Young and Violent (8 page)

Tea stands in the back of heaven, under the big black wire fan blowing warm air around the room.

Preacher Rone shouts, “Where you wanna go?”

The congregation calls back to him, “Heaven, Lord! Heaven!”

The preacher slaps his hands and sings:

The congregation bursts out: “See de King Jesus — De Jesus King — ”

“And do what?” Preacher Rone shouts.

“Do what de angels do, Lord!” is chorused back.

Preacher Rone says, “Sing it!”

Tea moves over to a bench in a corner under the fan and sits wiping his perspiring face. Song after song he sits through. Heaven is busting its gut tonight! Everyone got to say a prayer himself, standing up while the rest clap and inject “Yes, Lord;” “Tell the Lord;” “You know, you know;” “That’s true, Lord, hear him!” Tea tries to sleep, but can’t. He thinks: Preacher got a good racket. Used to be subway conductor, then decide to be preacher. People believe anything, you put God on the end of it.

Gets hotter and louder in heaven. Some heaven! Can’t hear yourself think, f’Chrissake. Everybody livin’ it up. Gettin’ with it. Flippin’ all over the place. Preacher doin’ all right. Pass the hat between sets. Give him the bread money cause he say he God.

This is the windup for the last pitch. Tea is soaking with sweat. Lord, that preacher won’t ever come off it, even when he’s building down. Eight-forty-five. Still all stomping their feet. God, God!

Heaven is breaking up at last, people filing out. Some stragglers lag to tell the preacher their problems. “Bring ‘em to the Lord,” he says.

“You convinced me tonight, Preacher Rone. Ain’t never gonna steal no more.”

“Stay convinced, brother!”

“You sure set me on fire, Preacher!”

“Was the warm breath of Jesus, sister, breathing down your spine.”

“You had the word, Preacher.”

“I heard it from the Lord hisself!”

At last Preacher Rone sees Tea, in back the church. He frowns. What the hell! Tea looks him in the eye and raises an eyebrow. The preacher gets short with his flock, and tells them he’ll see them tomorrow night, right here in heaven.

Tea doesn’t move until the place is cleared except for the preacher. Then he walks over to him, over near the exit from heaven, where the preacher is closing the curtain after the congregation.

Tea says, “I come here because I want it to snow, Preacher. It didn’t snow for two days.”

The preacher turns, pulling the robe off his big body. “The chicken alights on a rope,” he says matter-of-factly. “The rope doesn’t get any rest and the chicken doesn’t get any rest.”

“Never mind the double-talk. You can make it snow. Don’t tell me you don’t have none. All I want is some for me and enough for the hopheads I supply until I get the word on Ace. You can have a cut on the pushing.”

“The world is in a bad way,” Preacher Rone says, folding his robe over his arm carefully, “when an egg falls and breaks the bowl.”

“Stop beatin’ your gums!” Tea snarls. “I don’t know what the Christ all that gum-beatin’ means!”

The preacher puts his robe over the back of a chair. Then he turns and looks down at Perrez. His big arm reaches out for Tea’s skinny shoulders, and he holds him by them. “Now you listen here, you little pip-spic! You don’t come up here and tell me which end is up, hear? I
know,
hear? You don’t come up in the middle of a service to the Lord and tell me which end is up, hear? I
know!
And if I want to, I can break your arms and your legs next, so you just tone your big ass down, hear? You hear?”

Tea squirms to be free, but the preacher hangs on to him. Tea says, “I said I’d give you a cut on pushing.”

“If I was about to do business with you, pip-spic, you’d give me the whole cut, hear? Because I don’t like your face.”

“Let go me!”

“You going to listen first. Your Ace, he out! You hear? He out!”

“Whatta you mean, Preacher?” “Ace is out! He been replaced.” “Where’d you hear that?”

“You know better than to ask the preacher a question like that.”

“I don’t believe you.” “In time, you will.”

“So Ace is out! You’re still in — you and me can make a deal. I got plenty hops depending on me. Ace got a good take on ‘em…. You and me, Preacher, we can make a deal.”

Preacher Rone lets go of Tea and chuckles.

“What you got against it?”

“I don’t like your face.”

“Level, Preacher. Level.”

