Novels
an excerpt from
Under the Boardwalk
a novel by David Ortmann
Blood brothers
In 1980, I was popular. For two days.
At school, now in the fourth grade, I felt like the invisible child, one of the hundreds of utterly forgettable nine-year old boys. I wasn't talented enough with a football to warrant admiration and I wasn't talented enough with a musical instrument to warrant ridicule. I was just there. There the way Janitor Bob's yellow mop bucket was there, the way the green paint that peeled from the cinderblock walls was there-part of the school but too common to be recognized or distinguished.
My favorite memory of Clarksdale grammar school was our once-a-month film festival. Every child from every class, grades Kindergarten through sixth, was filed two-by-two into the huge gym, which doubled as an auditorium, to watch a film the principal had decided was enjoyable, but not without some educational value. By far the best film picked in 1980 was Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. It seduced everyone, me included. Its moral was simple: Be honest and you will inherit a kingdom and all the chocolate you can eat.
Honest was hard. I was forgetting how to do it or even what it was. Since Lola's Oyster Shell debut and the beating that followed, my life and character were becoming built on untruths: small untruths at first, but untruths that, like snowballs, get bigger if left to roll on their own. Untruths that sometimes threatened to suck me up completely.
Of course none of this was on my mind that April day. It was movie time and that meant one thing: no Math class. Any excuse to get out of Math was fine by me.
I remember thinking Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was the best movie I'd ever seen! I especially liked the Oompa Loompas and the obnoxious girl who turned into a giant blueberry. As the Oompa Loompas rolled her away, I heard a voice behind me whisper, "I'd like to see that happen to Joey Hellinger."
I turned around and saw Willy Walker for the first time. I was sure I'd seen him before but like the mop bucket, the paint, and me-Willy was not much to remember. Distinguishable only for his huge round glasses, he looked like the owl on the Wise Potato Chips box.
I found myself laughing at the image of the meanest kid in school turning into a giant piece of fruit and being rolled away forever.
"Quiet!" a teacher's voice boomed out from the back of the room.
Willy and I shared a conspiratorial glance, our first connection.
There were other connections. We both liked to eat Lucky Charms cereal, without milk, right out of the box. My favorites were the yellow moons. Willy's were the pink hearts. This was years before they added the blue diamonds. We both liked Welcome Back Kotter, but not Starsky and Hutch. We both loved animals and the woods surrounding our little town that were home to so many amazing creatures. Willy even showed me his secret tree, under which he would sit for hours watching the animals or reading one of his many books.
As age nine drifted into ten, and then into eleven, Willy effortlessly became my best and only friend. We liked to pretend we were family and once even picked our mosquito bite scabs raw, rubbing our bloody arms together. Exchanging fluids, we declared ourselves brothers.
"Like the indigenous people," Willy smiled.
"The what?"
"The Native American Indians," he said, as if that explained anything.
I was smart in school but Willy was a genius. I guess if anyone had bothered to notice us, they would have called us nerds.
Willy and I watched re-runs of The Six Million Dollar Man every Sunday night and traded Charlie's Angels cards. The cards came six to a pack with a powdery sheet of bubble gum sandwiched inside, all for the price of a quarter. Mrs. Walker always confiscated the gum.
"Too much sugar," she'd say. "You boys have to take care of those beautiful smiles."
That was okay. We didn't care about the gum. The cards themselves were enough, treasures traded with a seriousness and solemnity rare in eleven-year old boys. Willy's favorite Angel was Kate Jackson " 'cause she's the brains of the outfit." Mine was Farrah Fawcett because she had cool hair and she was the wife of the Six Million-Dollar Man.
Willy and I climbed trees and played Spiderman. We foraged deep into the New Jersey woods surrounding his house in search of snakes and lizards. Sometimes we purposefully got lost and then formulated a strategic rescue plan that had us back to my house in time for my mother's Ortega taco dinners. Tacos always tasted better with Willy.
