WEATHER REPORT

         by Jerr Boschee

 

It was October 4, 1955, the day the Brooklyn Dodgers finally beat the New York Yankees in the World Series after losing to them five straight times in 14 years. Heavy rains in Minneapolis that afternoon had cooled the air, splashed into every cranny, and smacked against faces on the city’s south side. Countless single men and husbands came home early or stopped at a bar to watch the game on TV. Now it was mid-evening, and the side streets were completely dark, rainwater still gurgling through the gutters into storm drains, the streets lit only by a sentinel streetlight at each corner. Temperatures were falling, heading toward the low ‘40s by midnight, with a chance for additional rain. Almost everybody in the neighborhood surrounding the Catholic Church had settled into their homes for the night, except for those in a backyard shed on Portland Avenue.

“Are ya scared?”

Eddie Randolph shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and stared at the baseball passing back and forth between Fat Freddy’s hands. “N-no, a course I’m not. Scared.”  

“Then wot’re ya so nervis for?” demanded Fat Freddy.

“I’m not nervis!” protested Eddie. “I’m jus, I’m jus essITEd, is all.”

“Humpfh,” announced Fat Freddy, “ya sure look nervis ta me. Ya look scared.”

“I’m not!”

Fat Freddy leaned back in his chair and glared at the small boy with the heinie who was standing on the other side of the small table and gripping his cap in both hands. He continued flipping the baseball from hand to hand, then moved his eyes around the room. Little Phil, the gang’s former leader, had given him a welt on his left cheekbone that summer – but Little Phil hadn’t said much since Fat Freddy trapped him a few weeks later in an alley. He sat in the corner of the clubhouse and stared glumly at Fat Freddy and the new recruits.

Five other ten and eleven-year-old boys were scattered around their deposed leader. Waiting. Some shifted their feet or cleared their throat and one of them coughed. They were all thinking of the day they’d stood where Eddie Randolph stood tonight and faced what Eddie Randolph had to face. They watched him closely. If they’d been scared when they were in his place, they denied it now.

Fat Freddy leaned forward again, and when he spoke the words came out like bullets. “All right Randolph you know why you’re here and what you have to do.”

Eddie knew why he was here. He’d only been living in the neighborhood for a few days when he first heard about the Red Bullet Club in early August, but he didn’t know much about it until he started school the day after Labor Day. He watched the members play baseball during recess on the school’s hard-packed dirt playground and sat at a nearby table for school lunch. He was too scared to approach them because they were all a year or two older, but he envied their friendships and self-confidence – and most of all their reputation.

His classmates talked about the Red Bullet Club in the lavatory and during recess. After school they’d sit on the playground and trade lies about the exploits of the club. “They only let their friends join,” said one of Eddie’s classmates. “They don’t trust nobody else. They don’t want squealers.”

“But whatta they do?” asked another.

“Do?” exclaimed the first. “DO? Why, they do everything! Man, they do things nobody else’d DARE do!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Eddie didn’t have to ask what those things were. He could imagine. He eavesdropped at lunchtime and during the baseball games. One day he saw them passing around baseball cards and Joey Martin said to Johnny DeMarest, “Wow, Petey sure made a haul, din’t he? Two whole packages at one time! Man, the clerk musta been blind!”

“Yeah, Petey sure knows what he’s doin’, don’t he?”

Another time Fat Freddy and Tony Meier sneaked cowboy hats and cap pistols into school and put them on at recess. The Red Bullet Club members ran off to the side of the playground to see them up close and ask where they came from. “Man,” said one of Eddie’s classmates, “d’ya see that? D’ya see those hats and those guns? They din’t pay for those things, you can betcha!”

For the first three weeks of school, Eddie lapped up tales of the Red Bullet Club, but he hadn’t mustered the nerve to speak to any of the members. That’s when Kenny Carson appeared in his classroom.

Kenny was a year older than Eddie, four inches taller, and about 20 pounds heavier. He’d flunked the year before and would probably flunk again this year. He was proud of it. His family had moved into a house a block from Eddie’s and a few days later they started walking to school together and talking about the World Series. Kenny soon became curious about The Red Bullet Club, so on the last Friday of September Eddie told him everything he knew while they were kicking stones and giant acorns along the alleys and sidewalks.

“Can anybody join?”

“I dunno,” said Eddie. “I don’t think so. They got some kinda nishiashun or other. I dunno.”

Kenny changed the subject, but that afternoon he didn’t walk home with Eddie. He walked home with Joey Martin.

As Eddie and Kenny trudged down the alley the following Monday morning, Kenny said, “Hey, ya know that club? The Red Bullet Club?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna join it.”

“You’re gonna what?”

“I’m gonna join it.” Kenny waited a moment while the news sunk in. Then he went on. “And so are you.”

Eddie jumped as if he’d been struck. “What? I’m gonna join?”

“Yup.”