“Sure,” Preacher Rone says, “Sure, I intend to. I was directed to. If you wants it to snow, spic, you better see a man by the name Pontiac.”

“You’re crazy!”

“That’s right — but that don’t change the facts, tamale.”

“Flat Head Pontiac?”

“Ace is out. Pontiac is in. That’s all the clues. That’s all the news.” The preacher picks up the baskets of money lying on the table near the back of heaven, and begins emptying them down his trousers pockets. Perrez stands staring at him. He murmurs, “You’re lying, Preacher. You’re lying!”

“You know where Pontiac live. You go ask him.”

The preacher places the empty baskets back on the table, and jingles the coins in his pockets with his large hands, rocking on his heels, grinning down at Tea.

“Level more, Preacher,” Tea says.

“What for? What’s in it for me?”

Tea swallows. He tries to say more, but can’t.

“You’re just a little spic, kid. You’re not a big man.”

“That’ll be news to the Kings, Preacher.”

“The Kings? I heard the name somewhere, but I don’t recall the faces. Isn’t that funny? I recall most of the records, though. I recall yours in particular. Let’s see, where’s that farm you spent some summers — Coxsack?”

“I ain’t threatening
you,
Preacher.”

“You can’t. Not you, snowman. Now you better shoot along. I got things to do.”

Tea’s voice comes out a whine. “Just tell me before I go,” he says, “tell me what’s going on. Can’t you level that much?”

The Preacher smiles. “One does not set fire to the roof and then go to bed,” he says blandly; and he turns his back on Tea, and walks through heaven toward the gold words on the pulpit that say
JESUS SAVES!

• • •

If someone were to ask the girl with chestnut-colored hair, olive skin, round, frightened eyes, and a body not quite ripe yet, how old she is — they would have to ask her in Spanish. And in Spanish she would answer, “Trece.” Thirteen.

But no one among the Kings of the Earth is interested in the age of the bim. She sits on the edge of the yellow-covered couch in the clubroom, listening to the raucous sounds the Kings emit on entering.

“C’mon, pay your two skins!”

“She don’t look cherry to me!”

“She’s tight, don’t worry! Two skins! C’mon!”

“Hey hey, we gonna make a little yeabosh!”

“Two skins, pay before entering!”

“Hey, bim! Take it off, bim!”

“Wait till everybody’s here. C’mon, two skins!”

“Hey, hey, we gonna git some!”

She sits silently watching the Kings saunter in, a hanky crumpled in her hand, wrinkled and damp from mopping her brow with it. The cellar is cooler than outside, but damp. Only boys are here. She must remember to be very polite, like her sister said, and then she can stay in New York and not go back to live with people who are not her blood, neighbors in Aguadilla who treated her like a
camarera,
until Rosa could send for her. Here in New York is better. See the boys all laugh and joke. Rosa said she would get money from them. Why? It is the States.
Mucho dinero!
She will help Rosa; give her it all. Will they say to her something in Spanish? What is she to do? She sits wondering.

“Okay! Everyone pay! Gonna count. Two, four, six, eight — ”

“Ahora!’

“Hey bim! Bim! Don’t just sit there grinning like a ninny. Take it off!”

“She don’t speak English.” “Tell her in spic then!”

The Kings of the Earth circle the couch where she sits. A clock off somewhere in the distance rings midnight. In Spanish, Flash speaks to the girl, who smiles widely as he begins,
“Buenas noches!”

She anwers, smiling, in Spanish.

“She’s glad to meet us,” a King guffaws.

“Get on with it, Flash!”

“All right! All right!” Flash says. Then to the girl, he says,
“Oiga,”
and she does. She listens. It does not take long to explain.

O
N
W
EDNESDAY
it is pouring. The gutters of upper Madison Avenue are filled with pools of filthy water. The gray afternoon sky cracks with jagged lightning lines and belches thunder. Marie Lorenzi sees Pontiac’s convertible parked up in front of the photography store between 101st and 102nd, and she runs through the rain to her rendezvous with him. Her kerchief soaks up the weather and flattens her wet hair to her head. She hugs her school-books to her plastic raincoat, and her worn-down high heels kick up damp slime on her slacks. Her red sweater smells the way wet wool does, and her mascara runs. When she reaches the shop, the door swings open before her hand touches the knob, a bell tingles, and Flat Head Pontiac smiles widely, bowing suavely.

