Tattoos
“You can’t depend on a beginning
You can’t depend on an end”
Busload of Faith ~ Lou Reed
“I’d tell you what it means if I didn’t have to try so hard”
Bob Dylan ~ Obviously Five Believers
~Tattoos~
“They said ‘congratulations, you’ve got what it takes’
They sent him back into the rat race without any brakes.
They took a clean cut kid
and they made a killer out of him is what they did”
Clean Cut Kid - Bob Dylan
If you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume you’re at an age where you’ve heard, at least once, an authority figure or a movie actor pretending to be an authority figure speak words something like:
‘Friend, nothing in life is simply black or white. Everything life throws at you will come at you in shades of gray.’
Well that’s not exactly accurate now is it? Take High School for instance. You either wore white socks everyday or you wore black socks everyday. Either you were cool by one standard or you were cool by another.
Back when I was in Junior High School, the students in grades 7 through 9 had to attend classes on the General Moses Hazen High School campus because the brand new Junior High School building wouldn’t be brand new until the following year.
They put all of us under underclassmen in the High School’s new wing and did their level best to keep us away from the seasoned, ball-busting, upper upperclassmen. An impossible task for Green Berets. How do you think the average high school hall monitor managed?
General Moses Hazen High sure had some crazy traditions. The goofiest one was what some genius administrator considered his crowning contribution to the health, well being and moral fiber of the student body.
The entire student body was organized into two teams. The Purple team and the Gold team, the official school colors. Once in the fall and once in the spring, they marched us onto the football field for competitive calisthenics and the singing of inspirational songs. The Purple team on one side of the fifty yard line, the Gold team on the other. Most of the RoyalKings in either division refused to participate. They sat on their assigned spots in the back rows wearing black leather jackets over gym shorts, tees, black socks and black high tops. They smoked skinny cigarettes and refused to cooperate with the teaching staff.
The General Moses Hazen student body was actually divided into two distinct, more organic, groups. I thought of them as the Preppies (white socks) and the RoyalKings (black socks.) The Preppies wore populated penny loafers, chinos, button down shirts and white socks. They enrolled in college preparatory classes and followed the rules. The Kings wore black leather jackets, jeans, steel toed shoes and black socks. They took wood shop, metal shop and shop lifted. “Rules?”
RoyalKings were pre-destined to become members of the manual labor force, the military or incarcerated. The Preppies were bound for prestigious colleges or an executive position in the family firm.
Although you’d probably categorize me as a Preppie, I wanted no part of either cohort. To protest the arbitrary stratification of my generation, I wore a pair of my father’s black and white argyle socks to school every single day.
With all those extra mouths to feed, the Hazen High cafeteria began serving lunch every morning at half past ten. That day, I had lunch in fourth period. The first seating of the day. You’d think it would be an advantage to have first dibs on the day’s culinary masterpieces. It sure wasn’t. No matter how you spin it, dreck is still dreck. As a rule we wolfed down the mystery meal in mere minutes and spent the bulk of the period outside pitching pennies, playing stickball and trading black market baseball cards.
Please keep in mind that the year was 1958. Outside the cafeteria were basketball, volleyball and shuffleboard courts and the smoking area. Back then, students were allowed to smoke tobacco on the west side of a double white line that ran the length of the tarmac. It also established a boundary between Preppie turf and RoyalKings turf.
Preppies usually shot hoops or, at least, tossed a ball around. Mostly they told stupid jokes, gossiped and flirted. The RoyalKings smoked menthol cigarettes, punched each other on the shoulder a lot, shot craps, and taunted the Preppies.
Sometimes the taunting got so out of hand, that the offended parties squared off ready to settle matters the old fashioned way. Every available student formed a wall around the would-be combatants to block the recess yard monitor’s view of the escalating urination competition. That tactic, and its variants were uniformly unsuccessful and rarely did an argument result in a bloodied nose, a blackened eye, a broken bone or a tarnished rep. No one had the stones to defy Coach Peter “Jumbo’ Long who used to play left tackle for the New York Giants. He proudly kept the recess yard relatively drama free until the day I killed Gino Pagano.
Gino Pagano was a ninth grader from the same East Drexel Hills neighborhood that produced most of the RoyalKings. Gino wanted to get in good with the sophomores and juniors, as he would be in the tenth grade the following year. With the Jr. High schoolers in their proper place next year, Gino was destined for the bottom of the totem pole again.
Pagano was a smaller guy like me. I was a lofty 5’5” then, all skin and bones. Gino was maybe 5’3” and was built like a walrus. Anyway Gino had asked Jimmy Walker one of the older RoyalKings for his protection the next school year. To prove his worth, Gino had to kick some Preppie ass right then and there. My apostate ass as it turned out. I was to be the morning’s entertainment. The betting line, 3-1 on Gino Pagano, was surely influenced by his weight and his ethnicity.
Seems the black and white argyle sock symbolism was pissing both groups off equally. However nobody, Preppie or King, had ever called me out for my neutrality-ware. Until Gino Pagano, following explicit instructions from his mentor, Big Jim Walker, strutted up to me and shouted, “What’s with the socks, Jew boy?” he brandished an unopened switchblade so’s I’d know that he was not to be fucked with back.
Let’s take a break from this scary bully-shit for just one second. Up until then, I was an ordinary 13 year old kid. I was into cool cars, rockets, comic books, science fiction, football, basketball and baseball. The usual suspects. I was just another typical American boy from a typical American town. Normal in every way except for one thing. I was fatherless. My dad got murdered in the O two years ago. He was filling in for his older brother Ted who was in the hospital having an emergency appendectomy.
Even after all this time, I was still filled with anger, with rage. I would have welcomed a bout with Sonny Liston. With two year’s worth of fury in reserve, Liston wouldn’t have stood a chance against me. Sting like a butterfly motherfucker.
After dad was murdered, Uncle Teddy took me under his wing. Ma said it was guilt that motivated Uncle T. There was more to it than that. Theodore Roosevelt Briscoe, my uncle, is, as was my father, a card carrying member of the undzer shtik. Think Jewish wise guys. After dad’s murder made me the de facto man of the house, Uncle Teddy and his crew taught me how to defend hearth and home. They taught me well. Disarming Gino would have been a piece of cake, if it came down to that, which it didn’t.
I’m not sure how to explain what happened when Gino started waving that knife around. I stood my ground and kept the adrenaline where it belonged. I imagined how dad would have reacted when he faced his murderer. I believed that Wild Will Briscoe would have looked him square in the eyes and said the magic words, “Go fuck yourself and while you’re at it, go fuck your mother too.”
I studied Gino’s moves like Dad and Uncle T taught me. I was more than ready for that clown. He was waiting on me to throw the first punch so he could later claim self-defense. My strategy was to wait for Gino to make a typical goombah mistake.
