ROBERT J. LEVY

NEW HORIZONS IN STICKBALL

At the start of the summer of 1965, when I was twelve years old, I believed my
life was permanently circumscribed by the small-minded, imagination-parched
streets I moved through. Then Huge arrived to play in the Burton Street Games,
teaching us possibilities in the sport of stickball no one had suspected. By the
end of that same summer I had participated in the ultimate stickball game, hit
the fly ball to end all fly balls, and discovered that even the suburbs can be
touched, however briefly, by marvels.

It was just Mitch and me the day it all began. The afternoon had been hot and
close, but toward evening the humidity broke and the breeze grew merciful,
particularly at the highest point of Burton Street where we had been playing
fungo with a spaldeen and an old broomhandle doctored with black electrician's
tape. We'd already worked out the cars-equals-hits thing: the green Buick was a
single; further down, a white Cadillac was a double; beyond that we selected a
Mustang to be a triple; at the very end of the street, an old Woody Wagon was a
homer.

At one point Mitch smacked an erring line drive that disappeared into the
backyard thicket of a distant home. We climbed the fence, but couldn't find the
ball, so we called it quits for the day. Later, we sat atop a rusted, wheelless
Chevy in an overgrown lot behind the train tracks of the Long Island Railroad,
reclining against its fractured windshield, trying not to gag as we smoked a
couple of Swisher Sweets Mirth had copped from his dad.

School was out. September was miles away. It ought to have been a perfect spot
at a perfect time, overlooking as it did the crisscross-shadowed Little League
fields and, beyond that, the seemingly endless grid of suburban avenues and
boulevards fanning out like a spiderweb on all sides. However, my folks had
recently split up. My dad removed himself from the familial picture to hole up
with his new girlfriend in Hempstead (good riddance to him, to his violent
tempers, and to being smacked for no reason). My more sat home giving herself
ulcers, pawing through religious pamphlets for life's answers, and plotting
revenge.

Me, I was depressed as hell. I spent my days reading grim French fiction I
didn't really comprehend ("Mother died yesterday. Maybe it was the day before .
. .") and smoking joints on the sly. I hated the neighborhood, the pettiness of
it, the closeted, cloistered, blinkered, racist, philistine, ghettoized
narrowness of Queens and environs. Of course, at the time, I would have simply
said the place sucked big-time. The fact was, I wanted something more than my
friends wanted, something great and grand. But I had no name for what that might
be and no understanding of how to achieve my goal. All I knew was that the
suburbs did not breed the sort of magic I sought.

So there we were, Mitch and I, watching silently as the normally squalid streets
of Queens were momentarily transformed into the gleaming kingdom of my wildest
fantasies by the impossible violet light of the waning sun.

"Will you look at that, Doug!" Mitch said, staring at the sunset.

"What?" I said, acting dumb. I watched Mirth struggle for words, words he did
not have. Mitch was not a verbal sort.

"It's . . . so, like, purple. You know?"

"Sure, Mitch. I sure do."

"Kinda . . . beautiful." There were tears in Mitch's eyes, which he wiped away
furiously. "You tell anybody about this and I break your face."

"Hey man," I said holding up my hands in mock boxing defense, "I'm cool." I'd
had a minor revelation: Even inexpressive guys like Mitch can yearn for
something beyond the shabby streets of Rego Park.

Abruptly, it was night. We looked up at the sky, heating the distant wash of
expressway traffic mingle with the electric chirping of crickets in the
weed-strewn areas around the train tracks.

Then we saw something.

It was not, by any means, a traditional heavenly manifestation. No shafts of
celestial light coursed down from the firmament. No angelic choirs sang. What
Mitch and I witnessed was something both infinitely more mundane and vastly more
peculiar.

At the extreme opposite end of Burton Street, a door seemed to open in the sky
-- just for an instant -- and then it dosed. It was as though a panel of
darkness of slightly different hue than the surrounding darkness unlocked and
shut. But in that second we saw something tumble toward a vacant lot about two
blocks away. In no time we were off and running.