“It’s really goofing out today, isn’t it, honey?” he says.

He shuts the door, and behind him a tall young nice-looking fellow in his early thirties says, “Here, dear, let me take those books for you. We’ll put them down where they can dry off.”

“I look like a crud!” Marie sighs, as she sees herself in the long mirror behind the counter. “God, look at me!”

“You’re easy on my eyes, honey,” Pontiac tells her, “very easy on my eyes, for sure!”

The tall young man smiles. “Want to take off your scarf and dry it too?”

“Naw. No, thanks. My hair’s all straight.”

“Just as you say.”

Pontiac puts his arm around Marie’s shoulder. He says, “Marie here is one of these chicks that’s always sharp, and always afraid she’s not making the scene. Chicks like Marie are real crazy that way.”

Marie is surprised, flattered, a little more unsure of herself now.

She murmurs, “You sure can pour it on thick, Pontiac.” “What’d I tell you, dad? She doesn’t even dig my sincerity.”

Pontiac puts his hand on the young man’s sleeve then and with an arm still around Marie, he says, “This is Larry, honey. He owns this fine establishment.”

“I’m glad to know you. I’ve heard a lot of nice things about you from Pontiac,” Larry says.

Marie is pleased and perplexed by the cordial and polite atmosphere that exists. “The pleasure is mine,” she says, stiltedly.

“Perhaps if we all go into the other room we’ll be more comfortable.”

“This cat’s got a studio back here,” Pontiac tells Marie. “Groovy, huh?”

The studio is a small, square room with white walls, a black fiber rug, and three or four black and white checkered sling chairs. There is a black couch with a tiger skin thrown across it, at the front of the room; and in the back and along the sides, various strobe lights, cameras, and photographers’ lamps.

“Gee,” Marie exclaims enthusiastically, “this is nice!”

“This ain’t no ordinary cat, honey,” Pontiac tells her.

“I’m glad you like it, Marie.”

Pontiac slumps into a chair and sticks his long legs out in front of him. Marie sits down opposite him. The words to “America” are running on her wet bandana, and as she slides out of her raincoat, her soggy sweater shows a flat, shapeless bust, where it clings to her. Pontiac pulls his holder from the pocket of his blue corduroy sports coat, sticks a cigarette down in it, lights up and leans back, blowing smoke from his nostrils.

“I’ll tell you what,” Larry says, still standing. “I’ll slip into my rain togs and run down the street for some coffee and pastry for us. You two have your little chat while I’m gone. All right?”

“Crazy!” Pontiac agrees….

When Larry has left and closed the door behind him, Pontiac begins, “I guess we had better get right down to business. Are you with it, honey?”

“Sure. Babe says she is all for it, Pontiac. Babe is fed up to here with Gober. She will cooperate in every way on Friday.”

“Good!” Pontiac says. “I’m glad to hear she is cutting him, because she is too nice a chick to get hung up on that sick boy.”

“Babe says something else, too, Pontiac. She says she overheard in Dirty Mac’s the other afternoon that the Kings plan to jap the Jungles Friday, right after the dance.”

“This I know, honey, but I am pleased to hear that Babe would pass this on to me. There is not much I do not know that goes on with the Kings. They operate very crudely. I’m hip! On Monday, for example, they shoot out that ignorant Red Eyes de Jarro to our turf to try and smell from Silly Charlie our wind. That really bugs me, that they think we’d trust a moron with our news.”

“How do you know so much, Pontiac?” Marie asks reverently.

“You can buy more with money than you can with threats. The Kings don’t dig this theory. That’s why they’re romper kids compared with the Jungles. If the Jungles have a clubroom, they pay rent for it. They don’t promise protection to some old creep above the place who’d screw them for five skins.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a ventilator up in that store above the Kings’ den. You can hear down it. That old creep’ll let anyone listen for five skins.”

“Boy, Pontiac, I’ve got to hand it to you!”

