Oh no! I was caught! Why did I feel so guilty? Just—to have to explain my game to an adult, to my mother, something told me she wouldn’t like it, I was in trouble.
But, that’s not the way it went.
“Where’d you get that?” “Where’s the other leg?” “Go back and get the other leg!”
I could hear the garbage truck a block or two away, my mother insisted this was an emergency.
You think this is confusing—I was amazed, my mouth was probably hanging open all down the alley.
I should explain. Like I did to Bennie and Nicholas (younger than me, they thought I got the neatest ideas). First, the top of the garage, the storage room with two square windows and the wooden stairs my father made. Pretty junky. Good place to play on Saturdays when my older brother was gone playing basketball and my little brother was barely able to walk. School had started so this made Saturday extra special, alone or with Bennie or Nicholas, the top of my garage was sort of our clubhouse.
Sort of.
Chairs with cracks, lawn chairs with sagging straps, a rusted lawnmower, boxes with I-don’t-know-what, and my treasures. A broken lamp (who needed light?), satin drapes (faded to flesh-colored), a bent curtain rod, the chipped picture frame (gold and fancy), a hoe with a snapped-in-half handle. And, the dummy.
See? After I set everything up, then we’d pretend it was the End of the World, a bomb went off, everything was knocked kerflooey. Especially the dummy. Who was an ambassador or king or somebody important so the bomb was dropped—or placed beside (the electric can opener with its motor exposed, our new bomb)—to kill everybody. But we survived long enough to get up off the floor, to stagger down the stairs clutching the wall, to die on the lawn behind the garage. As spectacularly as we could without any blood.
The dummy was easy. Dad’s spattered paint pants, an old blue jean jacket, garden gloves and rain boots with holes in them; rolled newspapers, two sections to form the arms or legs (bendable), and a burlap bag full of twigs and leaves; the only thing I had to get from the house, a paper bag for the head. Easy. Easy to put in position too, all he ever had to do was sit. On the throne. Or, in a minute, sprawl on the floor. Sometimes in pieces.
Tried drawing a face on the bag but that only made him look silly as a scarecrow. Better blank. From behind where we soldiers or assassins stood, didn’t need to see a face.
Oh yes, Dad’s discarded fedora helped (something sinister and spy-like about a fedora).
BANG! The bomb went off again.
You can see why telling my mother wasn’t a good idea.
But—she didn’t even ask?
I started Fifth Grade at a different school this year, Jefferson instead of Jackson, and part of the way is down the alley behind a cleaners, a Chinese restaurant, a office, another cleaners and the hardware. The hardware that caught on fire, at night, and we watched it burning and heard the paint cans exploding like giant popcorn. Anyway, alleys are much better at throwing stuff away than streets.
So, today was Tuesday (pickup day) and there on Republic, I spotted a table, a big table that only had three legs.
I thought how propped up in a corner of my palace it would be perfect for knocking down.
I thought, no, I couldn’t haul it to school, by the time I got out it would be gone.
I thought—I prayed all day the garbage truck would be late.
Because it was still there when I was walking home.
Now, to get it home and upstairs in the garage without—
My mother was outside doing something in the flower bed beside the house, no way I could get by her.
Oh boy, what could I say? No good excuse I could come up with why I wanted such a thing.
But rather than make me explain any of this, my mother with a gleam in her eye (she knew how many times she told everybody I was a “ragpicker,” a “sheeny man”)—instead, she decided the card table I brought home was “nicer than the one we have” if only it had four legs.
And it did. I made it back in time (the truck I could see only half a block away) and there the missing leg was, and my father fixed it and the day was saved and the thrill of the world coming to an end kept secret though Bennie said—
“Maybe we didn’t die, maybe we ex-caped to another country.”
“No,” I said, “everybody dies! Bennie, try dropping to your knees and then on your side—then you won’t get another bloody nose.”
—