Lunchmeat Read online

  The Black and White Knight’s section sat between the Red’s and the Yellow’s, the fifty-yard line. Technically, we were supposed to cheer for those knights too—when ours wasn’t engaged in combat, that is—but I didn’t feel any allegiance to them at all. I was a loyal subject to the Black and White Knight and would’ve gladly lent my squiring services to advance him to tournament champion.

  We took our seats, and the king addressed the crowd and read out the list of birthdays that delayed the gladiatorial carnage—my name was in the beginning, and that’s all I needed to hear. A horse show, which wasn’t interesting in the slightest, went on as the waitress dropped dragon soup into bowls we used to tip the slosh into our mouths—there wasn’t a spoon in the establishment.

  Next, the falconer took center stage in the sand and let his raptor whiz around the arena above the heads of the audience. Britney let out a shriek that could land her a role in a slasher flick.

  Finally, the knights were introduced and trotted out on steeds of chocolate brown and alabaster. The Black and White Knight waved to our section; I waved back.

  “You don’t have to wave back, Vic,” said Tony.

  I was enamored with the protector of the realm. His blond hair flowed down his back and covered his chainmail hood, and I immediately yearned for the days when my uncles called me Hans or Anders or something Swedish like that.

  His squire—the sock—handed him a bundle of red roses with truncated stems. Our champion smelled each rose, kissed them, and delicately tossed them to young lasses dotted throughout his cheering section. One flower went tomahawking over my head to a teenager seated two rows behind me, and I caught myself from jumping out of my seat and snatching it from the air. I swung around and could see the young girl shooting a toothy grin. Her father wrapped his arm around her shoulders and said, “Nice job, kiddo.”

  Was that chivalry? “Hey Karl, was that chivalry?” I asked while scanning the teenager, who was smelling the flower, up and down. She was pretty—at least, I heard Tony and George say something about it when we took our seats—but certainly I would need more than a rose to make Andrius’s mom smile like that. She was an ice queen. I’d have to at least win a joust.

  As I slurped down the last of my soup, the lights went out and a fog crept into the arena. A band of henchmen came storming out from the curtain, followed by a spot-lit knight dressed entirely in black.

  “The Black Knight!” Karl and I yelled simultaneously.

  I turned to George, the only one of us who had seen the show before, for some clarification, but he shook his head in amazement and said he had no idea what was going on.

  The king bellowed at the knights to remain calm and keep their swords sheathed. I felt like I had been duped and had suffered the torment of the Green Knight for months. Looking at him in the far left corner, he didn’t seem so evil after all.

  The Black Knight threatened to slaughter the realm if the princess was not handed over for marriage and then left the pit with his henchmen. The king explained that the tournament of sport and jovial spirit would have to take a turn of violence, and I sat back in my seat to take it all in. Karl questioned why wouldn’t all six knights join forces and fight the Black Knight together, but there was no time for such nuanced inquiries.

  Immediately the squires helped their lords mount their steeds, and the knights rushed off through the curtain and out of sight.

  “Pretty good, huh, Vito?” said my dad, leaning back in his seat so he could make eye contact with me.

  I bounced in my chair, waiting for the first two knights to burst out of the curtain and line up for the joust. Joust, then hand-to-hand combat—that’s what George told us. And as I sunk my teeth into my half chicken and peeled off the skin, the Green Knight appeared from behind the curtain on his jet-black horse, followed by our champion.

  I stood in exhilaration, raising my grease-covered hands into the air. The Green Knight stared at our section, and I yelled at him like my father yells at the Boston Red Sox. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George laughing with Tony and clapping under the table. I knew he was a traitor, a subject of the Green Knight who had infiltrated our bastion of purity.

  The knights lined up to joust, and I felt a cocktail of nerves and angst form and turn in my stomach. The horses kicked back the tawny sand as slobber fell from the bits. And before I could fully comprehend the moment I had been waiting for—the battle between the knight who had preoccupied my daydreams and my newly appointed champion—the lances dropped and the sand flew and they were off. Splinters of wood went flying from our champion’s lance as the crack of metal reverberated throughout the arena. The Green Knight had been dismounted. He scurried in the sand as his squire handed him a flail. Our champion dropped from his horse with a shield and broadsword.

