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Chapter 4
The Kobayashi Maru
A familiar voice awakened me by
softly singing the old hymn, “Rise and shine, give God the glory, glory.”
The song echoed from my earliest
childhood. My paternal grandmother Sadie, a very religious woman, sang it to us
in the morning when we spent the night at her house. However, this wasn’t my
grandmother’s voice. It was my older brother Lenny. He would sing it to wake me
up, but without my grandmother’s reverence.
I opened my eyes to find twelve-year-old
Lenny crouched down beside my bed in our old shared bedroom on St. Helens
Street. He stood up. “Get your bathing suit on. We’re going to do a little
trespassing,” he said. “And whatever you do, don’t wake Mom up.”
I smiled. We were going pool
hopping again. It was one of my favorite childhood memories with Lenny, but he
never planned for me to go along.
One summer evening the year after
my father died, Lenny convinced our mother to let him and two of his friends,
Charlie Woods and Pete Thompson, camp out in the backyard. She was at her
over-protective worst then. There was zero possibility she would let him go on
a real camping trip—or even spend the night at a friend’s house. I don’t know
how he managed to convince her to let him set up that little pup tent at the
back of our yard, but he did. He didn’t, however, intend to stay in the
backyard all night.
He knew she would be watching, but
he planned to outlast her. But what he didn’t count on was me. After my mother fell
asleep, I saw them sneaking out of the tent, and I went outside to join them. Lenny
heard the creak of the back door and turned to me. He angrily pointed back
inside, but, in a rare display of boldness, I shook my head no. He hurried over
to me.
“Get inside,” he whispered.
“No,” I replied, “I want to go with
you.”
Lenny pushed me. “You go inside or
I’ll beat the crap out of you.”
“If you do, I’ll tell Mom.”
That trumped his threat. Charlie
and Pete wandered over. “Come on, Lenny,” Charlie said. “Let’s give the boy an
education in trespassing.”
Lenny gave Charlie a look and then
turned back to me. “You say a word about this, and I will kick your ass.”
With that warning, we indulged in Charlie’s
favorite summertime passion: pool
hopping. That night we wandered throughout the neighborhood clandestinely
swimming in the pools of our neighbors. By four a.m., we had swum in thirty
pools. Charlie said that was the all-time neighborhood record, which would
never be broken. I know I never broke it. I tried to repeat the feat with my
friends, but they always chickened out. I don’t think Lenny and his friends
came close again either. The next summer, they discovered pot and spent most of
their time getting high in Charlie’s basement.
Now, in this dream, it looked like
Lenny and I were finally going to get the chance to break the record.
I didn’t remember getting dressed. I
just found myself walking down the middle of Beechwood Avenue trailing a few
steps behind Lenny. This was quite unlike our last adventure when we stayed
close to the shadows out of fear of being spotted. There was no fear now. The
houses lining the street were completely dark. It was very eerie, as if we were
the only two people in the world.
“Must be late,” I said.
“Yup,” Lenny answered.
It suddenly struck me that I was still
speaking in my adult voice, not my unbroken ten-year-old voice. I looked ahead
at Lenny. He was taller than me, physically, so I was still my ten-year-old
self in this dream.
As soon as the word dream entered
my mind, I calmed down. This was only a dream, and dreams had their own logic.
I had nothing to fear.
“Where are we going?” I asked
Lenny.
“The Kobayashi Maru,” he said as he
turned and gave me a wicked smile.
The Kobayashi Maru was a Star Trek
reference to an unwinnable training exercise in Star Fleet Academy. I knew
immediately what Lenny meant: the
Coleman Pool. We opted out of hopping in it on the night of our triumph. The
pool itself wasn’t much, just a four-foot circular above-ground model. The
problem was the location. An unclimbable seven-foot-high wooden privacy fence
surrounded the entire Coleman backyard. The only entrance to the yard was a
gate between the garage and the side of the house located a few feet from the
back door. That’s why it was so dangerous. If you woke up the owners, you had
to pass right by their back door to escape. Plus, Mr. Coleman supposedly kept a
shotgun loaded with rock salt near the back door. Even the reckless Charlie balked
at hopping that pool. He was the one who named it the Kobayashi Maru.
The next thing I knew we were
sneaking alongside the Coleman house toward the metal gate. I should say, I was sneaking. Lenny walked normally. When
he opened the gate, the metal clicked so loudly, it seemed to echo throughout
the neighborhood. I grabbed his shirt to pull him back.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Lenny just turned to me. “No,” he
said softly. “This is one thing I always regretted not doing.”
I released his shirt. He turned and
walked into the yard. I stood motionlessly trying to figure out what was going
on. Did his words reflect his childhood perspective or his adult one? Who was this Lenny?
A soft splash interrupted my
thoughts. I stepped into the yard and went to the pool. I found Lenny floating
on his back with his eyes closed and a big smile on his face. He opened his
eyes and turned to me.
“What are you waiting for? This is
the Kobayashi Maru, and we’ve beat it,”
Lenny said, and then he laughed sharply. “I bet Charlie’s rolling over
in his grave.”
