by Sol Yurick
Hinton put another dime into the slot and had another round with the sheriff and lost again. Well, he thought, drifting along out of town, it was expected—fixed. Everyone understood that. His scraped palm hurt from holding the knurled butt of the pistol. He ate some more candy and then had another hot dog and French-fries, and leaned against the counter of the stand and sipped iced tea with seven heaped teaspoons of sugar stirred into the tea, and chewed pieces of sweet candy. He looked as if he was staring at the passing people, but he was really looking over that old sheriff. No one else tried the game. That meant everyone knew it was fixed. Then he had an idea. When he finished eating he went over to try again.
Wounded Hinton, bruised Hinton, tired and drifting Hinton, Hinton the outcast, set himself against the town and its sheriff. He fought for his Family; he fought for his pin; he fought for himself. While the sheriff was sounding him and boasting and making his rep big—hadn’t he put down a thousand pitiful outlaws—Hinton drew the guns and cocked them. And when the word came, he fired just a fraction of a second ahead of the sheriff. This time the voice cried out in pain and told him, all right, he had won it this time. But there were two more chances and it was best out of three.
The figure stood there. Did it lean a little to the side? Did blood ooze from a hole in the shoulder, staining the front of that fancy western shirt? Did a look of pain make that impassive face a little whiter? Did it twitch? Hinton’s guns were cocked and he was waiting before the word came to drawcockandfire. He won a second time because the gun leaped in his hand and it spurted fire first; hot lead sprung across the gap, and crumpled the man who had shot him down and moved him on and wouldn’t let him live. Was there a new hole ripped into that flesh? The yelp of pain was joyful to Hinton and he grinned. The little kid pulled at his coat, asking him for a dime again, and he put the smoking gun down, dug, gave the kid a dime, and got ready for the third shot. He won that one too; he got the sucker right in the eyeball.
Hinton, very tired, straightened slowly in spite of his wounds, sucked in air, and felt new now—a man. He had faced up to and beaten the sheriff. He could have won another round, but he had the sense to put the guns away now, even though he was entitled to a free fight. He turned and walked away, began to strut through the arcade, and out; it was time to go and see if the Family had made it back.
The fag sounded him one more time and he wondered if he shouldn’t go with the fag and have a kick or two and then deck the fag and take his money. But the fag was no slender boy himself, but big enough, able to take care of himself, and that simpering, pleading look ambushed something hard. He moved on, paid another token, and went down to the station. A couple leaned in a corner; he couldn’t tell if they were men or women, but they were shielded by a spread-out raincoat and doing something. People passing didn’t stop them. A transit bull standing nearby didn’t see a thing.
When he got there, Dewey and The Junior had come and were looking around nervously, ready to cut out. They wanted to know where the others were. He didn’t know; everyone had been separated. He told them that they would make it home by the next Coney Island train. They looked a little uncomfortable, as if they were deserting, but they were really glad enough to go. He gave them the order feeling good now, feeling strong, and they took his command because that took the responsibility away from them. They sensed his new strength now and they were under him now, even though Dewey was Hinton’s elder brother.
When their train came, they got on, sat down. Hinton almost fell asleep. The Junior opened his comic book, but his eyes kept shutting as—though he had read it before—he tried to begin again.
July 5th, 4:30–5:20 A.M.
It was only a matter of coasting home. Exhaustion relaxed them. But two more things happened on the way home.
The train, as always at this hour, was slow. It had gotten well into Brooklyn. Dewey, sitting between Hinton and The Junior, fell asleep. They sat in a corner, under one of those DOES SHE OR DOESN’T SHE ads, where a young, beautiful woman leans over a little boy, almost kissing him on the mouth. The ad says it’s about hair dye. The Family always had fun with that one.
