Savage Streets

by William P. McGivern

  Jimmy took the folded page of a magazine from his pocket. “It’s pretty expensive,” he said.

  “Let’s see,” Farrell said. He sat down on the bed and put an arm around Jimmy’s thin shoulders. “What have we got here?”

  “Look!” Jimmy spread out the page on his father’s knee. It was an advertisement for a course in physical development. A grinning muscular young giant held a pair of immense dumbbells over his head, and the copy promised everyone from eight to eighty the prospect of prodigious strength and vigorous health for an investment of less than ten cents a day.

  “So you want to be a weight-lifter, eh?”

  “The whole set costs forty dollars,” Jimmy said. “And there’s a book that shows you just what exercises to do. Is that too much money?”

  “I think we might swing it,” Farrell said. “The only thing is, this equipment is too heavy for you right now. But I’ll tell you what. Next Saturday we’ll go downtown and look through the sports store. We’ll find some weights that will fit you. Okay?”

  “Yes — that’s fine.”

  Farrell looked down at him. “When did you get this bug for weight-lifting?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like to be strong.”

  “Well, that’s normal enough. But if I were you I’d save some time for baseball and football.” Farrell returned to the mirror to brush his hair. “It’s a date for Saturday then, okay?”

  Jimmy didn’t answer and Farrell glanced at him in the mirror. He saw that Jimmy was staring at the personal effects which he customarily heaped on his chest of drawers when he undressed for the night — cigarette case and lighter, car keys, wallet, loose change and bills. Jimmy seemed unaware of the silence in the room. He sat tensely on the edge of the bed, as if mesmerized by the silver coins gleaming under a yellow ray of sunlight.

  Farrell willed himself to turn his eyes away from his son’s thin, tense features. He stared at his own reflection in the mirror. He was pale, he saw. He made his lips form a smile. “Well, we’ll have a nice stag time of it Saturday,” he said. “Okay, Jimmy? After our shopping we’ll have lunch in a Chinese restaurant. How does that sound?”

  “That will be fine.”

  He heard Jimmy stand, heard the soft scuff of his shoes on the carpeting, and knew he was moving slowly toward the dresser. Farrell’s mouth was suddenly dry. “Jimmy, are you watching the time?” he said, still forcing himself not to look at the boy.

  “It’s all right.”

  “Well, how about seeing if Angey is ready? Go downstairs and tell her to rustle it up a bit. Okay?”

  Jimmy didn’t answer and Farrell, against his will, glanced quickly at his son’s reflection in the mirror. He saw Jimmy’s hand move out in a darting motion and take a dollar bill from the crumpled heap on top of the dresser. Farrell let out his breath slowly. He looked at himself, saw the long-jawed face, the grave eyes, the faint scar on his forehead from a football cleat in a college game. But it was the face of a stranger now, closed with anger, with bitter lines hardening the eyes and mouth.

  “So it’s a date for Saturday, eh?” he said. “A day in town with the old man.” The first coldness came into his voice. “We’ll have fun, won’t we?”

  “Sure, Dad. It’ll be fine.”

  Farrell turned around. Jimmy was standing in the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “I’d better get going,” he said.

  “Put it back, Jimmy,” Farrell said, and the anger in his voice made the boy start. “You hear me? Put it back.”

  “I didn’t take anything. Please, Daddy.” Jimmy’s eyes were bright with fear. “I swear it.”

  “Don’t lie about it. I saw you in the mirror.” Farrell was making an attempt to control his anger; he knew that would not help matters. “Put the money back on the dresser and sit down.”

  Jimmy took a step toward him, his hands fluttering in helpless little gestures. “Please don’t tell Mom,” he said in a whimpering voice. “You don’t have to tell her. I won’t do it any more. I swear.”

  “She knows about it already,” Farrell said. “She knew right from the start. Did you think you could get away with this sort of thing indefinitely?”

  “Can’t we tell her something to... to fix it up?” Jimmy’s eyes were imploring. “Could we tell her it was a joke?”

