Angelo

Angelo lived in the red brick two-flat above Yudock. He used to take pot shots at us with his lever-action bb gun from his back porch sometime when we wandered too close in the truck lot. Little puffs of dust would jump up around us in the cinders, or we’d get a little sting. He thought it was funny and he laughed and called us out for not paying attention to where we were going, as if it was his civic duty to keep us on our toes.

He had a shooting range set up were he set bottles or soup cans on the two by four cross piece inside his enclosed back porch and shoot at them from the other side his wobbly Formica-topped kitchen table with the chrome band and legs. He’d work the action sitting padded chrome chair and take aim with his elbows on the table.

If he was in a good mood and we braved his test of courage of shooting by our feet as we climbed the back stairs to his flat, he cocked the gun for us and let us take a few shots over the table, through the open back door and into the back porch to the bottles on the ledge. If he was in a bad move we never got to the stairs. Fruit crates under the ledge for the bottles caught most of the broken glass. The rest crunch under our sneakers as we came inside.

There was usually empty Campbell chicken noodle soup cans on the white gas stove and table and dirty pots and dishes in the porcelain covered, cast iron sink. It was the kind with the molded, fluted water trap flowing into the sink. It sat on top a cabinet with one door hanging crooked and several spots of rust were the porcelain was chipped and around the drain. There was almost no furniture and what was there was pretty ratty.

If he didn’t break them first, he gave us pop bottle when we were out collecting them for deposit money. We had to pass the test for the pop bottles two. He usually didn’t hit us. When he did it was a pretty good sting and once he had to dig one out of Frankie’s arm. When he hit us he said he was sorry a lot and pleaded and threatened for us not to tell and blamed us cause he wouldn’t have hit us if we weren’t moving and jumping all over the place like scared little girls.

He looked like the rest of us, a skinny kid with a buzz-cut wearing a dago-t. We all looked pretty much the same except for fat Georgie and that we were different sizes, generally according to our ages. All of us were tan in the summers from always running in the streets, dirt smudged from living in the grimy neighborhood. I think he was twelve or fourteen years old and he was my cousin Wayne’s friend and died in Viet Nam.