Chapter 3 _ Brooklyn, Punchball and the Catholics
(a sample chapter)
I had a close Jewish friend named Robbie, who lived next door in a structure identical to our own, and in the attachment to his house lived an Italian family, the Sorvinos. They had a twenty year-old son named Antnee, who was studying to be a priest, and a younger son by two years named Peter, who was – by our standards – a neighborhood god.
Some people might think that the older ecumenical student was named Anthony, but in Brooklyn it was pronounced with just two-syllables. Ant-nee usually walked slowly with a stooped and serious – almost mournful – expression. Deep in thought, he seldom looked up. He wore high-wasted baggy pants and floppy short-sleeve shirts that hung down past his elbows, making his pale, long arms appear thin.
His younger brother had the slicked back DA haircut, the tight white T-shirt with the Marlboro box rolled up in the short sleeve, the black Garrison belt – the buckle sharpened into a nasty weapon – worn hooked off the left hip slacked an inch or two, which was the tough-guy style that year. Pete had actual muscles hard with definition, had been in real street fights and was given a lot of respect.
“This is gonna’ be so boss,” crooned little Johnny McNulty, who normally was a diminutive type not given to such bold statements. But try as I might – for he was shorter, weaker and mentally much slower than me – I could find no fault in his statement. There were four older guys – high school kids – who needed us for a punchball game in the Sorvino’s alley! In 1959 Flatbush, an activity of this magnitude signaled a new level of kid existence in my now twelve-year old life. Being chosen to play punchball with the big kids is not a casual affair.
Brooklyn alley punchball boiled down to a game based on a “batter,” who stood at an identified “home plate” and depending on style, tossed the ball up a few inches with one hand, while swinging on it in a punching fashion with his other fist. Then the game pretty much resembled baseball. Rules and bases, though, were flexible based on the number of players actually playing the game and the layout of what was being used as a “field.”
So the game is on and I am on Pete’s team. Late in the game we’re up two runs. They have men on base, and I make a jumping, stretching, reach-for-the-sky catch of a line-drive, holding it aloft, the pensie-pinkie roundness stuck hard between my index and middle finger. A potentially game-saving play, Pete smiles right at me and makes a “YEAH! with his fist aloft.
Life does not get any better than this. I am Duke Snider and Pee Wee Reese rolled into one and we have won the World Series for Brooklyn. I am outside myself in exhilaration and I cannot contain my smile. My brains feel like they’re dribbling out of my ears and I know that I look like a fool with my face almost breaking in half, but for the moment I am past caring.
But what’s this? Some interloper was now putting his voice into our game. It was Pete’s older brother; the strange one, now somehow involving himself in our celestial activity, specifically singling out our local deity.
“Pete, time for dinner,” he called.
A pause, as all 11 of us hold our breath. It is two innings away from done, and it’s 15-13.
Pete just swears under his breath, and with his hands on his bent knees, looks straight ahead like a shortstop. Antnee returns inside to the sound of the screen door closing behind him. Ballplayer chatter begins anew:
“My man Pete!”
“Hooze up?”
“Hooze got daball? “
“Gimmeda fuckin’ ball.”
“Up!”
Two more plays go by. It’s now two-out. A deciding moment in the game is approaching as the Sorvino screen door opens, and Antnee’s call from the porch to Pete in the alley arrives with a stronger sense of impatience.
“Pete! Momma and Poppa are sitting down!”
“Fuck… Mm…”
A surreal freeze. All eyes, all voices, all attentions were cued as to whether or not sacrilege lines had been crossed. Those of us headed to study Wittgenstein and Kant in the halls of higher learning could already discern that the “F” word had been used in such proximity to the “M” sound that serious reflection was necessary to determine if acceptable cultural imperatives had been breeched. In the weeks to follow, future lawyers from this very group would spend countless hours attempting to consensually validate whether or not verbal impropriety had indeed transpired.
We were not left to wonder however, what had transpired in the mind of Pete’s older brother. Anthony Sorvino, devout student-worshipper of the living Christ, was about to let us all know what he thought of Pete’s response.
In the biblical account of David and Goliath, it is written, “then David hastened towards Goliath.” I was about ten feet away from Pete, and, like everyone else, my jaw dropped and my feet froze. We were all caught up in a moment taking place outside ourselves, as the noise of traffic itself ceased to exist throughout all of Brooklyn.
Antnee had swung into a high gear of quiet rage as he strode down the path away from us to the gate where it opened into the alley not thirty feet from where our young, ready hero now stood with his fists clenching, Adams-apple bobbing and face working. Pete was not a poser. He was digging in.
As his older brother rounded the U-turn out of the walkway and into a confrontation line directly toward Pete, we all blinked and were forced to re-focus. Antnee’s normally wan and mournful countenance could not be found. It had been replaced by something strangely alive and active with a resolve and purpose no one had imagined possible within the student-priest. No words were necessary to articulate further what that purpose was: “You are going to be punished for that” was clearly shining from every pore on his big-brother face.
In the countless summer hours to come dissecting every moment of the confrontation, it was generally agreed that Pete – although standing gamely with his fists raised – appeared to lack the appropriate mindset necessary to deflect his older brother’s conviction.
The student-priest was converging on Pete with such speed that when he suddenly threw up his fists and feinted left we all flinched backwards with a collective gasp. Pete bit hard on the feint and we were all treated to that unique and unmistakable sound of a fist hitting someone’s face with the full force of all knuckles. Blows continued to rain down on Pete with such relentless speed and power that it was difficult to know exactly how many had landed before he lay sprawled, face-down and limp in the alley dirt.
An eerie moment of silence descended upon the alley, and Antnee then helped him up. But while he was looking at Pete, he spoke not just to his brother, but to all of us; we, his sudden congregation.
“Momma and poppa are waiting.”
There wasn’t a head that didn’t bow just a little, and as we all gulped and blinked, he firmly-gently pointed his subdued younger brother in front of him, and the two walked the length of the alley to the gate entrance. As they walked up the center lane, it was as if they were leaving through a church aisle, leaving all eleven of us now parishioners; suddenly silent, reverent and wide eyed.
Take me, padre, oh somehow please take me too, for I am so lost… lost…
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