The Riviera motel had one of the great signs of all time; a waterfall of flashing neon, plunging into the asphalt pool of Route 4, just over George Washington Bridge.
“Hey, we’re gonna drop you guys right here cause we’re getting on 95.” That was the driver. They pulled over to the shoulder.
The one riding shotgun turned to us, and said with great sincerity, “Call your folks on that payphone and tell them to come get you. If you can get across the highway, go wait at that motel, but only cross if it’s safe.” He would make a fine father some day. “You guys are cool, really cool. We’re sorry we didn’t smoke weed with you, but we just didn’t think that it was right.” True stoners. Five hours had passed, and they were still thinking about not getting us high.
“You guys are cool. You’re young, but you’re cool. Glad it was us who stopped for you, not someone else.” That was the driver. Then he added, “Be safe out there.”
“Yeah, be safe.” They were very big on the safety all of a sudden. I guess after five and a half hours of frozen car travel genuine bonds had been formed.
We got out on the eastbound side of Route 4, and watched them roll off toward the Everglades. It was about 11:00 at night, and cold, and the relentless sound of cars whipping by at high speed made things extremely real. The whole thing was catching up to us now. Our intense desire to take a stand had allowed us to conduct ourselves as if we were 16 or 17, not 13, but now the carriage had turned back into a pumpkin, and we were just a couple of lost little kids out in the big bad nighttime world. There was nothing to do but call our mommy and daddy.
We walked along the shoulder to a payphone. It was a Ma Bell rotary special. I must have somehow known how to call collect, though I don’t think I had ever done it before, and surely not as a fugitive.
My mother answered the phone. I could hear the relief and hysteria in her voice as she accepted the charges for a “collect call from Tom.” She didn’t say “Hello” or “Are you okay?” or even “Where are you?” The first words out of her mouth were, “Oh my god, I thought this was going to be the longest night of my life.”
Turned out the school had just called five minutes before, alerting both the Swerdlows and Petroskys that their boys could no longer be accounted for and where they were was anyone’s guess. I called almost immediately after. I didn’t even give her a chance to play the role of the hysterical mother sitting by the phone. She wouldn’t have done it well anyway and always liked to tell the story of how when I had gotten unbelievably sick in Paris at the age of two and they were deciding whether I needed to go to the hospital she had asked the doctor if maybe he had something for her, as my illness was making her very “anxious.” The French doc laid some pill on her. 45 minutes later she decided I was looking much, much better, and off to Chanel where she bought an entire new 1964 super-chic wardrobe. She considered that story a charming anecdote.
When my dad got on the phone he was subdued and all he wanted to know was where he should come get us. See, he had a stake in fetching Petrosky as well, because out of sheer coincidence my dad sold ripstop nylon to Petrosky’s dad, so they knew each other. My dad was 56 in ’75 and though he had had Parkinson’s for a few years at that point he was still pretty functional. We told him we would be waiting in front of the Riviera Motel on Route 4 just across the George Washington Bridge, and he was on his way.
Now, all we had to do was make it across the highway, which we somehow did like a couple of startled deer, skittering across the pavement, dancing between roaring tractor-trailers and jumping the guard rail. We plopped down on the motel steps, the big neon Riviera sign dropping red and gold bombs on our heads.
An hour later my dad pulled up in his tan BMW 2002. He had that look on his face he got when things were supposed to be serious, but he couldn’t quite pull it off. “You guys got here quick,” he said, the slight trace of a smile in his eyes. We got in the car, turned around and back across the bridge we went, through the Bronx and then past LaGuardia, off to the safe haven of Great Neck, which, as reported earlier, I had fled a year before for the frozen north.
As we drove along the Cross Island Parkway, I wondered what was happening back in Lake Placid. Had word of our exploits spread, or were we just missing in action with no explanation? And how about Marchesi, what was he thinking? Was he reveling in his role as catalyst for this unfolding drama?
