The Kid Up the Street

 
FRANKIE KANE, the kid up the street, was gaunt and pimply, with gnarled teeth and a thatch of black hair. He came from a broken family and was already a teenager when I knew him. Knew of  him, that is, for I never spoke to him. I simply envied him from afar, like everyone else.
        Frankie lived at the upper reaches of Freeman Avenue, less than a mile away. But we never went up there because Old Lady Jober lived nearby, and Old Lady Jober was a witch. It was said she had murdered her daughter, that dead cats were chained at the neck in her basement. Live cats roamed her property at will, and Frankie Kane could be seen playing with them.
        One afternoon fire trucks roared up Freeman Avenue and we took off after them. Old Lady Jober’s ramshackle garage was on fire. It had been filled to the rafters with stacks of old newspapers. Frankie Kane stood out front with his arms folded, watching the flames. Old Lady Jober was nowhere to be found. The crowd grew steadily, and soon a member of the family—Old Lady Jober’s daughter?—appeared out of nowhere and spoke to the firemen. A few days later the house stood empty, although Frankie still tended to the cats.
        We envied Frankie Kane because he owned a pony, a shaggy black-and-white Shetland that he harnessed to a two-wheeled cart to give the littlest children rides around the block. Horses were unknown in our town— except for an old nag that annually plowed our garden on Freeman Avenue—yet we all longed to have one, like the cowboys on TV. And Frankie Kane had his own pony. He kept it in a garage like Old Lady Jober’s, which he had converted to a stall and stacked with bales of hay. Whenever the pony cart went around the block, I stood by the side of the road conspicuously, trying to look inconspicuous, as if I deserved a ride as much as the littlest children. But Frankie Kane never looked my way.
        And we envied Frankie Kane because he had been on television, displaying a talent for which he was known locally—puppetry. He made hand puppets all by himself, built a little stage with a red curtain, and put on comic shows for the littlest children, in a falsetto voice. He seemed to live for the littlest children. He had no friends his own age.
        When Frankie appeared on television with his puppets, we gathered at our house to watch him in all his glory. After the performance, the master of ceremonies interviewed him, asking how his hobby had begun. “Oh, just messin’ around by myself,” Frankie said. Frankie Kane was always messing around by himself. He was our wonder boy, our hero. He had a pony, he made puppets, and he had been on television. And one day he was found behind his pony stall with a plastic bag over his head.
        He was sixteen years old.