The other day while channel surfing, I stumbled upon an old film on Fox Movie Channel that I had never seen before: Ten North Frederick (1958), based on the popular John O’Hara novel. This A-list picture starred Gary Cooper and Geraldine Fitzgerald, as well as a young Diane Varsi. Suzy Parker played Cooper’s love interest. So how could I not watch? But the big surprise in the cast was a young actor whom I vaguely recognized from other pictures named Ray Stricklyn. He was cast as Cooper’s tortured soldier son, battling a drinking problem and a massive chip on his shoulder due to his father’s highhanded negligence, and his mother’s firm hand (below). (Video HERE.)

Intense, trim and wiry, with dark, sultry good looks, Stricklyn oozed a dynamic sensuality that resonated with me. This was the epitome of juvenile angst that movies in the 50s thrived on.  Only here, it was obvious to me (and countless other like-minded souls, I’m sure) that there was something other than delinquency seething under this sad young man’s skin. Stricklyn gave off unmistakable gay vibes that served to augment his performance rather than distract from it. He used his ambivalence to make the part work. For a youth to hold his own against the likes of Gary Cooper and Geraldine Fitzgerald was remarkable unto itself. But this kid had something unique — a kind of feral rage — that I found instantly appealing and intriguing.

I looked up Ray Stricklyn’s IMDB record to find out where else I might have seen his face. One of his first roles jumped out at me. He had played the brother of Debbie Reynolds in the Paddy Chayefsky classic, A Catered Affair, one of my favorite of Bette Davis’s later films. Almost a cameo role, Stricklyn’s turn as a high-strung, but likable, teen had stuck in my mind. And apparently in Bette Davis’s too. She and Stricklyn, I later learned, hit it off and remained close friends for many years.

Curious about his list of credits, which included a cult horror film The Return of Dracula (1958), as well as a couple of noteworthy westerns, such as Young Jesse James (1960), I did a quick Google search. One link popped out at me and made my jaw drop. Ray Stricklyn had been on the notorious “Spy List” back in 1990, along with Milton Berle, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee, Don Johnson, Mick Jagger, Tom Jones, and Rudolph Valentino.

One didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what these men all shared in common, especially since Tommy Lee would later show the world his credentials in explicit videos with Pamela Anderson. I certainly remembered Spy magazine’s list — which had created an instant furor — but had no memory of Ray Stricklyn, who it turned out, was the only one on the list who was gay. (Valentino was a bit more complicated.)

I decided to order the autobiography Stricklyn had written a few years before his death. Entitled Angels & Demons, One Actor’s Hollywood Journey (1999), the book is a fiercely candid, trenchant peek into Hollywood’s twilight years and his struggles with his homosexuality. While many recent memoirs by gay actors have been informative and eye-opening — in particular Farley Granger’s Include Me Out, and Tab Hunter’s Confidential — Stricklyn’s autobiography goes far beyond theirs in terms of self-examination and soul-searching, and chronicles the highs and lows of a failed Hollywood career with an honesty that is at times painful to read.

While not the juicy homoerotic exposé one might expect (Tony Perkins’s bio, Split-Image, by Charles Winecoff, is much more rewarding in that regard), Stricklyn’s memoir does have its amusing kiss-and-tell moments, especially during an incident in which he and James Dean were lounging together in Central Park, with Dean’s head in Stricklyn’s lap. Dean suddenly pulled Stricklyn down and kissed him full on the lips. It’s a tender moment between two friends, nothing more. But that was the effect Stricklyn seemed to have on those around him, although he recounts a hilarious moment in Lee Marvin’s dressing room when the unpredictable actor pulled out a gigantic phallic-shaped dildo and nearly attacked him with it. Stricklyn didn’t stick around to find out what precisely Marvin had in mind.

While working with some of the hottest actors of his day (including Dee Pollock, Bill Smith, Ty Hardin, Paul Newman and “cocky actor” Nick Adams, whom he did not particularly like), Stricklyn did not mix work with pleasure that often. He lists among his lovers Tab Hunter (no surprise there); Tony Perkins (a quickie in Central Park); Craig Hill, a handsome TV idol (Whirlybirds) who went on to make westerns in Spain and later married; and his lifelong partner David Galligan, an antiques dealer who became a noted stage director. Stricklyn didn’t shy away from sex, but it was not his number one preoccupation. He tried to go straight (via psychotherapy) or at least to swing both ways for a while (flirting with Joan Collins), but that only exacerbated his already significant drinking problem. Ray Stricklyn had several demons struggling inside him.

But it’s clear that the perception of his homosexuality had a major impact on his career. While he landed good roles in important films such as The Proud and the Profane, The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (playing Clifton Webb’s son), The Big Fisherman, The Plunderers, and The Lost World, he struggled to find regular work. Despite garnering accolades in almost every role he took on, Stricklyn was not given the leading roles he needed to firmly establish himself in Hollywood. The demise of the studio system was a major factor since his contract was not renewed when Fox ran into financial problems.

But watching his performances, one can’t help but be struck by the almost androgynous appeal Stricklyn showed — sort of a cross between the angst-ridden rebel of James Dean and the sensual vulnerability of Sal Mineo — and wonder if he was not a victim of his times. He did do a lot of TV work and had significant success in several stage plays, including Compulsion and Capote’s The Grass Harp. But his career seemed to be a never-ending stream of hopeful fits and false starts.

Stricklyn gave up acting for a time, working with the legendary PR mogul, John Springer. Stricklyn’s memories of promoting Peggy Lee, Mae West, Henry Fonda and Bette Davis are some of the highpoints in the book. But he yearned to return to the stage. It was Bibi Andersson, of Ingmar Bergman fame, who spurred him on to give acting another try. After several potent parts in plays, including Vieux Carré, for which he won the Los Angeles Drama Critics award for best actor, Stricklyn wrote and starred in a one-man show about that work’s author, Tennessee Williams. The show, Confessions of a Nightingale, toured the country for years, opened on Broadway (even the irascible John Simon liked it) and made Ray Stricklyn a bona fide star.

It’s gratifying to see a man fulfill his dreams. But apparently from what I’ve read elsewhere, Stricklyn never was able to shake off his demons. He did get sober in AA, and settled down to a happy partnership with David Galligan. But he continued to be wracked with worries and anxieties, smoked four packs of Kools a day, which led to a severe case of emphysema that eventually killed him in 2002. One friend wrote that even as he approached death, Stricklyn never lost his edge. He greeted death with rage, not submission.

