Peter and Veronica

Friday afternoon. No Hebrew School. He could do what he liked today. Peter dropped his books on his bed, grabbed his roller skates, and was out of the house before his mother could ask him where he was going.

Outside, he sat down on the stoop, quickly strapped on his skates, and skimmed off down the street. Funny how he hadn’t skated for years until a few weeks ago. Whether it was his friend who had decided to start skating again or whether it was his idea, he couldn’t actually remember. But now the two of them skated almost any free afternoon they had, which wasn’t much these days what with
cheder
every day after school except Friday.

Peter zipped around the corner at Boston Road and began picking up speed.

“Hey, Peter! Wait up, Peter!” somebody shouted.

Reluctantly Peter allowed his skates to decelerate and looked behind him. “Oh hi, Marv,” he said, as Marvin Green lumbered up to him, dragging a long piece of galvanized pipe behind him. “Whatcha got?”

Marv’s face was rapturous. “Look,” he said, “it’s got a valve on it—and it was lying right out on the lot next to the grocery store.”

“Mmm,” Peter said approvingly.

“Where are you going now?” Marv asked. “Do you want to come home with me and work on the shack?”

“I can’t,” said Peter. “I’m going skating with another friend. How about Sunday? You going to be working on it Sunday?”

“I guess so.”

“Good! I’ll see you then.”

Marv patted the pipe lovingly and said, “Don’t come too early. My father has to sleep.”

“O.K., I’ll be there about nine.” He nodded to Marv and began moving off. A short thrust with his right foot, a long swoop with his left, and the wind came stronger and stronger in his face as he zoomed along. He had to slow down to cross the street, but on the block where his friend lived, he went whizzing along down to the last house on the corner.

Nobody on the stoop, so he climbed up the steps on his skates, holding his arms out on either side of him. He didn’t even have to hold on any more. Into the vestibule he clattered and rang the bell marked R. PETRONSKI-4D with their prearranged signal, “DA DA-DA-DA DA ...” And in a second came the answering buzz, “DUM, DUM.”

Peter moved outside on the stoop to wait. After a few minutes he became impatient, and was just going to go back inside the vestibule and ring the bell again, when he heard a window opening overhead. He looked up and saw it was the right window, three stories above his head.

“What’s keeping you?” he shouted.

A small hand holding a paper bag emerged from the window. The bag dropped. Peter lurched to the other side of the stoop and the bag whizzed by his head, plopped on the ground, ripped open, and a geyser of water erupted from its insides.

There was the sound of a happy laugh, then a howl, then the window being banged closed.

Peter inched nervously around the remains of the bag, hurried down the stairs (holding on), and stood waiting uncertainly by the curb. After a few more minutes, the vestibule door opened and Peter’s friend came hurrying out.

“That rotten kid,” she said. “He’s jealous.”

“Hi, Veronica,” Peter said. “Was that Stanley?”

“Who else?” said Veronica, her eyes narrowing. “I fixed him though, but let’s go before he comes after me. It won’t hurt him to stay with Mary Rose for a change. Come on, hurry up!”

Veronica, holding her skates, began running down the block and Peter skated quickly behind her. They both could hear the window opening again, and a voice full of anguish cry, “Veronica, Veronica! Take me too! Veronica, Veronica ...”

Peter could see Veronica’s shoulders quivering but she ran faster, and he skated faster, around the corner, across the street, down another block, around another corner, until the tormented voice could no longer be heard.

“Phew!” Peter gasped when they finally stopped. “What a pest that kid is!”

Veronica’s chest was heaving, and she sat down on the curb and laid her skates down at her side.

“He keeps sticking his tongue out at me,” Peter complained, “and last week he threw a banana at me. What did I ever do to him?”

Veronica began strapping her skates on. “Never mind that,” she said. “You don’t have to live with him.”

“I’d kill myself if I did,” said Peter.

Veronica finished with one foot and began strapping on the other skate.

“Every time he sees me he says, ‘Yah, Yah, Yah’ to me. What’s biting him? And why doesn’t he wipe his nose?”

“Listen,” Veronica shouted, looking up at him, her eyes blazing, “you leave him alone. He’s only five, and ... you just ... don’t make fun of him.”

“Are you crazy?” Peter yelled back. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

Veronica shrugged her shoulders, finished strapping on her skate, and stood up. She was at least a head taller than Peter, and for a minute the two of them stood looking at each other, waiting. Then Veronica smiled. “Let’s go,” she said.

And that was that. One thing about Veronica, Peter reflected as the two of them whizzed off down the street in the direction of the big outdoor market place that lay at the bottom of the hill, you never had to waste time talking about where you were going or what you were going to do—you just went and did. Right now, for instance, there were any number of places they might have considered. They could have turned left and headed for the park, or right and whizzed down the broad, flat steppes of Prospect Avenue, or even back toward Boston Road and into the hill country. But somehow, without any discussion, here were the two of them, completely in accord, flying down Jennings Street to the market.

Veronica moved out in front. With her long legs she generally took the lead, disappearing from time to time but always reappearing at critical moments. Right now there was something lying on the ground in front of her, and Peter saw her body move into a crouch as she held out her arms and jumped cleanly over the obstruction. He braced himself, knowing that as good a skater as he might be, he was still not in the same league as Veronica. The obstruction turned out to be a child’s truck, and he concentrated on it nervously as he zoomed closer. Now! Peter flexed his muscles, held out his arms, leaped, and landed safely upright. A little wobbly, perhaps, but he’d done it.

Ahead of him, he saw Veronica race toward two girls walking together, laughed as he watched them spring apart, and called out, “Hi, Reba, Hi, Edna,” as he followed in the path Veronica had blazed for him between the two of them.

