Angels Dance on the Head of a Pin

By GlenScott Thomas Copper

In 1962, a thirteen-year-old altar boy and a teenybopper meet on a train to Chicago. Both are shuttling between relatives of their respective dysfunctional families. Willie lives in Hyde Park with her mother and stepfather. Scott lives in a Loop hotel with his Great Uncle Ode while waiting for the annulment of his parents’ marriage.

Willie and Scott spend the summer commiserating and enjoying Chicago, with Willie educating Scott on pop culture and highlights of her city and Scott sharing with her opera, the library, and hikes in the park. Soon, though, it’s time for them both to return to reality. Alone on his last night at Ode’s hotel, Scott discovers a distraught Willie, who threatens to jump from the roof, having accidentally killed her stepfather while fending off another sexual advance. Scott talks her down and convinces her to run away to Ode’s Wisconsin cabin to seek his advice.

When Ode fails to show, the two teens are forced to fend for themselves there in the woods. Winter sets in, and it becomes apparent that Willie is seriously ill. This is only the beginning of their struggles in a new world of their making, away from abuse and unhappiness. Scott and Willie have already been through so much, but together, they might find peace and a loving family among the Ho Chunk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Dec 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781489744722

GlenScott Thomas Copper

GlenScott Thomas Copper grew up along the Mississippi River. He has degrees in speech, English, and theater from The University of Wisconsin System and a Master’s in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College. He spent many years teaching at Milwaukee High School of the Arts. He now lives in Milwaukee with his wife, a small dog, and a large cat.

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Copyright © 2022 GlenScott Thomas Copper.

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LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-4473-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-4474-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-4472-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022918967

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 11/30/2022

CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgements

1: A Fart In Church

2: The Power of Words

3: The Pawn Shop Gang

4: Private Rankin’s Comeuppance

5: Confessions & Contrition

6: Sex-Ed., By the Book

7: Are You My Guardian Angel?

8: Comrade Conrad’s Catechism Lesson

9: The Holy Goose

10: What’s In A Name?

11: Siege of Mouse Island

12: There’s Always Someone Bigger

13: Life’s No Picnic

14: Penance and a Rescue

15: Deception (You Can See It From Here)

16: Getting to Table Rock

17: A Vision Quest

18: Horses

19: Missing

20: Requiem

21: Long, Long Division

22: I’m Off to See The Wizard.

23: Silver Bullet

24: Speech Therapy.

25: The Shadow Knows

26: Berghoff’s Restaurant

27: Uncle Ode

28: See Ya, Sweetie

29: Spies in the Courthouse

30: Hiding Private Rankin

31: Trouble’s Troubles.

32: Looping The Loop,

33: In To The Rabbit Hole

34: A New Job Times Two

35: The Right Fit.

36: Van Gogh & the Art Institute

37: Seminar

38: Tunnel Of Love: Riverview

39: A Silver Dollar’s Worth

40: Leukemia, & A Lunch Date

41: Seminar With Susie

42: Dressing Left or Right?

43: Binyon’s Turtle Soup

44: A Double Date With Dad

45: A Night at the Opera

46: The Talk

47: A New Set of Wheels

48: Anullment

49: Serving Mass

50: The Champ’s Camp

51: Squirrel Therapy

52: Willie’s Dreams Come True

53: The Monsignor’s Decision

54: A Second First Day of School

55: New School Friends & Jealousy

56: Cheap Therapy

57: Friendly Deceptions at Berghoff’s

58: The Ouchman

59: At The Crossroads

60: Liston/Patterson Fight

61: Moby Dick

62: Ode’s Departure

63: A Dress With a View

64: School Rules

65: Limbo & The Y Dance

66: Low Blood Pressure

67: Cafe Medici

68: The Doorbell

69: Last Night At The Majestic

70: Confession

71: Hello Mae West

72: A Cabin in the Woods

73: The 400

74: Darrow’s Gift

75: So Long Shadow

76: Alfie Jr.’s Rescue Mission

77: Mysterious Stranger at the Majestic

78: The Trench coat

79: Her Story

80: Promises To Keep

81: Choices: Fork in the Road

82: The Long Walk

83: Scary Thoughts?

84: The Forest’s Magic

85: Blissful Sleep

86: Alone Again?

87: A Cricket Hears Confession

88: Our Father, Forgive Us

89: A Geology Lesson

90: Geronimo!

91: Temptation.

92: Resist Not Evil.

93: Skeleton In The Closet.

94: The Lesson of Job

95: Revelation

96: Archeology 101

97: Digging It

98: Another Skeleton

99: Inventing Myth’

100: The Burial

101: Shots Fired

102: Surrender

103: A Rude Awakening

104: Hunting Season

105: A Biology Lesson

106: It’s A Choice

107: In a Dark Wood, Lost.

108: The Goose Hunt

109: Buck Fever

110: Northern Pike

111: The Breadwinner Returns

112: Life’s a Kick

113: Our Christmas Tree

114: An Angel Is Seen On High.

115: Something of a Shock

116: Keeping Calm

117: We’ve Got To Move Again

118: Going For Help

119: One Way Switches.

120: Getting Off Track

121: A Baptism Of Snow

122: An Old Friend Appears

123: Our New Very Old Home

124: Grandmother’s Revelation

125: Mother Mouse’s Medicine

126: A Trip To Black River.

127: Ho Chunk Ways.

128: News From Home

129: Fresh Meat

130: He’s Alive!

131: Grandmother’s Story

132: Ode’s Story

133: Mysterious Conception

134: The Matchmaker

135: A Visit To The V.A.

136: I Present Our Case

137: A New Value For Peace, Light

138: A New Arrival For The New Year.

139: Rabbits

140: Another Mysterious Arrival

141: Through the Crevice

142: Explanations

143: Ho Chunk, They Persist.

144: Digging Out

145: Happy Birthday, Little Bear

146: Being Ho Chunk 101

147: Resolutions

148: Epilogue: Family Reunion

DEDICATION

This is dedicated to my teachers: first of all, my wife and editor in chief, Karen Schaefer Copper; Professor Elbin Cleveland, my mentor and best friend; Mercedes Dzindzeleta, friend and first editor; sister Bernard, my first grade teacher who inspired me and taught me "god is love and love is god; Howard Zeiderman and the faculty of St John’s College-Annapolis where I learned to think; Mary Alice Kerrigan, who encouraged me to go to St. John’s; my grandmothers and their lessons on how to be good; and the Ho chunk people upon whose land and rivers I was conceived and raised, in particular, Mountain Wolf Woman, Conrad Funmaker, and Willie Taylor.

