World on a String

ONE

Bennie’s angst was slowly being overtaken by something new, something inside and something built up over a lifetime. “What’s the matter?” asked Sally. “You look like shit.” I look like shit? Bennie thought.
Bennie’s ego was easily attacked. Least of all did he, in his fifty-eighth year, want to look shitty. Looking good was usually uppermost in his mind these days since his manhood began to slip away.
“Thanks,” was his sardonic reply. He really didn’t feel well. A hole inside Bennie Felder’s character opened. The brisket sandwich, lean and sliced thin, sat cooling in the air-conditioning of Junior’s Restaurant in Tamarac, Florida. Bennie reached for the glass of ice water and very deliberately pulled the green plastic container to his lips. One small sip was all he could muster. “You don’t look so hot yourself,” was his weak, defensive rejoinder.

“Really, honey, you look very pale.” Sally ignored the poor attitude that was almost ever-present, since Bennie’s wife died two days before Christmas. “Do you feel all right?” Bennie had been experiencing changes for several years — changes that he hated and feared simultaneously. Aging was one of the changes and it was becoming more obvious. His richly thick, black hair had lost its curl and graying was a daily progression. Bennie scanned the growth of gray hair each morning frustrated by poor vision — a direct result of the cataracts, which were removed ten years earlier — and the slow, inexorable aging process.
As he sat at the restaurant inhabited daily by displaced Northeastern American Jews who followed the sun to Florida from such exotic places as Newark, Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia and Long Island, fear took first place over hatred of the terrible changes he was experiencing.
I hate this fucking feeling. I feel like shit almost all the time and now it’s worse than ever. What the hell is going on? I feel like a four hundred pound gorilla is sitting on my chest. Am I dying? What the fuck is this!
Bennie glanced at Sally, eight years his junior, who suddenly looked hard and all too young to suit his weakening countenance.
Look at her. She’s feigning that bullshit caring pose again. She doesn’t give a shit about me. I told her I didn’t want to eat lunch out today. It didn’t matter. She had it in that thick, stubborn Litvak skull to go out for a bite. Oh, shit! What’s that?
Bennie started sweating. A minor engineer attached to the cardiac division in the bowels of Bennie’s body threw the internal heating switch to maximum. The heat hit Bennie like a blast from a furnace, a red-hot heat that almost took his breath away. It first surfaced on his scalp and moved down and covered his eyes.
What is this? There’s sweat rolling down from my armpit to my waist. Can’t these cheap bastards let the air-conditioning stay on for more than a few minutes? Shit, it’s May, the hot season has started! Cheap bastards!
“Waitress. Waitress. Over here, please.” Sally was waving at Freda the diminutive, ancient waitress who had served them lunch. “Get some ice and a cloth napkin,” she barked.
Freda moved to the command of her customer, but she was visibly piqued at the tone of Sally’s voice. She thought, I’ll bring the ice and napkin when I’ve finished what I’m doing now. Some people think they are the only people in the world, probably a cheapskate anyway. Look at that guy the way he’s sitting there like a dummy, bent over his sandwich. You asked for sliced thin and lean and you got sliced thin and lean. What more do you want? Schmuck!
