Young and Violent

by Packer, Vin

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “But a gang boy did. It’s no good, Gober. He’ll have a fit if he finds you here.” “Then, later meet me. I — ”

  “No,” she says firmly. “There’s no way. It’s no good, Gober!”

  He says, “I’m not wearing my jacket — ” but she walks away from him to the booth in the back, and stands writing out the check for the party there.

  The jukebox whines a torch song and Gober sits despondently thinking that this whole thing happened to him because he had a lousy hole in his molar. Two weeks ago he never saw her; then when he was passing this luncheonette ten days past, he stopped to buy penny gum to stuff a cavity, and the hamburger grill was smoking, and there was nobody in the place besides her and him. So he showed her how to scrape it, and told her about making sure there weren’t any meat scraps left to burn once she’d cooked something on it; and they got to talking. Now he was hooked worse than Tea was on snow, and she was just as hard to get.

  “You keep out of this place, King Gonzalves,” her old man had said, eying Gober’s jacket, the first time he had seen Gober in the luncheonette. And the third time Gober had gone there he said, “I don’t want your kind hanging around here!”

  “What’s my kind?” Gober had asked him.

  “Young punks with Sam Browne belts holding their britches up, and knives and rock weighing them down.

  King! Not here! Not around here you don’t play king!” Mr. Manzi had barked.

  Beside Gober’s arm on the counter there is a pencil, and sipping his coffee, he eyes it, picks it up, and turns it in his thick, square fingers. From the silver dispenser he pulls a napkin and begins to draw. Behind him he hears the party in the booth laughing and the music asking where the baby’s dimple will be, and the whir of the electric fan. He draws a picture of a small curly-headed boy staring in the window of a café at a large rulino, a Spanish meat pie. The boy’s eyes are round and wide and wistful. Gober studies his picture momentarily, a faint smile playing on his mouth, and then underneath he scribbles the caption: No sabe como te quiero — You don’t know how much I love you. Then he looks up for Anita, and sees her standing down at the far end of the fountain.

  “Nita. I have something funny to show you.”

  She shakes her head, not looking at him.

  He whispers, “Psss — please!” and he is smiling, but she says only, “Go, Gober. Please go before Pop comes!” and does not move from her place there.

  For a while he looks steadily at her, hoping she will turn her head toward him, come down to him, or say something more, but she is adamant. He drinks the rest of his coffee without taking his eyes from her, wipes his mouth on another napkin and sighs. He sees the clock; a few minutes before nine, and remembers his appointment at the bridge — with Eyes and Tea. Still for some seconds he stays, persisting in his hopes, which are in vain — and then, resigned, he sighs a second time, swings off the high stool, and stands regarding his drawing. Again he calls her, “Nita, I left something for you,” and shoving the napkin down the counter, he ambles toward the door and out into the street.

  Pausing before the windows of the luncheonette, Gober reaches into the pocket of his clean white shirt for a cigarette, finds it, sticks it between his lips, and flips a match into flame with his thumbnail. A few feet from him, squatting on the curb, Junior Brown exclaims, “Hey — ’bout time, Gobe. You been forever!”

  Junior Brown is an undersized fourteen-year-old, with skin the color of milk chocolate, eyes like round brown marbles; teeth that are straight and buck and white as alabaster, and black burred hair. He looks up at Gonzalves with reverence and awe, and holds Gonzalves’ jacket as though it were the seamless coat of Christ, and grinning uncontrollably, he says, “You git to talk to her, man?”

  Gober glances sideways and sees her staring out at him, and for a moment they look straight at each other that way, oblivious to everything else, searching one another’s eyes with painful excitement, until after what seems to them to be a long time, Anita Manzi turns her back on Gonzalves. Drawing in on his cigarette, Gober exhales a cloud of smoke and stands stonily.

  “You gonna be late, Gobe,” Junior Brown tries again.

  “Give me my jacket, Nothin’ Brown!” Gober snaps authoritatively, “and never mind the small talk!”

  Then Gober straightens his shoulders, assumes a new and more characteristic posture, and saunters toward the younger boy, holding his long arms out for Brown to slip on the black jacket. “C’mon, Nothin’,” Gober says in his old, sure voice, “I got business to attend to t’night. Let’s make tracks!”

