Christmas
Tommy doesn’t know what day it is. He and the captain have
been playing Airway for days without stopping, eating turkey legs
brought to their apartment by the crippled woman who delivers food for
a penny. Tommy stares at the playfield: Boston, Philadelphia, New
York, Kansas City, Cleveland. He drops a nickel into the slot and
sends the ball into play, tapping lightly on the corners of the
machine, trying to drop the ball into Detroit and the resulting eight
hundred points. “Tilt!” the captain shouts, somehow
drunk on turkey legs and pinball, but the machine clearly reads Please Do Not Tilt Machine.
No foul. The ball bounces off of pins, Tommy putting English on
its spins, and then drops into Kansas City and six hundred
points. “Damn it all,” the captain again shouts,
turkey skin stuck in his teeth, his hands greasy and shaking.
“Poxy pin ball,” he says, but Tommy only pokes his tongue
at the machine and sends another ball into the airspace of the
playfield.
Here is what they have learned. Action is the secret of
suspense. The ball flashes around the field and then drops into a
ball trap, a colored airplane, a random city. There are shouts
and whistles, complaints from the neighbors, but these two wild
creatures are deaf to the cautions from beneath their feet, their arms
aching so much they cannot lift them above their heads.
***
It was a gift, this machine. The good captain arrived, sweating,
swearing, and lugging this machine into the living room. Out of
his pockets, he dumped nickels and pennies onto the floor, clinging,
clanging, drawing complaints from the neighbors below.
“Merry Christmas,” he told the boy, though it was not
Christmas, the air humid and ragged inside the apartment, the pine tar
on their hands evaporated long ago. Tommy slid a nickel into the
slot and recoiled from the sounds it made. The captain took over,
smashed the ball into the playfield and then manhandled the machine
until the metal box in the top right corner flipped over to read Tilted,
no score noted. “Damn it all,” he shouted and Tommy
quickly discovered the mechanics of the game, to push only so much that
the ball understands your desires, to fill the machine with your own
spirit, an airplane passing through clouds, to not let it snap back. A game of skill, for amusement only.
Tommy sends the ball to New York, one thousand points, on three
successive plunges, the machine unsure of how to proceed. The
glass is smeared with grease, bones clicking at their feet, fire
discovered and harnessed.
His spirit heightens, his spirit’s future level ever heightening.