Bennie’s surroundings blurred — turning into a canvas of unfinished faces. Images moved in and out of focus like a poorly shot 8mm home movie. Sounds commingled to create an annoying cacophony of confusion. He had slipped into another world now, a new world where the pressure was off. The angst was gone. Guilt had slipped away like a bad tenant in the night. The good knight, Serenity, vanquished Bennie’s concerns about what his sons thought about him. All had become right with the world.
Just as suddenly as the onset of serenity, Bennie’s field of vision began changing. His surroundings were slipping up. The window booth they asked for looked out on the new Toyota, Cressida parked facing the restaurant. Its silver-gray body glistened in the afternoon sun. Sally had insisted they drive around the diner until they found a safe place to park — a place near the window where they could watch the car. Bennie took three trips around the parking lot to appease Sally’s unjustified fears. It was easier than fighting and arguing which had become the game du jour.
That car! That god-damned car! That was going to be a pain in the ass. Not my problem any longer. They’ll all have to deal with it. Look at that, it’s shrinking. It’s moving down into the street. No. Wait it’s not moving down. I am. I’m sliding on this fake leather booth. Strange. Can’t seem to stop the sliding down. Oh, well. It doesn’t matter.
What did you say? Sally, I can’t understand what you’re saying. Oh, take that goddamned cloth napkin off my head. I can’t see a goddamned thing. Isn’t it bad enough I can’t understand what the hell you’re saying? Now you are covering my eyes with that goddamned cloth! What a stubborn bitch you are! Everything has to go your way. Well not this time.
“Call a doctor you moron! Don’t you see he’s having a heart attack,” ordered Sally.
“Look lady if he drank a little less you wouldn’t be screaming at me and disturbing my customers. Now, how about it? I’ll help you with him,” said Saul, the restaurant owner, as he bent down to help Bennie get up from the booth.
But Bennie didn’t struggle like a good old drunk should. Bennie tumbled to the floor like a lox. He fell on his side and his body weight pulled him onto his stomach. Saul still had Bennie’s left elbow in hand and was repositioning himself to move this schmuck out of his place.
What is this asshole doing to me? Why am I looking at this chintzy floor tile? I don’t want to see your goddamned floor tile you flaming asshole. What’s wrong with this guy? Is he stupid or what?
Saul huffed and puffed as he pulled Bennie’s hulking one hundred and ninety pounds face up.
Thanks. That’s better.
Bennie caught a glimpse of Sally. She looked scared and much older than minutes earlier. Bennie liked that.
What is wrong with Sally? Talking about looking shitty. You ought to see what you look like. Who is this asshole kissing me? Here he comes again. I’m not a fag you asshole. Let him have his fun. But I’m not kissing him back.
Two Emergency Medical Technicians had arrived and began to work on Bennie. They clamped a mask over his face and ripped open his new silk shirt. Saul dutifully cleared ogling people away from Bennie and the EMT duo.
Look at that equipment! That’s serious shit. I must be in trouble. Oh well, they’ll have to deal with it.
Freda, the waitress, watched and felt sorry for Bennie. Not so sorry that she didn’t realize she would be stiffed by those two. I didn’t know he was so sick. How could I? What am I supposed to be a doctor? I’m a waitress — that’s it, nothing less and nothing more.
The EMT’s worked on Bennie feverishly as he slipped away from the pressures which Sally had brought lately. He slipped away from his sons who made him feel constantly guilty about Sally and their affair before his wife’s death. Slipped away from life slightly after a lunch he didn’t want to eat on May 13, 1980.