Pagano was an impatient wannabe gangsta. I stood my ground with my arms folded across my chest like Mr. Clean. He intensified the taunts, ‘Your mother wears combat boots,’ ‘Yo mama’s so stupid, she got hit by a parked car,’ hoping to provoke a poorly planned assault on my part. It did not.
Here comes the weird part. Midway through the obligatory fight or flight internal debate, I got this really intense head rush. It came and went in a flash so bright, so intense that I had to shut my eyes against it. You might be thinking that Pagano should have taken advantage of my momentary loss of focus. He held firm to his self-defense strategy. When I opened my eyes, the world was different. Entirely different.
Gino Pagano called me a yellow bellied hebe chickenshit and dared me to kick his eyetie ass. Then he turned his back on me and started wiggling his butt around like a hula dancer. Everyone watching this epic performance started laughing. Me? I was focused on the strange tattoo on the back of Pagano’s neck. Buttons? A string of ‘buttons,’ maybe six or seven of them. What idiot has buttons tattooed on the back of his neck? They looked like different colored shirt buttons that seemed to move independently of Pagano’s twerkings. How could that be?
A thought plopped into my head, from where? I couldn’t say. ‘The red one, Julius. Push the red button.’
Full disclosure, my given name is Julius T. Briscoe. A shoutout to father’s favorite movie star/game show host, Groucho Marx. You may call me Julius, Julie, Jules or simply JT or even JB. Just don’t you call me Groucho. Although right then, I was feeling pretty fucking grouchy. What can I tell you, dad loved the Marx Brothers. He named my older brother Leonard after Groucho’s older brother Leonard.
Gino turned back around and swaggered towards me cheered on by a horde of jacked-up RoyalKings. Possibly conflicted by my mixed messaging socks, I received far less vocal support from the Preppies.
Playing to the crowd, Pagano flicked the knife open, he waved the grimy six inch blade around like a klutzy James Dean on ludes. Those ‘buttons’ rolled around his neck and settled to a stop just above his clavicle.
As advised, I ‘touched’ the red button. Not with any of my actual fingers, mind you, but with an invisible eleventh ‘finger’ attached to an invisible hand attached to an invisible third ‘arm’ that bridged the ten foot gap between Gino Pagano and me. I willed my invisible forefinger to push the red ‘button.’ Maybe ten seconds later, Pagano’s heart ground to a halt. Stupefied, he remained standing. A puzzled look on his face. The RoyalKings started hissing and booing, demanding that Pagano grow a pair already. Poor Gino lost control of his bladder and bowels. Following a slight delay, Pagano’s ‘buttons’ fell to the ground and his lifeless body went tumbling after. Gino Pagano was dead and there was little doubt in my mind that it was all my doing.
Coach Long had been watching the one-sided confrontation and had let the taunting continue until Pagano flicked his knife open. Coach was still shouldering his way through an unyielding crowd when Pagano went down for the count. Coach Long had recently lost his infant son to SIDS and frantically tried to revive Gino Anthony Pagano, Jr., sixteen years old. It was already too late.
No one thought to blame me. After all, I was just standing there like everybody else watching Pagano make an ass of himself. An ambulance from the hospital down the hill came and hauled his body away. Policemen came and asked questions. No one knew a thing. Except me. And I had no idea what I knew anymore.
Everyone I saw from then on was sporting those ‘buttons.’ Some wore them as headbands, or necklaces, or bracelets. I wondered if ‘button’ tattoos was another happening fashion trend no one bothered to clue me in to or, maybe, Wilma, the daffy lunch lady spiked Friday Surprise with that LSD stuff and I was seeing things.
Last period, top education management held a ‘Coping with Sudden Unexpected Loss’ emergency assembly. High schoolers in the auditorium. We lowly dweebs were banished to the girl’s gym where the B-list grief counselors read from the same bullshit scripts the big kids had to put up with. As if any of us knew Gino Pagano well enough to feel badly about his sudden, reportedly tragic, passing.
Of course, I felt bad about Gino dying before he had a chance, as far as I knew, to get laid, stoned or drunk. This whiff of remorse lasted perhaps about ten seconds. I didn’t know that asshole. He wanted to make his bones by slicing me up? Why? Was it something I said? I don’t remember even passing him in the halls. He did mention something about my socks. They must have given the wrong impression.
Because it was the last school day before Spring Break, they let us go home early, which presented me with a couple of options. Wait around for over an hour for the school bus to return from its first run, or just walk home. I walked. It’s really not that far, a couple of miles. It’s not uphill both ways or plagued by wolves, thieves and/or locusts. There wasn’t a storm cloud in the sky. Another perfect day in paradise.
Usually a bunch of us from the neighborhood walked home together. That day no one asked me to join them. I wondered whether they were afraid of me or just didn’t know what to say. That was alright. I could relate.
On the walk home, I came to conclude that everyone has these ‘buttons.’ Everyone in school had them. People in cars, trucks and buses had them, shopkeepers and shoppers had them and so did Hansel, a German Shepherd dog who lurked behind a chainlink fence on my route home.
If everyone in this small sampling had ‘buttons,’ my assumption was that people planet-wide and most mammals must also have them. As far as I could tell, no one but me could see or ‘touch’ them. What was up with that? Was there a secret identity and a flashy uniform in my future?
As expected, mother was still at work when I got home. I’m a late in life second child. My older brother Leonard is married with a baby on the way. He’s almost a big shot tax attorney in Chicago. While I was learning to walk, Chickie was studying for the bar exam a thousand miles away. We never had the chance to bond like brothers ought to do. Still, I needed to talk to someone about this ‘button’ situation.
My father was long dead and if I consulted mother, she would have dragged my ass off to the funny farm and had me fitted for a straight-jacket. That left hardly anyone to consult. My short list of potential advisors was extremely short. Uncle Teddy and maybe Hansel the wonder dog.
As mandated, I called Mom at the office. She took over Dad’s position, District Manager of the Western region of the Big Corners convenience store empire, one of the Briscoe family’s practically legitimate businesses. She was in charge of four thriving stores and two under construction. To prevent another bout with depression, Mother threw herself into the work. It kept her mind free from thoughts of revenge, suicide or my well being.
“Julius, I heard on the radio just now that some eyetalian boy died at your school today. What a tragedy. Did you know him? Did you see what happened?”
My initial thought was ‘Ma, the truth won’t set you free. It would burden the shit out of you.’ I dissembled. That means I lied. In my experience, if you call a liar out as a dissembler, you usually get a bewildered stare. If you call a liar a lying sack of elephant shit, well then, you’d better be ready to return a punch.
“I really don’t know what happened, Mom. I heard he fell down dead on the RoyalKings side of the line. Probably all that second hand smoke. That’s all I know.”
