One Good Punch Read online

  But things are changing.

  Look at our 4-by-800-meter relay team, the one we expect to score big this spring. Leadoff guy is from Trinidad; Rico moved here two years ago from the Bronx; Jay is from some city in New Jersey. The anchor guy—me—is the lone true Scrantonian, the one “lifelong resident of the East Side of Scranton,” as we say in the obits.

  But you want a few bright spots? Look around. Things did get better, at least for a few years. I’m no sociologist, but I can trace it back to the season things started changing for us. I was still in middle school, but I felt it. It was like the entire city snapped back and realized that we didn’t have to keep fading. We could take seven steps forward for every six steps back instead of the other way around.

  I’m a sports fan, and above all I’m an athlete, so maybe I’m not objective about this. But my grandmother caught it, and all of our neighbors, and the cops and the storekeepers and everybody walking the streets a few years ago when that Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton, USA, led Syracuse to the title.

  My goal is to follow the path that Gerry McNamara took. My sports are cross-country and track—lower-profile but just as tough.

  Sometimes I’m running not quite as hard as I ought to be, letting my mind drift and not putting forth the effort I meant to, and I’ll happen past little Bishop Hannan High School or some other place that reminds me of McNamara—that toughness, the focus that made you certain he’d nail consecutive three-pointers or get that crucial steal—and suddenly I’m running a whole lot faster, and I can’t wait to reach one of those killer hills and just kick its ass all the way to the top.

  It’s at moments like that when I know I can take this running thing far. State meet this spring; All-American in college.

  Scranton is the butt of jokes in movies and TV shows, as if it’s all polka and kielbasa and bowling alleys and pool rooms and former miners with black lung and no teeth. Give me a break. That’s only 90 percent of it. Maybe not even.

  Laugh if you want, or sneer. But check the results of the state track championships this May and see if my name isn’t there.

  My grades aren’t that good, by the way, and so far my athletic performances aren’t either. I did almost get to the state meet in cross-country. I finished eighth in the district and have the medal hanging on the wall of my bedroom. But I won’t be running for Villanova or Georgetown or Providence next year. No problem; I’ll keep developing anyway.

  I’m in the best shape of my life, ready to set records. A power runner—not big, but with a low center of gravity and good core strength. A guy who can keep going when things get difficult.

  I’m as tough as this city. I am this city in every cell of my body. It’s spelled r-e-s-i-l-i-e-n-c-e.

  Like the fires in the coal mines, we’re virtually impossible to extinguish.

  After my run, I try to slip into the school through the locker room, but no dice. Usually the place would be busy on a Saturday morning with sports teams practicing, but the basketball teams are all done and only a couple of wrestlers advanced to the regionals. So the gym is locked up.

  The side doors are locked, too. I flag down one of the custodians—Eddie, a good guy, been here forever, always asks me about track—but he says he’s been told not to let anybody into the school.

  “Something must be up,” he says at the door, wiping his nose with his wrist. “They said not to let anybody in for any reason.”

  “No problem,” I say. “I left a pair of running shoes in my locker, but I’ve got others.”

  Would have been nice to clean Joey’s little surprise out of my locker and rest easy for the weekend, but I won’t sweat it.

  So I walk the three blocks home, up the hill and on the outskirts of the downtown business area. My clothes are damp from the run and I’m thirsty and hungry, and I try not to think about what might be going on in the school. They’ve been doing drug sweeps every month or two.

  Nobody would suspect me anyway. I’m an athlete; I’ve never been in trouble; I don’t associate with troublemakers.

  Ask anybody around that school: I’m almost too good to be true.

  I get cleaned up and eat some leftover chicken wings and head to Shelly’s house. Her mother is a nurse at the high school, and I figure she might have a way of getting me to my locker.

  I’ve known Shelly since fourth grade, when she sat behind me in Mrs. Palumbo’s class at Jefferson School. She had a bad cold one day, so her nose was clogged and it affected her speech. Also her sense of smell, which turned out to be a good thing.

