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Authors: William Peter Blatty
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to transfer his annoyance with me to the Chinks by raising their protection fee from seven to ten percent.
You can prove almost anything you want if you want to.
Pop had cooked Peruvian shish kekab for dinner with a side of corn and boiled potatoes, and as we ate, our little curve-topped Philco radio was booming out the Saturday shows that began at five o’clock with Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge (“Make way for Her Nibs, Miss Georgia Gibbs!”), and then Bob Hope, Fred Allen and The Hit Parade , which played the top fifteen songs of the week; and, of course, The Lone Ranger , which in every single show had the Masked Man declare to some badass, “You’re not hurt! I only shot the gun out of your hand!” What I achingly longed for was right after that to just once hear a moan and the thud of a body falling to the ground. Pop loved The Lone Ranger , and the Red Skelton Show even more because of Skelton’s running character “The Mean Widdle Kid” who every week made Pop smile and chuckle with delight at his “If I do, I get a whippin’,” and then after a pause for wicked thought, “I dood it!” Pop was so pleased that I could imitate the voice of the kid to a tee and at random times he’d smile and say, “Joey, doing for me now ‘I dood it!’” It tickled him so! And when I’d done it he’d look down and shake his head and start to chuckle just the way he always did at the name “Baby Snooks” or the voice of his favorite newscaster, Gabriel Heatter. Imitating radio voices was the reason I was popular in school, though later on in my high school years when I discovered I could do a really chilling movie werewolf cry, it was a whole other opposite story inasmuch as not anyone, not even Pop, would ever dream of saying, “Joey, doing for me now scary werewolf call,” most especially on a Sunday in Central Park while we’re watching all these honking, ungrateful seals being fed and complaining like they’d just been harpooned when a fish didn’t score a perfect strike into their mouths as if the City could afford to hire Whitlow Wyatt, the Brooklyn Dodgers star pitcher, to come down there every day at two o’clock to throw flounder straight into the mouths of a bunch of glistening, spoiled little shits.
“What you do today, Joey?”
I shook my head as I chewed and swallowed, and then finally answered Pop, “Not much.”
“Me too.”
Yeah, sure: just busting his hump with that hot dog cart.
I thought of Jane:
“Be good to your father. He loves you so much.”
How could she know such a thing? Were her mom and dad friends with the Pagliarellos? Or was it just a pretty easy guess?
“Something wrong, Joey?”
“What do you mean, Pop?”
“You face. You thinking hard about something.”
I stabbed at the potato with my fork.
“No, nothing, Pop. Really. Just regular.”
“Could be this girl who buys spaghetti for you, Joey?”
“Ah, come on, Pop! I’m okay! I mean, really! I’m fine!”
Pop kept studying me, chewing on the stem of his briar pipe. He wasn’t buying it and I knew it. I was thinking about scads of things: Jane Bent and Mr. Am and the Asp and Baloqui, plus this sense of unreality that would drop over me at times like a Faraday cage reconfigured to block out time, and now and then I would feel, however distantly and through a veil all too freaking darkly, that events were repeating themselves! Not just moments, but in blocks of months—even years! It wasn’t déjà vu, it was déjà everythin g! At times I even knew what was coming next! Very rarely. But like now. The radio. The Hit Parade . A new “bonus song” about the Lone Ranger:
Gimme those reins, there’s pep in my veins.
Onward westward ho! Hi-yo Silver, Hi-yo!
I knew the words before I heard them!
“Come on, you thinking very hard, Joey. Tell me what about.”
I said, “Homework, Pop.”
What should I have said? I see the future? There are lies that don’t exactly rend the
You can prove almost anything you want if you want to.
Pop had cooked Peruvian shish kekab for dinner with a side of corn and boiled potatoes, and as we ate, our little curve-topped Philco radio was booming out the Saturday shows that began at five o’clock with Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge (“Make way for Her Nibs, Miss Georgia Gibbs!”), and then Bob Hope, Fred Allen and The Hit Parade , which played the top fifteen songs of the week; and, of course, The Lone Ranger , which in every single show had the Masked Man declare to some badass, “You’re not hurt! I only shot the gun out of your hand!” What I achingly longed for was right after that to just once hear a moan and the thud of a body falling to the ground. Pop loved The Lone Ranger , and the Red Skelton Show even more because of Skelton’s running character “The Mean Widdle Kid” who every week made Pop smile and chuckle with delight at his “If I do, I get a whippin’,” and then after a pause for wicked thought, “I dood it!” Pop was so pleased that I could imitate the voice of the kid to a tee and at random times he’d smile and say, “Joey, doing for me now ‘I dood it!’” It tickled him so! And when I’d done it he’d look down and shake his head and start to chuckle just the way he always did at the name “Baby Snooks” or the voice of his favorite newscaster, Gabriel Heatter. Imitating radio voices was the reason I was popular in school, though later on in my high school years when I discovered I could do a really chilling movie werewolf cry, it was a whole other opposite story inasmuch as not anyone, not even Pop, would ever dream of saying, “Joey, doing for me now scary werewolf call,” most especially on a Sunday in Central Park while we’re watching all these honking, ungrateful seals being fed and complaining like they’d just been harpooned when a fish didn’t score a perfect strike into their mouths as if the City could afford to hire Whitlow Wyatt, the Brooklyn Dodgers star pitcher, to come down there every day at two o’clock to throw flounder straight into the mouths of a bunch of glistening, spoiled little shits.
“What you do today, Joey?”
I shook my head as I chewed and swallowed, and then finally answered Pop, “Not much.”
“Me too.”
Yeah, sure: just busting his hump with that hot dog cart.
I thought of Jane:
“Be good to your father. He loves you so much.”
How could she know such a thing? Were her mom and dad friends with the Pagliarellos? Or was it just a pretty easy guess?
“Something wrong, Joey?”
“What do you mean, Pop?”
“You face. You thinking hard about something.”
I stabbed at the potato with my fork.
“No, nothing, Pop. Really. Just regular.”
“Could be this girl who buys spaghetti for you, Joey?”
“Ah, come on, Pop! I’m okay! I mean, really! I’m fine!”
Pop kept studying me, chewing on the stem of his briar pipe. He wasn’t buying it and I knew it. I was thinking about scads of things: Jane Bent and Mr. Am and the Asp and Baloqui, plus this sense of unreality that would drop over me at times like a Faraday cage reconfigured to block out time, and now and then I would feel, however distantly and through a veil all too freaking darkly, that events were repeating themselves! Not just moments, but in blocks of months—even years! It wasn’t déjà vu, it was déjà everythin g! At times I even knew what was coming next! Very rarely. But like now. The radio. The Hit Parade . A new “bonus song” about the Lone Ranger:
Gimme those reins, there’s pep in my veins.
Onward westward ho! Hi-yo Silver, Hi-yo!
I knew the words before I heard them!
“Come on, you thinking very hard, Joey. Tell me what about.”
I said, “Homework, Pop.”
What should I have said? I see the future? There are lies that don’t exactly rend the
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