Johnny Mac
was fourteen carrot
Irish,
orange-red hair,
brown freckles.
Skin, scorched nearly pink,
by summers sun.

Five years older than me,
maybe more.
I would never know.
We could be buddies though,
because,
as my mother later whispered,
Johnny Mac was
“slow”.

Johnny and I were pals on City Island,
swimming summers away in Long Island Sound,
before the signs went up
forbidding the digging of clams.

Shaping igloo shelters
in the huge snow drifts,
burrowing beneath
canvas covered skiffs
stored in the boat yards
for the Winter
back then
when winds and snows
were winds and snows
and the salt water froze
two hundred feet
out from the shore,
sloped enough so,
if you had the guts,
you could sleigh ride
salty ice
until you prayed you could
stop.

And then,
again,
Summer.

Johnny and I
diving from my Dads
Pennant Sloop
moored at Grants Boat Club.

I,
maybe ten,
Johnny,
maybe fifteen,

would wrestle on the beach,
and I would lose,
and, in the Pennants little cabin
on hot afternoons,
with nothing else to do,
him touching me
in ways I
paint now with an
exploratory hue,

but back then,
who knew?

Until,
once,
in the water,
climbing on his back
as he
grasped the gunnels,
I felt,
something,
where I’d never felt
anything
like it before.
Not pain, surely,
but, a surging urge,
an ache.
And Johnny said,
“Hay!”
Then smiling,
kindly,
at me,
said,
“Get off’a me you monkey!”

And I did what I was told.

I began to make new buddies
who never knew Johnny,
as he faded from my life,
obscured by everything
he could not,
would never be able,
to do.
Football with the City Island Giants!
Methodist Youth Fellowship dances,
girls,
Christine,
Gayle,
Dorothy…
Learn enough to graduate from P.S.17,
bus off island to high school,
drive out of state to college,
to learn,
and,
women,
Susan,
Linda,
Autumn…

Once,
I drove back to City Island
to see Cross Street,
and Grants Boat Club,
to find, instead,
a row of town homes on the beach.
To stop at Johnny’s house.
To be surprised to see his father,

“Himself” we’d called him,

an old man by then,
seventy five,
eighty,
standing there,
half of him
hidden behind the door.

“What d’ya want?”

” Hi,” I said.
“I’m Kenny.
I was Johnny’s friend.
I used to live
down the street
by the water
in the house
that was white with red…”

“John is dead.”

Himself said.

“Two days after
his twenty-first birthday
it was…
I’d bought him his car,
him still living here,
he was.
Not much of a life.
No job.
I thought a car would help…
maybe it did,
in a way.”

Himself
began to cry.

“He crashed it into the concrete wall
at the end of Main Street.
Seventy-five miles an hour,
they say.
No skid marks.
Ejected.
Found him in the Sound,
they did.
I don’t remember you”

“Well,” I said.
“It was a long time ago.
Sorry about…
you know…
Johnny.”

“Take care of yourself,”
Himself said,
and shut the door.

And I did what I was told.