PREFACE

This is a work of fiction loosely based on events and experiences I have observed or witnessed while growing up in the Midwest. I had two close friends in early childhood who were Winnebago (now Ho Chunk). They inspired my interest in their culture. I grew up directly under the faces of the Bluffs overlooking Prairie La Crosse where the Black and the La Crosse Rivers meet the Mississippi. I often scaled their heights as a child and would sit upon their ledges, looking down and imagining myself, two centuries earlier playing caabna (lacrosse) with my friends Willie and Conrad surrounded by their hoci. (homes). I have honored them in this narrative by using their English names, though the events and characters here are totally fictional. I lost track of them both before I was twelve. I have borrowed the names of my Uncle Ode Rankin and my Godfather, Shadow (Wilmer Conter), major heroes in my family’s history: stand up guys who were often there to stand in when others failed or were unable to show up.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I was inspired by and am very much indebted to "Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian" Edited by Nancy Oestreich-Lurie; as well as stories told to me by my Grandmothers Norma Elizabeth Snyder-Copper and Adelia Guelph-Dohlin, and Philomena Snyder, a close friend of my Uncle Ode.

Finally and most importantly Professor Elbin Cleveland who read the manuscript front to back three times over ten years reminding me repeatedly that plot is secondary to character. Aristotle got it wrong.

1: A FART IN CHURCH

Friday Before Memorial Day, 1962

Father Weber was taking his time at the memorial prayer. There were lots of newly dead to be remembered. The advanced age of his mostly German-Catholic parishioners who founded St. John’s seventy-five years ago, the Asian flu and polio outbreaks of the recent past were taking their toll. Father sang the Mass in a kind of Gregorian chant, often dwelling several seconds on each syllable. Gasps and winces punctuated each phrase as he hobbled from one side of the altar to the other. Suffering from gout, he consequently wore knitted leather-soled black slippers. He probably should have retired years ago. I’d only known him for less than a month, but I hoped that someday, in seventy years or so, Father Rankin would inspire the kind of devotion in me that his congregation had for him. He was the only thing that kept St. John the Baptist Catholic Church open. A new and grander St. James’ Lebanese Catholic Church with its Byzantine bell towers just three blocks north, at the top of the hill, overshadowed St. John’s.

When I become a priest, I thought I’d rather go by Father Scott than Father Rankin, though neither one sounded Catholic. At my Baptism my maternal Italian grandmother and her two sisters had decided, without consulting me, that I was to be the next priest in the family. We had had an abundance of nuns, but our last priest passed away around the turn of the last century. My few male cousins, all half a generation or more, older than me, were large, rugged baseball players and or soldiers. I was their last hope among a preponderance of girls, including my sisters. The three matriarchs noted, at my baptism, that my mother had neglected to provide me with a patron saint’s name.

Scott, my grandmother pointed out, is not the name of any saint I have ever heard of. And Father Mullen nodded confirming the same. Mother had already shamed the family once by marrying a non-Catholic. Chagrined she looked to Father Mullen.

He can borrow mine, if you like. He said. It’s also the patron of our Parish, Saint Thomas More.

So that’s how I got my middle-name- of a saint martyred for refusing to recognize the divorce of Henry The Eight.

Back now to this sweltering June morning in 1962; the Gothic lancet arched windows remained tightly closed against any sudden climate change. Incense fumes crept back to the seventh and eighth grade pew where I was trying to stay conscious and involved in the sacrifice. And yet the buzz of a cicada newly emerged from his thirteen-year underground adolescence managed to resonate through the shuttered stained glass. He was raucously proclaiming his passage into the hedonistic adulthood he’d savored those long years. The distraction helped me forget the queasiness in my stomach.

I wanted desperately to stay conscious. Mass, and especially taking Communion, had lately been the high point of my day. I was awed at having the body of God dissolving upon my tongue and going with me to class. It was like having a study buddy who knew all the answers, or who could at least show you where to look for them. To stay conscious, I let my mind wander to what I imagined to be that bug-eyed chirping satyr ascending the elm tree outside the stained glass image of St. John baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River.

Communicating with animals was a gift that could lead to sainthood I’d recently learned when Pope John XXIII canonized St. Martin de Porres, a sixteenth century Peruvian Monk with miraculous healing powers and the power of bi-location being able to travel to other places while still remaining bodily at prayer in his cell. I was especially intrigued to learn that he was able to communicate with animals. Sister Cecelia told us that one day he had called a meeting of the mice in his convent at which he convinced them to stay out of the pantry. Thus inspired, I concentrated on bi-locating outside onto that elm, singing and celebrating with the cicada inhaling the morning air on Avon St. But my nose was not so blessed. The incense-laden, stale, tepid air of this seventy four year old nave sank down to the pit of my stomach, behind my solar plexus like a sounding lead on Mark Twain’s riverboat.

At the Eucharistic prayer, I was ready, having perused my conscience for any minor sin I’d committed since this time yesterday. But we had to kneel down again, once more into the lowest strata of stale air where I was breathing the same vapid hand-me-down oxygen first inhaled by Sister Cecilia at the other end of our pew, passed along by each kid in the row, getting warmer, moister, and heavier with each use. I took deeper breaths, sighing loudly with every exhalation. Sister heard and gave me a glance, probably worried that I’d have to make another quick exit to puke on the stairs in front of the church.

I concentrated, tilting my head toward the vaulted arches above, stretching out my stubby nose, trying to reach for some of the lighter, fresher air above. With a great pull of my diaphragm, I inhaled as deeply as I could. Had someone farted? Or was it old incense? It was both! Not an Angel fart, but a full-bodied blast from the seventh ring of Hell fart.

Consciousness drained out the back of my skull, and a great, burning fist-sized knot grew behind my solar plexus. Beads of cold sweat formed on my forehead and upper lip, and a bubble of bile began to rise in my esophagus. I feared I wasn’t going to make it to Communion. Jesus, please don’t let me throw up!