“So you didn’t see anything?”
“Not a thing.”
Mother advised that she would be late again tonight using excuse #17b. The sick night manager or an acceptable variation thereof. Didn’t matter. She told me I could order a pie and have friends over if I wanted. We were preferred customers at State Street Gourmet Pizza. We even have a charge account. Our punch-card was always nearly mostly full.
After calming mother’s fears about Gino Pagano probably having something contagious, (the way those people live) I called Uncle Teddy at work and told him that I really needed to talk. He lived within bicycling distance from us. We connected after dinner most nights to throw the ball around and shoot the shit. I asked him what time he would get home tonight. He too, threw a #17b at me. Uncle Teddy’s excuses were always upfront. He ran the Big Corners empire out of the O, for Original, the headquarters store at Spruce & 18th just around the corner from the Z2. He also heard the report about Gino Pagano’s death and wondered how I was holding up. He asked pretty much the same questions as mom had and listened to my answers without butting in with stupid questions like Mom always did.
“Are you okay?”
“Not exactly, no. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Tell you what Jules, I’ll send someone to pick you up, it’ll probably be cousin Bobby. We’ll order out, and you’ll tell me what’s been going on.”
Not as easy as it sounds Uncle T.
Up until last year, the Briscoe’s numbers book headquarters and budget casino were located in the basement of the O. They were relocated to the basement of Dolly’s, an all night coffee shop down the block that Mort and Dahlia Gold own. Uncle Teddy converted the basement space into offices for our expanding empire’s need for paperwork in triplicate. At that time the Big Corners Empire comprised two dozen company stores and twice as many franchisees spread unevenly across the tri-state area.
Uncle Teddy gave me a bear hug and escorted me behind the checkout counter and handed me an apron. Business as usual. Big Corner’s original store hasn’t changed much since the day it opened in 1911. It began as a neighborhood grocery selling fruits and vegetables from crude wooden bins great-grandpa Sam built himself. We’re still selling produce, although the bins have been upgraded and the inventory has expanded greatly.
“You want to tell me what’s going on Julius?” My first challenge to overcome. Ted Briscoe has people on his payroll pretty much anywhere you can imagine. I was dead certain somebody, probably one of the RoyalKings, had already provided Teddy Briscoe with an eyewitness account of my smackdown with Gino Pagano, never once mentioning the ‘buttons’ he hadn’t seen.
I told Uncle Teddy my version of the events leading up to Gino’s untimely death. I was working up to explaining the ‘buttons’ when three sharp dressed men sauntered into the store. I was pretty sure they weren’t going to squeeze the Charmin or sniff the gardenias.
These three were members of the Submariners, a South Philly gang with good excellent taste in skin art. When a recruit’s probation period ended successfully, he was rewarded with a photorealistic tattoo of a Rolex Submariner timepiece on his left wrist. Indisputably the classiest gang tattoo of all time.
At that moment, I had no idea who the Submariners were or their alleged role in father’s murder. Uncle Teddy, however, recognized their outerwear. I could feel him tense up as they strutted towards us.
Edward Roosevelt Briscoe #60 had been a two-way player for the Steagles in the wartime NFL. Even together, those three Submariners were no match for Teddy ‘the Torpedo’ Briscoe. Not even close.
“Briscoe, why is the door to the casino locked?” That was Bruno Brückner, leader of the pack. The entrance to the old casino was in the alleyway behind the store under the fire escape.
“We shut the place down after my brother was murdered right here where his son is now standing. Maybe you fine gentlemen know a thing or two about that.
“Huh?”
“You can trust me fellas. The statute of limitations ran out last Tuesday.”
I know I should have warned you sooner, Uncle Teddy is a world class bullshit artist.
Uncle Teddy also had quite the lethal arsenal handy should the Submariners take things too personally. And I was thinking they just might. There was a sawed-off 12 gauge holstered under the counter, a .45 semi-automatic stuffed in his belt, a .38 snub-nosed in an ankle holster and although Uncle Teddy didn’t know it yet, me Julius Briscoe, psychic button-man.
“That’s bullshit Briscoe! One of my boys, Franz Hoffmann, told me he would have won five large playing blackjack here just last night. Mr. Pit Boss said my boy was counting cards and tossed his ugly ass out on the street. If he was wearing mittens, Franzie wouldn’t be able to count to ten. He asked us to get him his money and here we are. My boy Franzie, he ain’t got the stones to lie to me. But you think you do, don’t you Briscoe? You kike motherfucker.”
I would learn later that the Blackjack scam was the same one they tried to run on Dad before someone shot him for being insubordinate. Point blank. Six rounds. Let that sink in please. Point blank. Six rounds.
“I spoke only the truth to you my friend,” answered Ted Briscoe. “There’s no casino downstairs. It’s long gone. It’s all offices down there now. Would you like a tour? Your buddy is blowing smoke up your ass. I don’t know? I heard maybe that’s something you Submariner pervs are into?”
All this time, I’m trying to spot these guys’ ‘buttons.’ The Submariner ‘look’ featured high collared shirts buttoned up tight at the neck. This next part is freaky. Really really freaky. Because I couldn’t see them, I assumed that their ‘buttons’ were hidden behind those big collars. While Uncle Teddy was messing with their heads, their ‘buttons’ swarmed, synchronously, from the back of their necks, over their chins, across their faces, finally congregating on their foreheads.
I had no idea what was happening with the Submariners’ ‘buttons.’ They danced crazily, changing places like square dancers or jitterbuggers. When Uncle Teddy circled back to his original denial, Brückner pulled a Luger from somewhere handy and began examining it for fingerprints and spit-polishing the defects.
When I ‘touched’ Gino Pagano’s red button, it had been mostly out of curiosity, not malice. Killed him anyways, didn’t it? Would the same thing happen with these wise guys? I spoke out a warning.
“My uncle is not a liar. You assholes should leave before you can’t. If you’re looking for a game, your Philadelphia Phillies and the Pittsburgh Pirates are battling it out for first place tonight at Connie Mack. If you hurry you can still get there before the Mayor’s wife finishes singing the Star Speckled Bandit.”
Okay, I was a little bit nervous.
I grabbed three Snickers bars from the counter display and made a peace offering of them to the frustrated shake down artists.
“Fuck you and your Stickers.”
Then he raised his weapon and pointed it midway between me and Uncle Teddy. He whispered ‘pow, pow’ as he mocked pulling the trigger. As you might imagine, I have a problem with people brandishing weapons in my general direction. I didn’t hesitate, there was no internal debate about right and wrong, nor were good angels and bad angels bickering on my shoulders, no it was as black or white as it gets. The law of the jungle.