His words scared me. Charlie died
of a heroin overdose two months earlier. I went to his funeral. Everybody from
the old neighborhood was there. I put up a very nice memorial for him on Resting
Place that made his poor mother cry in gratitude. How did Lenny know Charlie
was dead? He was long gone before it
happened. But I quickly answered the question myself. This Lenny, this person
before me, was just a figment of my imagination. He knew everything I knew. That
thought reassured me.
“You coming in or not?” he asked.
Why not? Nothing could hurt me. I was safe in my bed
back at home. I moved closer to the pool, but I hesitated. In the darkness, the
pool didn’t look very inviting. The water was black as tar, and I had a strange
feeling that if I got in, it would never release me.
“You’re not afraid, are you?” Lenny asked. He stopped floating and
straightened up in the pool, kneeling down enough to keep just his head above
the water. “It’s not bad in here, Ricky. Not bad at all,” he said, his eyes
becoming more serious. “I wish I had taken the leap earlier. I would have saved
myself a lot of misery.”
His words gave me a chill. I knew
what leap he was talking about.
“It’s not what you think, Ricky. It’s
very peaceful here. You’ll like it.” Lenny paused and then added, “The world
has no pity for screwed up people like us.”
“I’m not screwed up,” I replied.
Lenny laughed as he moved closer. “Please! You’re the boy in the plastic bubble. You
don’t touch anyone, and you never let them touch you,” he said. “I might have
been a paranoid schizophrenic, but I embraced things. I followed my feelings. I
made contact.”
“And what did that get you?” I
answered defensively.
“Peace,” Lenny replied. “Come on,
Rick. I don’t want to argue with you, man. We’re brothers. We’re supposed to
love each other.” Lenny swam back a
little and opened his arms. “Come on in and try it out just for a minute. You’ll
see what I mean. I promise.”
Lenny’s eyes radiated sincerity. Despite
my misgivings about the water, I decided to try it. After all, it was just a
dream. I was safe.
I stepped forward and hoisted
myself up on the rim of the pool with both arms. I threw a leg over the top,
but before I even felt the water, I heard a fire engine. The sound stopped me. The
siren was echoing as if it were reverberating off tall buildings. It should not
have sounded like that here where the trees would have swallowed and muffled
the sound.
“Don’t worry about that,” Lenny
said. I turned to him. His eyes were anxious now, but he forced a smile. “Come
on. Let’s do some laps before Mr. Coleman breaks out his shotgun.”
There was something wrong about him.
I could see it now. Brothers were supposed to love each other, but I wasn’t so
sure he was my brother. Who was he? What
was he?
The siren continued. I turned to it.
When I did, I really opened my eyes. I could see the fire truck moving down
Joppa Road ten stories below me. I watched its progress for a moment before I
realized I was standing on my balcony and that I was hanging halfway over the
railing.
I normally enjoyed the view from
the balcony, but now it was terrifying. I froze. I had no idea how strong the
rail was and whether it could hold my weight. I was afraid to move and equally
afraid to stay still. Closing my eyes, I resolved to throw myself backwards in
one motion. Like a frightened child, I even counted to three before I pushed
myself back.
My neck hit against the seat of one
of my lawn chairs as I tumbled backwards onto the hard concrete of the balcony
floor. My elbow and back ached as I reached back to rub my neck. My other hand
went to my skinned elbow. I slowly stood up and looked over the balcony. The
fire engine was gone. All that remained immediately below was a decorative
fountain in front of the building. I doubted the five inches of water in it
would have done much to break my fall.
I staggered back into my apartment
to find the television and lights on just as they were when I fell asleep in
the afternoon. I looked to the clock. It read 3 a.m. Exactly. That was almost my time of death, I
thought.
My eyes went to my desk. As they
did, the screensaver switched to one of the pictures of my brother Lenny I used
on his Resting Place memorial. He had a lazy, happy smile in it. The photograph
made it easy to see why he held onto so many friends. There is no way I’d get
as many people at my funeral, even if everyone brought a date.
“Lenny, are you here?” I asked, not
believing the words as I said them. Of course, he wasn’t here. He was dead, and
dead was dead. Forever.
The screensaver image suddenly
changed again, and I found myself staring at Elisabetta Kostek. Her smile was
now a bemused taunt as if to say she had done this thing.
“This is crazy,” I said with the
voice of rationality.
I was tempted to go to the computer
and move the mouse, but I was afraid Elisabetta wouldn’t disappear. Instead, I retreated into my bedroom without
bothering to turn off the lights in the living room and kitchen. I closed the
door and locked it. It was the first time I ever locked my bedroom door in my
own apartment.
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Other Chapters:
Prologue - My Mother
Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com
Chapter 2 - Elisabetta
Chapter 3 - The Upload
Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru
Chapter 5 - Gina
Chapter 6 - Tombstone Teri
Chapter 7 - The Holy Redeemer Lonely Hearts Club
Chapter 8 - A Mourner
Chapter 9 - War Is Declared
Chapter 10 - The Motorcycle
Chapter 11 - Suspended
Chapter 12 - The Harbor
Chapter 13 - Bad News Betty
Learn more about the book Here.
While you're waiting for the next chapter of Chapel Street, feel free to read my memoir:
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