ShareThisWord among kids on the block was that Smiley was so straight and civilized that he would take a bullet for one of us.
Smiley was about 18 when he showed up on our West Bronx street in the summer of 1966. He was uncommonly friendly. That may be why youngsters accepted and looked up to him so readily.
The ever-present grin on Smiley's face complemented his lean frame and the odd way that he walked -- long strides off his toes.
Smiley was also serene, compared with the street's aggressive teens.
Their signature behavior was to gather loudly by the curbside and smash soda bottles. The accumulated glass would reflect the sky like placid water.
One late summer night I heard loud music and wild laughter coming from an apartment full of those adolescents.
I listened as the hooting morphed into noisy, angry shouts in the building's courtyard. I got up and looked out the window. Just like in the movies, there were screams, and then a deep, resonant pop.
This event sprang to mind recently, as my family settled down for the night in our rented lakeside cabin in New Hampshire.
Outside, waves slapped the riprap. The four of us quieted down to listen, as a common loon emitted a long howl. Elsewhere on the water, another loon called, followed by a third and then a fourth.
What we were hearing was the "wail," the extended cry that common loons used to contact one another.
Other loon calls include tremolo, yodel and hoot.
Tremolo is the loon's laughterlike alarm, uttered when danger approaches. Loon pairs sometimes tremolo together, and it is the only call that loons make in flight.
Male common loons yodel to declare or defend territory, primarily during breeding season. A yodel may also suggest danger.
A loon hoot is a soft call. The birds hoot between mates, adults and chicks, or among social groups living on or visiting a lake.
A born insomniac, I've always listened to sounds of the night. As a child, I could tell the thud of a man's shoes versus the clack of a woman's high heels; or the cry of a baby from the whine of a cat; and a fire-truck siren compared with a police car's or ambulance's.
The loud pop that I heard 44 years ago was an unfamiliar noise. But I would hear it again and again in subsequent years, as our neighborhood became a free-for-all.
It was a gunshot. That night in 1966 an off-duty police officer living across the street had demanded that the teenagers end their noisemaking.
When a drunken adolescent stepped toward him, the officer fired, but Smiley jumped between them. The bullet blew out Smiley's stomach.
It took all autumn for Smiley to recuperate. The officer was suspended from his job.
The book, "The Common Loon: Spirit of Northern Lakes," by Judith McIntyre, contains the text: "Loons hoot during ritualized social gatherings and on the fall staging grounds. Hoots are also used by one loon as it approaches a group or enters the territory of another loon."
Hooting was a hallmark of the territorial teens that convened at a shrine of broken glass two generations ago. If I close my eyes, I can still hear their howls. The recollection triggers anxiety.
I hope that in the years since Smiley indeed took a bullet for one of us that he rediscovered the feelings of serenity, which is what I experienced, as well as sweetness and wonder, listening to loons from a cabin in New Hampshire with my family.
(Scott Turner is a nature writer. Reach him at scottturnerster(at)gmail.com. For more stories, visit scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The Providence JournalComment
