\u201cTommy!\u201d Mrs. Del Vecchio shouted at her son from the side door of their house.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhaty?\u201d Tommy shouted back. He and I were playing catch with a rubber ball in the street in front of my house, which was two doors up from the Del Vecchio residence.<\/p>\n
The \u201cwhaty\u201d was one of the things I liked about Tommy: his cheeky sense of word play. It was a simple thing, and hardly the height of wit. Yet none of the other kids on the street\u2014the Joeys and Bobbys and Johnnys and Debbies\u2014said \u201cwhaty\u201d when their mom or dad called them.<\/p>\n
I was \u201cRuthie\u201d some of the time. But my mother called me Ruth Anne, so I couldn\u2019t very well say whaty<\/em> when she called me.<\/p>\n \u201cDinner\u2019s ready!\u201d Tommy\u2019s mother shouted.<\/p>\n \u201cOkay!\u201d Tommy tossed the ball to me. \u201cGotta go.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSee you tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n I watched as Tommy trotted off toward his house. He was a nice kid, but lately I felt bad for him because of his dad.\u00a0 Sometimes we kids\u2014my younger brother Art and Joanne Muhlbacher from across the street and others\u2014would play board games like Sorry!<\/em> and Parcheesi<\/em> and The<\/em> Game of<\/em> Life<\/em> on the round patio table to the side of Tommy\u2019s house. As we rolled the dice or spun the wheel under the patio umbrella that shielded us from the sun, we concentrated on the rewards and pitfalls of the games. But sometimes we\u2019d notice Mr. Del Vecchio entering or leaving his house\u2014a gloomy figure even in the brightest sunlight.<\/p>\n Although Tommy\u2019s mom was always cheerful, and would sometimes serve us root beer or Coke in real glasses, I don\u2019t recall Mr. Del Vecchio ever speaking to us kids. Even though he couldn\u2019t have been much more than 40, he was rail thin, and his head was completely bald\u2014like a cue ball. What\u2019s more, there were marks along one side of his head that I much later realized were suture marks. He never looked happy.<\/p>\n When I asked my mother why Mr. Del Vecchio\u2019s head was completely bald, she told me that he had a cancerous brain tumor.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you get radiation treatments, your hair falls out,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n I guessed that was why Mr. Del Vecchio looked grouchy all the time. He had something awful growing in his head\u2014like mold, only worse. I wondered how he acted toward Tommy. I suspected that Tommy had to be on his \u201cbest behavior\u201d at all times, but somehow I couldn\u2019t imagine Tommy managing that. Around us, he was a lively boy.<\/p>\n \u201cAh, poop!\u201d Tommy would raise his hands to his head and wince if his token landed on a bad square during one of our board game afternoons. Sometimes he would win and sometimes he would lose, but he was never a sore loser.<\/p>\n That August Tommy and I decided to create a spook show in my family\u2019s garage. Our immediate impetus was that the Kaminski kids over on Lansing Drive had had one in their garage, which we had both checked out. All they had were some threadbare sheets hanging from the rafters and some kid running around in a sheet.<\/p>\n \u201cThat wasn\u2019t scary,\u201d Tommy concluded. I agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy don\u2019t we put up our own? We can use my garage,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cNeat!\u201d Tommy replied. \u201cLet\u2019s do it!\u201d<\/p>\n Another thing I liked about Tommy was that he was willing to hang out with me, a girl. It helped that I was a bona-fide tomboy and not a girly-girl who was content to play with dolls. (Actually, I did play Barbie dolls with my friend Kathy, but that\u2019s another story.)<\/p>\n Before we began, I asked my mother for permission. I knew she would give it. She had had seven children. I was the sixth. Micromanaging us was beyond her energy level at this point.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, all right,\u201d she said. \u201cBut don\u2019t get into<\/em> anything.\u201d<\/p>\n The next morning we opened the door of my family\u2019s garage and began setting up the show. Art joined us. We had to keep the garage door nearly closed because we didn\u2019t want anyone seeing our preparations. Our \u201ccenterpiece\u201d was a dark blue, battered trunk I had taken to camp a few summers earlier. Now it was doing double duty as a tomb. At its head we placed a cardboard grave marker with \u201cIchabod Crane\u201d and 1776-1805 inscribed on it in magic marker (I had recently read a Classics Illustrated<\/em> version of The Legend of Sleepy<\/em> Hollow<\/em>). The way we had planned it, I would lead guests around and point out the tomb.\u00a0 When I exclaimed, \u201cHe died of fright,\u201d Art, clad in a Halloween skeleton costume and mask, would rise out of the trunk and wave his arms around menacingly before sinking back again into the trunk. (The whole show lasted only a minute or two, so he was in no danger of suffocating.)<\/p>\n Tommy was pretty good with a hammer and nails, so he climbed up a ladder and hung my mother\u2019s old beige curtains from the rafters to break up the space. When our next-door neighbor, Kevin Schmidt, popped his head into the garage to see what we were doing, I got an idea and looked around. There was an old chain in one corner of the garage, near a bald tire.<\/p>\n \u201cHere, you can rattle this,\u201d I told Kevin.<\/p>\n \u201cCan I howl too?\u201d Kevin asked.<\/p>\n \u201cSure,\u201d said Tommy. \u201cYou can howl all you want!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThink I\u2019ll ask my mom if I can take one of her old pots to bang on,\u201d Kevin mused. \u201cYou know, footsteps\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n I forget whose idea it was to place a red devil\u2019s mask over the utility light by the garage door, but it was a good one. By jerking a long string, Tommy could turn the light on and off, so it would seem like the devil had glowing eyes.<\/p>\n Tommy had another idea.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we should give out prizes,\u201d he announced. \u201cAnyone who comes to the show gets a chance to win a prize.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019ll the prize be?