Talking Story 
by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V19, #25 (June 30, 2009), page 7.

So reads a sticker, yellow as an emergency, slapped to the sides of sidewalk newspaper boxes and the backs of aluminum traffic signs on the east side of town. Our town. Our Portland.

I don’t know the name of the guy sticking them there. I can’t say what he looks like. But at times like this, on sidewalks like that, I drift back to not so long ago, to Salem’s Civic Center. It was a sunny day.

Some men, white men in brown shirts with Nazi armbands and bad hair were gathering nervously around city hall’s concrete flower tubs — red azalea exploding all over the place.

We walked by them. "N*gger lover," one of them said to our kids’ white mom. His eyes shifted left-right, left-right — checking whether he’d said it loud enough for his buds to hear. Or not.

I thought not.

I think he thought not too. So, I think he was winding up for another big move under Oregon’s heavenly summer sun, but when his look returned to me, when his eyes and mine met a second, met alone, he paused. And inside that slim moment, I think he decided against talking stupid again. I think he decided we knew each other. I can’t know that for sure, though.

I think I might’ve known him too. Maybe. It was his eyes. So familiar.

Sure, his face may’ve widened and sagged and his shape meloned and sogged, but I was pretty certain those sleepy peepers were "Treetop" Tommy Holdendorf’s eyes. And then there was that odd, that big smile.

Tommy, I whispered to me.

Tommy Holdendorf. He lived just two blocks over from our house. Just Tommy and his ma and two brothers. We never saw their pa, we never asked about him, but we did ask Tommy out for touch football at the turnaround — about 40 yards of gravel, hard dirt, and tough grass, ending at the Twin Trees.

Tommy could catch anything, anywhere near his long-long outstretched arms. He was not smart with books, not good with girls, not notable for a lot, but Tommy’s hands were big as Samoan royalty’s. Sticky as Velcro.

Tommy Holdendorf always had a place on our side (split end). He always had a position on our softball team too (right field) — he’d catch every pop fly with those hands. Bare hands.

We left that kid behind. Yes we did. I mean, street football and sandlot softball get forgotten when boys hit early teens. Abandoned for girls, for JV sports, for hanging out with a crew way different from when you’re younger, more playful, and less discriminating about who you’re seen with.

Some neighborhood guys went off with our school’s brainiacs, some went with the jocks, some ducked every afternoon under hoods of Chargers, Mustangs, and Tempests hopped up and driven low.

Nobody took Tommy along.

What Tommy Treetop then did after school, I cannot say. I can say for sure that I never hung with him again. I never said another word to him. To Tommy.

I’d see him around Frank Waters. Frank was big. He had big teeth, like a horse. He had straight blonde bangs. Frank Waters was violent and cruel. He enjoyed hurting younger and smaller kids. And Tommy’d be standing there. Leaning his long-long frame there, smiling. Smiling that Tommy Holdendorf smile.

He always wore that smile. It was a grin not actually connected to anything or anyone. It was kind of like Tommy: Not really at home. No place to be. Having no meaning. Tommy was always just lanking around, tall and smiling on his front porch or against his hall locker. Only waaay out in right field that smile meant something. Meant someone.

The last time I recall seeing Treetop Tommy, he was wearing his irrelevant, vacant, stuck smile. Mr. Flanders, our gym teacher, was running hard at Tommy, shouting "GET TO THE SHOWERS NOW." He shoved Tommy real bad, bending his back like a rice reed. Tommy didn’t run to the showers, he just lanked like Tommy always did.

Mr. Flanders got furious and roared down on him again, slamming him again. "I SAID GET IN THE SHOWERS." Tommy bent backwards like a reed in a storm. But Tommy didn’t run. He smiled that absent-Tommy smile. Like he always did.

Like I was saying, I don’t know who stuck those bright yellow stickers here and there in Portland’s eastside. I don’t know what he looks like. Or how his life is. But words like that on sidewalks like those, bring back me and Treetop Tommy.

Little Tommy parked alone on his porch; the kid smiling absently against his locker; but also that galloping boy totally tuned in while we held our breaths, while one of my big brother Robbie’s long-long bombs spiralled perfectly and arched beautifully and homed amazingly into Tommy’s outstretched arms. Ev-ver-ry single time.

And stickers like those bring back that slim moment at Salem’s Civic Center, when that familiar man’s eyes and mine met, and I paused, and he decided against talking stupid.

"Yes," I said soft to this tall-tall guy in his Brown Shirt and Nazi armband. "Yes Tommy. She loves me." And he stepped back and leaned back against his cool concrete wall.

And smiled his faraway smile.