Upper Peculiar by Joseph Heywood

Author:Joseph Heywood
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493039579
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2019-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

The North Marquette Dead River Rats gathered at Marian Conklin’s until they grew bored with comics. The proprietor carefully kept the boys away from the covered-up adult section of magazines.

Polio Denucci was last to join the group at the Sugar Bowl. He arrived huffing and puffing and out of breath, face red, and they all wanted to know how he escaped. He said, “I don’t know. He was right there in front of me, but I couldn’t see him and then he grabbed holt of me. It was scary.”

“How’d you get loose?” Checkers asked.

Richie described his escape, embellishing his story in ways only Polio could, including a brutal fight scene in which he resorted to his jujitsu to defeat the evil Z, the jujitsu learned after careful study of Blackhawk’s comic book adventures.

“Bullshit,” the others called out. They all knew Richie never fought. He swore and that was the extent of his resistance.

The boy dropped his head and said, “I guess he just kinda let go and told me he was sorry, and I got the hell out of there.”

The others booed him. “The Nazi let you go and told you he was sorry? That’s your biggest damn lie ever!”

He didn’t tell them that he had seen Zadravic grab Lumpy. He’d thought about telling the gang how he was wearing his rosary around his neck and that this had forced the Nazi Zadravic back, like a werewolf, but he was too weary to put much meat on such a plot and stuck with the jujitsu, which he liked. It was quite rare for Richie to not work rosary beads into his stories, and the boys noted this omission.

All gang members, except Lumpy, were Roman Catholics, part of Father James Anthony’s flock at Bishop Baraga’s Cathedral. All the boys were card-carrying altar boys, taking turns in the weekly Sunday mass schedule. Whenever two of them drew the same assignment, the others watched as the boys in front traded SBDs, arm farts, and flying rubber bands.

Each River Rat carried a rosary as a talisman against evil. They were handy implements for young lads with active imaginations. They had at times been sling stand-ins, cat-o-nines, marble bag carriers and head-bands used to put foliage around their faces for camouflage. Occasionally they used them to pray, which was generally required after they made their weekly partial confessions.

Checkers put his comic back in the rack and signaled for a huddle.

“Where the fuck is Lumpy, Polio? He’s slow, but he should’ve been here by now.”

“Don’t know,” Richie lied and shifted his attention to picking his nose. He had been so busy describing his own escape that he neglected to tell them about Lumpy’s capture. The others all gave him the business over his nose and Checkers wiped an imaginary booger on Polio’s arm and they called him snot-sucker and worse and they all laughed and only then did Richie tell them what he had seen.

Checkers said, “We can’t leave Lumpy there with that old man. We have to rescue him.

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