  “A joke? What do you think is funny about lying and stealing?”

  Barbara’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, moving with urgency and purpose. “What’s the matter, John?” she called. “What are you shouting for?”

  “Please, please,” Jimmy cried softly; his face was transfixed with desperate shame and fear. “Don’t let her come in. Please.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Farrell said.

  Barbara stopped in the doorway. She looked anxiously from Jimmy to Farrell. “What’s all this about?”

  A hideous little noise sounded in Jimmy’s throat. He turned and threw himself down on the bed, his body shaking with furious sobs. “You wouldn’t help me, you just wouldn’t,” he cried weakly.

  Barbara sat down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Now, now, what’s all this about?” she said.

  “I saw him take a dollar from my change on the dresser,” Farrell said. “I told him to put it back, and he denied taking it.”

  “Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy,” Barbara said, and drew his head close to her breast. “It isn’t so terrible. But why didn’t you ask us if you needed money?”

  “I had to have it,” Jimmy said, his voice strained and muffled against her body. “I had to. I couldn’t go to school without it. I couldn’t.”

  “But why not, darling?”

  “They said I couldn’t. They said I had to bring it.”

  Barbara glanced at Farrell, her eyes puzzled and anxious. He sat beside Jimmy and put a hand on his shoulder. “Now what’s all this, Jimmy,” he said quietly. “Who told you that you couldn’t come to school without money?”

  “Some kids. They said I had to pay them.”

  “And that’s what you did with the money you’ve taken. Given it to these boys?”

  “I had to. They made me.”

  “All right, Jimmy, let’s don’t worry about the money now,” Farrell said. “The main thing is for you to start from the beginning and tell me the whole story.”

  “I told you, I told you,” Jimmy said in a voice thick with emotion.

  “There’s nothing to be frightened of,” Farrell said. “Sit up and dry your eyes. I want to get to the bottom of this mess. I want to know who these boys are, how much money you’ve given them, where they live — everything.”

  Barbara released him reluctantly and he sat small and hunched between them, his swollen eyes fixed with bright intensity on the carpet at his feet. “I don’t know them,” he said. “They’re just kids, that’s all.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “There’s two.”

  “Do they go to Rosedale Consolidated?”

  “I don’t know. They’re always hanging around there.”

  “But they’re not in any of your classes, eh?”

  “No.”

  “Well, do you know their names?”

  Jimmy’s eyes shifted along the carpeting. “One of them is called Jerry. I don’t know about the other one.”

  “How old are they? How big are they?”

  “They’re like me, I suppose. I mean, they’re my age.”

  “How much have you given them?”

  “Twelve dollars. But four of it was my own money, my allowance.” He began to cry again, and Barbara took him in her arms and rocked him slowly. “It doesn’t matter, darling. You couldn’t help it. Now, now — it’s all right.”

  Farrell paced the floor, rubbing the back of his hand across his forehead. “It’s not all right,” he said. “It’s damn far from it.” Angey’s high and righteous voice sounded from the foot of the stairs. “Mother! I’m not going to wait for Jimmy any longer. He’ll be late!”

 
“Run along, honey,” Barbara called. “He’ll catch up with you.”

  “He’ll be late, you watch!” The door slammed as she left the house and Farrell went to the windows and looked down into the street. Angey was hurrying to meet the Sims children, blonde hair shining above the felt collar of her blue coat. Cute and pretty, Farrell thought, as he turned and glanced around the bedroom; everything cute and pretty, wall-to-wall carpeting, the aroma of bacon and coffee, scrubbed, handsome children and Barbara in a peach-colored housecoat; everything wonderful, everything serene and gracious.

  He tried to stay calm, tried to maintain a judicial, sympathetic attitude, but it was just about too much for him. By the books he was wrong, of course; old-fashioned, a century behind the times. The progressive, enlightened parent would place the boy’s future integration far above the sordid but essentially unimportant fact that he was a liar and a thief. But Farrell was ashamed of his son; it disgusted him to look at his tear-streaked face, his swollen eyes, to hear him confess that he bad been bullied into stealing by a pair of tough, aggressive youngsters who probably had spotted him for the softest touch in the neighborhood.