  The pair stride down Madison Avenue, Brown a foot behind Gonzalves, his big eyes fixed on his idol’s back. Brown is not a King, for the Kings of the Earth have no colored “citizens,” but, undaunted, he is an accessory whose skinny stick legs, like taut pistons, drive him on, following relentlessly in Gober’s tracks. Two years ago, when his mother and he had moved from 127th Street down into El Barrio, and he’d gone his first day to P.S. 109, he’d achieved a certain small notoriety among his classmates.

  “What did you say your name was?” the teacher had asked him a second time at roll. “Junior Brown, ma’am.” “Your first name?” “Junior.”

  “What’s the Junior stand for?” she had persisted. “It stands for nothin’,” he’d answered. “Well,” she said impatiently, “what’s your father’s first name?”

  “Ma’am, I don’t have one of those. My mother named me.” So they had come to call him simply “Nothin’.”

  “You headin’ off for the cellar, Gobe?” Brown questions.

  “Meeting Eyes and Bag first. What’re you eating, Nothin’? What’re you sucking on there?”

  Junior Brown held out the paper sack. “Want one, Gobe?”

  “What is it?”

  “Frogs’ legs.”

  “Ugh! Christ, no! Where’d you steal them from?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t swipe ‘em. My mother give ‘em me. She get ‘em from where she work.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, she a domestic.” “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, she get all sorts things. T-bone steak once.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure! She get all sorts things!”

  In his excitement at capturing Gober’s interest, Junior Brown babbles on about the shad roe he had once, and the venison, the lobster tail, and the ar’choke; but Gonzalves is not hearing any of it. His brow is knit in a frown, his concentration on something else, impervious, as they cross Madison and head down 98th in the direction of Park. Above them in the windows of the dilapidated apartment buildings, people lean on pillows on the ledges staring out at one another, and down at the squalor of the sidewalks and pavement beneath them. Shoeless kids play with fire at a rubbish heap on the corner, and a half a dozen men squat around a crap game midway in the block. A woman sits lazily on a front stoop, her breast bared and offered to her baby, cradled in her arms; while a fat, yawning friend sits in a camp chair chatting with her. Through the jagged glass of a broken window in a street-floor flat, an old man peers out; behind him a television set shows dancing bears on its screen as a flute plays Rio Rita, and a small girl in the room blows bubble gum into a pink balloon and skips rope. A street light that has been stoned out makes the end of the block dark, and in this darkness there are the shadows of others lingering idly, yakking and laughing and looking at what there is to see.

  “… and Missus Morganhotter tell my mother, ‘Take ‘em Bessie. We going Connetick this weekend and won’t eat ‘em anyways,’ “ Junior Brown is reciting to Gonzalves as they move along, “and them pok chop was three inch thick and wide as all outdoors and — ”

  But Gober interrupts suddenly, barking, “Nothin’!”

  “Huh?”

  “I want to tell you something!”

  “What, Gobe?”

  “I’ll break your head in half, Nothin’ Brown, if you say to anyone where I was tonight! You got that?”


  “Man, you don’t have to spell that out for me, and that’s a fact!”

  “I just wanted to make it clear.”

  “I know that much.”

  “Okay.”

  They cut around the corner of 98th and head up Park toward the wooden bridge that crosses the avenue, upon which Eyes and Bag wait. Nothin’ Brown empties the chewed bones from the paper sack into the street and blows the bag up, punching it with his fist so it explodes. He giggles, “Got ya, ya stool!” and tosses the torn sack over his shoulder. Then he says, “Gobe?”

  “What?”

  “Can I go up far as the cellar with you? I ain’t gonna snoop around. Just wanna walk up with you.”

  “I told you, Nothin’, I got to have a confab with Eyes and Bag on the bridge first.”

  “I could wait till you was through, and then walk up with you to the meetin’, Gobe. Can I?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Sure wish you’d let me, Gobe.”

  “Uh-uh. This is King business!”

  “You think there gonna be a rumble comin’ up, Gobe?”