I jabbed the fucker’s red button and just like Gino Pagano before him, down he went. Then I focused on his crew. They were in shock I guess. Their pack leader was down and they didn’t understand the why or the how of it. Both knelt to check on their fallen leader. Which is when I came to learn about the yellow ’button’s properties.
I went to hit the closest guy’s red ‘button.’ His were still doing the doe-si-doe. I studied the pattern for a quick minute and stabbed at his red button a little bit behind the beat and mashed the yellow one instead. The fucker didn’t die. He also didn’t move. Couldn’t move a muscle. Paralyzed from his head down to his shoes. I was more accurate with the last guy. Nailed his pause button on the very first jab. Just then Bobby Levine returned with take out from Mongo Mings Chinese.
It hadn’t been five hours since I first became a psychic button-man, and I already had a pretty good idea what two of those ‘button tatts’ did. The red one kills. Yellow immobilizes. Would a second touch on yellow remobilize?
Uncle Teddy, Bobby L. and I lugged the cadaver out to the alley and loaded it into a Big Corners van. Then we dragged the two might-as-well-be-mannequins to the basement conference room. Uncle Teddy sent Bobby back upstairs to mind the shop.
“Julius what the fuck is going on? Did you just kill Brückner and that kid at school too?” I did my best to explain about the buttons and my invisible arm. I thought Uncle Teddy would freak. He didn’t. He was inspired.
After my father was murdered, Uncle Teddy and the rest of the undzer shtik turned Center City upside down searching for his killers. They wanted names and were willing to pay handsomely for useful information. Lips had been zipped shut. No one knew nothing. Until Moses Stern stepped in and upped the pressure. Maybe you could get away ignoring a ‘request’ from Ted Briscoe, unwise to ignore one from Moses Stern. That’s for fucking sure.
Finally someone decided to cash in. Word was that Oberst Hans Wilsdorf, leader of the Philadelphia chapter of Submariners International did the murder himself. Wilsdorf was nowhere to be found. Some said he was in Dusseldorf visiting a sick uncle. Others said he ran off to Cuba after learning he had confused Ted Briscoe’s kid brother with a disrespectful nobody. Still others whispered that Wilsdorf was holed up in a mansion in Germantown waiting for things to cool down and burgling the shit out of the unsuspecting neighborhood.
Hans Wilsdorf was hiding out in Germantown just like a subset of the rumor mill said he was. Erich Brückner gave up the exact location of Wilsdorf’s Germantown command center where he was holed up with his elite guard and the gang’s rapidly expanding war chest.
One of the traits that runs in my family is the ability to remain calm and expressionless no matter the situation. Generation after generation, Briscoe men were medium height, lean, athletic and cunning. The Briscoes rode and fought alongside the Zolotos (Golds) all the way from Poland to the USA. An unimaginably long journey that began in the sixteen hundreds and didn’t end until the beginning of the twentieth century. Their yarns about persecution and pogroms notwithstanding, it seemed they hadn’t been in that much of a hurry to leave the old world behind.
Big Corners operates its Philadelphia distribution center from a warehouse on Two Street that it rents from Lizzie Gold’s Trust. Apart from the Golden Eagles Mummer Club, which only used around five thousand square feet, the place had been vacant even before Will Wallace’s death.
We discovered a pair of vintage free-standing jail cells in the cavernous basement that had been used during prohibition to brew Harry Rosen’s hootch. You could get down to the basement through a secret entrance on the riverfront side, or a trap door in the front office which was hidden under a dusty oriental rug that we later rolled Bruno Brückner’s corpse up in.
“JT, call your mother, tell her you’ll be spending the night at our place. Tell her that your Aunt Connie has us rearranging the downstairs all day tomorrow.” #51a furniture moving, a distant relative of #17b, a very believable one especially in Aunt Connie’s case. She was into massive, heavy furniture she compulsively upgraded annually. Mother gave a reluctant okay citing #2a, the one covering table manners and clean underwear. She didn’t know that I already kept a change of clothing at Teddy’s and Connie’s.
This ‘button’ situation was evolving. While we were riding to the Distribution Center in a van full of dead and immobilized Submariners, I had an epiphany. Whatever this new ability was, it had been triggered when Pagano pulled a knife on me and reinforced by the Submariner incident. Probably changed something in me permanently. If it had been, you know, like an adrenaline surge, I’d have been back to normal hours ago. I wasn’t back to ‘Normal’ and I was pretty certain I wasn’t going to be. Damned if I wanted to be.
Hans Wilsdorf’s hideout was in a 17th century grand mansion that had been repurposed into an old folks home. Nowadays they call them hospices. Back then they called them God’s waiting rooms. Wilsdorf and his gang converted part of the sub basement into a high-tech nerve center from which he controlled Submariner operations while hiding out from the undzer shtik, debt collectors and single mothers. The building had multiple escape routes should anyone catch wind of his location. Someone had. We were like twenty minutes out.
Uncle Teddy and I rode to Germantown in his Cadillac. Just the two of us. The rest of our team followed in a stolen tan Oldsmobile Rocket 88.
“How you holding up boychik?”
“I’m fine Uncle T, really I’m alright. More than alright, I’m psyched.”
“You killed that Pagano boy at school and a grown man right there in front of me today, and you’re ‘more than alright?’ I was still miserable a month after my first kill.”
“You killed someone? Who?”
“No one you would have heard of.”
“Julius you killed two people in one day, and you’re still a kid for chrissakes, you should be a little more upset I’d think.”
“Why? Both of them were coming at me. You and dad both told me to never take any shit or let anyone come at me with a weapon. They had me in their sights when I dropped them. Why should I be upset? They’re not a threat to me anymore. Perry Mason would argue self defense. Case dismissed.”
“Julius, that’s so cold. I don’t just like it. I fucking LOVE it. Nephew, you make me proud. Welcome to the family business,” answered Ted Briscoe with a grin and a proffered hand. Just like that, I was a made man in the Samuel Briscoe Gang, the guns and muscle division of the undzer shtik. Uncle Teddy gave me my first official assignment,
“I want you to do me a favor tonight. I want you to paralyze that fuck head Hans Wilsdorf so I can cut his balls off and feed them to him.”
“Well what would you think about me making him cut his own balls off, dip them in dog shit and swallow them whole? That way, there’d be no blood on our hands”
“You can do that?”
“I’m pretty sure, yeah.”
The Whispering Pines Retirement Home lived behind an eight foot stone wall that surrounded the two acre property. A wrought iron gate kept the riff-raff out which included us I guess. When we arrived, the mansion was looking good, backlit by the setting sun. It was built in 1788 by Brigadier General ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne, who had become, after the revolution, a successful restauranteur. It was five stories tall, had 54 rooms, turrets, bay windows and shrubbery, all in need of attention.