  “Let’s go over this carefully now,” Farrell said. “Two boys around your size and age, one named Jerry and the other without a name at the moment. They go to Rosedale Consolidated and they’ve made you pay them twelve dollars up till now. How much more did they want?”

  “Three more. I was supposed to pay them fifteen.”

  “I see.” Farrell kept his tone noncommittal. “Then you’d be a member in good standing, dues paid up and so forth. Is that it?”

  “I don’t know.” Jimmy’s eyes were still fixed with a miserable intensity on the carpet at his feet. “They said I couldn’t play football in the afternoon any more... until I paid them I couldn’t play any more.”

  “So that’s why you’ve been moping around the house,” Farrell said. “This beats anything I’ve ever heard of. You can’t play in front of your own home until you’ve paid them fifteen dollars. Did they bother anyone else at school?”

  Jimmy shook his head. He wasn’t crying any more; he seemed beyond tears, stunned into a helpless inertia.

  Barbara said, “Jimmy, why didn’t you tell us about this before?”

  “I was scared.”

  Farrell said, “Why didn’t you take a swing at these characters?” He couldn’t keep the irritation and anger from his voice, and Barbara looked at him sharply and said, “Well, that’s not important now.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Farrell said. Jimmy had stolen because he had been afraid not to; that was pretty obvious. And Farrell wasn’t sure which disappointed him more, the fact that his son was a thief or the fact that he was a coward. “Listen to me, Jimmy,” he said, trying to put some warmth in his voice. “We’re going to take this problem to the police and they’ll straighten it out. But there’s another problem here the police can’t solve. That problem is yours, Jimmy, and only you can solve it.”

  Jimmy was watching him closely, Farrell saw, and under the swollen lids his eyes looked like mere pinpoints of tension. Jimmy said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I can’t stand by your side every minute of the day and night,” Farrell said. “Neither can your mother, neither can the police. And eventually these kids will start bothering you again. They think you’re a soft touch. So unless you stand up to them they’ll make your life miserable. But tell them to go to hell just once, and you’re in the clear. It might cost you a black eye but I’ll guarantee you won’t mind that. You can hold your head up and laugh at them. They’re bullies and bullies always have a big gutless streak running underneath the big talk.”

  Farrell hesitated; was he telling Jimmy the truth? Or was he simply handing him pap, giving him an injection of verbal glucose? Tell them to go to hell once and you’re in the clear. Adults didn’t buy these inspirational shots in the arm, so why should kids? Tell the boss to go to hell and you got fired. And was it an inevitably provable theory that all bullies were cowards? Wolverines were bullies and so were tigers and sharks. There were bullies in Farrell’s office, and the people who stood up to them simply got kicked in the teeth for their pains.

  Farrell glanced at Barbara. “I think maybe you’d better drive him to and from school today.”

  “What did you think I planned?” she asked drily. “Buy him a bow and arrow and let him swing through the trees?”

  Jimmy said, “Mommy, I don’t want you to take me to school. I’ll be all right.”

  Farrell glanced at him. He seemed tense and nervous, but there had been an edge of determination to his voice. “You want to handle this yourself, is that right, Jimmy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stop it, both of you,” Barbara said. “I know you’re heroes, but I’m not. Wash your face, Jimmy. I’m driving you to school. And I’m going to talk to the principal about this business. Before anybody starts fighting we’ll find out exactly who and what we’re supposed to be fighting.” She tousled his hair and said, “Hurry now, while I change.”

  Farrell checked the time as he slipped on his jacket. “You’ll have to run me to the station. I don’t have time to walk.”

  She had changed into slacks, kicked off her slippers and stepped into a pair of brown loafers. “Sure, let’s go. The fighting Farrells. Dauntless and heroic to the end.”

  “You think I was wrong?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She was frowning as she pulled on a car coat, and pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “Not really, I must admit. I’d like to take those two kids by the back of their necks and knock their stupid heads together. That’s how tolerant and progressive I am. Well, are you all set?”