  “You playing Twenty Question, Nothin’?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then don’t!”

  At the foot of the steps leading up to the bridge, Gober stops and looks down at Brown. “This is as far as you go,” he says.

  “I see you tomorrow?”

  “If I don’t see you first.”

  Nothin’ Brown grins helplessly, nodding his head and backing off from Gonzalves with his puny hands tucked in the pockets of his worn brown corduroy pants. “Then I be seeing you, Gobe,” he says. “S’long, Gobe.”

  Gober gives an easy salute and starts up the steps when suddenly Brown snaps his fingers, slaps his head, calls, “Gobe!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Forgot to tell you somethin’.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, while you was in there, you know, while you was in the — ”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gober says impatiently, “what happened?”

  “That Babe — she and this other broad come by, see, and they looks in at you, you know?”

  Gober comes down from the step and walks over to Brown.

  “What do you mean, they looked in at me.”

  “They just did. They looks in, and this broad, she says to Babe, ‘See, what I tell you?’ and Babe, she say, ‘Yeah, yeah’ — like that, you know?”

  “Like what?” Gober demands.

  “Like she was learnin’ something’, Gobe. She say real slow, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ You know?” “And then?” Gober’s voice rises. “And then nothin’. They just go on then.” “That’s all?”

  “Sure. I sittin’ there and I see ‘em, and this broad say to Babe, ‘See, what I tell you?’ and Babe look and say, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ That’s all. I thought you want to know.”

  “Thanks!” Gonzalves says.

  “Well, I be seeing you t’morrow, Gobe. I be seeing you round.”

  Gonzalves does not answer. Slowly he climbs the wooden steps to the top, where the War Counselors await him.

  • • •

  Leaning against the pinball machine in the candy store on 100th and Madison, Babe Limon smokes a cigarette, and feigns interest in the June issue of True Confessions, which she has grabbed from the magazine rack behind her. As she flicks through the slick-paper pages, her friend Marie Lorenzi talks.

  She says, “He own you or something? He contributing to your support, or something? He married to you or something?”

  She files down her long red nails with angry motions. “Jesus, Babe, you saw him sitting there looking like he was swallowing blood over her! You going to take that?”

  Babe Limon is a small sixteen-year-old with firm, full breasts, a lushly curved young body, soft, golden skin, brown hair piled on top of her head, and a pretty face which is overpainted with pancake, rouge, mascara, and lipstick. She wears a flared bolero jacket of a shiny pink color, a plaid wool skirt, and a bright silk striped blouse. Her ensemble is completed by a pair of worn black patent leather pumps, and a cheap gold charm bracelet is fastened around one ankle of her bare legs.

  “One thing about Flat Head Pontiac,” she says, still looking down at the magazine, “is that he asked me, you know what I mean? He comes up to me in the corridor at school, and he says, ‘What’d you say if I said I was going to cut Gober out at the shindig Friday?’ See? He gets my opinion. I says, ‘You think you can? You think you can, Pontiac?’ I just ask him if he thinks he can.”

  “You got to decide, Baby-O. I tell you, break with Gober! Everybody and his brother knows he cruising that Polack up in the ice cream parlor. He just comes to you to cool off!”

  Marie stands arms akimbo as she talks, a tall, skinny, flat-chested girl in tight black slacks and a bright red sweater, a plastic raincoat drawn around her shoulders, a kerchief tied under her chin, and white socks and black toeless heels on her feet. She too wears a great deal of make-up, but her features are harder and more irregular than Babe’s; and she looks more sure, somewhat mean, and slightly coarse in contrast.

  “Last time I’m with Gober,” Babe starts, as she lays the magazine across the pinball machine and folds her arms across her chest thoughtfully, “he tells me, ‘Wash your face!’ in just that kind of voice. Like it was an order. ‘Wash your face!’ We’re down in the clubroom on the couch, all by ourselves, and he comes out with that. I say, ‘What’s eating you?’ and he says, ‘I’m not interested in making the cosmetic counter at Woolworth’s.’ “

  “Gober said that?”

  “Yeah. Three nights ago, after the dance. When I wore my blue.”

