Frankie the highjumper
Frankie, with the orange hair, the high jump champ of all the schools in New York City is in trouble. I watch from my window, one floor above the street, as his angry father beats him with a thick black belt. The father’s pants hang down around his bulky waist but his chest bigger still, his arms massive lunks. He looks like he could bend steel. Everybody stays clear of him. Right now, there’s even more reason to. Sharp whacks resonate against the glass pane, making it quiver. The neighborhood knows not to interfere. The wrath in the air could make the buildings tremble.
I rush outside to get a better view and watch, listen, as Frankie howls like an animal in a trap, nearly as loud as the shrieks at night the first-floor girl makes, the one whose beaten and whom I’ve only heard and never seen. Frankie’s face now twisted in agony. Like a traffic accident, it’s frightening, and thrilling. The dull neighborhood welcomes its excruciating intensity. Frankie’s head trapped in the crook of his father’s elbow. Frankie is all orange now —not just his hair, a pumpkin head about to burst over the sidewalk. I’m thinking how the seeds would erupt and spurt. It would be ugly but I wouldn’t turn away. Frankie twists and turns like a flapping flag, but he can’t break loose. After twenty thrashes, his father tosses the belt in the air. It turns into an angry snake, then falls to the ground, the buckle lying flat against the curb. Tenement windows screech open. Pale heads stick out curiously bewildered.
Frankie is in the center of a giant coliseum. All eyes watch. Men women, parents children, hypnotized by the cruelty because Frankie’s pain gives life to their sluggish befuddled faces. Eyes and mouths are invigorated, shrugs of shoulders, tosses of the head, knowing and unknowing nods: Everywhere scrutiny and confusion. The block is torn between wanting the struggle to stop or intensify. Their own confusion keeps people at bay.
A huddling crowd forms in the street, like at a fire, or when cop cars converge on troublemaking punks. Some old men lean against the brick of the building across the street, mumble among themselves, scratch their heads, assess the situation like it’s a puzzle to be solved. Women in housecoats and curlers converge, hands to mouths.
A scraggly shout from an upper story hurdles down.
“You’re going to kill him.”
Faces turn upward to see Wally Chubler’s dad, one arm behind his back, hiding his whiskey bottle, red knurly nose screaming on his face, pajamas crinkled and worn. The throng stares like dumb beasts. Frankie yowls louder; In an instant heads revert to him. Tears sprout from his bulging eyeballs. No one to lend a helping hand. This angers me, but then consider I am no better and become ashamed. Frankie, who yesterday proudly showed his medal for becoming champion high jumper of all the schools in New York City—looks into my eyes—pleading but embarrassed, begging silently for his life. His frightened eyes make his pain enter me. The air grows menacing; sunlight raw like whiplashed skin.
“You’re killing him,” another rasping shout sprouts from Wally’s father. Even four flights up I smell the reek of his liquor. I want to flee, get far from Frankie’s pain, but I am rooted. If I do not act, I will be an accessory to his anguish and this moment will be etched forever in my brain: a trophy to cowardice. Frankie’s medal dangles before me, his smiling face full of pride. But my mind’s eye turns to sound and something calls me like a siren song.
Suddenly separated from the paralysis of the scene, I spring toward the struggle and dive into the big man’s knees and trip him up. He falls like a tower. Our bodies are sprawled and struggle in confusion on the ground. Frankie wriggles from his father’s grasp and tries to scamper away. His body limps, his head is dazed. He makes away clumsily like a wounded leopard. The father gets to his feet, looms over me, and glowers. He’s confused as to who to go for first: me crumpled on the ground or Frankie slipping away. He pulls me up by my shirt but this time Wally’s dad is joined by a chorus of voices. I have made the block grow bold.
“LEAVE HIM ALONE,” they shout: an unschooled chorus out of key, standing firm against their collective fear.
Frankie’s father suddenly seems stunned at the swarm of accusations. He backs away as if the stares were arrows. Self-conscious, disoriented, he shakes his head in confusion, like a boxer trying to ward off a hook to the head. His hatred lies naked for all to ponder because Frankie was not only his victim but his shield. He wants to melt away, to flee, to ward off the emotion of the street that seems to swallow him in its growing wrath. He backs up slowly, strategizing, trying to bluff his way out behind his iron mask. But judgment has been made and he’s exposed from here on in. He lowers his head, kicks a stone, retreats and recedes down the block till he’s just a puff of shirt and pants.
A deep sigh eases the crowd and bodies languidly disperse as if to re-accustom with the dullness of the day. I scan the street for Frankie but he’s disappeared. Where will he go now to escape the trap of his house. An old craggy man looks upward, shakes his head in disbelief, then lifts a thin gray arm, and points toward the rooftops. Frankie is standing and smiling, alone against the pale blue sky. His hair is still orange but the rest of him is back to normal, radiating the power to be high jump champ.
People shout in awe and concern.
“Frankie, come down.” “Frankie, everything is O.K.” A chorus of Frankie this and Frankie that.”
But Frankie remains unmoved in a bubble of thought, a devilish smile across his face. And even though up five flights, he looks down at me; his eyes huge orbs. He is smiling just for me and I understand that now we have a bond. Frankie winks. I even see his eyelid flutter clearly. Frankie the champion high jumper of all the high schools in New York City climbs atop the stone lip that surrounds the roof. And and leaps. He catches a current and soars over the rooftops. His shadow slides down the street like airliners when they’re flying low.
Ely rides by on his tricycle, appearing silly and oversized.
“Ely,” I say, “Look at Frankie. He’s flying across the sky.” Ely considers, then looks up. He catches something in his line of sight and points, turns back toward me, his mouth wide open, his eyes dark moons of wonder, his mind akilter with a silver sun.