I was the new kid at St. John’s. Two months ago, I had been comfortably ensconced at St. Thomas More on the other side, the South Side, of La Crosse. Twice since then I’ve had to run out of Mass to puke over the railing of the limestone steps of the St. John’s. Usually, not much came out but a little green-and-white bile since we weren’t allowed to eat breakfast until after Mass–one of the rules of Catholic Communion. They didn’t want Our Savior, Jesus, to have to wrestle his way through our alimentary canal with Tony the Tiger.

I swallowed hard against the fist in my stomach. I seemed to be winning. That bubble of molten lead-like bile burned its way back down my esophagus and then sat there, ablaze behind my sternum, waiting for an opening. A minor success.

Thank you, Jesus!

But the effort had taken too much out of me and I couldn’t hold my head up any more. My heart was pounding and my knees were beginning to rebel. My right knee escaped from the kneeler and I was pitched in the direction of Mary Margaret, a raven-haired Moorish beauty wearing a sleeveless, yellow checked summer dress. My right hand instinctively reached out for the nearest support, which turned out to be Mary Margret’s shoulder. The touch of my hand on her bare shoulder brought me back to the world of the sensible. Just as our eyes met, her look of surprise turned to concern when my left knee slipped from the kneeler and the bridge of my nose crashed into the back of the oaken scrollwork of the pew ahead of us. The last thing I remember is the sound of cracking walnuts. At least I didn’t throw up.

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Through a fog, I found myself transported through time and space onto the playground at St. Thomas More. Sister Bernard had just hit a long fly ball and I was a third grader again taking off toward first base. The sisters didn’t run bases very well in their full-length habits so they let some of us–those who rarely got a hit–run for them. I never got a hit. Sometimes Sister Robert would intentionally walk me so I could get on base, but only when the Fourth Graders (her team) were ahead by quite a few runs. The ball was going deep into right field and my third-cousin, Marlin, was going after it. You’d never believe we were cousins. He was very tall, dark, and athletic. I was the smallest kid in the class, with flame-red hair and a pale complexion, except for the billion freckles that were no end of jokes from everyone. On the run, Marlin leapt for the ball, and again snatched away my chance of scoring. I stopped halfway to first base and turned and headed for the bench behind Kimberly Stadler, who was shouting something at me. I heard Sister shouting, too, Keep going, Scott! He dropped the ball! Keep going! So I took off running as fast as I could for first base. Marlin picked up the ball, and threw it with everything he had. The ball and I arrived at first base together. I don’t know where the first baseman was, but I caught the ball right between the eyes.

Regaining consciousness is strange. It seems like your hearing fades in first, but it triggers visual images that don’t necessarily correspond to what you’ve actually heard. I thought I was lying on first base, looking up at Sister Bernard, with Marlin and Kimberly behind her. Sister’s white linen scapula was freckled with blood. When Sister spoke, her face morphed from angelic Sister Bernard into the scowl of Sister Cecilia.

Who’d have thought such a little nose could hold so much blood? Sister said, With such a nose, it’s hard to believe he’s Italian."

I was beginning to realize I was still at St. John’s, now in Mother Superior’s office.

Is it broken? Marlin asked. But it wasn’t Marlin.

Sister, has someone called his mother? he asked, as he visually morphed from Marlin into Father Weber. And Kimberly dissolved into Mary Margaret in her yellow and white checked summer dress–now with a streak of red down the front. She peered at me from behind Father Weber, looking like Annette Funicello without her Mickey Mouse Club ears, only a little darker, with softer, chocolaty caterpillar eyebrows.

I don’t know, Father. It looks like it might be, but it’s hard to tell. It’s such a little thing. And the family doesn’t have a phone, so I sent his sister home to get the mother.

No phone, Sister?

No. They live in the Housing Project, Father: the Shue Homes. In a loud stage whisper, Sister spit out, She married a Protestant–left her with five kids.

Oh, God! I thought, Why did Mary Margaret have to hear that? The kids’ll all hate me for sure, now.

The grandmother pays their tuition. Sister Cecelia said. She’s Italian: a Guelph from Genoa," finishing her dissertation on our family’s recent misfortune.

St. John’s nuns were Franciscan, some just off the boat from Italy, on a mission to save the heathen souls of Middle-America and teach the rudiments of soccer. St. Thomas’ nuns were Benedictine, back in America after being kicked out of their mission in Hunan by Chairman Mao, where they taught Chinese children Christianity and baseball.

I think I can fix this nose, she said. I did my brother’s a couple times. A little push here, and... .

I felt Sister Cecilia’s thumb on my nose and... snap! A bolt of lightning shot through my face, and the room went white, like the first few seconds of an atom bomb detonation, as we had seen in the civil defense films at St. Thomas More. The room returned to its normal shade of gray, but I noticed I could breathe unfettered through my nose again, something I had had difficulty doing since my accident at first base.

Th-th-Thank you, Th-th-thithter, I said.

She grimaced at the sound of my lisp. I was not aware that I spoke any differently than anyone else, so I didn’t understand why she made that face whenever I said her name, Thithter Thethelia. I WAS aware of my stammering though, because some of the kids made fun of it, especially Dennis Vinson.

My sister, Beverly, came running into the office, all out of breath. Sister! Sister! My mommie went to the hospital... and... she’s gonna get a new baby! And Teresa, Penny, and Jenny are at Gramma Delia’s. Mrs. Clements told me... Grandma Rankin’s gonna come stay at our house after work. I get to sleep with her!

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What next? Sister Cecelia said rising to her full height of four-foot-ten. Well, I’ve got thirty Seventh and Eighth graders, finishing their breakfasts. The world can’t stop for one bloody nose. Come along, Mary-Margret; maybe we can find a clean frock for you in the donations for Africa. Nodding toward Mother Superior, and Father Weber, she swept Mary Margaret and Beverly out of Mother Superior’s office.

I suppose you’ll have to reside on my bench until your grandmother comes, glowered Mother Superior.

My face hurt, and both my eyes were puffing up, but the idea of spending the day with Mother Superior was worse than facing the teasing of my classmates. And another cicada began his freedom song. I got up off the bench. Thithter. I’m f-f-fine. I can g-go to clath. I turned and walked to the door.

