The Arangment

The hillbillies lived in the brown, brick, eight flat above the butcher’s. You could tell who they were because of there Appalachian accent and they didn’t where shoes. For a nickel they would walk on glass.

One year out trick-or-treating, I went in there building, They lived upstairs from Fat Georgie, who mother was the famous Zsa Zsa. Anyway, one of the hillbilly’s mothers invited me into their cabbage-smelling apartment and there was a retarded boy chained to the iron headboard of his bed. The mattress was bare and pea stained. He made loud grunting sounds at me and strained against the chain cuffed to his wrist like a dog. They gave me some kind of unwrapped, homemade sticky candy. I threw it away once I got outside. I wasn’t aloud to take anything that didn’t come in a wrapper.

The hillbilly’s were tough and we fought often. Sometimes they came out three or four at a time trying to catch one of us alone. They almost caught one Sunday, but I climbed up into the rafters of the little closed porch roof over the door to the butcher’s. They looked in the porch, but they didn’t look up.

One Saturday morning my cousin Wayne said he was talking to Claude. Maybe that was his name. Wayne said he bet Claude I could take his little brother. We were about the same age and size.

“The hillbilly’s are pretty tough,” I said.

“I think you can take him. Anyway I made the bet. Come on. It’s all arranged.”

“What’s arranged?”

“The fight,” he said. “Me and Claude got it all figured out. We’re having it by where they’re digging out for the expressway. It’s all fenced in. No body will bother us.”

“They’re pretty tough. I never fought him before.”

“Don’t worry. Your tougher than every other kid your size on the block. Come on they’re waiting. You don’t want them to think you’re chicken, do yeah?”

He took off up the block at a trot. I could just make out the fence a couple long blocks away. Even if I was chicken, he was right. I didn’t want them to think so. I ran after him. We snuck through and opening in the fence. The field of battle was churned up dirt and clay graded some in front of the deep wide trench that would become the Eisenhower Expressway. There was six or seven ragged boy waiting, most about twelve years old. I was eight. I don’t know how old my opponent was.

Learning The Trucklot Boy Trade

There’s a black and white picture of my sister with her long black braids, my squinty-eyed cousin Janis, Cute cousin Linda and me with by black rimed glasses crocked on my face, lined up in our church clothes on Peoria street with a mountain rising in the distance for background. We stood in order of age and height. My sister, at ten, was the oldest. We were a year a part from each other. At seven, in diagonally checked vest, bow tie, and short pants, I was the youngest.

It’s not a mountain. It’s the cinder pile and it’s only at the end of the block just across Huron. Peoria street T’s into Huron and a wide cinder covered dive continued north, across the street, for at least a couple long blocks, wide enough for semis to pass each other and maneuver.

To the west of the drive, starting across from the cinder pile, were the factory buildings that fronted on Sangomon street, with sunken loading bays filled with rain water and dead rats. Beyond old Pete’s shack at the bottom of the ramp, where dump truck drove to the top of the pile to dump their loads, was another truck lot. The deeper into the lot you went, the more decrepit and abandon to rot the parked trailers became.

Way in the back a debris littered viaduct under the Soo line is where my cousin Wayne taught me, Frankie, and Little Georgie how to bust booze and beer bottles to get a long point to use in a fight. He stood under the viaduct near where the rusted superstructure came down in the center into a raised concrete pier dividing the two bays. Wayne was twelve, my idol. Imagine James Dean as a skinny kid running in the streets, just starting to slick back blonde hair.

“You got to grab it by the neck,” he said. “The kind with the long neck is better. Hold it like this, and you got’ a hold it lose in case it breaks wrong so you don’t cut yourself so bad.”

We all had bottles we held. Frankie threw his against the concrete wall holding up the track bed and got one with a better neck.

“Yeah. That’s better,” Wayne said. “So you don’t just whack’em. You got to use a glancing blow, like this.” He skimmed it against the concrete pier with a fast, almost sidearm swing. It left the neck intact, broke most of one side away, and left a long point almost as long as the bottle before he broke it.

My friends and I were tentative at first, scared. Little Georgie dropped his bottle as soon as it struck the concrete. Frankie was afraid to try. My bottle didn’t even break.

“What a bunch a chickens,” Wayne said, looking directly at me.

“Let me try again?”

I whacked it and cut the web between my thumb and finger. I stuck the web in my mouth. Little Georgie tried again and got a long point.

“I did it. Hey. You guys. I did it.” He slashed at the air. “Ha ha. Take that. Take that.”

Wayne grabbed me by the wrist and roughly handled my hand. I winced. There wasn’t much blood. “It’s not so bad.” He through my hand back at me scanned the littered street and picked up another bottle. “Here,” he said. “Try again, glancing this time. Glanceing.”

I approached the concrete pier, steely eyed, like my other hero, Paladin, from Have Gun, Will Travel, right before a gunfight. I scrunched up my face and struck my blow. I didn’t need to say anything. I held the long point hi over my head glinting in the sunlight, a skinny trail of blood running down my arm. After admiring the gift of my new talent, I turned.

“Come on, Frankie,” I said. Don’t be chicken.”