My Other Life Read Free Page A

Latin" was how he described another language he knew.
    He liked telling the story of how he had had an appointment with a billionaire ("There are only thirty-six in the entire world, and I know five of them"). This was to have taken place at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, but Uncle Hal had been turned away by the doorman for not wearing a tie—he was wearing a war-surplus sailor suit and rubbers. The billionaire had to meet him at the Shamrock Luncheonette. The business was unspecified.
    He had been bitten on the thigh by a rat, he said. "This was in the market in Antsirabe, in Madagascar. Oh, years ago."
    He owned a pair of wooden skis, a wooden tennis racket, a leather hat, a manual typewriter of cast iron, clamp-on roller skates, and a bike with no gears. He claimed he used them all the time. I never saw him use any of them.
    After he stopped visiting us, Uncle Hal was seen playing with the neighborhood children who regularly came to his house. He gave them candy, he showed them his Japanese sword, he taught them how to do the bunny hop, he played tag with them, he encouraged them to tell him about their fears and hopes. At Halloween, he put on a mask and led them around the neighborhood. He was Santa Claus at Christmas, he was the Easter bunny, and on the Fourth of July he set off fireworks in his orchard.
    While these small children boldly went upstairs and demanded candy, we older kids hung back, too afraid to approach, afraid he would angrily send us home. We stood at the margins of his yard and saw him playing—running, screeching, his gray hair twisted, his shirttails flying. "You can't catch me!"
    People saw him at the playground, the beach, the schoolyard, the swings.
    I was at college then. One weekend, returning from Boston—this was the spring I graduated—I bumped into Uncle Hal at the post office. He was sending a large parcel and being very mysterious about it, concealing the address from me. I never knew what sort of welcome I would get from him and so I gave him the most tentative greeting. He surprised me by saying how glad he was to see me. "Want to see something? Huh? Something really amazing?"
    He pushed the parcel across the counter and then he was breathless, he was flying. His shirt was inside out, he was wearing striped pants and high-top sneakers. He hurried me to his house and pulled out a drawer—one of his treasure drawers. He took out a toy rifle—an air rifle, but an old one.
    "It's a BB gun—the original. I had that very model when I was ten years old. See the Red Ryder insignia on the stock? Listen, it's in perfect working order."
    He aimed it and went
pah! pah! pah!
"I've been looking for one of these for years."
    There was more in the drawer. A green plastic water pistol. A pack of bubble gum wrapped in colored waxed paper and containing two baseball cards. A
Sky King
ring with a secret compartment. A copy of
Tales from the Crypt
comic book. A hat—but no ordinary hat. He put it on.
    "We used to call this a beanie," Uncle Hal said. There was a propeller on top. He spun the propeller with his finger and said in a small boy's quavering, stuttering voice, "I got an idea! Let's go down to Billy's house and play marbles. Hey, I got my bag of aggies. These are good shooters." He swung a little clinking bag out of the drawer. "This one's a real pisser. Hey, what's wrong, Paulie, don't you want to come?"
    He took me by the arm. The propeller on his beanie was still turning. Was he defying me to make a remark?
    I clutched the books I had brought home to study for the weekend, for a paper I had to write.
    "Malinowski makes the point," Uncle Hal said—but how had he seen the small printed name on the spine of the book?—"that in the Trobriand Islands the relationship between a woman's brother and her son is stronger than between the boy and his father. In other words, the uncle and nephew—because there is definite proof of a blood relationship and there is