We arrived at the tract in question and climbed the metal lattice fence. We
thrashed around in the weeds for awhile, kicking stones, bottles and cans,
making a ruckus, but we didn't see a thing. Still, I felt sure it was the right
place.

"This bites it," said Mitch finally, ever expressive, "I gotta go home or my
mom'll have a shit fit." "Yeah, me too."

But as we climbed back up the fence, I happened to look over my shoulder. There,
deep within a scraggly bush, I could have sworn I saw two eyes, like luminous
yellow dots, staring back at me. I hesitated for moment, and they winked out.
But, of course, I was a kid, and it was probably all in my imagination.

When I got home, my mom was in front of the TV, biting her nails furiously, not
really watching whatever was on the tube, hardly noticing me enough to say
goodnight. Her jaw was grim and clenched, and her eyes were miles away,
obviously still visualizing new ways of dismembering my father.

The following day, around four, Mitch and I and about a half-dozen other guys
met, as we always did, on Burton Street. Mitch had a couple of spaldeens and a
stickball bat. Most of us played bare-handed, though a few wimps with tender
palms and fat piggy banks sported gloves.

The group of kids varied from day to day. There were some regulars, like me and
Mitch and Stu, and every now and again a new kid would show up from lord knows
where and ask to be chosen in. That day was no different -the usual mix.

We were choosing up sides. Somehow, over time, Mitch and I had become the
leaders of the Burton Street Games. As we were also probably the best players,
and pretty evenly matched, we had agreed it was only fair that we head opposing
teams. One or two newcomers got chosen toward the end, being unknown raw
material. Then, as we made our final selections, we looked up to see someone
approaching from further down the street, from the direction of the vacant lot
Mitch and I had rummaged through the night before.

The closer he got, the weirder he looked, until, by the time he stood before us,
everyone was thinking this was the strangest-looking kid they'd ever seen.
Everything about him was just slightly off, but only very slightly -- his
clothes, normal enough except they were of no style with which we were familiar;
his height, tall and gangly, but with arms and legs peculiarly proportioned; his
color, which was ever so faintly bluish because his skin was eerily pale and he
seemed to have an overabundance of fine veins running just underneath the
surface; and his manner of speaking which was not in words but in highly
expressive, breathy exhalations. All that and the constant look of confusion and
loneliness on his face marked him as an odd one, probably a kid who recently
moved to the neighborhood from out of town.

"Hey schmuckface, you wanna play?" Stu said, always friendly to newcomers.

The weird kid made some kind of herky-jerky motion with his head, which,
strangely, we all understood to mean yes. So we chose him in.

"What's your name, kid?" I said.

He just stared back at me, but every once in a while he'd let out a whoosh of
air, and it made a sound like wheeewgh or hyuuugh, so for lack of a better name,
and because he was such a tall son of a gun, I ended up calling him Huge. The
name caught on.

I took pity on the geek, so I chose him for my squad, but I had my doubts. First
off, I had the idea that he might be stupid, maybe not quite right in the head.
Then, as I started putting people in positions, he looked completely befuddled,
and I got this sneaking suspicion.

"Hey, Huge, you ever play this game before?" I asked.

Huge made his hyuuu sound and gyrated his head in a peculiar fashion that I
understood to mean no. I sighed and began explaining.

"Okay, so this stick is the bat. This ball . . . is the ball. You stand here and
you bounce it in front of you. When it comes down you swing at it. If you hit
it, you run to the base. Simple, right? Okay. The fielders are going to be
stationed at intervals all down this street. The Lincoln Continental there, the
gray one, is a single. The Corvette further down's a double. The Green Beetle's
a triple, and that red convertible Plymouth all the way yonder is a home run.
Comprende, amigo?"

I stopped to look at Huge, to see if there was any sign of understanding on his
face, but he just looked preoccupied.

"Look, in a nutshell the farther away you hit the ball, the better. Got it? The
farther away you go, the closer you get to winning the game."