  “Why would he do that?!” shouted Karl. “He has a much greater advantage from on the horse than on foot. I don’t feel good about this, Vic.”

  “Dad!” I screamed down the table, startling my father, who was sliding the meat off the pork rib with his teeth. “Karl says he has a much greater advantage…”

  “What? Vito, I can’t hear you, pal. Just enjoy the show.”

  Show? Show? My father’s nonchalance was unnerving. He clearly did not possess the same loyal zeal for our blond-maned champion that I felt building in the balls of my feet.

  The Green Knight whirled the chained ball of metal above his head and sent it crashing into our champion’s shield. In the moments before impact, I covered my eyes, fearing that one more crack against the shield would break his arm. But in a feat of unprecedented bravado, the Black and White Knight caught the chain of the Green Knight’s flail around his sword, and after a few pushes and pulls from side to side, sent his opponent soaring into the sand.

  The Green Knight was defenseless but evaded each elongated swing and swipe of our champion’s attack.

  “Just stab him! Karl, why won’t he just stab him?”

  The Green Knight’s squire rushed to his aid with a shield and sword of his own—excellent squiring, it hurt to admit—and the two defenders of the realm exchanged blows to the cheers and jeers of the crowd.

  Orange sparks flew from the blades on contact, and the Green Knight had our champion in a backpedal. He stumbled and fell into the sand after parrying a particularly wicked blow. He was on the defensive and I couldn’t watch. I had seen it too many times before—the imposing orcish horde ramming their way through my army of footmen and knights. I feared it was all over for my champion, and I licked the chicken grease from my fingers and sucked down the last sip of my Pepsi. (It was a “party,” so we were permitted soda.) But as an ice cube dislodged itself and smacked into my two front teeth, the Black and White Knight countered the Green Knight’s barrage, quickly rose to one knee, and struck the enemy in the abdomen with his sword.

  Uproar.

  The Green Knight stumbled backward before falling into the sand, never returning to his feet again. A white light haloed over our champion in the pit; Karl and I hugged.

  The Black and White Knight would go on to win the entire tournament, slay the (actually) evil Black Knight, and take the princess’s hand in marriage—a rightful prize for such a display of heroism.

  Perhaps all I needed was a tournament to win the heart of Andrius’s mom. I was confident in my hand-to-hand combat abilities against opponents like Paxton, Maine Ogden, the Barriston brothers, Lenny, and Silas. But Kader would surely defeat me in a joust; he rode horses every weekend when he played polo with his father. And he had all those weapons mounted on the walls of his house, and I don’t believe for a second that he didn’t take them down to practice. Yeah, Kader would prove to be a challenge, but perhaps he would be disqualified—there weren’t any knights in Iraq, right? Pierce Stone would be the final battle, my Black Knight. I’d use all of the weapons available on that one—broadsword, battle-ax, mace, flail, halbe
rd. He could have as many squires as he needed. I wouldn’t even use a shield. Two swords! That’s all to win Mrs. Varnus—win the tournament and kill Pierce Stone. All that and a truncated rose, of course.

  My father never let us go into Spencer’s Gifts, no matter how hard we pulled on his shirtsleeves. He would say the novelty store was for potheads and it was full of sex and vice, but I didn’t care about the sex and vice—unless they had posters of Suzanne Somers or Andrius’s mom—and only really wanted to watch the orange and purple lava lamp globs bounce against the glass. But Mrs. Geiger, our portal to the forbidden, let us frolic for a few savory minutes in the neon store after we filled our stomachs with Roy Rogers fried chicken and beef.

  “There’s a lot about pots and the Grateful Dead teddy bears in here, Karl, and ways to ‘arouse your lover.’” I said as I opened a greeting card that popped out a “banana hammock” inches from my shnozole (translation: nose).

  “Pot is a drug. Not like a Grecian urn, Vic, like in Hercules. I think it’s the same thing as mota. Ya know, like from the Offspring’s Ixnay on the Hombre.”