Hinton kept dozing off. The Junior was blearily reading again, the part about where the big battle had taken place in front of Babylon and the leader of the Rebel army had been slain and the Greek heroes were trying to decide what they would do now. Two couples got on the train, blond-hair crew-cuts and their doll-eyed girls. They were wearing fancy evening clothes as if they had just come from a dance—a prom maybe. They were big boys, football-player types, and they gave the three men a hard look even though they hadn’t done anything. Hinton half-saw and woke up to those cold, contemptuous stares. What right did those squares have to look at them that way? What had the Family done to them? They were minding their own business, weren’t they?
The couples sat opposite them. The girls put their heads on the boy’s shoulders and closed their eyes. The boys kept staring at the tired warriors, watching them warily, ready for anything. Why, Hinton wondered? They didn’t mean anything. All he could think of now was sleeping.
Hinton looked at the girls from under almost closed lids. They were clean looking, innocent, ideal teen-ager types about to be pretty young women, the kind you saw on television all the time and dreamed about. Now and then he even saw this kind at school, but not too often. One of them was blonde; her nose was slender-bridged and upturned a little, pulling her lip up. Her long legs were primly pressed together. She looked very clean. It would be nice to have a girl. It would be nice to cut out from the Family, to retire from bopping. Hinton felt wearier. Maybe he could get a girl, not exactly like this one—blonde, yet not really blonde; white, but not white—light-colored, long-haired. She would be innocent, sweet, from some other part of town, dressed clean, beautiful, slender—go steady—marry—a family. He would have a job, a chance. Having someone like her to marry would give him ambition. They would have a home and a dog. He would rise in the world and he would become—he wasn’t sure what. Something behind a desk: an executive. It would involve ordering men around because he would be a big man, a very big man, and he wouldn’t have to do it by bopping. He’d say “Do this. Call him. I’ll buy that. I’ll sign the contract,” and talk into an intercom to Miss. . . . They’d all bow to him and he’d control, like the gangsters did these days, in a clean way: no violence. He half-dreamed about that.
The dream became more commanding and his eyes were staring but he hardly saw the couples across the way. Dewey had slipped down and his head was lying on Hinton’s shoulder. Hinton saw the advertisement by the side of his head. Her face was lovely, sweet and young, unattainable too, a dream-mother. His hand reached up and he stroked the picture, following her cheek and chin line tenderly, his fingertips feeling it like it was almost flesh, not paper. He sighed, leaned back, and looked. He saw those two prom cats looking at him, half-grinning. He didn’t look back at them because then he’d have to recognize what their stare meant, and he’d have to challenge them, and that would lead to a little back and forth jive, and none of the Family were packed. These days you couldn’t tell even about prom cats. Everyone packed a little two- or three-inch slice. Everyone knew that. They didn’t laugh openly at him so he relaxed and pretended to sleep and soon, after five or six stops, they got off. As they left they turned and gave the Family the put-down look, but he pretended not to see it. And he knew now that he’d never have this dream; not that way. So he’d get it another way, he thought. Well, fuck those motherfuckers, he thought. Avenue J. He would remember that station and someday, just someday, he might lead the men and come down on a little raid around here, looking for them, because who were they to jive the Family?
It rankled him and he couldn’t sleep. The Junior’s eyes kept shutting, his head nodding over his comic book. Hinton had to jump up; the anger wouldn’t let him rest. His shoulder bounced Dewey’s head. They stared at him. He walked up and down the empty train aisle. He should have challenged those coolie bas
tards.
When they got to their stop they got off. They had a few blocks to walk through Colonial Lord Turf. It was almost dawn; no one would be awake at this time. Hinton wondered if the Lord’s plenipos had gotten back from the great conference. The others trudged sleepily, but the hatred made Hinton bounce. He wanted to do something. Then he got the great idea.
He shook The Junior and he nudged Dewey and told them, pointing to the cigarette in their hat-bands, “We’re a war party and we finish like a war party, you hear now? We’ve got to make one last raid.”
“Man, you make a raid. I’m tired, man. I’m too tired,” Dewey whined.