I don't know what it was -- if it was something I said or it had nothing at all
to do with my lecture, if he understood me or sudden intuition just bore in upon
him -- but his face lit up, and he exhaled a particularly loud and resonant
whyuuuuuugh. My team applauded and cheered. Huge looked genuinely pleased with
us and with himself.

Our side took the field first. About fifteen minutes later, after everyone on
Mitch's team had driven in several runs -- aided in their efforts by Huge's
bemused way of watching perfectly catchable balls bounce directly in front of
him -- it was our turn to bat.

Things were going okay for us. We cracked a few hits, had ourselves a couple of
RBIs. Then it was Huge's turn to bat. He'd been watching us, so I figured he'd
have the hang of it. He stood there stating off far down the street, and back at
us. Then he began.

Instead of bouncing the ball, he simply held it up high above his head, somewhat
in front of him. I was about to tell him he was doing it all wrong, but I never
had the chance because he let the ball drop and, before it ever hit the ground,
spun the bat around single-handed, banging a sizzling single tight past the
front fender of the Lincoln. We roared our approval from the curb as he trotted
awkwardly to first base.

Mitch looked in at me from his outfield position -- perplexed, no doubt, by
Huge's one-handed batting technique -- as if to say, What gives? I shook my head
and called out to him: "He's our secret weapon!" I had no idea what I meant by
that beyond being a wiseguy.

Sides changed again, but this time Mitch's squad was out pretty quickly. Huge
learned fast and was snagging some tremendous shots with real panache. My team
was soon back at the "plate," and it was again Huge's turn at bat.

He went through the same quirky routine: holding the ball high above his head
and spinning the bat around one-handed at blinding speed. This time he knocked
out a line-drive double that smacked off Mitch's fingertips, stinging his hands
red. Later in the game, on his next two at-bats, Huge hit a triple and a
towering fly ball down the block that fell in for a home ran.

Nobody was saying what was really on their minds, but I knew. Here was a kid who
had never played stickball before, and he'd managed to hit for the cycle in just
a few innings. It almost seemed as though he had misunderstood me when I had
explained the game to him, and thought that he was supposed to progressively
move from hitting singles to doubles to triples and then home runs.

It was again Huge's turn to hit, and I called to him as he moved toward the
plate: "Hey, Huge, what are you gonna hit now? Nothing's bigger than a home
run."

Huge looked at me quizzically for a moment. Then he made one of his
trumpet-whinny sounds, and I could have sworn he was laughing to himself. He
moved clumsily to the plate and stared far down the street.

And what a stare. It was a strange moment, and I think everyone felt it. You
almost got the sense he was looking for something beyond the home run boundary
of the red convertible Plymouth. He just stood there gawking for awhile.
Finally, the kids in the outfield started razzing him, yelling for him to come
on and hit. Then his head jerked in a funny way, like he'd found his mark or
spotted something far, far down the street. But what it was I could not say.
Then Huge looked over at me.

"C'mon, man," I yelled at him, laughing. "Hit already, before I grow a beard!"

And Huge did a funny thing. He raised his hand and pointed upwards and away down
the street, as though he were trying to tell me something. I couldn't help but
be reminded of the moment Babe Ruth supposedly pointed to the bleachers to show
the crowd exactly where he was going to send the next pitch.

Then Huge held the spaldeen above his goofy-looking head, and he let it drop,
and it fell, and he whipped the broomhandle around like the perfect batting
machine he was, and the ball took off.

And it kept going.

From the first second the ball sailed over the heads of the fielders, it was
clear to everyone that this shot was headed way, way beyond the red Plymouth,
which meant it would sail over into the grassy lots alongside the train tracks.

Except that's not what happened.

What really occurred is subject to dispute among those who participated in the
Burton Street Games -- or rather, subject to uncomfortable silences, because
after that summer we never talked of the events. Unquestionably, though, there
was unanimity on what all of us saw, or thought we saw.