Pontiac laughs, stretches, and flips the ashes off the end of his cigarette. “Honey,” he says, “I don’t do things in a small way. I got plans. You think I’m just interested in gigging around with small-time gangs and their sick little intrigues? I’m interested in being a
big
man. My turf’s going to be the world, honey. My gang’s eventually going to make Murder Incorporated look like a pansy club. First I’m going to get a rep! My name’s going to snag the imaginations of all the readers of the gore sheets, and they’re going to wonder how come a cat like me got to be so big, so quick. My gang, honey — the Jungles — they’re going to have a rep too! We start small, and we snowball. We get so big no one’s going to touch us — no cop, no D.A., no judge, no F.B.I. — no cat nowhere going to touch us. But we play it smart. We treat folks nice. We don’t threaten, we buy. That’s the craziest, honey — buying the world. It’s got a price too; don’t think it doesn’t.”

“Yeah, Pontiac, it all makes sense. But where you going to get the money?”

Pontiac nods, grinning, and sucks in on his holder, musing a moment. “Make it, honey. Make it. And that brings to mind something else I want to discuss. As you know, we got a auxiliary gang called the Junglettes. Our chicks all belong. You know that?”

“Who don’t?”

“That’s playing it smart too, you see. We treat our chicks with respect. They’re organized. They know they’re rated high with us. Our chicks make money same as we do, and they keep what they make. We don’t free-load on our chicks. The Jungles learned back in the Year One that people have got to be treated with human kindness or they’ll goof on you someday when your pants are down.” Pontiac frowns. “Excuse the vulgarity.”

“You’re smart, Pontiac. You’re awful smart!”

“I wasn’t born today.”

“Gee — I’d sure like to be a Junglette myself.” Pontiac beams. “Honey, you can be. You can be.” “You kidding?”

“Pontiac does not gig around, honey. The Jungles want both you and Babe to team up. Of course, we like to think you’d join in on all the activities too. We’d like to be reassured, honey.”

“Sure!”

“And you’ll profit by joining in too. Financially, I mean!”

“Gee, Pontiac, it sounds swell!”

“Crazy, honey! Crazy! Now if you will listen carefully, I will explain to you just one of the Junglettes activities. But before I do, you must promise not to interrupt or make your mind up until I have had my whole say. All right?”

“All right.”

“Crazy!” Pontiac stands up and strolls about the small room as he talks. “I am going to explain first that our chicks are never asked to do anything sexual that would injure their reps as chicks. No grind sessions or line-ups. That’s kid stuff. No prostitution. None of that. Our chicks are never asked to push horse at night, strictly in the daytime, and only if they can see pushing. If they cannot see this, they do not have to get with it. They are human beings.

“But to return to this sexual subject, which I hope is not bugging you, but it must be mentioned. As you know, Larry, here, is a fine photographer. He is all equipped. It is common knowledge that certain types of movies and photographs sell at a big price. A stag will rent such a movie for a hundred to two-fifty a night. A deck of good snaps goes for fifty per. A chick can be cut in twenty per cent on all deals she has participated in. It is easy money and there is no risk as to rep as you may think, for our boy Larry knows how to doctor such photographic undertaking so that the face does not show. The photography is shot in this very room, by Larry, with no one present but the participants. You met Larry; you know he is a nice guy. Everything is discreet. There is good dough to be had, and it is my opinion that a chick has only to gain. Well, what do you think, Marie, honey? Could you get with it? It is one of the more important activities of the Junglettes.”

Pontiac is behind Marie Lorenzi, standing in back of the chair she sits in. He leans down and places his hands gently on her shoulders. “Honey? Could you get with it?”

“Gee, Pontiac — I — don’t know. I mean, I never thought of nothing like that.”

“There’s big money. And no one’s ever going to know. You should see Larry’s fine Italian hand at work on these movies.”

“I could sure use the money.”

“And once you’re in the Junglettes, honey, you’re on your way. We’re taking our girls up the ladder with us. I’m hip, honey! A few years of movie work, and you’ll have made a pile. And our horizons will broaden, as they say in history books, and there’ll be bigger deals, important deals, deals that no one dreamed of! We’ll earn and we’ll buy, earn and buy, until we’ve bought a little place called Worldsville, and we’ll get wise it’s no bigger than something we can hold in the palm of our hands.”