I rang the gate buzzer expecting to be challenged. Instead, someone inside buzzed us onto the grounds. Uncle Teddy and I headed towards the main entrance while the rest of our crew surveyed the grounds mapping alternate entrances as well as keeping an eye out for patrolling, armed Submariners.
A plaque next to the doorbell read ’Whispering Pines. Dedicated February 2nd 1788.’ A newer plaque listed the visiting hours for each day of the week. When I rang the doorbell, it was already half past closing time. We heard a buzzing from somewhere inside. Finally an older man wearing a blue suit with fringed epaulets and striped trousers came to open the door.
“Gentlemen how may I help you?”
Uncle Teddy, master bullshitter, took charge, “We’re here to see my grandmother. I received a telephone call from her nurse telling me that mother Cohen wasn’t doing so well. Nurse Monroe was worried that Grandmother Rose wouldn’t make it through the night. We rushed right over. This here is her great-grandson Jesse James Cohen. He’s visiting all the way from California. He’s come a long long way just to be here today. He’s never met his great grandmother. Nor she him. Tonight may be their only opportunity.”
“I’m sorry sir, visiting hours are between 10am and 6pm. No exceptions.”
“Can’t you show a little compassion? She’s dying for fuck’s sake.”
Sensing that that jag-off wasn’t going to let us by without a tussle, I froze his ass. We strolled right on in like we owned the place. I sure liked that feeling.
In the center of the lobby were extra wide carpeted staircases leading to the upper and lower floors. A free-standing cloak closet dominated the space between the two. We dragged the stiffened gatekeeper over to it and stuffed him inside and shut the doors.
The down staircase emptied onto a bare, dingy sub-basement landing where stood an unmanned reception desk lit by a cheap table lamp. There were three rows of folding chairs facing the desk, a free-standing ashtray, a magazine rack and a waste bin. Propped on an easel was a blow up of an English language lesson page that explained the proper usage of the word ‘is’.
Corridors went east and west. Erich Brückner’s intel told us to ‘go east you ugly jew motherfuckers.’
Given everything that had already happened that day, you’d think nothing could possibly upset Julius Briscoe, cold-hard-hearted teenage psychic button-man. You’d be wrong.
The east corridor was lined with these shabby studio apartments. Some with their doors open. We could actually see these old geezers in their natural habitats, you know, sorta like at the zoo. These were really old, really skinny, white haired, unshaved guys wearing ribbed wife-beaters, boxer shorts, support hose and fuzzy slippers. What freaked me out was that some of these alte kakers were sporting tattoos. Not the detailed art like the Submariners’ tattoos. Just a letter and six numbers neatly inscribed on the underside of their forearms. It was later when Uncle Teddy explained the tatts’ actual purpose that I totally, I mean totally freaked out.
Remember, prior to recent events, I was a young teen filled with idealistic empathy. I knew very little or nothing about the Holocaust. An occasional RoyalKing type would point at me or one of my friends, laugh and loudly tell his crew ‘There goes another one Hitler missed.’ Shit like that wasn’t discussed at breakfast, lunch or dinner probably because my parents thought I was too young to handle it or maybe because they just wanted to forget the whole fucked-up thing. All those shades of gray looked murky to me.
We Briscoes are as Jewish as a ham & cheese sandwich with mayo and yellow mustard on Wonder Bread is jewish. We didn’t belong to a synagogue. We didn’t observe the sabbath or the high and/or low holidays. Like Dad and Uncle Teddy, I hadn’t taken religious instruction or been Bar Mitzvah-ized.
The east corridor dead-ended into a small day room where more tattooed alte kakers were drinking schnapps, smoking cheap cigars and playing pinochle. It stunk of smoke, booze, farts, BO and witch hazel. There were two doors on either side of the day room. Both were locked.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been paying attention, that Teddy Briscoe was carrying firearms, blades and lock picking tools. The first lock he defeated opened into a walk-in supply closet where the staff and management stored all sorts of diversions meant to keep the old folks from rising up and slaughtering them.
Next up, the door on the north wall.
“You don’t want to go through that door boychik,” advised the one old fart who still had most of his own teeth.
“Why’s that?”
“It’s full of Nazis. That’s why.”
The second door opened into another corridor. The stone walls and floors had recently been painted black. The hallway, a short one, lead to the Submariners’ nerve center in what was once a reception area. Hans Wilsdorf was seated, his back to us, facing a console on the far wall. He was alone, wearing a pair of cheap open air headsets, watching the news on televisions each tuned to a different local channel. One of the channels was reporting on the Gino Pagano incident. There were shots of Hazen High and interviews with Vice Principal Szell and several preppy upperclassmen. The sound was turned down but I was pretty sure they were praising the dead greaseball’s infectious school spirit. I mean what else?
Underneath the televisions on an old GI surplus work table was a small patch panel, a row of shortwave radios and half a dozen old black dial telephones.
He said it loud enough to be heard through the cheap headsets. “Hans Wilsdorf, bubbala, is that really you?” Uncle Teddy sure has a way with words, don’t you think?
Wilsdorf threw the headsets to the floor and swiveled to face us. He was pointing a semi-automatic in our general direction in a threatening manner. You should know, by now, what comes next.
This time I introduced myself first.
“I’m Julius Briscoe, you killed my father. Wilsdorf it’s time to say your prayers and kiss your ugly Nazi ass bye bye.”
“Fuck off, jewboy.”
“Go fuck yourself and while you’re at it, go fuck your mother too.”
Despite my promise to Uncle Ted, I pushed Wilsdorf’s yellow paralyze button and his purple pain button and held them down until his heart gave out. He didn’t last a minute.
Uncle Teddy expressed his disappointment, “Tell me you only paralyzed that fucker.”
“Technically, he’s paralyzed because he ain’t never moving no more. Ain’t breathing neither. Sorry Uncle T, I couldn’t help myself. He had a gun. Probably the same one he shot dad with. Point blank. Six times. Fucker had it coming.”
“Julius Truman Briscoe, I wanted to kill that son of a bitch myself.”
Maybe it was just my imagination, but Uncle T’s eyes glowed for a second then turned a lighter shade of brown. “Fucker killed my baby brother. I promised Mom and Dad that I’d keep him safe.” Edward Briscoe’s use of my entire name and his tone told me he was pissed off. Unfair of him given my limited experience as a psychic button-man. I returned attitude, “Father trumps brother in my book.”
According to Brückner, there were three more Submariners to deal with. They came at us hot and heavy from a hallway on our left. They were unarmed and underdressed. Skivvies and socks. Black socks. White skivvies.
“What have you done to Herr Wilsdorf?” demanded the tallest Submariner.
“The same thing I’m going to do to you punks if you don’t get the fuck outta here while you still can. Like right now, motherfuckers!” Having lethal psychic skills sure is a confidence booster.
