.” I walked over to the wall. “These cards are in mint condition aren’t they?”
“I think the majority are.”
I walked into the kitchen. It was done in red trim cards. The bathroom was old-fashioned white edges. A story popped in my head, the one every young boy hears from his dad or grandpa. The one about how “I had Babe Ruth’s rookie, but I put it in my bike spokes so they would make noise when I rode” or “ Your grandma used Babe Ruth as kindling for the fire place.” This was the complete opposite of that. Each card cared for and passed down in perfect condition.
Besides that, Mickey Mantle’s rookie card stood right in front of me, eye level, about three feet from the bathroom door.
“Do you know that your walls are pretty much made of money Roman?”
“I never really think about it. I could never sell them. They mean more than that to me.”
I looked over at Roman’s bed. “You live here by yourself?”
Roman nodded.
I saw a picture of two people on the nightstand beside his bed. “Where are your parents?”
Roman gave a smile that took an enormous amount of effort it seemed.
“They’ve passed on. I went back to Iowa to visit their graves last weekend.”
“I’m sorry,” I said and stopped the conversation. I could see Roman didn’t want to talk about it, and as bad as I wanted to know, I could wait to hear it when he wanted to tell it. Roman changed the subject to how he came to live in the house.
As it turns out, the cards and books weren’t the most amazing thing. The house was. It was scheduled for demolition just a few days after Carl and Roman had met. Carl owned the property and had renters from time to time but nobody ever kept the place up, even though their landlord lived across the street. Carl grew tired of chasing and begging people for their money, so he let the place go empty. The only problem was that like many other houses in the neighborhood, they were occupied, but not with paying tenants. Bums and winos filled the rooms not to mention the crack whores that Carl always spoke of. Needless to say they trashed the place. As time wore on the wood began to rot and the ceiling leak.
Carl thought the house was beyond repair and had it scheduled for demolition.
That was before he met Roman, of course.
Roman apparently came upon Carl one night on his way home from The Tavern. Carl was passed out on the side of the road, lying in his own vomit, something I thought could never happen to the nightly Tavern patron. Carl invited Roman to his house after the young janitor helped him home, and the two oddly enough seemed to have a lot in common; how much in common I would find out later. Roman talked Carl into letting him fix the place up; fixing things was one of Roman’s ever growing talents. Roman worked for a solid month, first cleaning up the needle-infested house and then getting it in livable order. He put on a new roof, gutted the interior, replaced boards in the floor and sanded and stained them. Carl could see his determination and decided to help. When it was 43
finished Carl basically gave the house to Roman. In Carl’s view it was cheaper to give it to Roman than to pay to have it torn down. Carl liked Roman from the start I think, just like I did.
III
My Pops dropped me off at school the next morning. Before I could get out of the car he tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at the parking lot. There was the Pinto as baby blue as baby blue could be. Roman obviously had fixed it and drove to school. By the looks of it he had also washed and waxed it. The only time the Pinto usually got washed was when it rained. I ran over to take a closer look.
I got in and noticed all the fast food wrappers that usually lined the floorboard were missing as well as the dirt and pebbles. Although Roman didn’t do his janitor’s gig last night, he still found a way to clean something.
At homeroom we had to vote for the Homecoming king and queen.
Heather and Johnny were on the ballot. I was too, but I never won. Johnny and Heather had been in the Homecoming court every year; this year would be no different. What was different however was that I didn’t vote for Johnny as I had the past three years. I voted for Sam Peterman.
At lunch I thanked Roman, and asked if I could pay him for the work. My father paying would have been more accurate, but I asked anyway. Roman, of course, refused. He told me what the problem was. He might has well have been speaking Chinese because I didn’t understand a word of it. It sounded complicated and long, but Roman said it wasn’t that bad. The bandages I expected to see on Roman’s left arm were absent and the scabs were already beginning to heal. Carl’s boiling green goop seemed to be working its magic. Heather sat at our table, as did Pick Bryant. Johnny did his usual evil eye routine. Jack and Brunno sat next to him like pit vipers ready to strike at any minute.