  In the afternoon Farrell called Barbara from the office. She was in good spirits; she had had a reassuring talk with Mr. Davidson, the principal of Rosedale Consolidated. There was no gang activity in the school, no trouble at all in fact, except the normal, spontaneous frictions that developed among groups of boys and girls sharing the same playground space and equipment. But Mr. Davidson had promised to investigate the matter, and ask the Rosedale police to detail additional patrolmen and police cars to the immediate vicinity of the school. It was a good start, Barbara felt, and Farrell agreed with her.

  There was a plans meeting on Atlas refrigerators at four o’clock, Farrell’s last chore for the day. Jim Colby, the account supervisor, presided at the head of the long table in the soundproof conference room. From where Farrell sat there was a panoramic view of rooftops, skyscrapers and the iron webbing of buildings under construction, hazy and insubstantial in layers of rolling blue smoke and fog. Farrell enjoyed the view and a cigarette. Colby did not look to him for original thinking. Farrell was a workhorse of a writer, valuable on service brochures, point-of-sale booklets and laboriously accurate operating instructions — the man at the long oar, was Colby’s phrase for Farrell.

  Jerry Weinberg and Clem Shipley, both alert hustlers, were present and a suggestion of Weinberg’s — to image the refrigerator as the heart of the home and feature it against backgrounds of fireplaces and toddlers in footed pajamas — had earned a thoughtful nod from Colby, and his approval had stimulated Weinberg into a tense and insistent elaboration of his idea.

  “You see...” He adjusted his glasses and took a sheaf of papers from an inside breast pocket. “I’ve taken a little survey among friends of mine, and I came across this fact, which I consider significant. They’re married men for the most part, with two or three children, and they live either in the suburbs or in good housing developments on a short commute. We’d need a larger sample, of course, if we decided to use this thinking, but at any rate here’s the pattern of these friends of mine when they get home at night: the kitchen or the dining alcove is the place cocktails are usually served — and the why of this is what’s significant, it seems to me. First of all, a man likes to be close to his wife at the end of the day, to talk to her about what happened at work and so forth. The livi
ng room is usually full of kids watching TV, and the wife is usually in the kitchen anyway, putting the finishing touches on dinner. So her husband joins her there with a drink. The steak is broiling, there’s the aroma of good food in the air, everything is warm and cozy and secure — a soothing combination of physical and psychological satisfactions that makes a man relax from the tensions of his work. This is the heart of the home — the kitchen.” Weinberg glanced alertly around the table. “You know, the old colonial homes had what they called a keeping room — this was the warmest room in the house, with the stove and fireplace in it, and this was where the family sewed and read and ate, where the kids got their Saturday night baths, where they repaired harness in the bitter winter weather, where they...”

  “Yes, I understand,” Colby said. “So?”

  “Well, my idea is — what about re-creating one of those beautiful old keeping rooms in a photograph? Huge stone fireplace, spinning wheel, thick-beamed ceiling, brass pots and pans shining in the firelight. People naturally. Kids, a grandmother.” Weinberg slapped the top of the table. “And right in the middle of this beautiful, lovely antique room there’s a shining model of the Jet-chilled Atlas right where it belongs, in the heart of the home.”

  Clem Shipley said, “You know, we had a room something like that in my grandfather’s place in Maine. At night the whole clan checked in for cocktails and...”

  But Weinberg had the ball and was breaking for the open field. “Excuse me, Clem,” he said, “but I’d like to circle just one point. Once we establish that the refrigerator is in the most important room of the house — the heart of the home, that is — then we can sell hard on the kind of refrigerator to put in that room.”

  “Yes, I see that,” Colby said. “How about doing a memo on this? Give me all your thinking. Well...” He put his hands on the table. “I’ll see you guys around.”

  The day was still fine when Farrell got home that evening. In the vacant lot beside the Sims house six or eight boys were playing football. Bobby Detweiller waved and called to him: “How about throwing us some passes, Mr. Farrell?”