Sleepers (15 page)

“You better,” John said.

The pain in my side was intense, jolts sharp and sudden.

“You keep running,” I said. “Go for Butter and Mikey. Get them here.”

“I can’t leave you,” John said.

“You’ll be back in five minutes,” I said a lot more bravely than I felt. “What can they do to me in five minutes?”

I stayed on the ground, clutching my side, watching John run down the hills of De Witt Clinton Park.

It was not the fear of getting a beating that held me. It was the fear of catching that beating from a girl gang. As I lay there, watching Rivera and her crew close in, I imagined the taunts and ridicule that would come, from
friends and strangers alike. A lot of boys in Hell’s Kitchen took home cuts and bruises handed out by Rivera and her Tornadoes. Not one of them ever admitted to it, at least publicly, and I was not about to be the first.

Janet Rivera stood over me and smiled, exposing a thin row of cracked teeth. “I knew a little fucker like you couldn’t outrun us.”

“You didn’t outrun me,” I said. “I took a break and waited for you to catch up.”

Rivera walked over toward Gonzalez, putting one hand around her shoulder.

“I
hate
clowns,” she said. “They’re not funny, you know? They only
think
they’re funny.”

“What they did to Rapo, that ain’t funny neither,” Gonzalez said, brushing the heel of her sneaker against my leg. “But I bet they laughed.”

“Gimme your belt,” Rivera said. “We’re gonna teach this clown to be serious.”

The park was empty except for an old rummy sleeping under a pile of newspapers on a bench. My face and arms were glazed with sweat and my right leg twitched from tension. One of my shoelaces had come undone and I couldn’t breathe free of pain.

Gonzalez stood over me and opened her straight razor. She leaned down and grabbed the top of my white shirt and cut it in half, stopping just above my pants.

“This is for Rapo,” Rivera said, swinging the belt above her shoulder.

“Hurt him,” Gonzalez said. “Make him hurt.”

Rivera’s lashes landed across my face and neck, the pain causing my eyes to well with tears. She then lowered the gate of her swing, my chest and stomach now taking the force of the blows. My chest was soon red, the sting as hard as anything I’d felt, a steady torrent of belt against flesh.

Rivera landed one last blow and stopped.

“You wanna piece?” she said to Gonzalez.

“He ain’t man enough for me to whip,” Gonzalez said, looking at me with a smile.

“Thank you,” I mumbled.

The first rock landed next to Rivera’s feet. The second hit her above the thigh. Gonzalez turned her head and caught one on the arm. The two girls who were holding me down let go and moved away.

“We’re goin’,” one of them said. “No more of this.”

I looked past Gonzalez, at the fence behind the sprinklers and saw Michael and John climbing over. Tommy stood facing the fence, tossing rocks over the side.

Gonzalez looked down at me, her eyes filled with hate. She took a deep breath, bent closer to me, and spit her bubble gum above my right eye. She took two steps back and let out two kicks to my groin, the hard rubber of her sneakers finding a mark both times.

“So long, fucker,” she said. “Be seein’ you again.”

When they got to me, Michael and John lifted me up, hands wrapped under my shoulders.

I was slow stepping my way out of the park, toward the bar on 52nd Street. The inside of my chest felt as seared as the outside. But more than anything, I was humiliated.

“I don’t want anybody to know,” I said.

“Might be in the papers tomorrow,” John smirked. “Not every day one of King Benny’s boys gets his ass bopped by some girls.”

“It would’ve been better if they killed me,” I said.

“You’re right,” Tommy said. “Much easier to explain.”

“This only proves what we always knew,” Michael said.

“What?”

“You can’t fight for shit.”

“I hear they make guys have sex with ’em,” John said. “You know, force ’em.”

“Now I’m sorry we came along,” Michael said. “You might have finally gotten laid.”

“I think I’m gonna faint,” I said.

“Ugly sex is better than no sex,” John said.

“Anybody asks, tell ’em a gang from Inwood came down and kicked my ass,” I said.