Just for the heck of it, I looked up Ray Stricklyn on YouTube to see if any of his old TV shows might be posted. And lo and behold, one was: an episode of the 1957 inspirational series, Crossroads, entitled “A Call for Help,” above, starring Richard Carlson and a young Michael Landon. Stricklyn plays a Mama’s Boy who is picked on by a local gang led by Landon.

To prove he is not the “sissy” they repeatedly call him, Stricklyn grabs his father’s gun and shoots Landon and another boy, killing the latter. He is put on trial and defended on the theory that he was fighting more substantial inner demons (which I presume to be 50s doublespeak for homosexuality).

It’s a fun episode to watch HERE, and one that underscores all of Stricklyn’s strengths, weaknesses and ultimately his enormous potential. Of course, it was the sexy bully Michael Landon who became a superstar. One can’t help but wonder what might have happened had their roles been reversed.

The first time I picked up a book by Phil Andros, I knew I had come upon something truly unique and wonderful: a literate porn author. In various paperbacks I’d stumbled across in the 70s and early 80s, including Stud, Shuttlecock, Greek Ways, and Below the Belt, I was completely captivated by the narrator’s powerful and very sexy voice. Here was a unique creation: a cocky, well-endowed hustler who made no bones about his profession, nor the sexy escapades he encountered. Phil Andros’s autobiographical short stories never apologized for their racy subjects, or for the fact that he was insatiable. His was the voice of a virile rebel, a liberated drifter, a free spirit — and an out gay man at a time when such publications were still drenched in shame and guilt. But Phil Andros was never shrill or demanding or self-pitying. Nor was he a flaming queen. He was masculine, butch and proud. He was a kind of gay comic book super hero, a Tom of Finland drawing come to life. (Tom of Finland, in fact, had done many of the cover illustrations.)

Little did I know at the time that Phil Andros was actually a skinny, slightly indigent, old man, named Samuel Morris Steward, living alone in a run-down section of Oakland. The writing was so forceful and realistic that I had assumed he was everything he said he was on the page. But in a very true sense he was. Because Steward himself was a sexual renegade, a pioneer who pushed the boundaries of gay literature, and society, while living a life that was just as louche and homoerotic as any of his Phil Andros stories.

In time I made a point of finding out everything there was to know about Samuel M. Steward. Born in 1909 in Woodsfield, Ohio, he had gone to Ohio State University, then became a professor at Loyola, and later DePaul University in Chicago. In 1936, he published a well-received novel Angels on the Bough, about his family’s life back home during the Great Depression. Armed with letters of introduction by well-connected friends, Steward went to Paris and met Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, with whom he became lifelong friends. He visited with them often at Bilignin, their country house, and wrote a memoir of that friendship and published a collection of their letters, Dear Sammy (1977).

I began to see Steward for what he really was: A literary figure who for unknown reasons had failed to live up to his early potential. It was not until he published his explicit Phil Andros stories (basically as a lark) that he achieved any real recognition. Later in life, he published a pair of amusing mystery novels, incorporating Stein and Toklas as sleuths, including the witty Murder is Murder is Murder (1985). These are feather-light entertainments, poorly plotted and implausible, but they provide a rare and invaluable hands-on insight into the private lives of these two titanic figures, softening the lingering edges wrought by Hemingway’s homophobic attack on the couple in his bitchy, posthumous work, A Moveable Feast.

To others, Samuel M. Steward was better known as “Phil Sparrow,” one of the leading tattoo artists of his day. This was a side to the man that I had little or no interest in until I read his book Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos (1990) and realized that much of the Phil Andros character was based on Phil Sparrow and his racy hi-jinks in the back room of the tattoo parlor. The authenticity of his stories stems from the cold hard facts of life he learned catering to these restless souls who passed through his hands.

In truth there were several different Samuel M. Stewards: the frustrated professor at a small school who dreamed of loftier white towers; the literary author manqué who dreamed of greater recognition, and output; the friend and confidante to a slew of famous writers who never resented their success; the sexual renegade who kept meticulous (and dangerous) diaries of his countless erotic encounters; the artist whose “tattoodlings” were sought after by Hells Angels and provocateurs alike, including Kenneth Anger (who asked Steward to tattoo the word “Lucifer” on his chest, below).

So imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered that an old friend Justin Spring, who had written so well about Paul Cadmus (Paul Cadmus: The Male Nude, 2002), has just published a riveting new biography of Samuel M. Steward! Entitled Secret Historian (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), it delves into all aspects of the man’s career as a professor, tattoo artist, and sexual maverick. The book is a revelation. Through countless interviews, access to Steward’s private papers, and the Kinsey archives (to which Steward had been invited to contribute), Justin Spring has unlocked and exposed a world that until now was only hinted at by other writers.

Like the groundbreaking book Gay New York by George Chauncey, that shed light on a vibrant, lost gay world, Secret Historian reveals a vital underground culture, thriving throughout the early part of the 20th century. Steward was there at key moments in queer history, a kind of homosexual Zelig. But even more so than that inspired Woody Allen figure, Steward was an active participant, not just an innocent bystander. Steward was a sexual zealot, pushing the boundaries of acceptable behavior at a time when the prudish Victorian mind-set still cast its pall over the population, and the Oscar Wilde trial was not that distant a memory.

Openly consorting with like-minded colleagues, teachers, students, writer friends, traveling artists and performers, pick-ups, and tricks, Steward kept detailed diaries and lists of all his sexual “conquests” and trysts. They number into the thousands. He also took photographs, and filmed his sexual orgies. Considering that he could have been arrested and blackmailed for any of these indiscretions, it’s remarkable that these documents survived. But Steward was an incorrigible pack rat, saving every scrap that ran through his nimble fingers. He was encouraged in this endeavor by his good friend and guide, Alfred Kinsey (above), who saw in Steward an invaluable entreé into the homosexual demimonde (to which he was himself drawn) and a unique example of a sexual gourmand, for want of a better word, for whom quantity was more important than quality. Spring makes the most of these ephemeral finds, bringing to life a vivid subterranean set wildly at play in the pre-liberated ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s.

And what a life it was! Samuel Steward luckily was at the right place at the right time so often that reading his biography is like gazing into a crystal ball, or being a fly on the wall in the boudoirs of the best and brightest of the era. Here we find Steward chasing down and bedding Rudolph Valentino at the hotel he is staying in during a tour promoting one of his silent films. Later we find Steward in London, seducing Lord Alfred Douglas in hopes of creating a visceral link between the notoriously beautiful poet (then a wizened and unattractive older man) and his great hero, Oscar Wilde.