If word had gotten out it must have had everyone talking, as no one had ever tried to run away at least since I had been there, nor were there tales of anyone having done it in the years before. And North Country had had some very twisted little genius-maniacs pass through its barnyard gates. But not even the great Jon Chartier, black-jean-wearing, Cuban boy-man of mayhem, had made a run for it. Not even Jon Chartier, who we swore could beat up half the teachers and whose accents and eyebrows alone could keep a 12-year-old in hysterics for six straight hours.
And what about Chuck Sherwin? Was he concerned for my safety? Chuck was my current house-dad, as I had moved from Tower House to Glass House for my senior year. Chuck was a good guy and an aspiring jazz fan, so we bonded over that, but most of all he was my basketball coach, and a fellow New York Hebrew who really looked the part. It was good to have a few New York type faces as an anchor and point of cultural reference, because it could get real Christian up there with the fish on Fridays and the mince-meat pie and the full-on Yule log Christmas where we ate the geese we raised and slaughtered ourselves. And let me tell you, if you’ve never stunned a giant, hissing goose with a blackjack crack to the bird-skull just before Harry Knapp expertly slits its throat, then you haven’t lived. You haven’t lived until you and Preston Maybank and Serge Harnett have held on for dear life to the massive, white and powerful wings of a just-murdered goose, their involuntary freak out death-convulsions covering you in a thick snow of blood-spattered down. And speaking of the mighty Harry Knapp, what was he thinking? Was he in his office working the phones, agonizing over a potential disaster complete with press coverage and lawsuits? Or was he at home in Meadow House calm as could be, laughing with his gorgeous daughters? One thing was for sure, he wasn’t lost in a moment of self-reflection, questioning the merits of corporal punishment.
I don’t really remember anything about that night in Great Neck, except that Petrosky called his folks from our kitchen, and that for some reason my parents had a Dutch apple pie, which was very strange because we were not a pie family. There was no big parental talk, no anger, no threats of punishment. Just relief. Just parents glad their kids were alive and not somewhere dead in a ditch. Even the great and relentlessly opinionated Amy Swerdlow had been too exhausted by her brief terror to lay any kind of trip on me and I remember no severe attitude, violent screaming, or memorable quotes. My father, as usual, looked at me with a combination of confusion, amazement and respect. Maybe he was pissed and worried by all the trouble I made, but he seemed to enjoy it more than anything else.
Me and Petrosky slept that night in the twin beds in my bedroom on the second floor, which had a blue crystal radio set in the window like I was a real American kid and not a troubled runaway or run back to in this case.
There was the long bus ride back tomorrow, and of course the wildcard unknown of Harry K. and whatever he had planned for our return. Would he go full Cool Hand Luke and put us in the sweat box? Would he give us barn chores for eternity, putting us on beef cattle duty until our fingers bled from hauling hay? Would he pull me off the basketball team, my only true happiness, and force me into a life of indentured servitude and cross-country skiing? Would he send us out into the frozen Adirondack wilderness with nothing but a compass, a copy of Horatio Alger, and an orange box of Gumpert’s dehydrated soup mix? The possibilities were daunting, and we were both still a little shell-shocked from having pulled this caper off. I mean, we had traveled the entire length of New York state with no adult assistance, and in doing so learned that with the right amount of moxie, balls and desperation a man can accomplish astounding things.
The next day my dad took us to the bus, which left around noon. We had Nedick’s hot dogs and orange drinks in the strange subterranean-death-mall that was the mid-’70s New York Port Authority. God, I loved Nedick’s. Every time I would go to work with my dad in the city, which was maybe three times in 13 years, we would hit the Nedick’s on the corner near his office, and the place just thrilled me. The hot dogs browning on that stainless steel log-rolling hot dog grill, and the neon-bright orange drink (for which they were famous) shooting around like jet fuel in that big space-age bug juice dispenser. The fabulous Nedick’s logo all blissed-out and winking at you in his green elf suit, a giant orange for a head. And those top-sliced, buttery-buttered buns that got all toasty on the sides. But what I liked best about it was the people—city people, all in a rush, all with a story, all with heavy burdens and serious shit on their minds.
