Thumper

By Stephen B Martin

At the age of four, you witness your mother's collapse as the washing machine overflows and sends clumps of soapsuds scudding past her across the kitchen floor. When your father goes to work, he leaves you next door at the Blue Belle Diner, under the watchful eye of Charlie, an ex-boxer turned short-order cook. The Diner becomes your day-care center as your mother waits for remission.

Deprived of a mother's physical affection, you become increasingly aware that your father resents you. Spending more and more time on the streets of Worcester, you befriend such marginalized and colorful characters as Worcester's Last Gypsy, Last Ragman, and Last Sidewalk Preacher.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350947373

Stephen B Martin

Life-long singer-songwriter, journalist, and socio-political activist Stephen B Martin lives with his wife and his parrot on Nantasket Beach, a peninsula south of Boston. He is currently at work on his next collection, titled Thumper Grows Up.

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Copyright 2024

Cover art copyright 2024 by Moira Lanier, soft pastel

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 979-8-35094-736-6

eBook ISBN 979-8-35094-737-3

About the Author

Life-long singer-songwriter, journalist, and socio-political activist Stephen B Martin lives with his wife and parrot on Nantasket Beach, a windy peninsula on the Massachusetts South Shore. He is currently working on his next book, titled Thumper Grows Up.

For Kathe and Bradford

Contents

The Blue Belle

Clownie

The Butler’s Pantry

Nuts In May

No Matter How Much Duck

Molecules

The Tornado and The Last Ragman

The Last Gypsy Shop

Playing Doctor

The Rat

The Forbidden Forest

Wonder Bread Wars

A Fair Act of Reprisal

A Lone Wolf

Boysenberry Surprise

The Last Sidewalk Preacher

The Girl with the Prettiest Leg

Sex Education

A Time for Breaking Excerpt from Thumper Grows Up

The Blue Belle

In grainy gloom beneath black drapes the radiator clanks in time as if a metal man were climbing the fire escape. The city is silent except for your father’s heavy breathing and the ticking of the kitchen clock. You roll onto your left side. Blood thunders past your ear. And there’s a high-pitched ringing sound. At first you thought it was coming from outside, but it’s louder when you cover your ears. You don’t like it.

Nor do you like the never-ending tick-tocking. Sometimes, like right now, the space between the ticks and tocks, the little bit of time that’s supposed to be quiet and empty, is filled instead by the echo of the tock or tick before it: TICK-tick-TOCK-tock-TICK-tick-TOCK-tock-TICK-tick-TOCK-tock. Sometimes it gets louder, and you have to put the pillow over your head and hum softly to drown out the ringing.

Your father snorts and starts to snore, keeping it up until your mother finally says, Ellie! Roll over! The bedsprings creak and twang and they go back to Sleepytown.

You were pretending to be there when they came to bed. They know you have trouble going to sleep and scary dreams keep waking you, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it. All they say is, It’s only a dream. Try to go to sleep. That doesn’t work, so why bother them with it? One problem is you can’t stop thinking. Your mind keeps jumping from thought to thought like a monkey from tree to tree.

But you like the feeling you get knowing no one in the world knows you’re awake.

You just can’t sleep until you just can’t stay awake, and before you know it the drapes are forest green, and you can hear and feel the slap and shudder of the wringer-washer. Your mother’s doing laundry in the kitchen. You’ll surprise her.

You’re a big boy now, four years old, but the one-bedroom tenement is too small for a big boy bed. So they took off the bars and your crib is now your bed. You drop to the floor and put on your red felt cowboy hat, chewed-up-but-still-salty rawhide chinstrap between your teeth. Wobbling along the narrow path between their bed and yours, you tiptoe down the short hallway past the den on the left and the curtained closet on the right.

The den’s too small to be a living room, but your father has somehow crammed in his roll-top desk, bookcase, desk chair, and Gram’s old couch that would fold out into a bed if there were room. Your grandfather’s stuffed scarlet tanager perches behind glass in the round walnut frame on the wall over the desk. Gram says it’s a hair-loom.

The doorless closet is the only closet in the apartment except for your mother’s mahogany wardrobe. The closet runs the length of the hallway, long enough for your father’s clothes at one end, everybody’s coats at the other, and a dresser in the middle because it wouldn’t fit anywhere else. A single high shelf holds hats, boots, and suitcases filled with stuff you don’t need now. There’s nothing scary about any of those things, but in the dark behind full-length forest-green curtains, you never know. What if it’s that thing with the teeth that jumps at you out of the bushes in that dream?