“Gosh!” Marie sighs. “Gosh! I never heard anyone sound off like you can, Pontiac.”

“Then you’re in?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m in. I’m sick of being nobody. I’m in, Pontiac.”

“And do you think Babe will buy it too?”

“I think she’s sick of it the same way I am. I think she will. Gober’s been giving her kicks where they hurt, and don’t hurt good. I think she’s ready for something better. Not just better than Gober, but same as me — better than the stinking little nowhere we live in!”

“Good chick! Good one!” Pontiac exclaims.

A voice says, “Well, everyone in here looks happy! Did we sign another starlet?” Larry enters the room carrying containers of coffee, and buns wrapped in rain-spotted tissue. “It’s still coming down out there!” he says.

“Marie is with it,” Pontiac tells him.

“Good, Marie. I’m glad to hear that.”

Marie Lorenzi blushes. “I’ll — feel sort or self-conscious — ”

“Not for long. You’ll be among friends,” Pontiac tells her.

“Like who?”

“Me,” Larry says. “I’m worse than Hitchcock. Always have to star in my own films. And — what’d you say Marie’s friend’s name is?”

“Babe,” Pontiac says. “A nice doll.”

Larry says, “Well, that would make it pretty easy the first time, wouldn’t it, Marie? We’ll just shoot you, me, and Babe. My wife will work the cameras. Here, try one of these fig buns … Ummm, they’re delicious!”

• • •

The rain cannot drown the decaying stink of the apartment house, the cooking smells, the odor of too many people in too few rooms. Past the pile of refuse that is always there in the corridor, Gober leads Anita Manzi by the hand. They go up the stairs together, and outside the Gonzalves’ flat, Gober says, “Let me take your raincoat, Nita. I guess the building smells, huh? I don’t know. I sort of smell it, but I’m used to it.”

Anita hands him her plaid coat, and says, “Wait — let me comb my hair first. You
sure
they expect me?”

“Sure.”

“And it’s all right, Gober? You’re sure?” “They’re glad. They think it’s nice for me to bring a girl home.”

The walls around them are scratched with names, drawings of hearts, heads and bodies of women, and obscenities. Plaster is hanging by threads from the ceiling; the light bulb is the dimmest watt possible. Above them on the next floor, an angry mother is chasing her child up more stairs, yelling, “I’ll put you in the furnace when I catch you, and shut the door!”

“It’s pretty noisy today,” Gober says, as he waits while Anita fusses with her hair. “It’s not usually this noisy.”

“Where I live, the couple upstairs are always fighting. We can hear them. They’re always shouting at each other.”

“You look swell. Really!”

“I’m nervous, Gober.”

“So am I.”

“You are? Why?”

“Search me. I don’t know. I guess because I just never brought a girl home.” Gober shrugs. “Well, I guess we might as well go on in.”

“Is it your mother or your father who doesn’t speak English?”

“My mother. But my father doesn’t speak too good. Sort of broken.”

“I’m ready, I guess.”

“Well, we might as well. Come on.”

Gober opens the door and steps into the living room. There on the antimacassar-covered sofa sit Mr. and Mrs. Gonzalves, in rigid postures, dressed in their Mass clothes. Neither one moves as their son enters with the girl and shuts the door behind them. Beside Mrs. Gonzalves, her husband looks very little and fragile. His feet do not touch the floor. His knees are crossed and his legs just hang over the sides of the sofa, the black shoes he wears shined to a high polish, his tight, ill-fitting black suit shiny from the pressing his wife gave it this morning. He has on a striped shirt and flower-splashed tie, a vest with a gold watch chain looped across it, and in the buttonhole of his coat, a paper rose.

Mrs. Gonzalves, big and obese, has on her navy blue silk dress with the rows of long beads around the neck. Her black hair is combed back neatly into a bun, and she smells of too much “Evening In Paris” perfume, which was given her last Christmas by Rigoberto. In her lap she holds the green satin pillow with the gold-sewn Mom across it.

Grober stands looking at them and they sit looking at him for a slow moment. Then, taking Anita’s hand, Gober says, “Mama, Papa, this is Anita.”