He lived on the bottom floor of the two family house we lived in on Hotchkiss
Street. We didn’t know the family very well and I don’t think I ever saw Buddy’s father. He had an older brother, Wayne and two older sisters, Alice and Naomi. By the way, Alice was a beauty and I swear to God, Buddy had green teeth.
I did not like him from the moment I saw him. He always had a scowl on his face and he was a bully. He was always picking on the little kids in the neighborhood and I always stuck up for them. He was thirteen years old and in the sixth grade, I was ten and in the same grade. It was inevitable that there would be conflict.
Buddy was bigger than me but I was a lot smarter. I wasn’t afraid of him and he couldn’t figure that out. He bullied the other kids because he saw the fear in their eyes. I avoided him as much as possible because I did not want to fight. I didn’t believe in solving our differences by beating on each other.
Green Teeth? How does one get green teeth? This is the question I’ve been asking myself since I first laid eyes on those pearly greens. Does he swim in the ocean and filter algae through his teeth? Does he keep his mouth shut and allow mold and mildew to accumulate because of the intense humidity? Does he eat green paint? It was a result of very poor dental hygiene, I’m sure.
Strangely, no one really teased or taunted Buddy about his teeth which kids are wont to do. I can only attribute this to pure and simple fear.
The last time I saw Buddy was the day he broke his arm. It was a school day and I got home at around three o’clock to see a Police car parked in our driveway. This was a very big deal and I knew it had to have something to do with Buddy or his older brother Wayne. What I did not know was that it also involved my mother.
I raced up the back stairs and burst into the kitchen to the sight of my mother being comforted by the beautiful Alice and talking to two police officers, one of them writing things down in his notebook. As the scene was registering in my mind, I asked my mother, in Italian, “Ma, what happened?” She would not look at me and muttered under her breath, “Niente, niente, go do your homework?” I turned to one of the police officers with an expectant look and he said, “The kid with the green teeth pulled a knife on your mother and we think he ran away when we pulled into the driveway.”
Ran away? I knew exactly where he “ran away”. At the end of our street was City School Field the venue where the high school football games were played. The gate was padlocked but we kids had been climbing that fence for years so it wasn’t an obstacle. Our end of the field had a large storage building where all the sports equipment was kept. There were bleachers on both sides of the field and at the very top row of the eastern side there was a large press box. It was a very snug space where the neighborhood kids would often be found doing all kinds of things both marginally illicit and innocent. That’s where I was sure the knife wielding, green toothed Buddy was hiding. I ran all the way up to the top of the bleachers and tore open the door. Sure enough, there he was, sitting on the floor in the far corner.
He squinted at me, shielding his eyes from the sudden stab of daylight. He slowly rose to his feet and I said, “I’m going to kick the s__t out of you!” I advanced into the room with my fists clenched when Buddy smiled his oddly colorful smile and said, “Ya’ gotta catch me first.” He took two steps to his right and jumped, head first, through the opening that the sports writer and the announcer used to watch the football games. I knew he was going to hurt himself because the bleachers were built into the side of a hill and there were no soft landing places. I heard a blood curdling scream and I rushed out of the press box to see Buddy cradling his left arm and moaning in pain. His arm was broken and a bone was protruding from his upper arm. His face was a mess and at least two of his moldy teeth were missing. I said, “Wait here, I’ll go get some help.” I rushed home hoping that the police were still there. They were getting into the squad car as I arrived at my house and I breathlessly told them what had happened. They called and requested an ambulance as well as a Parks and Recreation employee to bring the key for the gate. Buddy was taken to the hospital that day and that was the last time I saw him.
Two days later, Alice pulled up in front of the house with a pick up truck and Wayne and his sisters began to move all their belongings out and into the truck. I never saw any of them again. I heard that they had moved back to Maine. Over the next few months the gossip in the neighborhood was that a certain young man had thrown Buddy Green Teeth through that opening in the press box because Buddy had threatened his mother with a knife. I swear, I had nothing to do with it! He jumped.