On the Waterfront

by Budd Schulberg

  “Okay, you c’n take it in,” he said to the intern. “Another D.O.A.”

  Father Barry, a tall, lean, fast-talking product of Bohegan, praying for Joey while anointing him, told God he thought Joey deserved mercy in heaven since it had been so rudely denied him in his short visit on this earth. He was born and raised in Bohegan, Father Barry, and he was no pious-tower religious. His old man had been a cop, honest, therefore in trouble, getting the Siberian treatment, pounding a beat on the outskirts, believing in his religion as an ethical guide as well as a sacramental experience and not afraid to tirade against the birettas and the high cloth when he thought them too worldly and over-impressed with wealth and position. A natural-born rebel, an independent man had been Patrolman John Francis Barry. His son, the priest, thinking what a poor end this was for young Doyle, remembered the funeral of his father nineteen years earlier, when he was only eleven. Look at a priest and you may think, what does he know of the world, his collar cutting him off from knowledge of the world, secure for life in the bosom of the Church. But a priest is a man, small-minded or truly catholic, easily frightened or lion-brave, buttering up the parish richlings, or as concerned for the poor and the wretched as was Christ Himself.

  Mrs. McLaverty, a plump woman whose slip was always showing, said to a neighbor woman, “Poor Katie. They was as close as twins.”

  The other woman moaned. “The poor sweet thing. It’ll kill her, it will. Her only brother and she too good for this world.”

  Mrs. Collins nearby could not be quieted. A little off her head since Andy was taken from her, everybody said, and good reason, with four kids half-orphaned, half-dressed, half-fed.

  “You wait and see, God’ll be the judge.” She was talking sort of crazy. “The rats, they’ll burn in hell until kingdom come.”

  Mutt Murphy staggered closer to the widow Collins and crossed himself elaborately. “Amen,” he said. “Lord’ve mercy on him. He was a saint, that Joey. Oney one tried to get me me compensation. He filled out me report fer me ’n …”

  He was talking to himself again.

  “Come on, outa the way, comin’ through …” The morgue wagon attendants were pushing through the crowd of curious and bereaved. A cop shoved the bleary Mutt Murphy roughly out of the way, so the basket could pass.

  Mutt tried to slobber his condolences to Pop, but Runty also pushed him away. There was something about Mutt that was irresistibly pushable. And pushed or cuffed away he always swung back in your direction like a heavy punching bag. “Beat it, ya rummy,” Runty told him, throwing out his small tough chest in a characteristic bantam-cock gesture. “Leave the old man alone.”

  Mutt shrugged and walked away, shaking his head at the world. Runty and Moose helped Pop along by their closeness as they all followed the body to the morgue wagon. Most of the people in the neighborhood were gathered solemnly on the sidewalk to watch the wagon drive away.

  “C’mon,” Runty said to Pop. “Le’s go get a coupla balls in us.”

  Five

  LONGSHOREMEN WHO HAD HURRIED to the tenement courtyard were streaming back to the Friendly Bar, in need of a drink. There wasn’t much talk about Joey Doyle. There were wiser things to do, with so many goons on the Earie, than to express any sympathy for him, safer just to dummy up and go about your business, have a drink, watch the fights, keep your nose clean. If there was any law in this jungle, that was it. There was a fight on TV, selling the beer, and the men who had stayed in the bar, for reasons of their own, and those whose curiosity had led them outside into the cluster around the priest and the intern and the cops were now drawn together into their common escape, the 21-inch screen where the violence was vicarious and relatively harmless.

  Terry Malloy usually watched the fights Monday, Wednesday, Friday nights, looking on in a careless, hands-in-pocket, face-in-the-beer sort of way, shrugging off the guys who kept telling him what he could have done to those hamolas in the ring, but privately thinking a lot of young bums were getting away with murder to pull down the $4000 television money with nothing to go on except willingness and sometimes not even that. Not that Terry had been a ring master. He had been easy to hit; there was scar-tissue swelling over both eyes to prove it, but he had been strong and he had had the spirit for it and he knew a little about pacing himself and closing in on an opponent when he was ready to be taken. Only lost seven fights in forty-three, a pretty fair average for a kid brought along too fast, thrown in over his head a couple of times, and under wraps for the long odds in a couple of others. So Terry watched the fights, and once in a while dreamed the expug dream of a comeback: maybe he’d get his gear out and fool around in the gym just to get the feel of it. Hell, he was still in pretty good shape, only three four pounds over his best weight, and at twenty-eight—look at Rocky Marciano, Jimmy Carter. They were all around thirty now and seeing more money than they ever knew at twenty.