At Andre Gide’s in Paris, Steward lands the French writer’s nubile young Arab catamite. Later in an elevator at a department store, the eagle-eyed Steward has a quick but memorable tryst with Rock Hudson, then a working class boy named Roy Scherer. There are hilarious escapades with Sir Francis Rose, the troubled British artist, whom Steward penned a novel about in Parisian Lives (1984). Perhaps Justin Spring’s most surprising revelation is the extent of Steward’s amorous relations with Thornton Wilder, a closeted homosexual. After reading this book, it’s hard to think of the author of the iconic American play, Our Town, without envisioning Wilder engaging in frisky frottage in Steward’s arms.

Steward was also a magnet for other gay writers and artists, including Jean Genet, Glenway Wescott, Fritz Peters, Tennessee Williams, Jean Cocteau and James Purdy, and perhaps most meaningfully, George Platt Lynes, who shared Steward’s fascination with the beau ideals of American manhood. Barely a day seems to go by in Steward’s extensive diaries when some important figure didn’t touch his life or cross his path, or more often, end up in his bed. Steward had an ongoing affair with one of Lynes’s best-known models, and would often recommend his own “discoveries” to Lynes.

And then there is the second half of Steward’s life when he gave up teaching to pursue tattooing. Spring shows how foolhardy a venture this really was, and how risky for its time. Tattooing then was not the popular art form it is today; it was the realm of shady characters, prisoners, and outlaws. A gay man with a fetish for soldiers, sailors and rough trade opening a parlor in the roughest part of Chicago was a recipe for disaster. (Photos, below, copyright 2010 Samuel Steward estate; rights reserved.)

At times Steward found himself in harm’s way once too often, especially after he moved to Oakland and began working out of a ghetto. He was robbed often and also beaten. But Spring gives us insights into how Steward charmed his clientele, even when they were as volatile and violent as the Hells Angels, who, he documents, were known to sodomize and brutally attack their male enemies. Spring leaves no stone unturned, even interviewing legendary Hells Angels founder, Sonny Barger, below, who remembers Steward fondly.

Later Steward became active in the burgeoning gay porn scene on the West Coast, befriending J. Brian, who ran a magazine and film business. Through him, Steward got a steady supply of hustlers, and became intimate with Johnny Harden, one of the biggest porn stars of the 80s (both gay and straight). Harden later took the name Gene Carrier (an obvious double-entendre), posed for Playgirl, and resurrected himself as a Ford model, appearing in a series of prominent Gap ads, until his previous identity was revealed.

Spring keeps an academic distance from his material throughout the biography. It would have been easy for him to make sweeping assumptions about Steward’s various sex addictions, his chronic drug use (after giving up alcohol), his sado/masochistic tendencies, the obvious parallels of his hoarding, diary-keeping and punishing crushes, to today’s trendy concepts of OCD. But that would diminish the impact of what is revealed here. Yes, Steward might have been a better writer (or at least a more productive one) if he had not devoted so much of his life to pursuing sex, or if he had not medicated himself later on with endless painkillers and speed. He died in 1993.

But Spring shies away from laying blame, passing judgment, seeking causes, or reading between the lines. He merely chronicles the events as documented, and thereby gives us a three-dimensional portrait of the man, warts and all. My only quibble with this even-handed approach is that Spring seems to underplay Steward’s literary influence, undervaluing the quirky mysteries and ignoring the appeal of some lesser works when even in their weakest form they are much better than most of the lackluster junk being published today.

The subtitle of Spring’s book — “The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade” — doesn’t even mention the word “author”! Yet it is primarily as a writer that Steward will be remembered by future generations who pick up, as I did three decades ago, and still do today, his thoroughly entertaining Phil Andros tales.

[The following is a short story I’m working on, based in part on an actual incident from my childhood.)

Most of the streets in Munsey Park, where I grew up, were named after famous American artists, since the man who founded the village, Frank A. Munsey, had made his fortune as publisher of a popular culture magazine, Munsey’s. The community had been built on his former estate sometime in the 1920s. My family lived on Ryder Road, a long, winding street that culminated in a dead-end. A block away was Inness Place, which as the name implies, was not very long, tucked between Eakins Road on one side and Manhasset Woods Road on the other. It lay parallel to our stretch of Ryder Road. One of my best friends, Danny Enright, lived on Inness Place, so I often hung out there. Sometimes I’d go and shoot hoops outside his garage.

The quickest way for me to get there was by cutting through Mrs. Buckhold’s property directly across the street from my house. This led to the backyard of a strange-looking house on the corner of Inness Place and Eakins Road that had been left abandoned for a while. The old man who owned it and had lived there alone had died a year or so before. He didn’t have a family, so it was put up for sale as part of his estate. Since no one had come in to do any repairs or to give the house some landscaping, it just sat there, an obvious eyesore to the rest of the community. I don’t think anyone had even bothered to look at it for months.

Danny told me that his mother was annoyed that the house just sat there, unattended. The lawn was never mowed. It was a liability, she said to me one day when offering me some iced tea, that was destroying the neighborhood, bringing down property values. Danny laughed at her concern, and pointed out that the Burls house on the other side of the empty one was in even worse condition. But Danny’s Mom said that was because Mrs. Burl was a widow, raising a family on her own and that she couldn’t afford to keep up with the Joneses. She had enough trouble keeping tabs on her boy, Tony, who was always getting into scrapes with the law. He’d once been caught stealing candy from Asher’s down at the Munsey Park shopping center, and was often grounded.

Tony didn’t hang out with the rest of us much. Although in the same class as Danny and me, Tony had been left back a year and therefore was a year older. He suffered from what today would be termed “learning disabilities,” probably dyslexia. But back then he was just labeled “a bit slow.” He wasn’t stupid, mind you. He just wasn’t a whiz at math and his verbal skills were less than stellar. He played hookey a lot. It would be easy in hindsight to say that he was a juvenile delinquent but I didn’t know those words back then. I was only twelve years old.

I just thought Tony was cool because he wore beat-up, off-white, corduroy jeans, a white t-shirt, and had a black nylon Air Force jacket with a little zippered pocket on the shoulder in which he kept a tiny transistor radio. He was also more developed physically. Even now I can recall how his chest filled out his shirt in a way that none of my friends did. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him.