  “I like Americana better.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “When are you going to your lake house?”

  “Tomorrow morning. We’re staying there for two nights.”

  “That’s the whole weekend!” Karl shouted as he pulled on the straps of dangling black lingerie.

  “I know. I’m gonna miss you.”

  “I’m gonna miss you, too.”

  “Hey Karl, what’s a ‘vaginatarian’? Is that like an herbivore? Like a Brontosaurus?”

  “Not exactly, Vic.”

  “And now, my lovelies, you can have the green miracle cloth for only six easy payments of $9.99 and watch as the power of the Lord unfurls in front of your very eyes. Order now, my lovelies. Remember, you reap what you sow. Make haste.”

  The shot cut to Tom Jones Cleaver waving his arms and stomping his feet in front of a raucous congregation that didn’t have many teeth between them. Everyone had this thing called a mortgage, but no one could pay for it. I didn’t understand how the heck the miracle cloth would give them money—it looked like the cloth my mother used to clean her glasses—but Pastor Cleaver would pull them up, one by one, onto the stage, and they would testify that after praying with the miracle cloth, they received a check from the bank for thousands of dollars. And they’d all shout, “Hallelujah!”

  “Hello, my friend,” said my father as he stomped down the basement steps.

  “Hey Dad, do you have a mortgage?”

  “What’s that, pal? Oh, what crap are you watching? This guy is a such a phony.”

  “But all of these people get money in the mail.”

  “Vito, go to sleep. We’re leaving early for the lake house tomorrow.”

  “Do I have to go?”

  “‘Have to go’? Of course you do. What, you’re gonna stay here? Vito, family is the most important thing you have. You should want to spend time with your cousins. Remember, we come from humble roots down in Avellino.”

  “But someone always ends up crying. And I won’t go in the water. I refuse. There are snakes. Can’t I just stay with the Geigers?”

  “Basta (translation: enough, stop it). Go to sleep.”

  The drive to the lake house took us to that part of Northwestern-ish New Jersey that was exotic the way a coastal elite finds the plains of Nebraska or the hokey down-homeyness of rural North Carolina exotic—for its “otherness.” From the wooden dock, I could see white houses dotting the water, surrounded by a mountain of green, as if the lake itself were an in-ground pool protected by a fence of trees.

  “Remember to kiss your aunts and shake your uncles’ hands, and look them in the eye, capish?” (Translation: understand? Got it?)

  I did shake a few uncles’ hands and kiss a couple of aunts, but I had to piss like a racehorse (the newest phrase Karl and George were saying) and rushed into the bathroom without completing the entire Ferraro roster. A lavatorial couplet was written in red Sharpie and taped to the wall next to the toilet. It read: If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.

  Knocks berated the door. “Hey Vic! Hurry up, we want to get a Wiffle ball game going!” yelled my cousin Luke.

  I left the bathroom, crossed the dining room, and with an earsplitting white-metal screech, slid open the screen door that led to the wood patio overlooking the lush lawn. Luke was already taking cuts with the hollow yellow bat that was forever associated with summers and lemonade and such lush lawns as ours. At only five, Luke could already hit the Swiss-cheesed Wiffle ball clear over the studded rock wall we designated as a home run. I couldn’t clear the wall until last Fourth of July weekend, exactly a year ago.

  I could see Britney down by the dock, clutching Marlene. She was always so excited to see our cousins, but they ignored her—at least the girls did. I would hear my mom say things like “It breaks my heart” and “Why do they have to be so cruel?” during the car rides home, as I was pretending to be asleep.

  So I participated in the damn Wiffle ball game and was actually having myself quite a day (three for four with two doubles and two RBIs—I promise I can hit a home run) until a line drive smacked my cousin Derek in the cheek. I didn’t see it from the outfield, but I could hear that plastic-on-skin pop! He only started to cry when the armada of aunts descended from the porch to tend to his abrasion.

  We broke for dinner, which for some reason was always in the middle of the day, closer to when the Geigers had lunch. I brought my plate to Nana, who commented on how fast I run as she filled my plate with baked cannelloni that were so big I could wear them as gauntlets around my forearms.