They looked me up and down and started laughing their asses off. I froze them. Solid. Top to bottom.
Now, that I had their attention, I gave them a dose of mind numbing pain. They needed to scream. Alas.
Before the torturing could turn fatal, Uncle Teddy interrupted, “Jesse that’s enough.” I switched the pain off.
“You know you’re going to have to kill them now. But don’t kill them until we get that safe open.”
It was a free standing steel jacketed cast iron safe weighing at least a ton. Probably more. A combination wheel on the closed and locked door. ‘Acme Safe Company.’ gold leafed in an arc on the lintel.
I guess I probably shouldn’t have killed Wilsdorf so hastily. Uncle Teddy addressed the survivors, “Which of you knows the combination?” he asked nodding his head towards the safe. Catching on, I unfroze them enough so they could answer the question. I was really getting the hang of it.
“Anyone? Gentlemen this is your only shot at getting out of this place alive. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that what is happening to you is not the result of drugs or parlor tricks. My young friend here is doing this to you. He can just as easily kill you with his mind, make you shit your pants or cut your own dicks off. Give me the combination or I’ll turn Jessie James here, loose on your asses. I’ll give you like a minute to think it over.”
Before I froze them in place these thugs had formed a neat skirmish line. I walked up to the nearest guy “Can you open the safe?”
“Nope.” He wasn’t lying. Neither was #2. Evil bad guy #3 however knew about the combination but lied. “You’re lying.” I gave him a small dose of extreme pain. Two seconds worth. It was enough. Turned out the combination was taped underneath the third shortwave radio from the left. 4-20-18-89.
There was a shitload of cash money in that safe. There was another shitload of gold coins and fancy jewelry. All of it neatly bundled into a set of matching leather carrying cases from Dunhills. Six in all.
So far, the circlet metaphor was holding up fine. The ‘buttons’ weren’t buttons anymore. They had melded into a neon bright halo circling around people’s heads. A continuum of ‘colors.’ They offer a much wider gamut of mindfuck options to discover and experiment with.
“It’s time Jessie. We need to go. We can’t let those stooges live, not after what you’ve put them through. You wouldn’t know how to make them forget everything that happened here would you?”
Learning how to cause amnesia wasn’t high on my to do list that day. How do you determine the ‘colors’ to use and for how long at what intensity? I’d have to observe the subject daily for at least a year to verify that the amnesia was real and permanent. Too much of a commitment. Sorry fellas. Hope your insurance is paid up.
There was at least a million bucks worth of stuff in those satchels. (a serious underestimation I later learned.) I rummaged through them as we rode home. “So what’s with those tattoos?”
“Those are gang tatts, JT. Expensive. Takes almost half a year start to finish. The detailing is amazing. I thought the first one I saw was a real Rolex.”
“Not the Submariners’ tatts, Uncle T, the alte kakers.’ Some of those old farts were sporting tatts here.” I pointed to my forearm.
“You don’t know what those were for?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask. Would I?” Maybe I was just tired.
“Those are concentration camp tattoos. Julius, you do know about the camps, don’t you?”
“I guess I don’t.”
Uncle Teddy told me about how losing World War One had bankrupt Germany. The Germans blamed the Brits and the French for the hard times that followed. Their victors were calling the shots, so the kraut politicians blamed the jews who always got scapegoated when things turned to shit. Which, historically speaking, things always do whether jews are present or not.
This last time what the Nazis did was nationalize the jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals and the free thinkers’ property. The Nazi’s confiscated (stole) their stuff and sent them to ‘re-education’ camps where their names were revoked and numbers were issued. Which the Nazis neatly tattooed on their prisoner’s forearms so’s the digits wouldn’t be forgotten. As if.
And that’s not even the worst of it. The Nazi goons spared the able-bodied and marched the weakest men, women and children to a large building, stripped them naked so’s they could have a nice refreshing shower.
Those Nazis weren’t ones to waste water. It wasn’t water pouring from the shower heads. No it was something called Zyklon B, a poison gas, which killed them all in minutes. Which is one of the top ten reasons why no one should ever be nice to a nazi.
This brief history lesson made me burn. Granted I didn’t know much about Jews, or Judaism either, still, had we lived in Europe in those times, the distinction wouldn’t have mattered to those Nazi fucks. We Briscoes would get gassed too. All sorts of revenge fantasies roiled my mind. Some involved time travel. Some involved catching a clocker to New York City.
Blame World War II on Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Mussolini, and Frankie Roosevelt if you must, just don’t you forget Charlie Darwin. The Axis dictators twisted up his theories to justify their evil solutions to their nations’ myriad problems. The Aryans believed theirs was the superior race, not the immigrant jews that ‘invaded’ their country and fucked everything up. Their solution was genocide.
Up until the end of the war most Americans believed everything was hunky dory for the European jews and certain select minorities. How could that be you might wonder? Perhaps because, despite detailed reporting from its correspondents across Europe, the premier American newspaper buried such horror stories between the classifieds and the sports section. Why? I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the self-loathing Jews that owned and published that rag why those news reports weren’t fit to print on the front page?
We didn’t get back to Uncle Teddy’s house until quarter to three.
“Teddy you shoulda called,” Aunt Connie had been waiting up watching Shock Theater. Aunt Connie’s hair was in those giant curlers. She was wearing a pink bathrobe with pink bunnies leap-frogging all over it. She had her bunny slippers on. I had a hard time not laughing.
Constantina Marie Briscoe knew who her husband was, and like a policeman’s wife dreaded the situations in which his whereabouts were unknown, and was unreachable and hadn’t checked-in every five minutes like a good husband ought to do. Realistically, policemen’s wives had much more to worry about. Their husbands have rules and procedures to follow. Aunt Connie’s didn’t. The undzer shtick’s motto: ‘everything’s kosher as long as you don’t get caught.’
Uncle Teddy’s response sounded like he’d used it a time or two before, “It’s complicated baby I’ll tell you everything in the morning. It’s been a long, hard day.” He rested his elbow on my shoulder. “Right now me and Julius here need our beauty sleep.” Aunt Connie laughed and punched me and Uncle Teddy on the shoulder.
“Yow! Ouch!”
She never holds back.
Aunt Connie always had one of the guest bedrooms made up. I took a quick shower and tumbled into bed. I don’t know about you, but I never ever remember the moment when I fall asleep. I never ever remember my dreams either. Except for this one.