We walked home from school together every day. Mrs. Walker always had a pitcher of Kool-Aid and a box of Nature Valley granola bars waiting for us on the Walker's Formica kitchen table. My favorites were the blueberry ones. Willy carried more books home than any other kid at school. Piled high and crushed against his concave chest were basic and advanced readers, a spelling book, a math book, his gifted-and-talented manual, a mammoth social studies workbook, and whatever library books he happened to be reading for pleasure. I was always amazed that such a tiny kid could carry so many books.
I never brought home as many books as Willy did, so it just seemed natural one day when I said, "Willy, can I carry some of those books for you?"
He didn't answer me, but I caught a look of relief in his bright green eyes. Relief and something else, something I couldn't name, and then, like the sunlight that flashed off his huge owl-like glasses, it was gone.
From that day on I carried Willy's books. He still carried his library books, which he never let out of his sight, but I carried the rest. I was only an inch or two taller than he was, but those inches seemed to make a difference. Besides, Willy had respiratory problems and would begin to wheeze on the walk home whenever he carried too much.
Willy and I were walking home one afternoon, debating whether his Mom would make cherry or grape Kool-Aid, when we turned the corner at Rosenberg's Deli and ran smack into the Hellinger gang.
Joey Hellinger, his bother Ralph, and their four friends, Bruce, Danny, Ryan, and Slick Ike were the bane of Clarksdale grammar school. They were in the sixth grade and terrorized everyone. Joey, the leader, wore a Levi's denim jacket with a scary dragon drawn on the back in red and black paint. He had terrible breath, and I hated him.
"Well, what have we here?" he said, looking down at Willy and me. The four others formed a circle around us and the sun disappeared. I shivered. I hadn't noticed how tall they were before.
"Bug off," Willy snapped. "We've got things to do!"
Willy slid through an opening between Ralph and Slick Ike, like an elf in a forest of trolls, just as quick and just as unafraid.
Before I could sneak through the same gap, Joey looked down at the mountain of books I was carrying. "Check it out, guys," he said. "Gunderson's carrying Walker's books." The five began to laugh and I felt my face flush deep red.
I thought of a hundred things to say back to him but, lacking Willy's courage, I just slunk by them, head bowed with some deep unnamable shame.
"What're ya gonna do next Gunderson, hold his hand?" Joey laughed, and then I heard that word again, the word that rendered me defenseless.
"Faggots," he hissed.
Willy didn't understand why I didn't want to come in for Kool-Aid and granola bars that day. I told him I was cold and needed to go home.
I stayed cold even after I was out of the shadow of the Hellinger gang. I stayed cold in the burning afternoon sun. I went to bed cold that night. I woke up cold the next morning.
The next afternoon I told Willy that I was getting more homework assigned and that maybe he should carry his own books home from now on.
"Sure," he said quietly, cracking a weak smile that I would have seen, had I had the guts to look at him.
* * * *
In which I learn to betray
I began to avoid him. Willy said his mother started buying fewer blueberry granola bars on her shopping trips, but he wasn't smiling. I watched television alone after school, ate Ding-Dongs until I felt sick, ignored my homework, and got used to feeling like a bad friend. A lonely bad friend.
A week later, on Friday, Willy waited for me on the playground after school. Clusters of kids straggled about, anxious with weekend energy, waiting for their parents to pick them up, or for the fat yellow school buses that crowded the street.
"Hi Mikey." Willy smiled.
"Hey."
"I. uh. got some new Charlie's Angels cards," he said eagerly.
"So what?" I bit.
"There's lot's of Farrah." He waited in the silence for any sort of excitement from me. I didn't give him any.
"I. I. I though you might want them." In his extended hand he held a stack of Charlie's Angel's cards easily two inches thick. They were mostly of Farrah, but I even saw some of Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith.
I wanted the cards. I wanted them badly. But not bad enough to have people call me that name again.
"No," I shot his gesture flat, but added, "thanks."
I started walking. I saw Joey Hellinger and Slick Ike leaning up against the school wall, opening a pack of cigarettes.
Keep walking Mikey. Keep walking. I repeated over and over, trying to put some distance between Willy and me.
