“You are studying,” he says, “and keeping up with everything there?”
“Right.”
I feel I am being fried on a grill.
“Tell me about it,” he says.
Archie wants to suck me into something here, but I don’t know what. He must have heard something, maybe from Billy. Billy has been asking me a lot of questions about school lately, and I always try to put him off. I just mention the New York Knicks and he will automatically go off on a tangent about the McGuire brothers, and how either one of them can handle the ball better than anyone on the Minneapolis Lakers, who are the champs.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say. “It’s no different from any school, I guess.”
I know I could just get up and walk out of Archie’s office, like I did once before, but I don’t want Archie on my back every time I see him. He’s like the water fountain at Kips. He is here all the time, and never goes away.
“Do you like it there?” he asks.
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.”
“Do you have anything specific to say about it,” he asks, “like is there a particular subject or teacher you like, or some sports?”
I don’t want to outright lie to Archie, but I don’t even know my teacher’s name, except for Mr. Donahue in shop. And the only reason I remember him is that the guys called him Don’t-a-You-Donahue the first day of class, because he told just about everyone to stop doing something.
“Don’t bite your nails,” he said to me as I was wondering what I was doing in a wing construction shop class.
“I like Mr. Donahue,” I say.
“Mr. Donahue,” Archie says, “good. Why do you like him?”
“I guess he’s a good teacher. He pays attention, anyway.”
“Are you paying attention to what you’re doing?”
This is the setup now.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean,” Archie says, leaning back in his chair, “you are telling me that everything is sweet and dandy, but that’s not what I heard.”
“Billy,” I say. “I’m sure it was Billy who said something to you, right?”
“You know, son,” Archie says, “we are not talking about another person here. There is just one name I am interested in. Dennis. I want you to know that people are interested in you, and I want to tell you what I think.”
I begin to slouch in my chair, feeling that this is like a punishment just sitting here like this. People are interested in me? That’s a big deal, right? It’s just Billy bad-mouthing me to Archie, I bet.
“Sit up, son,” Archie says, “will you? Be proud of yourself. You may be a smart, talented kid, but I think you are in danger of wasting your life away like an unwatered vine.”
I don’t say anything, though he waits to see if I do.
“Who,” he says as he gets out of his chair, “who are the people we respect around here? Think about this, because you know the answer. It’s the guys who jump up and say, ‘Let’s do it,’ and ‘Let’s do it right and have a darn good time doing it.’ Guys who stand up straight, and sit up straight, and who put their chins out for whatever is coming. Blow the trumpet, son, maybe holler a little bit, and get going. Lift your head up and think about pulling yourself together.”
Archie now has his hands stretched out before him, and he pulls his hands together quickly, making a clapping sound. I jump a little in my chair. He walks to the window and pulls up the shade.
“Just look around the neighborhood,” he says, “and think about who you want to be like, because I’ll tell you this: If you don’t start thinking about who you are and what you can do, you might be on the road to playing rummy with guys like Eddie Dunne up at Sing Sing.”
Archie comes over to me and gives me a soft punch on the shoulder.
“We all like you, son,” he says, “but you should know that wasting your life is as bad as taking food out of a starving person’s mouth.”
I’m on Second Avenue now. It’s dark, and it’s cold, and the trucks are backed up all the way to 55th Street and beeping their horns so that it sounds like the clown act at the circus.
What? I am thinking.
What?
How am I taking food out of a starving person’s mouth?
M
y mother is at work, at the phone company down the block near Third Avenue, and Billy is just finishing the cheese and noodles she left him in the pot. I am at the medicine cabinet mirror above the kitchen sink, putting a tie around my neck.
“Maybe you don’t get it,” Billy says.
“I get it good enough,” I say. “I just don’t want to deliver the papers anymore, now that I have the florist.”
“You could do both jobs, Dennis,” he says. “I’m doing the railroad, and I still do the papers.”
I twist the tie until the double Windsor knot is just right, and I tighten it up as far as it can go. Billy has been throwing sacks of mail down at Grand Central, and he works all weird hours, never regular. Uncle Andy got him the job.
“Good for you,” I say.
“Don’t be a wise guy, Dennis,” he says. “You were never much of a wise guy, and so why are you starting now?”
“I don’t want to get up so early is all.”
“What about the money?”
“I’ll bring more money in with the florist.”