As the ball sailed over the red Plymouth it still had upward momentum, which
appeared quite impossible to anyone watching. Then, at some point beyond the
Plymouth, something happened to the sky.

Why search for different words when those I first used seem to fit the
phenomenon adequately? A door opened.

It did not open in the sky itself, but rather, it seemed, in the substance of
reality. What we saw, ever so briefly, was the ball sailing through an
other-dimensional portal over something that could have been a gigantic,
surrealistic version of a car, but could just have easily been some sort of
immense vessel for traversing interplanetary oceans. I looked at Huge dreamily
staring into that star-filled vortex, and saw him shake his head approvingly.

Then the door closed and everything was as before. Though, of course, everything
was different forever.

Huge had proved me wrong: There was something beyond a home run. He had, quite
literally, added a new dimension to the game of stickball.

Huge walked over to me and returned the broomhandle, because I was the next
batter up. Mitch was running in from the outfield, calling frantically.

"Uh, like, uh, it's getting near dinner time and my Mom will raise hell. I gotta
go."

"Yeah, sure, Mitch. No problem."

Suddenly, Stu and all the other guys were running in from the outfield, terror
written on their faces. Everybody was making lame excuses about why they had to
go home: dinner, lawns to mow, dogs to walk, chores to do. In no time the street
emptied out, and it was just me and Huge standing there alone. I regarded him
with awe, fascination, and, yes, no small amount of fear. Huge still gazed far
down the street toward where the door in the sky had opened. On his unfathomable
countenance was an expression that, in retrospect, I can only call wistful.

Then, without so much as a whyuuuugh, he walked off.

I don't know what it was that made me wait awhile and then follow him; perhaps
the part of me that yearned for an ineffable "something more." Perhaps in Huge I
sensed the presence of someone who would liberate me from the narrow confines of
my own life. I suspected where he might live, if live was the right word: the
lot where whatever had tumbled from that door in the sky had tumbled. Just
maybe, I thought, he was that mysterious whatever.

I watched him from down the street as he neared the fence, expecting him to
hoist himself up and climb it. Instead, he just seemed to pass straight through
the metal mesh. I figured there was a hole there, but as I neared the fence I
saw it was intact. Weird, I thought as I climbed over.

It was almost dark now, and I was only able to make my way because I had played
war games in the lot on many occasions. Littered as it was with rocks, broken
bottles and cans, the lot would have posed a threat to anyone unfamiliar with
it. I heard a noise and crouched behind a nearby bush. There was Huge, sitting
crosslegged against a boulder, staring up at nothing. He had some provisions, a
crummy blanket, but not much else.

I waited awhile. Soon he went into a sort of trance. As I crouched there, barely
breathing, I saw "things," for want of a better word, appear and disappear in
the air above him. They were like tiny versions of the portal that had opened
during the stickball game, like the door Mitch and I saw in the sky the day
before.

Odd shapes gyrated in jet black gateways floating above him. They did not look
like "images" in the air, but rather like tiny cross-sections cut out of another
world. As they coalesced and evanesced, Huge's face was constricted with intense
concentration, as though he were trying incredibly hard to conjure this other
reality into this one. Or, I wondered, could it be that he was trying to conjure
himself back into that other dimension? And was that other place "home," or, as
I suspected, some universe as strange and wonderful to him as he was to me?

And what in the world did stickball have to do with all of this?

That night, lying in bed after having quietly sneaked back over the fence, I
felt I had undergone some sort of catharsis, that I had to reassess not only the
normally torpid streets of Queens, but my whole view of reality. I had long
believed that Queens was the ultimate hicksville, that Manhattan, the great city
a subway ride away, was the exciting decadent gotham that called to me and my
ambitions. Suddenly, though, that island of skyscrapers seemed less important,
less of a goal, more of a way station between here and a reality so unbounded as
to be unthinkable to my adolescent imagination. I went to sleep that night with
images of starships and supernovas gyrating wildly in my head.