“You crazy or something, Peter Wedemeyer!” Edna shouted, and Reba began giggling. Reba had a way of giggling lately whenever she saw him with Veronica that irritated him, and he began wobbling. Muttering under his breath about fat girls who giggled, he held out both arms to steady himself, and kept his eyes on Veronica. The hill grew steep now, and he felt his knees quivering, while ahead of him Veronica nervelessly sailed down on one leg.

Down at the bottom finally, he looked around for her. There were so many people, mostly women with shopping bags and young children. Across from where he was standing lay the market place with all its outdoor stands and its mingled aromas of pickles, bread, smoked fish, and honey. He sniffed the air hungrily, as he always did down here, and fingered the empty pockets of his jacket.

“Hey, Peter! Here, Peter!” Veronica yelled. She had already crossed the street and was beckoning to him from the other side. He skated toward her, moving through the crowd of shoppers.

“You have any money?” she asked.

“No! You?”

“No.”

Slowly they skated along the street, stopping to salivate over trays of halvah, sesame candies, nuts, pickles, and all the fragrant dainties that lay on top of the numerous stands. The peddlers’ voices mingled with their cries of “Three for a nickel,” “Two for a penny,” “Fresh ... fresh ... fresh,” and the answering retorts of the shoppers, “I won’t give you a penny over a nickel,” or “You crook, you, the nuts are all rotten!”

Peter was dreamily sniffing the air over a barrel of sour pickles when Veronica pressed something into his hand. It was a strip of shoe-leather candy, and she was licking away at another one. Startled, Peter looked back at the candy stand that he’d passed a short while ago and then into Veronica’s face. She smiled innocently at him but tugged at his jacket as she moved them both along into safer territory.

Well, well, he was never sure what to do when Veronica went foraging, but the candy lay enticingly in his hand with its sour-sweet apricot smell, so he licked at it guiltily at first, then took a joyful chew, and hurried along a little faster.

At the corner, they turned and began skating in earnest under the shade of the elevated train up above. There was a trolley ahead of them, and Veronica motioned with her head as her skates began gathering speed. The trolley stopped, people got off and on, and breathlessly, they reached it just as it began moving again. Veronica held on to the back of the trolley with one hand and continued holding her candy with the other. But Peter let his drop, as he held on with both hands. This was only the second time he’d hooked onto the outside of a trolley, and all the warnings and dire prophecies of grownups through all his twelve years about what happened to children who snuck rides on the backs of trolleys still clamored at him from inside his brain.

The trolley jerked to a start and yanked them along over the cobblestone streets, faster, faster, faster. It was horrible, terrifying, glorious. Veronica sang, “Over hill, over dale, as we hit the dusty trail.” His eyes were glued to the back of the trolley. He was afraid to look at her, but her voice was reassuring, and he laughed a short, hysterical laugh and then concentrated on holding on as hard as he could.

They had been friends for only a few months. Before that, they were enemies. That was back in P. S. 63 when they were both in eighth grade. He had just moved into the neighborhood and found Veronica in his class. The biggest bully in the world, the other kids told him, bigger, stronger, fiercer than anybody else. She’d beat anybody up for nothing, they said, and nobody yet had been able to stop her. Well, he’d stopped her all right. He’d teased her and made up funny jingles about her, and she’d chased him for weeks until he got a couple of other boys to help beat her up. And that’s how the friendship began. Because after it was all over, he knew he had done a terrible thing, the worst thing he’d ever done in his whole life. He’d ganged up on one person, and that person a girl too. So he’d apologized and offered to let her smack him. And she stood there with her fists clenched, towering over him. And at first she looked like she was going to hit him, and then she looked like she was going to cry, and then she started laughing, and all of a sudden, they were friends.

The trolley jerked to a stop, and Peter and Veronica let go, moving back a few feet, just in case the driver decided to come out and have a look. More passengers got on and off, the bell clanged, and they were off again. Above them, the elevated trains screeched along, and beneath them, the ground flew out from under their skates.

After a while, the trolley stopped suddenly in the middle of the street and Veronica yelled, “Let’s go!” They began racing off as they heard the driver’s footsteps and his shouts behind them. Down a side street, around a corner, along another street they sped. Breathlessly, Peter raced after Veronica, the wind hitting his face so hard that he had to gasp for breath, swallowing painful, icy patches of air.

There was a pain in his throat that brought whirling lights to his eyes, and he headed into a lamppost, catching it with both arms and curling around it and around it and around it, until it held him finally, gasping but at rest.

She came back and circled him. “Gee, that was great!” she said.

Peter moved over, and she came and leaned with him against the post. They looked at each other and began laughing. She pushed him. He tottered but did not fall. He butted her and down she went, still laughing.

They sat for a few moments on the curb, their feet motionless and heavy.

Peter looked around him and said tentatively, “Say, I know where we are.”

“Where?”

“My Uncle Jake’s store is around here someplace. Come on!”

He got up and began skating, and Veronica followed. It was cold and beginning to darken. The lights went on, and Peter shivered and knew it was time to go home.

“I gotta go home,” Veronica shouted, and Peter cried, “O.K., but let’s just find my uncle’s store.”

They found it, a few blocks down. It was a little store, and outside on the glass pane it said, JAKE’S KNISHES.

“Come on, let’s go in,” Peter said. He opened the door, and the warm fragrance of steam heat and knishes felt like the promised land.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Veronica said.

“Oh, come on,” Peter said, grabbing her hand and pulling her along with him.

A small man at the counter looked up and smiled. “Peter,” he cried. “Hello, Peter.”

“Hello, Uncle Jake,” Peter said. He let go of Veronica’s hand and skated up to the counter.