  The congestion did not affect her hearing, so when Jimmy Risalvato in the aisle next to us farted loudly, she poked me in the shoulder and asked, “Can you spell that?”

  She meant smell, but like I said, her speech was impaired. And I took it literally.

  I turned around and said, “P-f-u-r-r-d-t?”

  She laughed so hard Mrs. Palumbo made her go out in the hall for ten minutes.

  Ever since then, I’ve been spelling fart sounds to her.

  F-a-a-a-r-d-t.

  P-i-f-f-e-r-r-d-s-s-t.

  B-r-e-d-i-f-f-r-i-d-i-f-e-r-r-r-t.

  It never gets old.

  Anyway, Shelly’s mother isn’t home, and Shelly says there’s probably no way her mom could get access to the high school on a weekend without a very good reason.

  I ask Shelly if she’s up for going to a movie on Sunday night at the Cultural Center. They show art films and foreign stuff the fourth Sunday of every month.

  “Sure, Mike. It’s a date.” She puts her hand on my shoulder.

  I nod. It’s not a date. We’ll just be hanging out, like usual.

  Shelly is cool, and she’s cute and athletic, with dark hair and a sweet smile. But we’ve been friends for so long that it’s kind of like hanging out with a cousin. Too close for anything much sexual to happen. I get tempted and we’ve experimented, but it doesn’t feel quite right.

  She keeps her hand there for a few seconds, looking at my eyes. I look down and feel my face getting hot. She laughs when she sees me blushing. And she steps closer, right up against me. “We left some unfinished business last time,” she whispers.

  “Yeah, I guess we did,” I say. But maybe we’ll just leave it that way.

  “We’ll say unexpectedly…. After being stricken at home…. Teamsters. Which local?…Okay…. Attended Minooka schools…. He belong to a church?…There’s a Saint Rocco?…Got it…. Friends may call…. Okay.”

  “Scranton Observer.…You know her age?…A hundred and two? Wow…. Hobbies or anything?…Get out! Parachuting? Until her late seventies…. Hey, Mr. Powell, can you hold on a second?”

  “Be right with you, Tucker.”

  “I’m back…. Okay…. Her husband died seventy-four years ago?…Where’d she work?…We can say ‘including the Duchess Underwear Company, Scranton Lace, and the Jaunty Fabric Corporation.’ I love that one…. Yeah, call me back…. The Saturday night deadline is early, so only till about ten.”

  Tucker is our police-beat guy on the weekends. He’s a senior journalism major at the U, but he’s writing a crime novel, so the cop beat is great research for him. He tries to talk like a hardened reporter, almost to the point of being a cliché. He even wears an old fedora and a skinny black tie. It’s all part of the fun for him.

  I walk over and ask, “What’s up?”

  Tucker sits back in his chair and puts one foot up against his gray metal desk. “Drug sweep at East Scranton High, Mr. Kerrigan. The hallowed halls of learning where you go to school.”

  “Really?” My stomach gets tight.

  “Yeah. Pretty routine; they found pot in a few lockers.”

  “They arrest anybody?”

  “Not yet. And this is strictly confidential, bro. They don’t even want us to report anything until at least Monday, after they confront the perps.”

  “How many kids?”

  “I don’t know. I gotta rap with a dick at headquarters later to get the facts. But it didn�
�t sound like any huge thing. Mostly just users, not dealers. Five or six people involved, maybe.”

  “Probably just some scumbags,” I say, but I feel a little shaky.

  The cop-beat desk is basically a bank of phones and computer terminals in the middle of the newsroom, so there’s no wall to lean against. I take a seat on an empty desk across from Tucker. “What do they do to the people they catch?” I ask.

  “Depends how much dope they had, I guess.” Tucker takes out a cigarette and puts it in his mouth. You can’t smoke in the building, but he’s always gnawing on an unlit one. “They get bigger fines for it being at a school, but probably the kids are still minors anyway.”

  “What does the school do, I mean?”

  Tucker shrugs. The cigarette hangs from his lip. “Suspend the perps, as far as I know. Or expel them, especially if they think anybody was dealing.”