  “He doesn’t appreciate you, Baby-O. He never did!” “No, he did. He used to. I don’t know what happened.” “It’s that Polack, Baby-O.”

  “Yeah,” Babe Limon agrees, “it’s her, all right. But he don’t get no place with her. That’s what I don’t understand. It’s not like Gober. Geez, Marie, you don’t know Gober! He’s oversexed or something, know what I mean?”

  “That’s what I been trying to tell you, Baby-O. He just uses you. You’d think you were his wife, kid. You’re crazy to torch for Gonzalves! Dime a dozen, Baby-O!”

  Babe tosses her cigarette to the floor and squashes it out. “Flat Head has pimples,” she says.

  “So what! He’s a big man! He’s got a car, hasn’t he?”

  “Another thing Gober says to me last time we’re together. You know how Gober is — always drawing these pictures of things?”

  “Yeah, I know how Gober is — so?”

  “So, he draws these two pictures of cats, see? One was a cat chasing in circles after his own tail. The other was a cat jumping up in the air trying to catch a rubber ball on a string that was too high for him to reach, see?”

  Marie snorts, “What an imagination!”

  “No, I mean, then he says to me, ‘Baby, if you were a cat which one you rather be?’ See? And I say the cat chasing his tail, cause it’s more like a game, you know what I mean? Lots of cats play that way. One we got in our building is always chasing his tail. So I told him I’d rather be that one than the other one, because the other one couldn’t get the ball he was after, do you see?”

  “So what did Mr. Picasso say to that?”

  “Well, he said, ‘That’s the difference between you and me, Baby. That’s what makes horse races!’ Then he gives me this whack across my rump, like he was being cute, only it was a hard whack, and he says, ‘Why don’t you clear out now, tootsie. Me and the boys got to huddle.’ “

  “You see!”

  “It was two things in particular, Marie, if you follow me. It was all that stuff about the cats, like I’d chosen the wrong one or something. And then, it was the way he came on with this tootsie business, like I was just another girl and he was finished with me for the night, and I could go on home or drop dead or something.”

  “I follow you,” Marie says. “Oh, I get the picture, all right.” She points her nail file at Babe and tells her, “
Chuck Gober! Play up to Flat Head, Baby-O, and let ‘em rumble over you. That’ll show Señor Gonzalves. Maybe he’ll get a rock in his head!”

  “You think the Kings would rumble over this?”

  “Baby-O, they’d have to! It isn’t like Gober announced to the world he threw you over. You’re still Gober’s girl on the books, Babe!”

  “A rumble!” Babe Limon says thoughtfully.

  “Sure, Baby-O. They’d have to!”

  “A rumble,” Babe repeats. “A rumble over me!”

  III

  They are children and they need our help. They are children and they need our love. Are our children so hard to help and love?

  — REV. ROBERT RICHARDS, ADDRESSING A FORUM ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY.

  SO I SAYS who the Christ needs ta go ta a whore and take de chance gettin’ rolled when you can get a bim any night de week in a line-up for one skin!”

  “… and just when D.&D.’s got dis hub cap off the Caddy’s wheel, a lousy Friday shows and says you’re unner arres’!”

  “… tole me all dey do out on Nort Brudders Island for a hoppy is give ‘im de cold turkey treatment, f’Chrissake!”

  The smoke pall is heavy in this cellar on 102nd Street where the Kings are congregated. There are a dozen Kings here — sitting on broken chairs, orange crates, a moth-eaten couch with its springs popping from its insides, and a long board supported at each end by empty beer barrels. A naked, dinky electric light hangs on a cord from the ceiling, over a tottering card table at one end of the wide-brick-walled room. Comic magazines are scattered about, along with dice, cards, empty beer and pop bottles, and old blankets.

  This is their clubhouse, and it is not much, but they are lucky to have it. The cellar where the Kings meet is safe; and so are the goods of the newsdealer above them, who lets them use the cellar in return for their guarantee that his store will be “protected.” Still, though they have permission to be there, they are wary of the suspicious nature inherent in coppers, and so they post Owl Vasquez outside, as lookout.

  It is Owl who stills the room now.