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cHow about a yoyo? I have a couple at home that I haven\u2019t played with much. Or maybe a fake snake? I got it. The fake snake can be the grand prize—the g.p.,\u00a0 and the yoyo can be the grand grand prize\u2014the g.g.p!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe g.g.p?\u201d I had to laugh at Tommy\u2019s nomenclature. \u201cSounds good,\u201d I said. Tommy ran home and back, and brought the yoyo and the fake snake. He carefully draped the snake over the mock tombstone.<\/p>\n While we were still setting up, my father poked his head inside. Fortunately, he parked the family car on the driveway in the summer, never in the garage.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d he asked. Evidently my mother hadn\u2019t bothered to tell him.<\/p>\n \u201cSetting up a spook show,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n He frowned. That was his default expression. Like Tommy\u2019s father, he wasn\u2019t in the best of health. He had already had one heart attack before we moved to New Jersey from Pittsburgh several years earlier. I used to worry a lot that he\u2019d have another one. His face would get red with the slightest exertion, and he often coughed. He had a heart doctor, but this was before they did bypasses, so there wasn\u2019t much doctors could do if you had arteries blocked from decades of cholesterol.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, don\u2019t get into anything,\u201d he growled, and left. I was relieved. You never knew how my father would react to things. If he was in a particularly bad mood, he could be quite nasty.<\/p>\n A day later the spook show began. The neighborhood kids had this amazed look on their faces as I guided them around the garage. Tommy switched the devil light on and off and on via the long string. Art popped out of the steamer trunk on cue, while Kevin made hellacious noises behind the back curtain. Some of the kids were so impressed that they paid a dime to see the show again. \u00a0I forget who won the prizes. All told we made a few bucks. But the biggest payoff was entertaining the kids. We lived in a development where you had to get an adult to drive you places. The spook show was something we kids accomplished on our own.<\/p>\n A few months later, I learned that Tommy\u2019s dad had died. The radiation treatments\u2014which had probably been very crude\u2014hadn\u2019t helped at all.<\/p>\n The next summer, my father suffered another heart attack and collapsed late one evening at the dining room table. Ever the conscientious metallurgist, he had been outlining some project for work one night on a yellow legal pad when he was stricken. He was dead by the time the ambulance arrived.<\/p>\n Neither Tommy nor I ever talked to each other about our fathers\u2019 deaths. We continued to play catch and sometimes \u201ckick the can\u201d in the street as if nothing had happened. Mrs. Del Vecchio still shouted \u201cTommy,\u201d and he still replied \u201cwhat-y.\u201d Sometimes Mrs. Del Vecchio would drive Tommy, Joanne Muhlbacher, and me to a roller skating rink in Glassboro. It was fun going around and around the rink to the corny music. Although Tommy was a much better skater than Joanne or me, I don\u2019t recall him ever making fun of our tendency to hug the wall. About a year later, Mrs. Del Vecchio sold their house and the family moved away\u2014as I recall, they were going back to live with Tommy\u2019s grandmother. That was the last I heard of them, until recently.<\/p>\n Writing all this in the warm glow of nostalgia compelled me to look up Tommy Del Vecchio on the Internet. It would be an understatement to say what I found put a different slant on my warm memories. Staring out from a mug shot taken in Florida was Tommy. I was sure it was he. He was the right age, and he had the same blue-green, close-set eyes, short nose, and round face. Only he was older and grizzled and looked to be a barfly like someone out of Charles Bukowski.<\/p>\n According to the news story\u2014which was from a local website in Florida–Tommy had made drunken advances toward a 9-year-old girl on a public beach\u2014telling her she was beautiful and asking her if she and her adult cousin, who was also present, wanted to go home with him. He had also tripped the 9-year-old and either deliberately or by accident flicked cigarette ash at her. When the girl and her cousin threatened to call the cops on him, he hurried away. But based on his description, the police tracked him down and arrested him on charges of felony child abuse.<\/p>\n The article went on to say that he had a prior arrest for \u201cdefrauding an innkeeper.\u201d Amazed, I continued looking through the entries on Thomas Del Vecchio and came across more mug shots. In each one, he looked angry, hard, and defiant. He looked aggrieved\u2014like the kind of guy who felt as if everyone else had something that he didn\u2019t, and he wanted what they had. Evidently, he had been in trouble with the law more than once. His rap sheet, though not lengthy, included grand theft auto.<\/p>\n I printed out a copy of the article and showed it to my brother Art.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you think that\u2019s Tommy?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n He stared at it. \u201cYes,\u201d he said. He couldn\u2019t stop staring at the mug shot. I guess, like me, he was trying to see the child in the man.<\/p>\n This two-bit criminal was one of my dear childhood friends! We still had a photo of him in the family album. In it, he and Art and Kevin Schmidt\u2019s little sister Pam are grinning for the camera. Tommy has by far the largest grin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I printed out a copy of the article and showed it to my brother Art.
\n\u201cDo you think that\u2019s Tommy?\u201d I asked him.
\nHe stared at it. \u201cYes,\u201d he said. He couldn\u2019t stop staring at the mug shot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[760],"tags":[1057,1060],"class_list":["post-13194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-nonfiction","tag-childhood-friends","tag-haunted-house","writer-ruth-a-rouff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13201,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13194\/revisions\/13201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}