Late in the afternoon of the next day, I found myself standing again at the foot
of Burton Street. Despite my disquiet about yesterday's events, I felt
irrevocably drawn to the site of Huge's miraculous fly ball. I figured that I'd
probably be the only person there, that everyone else had been permanently
spooked and would have gone elsewhere for stickball -- to Dietetic Crescent,
maybe, or Metropolitan Boulevard.

Boy, was I wrong. One by one, over the next half-hour, those same kids who only
yesterday had run home to their mamas in a panicky sweat straggled in, as though
they too had been drawn by the promise of something grand and marvelous that
would transform their lives forever.

Then -- right on cue, as though it were the final note in a symphony, while we
all stood gathered together, staring off in the same direction -- we saw him. It
was Huge. He ambled clumsily toward us and let out a magnificent whyyugggh!

Today everyone regarded him in a new light. He was no longer just a goofy
looking kid. There was respect on every visage.

I finally broke the silence. "Uh, so Huge, up for some stick?"

He wiggled his head yes, and we began. And it was like the day before, only
better. He put on an amazing show for us, and he seemed to know it. The sky
rippled and swayed with other worlds, and every time Huge batted he hit the ball
just a little farther, just a little higher, into a slightly different reality.
Sometimes we saw the ball rise past dying suns, vermillion with the blood of
their eternal going. Other times we saw the spaldeen fly past starships that
seemed to stretch for miles. Once, we saw the ball sucked into a black hole at
the furthest rim of nowhere-in-the-known-universe. It was hypnotic; it was
unbelievable/it was like a continuous dream.

And yet, through it all, while Huge put on his sky show, I sensed something in
him that was pained and disillusioned. While, for us, this was the ultimate
entertainment, for him it seemed to constitute something much more personal: a
quest of sorts? While we thrilled to his exhibition, he often looked glum or
distract ed, peering off into the portals he had opened as though searching for
a lost key.

Probably all of us, at some level, had a lingering suspicion that it was all an
elaborate parlor trick. I felt, as I'm sure did other kids, unsure if what I saw
was actually happening in any usual sense of the word, or if, somehow, Huge had
inserted these images in our minds. Then again, with my new enlightened attitude
toward the unpredictability of the universe -- even that neglible parcel
containing Queens -- I realized the dichotomy between the two was not so clear
as I had once thought. Was there, indeed, any difference between what was "real"
and what was "in my mind"? I was no longer certain. And that uncertainty itself
seemed to me a good thing.

So it went all that summer. Every day we'd meet in the afternoon, and Huge would
treat us to his sky show. Sometimes it would be one or two portals through which
he'd hammer a thunderous arcing homer, and we'd behold new vistas of worlds and
galaxies beyond our ken. Other times, a dozen or more portals would open and
close in rapid succession, and we'd glimpse, almost subliminally, strange
vehicles and transports past which he'd hit the ball for runs that went way off
any scorecard we might have kept. Thus, while the Burton Street Games continued
throughout that summer, in a truer sense they stopped being stickball-as-usual
on the day Huge arrived.

Which was fine all through July, when we were still numb with the novelty of
Huge's other-dimensional extravaganzas, when we were collectively as far removed
from school and responsibility as we would ever be.

But something changed around the first week of August.

For me, it began at home. My mom had started drinking on top of everything else,
and I'd often come home to find her asleep on the couch, a bottle of Dubonnet on
the floor beside her. Dad hardly called, and then only to pretend he was
interested in me. He sent me a birthday card and got my age wrong.

But so what. Big deal. It was a summer of magic, and I was beyond such petty
concerns.

Still, something was in the air, and the other kids had begun to seem
distracted. I remember sitting atop a car on Burton. Mitch and I were smoking a
couple of Kools he'd ripped off his mom, staring again at the sun staring its
slow fall into Flushing Bay, waiting for the other kids to arrive.

"You know, Doug," said Mitch in that lugubrious way he had, as though he were
inventing the words for the first time before he spoke them, "I kinds wish we
could play stickball."

"Waddya mean? We do. Every night."