Two

The summer of 1934 was too much for thirteen year old Bennie Felder to handle. While he was busy being a model adolescent: getting in trouble with the police, discovering sexual pleasures with Ida Wasnowitz and generally being more than his mother, Ethel, wanted to deal with, a course of departure was being planned by Bennie’s elder sister Irene.
“Ma,” whined Irene one evening when she and Ethel were alone doing the dishes, “you know I heard that there is a place for kids like Bennie. A place where they can be handled to help parents having a hard time making it.”
“What a ya talkin’? Who’s making it? Your whoring father could be helping if he wanted to; but he doesn’t. So we’re not making it at all.”
The bitter taste of Jack Felder had not yet left Ethel. Jack had gambled regularly all the years of their marriage losing what little money he earned when he was employed as a chauffeur. But that was not as bad as was his ugly womanizing right in his own home and in Ethel’s bed while she worked as a seamstress. Irene had come in on Jack when he and another woman, not Mommy, were huffing and puffing under the bed sheets. Although she was not yet in puberty and had no direct education regarding the sexual world of adults, she knew it was wrong and something Mommy would hate. It was also something Mommy would have to know. Irene had seen to it.
“Ma, listen, I heard some people talking about Velma Wilson’s kid. Ya know the one who was arrested for stealing cars?”
“Yeah, I know, the little schwartza lady who wants to be a cutter. Imagine her a cutter? So?” Ethel was not interested in Irene’s stories. They were always too long for Ethel’s interest to last until the end. Ethel preferred the abridged version to any story which didn’t pertain to her or which was complicated or potentially complicated or basically longer than sixty seconds.
“Well, she got a judge to send her son away to a place for kids who can’t be handled at home. Ya know like Bennie.” Irene couldn’t resist making the point clear. No stone unturned. She understood Ethel and the things, which interested her, and the things that Ethel feared, which was almost everything. The things she feared most of all were those which required thought and money. Ethel had little time for the former and none for the later.
“Bennie could be handled if he had a father to smack him around a little. But he doesn’t. And he’s too big for me and you. Poor Bennie! With a father like that what do you expect?” Ethel’s face displayed a duality of love and hatred for father and son.
“Again, so?” challenged Ethel.
“Judge Weinstock sent the colored kid to a place upstate.”
“A jail! Do you want me to send my son to a jail because he’s difficult to handle?”
“It’s not a jail. It’s called a home or something like that. They have a school there. You know how hard it is to get Bennie to go to school. God knows where he goes when he leaves here in the morning.” Irene was bent on using logic to win this one even if it was logic that had gaping holes in its format.
“Ma,” softening and caressing Ethel’s sinewy forearm, “it doesn’t have to be forever. Until you and I can make enough money to get on our feet. They like us both at the shop. Don’t they?”
“Sure they like us. Why shouldn’t they like us? We work like dogs don’t we? Do we complain? Do we? No! You bet we don’t complain. Not like some of the others complain.” Ethel was losing interest and Irene knew. She’d have to move quickly.
“Ma, I think we should send Bennie to this home for a little while. Not more than one school year. He’ll probably become a mensch. It’ll help him. Like those rich kids who go to military school.”
“I wouldn’t know the first thing to do. Besides my Bennie’s no criminal like that schwartza kid. It’s probably too complicated anyway.”
Irene seized the opening she was hungering for. “I’ll look into it and find out. That’s all. No decisions. Just find out if we can do it and we can see later.”
Ethel had come to the end of her interest on this topic. “Do what you want. But I don’t have any money for fancy lawyers. They got enough without my blood money.” And she finished the conversation with the loud punctuation of her kitchen chair scrapping the linoleum floor as she rose and went to bed to sleep “like a dead one.”
Irene sat up and planned her moves. Eight year-old Daniel slept peacefully. Ethel slept with the dead and Bennie felt his penis begin to swell.