I dreamed I was like a magician’s apprentice or something and that Uncle T was a magician or something, famed for his knife throwing skills. He was wearing a brocaded red silk dinner jacket, a Snidely Whiplash mustache and a black top hat. I was lashed to a spinning wheel of fortune. It was making me dizzy. I was no more than two revolutions away from barfing my guts out. Uncle T reared back to hurl a nine inch meat cleaver towards me, your whirling target. Suddenly I was riding in an airplane, one of those big twin engine Pan Am jobs. I was seated in the way back, two rows ahead of the restrooms, a barf bag in my hands. Everyone except me was either asleep or maybe dead. I walked towards the front of the plane, checking to see if anyone might still be awake or alive. No one was either.
I opened the door to the cockpit and stepped into the lobby of the Waverley Theater. I was standing on line watching the previous audience exit. I had no idea what I was waiting to see. Judging from the solemn faces, it wasn’t a Martin and Lewis Laff-Fest.
Finally the line started to move. There was a sign board next to the ticket taker’s stand. It showed the start times for the current feature, ‘Exodus.’ I grabbed a bag of popcorn, entered the theater and found myself an aisle seat. I sat down. Not on a cushy movie theater recliner but the cold cold floor of Independence Savings and Loan. It was being robbed. My popcorn had gone missing. My hands were tied behind my back. I was gagged. There were at least ten of us leaned up against the lobby wall. We were facing the row of teller’s windows.
Five bad guys wearing Lone Ranger masks and hats were looting the cash drawers. They were about my height and weight and were brandishing cheap chromed cap pistols. A sixth guy also my height and size was supervising the bank manager, a dead ringer for Barney Fife, as he attempted for the third time already to open the vault. I could hear my fellow prisoners trying to stifle back tears. From where I was seated I could see all six bad guys. For some unknown reason they began shooting the hostages one by one.
They came at me. The masked men were ‘buttonless.’ Color me defenseless. There was a loud sound. ‘Blam Blam.’
It was Uncle Teddy pounding on the door.
“Julius breakfast’s ready. Get your bony ass on up.”
“I’m up. I think we messed up Uncle T.” Teddy opened the door and leaned his head in.
“Messed up how?”
“Remember the old guy that wouldn’t let us in to Whispering Pines?”
“Shit.”
“I forgot to unfreeze him.”
“Shit.”
“We’ve got to go back. He could die.”
“Now you develop a conscience? We can’t go back there JT. Someone must have found him by now. I know a guy. Let me see what I can find out. Meanwhile come get breakfast. Connie cooked her ass off.” He winked.
Aunt Connie indeed loved to cook. She served us an amazing breakfast. Then she put us to work. We moved furniture from one room to another and back again. Was she indecisive, vindictive or addicted? I wouldn’t want to speculate.
After a couple more round trips, Uncle Teddy proclaimed that it was time to check ‘the back forty’ so to speak. The ‘back forty’ was more like the back two hundred. Acres of woods and streams. The last remaining natural habitat in the township that hadn’t been gobbled up by GI Billders. Uncle Teddy’s friends and business partners, Miles and Morton Gold own the land. At one time, I’m told, Miles had planned to build a prep school there. Evidently he found a better location in a more upscale neighborhood. Much further up the scale as I would soon learn.
We hiked through the woods, forded the creeks and came upon a glen where we could speak privately. Uncle Teddy riddled me with questions about ‘buttons.’
I was still struggling to understand this psychic skill. (I mean what else would you call it?) What I now believed was that ‘buttons’ and ‘crowns’ were road maps and conduits to a person’s brain functions.
Just the day before, I had killed five or was it six people without strangling, shooting, bashing anyone’s head in or by any other violent method known to or imagined by mankind.
When I do my thing, I don’t break into a sweat, my nose doesn’t bleed and I don’t pass out like the psychics in the movies and on the TV always seem to do. It’s neither a strenuous or a mentally taxing thing. It’s a matter of focus. I can’t explain it accurately. Try describing every component and procedure you need to employ just to raise your hand to your head to scratch an itch. How many words did you feel a need to invent? I didn’t need to be older and wiser to figure out that my newfound skill had to be kept secret. A deep dark one.
“Julius, I’ve been thinking about what you can do and how you do it.” Uncle Teddy has this way of talking sometimes that draws you in, lets you know you’re about to receive sound advice, be complimented, confided in, or manipulated.
“I’m thinking that no one else can know what you can do. Not your mother. Not your brother. No one Jules. Shit, I shouldn’t know what I know. You understand why, don’t you?”
“Well I guess.”
“I’m going to ask you again, son, how do you feel about what you did yesterday?”
I shrugged. “I don’t feel bad about any of it Uncle T. Man, it was like kill or not be killed. I chose to be not killed. It’s not like I’m gonna get caught. Right?”
“Of course not, Jules. I’ve been wondering, do you think the RoyalKings will come after you when break’s over?”
“Why would they? Vice Principal Szell said on the TV that the Pagano kid had a ‘sudden loss of heart function.’ No one could possibly think that I had anything to do with that.”
“The RoyalKings? They’re assholes. Dollars to buttons they will scapegoat your bony ass anyway, just because. They don’t need a reason because they don’t reason. Makes me worry that bodies are going to start piling up around you. We can’t have that Julie, your secret is way too valuable to risk being discovered because of low-life douchebags like the Kings. If those guys start coming at you, they’ll have guns, chains and knives on them for sure. Then what will you do?”
“I’ll try to stop them, paralyze them. I’m not sure what my range is or how many I can deal with at once.”
Uncle T changed the subject. “You ever hear the story about the goose that lays solid gold eggs?”
“Yeah, like when I was in kindergarten.”
“Well Julius, you’re like that goose.”
“What’d you say?”
“You’re like the goose that lays solid gold eggs Jules. Easy money. If you manage things right and don’t get yourself killed. There are people all over the world who want someone dead. They want the cause of death to appear to be totally aboveboard. Not a trace of poison or foul play. You can see where I’m heading here, can’t you?”
That I did. An essentially invisible assassin. Untraceable murders for big money? Scrooge McDuck-like fantasies got me to drooling.
“So you can see why it’s important that you learn to not kill every goombah dickhead that comes at you with a knife or gun?”
“Sure. But what am I supposed to do when they do?”
“For starters, why not just go to a different school?”
“What? Go where? There are RoyalKing chapters in every high school from here to bum-fuck Oregon. They even have their own newsletter Uncle T. I’ve seen it. It’s very professional looking.”
“Waverley Academy would be glad to have you as a student. In fact, I’ve already spoken with Miles and Mort Gold about your situation. You know, the part about gangbangers being after your ass because of that kid that died in front of you. Not your button situation.
Miles said you can start after spring break if you like. You won’t find any dumbass RoyalKing types out there in the middle of fucking nowhere. I can guarantee you that.”
The one thing I knew about Waverley Academy was that Dad hated it. Uncle Teddy had been among its first students along with Lizzie Gold and her twin brothers Max and Mort. Great Grandfather Sam and Miles Gold go way back. All the way back to a cave in France.