The other thing about Tony is that he had a rather husky voice and a funny scar on his neck just above his Adam’s apple. He’d been sick as a kid and had to have a tube stuck down his trachea. But I’m not too sure of the details. The end result is that his voice was deeper than the rest of ours, and he had a little catch to it, a breathy quality as if he were a heavy smoker. Today I would probably say he had a “bedroom voice,” but back then I just thought he sounded rough around the edges.

I thought a lot about Tony Burl in those days, although we were hardly pals. He hung out with a different crowd, mostly older boys who lived closer to the train station. But sometimes I’d see Tony when I was over at Danny’s, or I was hanging out with Josh and his two sisters a few doors down. I knew we had little in common, and I didn’t go out of my way to win him over. But I was secretly drawn to him and wanted to get to know him better.

That chance presented itself to me one quiet Saturday afternoon when I was down at the grade school. Sometimes when I was bored I would walk from our house to Copley Pond which was a few blocks away. I’d go there to feed the ducks, when there were any. And on the way back, I’d stop by the kids playground at the old school, the elementary I attended, built in the 30s, and sit on the picnic tables and look at the building.

The structure fascinated me. I loved its style of architecture, a cross between Gothic Revival and Georgian that gave it the feeling of being a royal palace or a mansion. There was a water table that ran all along its sides, a stone detail five or six feet above the ground. It served no purpose, except to break up the monotony of the red brick, and perhaps to keep rainfall away from the foundation. I later learned it’s called a string or belt course. But I just thought of it as a ledge, one that I had always wanted to climb but never dared. As I was gazing at it, I felt a punch to my shoulder and spun around. Tony Burl was standing behind me, dressed as usual in his white cords, tee-shirt, and black jacket. He had a smirk on his face.

“What you starin’ at?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just killing time.”

“Watch this,” he said, as he leaped off the bench and ran up to the school wall. He quickly removed his jacket and flung it back at me. I caught it and put it on the table. Tony’s t-shirt had slight perspiration marks at his armpits. His arm muscles were rounded and bulging, bigger than I expected, as if he had just been doing push-ups. He hopped onto a thick yellow pipe that stuck out from the brick wall, then scrambled like a monkey onto the limestone belt course that was raked at a steep 45 degree angle. Standing this way, his two feet, which were encased in black Keds sneakers, gripped the smooth surface. Facing me, his back was to the brick, gravity pulling him forward. He looked just like one of those statues, a telamon I think it’s called, you see on an old temple, holding up a column or a lintel.

Tony slowly slid along the ledge by gingerly moving his feet, while maintaining his balance with the flat of his hands behind him. From where I was sitting, it looked like an impossible feat since the angle was so pitched. Surely gravity would win out.

“Watch it,” I yelled at him. “You’re going to fall.”

Tony laughed. “Never have yet. It’s not as hard as it looks.”

The rubber soles of Tony’s sneakers squeaked as he continued along the course. I looked around to see if anyone else was there but we were alone. I felt very nervous.

“You better get off of there, Tony. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Don’t be such a sissy,” he yelled back. “Come on up. It’s really cool up here.” His voice was gruff and demanding. I felt that if I didn’t do what he asked, that he’d go on his way and leave me there.

“All you got to do is stand on that pipe and climb up. It’s easy once you get onto it.” He scrambled back to the point where the pipe was below him and leaned down to grab my hand. His grip was strong and forceful. I was pulled up onto the pipe, then hoisted onto the ledge. I had to swing my body around so that my back, too, was pressed up against the brick wall. It felt as if all my weight were thrust down onto my feet. Luckily I had new sneakers on and they held their position on the raked stone.

Tony wasted no time, quickly darting along the edge, gesturing for me to follow him. I could barely move. If I looked straight ahead it seemed as if I were floating on air. If I glanced down, I risked vertigo. I found that if I concentrated instead on the feel of the brick behind me, using my palms as guides, I could slide along, inch by inch, like a caterpillar. Tony called over to me to hurry up. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was fastened to that wall like a statue, myself, frozen in stone. The wind picked up, blowing my shirttails up. Dust flew in my eyes. I suddenly felt cold. “I can’t do it,” I cried out. “I’ve got to get down.”

“Don’t be silly,” Tony hollered. “It’s only scary at first. You’ll get the hang of it.” He scampered on, reaching the end of the wall, preparing to turn the corner.

“Wait! Don’t leave me here.”

“Okay, then. But get moving!”

Slowly, taking a deep breath, I moved my right foot over and then my left, and braced myself with my hands. Pressing my body against the brick, I could feel the massive weight of the building behind me. The brick was warm from the sun and the wind died down. I advanced, admittedly at a snail’s pace, but I was on my way. I caught up with Tony at the corner.

“The next part is tricky,” he said. “Cuz the ground starts to fall away and it seems like you’re higher than you were before, but the truth is that nothing has changed. You got to keep that in mind. It’s all in how you think about it. Don’t look down and you’ll be fine.”

But I did look down and I saw what Tony meant. The side of the building was constructed on a slope. The lawn gradually dropped down at an angle so that rather than being three or four feet above the lawn, we were headed towards a stretch of the raked ledge that was more like six feet above ground. “I can’t do it, Tony. I’m sorry. You go ahead without me.” I somehow found the strength to inch my way back to the starting point where I could climb back down to safety.

“I didn’t realize you were such a girl,” Tony said, frowning, when he came back. “But considering it’s your first time, I guess it’s understandable.” He spat out a wad of milky phlegm, then laughed as he watched it hit the ground below. “Wanna smoke?”

“I don’t smoke. I’m not old enough.”

“Don’t be such a freakin’ pain,” he said. “You don’t have to inhale.” He reached down and picked up his jacket, fishing through one of its pockets. He pulled out a pack of Marlboros, then lit one with an orange Bic lighter.

“Where did you get those?”

“They’re my Moms,” he said. “Here have a puff.” He put the cigarette into my mouth with his thick, calloused fingers. His nails were nearly black with dirt. I sucked in some of the smoke, filling my mouth, and let it out in a quick blast of air. It tasted awful, but I was careful not to choke or cough, and not inhaling certainly helped. My tongue felt like it had been tickled with a wire brush.

Tony moved over to one of the large round concrete tubes that the kids play in. They looked like giant toilet paper rolls. He curled inside one, with his feet up along one side and his back and head on the other. He sucked deep on his cigarette and blew smoke rings as he exhaled. “Come here and join me,” he said, as he scooted over and made room for me. “You face the other way. Then we can talk.” So I crawled in the tube, which was cramped, but cool. Our bodies pressed together at the sides. Tony’s feet were up beside my shoulder. His face looked funny with his chin clamped down into his chest, and his head slightly cocked. He had a broad smile with thick white teeth.