Three

Bennie had not returned home for dinner this night. Billy O’Meara had arranged for a rendezvous with two girls from the next block. They were two years older, as was Billy, but Bennie, who had started to shave already, was passing for fifteen, and his sexual interests and prowess were equal to the challenge of this night.
“Bennie, baby, I got us a night with Patty of the big boobs and Wanda of the gorgeous ass. What do ya say ta that, buddy boy?” Billy had a way with words that just leveled Bennie. Billy also had alluded to more exotic sexual experiences than Bennie had yet imagined. So Billy was the top dog of this troop of two.
“Where we gonna go?”
“Details. Details,” stalled Billy.
“Who do I get?” asked Bennie, beginning what were the usual negotiations that he so loved. He usually manipulated Billy easily. But this night he followed Billy’s experience with lust.
“What do you feel like, boobs or a nice round tush?” Bennie just loved the choice Billy had given. This night, with little negotiations, Bennie chose boobs over tush.
So, as Bennie’s penis swelled, he began fiddling with the clasp on Patty’s bra. His urgency mounted in direct proportion to his frustration with Patty’s clasp and with his swelling penis. He had spent the requisite time fondling over the blouse while kissing Patty’s candy sweet mouth. Then he had moved under the blouse and over the top of the bra moving his finger tips over the thickening young upright, nipples. It was time now to unclasp the bra and enjoy both bounteous boobs.
But Bennie couldn’t manipulate the clasp with his left hand. He had positioned himself with Patty on his left leaving his dominant right hand free to caress and fondle from the front. His tactical error was to leave his left hand to struggle with the clasp.
“Wait, she whispered.” No one ever said that Patty wasn’t compassionate. She undid her bra and Bennie melted into ecstasy as the weight of her young breasts moved and filled his sweaty right hand.
That was when his penis felt as though it would explode. He could feel her erect nipples and wondered what they would taste like. Would they have the same candy sweet taste of her mouth? Would they taste like milk?
Bennie glanced at Billy. Billy was moving along a little faster and Bennie took his cue from his friend and mentor. He lifted the bra up and away so he could see for himself if her breasts tasted like candy or milk or something else all together. In point of fact, he noted, they were slightly perfumed. She came prepared. That’s what I call a real girl, thought Bennie.
Bennie enjoyed the sweet smells of Patty’s breasts. Squeezing gently, then roughly when he realized they were resilient. Bennie played and made adolescent love as his penis was directed to begin thrusting. The thrusting went unnoticed until he maneuvered himself around to face Patty. It was awkward at first. Patty didn’t know what he was doing and Bennie wasn’t sure either; after all, they were fully dressed, except for her bra–but then he wasn’t in control.
Billy began a low throaty moan that caught Bennie’s attention. Although he tried to concentrate on his own business, he had to examine his mentor’s situation to understand the reason for the primitive moaning.
He doesn’t sound hurt. But he sure is beginning to make a real clatter.
Bennie repositioned himself and Patty. His eyes shifted to the sounds and he knew instinctively the cause for the moaning. He knew the sounds were sounds of pleasure. Billy was wrapped around Wanda, of the gorgeous ass, like a Python beginning the death grip on prey.
Billy was convulsing in grand spasms while Wanda vigorously stroked Billy’s uncircumcised and fully erect penis. Bennie was immediately overtaken by wild-eyed envy at Billy’s good fortune.
Again, he repositioned himself and Patty. This time he was too anxious and too rough with Patty.
“Hey. Be careful. What are you doin’ wigglin’ around so much? Huh?” Patty protested.
“Sorry. Oh shit, I’m sorry! Really!”
“Hey, Bennie, could you keep it down, we’re busy over here,” Wanda clacked, then giggled and guffawed, never missing a stroke.
But Bennie’s mind was filled with the image of Billy’s penis and Wanda’s fingers clenched around it, as she pulled, piston-like. Bennie wanted it too.
Tonight, however, wasn’t going to be Bennie’s night. Patty stiffened and called to Wanda, “Did ya’ hear the stairs creak?”
“I don’t hear nothing but Billy moaning here,” Wanda whispered.
Then Patty, Wanda, Bennie and Billy heard a door close out front.
“Shit! They’re home!” Patty heaved Bennie off in one motion and began dressing herself.
Wanda released Billy, all-to-soon, and he groaned in frustration, “Fuck!”
“Not tonight,” said Bennie as he saw his fantasy rise and go up in smoke even as his penis withdrew into flaccid reality.
Patty half ushered, half shoved Bennie and Billy to the kitchen and out the back door of the one-family house; but, not before she gave Bennie a little squeeze in the groin. “Some other time,” she promised.
The front door banged open as the back door closed softly. Patty’s younger sister wanted to know, “How come the lights off in here?”
Bennie and Billy left the girls to straighten out any problems and quickly tip-toe-ran down the alley between the houses, onto the street and away from the one moment of pleasure this day could have brought.

Four

Brooklyn celebrated its centennial birthday having gained a city charter in 1834. Bennie’s world was swelling with newcomers from Norway, Sweden, and Italy, along with Poles and Eastern European Jews. From 1900 to 1940 Brooklyn’s population more than doubled while Bennie’s world grew equally.
The growth and excitement of the streets caught Bennie’s attention during these romantic times in Brooklyn. There was always something exciting happening outside, somewhere down the block or around the corner. Police sirens broke the nighttime routine so often that they soon became a part of the nighttime sounds.
New buildings seemed to grow up over night. New opportunities for jobs and success in the land of opportunity stole Bennie’s attention from the boredom and rigidity of school.
Classrooms packed with children from diverse ethnic backgrounds made teaching a challenge for students and teachers. Bennie was not up to the challenge. His world lay outside the walls of school. His studies in mathematics ground to a halt this year.
Bennie yearned for more action than the classroom offered. On the days he attended school he spent most of his time staring out of the tall rows of windows yearning for the free moments on the streets below. When he wasn’t in the classroom, he was in the Principal’s office waiting to be reprimanded for an infraction that he always felt was totally insignificant. This attitude toward authority didn’t endear him to Mr. Howard Schoenberg, the diminutive principal who took school and Bennie’s misadventures very seriously.
Bennie was confused by the duality of his worlds. During a week’s time he could be made to feel like a fool by a glib and rigid teacher and later spend time fondling the breast of Patty or some other girl interested in meeting the demands of his adolescent hormones. At one time he was the fool while at the other time sexual intimacies made him feel like a man.
One world represented freedom and excitement with personal needs satisfied, while the other meant delaying these precious moments of gratification and wonderment. The choice for Bennie was clear. It would be boobs over books.

