Backbone > Frankly Speaking
Through the Grace of Johnny Alice
by Frank Crocitto; Illustration by Leslie Bender

Johnny Alice leaned against a fence watching the silent scuffle in
the alleyway. He held a sawed-off broomstick over his shoulder.
Intermittently, he looked back at the activity on the street, then returned his gaze to the alley, with a sigh.

On the wet and puddled concrete of the alley, two boys were engaged in a physical disagreement. One, confident and smirking, was Fat Steve; the other, the new kid, thrashed and grunted with all his might. Steve had him in a headlock and was leaning his weight upon him. The new kid struggled valiantly but when Steve put his leg out and tripped him, his favorite technique, the new kid found himself on his back in a puddle with Steve sitting smugly on his chest, knees pinning down his arms.
—Get offa me! I can’t breathe!

—Now, ain’t that tough, said Steve, his small eyes gleaming with triumph.

The new kid lacked curse words in his vocabulary as yet, so he summoned the names of animals. The only name Steve took umbrage at was Pig, and in response bounced down on the thin boy’s chest. The boy gasped and a look came into his face as of someone dreaming.

—Hey, you ain’t hurt, Steve sneered as he looked up to see if anyone was watching. His eyes met those of Johnny Alice.

Fat Steve rose up wearily, as if he were getting off a hard bench.
—Come on, I didn’t hurt you, Steve said with bravado. But there was anxiety scrawled on his face, for the new kid was rolling side to side, in silence.

This was the same ritual that had taken place every day since the day the new kid had arrived. Steve would invite him to wrestle, the boy would try to beg off, Steve would pursue him, pushing him or cornering him until he reacted. Then, Steve would toy with him, wrestle him down, and finally sit on his chest. Whenever the new kid came up the block he came up warily. It was where the games were played. Invariably Steve spotted him. The other boys, who relished watching a fight, had long lost interest. Though Steve and the new kid were about the same height and the same age, the new kid was skin-and-bones and Steve was thick and well-bellied.

—You big fat pig! the new kid spit out when he caught his breath.

—Hey, you better watch your mouth, sissy, said Steve, highly offended.

—Big fat, fat pig!

—You know, you got a big mouth. How’d you like me to break your skinny bones a little? Steve moved in on the new kid like a dogcatcher.
The new kid dodged a number of Steve’s attempts to snare him. He found himself being driven further down the alley to the backyard. He feinted and Steve made a serious lunge for him, which he dodged, and finally slipped by his lumbering opponent and sprinted out the alleyway.
Johnny had missed the last few moments of the fight. His teammates had called him to the plate. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the new kid emerge from the alley with commendable speed. Behind him came Steve, throwing dark threats at the runner’s back.

Just then a sun shower struck with surprising vehemence. The players and spectators scrambled for cover. The game, so rudely interrupted by the whim of heaven, was stickball-on-a-bounce and was being played by the “big guys”, who because they played so rarely, drew a crowd. All the little guys were there, lining the steps and curbs.

Some men, too, home early from work like Mr. Silvestri the housepainter. Victor and his brother Virgil on furlough from the Army, Andy Scarpoola who lived above the beauty parlor on the avenue, the Gerson brothers and the Banana brothers and crazy Sally Cancellari. Even Sigh-Yo, the Sirico family’s defective who paced up and down the block a thousand times a day, drooling, never harming anyone, and occasionally singing out the name he came to be known by.
The rain passed. The crowd issued from the protection of the great sycamore tree with a cheer. Within seconds steam was rising from the street and the slick black of it turned gray as it dried, from its crown to the curbs where rainwater rushed and gurgled down toward the 14th Avenue sewers.

On Johnny Alice’s second swing-and-miss a trio of girls who had draped themselves along the honey-suckled cyclone fence bordering Sirico’s Summer Garden gave him delighted boos. Johnny flushed but kept his eye on Sammy Gambino, who never waited for the batter to get ready. His next pitch, a reluctant, flabby high bouncer, struck a pebble and veered to the curb where it was picked up by the stream and bobbled away. While the catcher pursued the ball Johnny approached the pitcher.