“Which gang?” Tommy asked.

“The Cougars,” I said. “They’re pretty tough.”

“How about the gang from the School for the Blind?” John said. “You could say they bumped into you on the street. You had no choice. You hadda fight ’em.”

“There was eight of them and only one of you,” Tommy said. “The deck was stacked.”

“And they had dogs too,” John said. “You didn’t have a chance.”

“All I know is the Count of Monte Cristo never got his ass kicked by a girl,” Michael said.

“He was lucky,” I sighed. “He didn’t know Janet Rivera.”

Summer 1966

12

M
Y FRIENDS AND
I were as consumed by sports as we were by books and movies. We followed every pro sport with religious fervor and adolescent passion, except for golf, which was too silly to be considered, and tennis, which we thought was played only in England.

We were rabid New York Rangers fans. Our favorite player was Earl Ingerfield, a hard-skating journeyman who often made it a point to talk to us outside the team
doorway. He gave us new hockey sticks every season, which we used in the street games we played on the cement grounds of Printing High School. A crushed can or a roll of black tape was our puck; we wore sneakers in place of skates and our net was a wall.

We loved boxing, finding grace and a certain degree of solace in the savagery of the sport. Middleweight contender Joey Archer was the local hero, winning most of the bouts he fought inside Madison Square Garden. But we found his style dull and plodding compared to the inside power and speed of Dick Tiger, a brave warrior from Nigeria who would eventually wear both the middleweight and light-heavyweight crowns. In later years, Tiger died much before his time, an impoverished man who had seen his country turn into war-ravaged Biafra, and whose new leaders stole his fortune.

We went to the six-day bike races in the fall and listened to Italian and Irish soccer matches on portable radios. We cared little for Knicks basketball and barely tolerated Giants football, though we played both sports with frenzy. We followed horse racing more out of habit than interest. In Hell’s Kitchen, the track was sacred ground and the bulk of the betting was on the nine daily races coming out of whichever local track was in session.

But the sport we loved the most was baseball.

On summer afternoons we flipped baseball cards against other kids, looking to walk away with a bundle of new and valuable additions. We memorized statistics of current and former players and were able to cite the most mundane. We followed the daily exploits of our favorite New York Yankees as if they were members of our own families. We winced if Tom Tresh had a bad day at the plate, Clete Boyer committed a rare error at third base, or Al Downing gave up another long home run. The Yankee teams of those years weren’t really very good, but they were still the Yankees.
Our
Yankees. They were losers but they
acted
like winners. Just like us. Which is why we all loved them so much.

W
E WERE SITTING
on the front stoop of my apartment building, shoeboxes filled with baseball cards by our feet. It was the last week of August 1966 and the New York Yankees were, for the first time in our lives, a last-place team.

“Tough loss,” Tommy said, reading the box scores in the
Daily News.
“Now even the
Indians
are beatin’ us.”

“There’s always the Mets,” John said.

“Retards root for the Mets,” Tommy said.

“What’d Mantle do yesterday?” Michael asked.

“Didn’t play,” Tommy told him.

“He’s hurt,” I said. “Again.”

“Who they play tonight?” Michael asked.

“The Orioles,” Tommy said. “Stottlemyre’s pitching.”

“Wanna go?” Michael asked.

“What’s the point,” I sulked.

“We’d get good seats,” Michael said.

“Maybe they’ll go on a tear,” Tommy said. “Win about twenty-five in a row. Get back in the race.”

“Maybe you’ll wake up good-lookin’,” John said.

“Nobody even wants to trade for ’em this year,” I said, holding a handful of Yankee baseball cards.

“I got three Frank Robinsons and two Boog Powells,” John said, looking through a shoebox. “Who you got?”

“Who you want?” Tommy asked.

“Tommy Davis,” John said. “Powell for Davis straight up.”

“I got Davis,” I said.

“Trade?” John asked.

“I don’t know about straight up,” I said. “Davis is good.”

“What?” John said. “Powell’s a cripple?”

