Birdy

months.
    When we cranked her up, she made tremendous resonant, deep motor sounds; the whole garage vibrated. We rolled her out and drove her up and down the alley. Neither one of us had a driver’s license. The car wasn’t registered and didn’t have an inspection sticker. It was strictly illegal. We knew we had something valuable but we didn’t want to sell it. We loved that car.
    I used to dream about it; I still do sometimes. I dream we’re touring it through a beautiful warm landscape, maybe in some foreign country like France. There’s no billboards and the road is lined with trees and the fields are full of flowers.
    We decide to get it past the Pennsylvania state inspection and get it registered so we can have a license. My old man says he’ll take it down and go through the inspection for us. We’re tooyoung to own a car. The car gets passed and put in my old man’s name. I remember the license number: QRT 645.
    While Birdy is over at his place that spring, taking care of the birds, I’m either in the garage with the car or down in the cellar working out with weights. I can already press over a hundred fifty pounds. I’m working on muscle control, too. I can make a rope with my stomach and twist it from one side to the other. I keep asking Birdy to punch me hard in the stomach so he can test me, but he won’t do it.
    About two months after we have it registered and licensed, I go down to the garage after school to put on a new steering wheel cover. The car is gone! I’m sure somebody stole it! I run upstairs and the old man is sitting in the living room reading the paper. He sits there with his legs crossed. They’re so short and thick at the thigh that the leg on top sticks straight out. He’s wearing black low shoes and white silk socks. He has something against colored or woolen socks.
    ‘Somebody stole the car!’
    ‘Nobody stole it. I sold it.’
    He doesn’t even look up from the newspaper.
    ‘Aw, come on! Quit kidding! You didn’t sell it! Who’d you sell it to?’
    ‘Your Uncle Nicky came over with one of his “friends” and the friend wanted the car; he thought it’d be a real gag and offered me a C note. What’d ya think I’m gonna do anyhow; get myself in trouble over some junk heap of a car?’
    He looks up at me for the last part, then he turns his paper again, bangs on it to straighten it, and looks away. Uncle Nicky is my mother’s capo brother. I turn to her.
    ‘Is that really true? Did he actually sell our car to one of Uncle Nicky’s gangster friends?’
    My mother’s ironing in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. I don’t know why she always irons there. She couldn’t be more in the way. Come to think of it; I do know why. She wants to keep an eye on the cooking and at the same time be able to talk with the old man.
    She starts talking in Italian, actually in Credenzia, the Sicilian dialect. She always does this when she has something to say. It’s stupid because I understand everything she says. I can’t talk the stuff, but I understand. They know that. She tells my father to give me the money.
    ‘He don’t know what to do with no hundred dollars. He’ll just get in trouble again. I’ll put it in the bank. When he wants money he can ask me for it. I don’t want no more of this running away stuff.’
    He crosses his legs the other way at the same time he opens and closes the newspaper again. He reads a newspaper folded in quarters like he’s riding in a subway or something and doesn’t want to take up too much space.
    ‘Half of it isn’t even my money. Half of that car belongs to Birdy.’
    He doesn’t look up at me. My mother comes in from the ironing board.
    ‘Give him the money, Vittorio. It’s stealing to take somebody else’s money.’
    This is in Credenzia again. The old man looks up at my mother. He’s enjoying being the big shit.
    ‘I don’t have to give him or anybody nothin’. That car is mine; it’s in my name. I can sell it to anybody I want.’
    He pauses to let that sink in. Then he shifts his weight and pulls out his roll. He keeps his money like that, in a hard roll in his side pocket, big bills on top. He peels off five tens. He has that hundred dollar bill on the outside, but he pulls the tens off from underneath. He has a piece of elastic, not a rubber band, he keeps it wrapped in. It’s the kind of elastic my mother makes her garters with. He holds out the fifty bucks to me.
    ‘Here, give this to that