“You ever get to second base with Eileen Ziotas?” he asked. Eileen had been one of my girlfriends the summer before sixth grade started. I was surprised he knew about it.

“No. We just kissed a bit.”

“Man, I’d have liked to,” he said, laughing loudly. His voice echoed in the concrete. “You should have gone for it.”

“She liked Danny more than me,” I said.

He giggled hoarsely, then pulled away. “Come on, let’s get back on the ledge. I want to see if we can make it all the way around.” So we climbed back up on the school’s wall. This time Tony was more patient with me. And I felt less scared. We only made it halfway around the southern wall. Some yellow jackets that were nesting in a hole in the brick surface hindered our progress. Tony jumped off the ledge and slapped at a bee that had gotten under his tee-shirt. “Let’s try it again some other time,” he said, helping me off by giving me his arm to lean on as I jumped down next to him.

We walked back along Manhasset Woods Road towards Inness Place. Soon we were standing outside his house. “You wanna come in for a Coke?” he asked. I said sure. The first thing I noticed upon entering his house was how messy it was. There was a giant garbage can right smack in the center of the living room. One of those metal types with the lid off. It was filled with trash, discarded pizza boxes, and empty beer cans. The sofa had a sheet over it, but not as a dustcover. It was obvious people had been sleeping on it recently. There were food and drink stains too. On the coffee table was a pack of worn playing cards and some empty beer bottles.

Tony didn’t pay any attention to these things. Instead, he led me into the kitchen, which was filled with dirty dishes and more beer bottles. He opened the fridge and pulled out two Cokes. He stood in the cool air of the fridge and threw his head back as he gulped the soda down. His neck had beads of sweat along the scar on his throat. And I could see his Adam’s apple move up and down as he swallowed. He finished the soda and burped. Then he grabbed another one, slamming the fridge door shut. He pointed towards a small back staircase I hadn’t noticed, next to a cupboard, that led to the second floor, and his room upstairs.

His bed was unmade, and looked like it hadn’t been made in months. His pillow was on the floor, next to a pair of high tops and some gym shorts. Tony’s underwear lay under the bed in a pile, next to several noticeable dust bunnies. An empty can of tennis balls was on its side. Crumpled candy wrappers were strewn about. A dirty towel hung over the bed post. A box of Kleenex was tucked between the mattress and the box spring.

Tony jumped up onto the creaky bed and landed with a thud. He jack-knifed his body forward to flick on the TV on his bureau, then bounced right back. Some basketball game was on, but the sound was on low. I felt an overwhelming need to talk because my mind was racing with conflicting thoughts and I felt desperately uncomfortable but also exhilarated to be here in Tony’s room, alone with him. It sounded like someone was screaming in my head: “Say something, do something!…” But do what? I was completely at Tony’s mercy. If I said something it might break the spell and he’d tell me to leave.

We just sat like that for ten minutes or so. Finally a commercial came on and Tony got up and turned the sound off. He walked over to the closet, which was open, and riffled through the clothes which were on hooks and also hangers. Lots of stuff was on the floor, including a soccer ball and some dumbbells. Tony crouched down, reached into a laundry bag and pulled out some blue jeans, an older pair with holes around the knees. “These don’t fit me anymore,” he said, throwing them towards me. “Try ‘em on.”

“I already have a pair of jeans,” I stupidly said, catching them in my hand.

“Well, if you don’t want ‘em,” Tony said, “don’t take ‘em. I just thought they’d look good on you.”

“You want me to try ‘em on now?”

“I don’t care what the fuck you do with ‘em!” he yelled. I was taken aback. I had never heard anyone use that word before, except people I didn’t know, some tough kids at school. And some counselors once at camp. I stood up, pulled my pants off, then slipped into Tony’s jeans. They fit very well although they were a bit big around the waist. Tony came over and grabbed the front, just above the zipper, placing his fingers between my stomach and the waistband. “Tuck in your shirt and see if that helps…” I did as he asked. Tony led me over to a full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. “They look super on you.”

I thanked him and there was an awkward pause. “I still don’t know why you want me to have them.”

“Because you look like a geek in those other pants you had on,” he said. “Where did you buy those?”

“They’re chinos, from Brooks Brothers,” I said. “My Dad bought ‘em for me.”

“Well, you can’t expect people to hang out with you if you dress like some goddam faggot.”

“I thought faggots usually wore dresses,” I shot back, angry at him for calling me that word. Tony thought that was hilarious. He clapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me tight to him. “You’re pretty funny, you know that?”

There was a knock. His mother stood in the doorway, with a disapproving frown on her face. She was harried looking, rail thin with dyed blond hair, dark brown roots, a shapeless house dress on, and a stale odor of tobacco. “Tony, it’s almost time for supper. You going to invite your friend to join us?” She didn’t look at me but right at Tony. I glanced at the clock and realized I was late for dinner at my house.

“That’s awful nice of you, Mrs. Burl,” I said. “But I’ve got to get back home.”

As I was leaving, having remembered to pick up my own pants, then gone back down the back stairs through the kitchen to the back door that led to a screened-in porch, Tony leaned over and casually whispered in my ear. “Meet me at the school tomorrow morning around 10 and we’ll finish the walk around the ledge.”

“But what if it’s raining?” I asked, for no reason other than for something to say.

“It won’t be raining!” Tony said, dismissively. “Just be there.” He punched me in the back of the head, knuckling my hair. Then he smiled. “Don’t be such a spoil sport.”

I dashed out the back, cutting through Mrs. Buckhold’s fence. Tony called out behind me. “And make sure you wear those jeans I gave you.”

Dinner at home that evening was a blur. I barely spoke to my siblings. The housekeeper, Clara, was in one of her foul moods so she didn’t pay me any mind. After a few hours of television, I went up to my room and lay in bed thinking about Tony and our little adventure at the school yard. I glanced over and saw the jeans he gave me. I leaned down and pulled them up to me. They had a faint musty odor, like wet leaves under snow.

Luckily it did not rain the next morning. I got up early, too excited by my new friendship to sleep in. I took a shower, threw on a tee-shirt and Tony’s jeans. I got to the school yard a half hour early. I couldn’t believe that Tony Burl was coming to spend the day with me. He showed up late, of course, kind of grumpy, his hair a mess. He didn’t explain why. But once we were up on the ledge, he cheered up. By eleven we were halfway around the building.