Bennie’s Brooklyn was a cacophony of daylong sounds of men, machines and a multiplicity of European languages mixed with broken English and aggressive behaviors. The impact, although apparently no more severe than on anyone growing up in the same environment, left Bennie confused. His focus changed with the most immediate intrusion.
On summer nights in 1934, sirens approaching with their haunting sound, passing his apartment building and blaring their urgency only to drift away into a black silence would awaken him. Sometimes he would hear the squeaking of bed springs accompanied by the heaving and squeals of the young married couple on the other side of the paper-thin wall. These sounds at first meant nothing to Bernie. Later, when he understood their meaning they aroused him. Visions of sexual gymnastics filled his adolescent mind.
Although his mother and sister constantly bemoaned the family’s financial state, Bennie really didn’t know that he was poor – he had a bed, food, friends and the freedom of the streets. What more did a young boy need?
Irene needed more. She needed to have money to buy clothes, to meet a man, to escape her dreary world.
She and Ethel spent all day at Estelle’s Dress Manufacturing Company sewing clothes for other women; but her meager wages didn’t allow her to buy the clothes for which she so hungered. Each time she walked by a clothes rack at the shop she let her fingers fondle the soft fabrics. The sensuality of the dresses-not everyday work or house dresses-but feminine dresses that shifted around hips and thighs colored all of Irene’s desires.
If Poppa didn’t leave us… If Bernie would help make some money… If a man would come along and take me away from this…
So, Irene spent a little extra time and bus fare to investigate the ways to get rid of Bennie. It proved to be one of her best investments.
___ ___

Bennie was bundled off and sent to a home for boys in Pleasantville, New York. As a bonus, Irene was able to wheedle Danny’s departure as well.
“Ma, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.” Bennie was stunned when she told him. “What’d I do?”
“It’s not that. You didn’t do nothing. It’s just that it’s so hard.”
“What’s so hard?” Bennie protested. Life was rosy for him. The weather was always right. Rain or shine. He never went hungry. He was gaining daily experience with sex-even if it were sometimes by his own hand.
“Ma, I don’t understand. Gimme another chance. Please, Ma. I’ll go to school every day. I swear it. No more trouble with Principal Shoenberg.” Bennie’s pleading was sincere. Ethel noticed. She wavered, but Irene took action.
“Bennie, don’t be so selfish. Does everything have to revolve around you? Maybe this has nothing to do with you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ya, hear that, Momma? He curses me when I try to keep this family together.”
“Don’t you curse Irene, you bum.”
“Bum?” Bennie was deeply hurt.
“Yeah, bum,” said Irene. “Do you work? Huh? Do you? No! Then you’re a bum.”
“And Danny? Is he a bum too? He’s a baby. How can he work? How can I work? Nobody’ll give me a job.” Bennie paced. “Come on ma, this is crazy.”
It was too late. Ethel had lost interest. It was over.