The story goes that Miles Gold, was so pissed off from one too many ‘Lizzie is a lovely, intelligent child, still I’m afraid she just wouldn’t fit in here at Sillington Academy’ type rejections that he started his own prep school in its temporary location on the third floor of the original Zoloto Towers. The next morning Mr. Gold went out and purchased a three hundred acre estate off Conestoga Road in Saint David’s. The morning after that he hired the best teachers and administrators away from the same schools that had rejected Lizzie Gold.
Less than a year after Black Tuesday, which made Miles Gold a multi-billionaire, the Waverley Academy Campus was up and running for the start of the 1930 fall term.
Uncle Teddy was ten years older than my father. Ted grew up close friends with Mort and Max Gold who lived in the Z right around the corner from the O. They were in the same grade at James Madison Elementary School and were best pals in and out of school. Uncle Teddy received a full scholarship to Waverley where he distinguished himself on the gridiron, the basketball court and the baseball diamond. Waverley Academy’s very first ringer.
Two years after Teddy graduated, Waverley Academy rejected my father’s scholarship application due to his poor scholarship and his anti-social tendencies. Miles Gold, by that time, had relegated such decision-making chores to staffers unaware of his underworld associates. They thanked my grandparents for their interest but regretted to inform them that their second son ‘was not up to Waverley Academy’s standards. Should those standards suffer, we’ll be in touch. Thank you and have a nice fucking day.’
Ever since I can remember, Uncle Teddy, each time he saw me, would always point out that there is something about me that reminds him of the Gold twins and their father, although he never told me exactly what that something was. I am nothing like them. The Gold’s are way over six feet tall, handsome, blonde, charming. I figured Mort was pretty much the same as his identical twin, Major Max Gold who was killed when Lt. Beau Sullivan (don’t get me started on the Sullivans) botched the landing of a troop transport at McGuire AAFB resulting in severe and several fatal injuries to the 200 officers and enlisted men returning stateside from the European theater. My father, Corporal William Howard Briscoe among them. Dad sustained third degree burns on his left leg and his face.
The other one thing I knew about Waverley Academy was that it is expensive. I was pretty sure way too expensive for my widowed mother approaching sixty to afford. When I pointed that out, Uncle Teddy explained that tuition, books, uniforms, room and board were taken care of by something called The Vhagonzug Foundation.
“Hold on a second there Uncle T! Room and Board? It’s a sleep over school?”
“Waverley mostly has day students. But for right now, the best thing is for you to disappear. Maybe the RoyalKings will be looking for you, maybe they won’t. But the Submariners sure as fuck are going to be looking for their missing men and all that treasure. And the first place they’re going to go looking for them is the O. And I don’t want you anywhere nearby when they do.”
I had no mental image of a Prep school to reference. Waverley Academy could’ve looked like Independence Hall or the Taj Mahal for all I knew. Kids that went to schools like that had rich and therefore, according to Darwinian doctrine, smart parents. They had perfect teeth, strong healthy bones, ran five miles every day, were kind to animals and small children and had never once encountered the likes of Gino Pagano. Or me.
Truthfully I was leaning towards duking it out with the RoyalKings and the Submariners. Both at once, preferably. I was cocky, unaware of my limitations if I had any. I was more afraid of not fitting in with the ultra preppie, snooty Milton Armitage types I was sure to encounter at Waverley.
Then I remembered the other one thing I knew about Waverley Academy.
“Where do you go to school, Julius?”
“Shawnee Elementary. You?”
“Waverley Academy,” answered my first and only one true love, Gracie Gold. She was short and skinny like me. Her hair was golden (what else?), her eyes blue. She had lotsa freckles and a crooked smile. I liked her. I was pretty sure she liked me too. That was like three years ago. I wondered if she remembered me at all.
Everyone had taken that Saturday off. We rode out to St. David’s in Uncle Teddy’s Caddy. Top down. Spring, hope and allergens were in the air. My mom surprised me by agreeing nearly at once to the Waverley Academy idea. She sorta balked about me living on campus until Uncle Teddy pointed out the advantages of me rubbing shoulders with the ultra rich on their turf. Hard to keep up with these Joneses from our side of the tracks. He neglected to mention that there were, most likely, blood-thirsty, depraved, ‘out-there’ gangbangers out there meaning to do me extreme bodily harm.
You remember what the old farts always tell you about first impressions, right? Well, the Waverley Academy campus gives one kick-ass, takes-your-breath-away first impression alright. First of all it’s like on this unmarked road you have to know is there or you’d drive right past it like maybe five or six times before you finally spotted it. If you ever did.
Uncle Teddy, of course, knew exactly where to turn. It was a winding, tree-lined, two lane blacktop named after the Civil War hero Captain Duncan Brady. It zigged and zagged for a couple of miles before it arrived at a set of enormous monogrammed gates that had to be thirty feet tall. They were open. We rolled right through onto this gigantic roundabout. It was at least 200 yards in diameter. Side roads at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock positions, were aligned with the cardinal points, dividing the campus into precise quarters. The inner circle was lined with hedges that stood about three feet high. ‘One-way arrows’ neatly carved into their flanks directed Uncle Teddy to turn right. The inner circle was covered with lush, carefully groomed, Kentucky blue grass and populated, that morning, by volleyball courts. A half dozen of them ready to host the annual tournament when the student body returned from Spring Break.
There was a furious, hotly contested match in progress on the center court, the only one in use. The adult Golds vs Next Generation Golds. Gracie Gold, her right foot in a cast sat on the Umpire’s tower, gold-plated whistle at the ready. She was way more amazing than I remembered. My heart stopped. Figuratively speaking. As the Cadillac rounded the circle, Uncle Teddy beeped the horn, Gracie looked our way and beamed a million watt smile in my direction. I wished. How was I to know that she had a crush on her godfather, Edward Briscoe?
The Waverley Academy Administration Building and Harker Hall straddled North road at the top of the circle. It was a pair of sprawling old stone mansions built following the revolution by Nathaniel Greene. The mirror-image mansions housed Greene’s in-laws in the east building and Greene and his family in the west building. When Nathaniel Greene passed on, the estate was passed on to the church of his choosing which converted it to a non-secular co-ed prep school. The east building housed the women. The west the men. The two buildings were joined by a pedestrian bridge linking the third floors.
Early in the 20th century, a Jack the Ripper wannabe tore through the women’s dorm one autumn evening leaving a dozen dead or severely wounded upper middle class co-eds from good families. In those times such behavior was completely beyond the pale. Convinced the scoundrel was still on the property, authorities ordered the evacuation of the entire campus. Two weeks later when the order was finally lifted, nobody returned. No one ever returned. In a fortnight, it had become a ghost town. And so it remained until Miles Gold bought it in 1929 for a song.
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