  “Hey, Terry, watcha doin’ out there? Riley’s makin’ a bum outa that Solari.”

  It was Specs, who had been up there on the roof with Joey, Specs and Sonny. Now they were both inside belting whiskey with beer chasers and watching the fight as if nothing had happened. Specs didn’t look like a pistol, slight and pasty-faced, but he had the guts or the craziness to take men’s lives without flinching, which means without thinking too much about it. He was a nervous man with poor eyesight and he gave Terry the creeps, but he would do anything Johnny Friendly told him, that was for sure. Sonny was just a big meathead who went along, mostly because he had so much respect for Specs. People didn’t realize that it took something extra to go all the way with another guy’s life. The average bruiser like Truck or Gilly couldn’t do it. They could beat you so you died of it, sure, leave you to spit out your life in an alley somewhere. But this other, premeditated thing, the average guy in the mob wasn’t up to that. You had to have something special, something big or sick in your character. Terry knew that. He knew Specs and even Sonny were tougher or more desperate than he was. He himself was just a hanger-on, a crumb-catcher, usually trusted only with the smallest errands, which was perfectly all right with him. Small potatoes were all right with him. The rest of it was too much trouble, like being President. Who the hell wanted to be President? Look at this Ike and all the headaches he was into. Five stars on his shoulder and he’s a hero, George Washington, with the whole world calling him Champ. A year in the White House and he’s a bum and Pegler is calling him all the lousy names he used to save for the Democrats. President, or even delegate of Local 447 like Specs Flavin, who wants it? A couple of clams in his pocket and a good-looking oyster lined up for the night-o, that was for Terry. Only now he was in a little more than he had figured. The hell with the fight and Specs and Sonny. He’d tie on a good one tonight and wash it out of his system. It wasn’t his fault, not as long as he figured they was only gonna be talking to Joey. Of course he knew Specs and the jobs he would do for Johnny Friendly. But it wasn’t his fault if something happened without his knowing it was going to happen.

  In the bar, the same old arguments, the same old bull, the same old aimless talk, the ball games and the fights and which stevedore official was the biggest S.O.B. and whether or not Flat-top Karger would get his old hiring-boss spot back when he got out of the can.

  “Come on over, have a shot,” Sonny beckoned.

  Terry waved them aside and went on into the backroom. The backroom was just an old, stale rectangle with the boxers and the ballplayers and the horses and a few broads on the wall—art studies—and some pictures of the big shots (from Johnny Friendly up) arm-in-arming one another. There was a touching picture of Johnny right in there with International president Willie Givens, Tom McGovern and the Mayor of Bohegan, snapped on the joyous occasion of the last testimonial dinner for Willie, an annual affair given by the Willie Givens Association, with a list of sponsors featuring everybody of importance from the Mayor and the political bosses to Murder Inc.’s Jerry Benasio, who brought business efficiency to murder. Politicians,
shipowners and racketeers, that was the axis on the waterfront. They gave beautiful testimonial dinners. Each year Weeping Willie thanked them with a voice full of tears and whiskey and heartfelt clichés.

  The principal piece of furniture in the room was a pool table, which served Johnny Friendly as both a desk and a playground. Pool was his game and though he lost money easily (“It’s only money,” a favorite phrase) he lost this game of skill with great reluctance and would badger the victor until he had evened the score, then play again and again until his superiority was there for all to see. Competitive. Wanting to beat everybody at everything. That’s what had made him so big on the docks.

  The television was on in the backroom too and everybody was watching with one eye because the other eye was on Johnny. This was Friday, payday on the pier and the paynight in Friendly’s Bar where the take was cut up among the henchmen who called themselves the union officers. All over the harbor the locals were paying off tonight, on Staten Island, along the East River and out in the Benasio country of Brooklyn, a stack of blue chips for the loyal favorites, a piece of the pilferage and the horse money and the short-gang gimmick (hire sixteen men for the work of twenty-two and pad the payroll with ghosts). All over the harbor it was paynight and the boys had their hands and their tongues out. Johnny Friendly was a big man all week, and could tell Willie Givens what to do and carry out the unwritten, unspoken orders of Tom McGovern, but bigger tonight because now the loot was in the hand and he dealt with realities, was moving around the backroom with the authority and dignity and bad manners of an old-fashioned king.

