"Standing Down" (standard:drama, 1222 words)
Author: Jerry Vilhotti	Added: Dec 16 2005	Views/Reads: 3434/2	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
What's right to do sometimes hurts very much

Johnny was a new teenager.  He had become that the last week of December
- the day before Christ was born - so in a sense he really was part of 
the new year. Mister Soupbonee, who lived in the corner house, called 
Johnny over to talk.  Mister S. was a New York City bookie that all the 
mothers and fathers knew about on the street so from their mouths all 
the kids knew too as the saying went often that what came out of a 
child's mouth was given birth from the voice of a parent. "Johnny, I 
hear you made the Washington Hill Cardinals little league team," he 
said in his raspy voice; the same one he used the year before when he 
had asked Johnny to do him a big favor and shoot his Irish setter "Mic" 
in the face with ammonia from his water pistol to get the dog out of 
his nasty habit of chasing "Eyetalian" drivers which Johnny did; 
sustaining a big bite on his thigh and the man was impressed that 
Johnny's parents did not sue since one group of people who never wanted 
to be taxed, though they were really being by paying out moneys for 
other things and not knowing it; insisting the country had become a 
litigious one with everyone trying to sue the pants off those who had 
lots of "mazuma" -  a favorite word often used by Mister Soupbonee for 
money.  He had made so much money from "Barnum suckers" looking for 
their green ship to come in that he was able to buy the home on the 
corner of Madison which was a third larger than all the other houses 
side by side traveling the length of a football field between swamps on 
the one side where mosquitoes made a feast of the inhabitants during 
summer nights and a wooded area to the other side that was once home to 
Indians before they were massacred by the Massachusetts taliban 
colonists who left because of religious persecution. " Your buddy 
Splunky told me the harps voted you captain and he said you're playing 
short-stop and batting clean up!  I watch you playing on the street and 
see you hit homers two and three pole lengths away!  And you catch pop 
ups with your back to home plate!" Johnny nodded modestly.  He still 
couldn't figure out why the man called him to his front stoop; unless, 
it was because all the other guys were making fun of their last name 
calling his son, two years younger than Johnny, "Campbell Soupbone"? 
"How old are you, kid?" "I just turned thirteen in December" Johnny 
said ready to tell Mister Soupbonee he never teased his son Tony and 
would always stop the guys from doing so when he was around. "Gees kid, 
doesn't that make you too old?" "Mister Mullins our coach says because 
I was close to the new year - I'm OK!" "I read in the Burywater 
Simpleton that only kids from the ages of nine to twelve are legal to 
play, kid.  You think it's fair to shut those kids out?" There was that 
word "fair" again.  He must have heard it said a million times since 
they had moved north from the East Bronx and every time he heard it 
only the opposite happened. "But Mister"- "Johnny I like you much and 
my kid looks up to you.  He tries to talk like you and he even limps 
like you pretending he has a game leg like you.  But kid you do what 
you think is right. The only thing is this kid: if you guys win the 
pennant and they find out about you - they take the flag away!" ... The 
day after Johnny's operation, the doctor's scalpel left a long railroad 
track of scar over the area where he subtracted the stream of water 
trickling inside, the doctor told the boy's mother that he had also 
taken from the leg a cancerous substance and so charged her double for 
the operation. Doctor Harridan, a bargain basement one and a graduate 
of a school where many Burywater young men would attend perpetuating 
the "who you know" system utilized by the ethnic group in power, never 
did realize he had mistakenly taken growth cells which would manifest 
five years later when Johnny's leg would bow from the weakness within 
and inside the memory of the dream he had while on the operating table 
of the sun twanging from a frown to a smile - he placed the faces of 
the nun Sister Cabrini and the nurse Roberta Gentile inside the smiles 
since they had helped the seven year old through his frightening ordeal 
.... Johnny never thought of that since Mister Mullins had said 
everything was all right. The day Johnny was supposed to pick up his 
uniform at the community house next to the ball field the great Roger 
Conners, who was the only Burywatarian to be inducted into The Hall of 
Fame, had played as a kid. Conners was the king of home run hitters of 
the dead ball era and due to his height while playing for the New York 
baseball team had been the one who had given them their nickname after 
fans yelled that they were giants seeing the six foot four inch and two 
hundred and forty pound guy walking into the Polo Grounds. Johnny 
called the coach up and told him he found out he was too old to play. 
"That's OK kid like I told you-" Johnny controlled his voice as he said 
he would feel bad if they took their win away - if they won the pennant 
- because of him.  He would feel he had betrayed them all. Mister 
Mullins was not a Black and Tan kind of guy, like many had been on the 
old sod and had migrated to Burywater, and felt compassion for the kid 
sensing Johnny really meant what he was saying and told Johnny he 
respected him for what he was doing but if he decided to come and play 
he would like that and tried to explain there would be other kids who 
would play who were even older than Johnny.  After the season ended the 
newspaper reported there were over twenty ball players overage and 
three were as old as fifteen!  One of the fifteen year old kids would 
be on Johnny's high school team but would quit after dropping a dozen 
pop ups telling coach Moriairty it was because baseballs were much 
smaller that the basketballs he could put in baskets while starring for 
coach's basketball team. The day of the parade on a Sunday heralding 
the first year of little league baseball coming to the city of a 
hundred thousand people ten years after it had in Pennsylvania, Johnny 
sat alone in the movie house, having asked his father for money for the 
bus rides to and from downtown, a thing he seldom did for his mother 
often told him they needed every penny to pay off their new home, where 
he would sit in the darkness hearing the marching band just outside of 
the theater playing a tune of taking someone out to the ball game. No 
one could see the tears in the ballplayer's eyes.    END  12-16-05


Tweet