“Make the trade,” Michael said.

“Straight up?” I said.

“Seems like a good deal,” Michael said.

“How about you throw in a pitcher?” I asked John. “Any pitcher. I don’t care who.”

“Why?” John asked.

“Gives the deal weight,” I said.

“Forget it,” John said. “Powell for Davis. That’s all.”

“I got a Boog Powell,” Tommy chimed in. “Only it’s from last year.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

“You’re gonna trade with
him
now?” John asked.

“Only if he gives me what I want,” I said. “Powell and a pitcher for Davis.”

“Diego Segui,” John said. “I’ll give you Diego Segui and Boog Powell for Tommy Davis.”

“That’s your best offer?” I asked.

“That’s my
only
offer,” John said.

“Deal,” I said, exchanging cards with John.

“Fucked again,” Michael said to Tommy.

“No, I wasn’t,” Tommy snickered. “I don’t even
have
a Boog Powell.”

“You
lied?”
John said.

“I
bluffed,”
Tommy said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Get the deal movin’, that’s all,” Tommy explained. “Or else you two woulda been yappin’ here all day.”

“You know, Butter, you’re not as dumb as you look,” Michael said.

“No,” John said. “But he
is
as ugly as he looks. It’s like hangin’ out with that guy with the bells.”

“What guy with the bells?” Tommy asked.

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” I interpreted.

John nodded. “That’s him.”

“C’mon,” Michael said. “Ditch the cards and let’s go swimmin’.”

“Where?” I asked. “The sprinklers?”

“No,” Michael said. “The river. We can catch a bunch of eels if we’re lucky.”

“Why is that
lucky?”
Tommy asked.

“Because Mr. Mangnone’ll give you three bucks for every eel you bring him at the store,” I said. “Dead or alive.”

“What’s he do with ’em?” John asked.

“He eats ’em,” I said.

“You’re pullin’ my prick.”

“I wouldn’t touch your prick,” I said.

“Serious?” John said.

“Boils ’em first. Gets all that shit outta ’em. Then he cooks ’em in vinegar and oil. Lots of spices thrown in. It’s pretty good.”

“You ate eel?” John asked, his face twisted in disgust. “On your own? I mean, without nobody havin’ a gun on you?”

“That’s nothin’,” Michael said. “Tell ’em what you have the day before Easter.”

“Lamb’s head,” I said.

“I don’t believe it,” Tommy said.

“The
whole
head?” John asked.

“Except for the eyes,” I said. “We give those to my grandmother.”

“Oh, Jesus,” John said. “Why?”

“She mixes ’em with oil and water,” I said. “My mother says it cures headaches.”

“Like aspirin?” Tommy said.

“Sort of,” I said.

“You’re like a freakin’ cave man, Shakes,” John said.

“What’s that flower you like to eat?” Tommy asked.

“What flower?”

“The one your mother made that one time,” Tommy said. “With all the leaves.”

“Artichoke?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Tommy said.

“That’s not a flower, moron,” I said.

“Looked like one to me,” Tommy said.

“Lamb’s head and flowers,” John said. “A feast.”

“The Irish know nothin’ about food,” I said.

“I give you that,” Tommy said.

“I give you
this,”
John said, grabbing his crotch.

“What does an Irishman call a seven-course meal?” I asked.

“What?”

“A six-pack and a boiled potato,” I said, initiating the Hell’s Kitchen game known as the dozens, where ethnic insults flew with abandon.

“How can you spot the bride at an Italian wedding?” John asked.

“How?”

“She’s the one with the braided armpits,” John said.

“What’s Irish foreplay?” Tommy asked, standing up and moving from the stoop.

“What?”

“Brace yourself, Bridget,” Tommy said.

“How many Irishmen does it take to change a light bulb?” I asked.

“How many?”

“Four,” I said. “One to hold the bulb and three to turn the ladder.”

“I’m goin’ swimmin’,” Michael said.

“We’ll go with you,” I said, following him toward the 12th Avenue piers.