Just a minute, young man, Sister Superior said, So, just what is all this vomiting and fainting? You make an amazingly quick recovery once you’re outside of the Lord’s house. If you’re just trying to avoid going to Mass every day, you might as well go to public school, with the rest of the heathens."

Oh, no, Thithter! I like thaying Math every day. I look forward to it.

Then what’re all these goings-on? You allergic to Communion? What is it about sharing in the Body and Blood of the Lord is making you sick?

I was struck by the implication of her question and stood in silent contemplation for a moment searching the cracks in the old pine flooring for an answer. I-I-I-I d-d-don’t know, Thith-thithter. .

Well, we can’t have you throwing up the Lord onto the church steps. What would He think of that?

But I’ve never done that, Thithter. It’s always been before the conthecration. I always feel better after Communion.

She stooped over to look me straight in the eyes as if she was trying to read what was behind them. What do you say, Father?

Father Weber looked like he had dozed off in Mother Superior’s desk chair, but his eyes fluttered to half-open. Yes, what is it, Sister?

What’s to be done with this boy, getting sick and fainting in Mass? He’s new here. What if the other boys start using this as a ploy to get out of Mass!

Father Weber looked at me with his eyes half open. I wasn’t sure if he was squinting to look deeper into my soul, or if he was just half awake. I believed priests had a special talent for seeing into a person’s soul. That’s why they could hear Confessions.

What’s the trouble, son? Are you sick?

I wasn’t sick in the usual sense, like a cold or the flu or chicken pox. I answered as honestly as I could,

N-no, F-f-father. It jutht gets h-h-hard to breath thometimes.

When is it hard to breathe son, during Mass?

Well, F-f-father, when it’th real hot, and I can’t move around during the Eucharithtic prayer, or the Conthecrathion, and the incense and ah ah ah other ah o-o-odors . I-I-I feel like I have to vomit or or I get vertigo and…f-f-f-faint.

This ever happen anywhere else?

Only once when I got hit in the head with a baseball.

With a note of caution in her voice, Mother Superior leaned over and whispered over father’s shoulder, but I was able to decipher what she said to him,

Sister Cecilia thinks he might be the Antichrist, Father. She said he won’t look up at the sight of the Host and mumbles things.

I had never heard of anything called an Antichrist before. I had to admit it didn’t sound good, but it made Father burst with such a laugh that he almost lost his upper plate. He hobbled around the desk and leaned toward me, like Perry Mason, and asked,

Did this happen at your old school... where was that?

Thaint Thomath More. N-n-n-no, Father, jutht here.

With a bit of smugness, Father looked at Mother Superior and chortled, Just like Tom Mullen to send the Antichrist up to my parish. Too busy building his new church. He leaned again toward me and asked, You say this never happened at St. Thomas More, but only here. But, did you go to Mass every day while at St. Thomas More?

Yeth, Father, I wath a therver.

A ther... server, you don’t say. Ah! And with another sly Perry Mason look he stood and said, "Ab homine iniquo, et doloso erue me." (From men unjust and deceitful, deliver me.)

And I responded instinctively, Quia tu eth, Deuth, fortitudo mea. (For you, God, are my strength.)

With that, he turned to Mother Superior and said, I believe your Antichrist may just have a touch of asthma. Have Mr. Otter pry those windows open and turn on the fans half-hour before Mass each day. He turned and hobbled toward the door, and chanted, Introibo ad altare Dei. (I will go to the altar of God.)

And I responded, Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. (To God, who gives joy to my youth.) These lines were some of the dialogue between the priest and his server at the beginning of each Mass. As he hobbled out the door and continued to chant, Thend him to clath, Thithter Thuperior.

2: THE POWER OF WORDS

(Friday Before Memorial Day, May 30, 1962)

On the playground, during lunch that same day, Sam Clements and I were stealthily creeping up on a white fantailed pigeon strutting his stuff atop the brick wall that separated the playground from the cloister of the rectory. We did this every lunch hour. It was Sam’s idea that we could be quiet enough to get right underneath one of the pigeons, reach up very slowly and grab one of its legs. Sam was the only friend I had made in my short time at St. John’s.

He, too, lived in the Housing Project, which was a federally funded low-income housing tract built in the middle of what used to be a marsh or backwater of the La Crosse River, which, in La Crosse was a backwater of the Mississippi River. They had taken Indian Hill–an ancient giant sand bar or dune thrown up by the Mississippi sometime near the end of the last Ice Age, and cut a swath through the middle of it, dumping the spoil into the middle of the marsh. They kept digging and dumping until the sand stopped disappearing into the mile-deep muck, which was the marsh. Upon this new soil they built about a hundred brick duplexes.

I can’t think of a more inspirational place for a twelve-year-old boy. The swath that cut East to West through Indian Hill provided us with two fifty-foot cliffs of compacted sand and clay, into which a thousand cliff swallows burrowed their nests. At the bottom of each was a steeply sloping soft and tawny rockless sand scree. One could ascend to the top of the cliff, back up about ten yards into the scrub red oak, charge at top speed to the edge, spread your wings, and leap into the arms of God, amid a flurry of his feathered minions who exited their cloisters at the rumble of your footsteps. After a two or three-second flight we’d land up to our knees in soft sand and summersault to the bottom of the hill. The really daring would fly all the way to the sand without putting down their landing gear: belly flopping and sand-surfing to the bottom. But you had to remember to keep your eyes and mouth shut. There was nothing more frightening than trying to run home blind to have a small sand dune washed out of your eyes.

Another amusement park for us was the marsh itself, including the river, ponds, and islands. In spring it was filled up by the Mississippi at or near flood stage. As the waters subsided they left behind a sea of grasses and ponds of stagnant water teaming with tadpoles, mosquito, and myriad other insect larvae to feed stranded Mississippi River fish. And of course, there were the rivers themselves: The La Crosse, the Black, and The Mississippi, each with its own attraction inviting exploration and discovery.

To live in this Eden a child had to belong to an unfortunate family. Either your father was killed, maimed, or went crazy in Korea; or got polio or some other sickness and died; or couldn’t go to work for a long time. Or, he was unknown and not to be spoken of. Or, as in my case, already had, or was contemplating, divorcing you and your mother–a mortal sin.