“It’s like throwing money away to quit the papers.”
“I’m fourteen, Billy, and I can do what I want.”
Joey Jurgensen has a cousin in the Bronx who is having a Saturday night party. And so we’re going up there with him on the Lexington Avenue Express. It’s what everyone wants to do, but I would rather just hang around the block doing nothing to see if Virginia Sabella comes around. I just met her the other night, and we went down to watch the Pepsi sign.
But a guy can’t hang around with himself, and so I’m here with Joey on the subway. Scarry and Walsh are with us, and Tip-toe Tommy Moran who got his name because he is so quiet.
“Will there be broads there?” Scarry asks.
“More broads than in Julia Richmond High School,” Jurgensen says.
“But will they be real broads,” Walsh says, holding his hands just out from his chest, “you know?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jurgensen says, “broads with bazooms bigger than smoked hams.”
I am smoking a Lucky Strike with Walsh, taking turns puffing, and I notice we are right below the No Spitting sign.
“How far can you spit?” I ask Walsh. I know how easy it is to press his buttons.
Walsh has a mouth bigger than the average toothy guy, and when he smiles he looks like the grille of a Buick Skylark. And he’s smiling now.
“I could spit all the way to England,” I say, “if I spit in the ocean.”
“But,” Walsh says, “we’re in the subway.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say, “so I could spit to wherever the conductor is.”
The train is just pulling into the 86th Street station, and we are getting out just for a second to see how far away the conductor is, but there are two cops running to the door as we step out. Walsh has the cigarette and flips it fast onto the tracks. But he can’t hide the smoke, even after he has swallowed it, and the cops pull us all off the train.
I am immediately worried, because everything is dead serious with them. They ask for ID as the train roars out of the station. I don’t say anything as I fumble through my wallet because I know not to say too much to the cops. Every word can be a shovelful in digging your own grave.
Scarry, though, is talking, and a little too much if you ask me.
“I didn’t do anything, Officer,” Scarry is saying. The blotches on his freckled face seem to be redder than usual.
I laugh to myself because I know he is right, that he did not do anything except getting on the train with us. But the cops are not going to care about who did what where. They just know they pulled five guys off the train, and now they have to do something with them.
“Shut up,” a cop says to Scarry as he takes the ID out of my hand.
“But,” Scarry says, “I don’t want to get into trouble because my uncle is a chief inspector in the police department.”
This gets the attention of the cops. My attention, too, because I did not know this.
“Who’s your uncle, wise guy?” the cop says.
“Bill McQuade,” Scarry says. It’s a name the cops recognize.
“He’s my mother’s brother.”
I am amazed now as the police officer gives me back my ID and walks away without saying another word. I am thinking that Scarry is like the Pope himself giving a dispensation.
Just now another train arrives and we get on it, all of us hoping the doors will shut quickly behind us.
We don’t stay long at the party in the Bronx, just long enough for Jurgensen to find his uncle’s booze stash.
“We’re gonna be served in a goodly fashion by uncles tonight,” Jurgensen says as he holds a bottle of Three Feathers to his lips.
In no time at all, half the bottle is empty and Jurgensen is staggering.
Scarry is pissed off there are no broads who will talk to him.
Walsh has his arm around a girl who looks ten years old, and Tip-toe is sitting in a corner, his arms folded, watching them silently.
It’s not the kind of party we want, and so we head back to the subway.
Again on the train, Walsh is smoking, and I tell him to put it out until we get to 59th Street. The car is empty except for us, but you never know when a cop will come.
“Why do you wanna push your luck?” I ask.
“I just gotta prove to myself,” he says, “that I don’t have any luck, you know what I mean. So I’m gonna smoke until I fart smoke rings.”
“Jeez, Walsh,” I say, “just put the thing out, will ya?”
“Fuck you,” Jurgensen says, waking up from a sleep. I don’t know who he is talking to, and I don’t think he does, either, but I direct his comment to Walsh.
“See, Walsh,” I say, “even Jurgensen thinks you should get a new brain.”
I look to Jurgensen. He is in a corner, and again sleeping like a Bowery bum.
Just now, four Negroes come through the car. They are about our age.
“Fucking monkeys,” Tip-toe says, the first thing he’s said all night.