  Jimmy Powers was narrating on the television, building up a guy who shouldn’t have been up there. “He’s being beaten to the punch but he’s always dangerous, he’s got a lethal right hand,” the comment interrupted the fight.

  Johnny Friendly laughed. “Lethal shit,” he said. “The kid’s nothing.”

  Terry was in the room, just inside the door, in a mood, looking at all of them. Jocko, the big-faced bartender, poked his head in the door.

  “Hey, boss, Packy wants another one on the cuff-o.”

  Packy was an old longshoreman and ex-con, helpful in a minor way until the sauce got him.

  “Give it to ’im,” Johnny waved Jocko out. He was always generous in public and he was nearly so in private. If you were able to accept his way of life without question, he was rather an exemplary character.

  Big Mac came up to the pool table with a wad of bills. He didn’t say anything because it was just a routine pay-in, the cut from the shape-up, five days, 850 men paying Big Mac two to five bucks a day for the privilege of being thumbed in over some other guys. Better than ten thousand dollars. Two piers. And Johnny had a third opening up any minute. Big Mac lingered and Johnny knew there was something on his mind. Johnny took him into the cubicle washroom, the inner sanctum for the business that even the Johnny Friendly boys didn’t have to hear. Johnny had a general’s sense of security.

  Big Mac, a material witness in a couple of local murders, including the Andy Collins job, a man with a hard jaw encased in the fat of easy living, put his mouth close to Johnny’s ear.

  “We got a banana boat comin’ in at B tomorra, the Maria Cristal from Panama. I was just wonderin’. Them bananas go bad in a hurry.”

  Big Mac looked at Johnny, waiting for the word go. What he meant was a work stoppage. You dream up some labor grievance—the company is using its own men to speed the unloading—any handy gimmick, and then you pull the men off and leave the bananas to rot. In twenty-four hours the banana people—the ones who contracted to buy ’em are the ones who get stuck—are singing yes we have no bananas. Then Big Mac whispers to them he can get the men to call off the strike for a consideration—some bills slipped into an envelope like it was Christmas. They had worked it with tulip bulbs from Holland last spring and shook the Dutch uncles down for 25G in cold cash. There’s a fortune in tulip bulbs and 25G is a small price to get them into America before they rot in the hold.

  “Okay, ask ten G,” Johnny said. “But be sure you don’t pull the men out without a good reason. Be sure it looks legit. So I c’n bull the press how we’re fighting for the rights of our men.”

  “I got ya, boss,” Big Mac said. “I don’t think we’ll have no trouble. That banana outfit aint got no guts.”

  They came back into the big room and the television fight was still on. “Solari’s hanging on,” Jimmy Powers was saying. “Riley had him hurt, but he can’t seem to finish him off. Only thirty seconds now. Solari has him tied up, the referee can hardly get them apart. They’re both pretty tired boys.”

  “Aah, turn it off,” Johnny said. “Them clowns can’t fight. There’s nobody tough any more.”

  He said it in a roar, looking around to challenge everybody, and the goons and the runners and the pier bosses and the shylocks and the gambling concessionaires and the stooges with big titles all nodded. Terry was standing there by the door, not coming in or throwing a few friendly hooks at his chums as he usually did. Johnny saw him and grinned.

  “There he is! You could of licked ’em both with one hand tied behind ya.” He put his thick arms around Terry’s chest and lifted him off the ground with affection. Then he fell into a favorite gag, cowering as if afraid he was about to be felled by a terrible punch. “Don’t hit me. Don’t hit me now! “ Usually Terry was glad to go along with the gag, pleased at all this attention from the big man of the neighborhood. But this time he hung limp in Johnny’s arms and he didn’t feint at him and fall into the byplay as he had been in the habit of doing.