My dad was still in the contemplation stage. I was dangling just above a kind of limbo. Sam’s father had been struck with polio like President Roosevelt and couldn’t farm anymore, a much more honorable circumstance than mine. Piloting a wheelchair in lieu of his tractor, Mr. Clements was always home for his boys, Alvin, Sam, and Michael, who still lived at home. There were six older sons and a daughter, Dorothy, who was often at home planning her wedding but staying somewhere else. I hung out much of the time at their house where I felt like just one more brother.

When the neighbor ladies asked my mother where her husband was, her answer was always, Dick travels a lot in his work. She wasn’t lying; she just neglected to say that he’d only been home long enough in the last year to get her pregnant for the seventh time about six months ago.

He’s in some kind of business in Chicago. And that was the truth, too.

The projects were segregated from the North Side of La Crosse by the Burlington Northern railroad tracks on the east; and the Milwaukee Road tracks on the west. And La Crosse’s North Side was separated from its South Side by the two-mile-long, one-mile-wide, and one-mile-deep La Crosse River marsh. We lived on the wrong side of the wrong side of town, but it sort-of bound us together. At the time, I was almost unaware of the economic disparity into which Dad’s departure had deposited us. As kids, we got everything material that we were aware we needed, and though we didn’t get everything we wanted, neither did any other kid we knew.

Sam was sidling along the wall from the right side of a white fantailed cock pigeon. I moved a little faster than Sam from its left. The pigeon was strutting in his direction. Sam slowly raised his finger, indicating I should stop, as the pigeon posed and puffed out his chest right above him, Sam’s fingers slowly crept up the red brick wall. The pigeon turned his tail toward Sam and spread his fan to its full width. Sam’s hand went up for its leg just as his younger brother, Michael, shouted, Git im, Sam! Well, the pigeon took off just in time, but not without dumping his ballast onto the short hairs of Sam’s butch haircut.

Michael was a Fourth Grader who idolized his older brother. He was always nearby to cheer him on to victory, which was sometimes problematic and annoying. Such was the case today.

Michael erupted with, A pigeon pooped on yer he-ad, a pigeon pooped on yer he-ad! He was rolling around holding his gut, giggling and giggling. I couldn’t help but join him. Sam looked like the statue of St. John in front of the school, with viscous liquid pigeon poop running down his left temple and into his ear. Sam just stood there, turning redder and redder, pursing his lips, trying not to explode. As the other kids nearby on the playground came to see for themselves Sam couldn’t contain himself any longer. He strode over to Michael and screamed, You... you... you... FUCKER! and then ran in the door to the cafeteria exclaiming, Oooh fuck! Oh fuck, fuck, fuck! as he went.

This was a totally new epithet in my experience, one for my collection. St. Thomas More had been a more sheltered experience for me. I hadn’t even heard my dad say that word. I knew right away, because all the other kids gasped and a couple of the girls covered their ears, that it was an exceptional word, one of those words children were forbidden to speak or hear.

Words have been my specialty. Mom said I spoke before I could walk, always garnering accolades from adults to whom I was presented. My study of lexicography had lately been centered on epithets and expletives. They energize and magnify the content of one’s thoughts, having an almost supernatural effect on hearers. Sort of like the effect of Latin in the Catholic mass, most of which I learned serving Mass for Father Mullen at St. Thomas More. They were magical words. The right ones turned bread into flesh, and wine into blood. I wanted to learn all of the power words and incantations I could. What I lacked in athletics, I would make up for in linguistics. I tossed around words the way other kids tossed around footballs. Sister Bernard and Miss Thurow, our city librarian, were my coaches and sparring partners in the sport, and Father Mullen too, when not in his vestments. He once warned me that if I was not careful, people might take me for a pedant. I had to look up the word, though I acted as if I was already versant with it.

I’ll be careful, Father, I said, thinking the word must have something to do with children’s doctors, connecting it with P-E-D iatrician. The person to whom I often was taken when injured after failed attempts at Superman-ing off the garage roof with a new variation of a cape or wings.

I was a bit chagrined to learn later in the library’s unabridged dictionary that a pedant was A person exhibiting an excessive or inappropriate show of his learning and/or scholarship. in other words, a show-off. Father Mullen was actually warning me about the deadly sin of PRIDE. As Jesus had warned us, "be not like the hypocrites; they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues, and at street corners where everyone can see them: Truly I tell you, they have their reward already. That’s when I resolved to be more like Clark Kent appearing as a mild-mannered reporter even though he was in reality The Man of Steel, but only when someone truly needed a man of steel. After that I tried not to make a show of being smart in class except when Sister had exhausted all the other raised hands.

Now Fuck is a lowly, single syllable word, not an indicative polysyllabic scholar’s word with Greek, Latin, or French roots one can decipher through dissection syllable by syllable. Yet it obviously had some power behind it. Was it sinful? I couldn’t tell. It did not "Take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." I thought I knew all of God’s names by then. Nor did it seem like an oath. It didn’t sound like a solemn promise to do or believe anything either. Could it be an acronym: Foul, Utter, and Contempt, seemed to fit the emotion of pigeon poop on the head.

Still, there were plenty of technically not sinful words that got you in trouble. Epithets, words that labeled or equated someone with a negative such and such, like shit, piss, ass, asshole, son of a bitch, and just bitch: all of which I had learned from listening to my dad, but didn’t dare utter in front of him. In the same light there were some Italian expletives I learned from my mother: Most often "Caduta" and baccio-me-culo, which my cousin Martin had translated for me as "shit!" and kiss my ass! These too were power words and thus intriguing. Of course, there are others, but, at that time in my life, spending all my time at school, Mass, the library or in front of the TV, my cup did not runneth over with profanity.

At St. Thomas More I was not welcomed into the coterie of the boys for whom "Fuck," or any of its variations, might have been part of their vernacular. If there WERE any of those at St. Thomas More I was unaware. I was that pious little red-headed kid known as Sister’s pet.

I learned a few bad words while eavesdropping on the neighborhood women who visited my mother to have their hair done. Before she married, my mother had been a beautician, but my father made her quit because he didn’t want anyone thinking he couldn’t support his family himself. But, she kept it up at home because she loved doing her art. and it helped out the ladies who couldn’t afford regular trips to the beauty salon.

