King of the Underworld Part Two

King of the Underworld Part Two

I'm in an alley a block from our old apartment house at 13th and Berks. It's like a scene from Alice in Wonderland. I've shrunk to the size of a rag doll. The rest of the world has expanded to its true proportions. Red brick three story row houses stretch out for block after block in every direction. Certain that the King's men are right behind me, I burst into a cold sweat. The alley, littered with over flowing brown bags, a summer's growth of weeds, and the stench of the season's garbage seems to go on forever and ever. "If only I can make it home. If only I can make it home..." I keep telling myself.

Around the corner, I find the empty lot where our apartment house once stood. Poking in the rubble, I search for a trace of something familiar. Footsteps sound in the alley. My heart beats faster and faster...

C.C. rushes at me and grabs my hand. I'm back to my normal size again. "Quick... Quick," he cries leading me to the flat green double doors that lead to the basement of our childhood home. "He'll never find us down here. We can hide behind the furnace," C.C. explains as he pulls on the iron handle. I hurry down the wooden steps as C.C. pauses to bolt the door behind us. Footsteps vibrate on the closed steel doors. Then, complete stillness.

A beam of light comes through a narrow casement window and falls on a short flight of concrete stairs that lead down to the front of the cellar. "What's that?" C.C. asks pointing to a dozen or more cardboard boxes stacked just a few feet from the furnace. A gigantic rat races across the boxes and dives for the floor. "We'd better get out'a here, Jackie. The King's men are long gone by now."

"No, we'd better not. If they catch us now, we might never escape again," I say and head for the stairs. C.C. follows a step or two behind. At the uneven stack of boxes, I brush off years of dust. Opening the closest one, I find that it is filled with faded photographs. Some, that I've seen copies of; my dad in his boxing trunks and gloves, my mother with pearls and sparkling teeth, C.C. and I in our Sunday school suits, grandmother and grandfather standing in an ancient doorway. Others that are new to me; aunts and uncles in stiff poses, and foreign looking people who I don't recognize. There are dozens and dozens of photographs; photos from the forties, the thirties, the twenties, the turn of the century.

I look more closely at my father's boxing picture, and see a muscular lightweight with straight black hair and a cocked left jab. On the front of the picture it reads, "Charley Daley, Coal Region Lightweight, Johnny 'Tex' Ballent, Mgr.” On the back it says, " Charles Daley, 1009 Brandywine Street, Philadelphia, Penna. Age 24 years. Weight 133 pounds. Height 5 ft. 6 in. Free to go any place in the World on a minutes notice."

As I hold my mother's picture to the light, I see short bobbed hair and a laughing face with all the energy of a twenties flapper. I remember my father saying that he wanted that picture buried with him when he dies. "It was jus' one of those unfortunate things, Jackie... Your mother and me. It wasn't anyone's fault. If you marry a beautiful woman who drinks you're in for a life full of suffering..." my father told me.

The next box is filled with newspaper clippings. "Coal region lightweight Charlie Daley fights in main event." "Daley wins in split decision." "Daley stops Machine Gun Thompson in fifth round." "Coal region lightweight puts fist through wall at local card room... "

The memory of a childhood rhyme rings inside my head; "Charlie is a boxer. Charlie is a bum. Charlie went in the kitchen and drank all the rum..." “He can't always help what he's doing. He took too many blows to the head," my mother told Uncle Lee... "You punch drunk God dammed Pollock," she shouted in the heat of an argument.

A third box contains letters, bankbooks, birth notices, and death certificates... I peek at a letter from my aunt Marian. It tells that my grandparents were born in Lithuania. How they migrated to Scotland. How my father was born there. How they scrimped and saved and finally made it to America. How my father changed his name from Sunelaitis to Daley when he turned professional. "Hundreds and hundreds of yesterdays... Our entire past is these boxes," I tell C.C.

"What's that noise?" C.C. asks in a frightened voice. "We shouldn't be down here going through his papers. If he catches us, again, we're in big trouble. Remember what happened when we took the orange soda out'a the landlord's ice box." A gnawing sound comes from beneath the box I'm looking through. "It's there,” he tells me pointing at the box. The sound grows louder. "It's a rat's nest," he screams and breaks for the cellar doors.

"Wait a minute. Wait..." I call as a newspaper clipping flutters to the floor. Lifting it to the light, I read, " South Philadelphia fire kills man 45; careless smoking is blamed." I realize that the clipping describes my brother's death two years earlier. "Wait... Wait," I cry as the clipping drops from my trembling fingers.

C.C. pushes open both doors and climbs outside. Two of the King's men are waiting for him. As they lead him away a guard at each arm, one of them says, " Come on now. You don't want to miss your breakfast do you?"

"No... No, I guess not," C.C. answers.

I tremble in fear certain that they'll come for me next. Not a sound except for the steady gnawing from the cardboard box. Then, I focus on my hands and realize that I'm dreaming. "It's only a dream... It's only a dream," I keep telling myself.

Then, it strikes me that the stairs that lead to our childhood kitchen are just to the right of the furnace. I grope my way to the stairs and find them covered with dust and spider webs, but still intact. At the top, I find the kitchen door.

Turning the knob, I step inside and find myself in an electronic workshop, which is filled with pinball machines and one-armed bandits. A bald headed teenage girl leads me to a small room. She points to a computer and leaves.

In front of an old Apple IIe, I turn on the drive. As the screen lights up, the palace dining area comes into view. My mother is walking down the long entryway. She wears a yellow mop wig. Her face is painted in minstrel black. Several colored servants with large platters of Southern fried chicken, mashed potatoes, lima beans, and corn bread are dancing around my mother. They jeer and poke at her in a very disrespectful manner. When they see my face on the screen, they all fall into line. My mother takes off her wig, straightens her dress, and gives me a nervous smile. "Don't worry, Jackie. Everything happens for the best. It's all for the best. God loves you!" she tells me as the screen goes blank.

I hit escape and the King's helmet covered face fills up the entire console. We glare at each other with an intensity that dissolves the black Plexiglas of the King's mask. I behold the deep green eyes of my father peering into mine. "You are not the creator... You are not the King of the World. You're nothing but moon dust!" I shriek at him.

Surge after surge of electrical force hits against the computer screen. The glass shatters. My image of the King, my image of my father, my image of myself is broken into a hundred million sub-atomic particles. As the electrical balance between my atoms collapses, it's just like professor Paul Hewitt explains in his physics text, I'm blown off my seat and reduced to the size of a pin. Falling backwards, I continue to grow tinnier and tinnier. When I turn to look, I see vast mountains and canyons where the floor should be. In the empty silence, I’m sucked into one of its gray walled canyons.

Still shrinking, I see that the canyon floor itself is covered with mountains and deep chasms. When I'm about to hit bottom, I float into an even deeper crevice. The walls are no longer solid. They are nebulous see through veils that wave in and out of each other. Below, now, are gray and back clouds. I continue to shrink as I fall into one of the clouds. And, then, in a wink, I find myself in a place more empty than what I encountered in falling from the moon. Far in the distance, a streak of light flashes. And, then, nothingness; no thought, no feeling, no sound, no time-space, just the silent energy of an all encompassing void...

And, out of the nothingness my atoms begin to reassemble. Out of the nothingness comes a new beginning. A brand new being is created; a being who is no longer chained to his image of the King. A being who is no longer his Father, Mother, or Brother... Shadow or Anima... And, I walk away from my childhood home with a different understanding. I walk away a free man.