  Johnny lost interest in the kid. After all, he was around mostly for laughs and as a little pay-off on the oldtime boxing skills, and he looked around for one of his shylocks, keeping in his mind all the transactions and aware that one of the loan sharks had yet to turn in his yield for the week.

  “Where’s Morgan? Where’s that big banker of mine?”

  Morgan, a waterfront Uriah Heep, who looked like something dredged up out of the foul waters of the slip, came forward. He was on his feet but he seemed to be crawling.

  “Right here, Mr. Friendly.”

  “Well ‘J.P.,’ how’s business?” Johnny said.

  “I’m havin’ trouble with Kelly again, boss,” “J.P.” recited his complaint with reproachful side glances at Big Mac. “He won’t take no loans and Big Mac keeps putting him to work anyway.”

  “I got to put him to work. He’s my wife’s nephew,” Big Mac insisted.

  “But he won’t take no loans.” “J.P.” was bold when Johnny was here to keep Big Mac off him.

  “I got to give him work. You know my wife. She’d murder me.”

  Johnny Friendly laughed. “That’s why I stay single.”

  Big Mac glared at “J.P.” He liked to run the pier a little bit the way he, Big Mac, felt like running it and he was sick and tired of this little wormy “J.P.” always running home to Johnny with his tattle-tales. “J.P.” reached into his crumpled gray suit for a worn wallet and took out a wad of bills. “Here’s the interest on the week, boss. Six-thirty-two.” “J.P.’s” take would be twenty per cent, around $125, nice pay for just nosing around into other people’s troubles.

  Johnny handed the roll to Charley Malloy. “Here, count it. Countin’ makes me sleepy.”

  Johnny liked to have his people checking up on one another. It was one of his ways.

  Skins DeLacey, a checker on Pier B, a sharp-looking, dressy kid with a knack for not working, and a reputation for stealing from himself just to keep in practice, came in and presented himself to Johnny.

  “Howja make out with the sheet tin?” Johnny asked softly.

  “Lovely,” Skins said. “I wrote a lovely receipt if I do say so myself.”

  “Stow the receipt. I’ll take the cash,” Johnny said.

  Skins had the wad. “Forty-five bills.”

  Johnny looked around for Terry. Terry was standing there glum, trying to think. He wanted to say something, but he didn�
��t know what to say, much less how to say it. He felt funny, like being down on the canvas without feeling any pain and yet unable to get up. That had happened to him the time McBride had knocked him out in Newark. His head was clear and he could hear the count and he felt he could get up and fight, but there was something cut off between his head and his legs and he was still down on his hands and knees at the count of ten.

  “Here, Terry, you count this,” Johnny handed him Skins fistful of cash.

  “Aw, Johnny …” Terry started to say.

  “Go ahead,” Johnny ordered. “It’s good for you. Develops your mind.”

  “What mind?” Big Mac dead-panned it.

  Terry turned on him, relieved to find a target. “You’re not so funny tonight, fat man.”

  Big Mac bellied up to Terry, ready with his hands. The kid was nothing, as far as he was concerned. Charley was smart and useful but he could see no point to Terry.

  Johnny moved between them, and put his arm around Terry. “Back up, Mac, I like the kid. Remember the night he took Faralla at St. Nick’s? We won a bundle.” He dug a grateful fist into Terry’s still-boxer-toughened side. “Real tough. A big try.”

  The blow and the talk and the headache Terry came in with threw him off his count. “I gotta start over,” he said.

  Johnny laughed and slapped him on the back. “Skip it, Einstein. How come you never got no education, like your brother Charley?”

  Charley looked particularly scholarly with his glasses on. He read a lot. He was proud of having finished From Here to Eternity. He liked books he thought were true to life.

  Big Mac nodded toward Terry, out to get his goat. “The oney arithmetic he ever loined was hearin’ the referee count up to ten.”

  It got some laughs and Terry was ready to bury a fisted right hand in Big Mac’s paunch. Johnny didn’t like roughhouse in the back room. This was a business room and Johnny never looked for unnecessary trouble. He had smoothed out a good deal with prosperity and Charley had helped to dress up the operation. Legitimatize it, Charley called it. He represented the local on the District Council and could sound more like an upright trade unionist than Reuther himself. Now Johnny pulled Terry away, blocking him off with his squat, authoritative body and asking his brain-man: