The Tin Box - Chapter 5

Chapter 5                                                 The Tin Box Secret

 The June sun warmed my skin, as I lifted my face toward the sky.  Sweat beaded on my skin and anger settled in my bones. 

Two days ago Bobby Kennedy had died, a day after being shot in Los Angeles, and directly after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary.  I thought back to five years ago and John Kennedy’s funeral.  Images had been caught on television of his children, Caroline and John-John, standing at attention as the cannons fired one by one.  Their small hands grasped in their mother’s grip, as she stood solemnly between them.  Instinctively, I shook my head trying to erase the image from my mind as if I was an Etch-A-Sketch.  Now Bobby was gone too. 

To stave off the feeling of hopelessness, I continued to fuel my anger.  After all the talk of peace and withdrawing from Vietnam, soldiers were still dying every day.  I had hoped that Bobby Kennedy would bring this war to an end.  I thought with self-disgust, this was a real war, not a movie, and it was deadly.  How could I go about my daily life and not realize the extreme danger Joe was in.  The reality of the war had finally been driven home when my brother’s friend, Steve, had come home in a wooden box last week.  When Steve’s little sister, Tara, returned to school, I didn’t know what to say to her.  When I passed her in the hall, I just lowered my head, afraid to look into her eyes, afraid to see her pain.  It was becoming more apparent, each day; that even the ending of a war could drag on beyond the endurance of all patience. 

 As I looked at the sun, I wondered why everyone always drew the sun yellow when it was actually a blazing bright white.  I closed my eyes for a moment and saw the red blood vessels squish behind my eyelids.  The pounding blood sizzled and flamed into tiny explosions.  It reminded me of the large screen backdrop at school dances.  Blobs of colorful oils dancing on the screen would crash into each other producing a psychedelic scene for all to enjoy. The continuous liquid, flowing motion matched the beat of the drums in the band. 

At the last school dance in May, the pulse of the drums had brought an unconscious jerking movement from my body.  I thought of tribal dances and the raw communion an individual could feel with music.  It was such a release of spirit to dance in a crowd.  There was an anonymity that was produced by the pounding music, the flashing lights, and the colors on the pulsating colors on the screen.  To feel young and alive, with your friends around you, dancing in the darkness and laughing, was intoxicating.

I had been dancing in the crowd, rocking to the music, as my senses reeled.  In mid-dance, I opened my eyes to find Donny watching me from the side of the room.   He was casually leaning against the wall, but his stare was intense and burning.  At once, I felt self-conscious and all of the natural rhythm and movement of the moment deserted me.  Awkwardly, I bumped into Heather and almost knocked her over.  She opened her eyes as she shouted above the music, “Hey, what’s up?” 

“Nothing,” I said.  “I’m going to go get a cola.  Want anything?”

“No thanks,” she turned and started dancing with Petra.  I noticed another girl, Annie, swaying to the music on the dance floor by herself.  Even in the strobe light you could see the dark cast to Annie’s skin.  An Italian family had adopted Annie and her biological brother Mark, when they were younger.  When they first moved to Baldwin, Annie was in second grade and Mark was in third.  People started speculating about their natural parentage when it got out that they were adopted.  Mark looked more like the rest of us in Baldwin, but Annie’s hair frizzed when it wasn’t held back in a clip.  As her facial features matured, people started to whisper.   Although I had known her since second grade, it hadn’t occurred to me until last year that she was a mulatto.  The other kids had often teased her about looking different.  It must be difficult to be caught between two worlds, looking like she belonged to one world, while living in another.  Her adoptive parents had tried to cover up the truth, but truth has a way of forcing itself out into the open.  Poor Annie found herself suddenly shunned by her childhood friends as their parents’ prejudices suddenly prevented her from being able to play with their children.   Even Mark was excluded in spite of the fact that his features looked more like everyone else’s.

At the dance, I had walked over to the refreshment table and bought a soda from Mr. Hunter, my social studies teacher.  Then I took a seat against the wall and sipped it slowly, just so that I would have something to do.  Sheldon Levy sat down next to me and asked, “Do you want to dance?”  Sheldon’s skinny frame, rather large nose, and huge brain made him a target for the “jocks.” Earlier in the year, I had felt sorry for Sheldon, so I made a point of talking to him and smiling when I passed him in the hall.  Now I seemed to be his only friend.  I didn’t want to be nasty to him, but he really was a bit annoying.  I opened my mouth to say “no,” but he had these huge sorrowful eyes that were just pleading with me to say “yes.”  So instead, to my surprise, out came, “oh-h kay.”  We walked out to the dance floor and started dancing.  Someone produced a beach ball and we all started to pass it around, the crowd keeping it afloat as everyone’s hands reached toward the ceiling.  I was having a good time and even started to relax again.  But when I looked over to the side where Donny had been a few minutes before, I saw that he was gone.  I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed.  I didn’t see him again that night; but the next week in school, I found a note in my locker.  It said “Good for you!  You made Sheldon’s night. D.”

Since Donny and I had never spoken to each other, I didn’t have the guts to ask him if he had left the note.  At first, I had hoped that he would say something to me.  But as the days turned into weeks, I had almost forgotten about the note. 

          As I walked toward the beach, and my special place, I wondered again if indeed it had been him.  I wanted to sit and just take a moment to think about things.  I kicked a stone as I walked up to the construction site.  Because I was concentrating on the stone I wasn’t really watching where I was walking.  Then I heard a voice yell, “Hey, watch out!”  I looked up to see Donny standing by the sand dunes.  Right in front of me, was the arm of a small bulldozer, the bucket just about at head level.  If he hadn’t said something, I would have walked straight into it.

Totally embarrassed and disconcerted to find Donny standing in front of me, when I had just been thinking about him, I blushed and started praying that a pothole in the ground would suddenly open up and swallow me whole. 

“What are you doing here?” He asked.

“Uh, just w-w-walking.”  Oh, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, I thought.

 My throat felt dry and parched as I noticed that he held a guitar in his hands.  I tried to speak again.  “Do you play the guitar?” Mentally, I kicked myself again, Stupid, there’s nothing like asking the obvious.  He smiled as I drowned in embarrassment, “Yeah.  I like to come here sometimes and play.  Usually, it’s deserted,” he looked at me and smiled, “but these tractors are getting pretty close to the beach now.  I guess this place won’t be peaceful much longer.” 

I walked past him to the sand dunes and down to the shore.  There was a little mound of sand with a flat rock on it that made a natural seat.  I sat down on the rock and picked up some pebbles.  Automatically, I started to toss them into the water.  I didn’t know how I felt about sharing my special place with someone else, especially Donny.  I felt kind of exposed and vulnerable, yet it was exciting to be so near him with no one else around.  He walked up next to me and said, “You have to make them skip along the surface.”  He picked up a pebble and threw it so that it skimmed the water and bounced three times before sinking.  I stood up and tried to do it too, but the rock just sank. 

“You have to pick the right rock; it needs to be flat and smooth.  Then you have to flick your wrist like this,” he demonstrated.  It bounced four times than sank.  I searched for a smooth flat pebble and tried again.  This time it bounced once before it sank.  “That’s it, you’re getting the hang of it,” he said.  We continued to bounce pebbles on the water for a while until I got pretty good at it.  I started to feel more comfortable and relaxed as I gazed out over the bay toward Jones Beach. 

 In the distance, I could see the mushroom-shaped water tower and the bridge leading to the small barrier island.  The seagulls were standing on the buoys out in the water.  Their cries filled the air as if to sound an alarm.  He said, “Do you know why all the seagulls are facing in the same direction?”

“No.”  I looked out over the water and noticed that, as far as I could see, all of the seagulls were facing west. 

“They always face into the wind because they are sniffing the air for food.” 

Seagulls were scavengers, wherever there was garbage there were seagulls.  In spite of the fact that most people found the seagulls to be pests, I liked them.  They weren’t graceful like other birds; they had to work hard to keep aloft.  Their wings beat continuously as they rose up toward the sky. They would soar for a short space of time and then they had to beat their wings again to keep from falling.  I watched as again and again they attempted to reach new heights, only to be reminded of their limitations. 

Noticing how many seagulls were nearby, I said, “A storm must be coming.”  I knew that seagulls flocked to shore when there was a storm out at sea.  

I could hear thunder in the distance.  The sound reminded me of the war.  I thought of Bobby Kennedy, of JFK, of Steve, and of my own brother, and my shoulders slumped. 

“What’s wrong?”  Donny asked.

“My brother . . . he’s in Vietnam,” I swallowed hard.  “We haven’t heard from him since Easter.” 

I pulled out a little troll doll from my pocket and straightened its yellow hair, holding it close to my heart.  “On the day Joe left, he gave me this.  It’s a Wishnik.  He told me that if you hold it close and make a wish, the wish will come true.  As soon as he drove away, I wished that he would come home safe.  But that was almost two years ago.”

“He hasn’t come home in all that time?” 

“He could have come home last year, but instead, he re-upped for another year.  I don’t think he wants to come home.”

