One day a boy walked by my house as I played in my front yard. We had just moved, and I really didn’t know anyone at all. I was maybe five. He was a lot bigger than me, but he seemed to be about my age. He was open and curious and friendly, and we made friends in the usual five year old way, by asking each other our names and where we lived. He said his name was Steve; he lived up the street. I did not know it then, and I’m not sure how or at what point in time I actually did figure it out, but Steve was a lot older than me: he must have been 17 or 18 on the day we met. We became lifelong friends.
For years, when I was real young, Steve would wait outside my bedroom window in the morning for me to wake up. I’d hear him out there, and eventually I’d stick my face against the screen and say “Hi, I’ll be out later, after breakfast”. Or, “Sorry Steve, today’s a school day; I’ll see you after”. (Years later, when I was away at college, Steve would occasionally still show up. My little sister would give him the same basic message). He followed all of us neighborhood kids, all over the place as we played ball, or tag, trick-or-treated, ran wild in the woods, everything…
A lot of times Steve just couldn’t do the things we did (such as ride bikes, or swim, or ice skate), and then he would wander off to another part of the neighborhood and find some other kids to be with. When our games got too crazy or competitive we couldn’t let Steve play. He was incredibly strong—way stronger than anyone else—and much bigger, too. Steve did not know his own strength, and we found out early on that it was simply too dangerous—for both us and him. But more often than not we’d give him his at bats, especially when we played baseball in front of Sue Olsen’s house. You should have seen him hit. One of my most vivid memories is of Steve taking his warm-up swings, grinning from ear to ear, yelling out “Pitch it in!! Pitch it in!!! I’ll kill it!!” And he did. It was always a little sad to me when summer ended and school began for the rest of us; that meant that Steve would be alone in the ‘hood for the better part of a long day. Many times he would be waiting for us at the bus stop (along with my dog; they were fast friends).
Some moms wouldn’t let their kids play with Steve; my mom didn’t interfere. A very few kids in the neighborhood would occasionally be cruel to Steve—in the usual ways that children are cruel—but I’m sure they were in the vast minority. The guys I knew—Eddie Clark, Paul DePaoli, Dougie DePaoli, John and Mike and Frankie Vallorosi, Billy and Richie and Donald Hatcher, Jeff and Chris Maguire, the Miskell’s and the Sally’s—most everybody I knew treated Steve with kindness, protected him, and accepted him as the fixture in the neighborhood that he was. Steve was always there, as long as I can remember, sometimes right in the middle of us, sometimes looking on quietly from a short distance.
One time, Jeffrey Maguire, the Rosenberg brothers and I decided to take Steve to the movies with us. We were going to see Godzilla vs. Megalon (we lived for Godzilla flicks). None of us knew if he’d ever been to a movie theatre before, but I don’t think that thought bothered us much. We marched up to his house, rang the doorbell and presented the idea to his mom. She was thrilled and Steve came thundering out of his house smiling a smile a thousand miles wide. When Mrs. Rosenberg heard of the plan she quietly balked (our moms split driving duty to movies, bowling alleys and skating rinks all over Westchester). That left me, Jeff, and Steve with scant time to make it to the Triangle Movie theatre way over in Yorktown Heights. Mrs. Maguire, Jeff’s mom, was a bird of a different feather. She lit a cigarette, got us in the car, hustled us there, gave us money for the tickets, and picked us up later.
When we arrived, it became clear that Steve had never been to a movie, or anything like it, in his entire life. He stopped to gawk at everything: the candy counter, the popcorn machine, the people on line, his ticket stub. Jeff and I were about eleven; we were in way over our heads. It turns out Steve was totally scared of the dark: we had to tug and pull, push and plead Steve into his seat. Once we got him seated and the cartoons came on, he settled down a bit. But he had no inkling of movie etiquette, and every time something semi-exciting happened (which was every thirty seconds or so—remember it was a Godzilla flick) he yelled out loud in excitement and glee. Jeff and I sat on either side of him and did the best we could to not get kicked out.
Stevie talked about seeing that movie for a long time afterward…I think (unknowingly) it was one of the kindest things we could have done for him. He would see me in the neighborhood years later and shout: “John, Godzilla John!? Godzilla!?” He would just yell it, over and over again, as though it was the grandest word known to man. I would shout back: “Godzilla, Steve! Godzilla!” and he would just scream with laughter.
Another time Willett Denike had the idea to have Steve swim in his pool with us. Willett always looked out for Steve, treated him with utter kindness. Nobody could say or do anything against Steve when Willett was around. We ran up to Steve’s house to ask his mom permission, and five minutes later out he trotted with his towel and shorts. We marched off to Willett’s house. The pool was in the backyard. All was well at first; Stevie climbed the ladder to jump in. He made it to the top, looked at the water, and…froze. He looked down into the pool and began an unearthly howl. We were dumbfounded. We pleaded with him to jump in, or come down, or just stop howling. Nothing worked. He had a death-grip on the ladder. Willett tried to muscle him off, but Steve had the body of a grown man, and though Willett was very, very strong, he couldn’t budge Steve at all. It seemed to go on for hours. We begged, we tried force, we wandered off to see if he would follow us, we tried to bribe him with food, but Steve didn’t move an inch; he just howled. Finally Mr. Denike came home from work and managed to get him down. That was the last time we ever tried to get Steve to swim with us.
Much later, after I was married and hadn’t seen Steve for a long time, I tracked down his mailing address. I think I got it from Scott Olsen (Sue’s brother), another neighborhood kid who just took care of Steve. (I understand Scotty stayed in touch with him for years and years). Steve had moved with his mom to South Carolina. I sent Christmas cards right through my thirties, and Steve’s mom would respond in kind, until they began to come back marked “Addressee Unknown”. |