  I joined my cousins on the back deck, where we sat, segregated by gender, at long weather-beaten tables that reminded me of something medieval. I attempted to join a conversation that my brother was having with my cousin Markey, but I was denied entrance by the two words that had haunted me during my youth: “double digits.”

  Tony and George had formed a highly selective, masonically secretive club that for admission required the member to obtain at least ten years of age. Being only eight, I was shoved to the margins of their conversations and locked out of the SEGA room on multiple occasions. I yearned for the age of ten like one yearns for seventeen (driving age in New Jersey) or twenty-one (Sambuca). And now it appeared that my cousin Markey, having reached the requisite age and enduring whatever cryptic rituals had been imposed on him by the older brothers of the world, was an active member of the eternal rite.

  I looked down the banquet table and saw Britney scraping the sauce off her cannelloni with a plastic fork. Nana, who was hard of hearing and plopped the pasta onto our plates like soldiers in the mess hall, must not’ve heard Britney’s timid objection to the thick red gravy.

  I got up and carried my plate down the table. “Hey Luke, could you switch seats with me real quick? I want to sit next to Britney.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Hey Brit, do you want this one? It only has a little sauce on it.”

  “Okay. Thank… thank you, Victor.”

  “Hey guys,” I said to my cousins Melissa and Marissa. They weren’t sisters, but they were chronically attached at the hip during family gatherings and could’ve passed for twins. “Have you seen Mulan? It’s one of Britney’s favorites, right, Brit?”

  “Yeah! I like it when… when… Mulan…” The girls crossed their arms, waiting for Britney to spit it out so they could carry on with their conversation. “… when she... she cuts her hair off and becomes a boy.”

  “Mhmm,” said Marissa.

  “Uh huh,” said Melissa.

  “What’s… What is… Do you have a favorite part?” Britney said, speeding up her question.

  “We’re a little old for Mulan,” said Melissa.

  They were the same age as B
ritney.

  “It looked stupid to me,” said Marissa.

  And they turned back to each other and continued their conversation.

  “Hey Brit, I like that part too.”

  “Yeah, Victor?”

  “Yeah, but I like the Mongols.”

  “The Mongols? But… but they’re bad!”

  “I know! But they’re the best warriors. Hi-ya! Hi-ya, ya!” I sliced through the air with my plastic knife as Britney laughed.

  I turned to my cousins Rookie, Luke, and Junior—who, like me, were stuck flailing in our youth and not permitted into double-digit conversations—and asked if they knew that King Arthur was gay. I didn’t have energy to explain to them what gay was, and Karl wasn’t there to fill in any gaps I might leave, so I performed a full rendition of the melee between King Arthur and the Black Knight right there on the deck.

  After I was finished clunking two crumbling Italian bread crusts together as coconut halves, I plopped back onto the wooden bench and sopped up the remaining sauce and cheese by scooping the hunk around the lining of the bowl. Even at a young age, I had indulged in the invigorating act of fare la scarpetta (translation: to scrape up the remaining contents of a bowl with a piece of bread). There was a frisson of pure joy that accompanied whirling the flaky crust around the edge of the bowl until it turned a bright red that not even the enchanting home screen greeting of my SEGA Genesis could duplicate.

  I watched through the sliding screen door as my father and papa walked across the living room and down the basement steps. I had long wondered what was in the lake house basement but had always been too terrified to venture into the deep unknown on my own. Perhaps it was the courage I had gained from witnessing the Black and White Knight’s heroism in the arena, or perhaps it was my exclusion from the tantalizing double-digit conversations, but I decided that day would be the day I descended into the darkness.

  I scarfed down the rest of the bread and slid open the screen door before I finished chewing. I trailed them down the steps and reached the dusty, dank cellar, home to tools and fishing rods and plenty of spider webs that reminded me of an expansive dungeon or doomsday bunker. I followed what I assumed to be my father’s voice, but it was so distant it seemed to be receding, even past the confines of the house as if the cellar were an underground tunnel—similar to a project Karl and I had been concocting to connect our two houses.