The Last American Martyr Read Online Free PDF

feet.
    I went over to investigate, and when I looked into the steel grid below, there was Sylvester, cringing, covering his face, trying not to cry. The big kids were all spitting and dropping ashes on him. This future Nobel Laureate went absolutely nutso. I charged the heartless bullies, swinging the broomstick like a madman. I clipped a few pretty good before they knew what was happening, and when they scattered, the last one left was the biggest. A full head taller than me, smirking at me as if I were some kind of joke, I cracked the kid a good one over the head. The broomstick broke, the bully lost his smile, and I chased the bawling kid out of the schoolyard with what was left of the bat. For the rest of that year, nobody in school gave Stanley a bad time. Unfortunately, my parents moved us to another neighborhood the following summer and the same old troubles cropped up all over again.
    By junior year in high school, I had devolved into someone else. Our family had lived in the same apartment for a record two-and-a-half years. Six feet even by now, still very thin, I was a first-string guard on Flushing High’s basketball team. For the first time ever, I had plenty of friends. But things at home certainly hadn’t changed much. My mother still shopped on Fridays, still for the same old TV dinners and cold cuts. And as always, by the time Tuesday rolled around, if Stanley or I wanted a snack, all that would be left was a half empty mayonnaise jar and a loaf of white bread. Stanley handled it, but I did not. Sick to the gills of always being broke, I did some things I’ll regret for the rest of my life.
    I’d lucked into a part time job at Saint Theresa’s church rectory, working Monday and Thursday nights, but a dollar-fifteen an hour only netted me around eight dollars a week. That was enough to take a girl to the Keith’s RKO movie theater, and maybe spring for pizza and Cokes afterwards, but that was about it. My friends fared much better. They always had plenty of “jingle,” even though their families weren’t much better off than mine. Instead of getting jobs they were always hustling and heisting.
    Before I knew what hit me, I found myself compromising my staunch values. I started stealing—five dollars at a pop. When parishioners at Saint Theresa’s came to the rectory to buy Mass cards, I’d pocket the stipend. Since I only worked eight hours a week, there were times when I didn’t get the opportunity to steal anything. That’s when I found myself joining my friends on their money making escapades. As cool as they thought the easy money was, I always kept my feelings inside.
    What I hated most was stealing donation canisters from store counters—taking considerable amounts of change and bills intended for kids with muscular dystrophy, polio or some other horrible disease. I didn’t enjoy robbing crates of empty bottles from the back doors of bars and restaurants either, but the deposit money added up. I knew the guys and I had stepped well beyond the realm of serious mischief when we progressed to stealing girls’ purses and wallets. This we would do at local dances or, in the summertime, at Rockaway Beach.
    I detested myself for all of it, but tainted or not, I liked the unfamiliar feeling of money in my pockets. When I was very young and the ice cream truck came down the avenue there’d been far too many times when I was the only kid who did without. Then there were all those mayonnaise sandwiches, and a hundred other reasons for taking what didn’t belong to me. But the madness suddenly stopped about two years after it started.
    It was late at night and virtually no one was on the streets. I was walking home with a friend of mine, Billy Shea, after sneaking into a college beer-racket. We’d gotten thrown out for fighting, but our bellies were still filled with beer. A tight chain of closely parked cars buffered one side of the sidewalk and wall-to-wall, towering apartment buildings lined the