Gennifer Choldenko: Al Capone Shines My Shoes

The first time Nat went to the Esther P. Marinoff School she pitched a fit the size of Oklahoma and they kicked her out, but I don’t think that will happen this time. She’s getting better in her own weird way. I used to say Nat’s like a human adding machine without the human part, but now she’s touching down human more days than not. And each time she does it feels as if the sun has come out after sixty straight days of rain.

“Tell her, Moose. Tell her how wonderful it’s going to be,” my mother says.

“Tell her, Moose. Tell her how wonderful it’s going to be,” Nat repeats, picking up her button box and holding it tight against her chest.

“You get to take your buttons, Nat. Mom said,” I say.

I almost think I see her smile then-as much of a smile as you ever get from Natalie anyway. She peeks inside her button box, checking to make sure all of her precious buttons are exactly where they’re supposed to be.

When we head down to the dock, my mom’s step is light on the stairs. She’s so sure that the Esther P. Marinoff will be the thing that fixes Natalie. My dad’s feet are moving to the beat of an Irish jig. Natalie is taking each step carefully and methodically as if she wants each foot to make a lasting impression on the stairs.

When we get down to the water’s edge I see Trixle walking across the dock, bullhorn in hand.

“Two hundred yards back please! All boats must stay two hundred yards off the shore!” Officer Trixle booms through his bullhorn to a tour boat that has come too close to the island.

“Warned him before, that one. Mac’ll put a bead on him. Fix ’em good,” Trixle tells my father.

Natalie hates loud noises. Once they shot a warning blast into the water when we were in our apartment and she curled up in a ball in the middle of the living room and stayed that way for the better part of the afternoon. Another time she didn’t seem to hear a gun go off ten feet away. It’s impossible to predict what Natalie will do.

“Darby, hey Darby…” my father wheedles. “Please-not today, okay, buddy?”

“Got to learn to straighten up and fly right,” Darby mutters, “if she’s coming back, that is.” His eyes are bright with the unasked question.

Before the tower guard can get the boat in his gun sights, it turns starboard and hightails back to the city, and the tick in my mom’s cheek relaxes.

Officer Trixle gets a happy little bounce to his step. He motions to the guard tower anyway, and the guard tower officer pelts the bay with a showy spray of firepower that pounds like fireworks exploding inside your head.

Natalie shrieks high and piercing like the escape siren. She closes her eyes, wraps her arms around her head, and begins to rock.

The bullets don’t get anywhere near the tour boat, but it roars forward, sinking low behind as it struggles to gain speed.

“Natalie, it’s all done now. It’s all over. No more guns, okay? No more,” I tell her as my mother digs in her bag for the emergency lemon cake.

“They were leaving already,” my mom whispers to my father. “That was completely unnecessary.”

“He’s just doing his job, Helen,” my father says, but his face is pinched like his belt is a notch too tight.

Nat’s arms stay wrapped around her head like a bandage. She rocks from foot to foot, still making her little shrieks.

Trixle hitches up his trousers and walks toward us. He stares at Natalie. “Got a problem here, Cam?”

“No problem. We got it under control.” My father’s voice is confident and commanding like a Boy Scout leader’s.

Trixle sucks on his lip. “Don’t look that way to me.”

“Just scared her is all,” my father tells him.

Trixle clears his throat. “Gonna have to do an incident report on this, Cam. Warden’s orders.”

My father frowns and lowers his voice as if he’s letting Trixle in on a secret. “Nothing to worry about here, Darby.”

Darby makes a juicy noise with his spit. “Anything out of the ordinary, I got to report.”

My mom picks up Nat’s suitcase, hoping to distract her and get her away from Darby. “Let’s go, Nat,” she says.

“But what about Jimmy and Theresa?” I ask. “They wanted to say goodbye. Couldn’t you wait? I can run get them. It will only take a minute.” Theresa is Jimmy’s little sister and she’s really good with Natalie.

My mom shakes her head. Nat’s shrieking has subsided. Now it’s more like the hum of a radio gone haywire. But my mom clearly wants to get her out of here.

I don’t think Nat will go, but she does. She’s still humming, still holding her head, but she’s walking along behind my mother, yes she is.

“Bye, Nat.” I wave stiffly.

“Moose bye. Moose bye,” she says as she toe-walks across the gangplank.

I take a step forward. I know better than to try to hug her. Nat hates to be touched, but I want to go get the Mattamans at least. I promised I’d let them know when she was leaving.

My father puts his hand on my arm. “She can’t take much more hullabaloo,” he murmurs, his eyes on Darby Trixle, who is deep in conversation with the buck sergeant.

My mom waves to us from the starboard side, scooting Nat’s suitcase under the seat. Nat sits down, her eyes trained on her lap. The motor roars to a start and the Frank M. Coxe pulls out fast, carving a white wake in the stirred-up brown water.

We watch until the boat is so small it could fit in the finger of my baseball glove. And then it’s gone.

Same day-Monday, August 5, 1935

There’s nothing like baseball to get your mind off of things you’d rather not think about. The smell of the glove, the feel of the ball, that thwack the bat makes when you crush the ball… It’s enough to cure anything bad that could ever happen. And today is a baseball day, because my friend Scout from school is coming to Alcatraz this afternoon. Scout is Mr. Baseball. He has his own team and he can really play.

I tell Jimmy all about this inside the crawlspace under 64 building that runs beneath apartment 1D, a vacant apartment, to 1E, Mrs. Caconi’s place. The crawlspace is in what we like to call Chinatown because it looks like the alleyways in Chinatown in San Francisco. Normally, the crawlspace is locked, but last week Jimmy saw the screws in the door hinge were loose, so he took off the hinge and we opened the door. When we leave, we put the hinges back and the door seals up tight like no one has ever been inside.

The only problem is it’s dark in here-everything is coated with an inch of dust and you have to crawl on your hands and knees, avoid the ant holes, and watch the beams so you won’t clonk your head. The cobwebs alone could kill you the way they descend like gauze over your mouth and you breathe ’em in and hope you haven’t sucked a spider down your throat. Still, it’s a good place to talk things over. In our secret passageway, we say things we wouldn’t say anywhere else. I like that no one knows about this place except Jimmy and me.

I can’t imagine a better spot than underneath Mrs. Caconi’s apartment either. The moms on the island spend a lot of time at Mrs. Caconi’s the way the kids gravitate toward the parade grounds. I think it’s because Mrs. Caconi doesn’t have kids, so they get a break from us at her place-kind of like the teachers’ lounge at school.

Our best day last week we heard Mrs. Caconi and Officer Trixle’s wife, Bea, discussing hair that grows out of your ear hole. Apparently Darby Trixle has big bushes of ear hair Bea has to clip every week. We could hardly keep from laughing out loud when we heard this.

That’s the one thing we have to be wary of down here: noise. We’re pretty sure they can hear us in the apartments above, if we aren’t really quiet.