Part IV: Spin – God’s Wild Children: #5 (Chapter 74)

We had only two bedrooms in our house; whenever my cousins, male or female, stayed overnight, Nana bunked them in the bedroom I shared with her.

She would go off to sleep in Pappa’s double bed.

I was drawn to Pappa’s room; it was cool and dark like a cave, the blinds always shut against the outside world. I liked sleeping in Pappa’s bed; when I was four or five, I would often wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and trudge into Pappa’s room.

“Can I sleep with you?”

He would answer with a grunt; I would climb in and fall into a dead sleep.

But when I was seven, Nana forbade me from going into Pappa’s room in the middle of the night.

Still, when I was home alone, I would sometimes crawl into Pappa’s bed and fall asleep, the darkness of the room enfolding me like a warm blanket on a bitter winter night.

Pappa did not like having to give up his privacy for overnight guests, especially for the O’Flaherty kids. He would grit his teeth, grumbling under his breath about intruders.

But he had no choice; Nana decided domestic policy, and that was that.

At the first sign of O’Flaherty invasion, Pappa would pack up his golf clubs and head for the greens or, depending on the time of day, the bar. If an unexpected kid showed up early in the morning, he made a day of it: in the morning and early afternoon, he would play 18 holes; then at Rick’s Diner, eat steak and fried potatoes; during late afternoon and early evening, bartend and book bets from his regulars; grab a loose meat sandwich at Ye Olde Tavern and run out to Sodrac Park, the dog track across the state line in North Sioux City, South Dakota, to catch the last six races and hope that none of his bettors’ long shots came in; then return to the bar where he paid off his winners (minus 10% commission). About 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., he would come home and slip into bed next to Nana, always sober because he had gone on the wagon back in 1935.

Early that Friday morning, while Danny and Aunt Gwen slid inside the front door, Pappa made his escape out the back.

When Nana turned the channel to the 10 o’clock news, Pappa was still out.

She stood in front of the TV. “Time for bed.”

In unison: “Aw-www, do we have to?”

“Kids, it’s been a long day, and I’m tired,” she said in a soft voice, a voice even more potentially dangerous than her shrill “Samantha Anne!” simply because you didn’t know what to expect if you pushed her too far – but also the voice most likely to offer a consolation prize.

“Can we talk for a little while?”

She sighed. “I suppose so, though God only knows why after all that old fighting all day.”

“Can we go swimming tomorrow?” Danny asked.

“Oh, I suppose so.”

Danny and I jumped up and down. “Goody, goody, gum drop; goody, goody, gum drop; goody, goody gum drop....”

“Now, go on, you two.”

Danny and I took turns going into the bathroom to get ready for bed. After I changed into my baby doll pajamas, I turned off the light and climbed into my bed, next to a window, and pulled the sheet up to my chin, even though the room temperature was well over 80 degrees and muggy.

I waited for Danny to come out of the bathroom. On the other side of the room on Nanas bed, her white chenille bedspread glowed in a beam of moonlight coming through the window.

If I squinted hard enough, I could almost see the Blessed Virgin Mary rising up off Nana’s bed and standing next to mine, her head bowed, eyes closed, hands clutching a Rosary, but the image faded.

The dark is my friend.

An oscillating fan stood on Nana’s vanity, droning as the blades swept back and forth, occasionally blowing moist, warm air on my face and hair.

A shaft of light appeared as Danny opened the bathroom door, disappearing as he flicked the light switch off.

He skipped out of the bathroom, wearing pinstriped boxer shorts. Bare chested, his ribs stuck out, almost like a turkey breast picked clean; I wanted to laugh outright and tell him how silly he looked, but that would have violated the never-ever broken unspoken rule: bedtime was truce time.

He ripped the chenille spread off, jumped into Nana’s bed, and hid underneath the sheet.

Nana came into the bedroom and switched on the ceiling light. “Okay, you two, not until you say your prayers.”

We dragged ourselves out of bed and kneeled. I folded my hands together, closed my eyes, and prayed to God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary.

I sensed her shadow hovering over me as we recited our bedtime prayers by heart.

The dark is my friend.



Nana tucked us in and turned out the light; Danny and I did not speak, almost as if we needed to absorb the activities of the dark: Mr. MacIntyre’s gray wiry-haired mongrel droning, “woooff, woooff, woooff,” and then whining halfheartedly; crickets chirping; thunder rumbling in the distance; occasional echoes of drunks passing by, punctuated by shrill laughter; glimpses of sheet lightning; smell of ozone; rustle of leaves; plop of giant raindrops hitting the window and clapboards, then subsiding; whiffs of tar rising from the streets; ssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeee...” of cars sloshing by; “woooooooo, wooooooooo, woooooooo, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding...” from the downtown depot; humidity bearing down, saturating me; wind stopping abruptly; all sounds suspended; stillness; heaviness in the air, almost a vacuum, bearing down on my chest; shifting air currents...

THE DARK IS MY FRIEND!

...Werewolves with sharp green eyes peeking over the foot of the bed; Frankenstein monster lumbering; room disappearing into The Twilight Zone; Dracula baring white bloody fangs; the Devil coming for souls; pneumonia, leukemia, polio (iron lungs; boards on wheels for the crippled), whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever, cancer...

Didn’t Babe Ruth die of cancer?

Mark Twain was born under Halley’s Comet and died under Halley’s Comet.

Columbus Day. Born on Columbus Day. In fourteen hundred and ninety-three, Columbus sailed the deep blue sea! No! No! Johnny Frank said that last year, and he flunked history. In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Will I die on my birthday?

I sat up in bed. “Danny? You awake?”

“Yeah...”

“You hear something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the rain.”

The-dark-is-my-friend.

The leaves rustled again, and wind whipped through the window.

“Yes, the rain,” I said.

Yes, the dark is our friend.

“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” Danny’s voice high-pitched like a girl’s, not its usual croak.

“Me? Believe in ghosts?”

“That’s baby stuff, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“And we don’t believe in baby stuff, do we?”

“Not us,” I said.

Something heavy in the air dissolved, the world becoming calm again; we both laughed at the possibility of such foolish fears.

We whispered through the night, telling each other dirty jokes and exaggerated stories about our escapades at school and on the streets. Occasionally, one of us would laugh out loud.

Nana would yell from Pappa’s room, “Go to sleep, or I’ll get the belt.”

We would giggle because we knew she was talking in her sleep.

As the sky outside lightened, Danny and I yawned. I drifted off into a twilight sleep, half listening as he told a complicated story about his troubles with Monsignor Collins and a Hires’ root beer bottle.

I never did hear the end of the tale.

The dark was my friend.



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