“It sucks,” he said, yelling over to me, “that we got to get off the ledge when we come to the front entrance.”

“That’s okay,” I shot back. “I could use a break.” My knees were killing me from standing on the angled belt course for so long.

We made our way along until we got to the front doors. Here a balustrade descended from the side of the doors, down to a rather grand staircase, facing the expansive lawn out front where the school held impromptu soccer games and sporting events. Tony lit a cigarette and offered it to me, but I said no. Tony’s brow was beaded with sweat and his shirt stuck to his chest. I had barely perspired at all. “Man, I’m thirsty,” he said. “Let’s see if we can get inside and get a soda from the kitchen.”

“We can’t do that,” I said. “We’ll get into trouble.”

“There’s no one here,” Tony said. “It’s Sunday. The janitor has the day off.”

Tony tried the front doors, but they were locked. He told me to follow him. We went around to the side-entrance, back where the new gymnasium was. He climbed down into one of the bushes that lined the front facade. Behind the bush was a well, with a low window in it, leading to the basement. The window didn’t have a lock on it, and it was painted shut. Tony pulled out a pen knife from his back pocket and jimmied open the window. He got on his back, shimmied his legs and butt through the opening, then slid in the rest of the way as if he were doing a limbo dance. I had less trouble squeezing through since I was about three-quarters Tony’s size.

It was pitch black inside, at least until our eyes adjusted to the gloom. It was also quite cool, and deadly quiet. We were in Coach Wanderley’s office. His desk was littered with papers and files, and his trademark whistle. By the desk was a large basket full of “nuke-em” volleyballs. Tony led me out to the main hall where the only sound was our footsteps echoing down the corridors. Soon we were in the lunch room where the only sign of life was a lemonade dispenser that had been left on, spewing up juice like a fountain in a park. Tony bypassed that and snuck behind a counter, flipped open the big gray refrigerator and pulled out two Coke bottles. He popped the cap on one by pressing it against the edge of the counter and slamming it with his fist. This caused the soda to gush up like a geyser, spuming foam all over his shirt. Tony laughed and did it with the other one, but this time more carefully. He handed that one to me.

“Damn, this shit is sticky,” he said, as he patted his chest through his wet shirt. He put his soda down, then pulled off his t-shirt with both arms crisscrossed. He wiped his armpits with the bundled up cloth, then smelled the wet clump in his hand. “Damn, I forgot to use deodorant today!” He laughed, then tucked the shirt into his pants, so that it hung down over his backside. “Come, let’s check out the gym.”

“We better be going, Tony,” I said, whispering. “What if someone sees us?”

“Ain’t no one going to see us, you silly chicken. We’re all alone here.”

The gym was eerily quiet when we entered it. The newly polyurethaned wood floors gleamed in the morning light, nearly blinding me with their brilliance. Tony made a dash across the room, his sneakers squeaking loudly, making me even more nervous. He grabbed at the long rope which dangled from the ceiling, then pulled himself up, climbing it like a professional gymnast. His thick arms were like ropes themselves, all sinews and muscles, slinking like snakes under his milky white skin. Even his stomach muscles were moving, pulled tight as he lifted himself up higher.

“Be careful up there!” I cried out as he reached the top. Tony slammed the flat of his hand against the ceiling in a gesture of triumph. He held himself with one arm outstretched, then twirled as he quickly slid down the rope.

“Shit!” he shouted as he reached the floor. “I burnt my hand.” He showed me his palm which was red and blistering.

“Does it hurt bad?”

“Nah,” he laughed. “Piece of cake.” He slapped me on the shoulder, then scampered over to a pile of blue rubber mats on the far side. He bent down, slid one off from the top and lay it on the floor.

“Come on, let’s wrestle!” he shouted.

“I don’t know how to wrestle,” I said, standing over the edge.

“Nonsense!” Tony grabbed my wrist and with tremendous strength pulled me to the mat. Next thing I know he had me on all fours, with one arm on my back, the other on my butt, danging it through my legs. In a flash, I was flat on my face, Tony on top of me.

“You got to try a little harder,” he hissed in my ear, pulling me back up and starting the whole thing over again. We must have done that maneuver a dozen times, each time Tony pinning me to the floor before I even had time to catch my breath. Finally, in a fit of exhaustion, I simply collapsed underneath him.

Tony grabbed both my hands with his and pressed down on top of me. “Give up?”

It hardly seemed worth answering even if I had had the strength. I just lay there in the silence. Drops of sweat from Tony’s brow landed on my face, sliding like tears across my cheeks. I could feel his heart beating against my back. Suddenly there was a loud noise of a door being opened, and of keys being jostled. The sound came from the main hall. Tony leapt to his feet, then reached down and pulled me up. “Holy shit,” he said. “It’s Coach Wanderley. Let’s get the hell outta here.”

Somehow we managed to escape without being seen, or heard, although I had to wonder what the coach would think of finding the wrestling mat out there in the middle of the floor. Tony and I scooted out the back door towards Revere Road, laughing all the way, then jogged up towards the shopping center in Strathmore Village. Neither of us had much money, in fact, I’m pretty sure Tony didn’t have a dime. But I had a couple of dollars from my allowance which we used to bowl a few games in the alley below the deli. There was just enough left over to pay for two hot dogs which we decided to eat outside. Tony said he couldn’t smoke in the bowling alley since he was underage.

So we went out to the park bench opposite the shoe store. It sat on a hill overlooking Northern Boulevard. Tony and I laughed as the cars whizzed by since Tony seemed to think they were all a bunch of jerks. He kept giving the finger to old ladies in their suburban station wagons who were on their way to Miracle Mile, and its department stores. But the party came to a screeching halt when out of the blue, Tony’s mother showed up. She must have come to the deli and was leaving the parking lot when she saw us. She parked her Pinto before we knew she was there. Seeing that Tony was smoking, she started screaming at him and told him to get in the car, now! Tony sheepishly stubbed out his cigarette on the seat of the bench, winked at me and said he’d see me later. Mrs. Burl did not offer to give me a ride home.

* * * *

A couple of days went by and I didn’t see hide nor hair of Tony Burl. He wasn’t up at the school, nor did I see him hanging around on Inness Place. No one seemed to know what had happened to him. One kid said that he’d heard that Tony was going to be sent to Farragut Academy, a military school down south. I couldn’t believe it. I moped around, feeling sorry for myself, but also worried sick about him. What on earth did his mother do to him when she found him smoking with me? I made do by catching up on some reading, working on my coin collection (I had a thriving business selling old Chinese coins my Dad brought back from his many trips abroad) and hanging out with Danny Enright.

