World's Fair by Doctorow E. L

Author:Doctorow, E. L. [Doctorow, E. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Fiction, Literary, Classics
ISBN: 9780307762962
Google: GQY5pBvrzCgC
Amazon: 0307762963
Goodreads: 10300316
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1985-10-12T07:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

Of course I fell all the time, but that was different. I lived in proximity to the pavement, in front of my house I knew the topography of the stoop and the cement sidewalk, and the cracks in the sidewalk and the chips in the grey blocks of the curb. I had a best friend now, Bertram, who lived a block away on Morris Avenue and took clarinet lessons. He was short, and tubby. I directed our games. Pretend I’m this. Pretend you’re that. Pretend I say this and you do that. The latest serial in the movies was Zorro, a kind of Lone Ranger in black with a black horse, and in our games I was Zorro and Bertram was everyone else in the cast. I was more agile than he, and therefore the hero. We had laths we had found in the ash can which we used for swords. Bertram, in our duels, represented many soldiers or a whole posse, and I’d no sooner stab one of them and see him fall, than another would pop up and challenge me. I leaped up on the stoop, I raced past him down the brick stoop and jumped to the ground. I fell and dueled with Bertram while on my back. He danced around me. Our game was a long-running serial and took us down the alley and into the backyard. Here, as Zorro, I now had the daring to climb the stone wall patched with cement that divided my yard from the back of the apartment house on the other side of it. The wall held up a rotting wooden fence that tilted over it and impeded passage. The cement was cracked and crumbling. Colonies of brown ants lived in the holes. My friend couldn’t quite handle this wall. I raced along my dangerous parapet and he ran alongside, below me, in the yard. Loyally, he huffed and puffed. He could never win these adventures because I was always Zorro. He died and died again. He might, during our dueling, touch me with the end of his sword and say he’d gotten me, but I always insisted it was a flesh wound even if his sword hit me square in the middle of the chest. He’d try to argue but I’d draw him back into the duel, lifting my sword, nicking him and dancing backward with a merry laugh. He’d start to chase me and we’d be back in it. Truly we were not playing. It was understood life was cheap. People fought. Blood flowed. Honor and justice were at stake. We went on with it hour after hour. The invention was endless. I told him what to say, then I answered. We replayed the scenes when I thought of something better. The dirt and grit of crushed stone was embedded in the flesh of our palms. Our eyes glistened from exertion, our cheeks were red. Once or twice a day Bertram cried real tears and I was close to them.

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