While fixing their hair she would have to admonish them, Not in front of the children... please, after they let one of these other words slip concerning the habits of one of their husbands or another neighbor lady who seemed to be ordering an inordinate amount from the Fuller Brush man. Though I couldn’t recall every hearing any of them use Fuck in any form.

I’ll have to look that one up, I told myself. But where? On the South Side, our house had been just two blocks from the South Branch Library. There the "Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language" was always available to me. They even had a stool so a short person could stand at its podium. It was the place to which I escaped to avoid the humiliation of even the girls on my block trying to teach me how to throw, catch, hit, or do something with some kind of ball.

The library was also where I learned about other redheads, like Christopher Columbus, Napoleon, Vincent Van Gogh, Red Ryder and Thomas Jefferson; and how they overcame their childhood deficits.

But, now on the North Side, I had a long, dangerous walk to the North Branch Library on Gillette Street. Dangerous because of a certain cabal of toughs in blue jeans, white t-shirts and greasy ducktails who hung out between Brophy’s Pawn Shop, and Freddie’s Market on Liberty Avenue. Having to walk around the Milwaukee Road switchyard and B & NW trestle made Liberty Avenue the most direct route to the library. There was no bus route or person with a vehicle available to me to get past them. I’d made several daunting attempts already.

My desk at St. John’s was along an exterior wall with six-foot double-hung windows that began three feet above the hardwood floors. Below the windows were built-in bookshelves that held mostly school texts, which were not allowed to leave the room. However, I sat next to the reference books. So usually, while Sister was teaching the Eighth Grade lesson, I explored the Britannica Junior volume by volume.

At St. John’s School we had to bunch up on classes because there weren’t enough students for a whole grade with one teacher, as they had up Avon Street at St. James. I’d overheard St. John’s parishioners worrying that soon St. James will have siphoned off enough of our kids, forcing St. John’s to close.

All this meant that each of the nuns at St John’s had two grades to teach in the same room. While the eighth graders were being taught, the seventh graders were doing their math homework, practicing their penmanship, or memorizing catechism questions.

I had taken to filling that time reading encyclopedias, and studying the dictionaries that were next to my desk since most of what Sister Cecelia was teaching, even to the eighth graders, had been covered already at St. Thomas More.

Sam wasn’t there when class resumed after lunch. My guess was that one of the girls who had covered her ears had tattled on him, so Mother Superior was probably laundering his tongue with a bar of Lifebouy.

St. John’s did not have an unabridged dictionary in the reference section in my classroom, but they did have a Webster’s Collegiate Edition, and I could reach it from my desk. I guessed the word was spelled f-u-c-k-e-r, but I couldn’t find it. Tried f-u-k-e-r, f-u-c-h-e-r, and f-u-c-e-r; nothing there, either. So I tried to figure it out for myself. Fucker–must be one who fucks, just as baker is one who bakes. So, fuck must be a verb–a power word. Something one does. Infinitive form, to fuck. Past tense, fucked; present participle fucking, if it had a standard conjugation.

About this time Sam came in and handed his pass to Sister. He was working his tongue like an old woman coming back from Communion trying to find the Host in her mouthful of senseless false teeth in order to avoid accidentally putting a celluloid tooth through Jesus. He took his seat ahead of Mary Margaret who sat just in front of me. He was looking for a place to spit and aimed one for his ink well.

Though it was 1962, and the ballpoint pen had been in use in America for a little more than ten years, St. John’s was not a progressive school. We had to learn to write with fountain pens. Mother Superior explained to my Grandmother Delia when she enrolled us in March, that we would need a quality fountain pen and a bottle of ink.

The Bishop, doctors, and bankers, quality people, she said, they don’t use those new pens. The pressure on the point to make them work, it impedes the grace, the arc and flow of the pen. He needs this for quality penmanship.

Grandma looked at me and back at Mother Superior.

But Scott is left-handed, she explained. Left-handers tend to smear with a fountain pen. The ink takes too long to dry and their hand drags through what they’ve just written. They have to scrunch their hand around, sort- of up-side-down and backwards, to make it work. She indicated this by dangling her hand in front of her as if it had just had all the tendons severed at the wrist. Grandma knew this from experience, because my mother was also left-handed.

Mother Superior took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She was trying, no doubt, to relieve the tension that caused a big blue vein to pop out from under the white linen wimple over her left temple.

We have, no left-handers at St. John’s. The left is the ‘sinister’ hand, and does the work of Satan. The left hand is reserved for the more... ‘lowly’ functions.

Grandma looked back at me. She had just done the most talking back to a nun that she had ever done in her life. She knew that if I were to become a priest, it would be through diligent effort and prayer on her part AND on my part, and on the rest of the family too. All my cousins and uncles were six-foot home-run hitters by the time they were confirmed. I think for that reason, long ago, Grandma Delia and her sisters had decided that I would be the priest in the family. There hadn’t been one in the family since they left Piemonte during the unification of Italy. My mother passively went along with the idea; my dad scoffed. Grandma and Aunts Clara and Pearl were the only ones saying Rosaries for my ordination.

Grandma Delia always pronounced her maiden name as Gelf, an Americanized version of Guelphi, de-Italianizing it to shield her from the shame brought to Italian immigrants in the twenties and thirties by Al Capone and the Chicago Outfit.

Grandma Delia’s father, Pa, made a considerable amount of wine in his cellar. But he was not a bootlegger, she said. He was extremely proud of–and generous with–this talent, but never sold his art. It became Sacramental wine for St. Charles’ services in Genoa, Wisconsin. No one of any age ever came to his house without being invited into the cellar to sample his latest vintage: raspberry or dandelion, plum or pear, and even some grape. Grandma’s family was nothing if not adaptable.

Scott can write with either hand, can’t you? she said, looking to me for assurance.

Of courthe, I nodded. I could sense she’d be saying several rosaries for my penmanship in the next few weeks. I’d have the whole summer to practice. Thus I became a north-paw when I became a North-Sider.

Most of our school inkwells were empty since the invention of the cartridge fountain pen and they became a convenient place to stash small trash. Sam sat down and got out his penmanship, but I was anxious to discover the possibilities that a new verb could offer in a new environment. Without thinking, I wrote him a left-handed note.