Then one night, I think it was Thursday, after I had gone to bed, and was fast asleep, I woke up when I felt a hand on my chin, shaking me. It was Tony. The lights were off and I could barely make him out in the dark, except for his white t-shirt which shimmered in the moonlight like a ghost. “Tony!” I gushed. But he clamped his hand over my mouth. I could smell the tobacco on his rough, callused fingers.

“Be quiet,” he answered.

“How did you get in?”

“The garage. It was open. Listen, I ran away from home. A couple days ago. Mom kept me from school, said I was sick. Then she sent me to a guy, some counselor. Claimed I was having problems, needed help. He told her I needed to go away to school since I was too much of a burden for her, living alone without a husband, and shit. Some place called Farragut Academy. But I refused to go. So she locked me in my room.”

My eyes grew large as I listened to his story. I couldn’t believe what a pain his mother was being. All he did was smoke a couple of cigarettes. It was only later, much later, that I found out that Tony had done a lot more than that. And he was lucky that she only wanted to send him away to school, rather than a reformatory.

“What do you want me to do?” I said, not sure why he had come to me.

“I need some food. Can you give me some stuff?”

“Well, sure. But we got to be careful. The housekeeper keeps an eye out for every slice of cheese that’s missing.”

I took Tony downstairs, careful not to turn on any lights, and to not make a sound. Clara was a light sleeper. When we got to the kitchen, I made Tony a couple of sandwiches and gave him some sodas and a slice from the cake Clara had made the other night. As well as some apples and stuff I found, like crackers and cheese. While I bagged it all up, Tony told me that he had moved into the empty house next door to his own. He’d broken in through the screened-in porch, and was camping out in the attic.

“Why not one of the bedrooms?” I asked.

“Cuz, you idiot, if they show the house to someone they’d find me and my stuff.”

“But no one has looked at that house for weeks!” I shot back, annoyed that he’d insulted me.

“Well, who’s to say they won’t show up tomorrow. Or maybe the owners will move back in.”

“I doubt that. The old man who owned it is dead.”

“Good,” Tony said, biting into the apple. The sound it made made me worried Clara might hear it.

“How long are you going to stay there?” I said.

“I’m not sure. A couple more days. Then I’m going to hitch a ride out to Montauk. I know this guy out there who has a cabin, in the woods. I can stay there until I figure out what else to do.”

“It’s gonna be awful cold out there this time of year,” I said, remembering a trip I’d taken to Montauk once when the weather was foggy and damp. My father had said that’s why it had never taken off as a resort town in the 20s when they tried to build it up, because the weather was so unpredictable.

“I can build a fire if I need to,” Tony said. “I learned all that shit in the Boy Scouts way back. Well, I better be going. Thanks for your help, pal. Don’t tell anyone you saw me, okay?”

“Nah. I wouldn’t dare tell a soul. I’ll bring you some more food tomorrow after school.”

Tony locked my head close to his in a choke-hold and rubbed the hair on his forehead against mine. Our noses grazed against each other, like two Eskimos. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

Then he was off, slipping off into the night as quietly as he had snuck in.

The next day I could barely concentrate at school. My social studies teacher kept on talking about the War of 1812 or some such stuff while I gazed out the window and thought about Tony. It made me feel sick inside to think of him all alone in that house, hidden away in an attic like Anne Frank. The thought of Tony ever keeping a diary, however, cracked me up and I laughed uncontrollably during one of Mr. Martin’s monologues. He glared at me, but luckily he didn’t give me detention.

When school let out, I walked home the long way, down towards Northern Boulevard, stopping by the small grocery store next to the gas station. I bought some jars of peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of bread, some Oreos, a half pound of sliced turkey, some mayo, a jar of pickles, a pound of macaroni salad, and several candy bars. But as I was in line waiting to pay for the stuff, I realized that without a working refrigerator, much of this stuff would go bad. So I put the mayo back, and the macaroni, and picked up some cans of ham and tuna fish instead. I also bought a can opener, since I knew Clara would notice if I took ours.

Clara, luckily, was up in her room on the top floor when I got home. So I was able to leave the bag of groceries in the basement bathroom, which was always as cold as ice. I took some paper towels, and some old silverware that belonged to my grandmother and placed them in the bag as well. As I was doing this, I remembered that Clara kept some paper plates and cups in the walk-in closet in the kitchen. But I had to be careful she didn’t see me when I went in there. She has a wicked temper. I’ll never forget the time she locked me in that closet for several hours because I had refused to eat something she’d cooked. I was just a kid then, and should have known better, but you never knew when she’d go off like that. I managed to find the paper plates, which Dad had bought for a picnic years ago, but never used, took a handful, and then noticed the long, red candles on the shelf, the kind we used on the dining room table for special occasions. Tony didn’t have any electricity in that old, abandoned house. So I took some of those too.

We always had dinner at 5:30 back then. Like clockwork. If you weren’t home by then, Clara would throw a fit and refuse to feed you. She didn’t ring a dinner bell, like Josh’s mom did, nor did she ever call out for me.  It was left to me to figure out what time it was. So I made sure to always have my watch with me wherever I was. This gave me about an hour to kill, so I snuck down to the basement again where Dad kept some old trunks in the closet in the wash room. They had belonged to his mother. I had opened them once when I was being nosier than usual and found they were filled with fancy old linens, handbags and funny looking shoes, as well as a bunch of weathered photograph albums. I grabbed a couple of sheets, some towels and stuffed them in one of the larger pocketbooks I’d found inside. Hanging on a hook in the wash area, I noticed  the apron that Dad used when he was barbecuing. It had an ad for beer on it. If Tony and I were going to be cooking hot dogs, I wanted to be sure we did it in style.

When dinner was over, Clara asked me if I wanted to play a game of Scrabble in the kitchen. She liked playing Scrabble because it helped her learn English. But I told her I had too much homework and excused myself. I busied myself with small chores until I heard her come up the stairs to go to bed. She usually retired pretty early since she was always the first one up. I waited about a half hour to make sure she didn’t come back down again, then I very quietly went downstairs, picked up the bags I’d packed and exited through the garage.

The trickiest part was not being seen by anyone on the street. It was still pretty light outside. So I crossed the street, slipped through Mrs. Buckhold’s hedge, waited until the coast was clear. Then I crouched and crawled towards the back porch of the empty house, which led to the kitchen. By the time Tony opened the backdoor, and I got inside, I was out of breath, more from nervousness than exhaustion.