We got on the bus, a gleaming Continental Trailways with a big flat face. Usually, when you took the bus to North Country, it was a chartered deal that loaded on the east side by the Waldorf Astoria, but it was just two of us this time and we were on the real bus with the somewhat sketchy adult non-car-owners of the world. Bus travel was okay but it always made me sad. Your whole life going by out the window like that. Having to face how big the world was and how much of it you would never be a part of. It sure as hell wasn’t as good as the trip down. No smell of pine trees and cheap marijuana, no big platter of club sandwiches. We were used to improvised, on the lam, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants fugitive action. Now, we were back in the regular world with everyone else.
I don’t remember either of us talking to the bus driver but we must have, because he let us off right at the school. Just pulled over to the side of Route 73, as if we had yanked the cord that rang the bell on the M104 that goes up and down Broadway. And off we got in the cold December darkness, stepping off the open highway we had stepped out onto 24 hours before. We were back at the big house.
We walked down the dirt road, past the barn, the pigs squealing over the last of their slop, and then down the long, frozen straightaway where Jon Morgan gunned his country-boy pickup, and a right turn at the big, square, winter-dead vegetable garden where black kale was grown 40 years ahead of its time-- And then, like a sign of life on a distant hill, the lights of the dining room came into view above the duck pond. It was dinnertime and they were all in there, eating home-grown pork or maybe “snowball casserole” if they were lucky. And on we walked, toward whatever was waiting, the black shadow-ghost mountains watching over our every step.
We heard them before we saw them, heard the sound of a hundred kids eating supper—conversation and nonsense, silverware clinking on plates. Many (surrogate) families eating, one big family eating. It sounded like music. And then we stepped over the threshold of those open double doors and all the music stopped. It wasn’t all at once, but a quick but gradual silence. It took exactly as much time as it takes for one person to notice something, then several people more, and then everyone else just feels it and within about 15 seconds people were no longer doing what they had been doing. And with all eyes on us, Petrosky and I traipsed on in and sat down at our respective tables as if it were no big deal. And that would have been that. Except that as we sat down, Eric Lindquist stood up.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, Eric Lindquist was my best friend. We had started to get close the year before, but our senior year we were really tight and one of the things we were tight over was Bob Dylan. Now, you got to remember that this was 1975, and Dylan was 34, and had just come out with Blood on The Tracks and Desire in the last 2 years. We’d go up to Eric’s room in Cascade House, put Desire on his cheap-ass stereo, and play it till the grooves came off. We knew every word to “Hurricane.” “Remember that murder that happened in a bar/Remember you said you saw the getaway car/Think you wanna play ball with the law/Think it might have been that fighter that you saw, running that night/Don’t forget that you are whiiiiiiite!” We loved that shit, and had been turned on to it the year before by our beloved English teacher, Norman
Norman Hindley was all man. He may have taught English, but he wasn’t no soapy sensitivo like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. He was serving up Hemingway and Bukowski, and started a boxing club in his living room, and would drive us into town with him when he ran errands, then take us with him into this dump of a hick-tavern with old snow-shoes on the wall, and he’d walk up to the bar, slam down his fist and roar, “TWO SHOTS OF THE BIRD, AND AS LITTLE BUSLLSHIT AS POSSIBLE!” And they’d pour him a double Wild Turkey, and he’d knock it back with force, blow out a booming exhale and say “FUCK YES!” And then he’d laugh from the bottom of his balls, wipe his mustache with the back of his hand, drop three bucks on the bar, pivot on his big, Frye boot heel, and stride on out with us in tow. God, he was the best, and had come to North Country from his little “grass shack” on Molokai, where he said there was a leper colony. Norman was obsessed with Dylan and King Curtis, and on weekend afternoons we’d all go up to Mountain House, listen to his records and knock each other senseless with giant, oversized gloves.