“But, but, but . . . ”

“I tole ‘em I wanted to join an’ they said okay and then I tole ‘em you wanted to join too an’ they din’t want to let ya but I tole ‘em if they wanted me to join then they hadda take you too.” Kenny spoke quickly, but Eddie glommed onto every word, his eyes shining.

“You tole ‘em that?” he asked, amazed.

“Yeah.”

“But how come?”

Kenny looked at him funny. “Well, you wanted ta join, din’t ya?”

“Yeah, but . . . ”

“So now you can join,” he said, “but we still have to pass the nishiashun, so we’re supposed to meet everybody in the clubhouse tomorrow night at eight o’clock.”

Now that the moment he’d been waiting for seemed so near Eddie started to sweat. He knew about these nishiashuns. He knew a lot more about them than he’d told Kenny. He supposed Kenny wouldn’t have any trouble because he was a year older and wouldn’t be scared, but Eddie was scared. He’d heard about these nishiashuns. One of his classmates said they made you do something really dangerous to prove you were worthy to join the club, something like snatching an old lady’s purse in broad daylight, stealing a hubcap, or scratching the side of a cop car, and Eddie’d never done anything like that except hear about it.

He sweated all that night and all the next day, and he was still in a lather when Kenny picked him up and they walked to a storage shed three blocks away behind Fat Freddy’s house. Now he stood in the middle of the room in front of Fat Freddy and said with as much courage as he could muster, “No, what do I have to do?”

Fat Freddy laughed. “Ya gotta prove yourself. Yeah, isn’t that right, guys?” He looked around and the others nodded or grunted to show they agreed. “Ya gotta prove yourself. Do ya know how you’re gonna do that?”

Eddie shook his head, still staring at the baseball in Fat Freddy’s hands, not daring to look at anybody else, not even Kenny, who stood alongside him.

“Well, do ya?” demanded Fat Freddy.

“No,” mumbled Eddie.

“Okay. Then I’ll tell ya.” He leaned forward and his tone became more ominous. “Ya know that hardware store down by the ice cream store?”

“Uh-huh,” said Eddie.

“How ‘bout you?”

“No,” admitted Kenny.

“Well, that’s all right. He’ll show it to ya. Anyways, there’s ‘n alley runnin’ jus alongside it where ya can hide.” He stopped talking and settled back, pleased.

The silence went on for a moment until Eddie dared speak.

“Is that all?” he asked.

Everybody else except Fat Freddy and Kenny burst out in a chorus of giggles.

“A course that’s not all,” sputtered Fat Freddy sarcastically. “Ya think that’s gonna prove anythin’, hidin’ inna alley?”

Eddie didn’t answer.

“So, what are we supposed to do?” asked Kenny calmly.

Fat Freddy’s tone changed again as he addressed the older boy. It wasn’t sarcastic anymore, purely business.

“Right. You two wait there in the alley until about nine-thirty when it’s really dark and quiet. Then when nobody’s comin’ you sneak out in front a that big picture window in front a the hardware store. Then one a you picks up a big stone and smashes it through the window and the other one snatches up somethin’ from inside. Then you bring the stuff back here tomorrow night. Got it?”

Once he’d started Fat Freddy had given it to them fast. Eddie felt his heart drop six feet into his stomach. Smash a window! Steal something from inside! Bring it back! He felt sick, but he tried not to show it.

The room was totally silent now. Eddie could hear Kenny breathing beside him and when he finally raised his eyes from the baseball he felt as if every other eye in the room was on him. Fat Freddy was grinning at him and waiting. He spoke again, “Got it?”

Eddie took a deep breath.

“Yeah, I got it.”

Kenny turned and walked to the door, calling over his shoulder, “You comin,’ Eddie?”

Eddie stumbled quickly over to his friend and went out with him. As the door shut behind them, they heard the others burst out laughing. The rain had returned, slowly changing from a drizzle to a slanted steady stream. Kenny and Eddie hunched up their jackets and tightened their caps. They walked silently for a few minutes, Eddie’s heart thumping wildly and his hands stuffed in his pockets. Finally, Kenny started speaking about a block from the alley.

“They don’t think we can do it, Eddie.”

“Huh?”

“They don’t think we can do it. They just gave us this tough job ‘cause they don’t want us in their club.”

“They don’t?” said Eddie, his mind spinning.

“No, but we’ll show ‘em, won’t we, Eddie?” said Kenny. “We’ll show ‘em.”

Eddie didn’t say anything, but Kenny kept talking, as if to himself. “Sure, if we DO the job, then they gotta let us in the club or else we’ll tell everybody in school about it and their name’ll be mud. They gotta let us in. Right, Eddie?”

He stopped, turned toward the younger boy, and waited. Eddie took a deep breath, then looked straight at him. “Right, Kenny. We’ll show ‘em.” He started feeling excited, not so scared any more. “Right, we’ll show ‘em,” he thought. “They think they’re so smart. We’ll show ‘em.”

The boys snaked into the alleyway, crouched down, and started to wait. Kenny had a watch. They figured about an hour.

It was getting colder.