The Junior just looked at Hinton, stupefied. Hinton told them, “Man, we’ve just got to do it or we lose our self-respect.”
“Now? We’ve been up all night. You’re losing your mind. You’re flipping. You’re becoming something else, like that Willie, man.”
But Hinton began to talk, reminding them that they had lost the core part of their army. The enemy would know it and they would come, bopping, japping, rumbling down on them, raiding them silly, unless the Family struck first and showed them, but good. Now. Now! As a defensive action. The Family was tougher than they thought, more tough than before. Who did those mothers think they were? The Family would come down on them and clean them up once and for all, but good, but the best. Would they be expecting it? Dewey tried to argue against it, but Hinton was getting himself more and more excited with the idea and the anger carried him along and his fury began to wake up Dewey and The Junior. Hinton rehearsed the old slights, foresaw insults to come, reminded them of traditional territorial fights, predicted what would happen and how a raid would give them much rep for big heart. All this part of the world would know, and all the other gangs would have respect and would come around and want to ally with the Dominators. They had to do it, once and for all. But best of all, it would be totally unexpected.
“But man, what about the truce?” Dewey asked.
“That truce means shit, man, shit, and you know it. After it broke, up there, it means shit, and it’s every army for himself and we have got to make it now. Now! I mean tomorrow will be too late.”
And he had them worked into a trot now and they were going along fast. They tore off two antennas from cars for whips as they passed; they found a thrown-out chair and took it apart to use one of the screw-head legs as a club. They swept down into the heart land of the Colonial Lords.
Most of the Colonial Lords lived in a housing project. The Family charged down in the dim dawn light, looking for a Lord or two, or for one of their women, but no one was there. While the others japped in the playground, The Junior behind a jungle gym and Dewey in a kiddie pipe, Hinton came out into the middle of the project. He stood on a lawn, in the center of a vast circle of eight fourteen-story apartment houses which towered above him. The First of the Colonial Lords lived in one of them. Yelling, Hinton dared him to come down, and dared him to Fair-Fight man to man, and insulted everyone connected with him, allies as well as personal family. Hinton’s voice rang out, high, going far along the slowly brightening areas, and beat up against the huge houses where it echoed back, faint, higher, ringing. No one came. The quieter it was, the louder Hinton screamed. But nothing moved. Nothing at all. He kept this up for a while and he could tell that The Junior and Dewey had big respect for him. He had made his rep. He swaggered away and they strutted behind him over to the handball courts.
Hinton took out his Magic Marker. The Colonial Lords had written their marks all over that ball-wall. Hinton wrote that the Dominators had come down LAMF and they shit on the Colonial Lords, whose mothers were, one and all, whores. And there was not one man among the Lords who was not a bastard. And then, while Dewey and The Junior supported him on their shoulders, he drew a picture, high, high up. He did it well, using a few lines, but showing it all, because wasn’t he the Family artist? He drew a picture of a woman in oral intercourse with a man. He titled the man, Father of the Dominators; and he titled the woman, Mother of the Lords. And then, on one side, he drew a portrait of a woman being raped by a huge-organed giant and he titled the man The Dominators, and he titled the woman Debs of the Lords. He took great care to make the woman’s face very ugly and he wrote down as many of the Lords’ girls’ names as he could remember. And then he drew a lot of tiny little men standing around and watching, their tongues hanging out. And he called the little men, The Lords.
Then he called a charge. They began running through the project streets, swinging the antenna whips and the club, making trumpet sounds, sounding the Lords again, daring them to come out and fight, trampling all over their sacred turf.
No one came out. Hinton’s throat hurt. He gave the order to march away. They jived along, out of that land.
July 5th, 5:20–6:00 A.M.
Before going home, Hinton led The Junior and Dewey down the street toward the beach. They followed him; he had become the Father. The morning wind was coming at them from the sea. It was still hot, but every step took them into cooler and cooler areas. It was lighter above the housetops, but still dark below.