Five

Bennie arrived at the Pleasantville Home for Boys in Pleasantville, New York on a bus with Danny and thirty other boys.
Danny cried the whole trip. From the moment they were awakened at dawn, Danny had whimpered and cried. He was tired and confused. “Why am I going on a bus? I’m sleepy. I don’t want to go.”
“My babies are going away from me! Jack, you bastard! Look what you’ve done!” Ethel continued her quasi-hysterical flapping and let Irene take charge – this was all too complicated for Ethel.
Danny and Bennie had been shuttled off to the bus depot and the waiting staff of the Pleasantville Home for Boys. As the bus departed the streets of Brooklyn, Irene’s horizons expanded as Danny’s and Bennie’s shrunk into the crowded and stuffy bus seat. The brothers sat huddled together like two monkeys waiting for their mother to return.
By the time they reached Pleasantville, Danny could only manage to whimper. His energies were spent. He had cried bitterly in fits of anguish, alternately being overtaken by a catatonic-like stupor only to resurface into reality and renewed crying.
“Don’t worry Danny. I’m here. I’ll never dump you. I’m your big brother. Never forget that.”
The bus ride was punishing on their psyche and on their bodies as they were bumped and jostled non-stop from the cobblestone streets of Brooklyn to the paved highway and to the dirt roads which led to the school’s grounds in Pleasantville, New York.
The school grounds were neat and cared for by a staff of local caretakers who worked for a meager sum and a clean place to sleep, along with regular meals.
Sixty-five boys from six to sixteen were bunched in dormitory buildings with shared showers and lavatories. There were no desks or lamps from which one could read a book or a comic book. Lights out meant darkness, pranks and the dreaded quiet time just before being overtaken by sleep, the time when each boy faced his worst fears and longed for a second chance to be home or with anyone who cared even a little.
For young Danny, this was the worst time of the day. He was not with Bennie. Age and dormitory separated the brothers. While Danny cried softly and listened to the other new boys cry as each arrived and was placed in the great room of beds, Bennie would lie awake dreaming of Patty and the day he would find another Patty.
Once, just as Bennie was about to doze off into sleep, he was awakened by a guttural, ear-piercing scream from Izzy Shapiro, the Holy Terror, as he liked to call himself.
“I got ya, Bennie. I scared da shit outa ya. Ya shoulda seen yur face.”
“I’ll beat the shit outa you if you don’t pipe down and let me get some sleep, you moron,” Bennie bellowed.
“Moron. Moron? Moron!” Izzy jumped up and down like a wild chimp. He beat his head with his fists. “Moron! Moron! You called me a moron.” And then, as Bennie sat up with a look of disbelief, Izzy sprang onto Bennie’s bed and bit Bennie on the ear. He bit and held on as blood spurt from the ear and as Bennie pummeled Izzy’s face into pasty pudding.
Bennie beat Izzy that night and beat him until he couldn’t beat Izzy anymore; until, Izzy was unconscious.
The screaming and shouts brought Ludwig Dulgire, the night watchman, who was nearby checking the doors, when he heard, “…such a tumult dat I think maybe somebody is being kilt. So I run into the dormitory room to find all the boys around Bennie’s bed. Bennie is screaming, and crying, and pounding Izzy in the face so hard. And Izzy is not making a sound on account of he has Bennie’s bloody ear in his mouth, which is still attached to Bernie’s head, but barely, and I run to them. Quickly, I smack Izzy on the back of the head and he opens his mouth long enough for Bennie to pull away and then I grab them both, one in each hand, and take them to you, Herr Mr. Principal, Orenstein.”
The medical staff took both boys to the infirmary where their wounds were attended and where they slept until noon the next day from sheer exhaustion. Ludwig, who loved to tell stories, had a hum-dinger of a story for two months until the head cook was caught dancing drunk and naked outside her cottage rooms with a much younger and equally drunken caretaker.
Grudgingly, however there grew a bond between Bennie and Izzy. They were watched, with careful scrutiny, by the other boys for signs of the violent insanity they had displayed that night. It surely saved them a beating at the hands of tough guy Paul Slowanski. Even Big Pauly, as he was called, who was at least six inches taller and twenty-five pounds heavier than the biggest boy, had heard about the devilish fight between these two and even though he was a bully he was no fool and he steered clear of the two crazies.
Bennie developed a reputation as a tough guy. “Me, a tough guy? I don’t feel like a tough guy; but, if it will save me from trouble – hell, I’ll be a tough guy.”
Danny, on the other hand, wasn’t so fortunate. He was all too lonely and scared to be able to deal with the realities of the school and the absence of his mother and sister.

Six

The world was a jumble of hardships that touched everyone. Five years after the Great Depression and the economy was still struggling mightily. Long after the men had begun to jump out of office buildings during the panic, long after men had sold apples on the streets and women sold their most prized possession to endure another day, Ethel trudged forward to the sweat shop and toiled until her fingers had no feeling. Irene worked the same long hours, but her dreams of finding a good man with a few dollars kept her sanity alive.
Ethel’s husband Jack drove his car for the man who had hired him until one day he was told the man had died and Jack was no longer needed.
“Can’t I drive for the wife?” he pleaded.
“She never leaves the house and she needs the money that the sale of the car can bring.”
That was that, the end for Jack’s career as a chauffeur had ended with the death of the car’s owner.