Eric was cool and from a whole other world than I was. The very reasons he was wrong for the runaway caper were the same reasons he was right for everything else. He was smart and thoughtful, and whereas I was fierce and delicate and showed everything I was feeling, he let there be a little mystery to it. It was in his genes to just lay back a bit, but he could still convey more warmth with a smirk and a nod of his head than I ever could with all my carrying on. He was a good, calm, interesting dude, but sometimes even the well-adjusted are in need of a good extremist and he knew that when everything was on the line, which was quite often at a place like North Country, I was ready for action or whatever my idea of action was. And most of all, we made each other laugh, which for two 13-year-old boys is the deepest bond of all. And that’s why when Petrosky and I sat down, Eric Lindquist stood up, and with everyone’s eyes now on him, started clapping.
I remember the sound, the sound of hands coming together. Everyone was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, but he didn’t care. It was a classic revolutionary tactic—the public acknowledgement of a rebellious act as its own and separate rebellious act. Lindquist had gotten political. And as he stood there applauding you could feel the whole room look to Harry Knapp. But Harry just sat there. He didn’t do a thing. And then, instead of leaving Eric out there all on his own, Jon Amsterdam, lord of pancakes, decided to stand as well. And so now there were two of them. And then Tom “Tweiss” Weiss, math-god and chess expert, rose up as well, so there were three. And soon came Alex Tangalos and Peter Whalen and Willie Van Pelt, and then Gwen White stood up and Jessica Barnes and Yolanda Piston and Topher Barrett, Wing Biddle and George Walker, Avery Bross and Marta Strohl, even Bobby Hughes. Even Marchesi could not pass up his chance to be part of this.
Half the school was up on its feet, and now the younger kids started standing because the older kids were. Fourth-graders and fifth-graders rising up, nine- and ten-year-olds sent off to the frozen north, their welfare entrusted to the mad, blue-eyed Marine, even they were standing up and clapping, though they may not have known why.
But they did know why. Everybody knew why. It was because we had done it. Petrosky and I had somehow broken through. We had wandered into the deep, dark recesses of the sacred unknown, and were now back among them. We weren’t dead, we weren’t banished, we weren’t chained up in the dungeon with Roger Loud lashing our backs.
And now everyone was standing up, and for that one brief moment we were all connected by the same realization. And the realization was this: There is no need to be scared. The worst has already happened. Our parents don’t want us and have sent us away. There’s nothing else they can do to us.
Harry Knapp just sat there and smiled. He wasn’t threatened in the least. The truth was, we had been more faithful to the Harry K. doctrine by taking off than we ever could have been by following the rules. He hated rules, and conformity. He was the biggest rebel of all. He used to say that “a good Marine can pack in his back pocket,” and here we were, right in step, having gone on a 550-mile round trip with nothing but the coats on our backs. But as much as he was a rebel, he was still a Marine, and so as he rolled with this bit of anarchy, this improvised display of school spirit, his smile said, “Enjoy your moment while you can because I’m not going anywhere.” And when he got the chance to drop the hammer on me he did, the mercurial, twisted fuck. He was unstoppable, like no one I have ever met before or since and he’d still be slaughtering Christmas geese to this day, except a handful of years later old Harry K, having left the safe and familiar confines of his dear Adirondack Park had a massive heart attack while scaling the east peak of Coropuna in the Peruvian Andes, plummeting 17,000 feet to his perfect, glorious death.
Ah, what an ending. Among my favorite lines was when you were used to life on the lam, the pine and weed aroma, the sandwich platters, the anything-might-happen. I think it's one of the best things about being human--our capacity to give ourselves over that is. And Eric. Oh, to have friends who give us the reception we need. Thanks for sharing your Catcher, Tommy.
I’m remember Ezra saying you were like Lenin