A Story

When I was young, there was a fellow who wandered around the neighborhood. His name was Ricky, as the kids on my block told me. He was like 19 or so. Something was a bit amiss with Ricky. He always wore an army jacket, and he always had a VERY serious look on his face. He didn’t loiter. He kept walking around. Thank goodness.

When I think of him, I kind remember him like the bodyguard in My Bodyguard, not the Whitney Houston film The Bodyguard but the 1980 film with Matt Dillon and Martin Mull and Adam Baldwin as the bodyguard. I think mostly I remember him like that because the character in the film is also named Ricky and wore an army jacket, but that’s not where the similarities ended. Anyway, Ricky was more than a little off.

When he spoke, which I prayed with all of my might that he would not do when we crossed paths (usually along the four-block walk to and from my school bus stop), it was usually unintelligible. Way out there.

Stories about Ricky were wild, because... well, kids will believe just about anything. Honest to God, the story we heard most often was that Ricky lost his cool and picked up a car and threw it into the swamp that was adjacent to my route to said bus stop. Even then we said “No way,” but when we heard it was a small car, we thought “Maybe.” As we got older, we thought perhaps he’d driven a car into the swamp. Any way we sliced it, we were told to be afraid. And we were afraid.

I never asked my parents about Ricky, mainly because the less I thought about Ricky, the happier a childhood I would have. I felt bad for him. I mean the guy clearly had no family. I guess, well, none of my friends ever talked about them. Or where he lived. I suppose my parents could have proactively explained Ricky, assuming they knew the details, but maybe they didn’t want to give my clucking henhouse of a circle of friends any chicken feed. Or maybe the less they thought about Ricky, the more they could sleep as parents. There but for the grace of God and all that jazz.

In retrospect it makes me sad. (I’m making an assumption about Ricky now, based on what I saw and remember from 40 years ago, but I feel pretty sure.) I worked for a nonprofit serving people with disabilities for 8 years, and when I think of the monstrous stories about a monstrous character that we created and propagated, that makes me feel lousy. Obviously fear does that to people. You’re afraid of what’s different, and he was just different. Well, plus it’s legitimately scary to a kid when a cross between an old kid and a young adult is ambling around your block saying words that don’t compute... and you have a strong sense that it’s not one of those times when an older person says stuff you don't understand because they are older and smarter and wiser.

The neighborhood where I grew up, like that of many people I know, was a site of blissfully ignorant youth in an era when you said bye to Mom as you were pedaling away on a summer morning and returned to base only for sustenance or because the sun went down. Ricky represented an element that did not go with that grain. At my current age, I realize that this must have been hardest — by a Larchmont mile — for poor Ricky. At age 8, we felt a little sorry for him but were mostly scared. And we managed that fear with group therapy (groups of friends telling predominantly fabricated stories) and establishing a common enemy to help us cope. I’m glad that, for the most part, I no longer need to do this in my life.

Anyway, in the last years before I forgot about Ricky, either because he no longer came around or because in 7th grade we moved to a new neighborhood, Ricky took to carrying a bag with him. I guess you’d call it a satchel, though that word isn’t very Ricky. As you’d guess, that accoutrement to his ensemble, as the descriptors venture further and further away from apropos, was fuel for a whole new batch of red-hot fables from the Lords of Buckingham Avenue, or whatever we were calling ourselves that week. Front. Page. News.

Why did he always have the bag? What’s that about? Where did he get it? And of course, most importantly, what in the world was in it? Top answers on the board included “a gun,” “knives,” “nunchucks” (one of my friends thought nunchucks were the baddest-assed thing ever and mentioned them as often as he could), and, of course, “a human head.” One kid thought Ricky might have a jar with his own excrement in it. That kid always said stuff like that to elicit a group “ewwwww, sick!”

We never knew what Ricky had in his satchel. Maybe comic books. Maybe a list of grievances. Could’ve been a human head or a poop jar. Could’ve been anything. Could’ve been nothing. But I’ll tell you this: whatever the hell it was, you could prop it up on a TV-tray next to a podium and run it as Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential candidate and that ticket should beat Donald Trump. 100 times out of 100, Sleepy Joe and Ricky’s Bag should sweep Trump/Pence out of the Oval Office in an electoral bludgeoning that makes Fritz Mondale feel emboldened. That’s what should happen.

Given that it’s the Democratic Party, National chapter, in the United States of America orchestrating this, however, well... that clouds the issue. As my JV football line coach used to say, they could fuck up a wet dream.

That’s what I think.