All American Boy by William J. Mann Page B

looking at what they’ve done. They see her mouth open into a large, angry O. Regina doesn’t care. She hears her grandmother shouting at them, ordering them inside to account for their behavior, telling them what bad girls they are. Regina runs. She doesn’t think. She just keeps running. She runs out of the yard and down the street. She runs past St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, where Mama used to take them. She runs onto Main Street and then right through the busy intersection of Washington Avenue, a bus driver leaning on his horn at her. Right past Henry’s Diner she runs, right past the town hall, past the Palace movie theater and St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church, which has always scared her with its black-robed priests and heavy smells of incense. Into the tall grass of Devil’s Hopyard she runs, where she finally collapses, her legs feeling as if they’ll snap right off.
    Only then does she turn to see that Rocky was behind her the whole way. They roll into each other’s arms and cry for a long, long time.
    Aunt Selma doesn’t go to the funeral. She stays home to watch her sister’s girls.
    â€œSit here and eat your oatmeal,” she tells them. She is dressed all in black. “I don’t want you to move from those chairs. I want to say good-bye to your Mama. They’re going to drive her by here after the church. I’m going to watch from the front door.”
    â€œCan we watch, too, Aunt Selma?” Rocky asks.
    â€œNo. I don’t want you to remember your Mama in a hearse.”
    They don’t know what a hearse is. Aunt Selma goes to the front door. They sit and drink their milk. It is a quiet morning, except for the birds chirping outside. The girls do not talk. Rochelle starts to hum. Regina fidgets.
    â€œI have to go to the bathroom,” Regina says softly.
    â€œAunt Selma said we can’t move from these chairs.”
    â€œI have to go to the bathroom,” Regina says again.
    She stands up. Rocky resumes her humming. Regina slips softly upstairs.
    From a bedroom window she watches the black cars drive slowly down the street. There are three of them, and she knows Mama must be in one. They come up from Main Street and turn onto Oak Avenue. They pass in front of the house and wind back the way they came. She thinks she sees Mormor sitting in one of the cars. She doesn’t know for sure. She doesn’t know where they’re taking Mama. She doesn’t know why the black cars came by the house. She doesn’t know where she and Rocky are going to sleep tonight.
    All she knows is: you touch one, you kill them all.

5
    GHOST MANAGEMENT
    Wally drives along the river into Dogtown, where the stench of sewage and swamp water hangs so heavy in the air he can taste it on his tongue, like soot after a fire.
    â€œDon’t go down there,” his mother used to warn him, wringing her hands. “It’s bad down there. Bad .”
    And bad it was. Behind the crumbling factories the old tenant housing remained, rowhouses built by factory owners for their immigrant workers at the turn of the last century. Irish, then Swedes, then Poles and Jews, finally Italians and Puerto Ricans. The houses of Dogtown were built over swamps, where skunk cabbage grew plentiful and tall, where velvety cat-o’-nine-tails enticed children to wade across the muddy, stinking water that licked the edges of the tenements. “Don’t go down there,” Wally’s mother had pleaded, but although he continued to listen intently to every conversation dropped in line at Grant’s department store, he had long since stopped listening to her.
    â€œIt’s got to be Alzheimer’s,” he tells Cheri on his cell phone. “That’s the only way to explain her behavior. It’s bizarre, even for her.”
    â€œSo what are you going to do?”
    â€œShe has no one else.” Wally sighs. “I’ve got to get her in to