None of them says anything, and they continue on through the slamming doors that separate the cars. But, in just a few seconds, as the train screeches into the 149th Street station, the four return. This time they are with four others. Some of them, I can see, are swinging bicycle chains.
I am thinking that I should apologize to them, tell them that Tip-toe is a spastic, and that he doesn’t mean it, just as my mother doesn’t mean it when she talks about guineas, but I know that they will not be convinced.
I guess we can fight them, but it looks like we are going to get beat pretty bad if we go against these chains. The train doors pull back, and I know we have to move fast.
“Who said it about monkeys?” the toughest-looking of the bunch says.
“Look,” I say, “we don’t want no trouble, man.”
The guy then swings the chain, and it goes an inch from my head and down into my shoulder, biting into my skin like an electrical shock.
I get up and push him away and make for the door, and I see out of the corner of my eye that Scarry and Walsh have pushed those in front of them also, and are behind me. Tip-toe was the first one out the door.
We are on the platform now, running toward the turnstiles, and they are behind us, yelling like Comanches. And then, just as we get to the turnstiles, we are blessed with a visitation from the Holy Ghost himself as two policemen, the very same two we had met earlier, come out of the change booth. It is like the hundred-meter race in the Olympics has come to a sudden end in the middle of the race, and I stop before the two cops, and everyone behind me stops, too. I try to recapture my breath. God, I have never been so happy, and I am thinking that maybe Walsh will begin now to have a streak of good luck.
“What’s going on?” a cop asks.
“Not much, Officer,” I say.
“Good to see you,” Scarry says.
I don’t see any bicycle chains now as I count the gang as the Negroes pass, each without a word. It doesn’t matter that they’re colored. Size, shape, and number are the important things in a fight. There are eight of them, and the smallest is bigger than any of us. Now here we are with the cops, the four of us, and it’s good to watch them pass.
God, just four of us.
Jurgensen is still on the train. He slept through Tip-toe’s creation, the bastard. I am the only one who took a welt, and I can still feel it in my shoulder. Jurgensen will never know what he missed.
I think about Tip-toe. What is it inside of us, anyway, that we have to talk about people because of their race? These guys were minding their own business when they went by in the subway. They didn’t mean us any harm. And Tip-toe was wrong to call them a name, any name, that they would hate. I don’t know why we are always looking for trouble. Maybe we should change Tip-toe Tommy’s name to Treacherous Tom?
The two cops, I am thinking, know exactly what they have walked into. They don’t say anything, and neither do we, but we stick very close to them as they wait for the next downtown train. They are not more than ten feet away from us.
“Why don’t you smoke now, Walsh?” I ask.
“Fuck you,” Walsh says.
“Right,” I say. “That’s a courageous answer. Anybody notice that Two-Wallet Joey is missing?”
“Where is that fat farm?” Scarry says.
I suddenly bend over in laughter.
“One thing for sure,” I say, “if we don’t know, Jurgensen doesn’t know, either, and he’ll know even less when the conductor wakes him up when they get to Coney Island.”
Billy wakes up when I come into the room.
“Where were you?” he asks, picking up the alarm clock and checking the time. It’s a little after midnight.
“We went to a party in the Bronx,” I say, getting out of my clothes. “It was a dud.”
“You going to do the papers in the morning?”
“Yeah, Billy, I’ll do the goddamn papers, anyway.”
“Good.”
“It’s no goddamn big deal.”
“I’ll get you up.”
I can get five hours sleep, anyway, I’m thinking as I climb up to the top bunk.
I close my eyes, and before I know it the picture of Virginia Sabella forms in the darkness. Virginia, who I finally met, with those dark eyes and that dark Italian skin and those red, red lips, coming all the way down from where she lives on 68th Street, and walking up 56th Street with her cousin Maryanne Maniscalco, who brought her down to our block because she’s friends with Catherine Gaeta, walking in those tiny steps because her pink skirt is so tight, her pink sweater swaying from side to side as her breasts move, the pink bandana around her neck flying in the breeze, her black Julia Richmond school jacket open and blowing behind her. I have every oval inch of her memorized, and especially the smell of her breath as we kissed down by the river. The first girl who has ever gone down to the 51st Street park with me, Virginia Sabella, her name like a cigar or a glass of wine, but to me her name will always stand for the first girl who looked into my eyes, and then kissed me, and then told me that she liked me, a lot.