Shooting for all the marbles

Jake didn't come bouncing off the bus like the other kids. He stepped slowly down to where we stood, on our new school's still black asphalt. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"My dad got laid off and we're living in a motel."

"Oh."

Stuff like that happened all the time now, we knew. When my dad was laid-off from GM; he still managed to pack the pantry shelves with cans of beans, and bags of rice. He even managed to buy a fallout shelter in case of a nuclear holocaust. The news claimed Kim Jong Ill was going to blast us with missiles. Dad's been unemployed for over a year now, but claims those commie bastards still aren't going to get us.

"My dad wasn't working last Christmas," I offered. "It was still OK." We turned and walked down the alley way, toward the play ground. Jake toted his lunch sack choked and dangling from his fist, not with the top rolled into a handle to carry like a dad's black lunch pail. He stopped and turned to me, giving me his "You don't understand" look.

With jaw set, Jake blurted in exasperation between clenched teeth, "I won't get no more marbles!"This was a real problem.

We at Washington Elementary could tell the worth of a kid by the size of the lumpy ball swaying in the toe of his purse, an old sock, knotted on top, and tucked up under the belt. Boys were on the marble standard. We didn't know, or care, what monetary system girls used. Marbles mostly changed hands through games of skill, like marbles in a pot or chase. If a purse got too light, one could swap Devil dogs or other lunch sweets and regain status.

Jake's father, working at the moon marble shop bankrolled Jake with the many marbles carried home in his toolbox. Moon Marbles. Jake didn't play marbles well and thus paid his dues to the big kids, allowing him access to their side of the play ground. Now he was in danger of being exiled from this training ground that taught us how to be the big kids when our time came. Jake might drift off with Sammy, the geek, who played jump rope with girls.

We walked out onto the playground's black-top, past the tether ball poles, across the large white four square grids and through larger dodge ball circles, to the hang out where the pavement ends. There was time before the bell and Rocky spotted us right off. He was in the fifth and a head bigger than us.

"Want to play chase, for a Marble?" Rocky asked Jake. Jake hooked his finger into his jeans' watch pocket and fished up his shooter. After only five shots, a glassy tick sounded the end of the game. Jake sighed. He un-knotted his sock and strained out a snippy, careful to let the lowly cat-eyes trickle through parted fingers, as we all did, to reveal mostly snippies , purees and boulders as his cupped hand emerged. The fifth-grader accepted his spoil and left us alone.

"Why didn't you just give him a pee wee?" I asked.

"And what? get my ass kicked? asked Jake.

Jake usually didn't mind losing, knowing school time was easier if he spread his wealth. Jake wasn't good at run or jump playing, but he was wise. I once asked him why boys had nipples. He explained how, while we were still swimming in our mom's bellies, the last thing God made before we came into the world was our lungs so he could puff the breath of life into us. He said God poked his fingers into our baby bodies and left two little swirls on our chest like where you'd swipe a finger's dip in a mixing bowl.

At second recess jake sat on the wooden curb edging the black top. A buffer of dirt, worn weedless by workmen's boots, tailed off into the thin new green where the taste of tar and dust faded to the smell of grass stains. Many marble players would run this curb, up to twenty, bowing and groveling boys moving in spurts, popping up, sprinting and squatting still again, as they rushed to slay or die before the buzzer blared out across the play ground.

I told Jake about our beans and rice Christmas last year, when my dad apologized for the lean pickings around the tree.

"It was great. I got a real hunting knife in a leather sheath."

Jake pressed three toe breakers down on the dirt between his feet and topped them with a forth, forming a simple pyramid, then walked away toward the grass. With the rubber toe of his sneaker he plowed a line in the dirt.

"Think you can hit those from here?" Jake asked, and nodded his close cropped head toward his pile of marbles.

"Yes."

"If you miss I keep the shooter. And you get to keep all my toe breakers if you hit them," Jake smiled. All the hardness was gone from his face. I could see the smart in his eyes again, assuring me we would use this recess properly--to have fun. My first shot went wide-right. Jake ran up to scoop my dead shooter out of play. Right, right, left, then a clear tip.

Jake yelled, "Got to knock it down," when I jumped to pocket my prize. Knees to the dirt, I began a volley. I missed two left, one right. Then a hit! The little pyramid exploded in a small cloud of dust. I dumped my winnings down my brother's old gym sock. To win four marbles at once was a heady thing and could surly be done with less than eight shots. I was hooked, as would be most boys on the school yard as Jake moved us from playing games of skill to games of chance.