  I just nod. “Let me know if you hear anything else…. And, uh, just curious, if you talk to anybody from the school, find out what they do to the kids.”

  “Will do.”

  “Hello? Huh? Oh yeah, this is the Scranton Observer. Sorry…. Sure, no problem…. Where did he die?…After being stricken at home…. Okay…. I’m sorry, what was that again?…An army veteran of World War II, serving in the Airborne Division…. Any survivors?…You said Brian?…Oh. Byron. Sorry…. Lithua-n-i-a-n R. C. Church…. Right…. Right…. Sorry, what was that last thing you gave me?…Valley View Coal Company…. Right…. No, I’m okay. Just distracted by something…. Lettered in football and baseball at Scranton Central High School…. Yeah, that sounds like quite a life…. Donations to the American Diabetes Association…. Got ya….”

  ‘Scranton Pride’ Campaign Produces Mixed Results

  THERE AREN’T A TON of homeless people in Scranton, but they’re out there. I see the same few every time I walk home from the Observer after midnight. Charlie is usually in the doorway of the old National Bank building; Santa is on a bench by the courthouse; Wiley is wandering around the square.

  Like I said, there aren’t many other signs of life this time of night, especially in the winter, so these guys are almost a welcome sight. Walk along Mulberry or any other downtown street away from the courthouse square and you’re astounded by all the vacant spaces. Eight or ten buildings in a row—beautiful brick and stone buildings—and the storefronts are empty except for maybe a little shoe-repair shop or a sandwich place in the middle of the block. The windows are covered in brown paper and big FOR RENT signs. The slogan OFFICE/RETAIL SPACE AVAILABLE is as ubiquitous as those green-and-gold Scranton Pride banners.

  I did a term paper about the city in tenth grade. The one thing that sticks in my mind from that research is that, in the early 1900s, National Geographic said Scranton was the richest city of its size in the entire frickin’ world. All that iron and steel and coal. There’s been a heck of a big drop-off since then, let me tell you.

  But there’s always a big renovation job going on somewhere, some plumber’s or bricklayer’s pickup truck on the sidewalk and a big yellow chute from an upstairs window leading down to a Dumpster.

  And then you get closer to the square and there are so many banks and a bunch of restaurants and a handful of jewelry shops near the Lackawanna County Courthouse. So there must be a lot of money around here somewhere.

  I gotta call Joey when I get home. I forgot to bring my cell, but I’m going to ream him out good for the dope in my locker. I’m figuring my clean record and the fact that I’m a sports guy is going to help make this go away quietly.

  If it doesn’t, then my life is going to change in a hurry.

  Our house is small and gray, halfway up the hill a few blocks from the university and basically indistinct. The front light is on and my parents are asleep, so I grab my cell phone and go out to the street. Joey picks up on the first ring.

  “They did a drug sweep,” I say.

  “Who did?”

  “The cops.”

  “Today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn,” Joey says. “They find anything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You get arrested?”

  “No. Not yet anyway.”

  “Then how do you know about it?” he asks.

  “A reporter told me. Where are you?”

  “I’m on Gibson Street. Walking home.”

  “Head down this way. Go over to Jefferson and come toward my house. I’ll meet you.”

  I hang up on him before he can respond, but he better show up. I never said he could put anything like that in my locker. It wasn’t my stuff. And no way would I ever put it in my locker even if it was.

  We meet up in front of one of the university buildings. Most of the campus is off by itself, but there are several buildings on the edge of the downtown like this one.

  Joey’s got this big shit-eating grin as if this is real funny, but he’s got nothing at stake like I do. He’s not going to college; he hasn’t got any senior-year track season to worry about. He’ll be lucky if he graduates.

  “Dude,” he says, putting out his fist to meet mine but looking over to the side. He’s shorter than I am and tries to dress like a hood, but he was one of the most uncool kids around until last year, and now he overdoes it.

  “So, fill me in,” he says. “What’d the man say?”