“Does he write to you?” 

“Sometimes” I thought about the presents Joe sent to my sisters and me.  We didn’t have much, my dad worked hard but he didn’t have the money for extras.  Even at Christmas we only got one present each.  Getting gifts from Joe was a real treat for us.

“Joe likes to send us gifts from foreign countries.  He’s sent us banks carved out of coconuts that look like monkeys, dolls from different countries in Europe, and my favorite present, kimonos from Japan.” 

         

          “That’s pretty cool.”

I sighed in frustration, “I just don’t get why we have to fight this war.  When is it all going to end?”

Donny sat down on the sand dune next to me and started strumming his guitar.    

          As he played, I watched the tide beat against the shore, ever so slowly creeping closer to my feet with each surge.  I had taken my sandals off and squished my toes in the sand.  When Joe had left for boot camp three years ago, no one had realized how horrible this war was going to get.  I hoped that whoever was elected president, they would get us out of Vietnam in time to save Joe.  I wiped my naive tears away and knew that there was nothing anyone could do but pray. 

                  

           Donny reached out his hand and almost touched my hair before he let his hand fall back down to his guitar. 

He said, “You know, it’s only by living through the difficult times that we learn to appreciate the good ones.  When people around you are filled with hate, you learn to value love even more.”

“You sound like you know a thing or two about that” I said.

“Let’s just say, my family passes down anger and hatred like they are the family heirlooms. They fuel their own egos by hurting others.  What they haven’t figured out yet, is that sometimes, it’s only when someone is ground into the dirt that they finally get the courage to stand up for themselves.”  He started to grind his heel deep into the sand.   

His entire body seemed to have tensed up and it sent out the message that this was not something that he was ready to talk about.  As much as I wanted to ask him to explain what he meant, I felt like I was intruding on his thoughts.  There was this wall up all around him and I sensed that it was hard for him to let it down. 

Instead of talking, I focused my attention on a horseshoe crab.  It was crawling over a rock, but then it flipped off and fell on the hard shell of its back.  Its tiny legs wiggled in the air, as it tried desperately to right itself.  The mouth convulsed in the center of its soft underbelly when it found its vulnerable side exposed to the sun.  I used to think that horseshoe crabs were little monsters.  As a small child I had been afraid that they might bite or sting me.  But the menacing-looking tail that stuck out behind it was not a stinger after all, it only helped the horseshoe crab move through the sand.  The truth was they were harmless.  I stood up and walked over to it.  Gently, I picked it up and placed it on its legs.  It just stood still, terrified to move, trying to blend into the sand, and hoping I wouldn’t hurt it. 

“Poor little guy, there you go,” I said. 

 Suddenly, Donny’s mood lightened and he smiled as he started strumming on his guitar again, this time playing a happier tune.    

When he put the guitar down, he was watching me, “That was really nice of you to dance with Sheldon.” 

“Then it was you who left that note in my locker!” 

“Yeah, I just thought you should know that not everyone thought you were crazy for dancing with him.”

While we were talking, the wind started to pick up and the waves in the bay grew rougher.  The sun sank behind an angry-looking cloud and a chill ran up my arms.  I hugged myself and stood up.  It must be getting late; I’d better get going. 

“I’ll walk you home,” he offered. 

 I hesitated for a moment, but then said “Okay.” 

Donny slung his guitar over his shoulder.  His bicycle had been on the ground, so he picked it up now and walked it as we crossed the construction site together.   We had just made it to the road when the clouds unloaded their burden and the rain poured down on us. 

“Hop on the handlebars and I’ll give you a ride.” He saw me hesitate again, “It’ll get you home quicker if we ride.”

I didn’t mind the rain and I didn’t want to get home quicker, but I couldn’t think of an excuse to say no.  So I hopped onto the monkey bars and we drove through the rain.  I didn’t even notice the rain anymore; his arms were on either side of me, guiding the bicycle.  I directed him to my house.  The closer we got, the more nervous I was.  Luckily when we got there, my father’s car wasn’t in the driveway. 

He pulled up to the curb and I jumped off.

 “Can I call you sometime?” he asked.

“Sure.”  I didn’t know what my dad would do when a boy called the house, but I decided I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. 

He took out a pen from his pocket.  “So what’s your number?”

I told him the number and he wrote it on the palm of his hand.

“See you in school on Monday,” he said. 

“Yeah, see you in school.”  I waved goodbye and ran into the yard, behind my house.  I didn’t breathe again until I got to my room.  I looked out the window, only to see the empty street below.  But for the first time in my life, my heart was full.