Please define FUCK, and is that how you spell it? I can’t find it in the dictionary.

I had to get the note to him but I definitely didn’t want Mary Margaret to read it. So, I crumpled it up and tried to land it on his desk. It went past his ear, hit his desk, bounced off Dennis Vinson’s back and came to rest in the middle of Sam’s page of capitol P’s. After reading it, he turned over his page of capitol P’s and wrote out his response. When finished, he folded it neatly and slipped it under his arm back to Mary Margaret. I was ready to die, right there on the spot and go straight to Hell, if she opened it. I figured I’d better start an Act of Contrition. Oh, Lord, I am truly sorry.... But she didn’t read it: she just passed it back to me, with a conspiratorial smile.

Thanks, anyway, God–we’ll talk again later. I took the page of P’s from Mary Margaret, acknowledging her complicity with a smile of my own, and opened it.

"I guess F-U-C-K is the way you spell it, never saw it written.

Kathy Pauley’s going to fuck Johnnie Peterson tonight at the fort, says it’s how people make babies when a boy takes off a girl’s clothes."

Wow! Two new concepts: Fuck: to remove a woman’s clothing, and to make her pregnant. My imagination went crazy. Fucker: one who removes women’s clothing. Fucked: to have one’s clothing removed. I wondered if it was reciprocal. If a girl removes your clothes, was she the fucker and you the fucked? But boys don’t get pregnant. It wasn’t logical. Guys didn’t get pregnant, and why wouldn’t a girl get pregnant every time she undressed herself? Was there something mystical about a boy doing it to a girl? There had to be more to it than just undressing. I undressed my little sisters once in a while to help mom get them ready for a bath, and they didn’t get pregnant. Perhaps there is a Latin incantation I’d missed, that the priest teaches to brides in the marriage ceremony. I was going to have to go to the Library. I could accept fucking as undressing, but it didn’t follow that fucking, by itself, caused babies. I penned another note to Sam, under his note on the page of P’s.

Thanks, but I don’t get the making a baby part. Seems illogical. Ask Kathy P. about it tonight? There’s still some pigeon excrement on the back of your earlobe

Like us, Kathy Pauley was from The Projects. But, because she was a Protestant, she went to public school. She was thirteen but still in the sixth grade, on account of her family moving a lot, because her dad had gone crazy after he came back from Korea. He was in the state mental hospital in Madison.

Kathy was a tomboy. She had a short brown pageboy hair cut, parted on the right side like mine, and played baseball and jumped off cliffs, just as all the boys did. She was a left-handed pitcher and always got picked first for baseball or pom-pom pole-away. I was always picked last. She was starting to grow breasts and Johnnie Peterson had started calling her Boobsie, which she hated. She would threaten to beat him up when he said it, but he could always run faster. She seemed to be the local authority on things of a carnal nature. Having breasts seemed to give her an air of maturity.

To get this note to Sam, I didn’t want to take a chance of waking Dennis Vinson. He always wanted to beat me up on the way home, for no reason, and I sure didn’t want to give him a reason. I wasn’t sure if I could trust Mary Margaret to pass the note back to Sam without reading it. It was a tough choice: to get beat up by Dennis, or for Mary Margaret to find out that I was really a lecherous sinner, filled with impure thoughts. I decided to trust Mary Margaret. I wrote Private on it with an elegant left handed P, and touching her left shoulder, nodded a quick request for her to pass the folded page of P’s back to Sam. Which she did.

Sam scanned the paper and quickly penned another note, slipping it back to Mary Margaret. But, before she took it from him, Sister Cecilia walked to our row and announced. Okay, Seventh Grade, let’s have your penmanship. She started walking down our row.

Nothing, Mr. Vinson? Why am I not surprised?

While she was harassing Dennis, Sam stuffed his page of P’s in his mouth.

Stopping at Sam’s desk she asked, Mr. Clements, Nothing to turn in? What do you have to say for yourself?

Sam just stared at his desk.

Nothing to say? Probably best to give that tongue a rest... Well, young man, we’ll see you for thirty minutes after school. She stopped at Mary Margaret’s desk. Very nice, Mary-Margaret. Be sure to put your name on it."

I felt guilty as I turned in my page of sloppy, irregular, right-handed P’s, knowing I was the reason Sam would be spending an extra half-hour at school on a Friday. But that was infinitely better than the consequences of her seeing that note. Probably excommunication!

3: THE PAWN SHOP GANG

(After the End-of-School Bell the Final Friday of May, 1962)

Getting to the North Side Library meant walking the opposite direction from home, twelve blocks north of school, up Liberty Avenue, and then past Logan High School.

After school, I slipped out the playground door and went around the front of the church to ditch my sister, Beverly. Sam was doing his detention with Sister Cecelia, which left Beverly and Michael unaccompanied to walk home to the housing projects together. Walking home with them was like taking your pet turtle for a walk. They were the daudlingest kids in the world. They’d have to stop and investigate every piece of broken glass, sneak up on every pigeon, and stop and talk to every old lady. They’d see Mrs. Brumke in her yard or garden and they’d wait for her to go in and get them each a windmill cookie, then she would tell them all about her treasured flowers and vegetables and the windmills back in Holland when she was a girl.

Sam and I could never wait for windmill cookies. We had adventures calling us from the marsh while Beverly and Michael would toddle along, eating their cookies, picking up butterfly corpses and saying Hail Marys for them. They’d chatter incessantly about making their First Communion or taking care of babies or conjecturing about the new ones which were on the way for both of our mothers.

I watched them waiting for me on the front stoop of school until they finally started for home without me. You never knew, with Beverly. She had the patience of Job. So, with out Michael to prompt her, she might sit and wait for me ‘til it got dark. I’d catch Hell for leaving her there and have to go back and get her.

Once they were safely around the corner, I headed up Liberty. I passed Freddie’s Market on the way. About three times a week, Mom sent me there for bread and milk and cigarettes. Bread was twenty-nine cents, milk was thirty-one, and a pack of Pall Mall was twenty-five.