They walked toward the boardwalk. When they came to the last block, Hinton halted them before crossing the street. He stood, hand raised, looking up and down. Nothing there but a garbage truck, grinding refuse, yellower than the murky light coming down from the overcast sunrise. The street lights were paling; they had blue, fluorescent edges. Hinton waved his hand the way patrol leaders did; they crossed the street, walking cool, alert for surprises. Far up the street a Headbuster patrolled, his back toward them. They were on their territory now; everything had a tremendous and comforting familiarity. They knew it to its confines, six short blocks by four long blocks. They could cover it in a short time—each brick was completely known, each stain, each sign, each gunmark on the concrete sidewalks, each hiding place. It was like knowing an endless and soul-freeing space where there could be no real threat. There wasn’t as much space in the rest of the whole city. They drank it all in, everything from the cracked asphalt to the strutty rise of the roller coaster over the houses. It was there. There. Comforting after their night. They began to walk along the last block before coming to the boardwalk.
Hinton smelled the cool sea wind and began to feel a joyful excitement and quickened his step again. The boys moved a little faster. Hinton began to trot. They trotted after him. He began to shout, shouting nothing, letting the choking in his throat find a wordless opening. He began to run. They ran after him, laughing, silly, unable to control themselves. Was this all there was to being a man, Hinton wondered as he ran? Was this the way you became a leader, a Father? He ran up the ramp to the boardwalk. They ran after him; their feet clattered on the wood, keeping time. A few people strolled along the empty stretch of wooden walk which disappeared along both sides, fading into the morning’s red haze. A few fishermen were arriving for early surf fishing. Farther off, a family loaded with blankets and beach equipment crossed the boardwalk, coming to the beach early. The morning sun was balled red in the haze, hanging off to the right. The littered sand and the red-stained water, placid under the wind, lay ahead.
Hinton pointed and yelled, “The Ocean!”
They yelled, “The Ocean, The Ocean!” and they all laughed hysterically.
Hinton ran down the stairs to the sand and all the way down the beach to the water, veered off sharply to the left, slipping, touching the soft surge of the wave, and feeling the wetness coming in through the rips in his shoe. It was chill-shocking, burning on his abrasions, and then cooling and pleasant. He dipped his scraped hand into the water and shook loose drops into the air.
They ran. They couldn’t stop laughing now, trying hard to keep the joy from degenerating into baby giggles. They cackled and made howling, shrieky sounds. A few gulls flew up at their approach; wind blew scraps of paper lightly, lifting them; sand grains sprayed upward as their running feet hit the beach. The wind from the sea was cooling now, almost chilling, and all the air that
had stifled them the whole night seemed to be clearing away, and it was as if they were coming loose from a palpable thickness now; every step they took was lighter and they felt hilariously lifted off the ground until they barely felt their exhaustion. Hinton no longer cared that the ruination of his fancy Italian-style shoes that had begun in the park—how far away that seemed, as if it hadn’t even happened that day or that week or ever, really—was almost complete now. Where was he going to get another fifteen bucks for shoes like these? It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all.
Dewey did a cartwheel, the pin in his hat glittering in a circle. The Junior tried it and the war cigarette fell out of his hat. He picked it up and was about to stick it back into the band of his hat when he had an idea. He turned and ran to Hinton, kneeled, and gave it to him. Hinton took it, held it for a second, and put it into his mouth. The Junior lit it for him. Hinton puffed it once, twice, hard and cool, and then let the smoke dribble out of his mouth and nose to be caught, whipped away, and feathered into nothing by the sea wind. He pinched out the cigarette and stuck it back into The Junior’s hatband. Dewey looked on and nodded. Then Dewey and The Junior took out the war cigarettes from their hatbands and gave them to Hinton who put them into a half-empty pack of his own. The war party was over. Hinton turned and began to walk back to the Boardwalk. The others followed. It was understood. Hinton was now Father.