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Show 146 "It's not going to be a slum," said Red. "While I'm here it will never be a slum." Georgie Gorky once had an aia older brother, Franky Gorky, but one day many Christmases x ago that axa ended. Helen told us the story all the time. Franky Gorky was the nicest kid in the whole universe, xaxxaxkaxkaaxiaxaxax Wild animals came up to Franky Gorky and ate out of his hand. Birds waited for him to wake up in the morning before ka they started singing. Franky Gorky caught house flies and carefully took them outside instead of hitting them with a fly swatter. He was friendly to k other children. He shared his candy and toys. He was respectful of adults. Franky Gorky was the nicest kid in the universe and so he had to die. One Christmas morning when his grandmother arrived, parking across the street because the block was all filled up with Christmas visitors, Franky Gorky ran across the street to greet her, xaxgai Hxxaaxaxi slipped on some ice in the middle of the street and got wiped out by a drunk driver. That's what happens, Red always said, when people take other people's parking places. There wasn't a kid on the block who ever knew Franky Gorky. Even Georgie Gorky didn't remember Franky Gorky because Georgie was still a little tiny kid when Franky bought it, but everybody knew about Franky Gorky because he was the first lesson to every human on Twenty-fourth street that no matter how good you are if you don't look both ways when you cross the street you're going to get rubbed out. Remember Franky Gorky. We all sure did. His parents Greta and Gary Gorky kept his room exactly the way it was that Christmas morning he axa died. Back when I was friends with Georgie we'd sneak in there, because only on special holidays was anybody supposed to go in there, and look at Franky Gorky's picture, he had a face like a horse chestnut, and touch his rosary and smell his pillow. And still, every year, on the day after £xx Christmas, the Gorky's piled into their car and went off to Franky Gorky's grave and left little Christmas presents for Pranky Gorky, that little stinker, as Greta and Saxxx Gary Gorky had called him, whose taste in toys hadn't changed much in all the yearsy^hat; hedied. Then the Groky's came home and lit a candle |