  “Not much. Just that they found drugs in some lockers and haven’t arrested anybody yet.”

  “So that doesn’t mean they found anything in yours. They probably went right to lockers like Freddy’s.”

  “Freddy’s not that stupid,” I say. “Hardly anybody is.” And by that I mean that Joey is one of the few.

  “Like I said, they’d never suspect you,” he says. “Nobody would think you’d have drugs in your locker.”

  “That’s because I wouldn’t. What were you thinking, man?”

  “That it was probably the safest place in the school to stash it.”

  Joey has my locker combination because I let him put books there sometimes between classes so he doesn’t have to lug them around. My locker is right in the center of the main hall. His is down in the depths.

  We were friends way back in fifth grade before any of us were cool—always playing video games together at my house and talking about sports during school. I never quite shook him. Last summer he moved up a notch in status when he started hanging out with a party crowd. I would run into him on the street at night and he’d smell like pot or beer. But most of the time he was still the same geeky little guy, so we stayed friends, more or less.

  I’ve been to his house. Not the type of place you want to hang out at. His parents are both alcoholics, and they fight a lot. Joey gets yelled at with good reason and not, and there’s always a pile of dishes in the sink and a cracked window or a leak. It’s no surprise he’s never home anymore except to sleep.

  So I could turn him in if I get questioned. Yeah, it was in my locker, but they’d believe me if I said who put it there. And I’d be telling the truth. I never had possession, no money had changed hands. Technically, all the guilt is on him.

  “Look,” he says. “Just deny everything. Say you have no idea how it got there. You could get twenty-five teachers to vouch for your character. ‘It’s clearly a frame-up,’ they’ll say. ‘Thomas and Catherine’s little boy would never do a thing like that.’”

  I shake my head slowly and watch a couple of cars go by. I want to smack him, but he’s too innocently sleazy.

  “You gonna incriminate me?” he asks, making it sound funny even though I think he’s worried that I will.

  “You suck,” I tell him for the fiftieth time since this happened. Where do you draw the line with your integrity? Do you protect yourself or your friend?

  He rolls his eyes. “It’ll probably just blow over anyway,” he says. “We don’t know nothing about it, all right? Anybody could slip a few joints between the slots of a locker.”

  “So just lie about it, huh?”

  “Belie
ve me, Mike, they’d want you to lie. No way do they want to find drugs in a locker like yours. They do those sweeps to get rid of people like Freddy. Or me. No way they wanna screw with captains of the sports teams or anything like that. That hits the papers and it looks bad for everybody. But if they catch the ‘delinquents’ in my crowd, then the school looks good for weeding out the scum, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You got nothing to worry about. I guarantee they didn’t even check your locker,” he says. “Believe me.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  He looks me in the eye finally, then checks his watch. “Whatever happens,” he says, “just do me a favor and leave me out of it.”

  SECTION B

  LIFESTYLES and OBITUARIES

  Anxiety Has Negative Effect on Performance, Report Finds

  I DIDN’T SLEEP TOO WELL but managed a few hours and then woke up suddenly raring to go. The sun is shining, and it doesn’t look too cold out at all.

  My parents have already gone off to church—I make my appearances there on Christmas and Easter—and I’m not in any mood for conversation anyway. So I eat some toast and an orange and lace up the running shoes and head out, figuring some easy miles will calm me down and give me some perspective.

  The first few miles are very low-intensity, no effort at all because I’m still thinking hard about the situation and what it might cost me. But I’m starting to heat up now, feeling better.

  I’m following part of the course for the Steamtown Marathon, which they hold every October. The course starts out in the woods, then makes its way through Carbondale and the valley and eventually finishes here in downtown Scranton. The running magazines and Web sites consider it one of the best smaller marathons in the nation. I’d like to run it someday, but probably not until after college.

  I can see the high school in the distance, and I know there’s no better therapy than to get on the track, to hammer out a few 200-meter segments and prepare myself for the spring. I’m all warmed up and ready to roll, so I head down the hill and through the parking lot and through the gates of the stadium.