Bennie however was seeing better times. He ate regularly, he slept well, he went to school but struggled with mathematics, and he played baseball and other games in the warmth of the summer’s days.
However, Danny’s melancholy never fully left him. He wanted to be happy, but he no longer knew how to have the fun that all the other kids seemed to be having. However, he did love to spend time with Bennie, who protected his baby brother and took care of him as best as he could.
Bennie almost always captained the baseball games and always chose Danny for his team against the protestations of the older, better players.
“Come on Bennie. Look at him, he’s so little,” they complained regularly.
Just as regularly Bennie would say, “He’s with us,” punctuated by a look of resolve that was incontrovertible.
One day while the big boys were playing ringer where players tried to shoot another player’s marble out of an inscribed circle drawn in the sand or dirt, Bennie learned that Danny had a natural talent for the game.
“Let’s see you do that again,” said Bennie proudly while the brothers were horsing around trying new marble shots.
“Okay,” Danny shrugged matter-of-factly. His cherubic fingers wrapped around the marble, while he scooted low to the ground to get a clear view of the path that the marble would take. After several seconds of complete stillness he pushed his thumb forward sending the blue marble on its imaginary line and hitting the other marble squarely in its middle propelling it out of the ring. Danny peered up at his brother for the approval he so needed.
Bennie smiled broadly, “Ata’ boy Danny. You’re great at marbles.”
Danny stood up tall and proud. “Yeah, ya think so? Really?”
Bennie’s hand reached out and tussled Danny’s hair, “I know so little brother.”
Just then Big Paulie sauntered by and scoffed at the two brothers. “Playing kids games Bennie,” and this drew a laugh from Paulie’s entourage.
Danny pouted, but Bennie didn’t react at first, then he smiled softly and said, “Yeah, you’re probably right Big Paulie. I guess a guy as big as you must think this is too easy. After all, no power is needed—except brain power.”
Paulie reacted true to form, “What did you say? Did you call me stupid? You crazy…” Paulie caught himself and backed off from the potential battle with crazy Bennie. He turned with a wave of indifference at the Felder boys. ”Come on,” to his group of tag-a-longs. He moved off until Bennie spoke.
“Betcha my kid brother can beat you at marbles.” Bennie let it sit in the air like a hummingbird over a sweet flower.
Paulie stopped, took a deep breath to compose himself, and peered at Danny over his shoulder. A darkness crossed over his face as he turned to look at Danny and then at Bennie. Paulie’s cohorts were breathless with the anticipation of a good fight that, no doubt, Big Paulie would win. However, Paulie simply said, “How much?” he grumbled.
“How much?” Bennie mimicked Paulie with the same rumbling, grumbling, guttural sound tinged with a challenge.
Since no boy had any money or anything valuable, all bets were predicated on betting chores to be done. As a way to teach responsibility and to keep costs down the Home had each boy complete daily chores such as sweeping the dorm room, cleaning the toilets and washing bed sheets and personal clothing.
“Toilets,” Bennie taunted with utter disgust.
Paulie’s jaw tightened at this bet. Each boy drew toilet cleaning once a month. It was demeaning and a terrible job. Sinks and toilets had to be cleaned and disinfected and the floors had to be mopped and often scrubbed on one’s hands and knees to get the dirt and grimy scum off the floor. Even though the task was often completed by two boys it was universally considered the worst of all chores and the most degrading especially when someone entered to see another hard at work.
“Toilets?” Paulie questioned. This was a very serious bet now. A gauntlet had been laid down and it was up to Paulie to respond in front of the eagerly watching boys who wanted to see how their hero would react.
“How many days?” asked Paulie hanging on to as much belligerence as he could now muster.
Bennie buckled a little thinking that he might be cleaning the toilets if Danny didn’t beat this guy. He glanced over at Danny who stood with his chest puffed out and his lower lip quivering with anger. Bennie had seen this side of Danny before, but it had been gone since they had arrived and the trauma of their departure from home had begun. Now, Bennie was relieved to see it re-emerge. It was a portent of good things to come.