—Sam, why don’t you tell your brother to lay off the new kid?

—What new kid?

—The skinny kid with the mussed hair. He keeps bullying him. The kid’s half his weight.

—OK, Johnny. I’ll talk but I never seen my stinkin’ brother listen to nobody.

Sammy’s next offering went for a long journey over the trolley tracks and a whole sewer length up the next block. With the same exuberance the girls had booed Johnny they now cheered him. Squealing, they dashed across the street and tried to mob him as he rounded third. But their timing was off so they only caught a piece of his shirt. When Johnny stepped on home plate, the sycamore tree shrugged and let fall a shower off its leaves, which made the girls cheer as if they’d gotten a consolation prize.

The new kid watched the game from behind a tree trunk. He kept his eye on Steve too, who was on the prowl, chewing on Tootsie rolls. When the new kid’s mother called he raced down the block as if he had wings on his ankles.

Johnny Alice was the pride of the block. He was good at everything—sports, school, fixing skates, or making soap boxes—accomplishing things with a graceful, unpretentious ease. He was handsome and well built; a friend to all, though with no best friend. He moved through the seething excitement of the block with serene detachment. Fights were always breaking out between the boys but no one was interested in fighting with Johnny Alice.

He lived down the block with his mother, known to the neighborhood as Madam Grace, a widespread woman who sported a wiry moustache, whose wardrobe appeared to consist entirely of housecoats and aprons: Though the people next door swore they’d seen her sneak out nights, her mop of hair pomped and coiffured, clean-shaven and dolled up in mink and diamonds.

Johnny had been born on the block but he hardly seemed to be Madam Grace’s child. She was loud and slovenly. He was quiet and trim. She was unkempt and aimless. He was curried, combed, and purposeful in whatever he did. They were rarely seen together.

The girls on the block—Marie and Annette and the two Joanies and Rosalind and Augustine and Jenny Spadaro—all around his age—were drawn, like the girls in school, irresistibly, to Johnny Alice. He was the dreamboat. They observed him and gossiped about him and wrote letters back and forth about him. If he passed by, they tagged after him, shamelessly. Unable to secure his attention, they would taunt him. They would—accidentally—fall against him. They made up dramatic stories to tell him just to be near him. Though they kept one another guessing, and sometimes hissing like jealous cats, he had never kissed any of them.

Johnny’s mind was elsewhere. He surveyed the events of the world from a compassionate distance. Important, mature matters seemed to have a hold on his attention, perhaps what he had to do at home or what he was going to do with his life. He was “Johnny Alice” and the neighborhood speculated upon what great things he might do with his life. He might even go to Hollywood.

One morning, a bright morning a few days later, Johnny came out of his house bouncing a new Spaldeen, and asked the new kid who lived but a few doors away if he knew how to play stoopball.

—I don’t like stoopball, he said sullenly, and continued to pick the bark off the trunk of the thick, mottled sycamore in front of his house.

—It’s a good game, said Johnny.

The new kid, who reluctantly confessed his name was Frankie, learned quickly, and to his mentor’s delight, won the third game. He had quick reflexes and deft hands and good aim. But it took Frankie’s beating the older boy three games in a row for him to believe Johnny wasn’t letting him win. At supper that night he told his sister what had happened and believe him; and later when his father came home from work and he told him, his father called it beginner’s luck.

The next time they met Johnny was carrying a BB gun. Frankie was mesmerized; he’d never seen such a gun.

—My father gave it to me, said Johnny.

—I never saw your father.

—He doesn’t live here. But he comes on my birthday and on Christmas, sometimes. He gave it to me for my birthday.