I lunched with Jake that day. He finished the innards of his throttled lunch bag fast, and hit the tile running in the wrong direction, toward the ladies in blue, with hair nets, who doled out hot lunch. I waited for him out where the red brick hall dumped on to the playground, where girls clustered near sour dumpsters and chanted, "Texaco, Texaco, over the hill to Mexico, where they make those--red--hot--," then doubling the cadence of long hardtop slapping jump ropes, "---PEPPERS!"

Jake emerged from the cafeteria with an empty, one gallon Ketchup can. At the edge of the black top Jake set up his small pyramid. Boys soon swarmed around Jake's shooting gallery like summer flies, first passing, then pausing, and eventually landing in swarms. Jake was quick about policing spent shooters and tossing them into his can. Boys were shooting two and three at a time and Jake asked my help in keeping new targets set up. Even Rocky and other, older players, had depleted their purses attempting to win bragging rights at Jake's shooting gallery. After lunch break Jake returned to his class with three inches of marbles in his can.

"I have plenty of marbles, for a while at least" mused Jake.

Over the next few days many socks were replaced with mother-sewn pant-leg bags, with draw strings, or for the arcade operators, coffee cans. The number of marbles in circulation tripled. Six or seven shooting galleries competed every noon, but Jake was always favored. If a pyramid of toe breakers wouldn't draw, agates would, only agate shooters of course, and toe lines would move close enough to entice, yet assure a margin of favor toward Jake . He took in a nearly a full can one Friday, before all were convinced they really couldn't tumble a pile of steely boulders with shooters restricted to non-boulders. A glut of marbles reduced their worth to less than pennies. Rocky liked tossing handfuls on the roof, where the gutter carried them clattering over to a down-spout that sent them skipping under the feet of the jump-ropers. Fifth and sixth graders no longer demanded payment in marbles to hang on their turf. Boarders had devolved.

Arguments, shoving, and blows, became common beyond the black top. Only a small hand full of elite players abandoned the edge and continued "chase" out along the ball field. The galleries even allowed a girl to shoot. "Her marbles are the same as ours," Jake explained. The cloud of dust beyond the edge became thicker each noon as groveling boys crushed and uprooted the new grass.

"Look. It's the principal." Jake spotted him, seldom seen on the playground before, then returned to gathering shooters as they thudded off his backboard. The principal walked straight toward us, then stopped and scanned the asphalt. Sammy and some girls were skipping long rope, and two safety monitors were playing tether ball. The principal turned and, walking slower, moved over to peer through the gray metal door of the equipment room, propped open by a sixth grade monitor on her chair. Inside were shelves lined with dodge, kick, and tether balls. He then retreated back down the Alley way.
Classroom blackboards (really green) all announced the same Friday-morning message, and teachers reinforced it.

"NO MORE MARBLES AT SCHOOL."

By lunch the marble midway was empty. Players began separating out their "keepers". Bloated bags of moonies, were now nearly worthless. By last recess Jake's feet were crammed between heavy cans of toe breakers stowed beneath his desk. He had traded away next month's lunch sweets and a few keepers.

"What you going to do with all those moonies?" I carried another marble can past Jake's frowning bus driver. I had promised to drag my old wagon over to Jake's bus stop and help haul his hoarding home. We set two more cans behind the green wheel humps so they wouldn't slide forward.

"Well... Not as good as Dad's toe breakers, but they work, you know, as ammo."

"What?"

"Show you how to make one like mine." Jake pulled out a homemade sling shot. "My brother showed me. You cut long strips out of inner-tubes; they'll send a marble three or four streets over." Jake stretched one fisted arm up and away. The other he pulled back past his chin. He snapped open the hand near his face. "Zap! Right out off sight. My brother says he's killed Birds, cats and even a rat.!" Jake was wise and everyone

 would be doing it Jake's way soon. 

"A sling shot?" I asked. Jake smiled, "maybe we can hit ole Sammy from three blocks away. Plunk him right on his head."

"Yea, Imagine it? Sammy would be wondering what the hell hit him."

"Back to your own bus now."

I turned to see the top half of the bus driver's head in the wide mirror. I could see from the eyebrows pulled down from under her hat brim she meant,  NOW.

"I'll bring the wagon," I yelled, and darted down the bus steps.
"Walk! Don't run," I heard Jake's driver recite as I jogged with impatience to my bus. I couldn't help be excited all the kids dumped their marbles on Jake and now we were going hunting.