"Hey!" he yelped in a high-pitched voice that made me cringe. "My Dad got tickets to the Marvel Comics Fair this weekend. He said he'd drive. Wanna go?"
"No." I didn't turn to look at him.
"Do you want to come over today and see the new lizard I found on Sunday? I named him Gus."
Why was Willy being so gosh-darned loud? Joey and Ike were looking right at us!
"Well, if it isn't Mr. and Mrs. Mikey Gunderson," Joey sneered. "Gonna kiss him for us, Mikey?"
I tried to ignore them but the throb of shame in my head made it impossible. More kids turned their attention toward me, toward us. Willy and me. I felt like someone had lodged a balloon deep in my skull and was blowing it up, bigger and bigger.
"Mikey," Willy wailed, even higher pitched this time, or so I imagined. "I thought we were brothers!"
"I thought we were brothers," Joey mocked him. "More like sisters!"
A twitter of laughter spread through the crowd of kids gathered.
"Sisters. Sisters. Sisters." That word rang through my head like an unmerciful gong. I could see tears welling in Willy's eyes. Burning there, like the words burning in me. Sisters. Faggots. Sisters. Faggots.
"Don't you understand the word no?" I turned on him, flaring. "I hate you and your gay Charlie's Angel's cards, and your stupid comic books, and your Mom's cruddy Kool Aid and everything about you including your queer lizard with the dumb name! I hope it dies!" I spat at him.
Willy started to cry. Damn that little faggot fuck, I thought. I had completely lost control, not realizing that I'd even hit him until we were on the ground. Willy wailed like a little girl beneath my fists. I pounded his face and nose until sticky blood splashed hot on my cheek. Burning, wet, livid blood, and definitely not the blood of brotherhood.
"Fight. Fight! Fight!"
The words rang through the playground. A mob of bloodthirsty kids circled Willy and me as I continued to pummel him. Relentless, I beat him with all the rage and misunderstanding festering inside of me. I beat him the way my father beat me.
Only worse. So much worse.
When I got up, all the kids were silent. Slick Ike and Danny were behind me. Willy was face down on the ground, crying and wheezing, his eyeglasses lying smashed next to him. I watched the playground dirt settling around him, knowing he couldn't breathe.
"Nice work, Gunderson. You really learned that little bitch." That was Slick Ike.
"Yeah, Bitch," I yelled down to Willy, strangely comfortable with the b-word, which I'd never uttered before.
"I'm not sure he's done yet, Gunderson," Joey Hellinger said challengingly. He slithered up beside me, leaning on my shoulder like a real pal would. I could smell the cheap musk aftershave he wore. "Kick him, Gunderson," he hissed into my ear.
"Kick him in the head." Joey's words bit harder this time, like an order and just loud enough for the other kids to hear.
I could hear my father's voice, "Never kick a guy when he's down." The unwritten rule of good sportsmanship ran through my mind-but the cries of playground children rang louder than any rules I'd ever learned.
Kick him. Kick him! Kickhimkickhimkickhim!
I drew my foot back and landed a sharp kick right at Willy's head. He screamed and both his hands shot up to hold his head as he rocked himself in the dust, crying.
I left Willy in the dirt that day and walked home with the Hellinger gang. Joey even put his arm around me and called me "dude."
* * * *
The kids at school treated me differently for the next day or two. They were either afraid of me or they wanted to be my friend. For those two days I was popular, respected, and feared. After that, I was just Mikey Gunderson again. No one called me names anymore, but no one wanted to be my friend either. Willy didn't come back to school for a full week.
Five days later, I started crying. The pain of loss I felt in my stomach had me crying as hard as Willy had, cries I had not be able to get out of my head since that day I hurt him so badly. I called his house. I called his house to hear his voice. I called his house to say I was sorry.
I am sorry, Willy.
His mother answered the phone and said, "Michael Gunderson, don't you ever call this house again. Do you understand?"
Then she hung up.
The day Willy got back to school, I found a note in my spelling book. It said, "You're not my brother anymore." There was no signature.
That summer Willy's parents moved away.
I never saw him again.