Backbone > Frankly Speaking
To Save the Day
by Frank Crocitto; Illustration by Leslie Bender

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Their eyes followed the ball bound up onto the avenue, strike the trolley tracks, waver a moment, then lazily bounce across the tracks and drop to a dribble on its way to the far curb.

—Go get it! somebody shouted, hoarsely.

Joe Petunia and his first baseman, Waddles, broke out of their trance and dashed toward the corner. Before they reached it, the new ball—pink, with its bloom of white powder still on it—slipped down the sewer. Petunia threw his arms up and smacked his thighs in disgust.
The team in the field left their positions and drifted to the corner.

The early morning sun gleamed on the trolley tracks, turning them to strips of silver. The birds were singing in the high hedges. The air on the street this Saturday morning had a special freshness, having mixed with a salty breeze coming off the Narrows.

Like a conclave of physicians around a hopeless case, both teams moped around the corner sewer. Bobby Gerson, the self-appointed captain of the 8l Street team, was particularly exasperated.

—Why throw the ball home if there’s nobody to cover?!

Louie, who had thrown the ball home—from where it had come bobbling out of a tree—blamed the third basemen for not covering the plate. The lanky third baseman admitted sorrowfully, that he should have been there.

The corner sewer was there to welcome the rainwater. The steep hill on the other side of the avenue and the slope of the avenue itself made the sewer an ever-eager trap for spaldeens. The spaces in its thick steel grating were big enough for a ball to fall through and if it failed to drop in there, a wide, rectangular slot like a sinister mouth was waiting at the curb to gulp it down.

Usually John the grocer lent his gripper to the boys, the long-handled device he used to grab toilet paper and such off his high shelves. That’s why Fat Steve was knocking urgently at his door. The boy peered in. He tested the latch of the door handle.

Perplexed, he stepped back and called back to the gathered teams.
—It says he’s open at eight. But he’s closed shut.
After some wrangling between Bobby Gerson and Joe Petunia about forfeit and whether you can win a game before one inning was finished, Petunia conceded and agreed to start over the next Saturday. While they argued Louie, on his belly, was squinting through the grating. He spotted the ball then ran off down the street. When he came back he had a tree branch in his hand.

Just then a trolley came by, its driver ringing his bell insistently. It stopped. Its doors opened.

—All aboard for Coney Island. Great day for a swim.

The boys ignored his sarcastic invite. Except Frankie who suggested he go dunk his head in a bucket. The driver laughed and went off dinging his bell wildly.

—That’s my stupid uncle, Frankie explained.

Together Louie and Bobby, the strongest on the 81st Street team, lifted off the sewer grate, lugged it, and leaned it on the curb. Bobby, seeing a possibility of success with Louie’s limb, took command and gave orders to stand aside and tap the ball to the middle and get it between the fork of the branches.

Joe Petunia and his team, who had been ready to walk away moments before, cheered the laborers on. Only Frankie, a dubious look on his face, saw the futility of their boisterous efforts. Because he was standing aside from the crowd, he saw Emile coming.

By the time Emile stopped his car the boys all had their backs to him, the tree branch was out of sight and Louie was sprawled by the curb concealing the sewer grate. From his patrol car Emile shouted across the avenue.

—Whatzit a convention?

—We’re playing a game, Emile, said Bobby respectfully.

—I don’t like you creeps congre-gating—so move along.

—O.K., the boys mumbled and they acted as if they were responding.

Emile was an old cop who used to walk 13th Avenue as part of his beat. He left a sour wake wherever he went. When another cop took over his beat the boys were ecstatic, until Emile turned up in a squad car. His pot belly got larger and his nose looked more and more like a banana, bending in an arch toward his lip. He was mean and people said it was because his wife beat him.

—I’ll be passing by in a little while and I don’t want to see your ugly faces.

—Don’t look, someone said.

—We got the right of public assembly, said another.

Emile swung open the door of his car, threateningly. The boys, knowing how much he would rather sit than stand, had taken a calculated risk. He drove away with a black look on his face.

—You better watch yourself Frank, Joe Petunia said. He’s a nasty cop.

—He should look in the mirror if he wants to see what ugly looks like, Frankie answered.