I was allowed to spend the fifteen cents change on whatever I wanted–usually a nickel Hershey Bar. I could keep the remaining change for a Hershey Bar after school. On the way home from school for lunch, just before crossing the Milwaukee Road tracks, I would slip into the Hiawatha Tap and get a candy bar for me, and one for Sam, ‘cause Sam never had any spending money.

Once his mother sent him to the store for bread and milk and cigarettes and I went along. I convinced him that it was okay to spend the change on himself (and me, of course). He didn’t think that his mom would agree. I asked if she had said to bring the change home and he said she hadn’t.

You thee, I said, she expects you to thpend the change. That’s the kid code. If she didn’t want you to thpend the change, she’d have told you. It’s only natural that you should receive thome commensurate form of compensation.

Sam ended up getting a hiding and his mother talked to mine about the bad influence I was having on her son. Then Mom explained to me that I should be aware that there were many families, especially in the projects, who were not as well off as we were and to never talk about money or things we have that they don’t because it could make them feel bad.

Just past Freddie’s Market was the Brophie Pawn Shop. It was a hangout for some of the tough kids who would have gone to Logan High School, if they ever went to school. Dennis Vinson would sometimes be there taking Tough Lessons from John Brophy and his minions, the Mosser twins. They could be playing Stretch on the boulevard with their hunting knives or talking about which of the guns in the window of the pawn shop would put the biggest hole in a Nazi or a Commie. Dennis said they were just waiting to get into the Army where they were all gonna be sharpshooters.

I had learned, in my short time on the North Side, to cross to Avon Street when going to the Library. I don’t know what I was thinking that day. I guess I was unwrapping my Hershey Bar and concentrating on not tearing the silver paper so I could later fold it into an F-101 delta-wing fighter.

Anyway, I ran into Dennis as he was stepping out of the pawn shop.

Watch where yer going, fairy, he said, as half my Hershey Bar fell to the sidewalk.

I stared down at my chocolate, wanting to pick it up before it got too dirty to eat, but not wanting anyone to know that I would eat something that had fallen on the ground. I didn’t want to look up, either, because I didn’t want to challenge Dennis. South Side bullies were like Shirley Temple compared to these North Side toughs. There’s something about living on the wrong side of the tracks that makes some people feel like they need to be meaner than everyone else.

Dennis gave me a shove backwards.

Hey! Wha ‘d’ya say when ya bump into someone, huh? he snorted.

I focused on the chocolate. Sister Bernard had said that in situations like this, Jesus would say to turn the other cheek. Ex-ex-ex-thcuthe me, I whispered.

I can’t understand nuthin’ you’re saying, Sissie! What’dya say? Dennis towered over me. I felt that bubble of bile rising in my esophagus again and gulped it down. I’m th- th-thorry. I replied.

Then, a very large black Wellington boot stepped down from the pawn shop and stomped on my fallen chocolate. John Brophy’s boot was grinding it into the concrete.

Well, what do we have here? It’s Red-on-the-Head, Like-the-dick-on-a-Dog!

Anywhere in America during the 1950s, after several seasons of The Howdy Doody Show, having flame red hair and freckles made you an easy target for the wise-asses to get a cheap laugh at your expense.

John’s height matched his feet. He was six-foot-three, with a greasy Elvis Presley pompadour. Dressed entirely in blue denim except for a dirty-white t-shirt under his sleeveless jean jacket, he had his jeans rolled above his Wellingtons, and a pack of Camels rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve. A lit one was hanging from his lip.

He grabbed a handful of my hair and lifted me off the sidewalk. I tried to turn the other cheek but my body just twisted beneath me, and I could hear several follicles giving up the ghost as they released their grip on my scalp. I started saying an Act of Contrition, "Oh, my Thavior, I am truly thorry for having offended you... ." I’m not sure if John recognized the prayer, or thought I was talking to him, but he lowered me to the ground, retaining his grip on my hair, then pulled an eight-inch switchblade from his pocket, whipping it open.

Should we take um red scalp, Kimosabe? John asked Dennis with a laugh.

I stopped praying, because that bubble of bile had lurched back up blocking my larynx. I tried to swallow, but instead of it going down, it erupted, sending everything above my diaphragm out and into the top of John’s right boot.

He released my hair and jumped back shaking off his boot. I didn’t stop to see what happened next, but I heard Dennis guffawing and John growling Awww, fuck! What the Hell you laughing at?

I headed for home–not by the prescribed route, but straight home: due east toward George Street, which meant going across Swanson’s football field, through Swanson’s Junk Yard, and through the Milwaukee Road switch yards, and then island-hoping through the marsh. They gave up chasing me in the marsh. They didn’t know where all the solid parts were and got mired in the muck.

When I got home, Grandma Rankin was busy helping Beverly sew Teresa’s First Communion veil. Grandma reminded me to wash my hands for supper, because she was, fixing to serve pork chops.

Grandma Rankin’s pork chops were special. She only came for visits once in a while, and rarely cooked. She spent most of her time at my aunt Lizzie’s house, helping her daughter raise her family of seven kids. That was three more kids than ours, their score having been boosted by two sets of twins. She and my dad, her brother, had both converted to Catholicism when they married. When Dad informed Grandma Rankin that Mom was pregnant, I heard Grandma scolding him.

This competition between you and Liz has GOT to stop. What? Are you two out to prove who’s the better Catholic!

It’s not up to me, Mother, he said with a big sigh. But... another boy... it sure would be nice... . At the time, I didn’t see it as a slight, for I too dearly wanted a little brother instead of another sister.

Anyway, I was looking forward to sitting down to pork chops, boiled potatoes and gravy, sweet peas, and corn bread (a southern Illinois supper–not the typical pasta and cheese or risotto we ate when Mom or Grandma Delia was cooking). Not that I didn’t love macaroni & cheese and rissot. It was just a nice variation on the theme of supper.

4: PRIVATE RANKIN’S COMEUPPANCE

(After Supper, Friday, May 25, 1962)

After supper we watched Paladin on Have Gun Will Travel. My three-year-old sister Jenny loved the theme song, but she couldn’t pronounce Paladin. She’d sing, Pottyin’, Pottyin’: where do you roam? Pottyin’, Pottyin’: far, far from home. Which is what she actually used to do. When she was out playing somewhere and wet herself, rather than running home to pee. When her damp clothing began to chafe,