“Jesus, you brought enough food here for an army!” he said, laughing. I could tell he was thrilled by the selections.

“You said you were hungry.”

He ate some of the canned ham. “Tastes weird,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I could see that he was filthy. His hands black with dirt.

“What have you been doing?” I said, pointing to the stains on his hands, shirt and pants.

“I was in the furnace room. I was trying to see if I could get the stove running.”

“Without electricity?”

“Yeah. It uses gas instead. But it wouldn’t start. But I did find this…” Tony showed me a funny looking thing which he told me was a hibachi, some kind of Japanese barbecue grill. “I found some old coal in the basement,” Tony said, which explained the stains on his hands and clothes. “Works like a charm. Come here, I’ll show you.”

We went out to the enclosed porch where Tony had set up the hibachi. The coals inside were smoldering, giving off a thin cloud of smoke. “Don’t you think that’ll make the neighbors suspicious?” I asked. “Surely they can smell the smoke.”

“Nah, there’s not enough of it. And lots of people are out barbecuing tonight. They won’t even notice it.”

I couldn’t argue with that line of reasoning. So I relaxed, went back into the kitchen and started to unpack the groceries I’d brought. While I did, Tony turned on the transistor radio he had. Some pop station I never listened to. I told him to wash his hands before he started to leave stains on everything, but he reminded me that there wasn’t any running water. “What the hell have you been doing then for a toilet?” I asked.

“I just piss in the sink,” Tony said. “And flush it down with this.” He showed me a large wash bucket he’d found in a neighboring garage. “I get the water from the hose outside the house next door.”

“And washing up?”

“I don’t do much of that. But when I need to, I just use cold water. It’s fine.”

“Well, you smell like a gym locker,” I said. “Let’s warm up some water on the hibachi, and you can at least shave.”

“Listen to you, you sound just like my mom,” Tony said, laughing. “You better get back home.”

“Tony, you can’t stay here indefinitely. What about school? Hasn’t your Mom sent the police out looking for you?”

“How the hell would I know?” he said, angrily.

“She must be worried sick.”

“That bitch? She could care less. I was just another mouth to feed.”

“But what are you going to do? You can’t really go to Montauk.”

Tony sat at the little breakfast table which was in a nook by the window. “Maybe I’ll go to California. I’ll hitch a ride across the country.”

The thought of Tony leaving suddenly tore at my insides. I wanted to reach over and wrap my arms around his shoulders, and hold him tight, but I knew better. Instead, I said, “You’re going to need some money if you do that.”

“Nah. I’ll figure it out. I’ll get some work as a grease monkey or valet parking. Shit, I could even caddy if I had to.”

“I’ve got a little money saved up from my allowance. I’ll bring it over tomorrow.”

Tony smiled. He stubbed out his cigarette, then stood up and came over towards me. He put his hand against my cheek, then pinched my nose. “How much you got?”

“About fifty dollars.”

His eyes lit up. “Just bring me ten, kid. I’ll be all right.”

I don’t think I’ve ever felt as happy as I was that night. No, I’m sure of that. Not ever again. When I got home and crawled back into my bed, careful not to let Clara hear me returning, I couldn’t sleep. My heart was beating too fast. My mind racing. I counted sheep and counted backwards from a thousand, but nothing could stem the excitement I felt. I thought of what it would be like if I went with Tony on his trip. If I ran away from home too. Just the two of us on the road. He’d be safer with someone beside him. And I could get more money from the house. I knew where Clara kept the food money, and where Dad kept his gold cuff-links and tie clips and a Swiss watch he never wore that he told me was worth almost as much as our car. I could also sell my coin collection, although that would be hard to bring along if I left the next day. There wouldn’t be time to sell it before then. Perhaps I could arrange things and meet up with Tony later. But I knew he wouldn’t wait for me. I had to do it now.

Just before dawn, I gathered up the things I could take, and packed a small bag. I wanted to take a shower, but realized the sound of it would probably wake Clara up. I was just washing my face with a damp cloth when I heard the siren. No, make that sirens. There were two or three of them. It sounded as if the entire town was under attack. I peered out the bathroom window and saw strange flood lights circling outside. Someone shouted. A door slammed. A woman screamed.

I raced outside through the front door and stood out on the lawn. I could see smoke rising in the sky behind Mrs. Buckhold’s house. I raced through her property towards Inness Place. The empty house behind hers was ablaze. Flames shot up through the second floor windows and licked at the roof. Several firemen lined up around the foundation, carrying a hose. A large spume of water gushed out of it and soaked the side of the house. As it did, the windows burst outward, sending pieces of glass flying into the night. Another scream. This time from Mrs. Buckhold who had come out on the street in a nightgown and bathrobe, with curlers in her hair. She pointed to the roof of the house. “There’s a boy up there!”

Tony was standing on the edge of the dormer window that jutted out below the attic window. He had climbed out to escape the smoke and the flames. He was half-naked, covered in soot. The men below yelled up at him not to move. But I could see that he wasn’t listening. He looked almost as if he were sleep-walking. He started to move over the roof tiles, along the ledge, looking for a way down. I cried out to him. But he couldn’t hear me. Suddenly a ball of fire escaped from the dormer window, nearly scorching Tony as he clung to a gutter pipe that led from the roof to the second floor ledge balcony. Nimbly he shimmied himself down until he could stand on the roof over the front porch. A lick of flame darted up and nearly got him, but he jumped back and pressed against the wall, as if he were supporting it on his shoulders. It must have been hot as well, because he bolted forward and screamed. He threw his hands up as if in triumph, or as if to say “look at me, I’m on top of the world.”

I yelled his name. “Tony!” He turned, his mouth open, and waved.

But just as he did, the ledge gave way under his feet, and he was hurled to the ground. I heard a loud thud, but couldn’t see past the hedges. I tore through them, scratching my face and shoulders against the branches. But when I got there, he was gone. The men were carrying his lifeless body on a stretcher into an ambulance.

Through the smoke, on the other side of Inness Place, I saw Mrs. Burl. She was as stiff as a pillar. Danny’s mother, Mrs. Enright, stood beside her, with her arms around her shoulders, comforting her. I felt a sharp finger jab at my shoulder, and spun around. It was Clara. “What are you doing out here?” she yelled. “Get back to the house immediately!”

“Shut up!” I screamed at her. Then I turned and walked away. Down the steps to the driveway, and along the sidewalk, away from the fire engines and the crowd on the street, towards the old school.