"Nah. I don't mean that. I mean, I wish we could just play regular, plain old
stickball."

Then he turned back to the sunset, and took a drag on his Kool.

I knew exactly what he meant, because I could tell the other kids were feeling
the same way. Sure, they liked Huge, and they vaguely understood that he was a
miracle visitor from some other dimension or planet or time. True, they had been
hypnotized with wonder all through July. But now, as August reared its sultry
head, bringing with it the first reminders that school and adult responsibility
would again be thrust upon them come September, a lot of the kids seemed to
want, once again, to just be...well, kids.

It happened gradually, throughout the first half of August. Fewer and fewer
regulars showed up for the Burton Street Games. Later, word came from Mitch that
a couple of the kids, Stu among them, had been seen whacking the tar out of
spaldeens at Dietetic Crescent. The defections hurt. I could even tell that
Mitch himself was getting nervous, as though he'd spent a month in a dream from
which it was now time to wake up.

Me, I felt that tug too. But, like I said, I never had much in common with the
kids around here. It always seemed like half the guys I knew wanted nothing more
than to go into whatever profession their fathers practiced. I always wanted
something more. I wanted to fling myself into wonder headlong. I didn't want to
go back to being "just a regular kid" by any means. But what exactly I wanted
was still unclear.

So I hung on through those dog days of August, arriving on time, regular as
could be. Kids still showed up for the sky show, and Mitch dutifully came by,
but I could tell he was morose and distracted.

For his part, Huge grew more and more disconsolate, if that was possible. His
whyuughs seemed less heartfelt, and while he still tore the air apart with his
towering fly balls, there seemed to be something less intense in his mission. If
I had to guess, I'd say he was gradually giving up on finding whatever it was he
searched for in those doors in the sky.

I felt deeply sorry for him, even guilty, as though I were somehow personally
involved in his quest. I passionately wanted him to find whatever he was looking
for. Why? Maybe I felt he was, in his own peculiar way, a bit like me. I had
come to believe, without question, that it was not "home" he was looking for. I
had concluded that he was an explorer who had lost his way, who ardently sought
a return to his quest. It was the look in his eyes that had convinced me, as
though his point of focus were light years beyond this time and place. At least,
that's how it seemed to me.

And then, amazingly, it was the last week in August. School loomed like a
monster on the horizon. Mom had joined AA and was getting all squishy and
religious. Dad's girlfriend had dumped him, and now he wanted back. Mom was
always squeamishly asking what I thought about him coming home, which meant she
was eventually going to cave, and it didn't make a rat's ass of a difference if
I said no.

The night of the game to end all games I was walking alone to Burton. Mom had
just told me Dad would be moving back. I stomped out of the house, anticipating
the fights and hollering and, eventually, the inevitable rages and beatings.

I sat atop an old Volvo, staring down the street at nothings it felt like I was
gazing into my own future. This was it, wasn't it? I thought. This was the whole
shebang. I'd never do anything marvelous. I had spent my summer as a witness to
wonder, and now I was going back to being smacked after dinner by my dad for
lord knows what offense against his peace of mind.

I sat there for a good long while. The sun was pretty much down, but the air was
still thick as soup and noontime-hot with distant rumblings of heat lightning.
Street lights were coming on with their eerie, artificial glow.

No one was going to show. I could feel it in my bones. And no one did. It was
the first time nobody came, and it meant the Burton Street Games had officially
come to an end.

But then, as I sat there, from the distance, that gawky, ambling form came
lumbering down the street. He walked right up to me and nodded his goofy nod.

"No game tonight, Huge," I said. "No one's coming. It's over for the summer."

Huge turned to me and did something totally out of character: He smiled at me. I
saw something in those bizarre yellowy eyes of his, something like triumph. The
melancholy that had dogged him these last weeks seemed to have evaporated. What
was this about? He took the stickball bat from my hand and held it out to me, a
look of ecstasy on his face.

"We can't play, Huge. Don't you get it? There's no one here."