It was hard to get a word in with Roman anymore because he and Heather talked the entire lunch period. He hung on her every word, even taking time from his applesauce to look her in the eye. I don’t think Heather thought of him as more than a friend, but somewhere inside she was growing closer than that. And who could blame her? The guy listened to her talk about herself for as long as she could speak. Is there anything women like more? Roman liked what was on the inside. That was my take on the situation anyway, and whether it was right, one thing was for sure: Roman and Heather were becoming good friends at the least.
IV
That night Roman showed up for work twenty minutes early. Roll call was at 6:45. Yes you heard me right, the janitors had roll call like soldiers or policemen. Being a janitor at Collingston High was serious business especially when Boss Chatterling was running the show.
Helen Chatterling was the head janitor and had been for at least thirty years. She was a ginormous woman, six feet two and at least 250 pounds. She was in her mid sixties but looked fortyish. The name “Boss” was partly hung on 44
her because she was in charge of the janitors. When people think of janitors, they think of skinny old men with no teeth and a gray whiskered face hunched over a mop bucket and a dingy rag hanging out of their back pocket. It might be like that at some places, but at Collingston it was much more. Yes the janitors were the cleaning crew and that took up a lot of their time. But they were also maintenance. When light bulbs broke or the boiler went out or the plumbing failed or a lock couldn’t be opened, who do you think took care of it? It sure as hell wasn’t the prison guards. Those kinds of things weren’t in teaching contracts.
Collingston had no security staff, so when fights broke out, (and they did on a daily basis), or when someone brought a weapon to school, the Boss’s staff took care of it. She herself broke up too many fights to count over the years, and her reputation was passed down from one generation to the next. It was known that when the Boss broke up a fight she was going to get her licks in too. She came from a different time and seemed to be immune to the ridiculous rules of education that govern us now. The Boss was the boss because she had the power. More than the teachers and the principal. Maybe even more than the school board. She was the only person who had a key to every lock and door in the school. If you crossed her, she would get even. Helen was on the front line, down in the trenches.
At roll call she walked with a clipboard in hand and stopped to inspect each of her janitors one by one, quick but thorough. Roman was first.
“Swivel, is that arm injury going to keep you from doing your duty tonight? Because if it is, you need to let me know. I ran behind schedule all night yesterday because you called in sick and that is not going to happen again tonight.
If you can’t suck it up and work with a little pain I’ve got a stack of applications sitting on my desk from students begging to be put to work. You realize you are the only student janitor in this work force and being the only student is a privilege that I’m not sure you’ve lived up to? Are we clear Swivel?”
Roman knew better than to smile. “Crystal, Boss.” Roman also knew that Boss Chatterling was quite sure that he had far exceeded her expectations as a student janitor or just a janitor at all. He could tell the way she talked to him. The way she never interrupted his work. The way that after the first week she never checked up on him. She gave him a list. He did what was on the list more quickly and more meticulously than anyone else. The speech she had just ripped him with was for show, not for her or him, but for the rest of the janitors at roll that day.
Roman had the third floor in the main part of the building like most nights.
The other janitors were usually doubled up on parts of the school but Roman was so fast Boss Chatterling assigned only him. Light bulb changing was first because lights were on the ceiling and Roman always worked from the top down. The bulbs were the long fluorescent ones, fragile and awkward, but Roman still managed to fit them on his cart and had yet to hear one shatter on the floor. There were six rooms that had lights either burned out or flickering like strobes. Roman changed them one by one, putting the old ones neatly on his cart. He climbed the stepladder, pushed up the plastic rectangle in the ceiling and moved it on top of one of the other cardboard-like rectangles that made up all the rooms’ ceilings.
Dust fell out every time.
45
Midnight was break time for the other janitors on Roman’s shift, but it was quitting time for him. He had finished his assignment twice as fast as the others and now it was time for him to go home.
Roman exited the front of the high school at the main part of the building like he did every night. There were three people and a dog—too dark to see who—
in the parking lot across the street. Roman paid little attention and turned left toward home. The nights were begin