Since Johnny Alice’s backyard was one over from his, the new kid didn’t ask his mother if he could go but skipped after Johnny, who led the way like the Pathfinder, through his alleyway and into a great grassy space that seemed wide as a meadow.

The kid held the rifle and Johnny showed him how to pump it and to sight things with the help of the tiny nub at the end of the barrel. Frankie caressed the weapon.

—Do you want to shoot a little? asked Johnny.

—Naw, I don’t think so.

—Come on, Johnny urged, don’t always say no when you really want to do something.

For hours they lay on their bellies in the high grass and shot unsuspecting grasshoppers.

That Sunday, on the way home from buying buns at Hansen’s Deli for his mother’s breakfast, Johnny saw Fat Steve sitting on the new kid’s chest in the alley next to Sirico’s Summer Garden. Both were in their church clothes. Frankie’s face looked feverish, his hair was messed and one of his pant legs was torn at the knee.

—Let him up, Johnny said quietly.

—I don’t do anything to him, Johnny. He keeps on bothering me.

—I don’t bother you, you big fat liar.

As they walked down the block together Johnny pointed out the state of the boy’s pants. Tears crept out of the boy’s eyes.

At three o’clock, when Sunday was at its sleepiest, as they had agreed, Johnny and Frankie met in the quiet shade of the older boy’s alley. They looked at one another a while, and then, as though he was making a difficult decision, Johnny spoke.

—Frankie, put up your hands. Like this. Put ‘em up. I’m going to show you how to box.

And so it was for the next two weeks, morning and noon, the two met in the alleyway. The new kid could bounce about on his toes, dodging and feinting. His left jab shot back and forth like a piston. He could move in with a combination and move out in a flash. He could box.

—The next time Steve wants to wrestle, Johnny announced, you tell him you want to box.

—I can say it but he’ll still try to grab me.

—You just dance out of reach, Frankie. You’re not afraid of him, are you?

—I’m scared he’ll want to kill me if I hit him.

—He won’t touch you, promised Johnny. You keep your fists up and keep that jab snapping in his face; don’t let him corner you; weave and dance, in and out, and let him have his lumps.

Frankie declined Fat Steve’s challenge to wrestle when they met and Fat Steve laughed at Frankie’s invitation to box. He rushed the new kid, who sidestepped and let him run into the alley wall of the Paladino house. Enraged, Steve rushed him again. Again Frankie leapt aside. This time Steve stopped short of the wall, but he caught a crisp right hand high on his cheek near his left eye. Cursing and threatening, he dove at his opponent, but Frankie moved backward faster than Steve could run forward and the diver belly flopped onto the concrete. Frankie allowed his infuriated nemesis to get up but he didn’t wait to be rushed again. He moved straight toward Fat Steve and with two swift jabs boxed his left ear, then his right ear, and leapt back before his adversary could throw a punch.

The rest of the confrontation—comprised of Steve’s desperate attempts to snatch a shadow and bloody threats of what he was going to do when he got his mitts on Frankie—lasted but a few minutes. When the new kid, taking no pleasure in pummeling his dazed antagonist, suggested that he had had enough if Steve had enough, the bigger boy didn’t answer but stumbled to the back of the alley, nursing a black eye.

—I’m gonna get my brother Sammy after you, he whimpered at last. He’ll show you. He’ll show you damn good.

Frankie left the alleyway, his body still trembling from his trial. He passed Bobby Gerson and Junior Sirico and the two Banana brothers. They looked at him, amazed, recognizing that something out of the ordinary had occurred.

But Tommy Penny-Loafers, who lived in the white house on the corner and who didn’t have a friend in the world, decided to stick up for Fat Steve and block Frankie’s way out of the alley. Frankie didn’t have breath to speak so he pushed Tommy and sent him tumbling into the hedges.
As the new kid walked down the block he heard Tommy Penny-Loafers calling after him:

—Hey you’re gonna fight me next, you skinny prick!