He shook his head no, and pointed to himself and to me.

"Yeah, sure, there's us. But what can we do?"

He thrust the stickball bat into my hand and he shuffled down the street to the
field.

"Yeah, okay," I said. "If you wanna play fungo for awhile that's fine with me."

So we began. And it started typically enough. I knocked grounders and line
drives toward Huge, who now could field with the best of them. Then Huge started
gesturing to the sky behind him.

"You want me to hit fly balls? Sure, okay, if you want."

And I began knocking some tall ones down the street -- real high, so he had a
chance to get under them. Then he started shaking his head, pointing even
farther down the street.

"Hey, Huge, that's your specialty, not mine."

He shook his head furiously in disagreement, so I figured, what the hell, I'd
just try and whack the daylights out of the ball.

As I readied to do so, something entered my mind, like a living force, and I saw
Huge staring at me with a terrifying intensity I had never seen before or since
on the countenance of any living creature. I felt infused with sheer energy, as
though I were an explosion waiting to happen, as though forces were building and
coalescing in me that had to be released. I wasn't sure if I was about to die or
disappear, but I knew one thing. I had to hit that ball as hard as I could.

I looked down the street and saw Huge Smiling as though he was satisfied I was
ready. Then I realized this is what Huge had been leading up to all summer: This
moment, just him and me, was part of whatever weird magic, science or both that
Huge was invested with, which he had now temporarily passed on to me, which was,
somehow, to be transformed in the unlikely game of stickball.

Then Huge was running, running down that street as far and as fast as he could.

I knew what I had to do.

I held that ball high above my head, and it glowed, literally, with an unearthly
blue incandescence. The bat in my hand vibrated with a living power; it felt
like a hundred electric eels all squirming to discharge their voltage into the
night.

Then I let that ball drop. And I whizzed that bat around one-handed. And I
connected.

Or, rather, whatever mysterious force possessed me connected, and that ball took
off, not as a projectile takes off, but as a rocketship takes off, roaring at a
furious speed down the street in a line drive headed toward the receding figure
of Huge. In a flash, it was over his head, and just passing him as he ran
faster, faster building up a locomotive's momentum.

Then the entire world exploded. The sky opened up -- not like a door this time,
but more like a vast theater curtain pulled aside to reveal an immense,
unfathomable, star-drenched ocean. It was dizzying inexpressible, complex beyond
retelling. And into this incomprehensible panorama the distant figure of Huge
leapt. . .and disappeared.

The curtain snapped shut. The next thing I remember was the muggy night breeze
and the cicadas chirping. I stood there dazed.

Summer was officially over.

After Dad came home to stay, I spent a lot of time in my room reading --partly
to avoid him, partly to discover something in novels I no longer found in my
daily life now that Huge was gone. As a result of my bookish activities, I
learned that a story like this is supposed to have one of two endings.

In the first, I return to Burton Street day after day, to that vaunt lot,
looking for some sign of Huge, some trinket or memento of his being there,
something that proves we weren't all suffering from a kind of mass hysteria.
Well, I did go back to the lot, but I found nothing not even his tattered
blanket or the remnants of his few provisions.

In the other ending I come away from my experience having "learned a lesson," a
sudden understanding of how that magical-something-extra I've been looking for
was always in my own back yard after all. That didn't happen either. I still
wanted something more than the streets of Queens had to offer, and I was still
unsure what that was.

No, this story ends messily, in uncertainty, with a bunch of kids going back to
school to resume their normal day-to-day lives. As before, we hung out, we
fought, we smoked cigarettes in alleys, and, yes, we played stickball.

But no one ever mentioned Huge.

Me, I'm "all grown up" now, but no more satisfied with the world. I still wait
for something wonderful to happen. I know it probably won't. It's the child in
me that just won't let go, the part of me that still returns in the occasional
dream to Burton Street, to the night when it was just me and Huge playing fungo,
knocking fly balls down the street, tearing apart the fabric of reality with our
bare hands.