Your mother bought enough forest-green cloth on sale at the fabric store to make, as your father put it, "outfits for Robin Hood, all his merry men, and the sheriff of Nottingham." She used it to sew curtains for all the windows and the closet, a skirt, a shirt, and an apron, and she’s using the scraps for a quilt she’s been making all your life.

You peek around the corner. There she stands, in the sunny alcove off the kitchen, tall and thin in a pale blue housedress and forest-green apron, embroidered with little red and blue flowers, tightly tied around her waist.She’s still as a statue, one hand on the big, white washer and the other on the lip of the high sink. A black rubber hose runs from the faucet over the sink into the round washer – with-the-wringer-on-top. She must be waiting for it to fill.

In the corner to the right of the alcove is the stove, and pushed against the far wall stands a small square wooden table with three wooden folding chairs, on loan from the Church, tucked beneath. A fourth chair, reserved for Gram, leans folded-up against the wall to your right, between the bathroom door and the wooden Standard ice box that squats beside the front door. The only door, really. The back door is the bedroom window with the scary fire escape.

You hop across the threshold like a surprise cowboy bunny and yell, Hi, Mommy!

As if in answer, her knees bend, her hands slip off the sink and the washer, and she goes ragdoll limp, slowly falling sideways. Her hip hits the floor, then her elbow, her shoulder, her head. Lying on her side, she looks at you with wide eyes and opens her mouth to talk but doesn’t say anything. Now her eyes close and she rolls forward onto her belly.

Clumps of soapsuds slip over the washer’s lip and slide to the floor at her feet. You shake her and cry, Mommy! Mommy! Wake up! You try to pull her away, but you’re not strong enough. You think to turn off the faucet, but you’re way too short to reach it, and now it’s too late. A waterfall splashes onto the linoleum, spreading the suds across the floor. You try again to move her, but the flood slips your feet out from under you.

Howling for help, you’re crawling toward the door when a key clicks in the lock and your father and Uncle Billy burst in. Sliding across the room in his penny-loafers, Uncle Billy turns off the faucet while your father picks up your mother and carries her to the bedroom. You follow and watch as he lays her down on the bed, unties her apron, and tears her dress taking it off. You don’t remember ever seeing her num-nums. They tell you she breast-fed you but they ran out of milk, and you had to go on the bottle. They look empty, like old mostly flat balloons.

In a flash, you remember screaming and crying and kicking because she wouldn’t unbutton a blue blouse with red flowers on it. Somebody said, Mommy’s num-nums hurt from you sucking on them. Look, they’re all out of milk. You can see her unbuttoning the blouse and showing one poor, droopy nipple, bright red and chapped, covered with flaky scales. The memory makes you sad.

Uncle Billy mops the kitchen floor while your father dries her off and dresses her. You dry yourself and get mostly dressed, correctly putting on your underwear, socks, pants, and shoes, but your father has to tie your shoelaces and re-button your shirt.

Stay with Mommy and yell if there’s any change. Any change at all, he says. He collects all the towels and spreads them on the kitchen floor while you watch her sheet-white face, looking for the slightest change. Her eyes keep moving behind their eyelids, but he says that’s good because it means she’s dreaming. You hope they’re good dreams. You hold her icy hands to warm them, wondering if she can feel it. Now he picks up the dripping towels and dumps them in the bathtub. To Billy he says, I’m going down to the diner to call an ambulance.

Billy says, It could take an ambulance forever to get here, Ellie. My car’s right next door at the station. I can have it out front by the time you get her downstairs, and we’re at the emergency room in five, ten minutes.

Billy hurries down the stairs, skipping every other step. Your father says, Grab your coat and a blanket, and, uh, something to keep you busy. You’ll have to stay with Charlie until I get back. You collect your giant Child’s Garden of Verses, your frayed blue baby blanket, and the little pillow with blue hollyhocks your mother embroidered. He wraps her in a blanket and easily picks her up. The three of you go to the elevator, which is just now coming up with the Ice Man in it. With giant tongs he carries a big glassy block in each hand, one for your ice box and one for your neighbors’ down the hall. The Ice Man slides open the inside door of the aluminum elevator cage and unlatches the gate in the tall wrought-iron-fence-like thing surrounding the elevator shaft so nobody can fall into it. He picks up his ice and steps out.

Your father says, Can we settle up next time?

The Ice Man nods. Sure thing, he says, holding the gates open until you’re all aboard, then closing them for you. You rattle and sway your rickety way down, holding on for dear life and peering through the mesh floor. The black square that is The Basement grows bigger and bigger until it’s about to swallow you, but the cage jerks to a stop just in time. You can feel and smell the cold, musty breath of whatever lurks down there. Your father says it’s just furniture, but furniture doesn’t smell like that.

You