Before long the fishers of the ball gave up. They had gotten the ball part way up the sewer wall twice but each time the tool proved to be too gross for the task and it slid back down into the murky water. Louie tossed the branch over the high hedges around Mrs. Negalewski’s yard. She lived alone and she never raked her yard.

As the two strongmen were hauling the grating back over the sewer Bobby got an idea. He was a shrewd article so he approached it obliquely at first. Money being an important concern, he spoke of how tired he was of shelling out money for spaldeens and how leaving the ball floating in the sewer wasn’t a good idea since with a little rush of water—like from somebody using a hose—it might float away and how stupid it was to wait for John who was probably taking the day off to go swimming. He made the case for getting the ball—and getting it now! Then they could go on playing instead of sitting around and waiting for next week. Bobby had the makings of an orator, or at least a salesman, so he aroused the boys into cheering agreement. All except Frankie, because he saw it coming.

—Forget it, Bobby.

—How much you weigh, Frank?

—It doesn’t matter what I weigh. What’s your mother weigh?

—You’re the one that threw the ball.

—No, Louie threw the ball.

—Right, but you should have been there.

—I can’t be everywhere. And I’m not going down that sewer.

The boys realized Bobby’s inspiration was their only hope. So Steve and Louie with an assist by Petunia and Co. jumped in with their two cents.

—You really should have been there, Frank. I would go down if I wasn’t so fat.

—That’s big of you, Stevo.

—Yeah, you should have been there, urged Louie. You’re the Flash—the fastest man alive. Ain’t that right?

—There’s nothing to be scared of, Joe Petunia said.

—Stay out of this, Petunia-face.

Under the pressure of his peers, Frankie felt his resolve melting. The implication that he might be afraid galled him. He thought he had better get angry and walk away or he was doomed to go down the sewer. He lingered.

—Why don’t you buy a ball, Bobby?

—I don’t have the money.

—You got the money, you cheapo.

—Frankie, listen to me. Louie and I can hold you by the ankles. You weigh a feather. We lower you down, you grab the ball, and we’re done. We can play. We got a whole day ahead of us.

The boys were smart enough to keep silent. They saw Frank was thinking about it. If they let him think they believed he’d eventually come around.

—Why am I the one that’s always gotta take a chance? Frankie said finally. It’s not fair. It’s not right.

Both teams cheered him as he wriggled on his stomach over the edge of the sewer. A shaft of light struck the flesh-colored ball, floating still as a lotus on the black-greenish slime. He felt the strong grip of his friends on his ankles.

—Just tell us when, Frank…

—Now, I get my revenge,giggled Louie.

A t this a husky roar went up. It cowed Louie into a sniveling apology.

—He knows I’m kidding. You know I’m kidding, don’t you, Ceech?

The diver didn’t answer but he let go his grip on the street and went dangling freely into the shadows over the dark water. The rounded sides of the sewer shaft were mottled with mold and a white crud that looked like peeling paint. On the dull, flaccid skin of the water were fragments of the world the diver had just left—some orange rind, a milk bottle top, some small twigs, the page of a magazine with the face of a movie star, some slats from a fruit carton, a soda bottle. Out of the angle of his eye he saw something cut the water and he saw its gleaming eyes watching him from the shadows.

In a flash, all the anxiety he’d had on the street vanished. He was cool and observant. Despite the reek of the water he felt clean and without a care. Even the thought that they might drop him had gone. He was possessed by a singular peace.

He reached for the ball. Unable to quite touch it, his handlers swung him closer. He placed his thumb and middle finger on it, carefully touching the exposed half of the ball. It seemed a precious thing, almost a living thing that he was rescuing for a finer fate.

—I have it, he declared.

His friends drew him up. He found he had a fleeting regret at leaving the still, quiet shadows of the sewer. In a moment he was in the harsh brightness again, accepting slaps on his back and cheers in his ears, feeling a swelling in his chest as if he were a hero. Though he knew he was no hero he also knew he’d had for some brief, few moments, an experience granted to few. He was destiny’s darling.

—I’ll be right back, he said as he went sprinting down the block.

—Where you going, Ceech?

—I’m gonna wash my fingers, he called over his shoulder.