The Wanderers

by Richard Price

  And Joey Capra was everybody's choice for all-league halfback. A scrambling, hustling zip who could squirt through defensive lines like Jell-O between clapped hands.

  Except for his thick brush mustache, Emilio Capra looked just like Kirk Douglas. Arrow features, obsidian flecks for eyes, a white line for a mouth. Rich black hair dashed back in waves from his forehead. Neck, arms, legs, torso bulging like a weightlifter gone berserk. Joey was skinny—muscles looking like something trapped between skin and bone. The same face of a hawk but without the glinting power behind the corners of the mouth and the eyes. Father and son played a perpetual game of tag When Emilio was home Joey never sat he crouched; he never walked, he trotted. Always locked his door, slept with one eye and both windows open. Emilio played frog to Joey's fly Emilio would be immobile following Joey only with his eves then suddenly lash out with a quick left, a quick right. Pretend to read a newspaper, and when Joey tried to sneak past, Emilio would snake out a foot—Joey would start to fall but regain his balance and dance triumphant into his bedroom. Emilio would wait for next time.

  ***

  Perry was fullback—slow but unstoppable. A Mack truck rolling downhill. He was best friends with Joey like Little John and Robin Hood. It was envy at first sight—Perry wanting Joey's lithe speed, Joey wanting Perry's bulk and power.

  "You wanna have a catch?" Perry and Joey were walking home from the el station on a nice enough November Friday afternoon.

  "Awright, yeah." They deposited their schoolbooks and made sandwiches at Perry's house.

  "I ain't diggin' the idea of playin' the Del-Bombers tomorrow." Perry tore off half a ham and ketchup sandwich.

  "Maybe they ain't diggin' playin' us," Joey said. The Del-Bombers were an all-colored team from the North Bronx near Mount Vernon.

  "How'd you like Terry Pitt on top a you in a pileup?" asked Perry.

  "Pitt's a pile of shit. He couldn't catch me with a dragnet." Joey was a cocky bastard.

  "Don't be too sure."

  "Hey! What is this? We're gonna kick their asses." Joey patted Perry on the knee reassuringly. "C'mon, man, don' be such a faggot."

  "You wish."

  "I know."

  "You blow."

  "You wish."

  They got the football from Perry's room and headed toward the elevator. Perry wore ankle-high, dagger-toed, peau de soie shoes with Cuban heels and heavy taps that made him clop down the hall like a Clydesdale.

  "Whyncha put on sneakers?"

  Perry started back to change, but the elevator came. "Ah, fuck it."

  As they walked to Big Playground they flipped the ball between them. Perry scooting ahead of Joey, Joey scooting ahead of Perry. They played in the basketball courts, which were wide, long, and empty.

  "Long bomb!" said Perry, scrambling like a quarterback. Joey streaked across the concrete, catching Perry's pass Willie Mays-style.

  "Tittle to Shofner. T.D.!" shouted Perry, snagging Joey's pass. For thirty minutes they ran at oblique angles to each other catching good and bad passes, announcing the names of the great and near-great quarterbacks, ends, halfbacks, and linebackers.

  "Hold on!" yelled Joey, trotting to the bench. "Rest time. Don't wanna get knocked out."

  "C'mon," said Perry. "One more long bomb!"

  "Forget it."

  "C'mon..." He flipped the ball to Joey. "Dome. Long bomb." Perry ran as fast as he could looking over his shoulder for Joey's pass. Joey threw a high spiral. Perry stretched his arms—mouth and eyes open for a great catch—Bart Starr to Mary Fleming, Unitas to Berry. His slick shoes slid across the cold ground, the taps on concrete sounding like roller skates, and his legs slipped from under him. Skidding, he crashed heavily into the mesh playground fence, the football bitting the same spot on the fence a second later. Perry rolled on the ground screaming. Joey ran over. "Oh God, it's broke, oh God, oh Jesus, oh God." Tears splashed his face, running into his ears. His teeth chattered in shock as he held up his right arm his hand hanging too loosely "Oh Jesus oh Jesus, owww."

  "Sssh." Joey stared at Perry's broken wrist in horror. "Walk on it."

  "Oh, it hurts, Joey, it hurts, it hurts."

  "Sssh." Joey helped Perry to his feet. They walked through a six-foot-high triangular hole somebody had clipped in the mesh fence and hailed a cab for Jacobi Hospital.

  "EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" Perry's mother tore out a healthy fistful of her hair when her son and Joey walked into the kitchen two hours later—Perry's hand encased fingertips to elbow in plaster of paris. After two Nembutals Perry was serene and barely heard his mother shrieking. Joey was feeling no pain either because he'd also taken Nembutal from the packet the doctor at Jacobi gave Perry. Perry's mother started working up her panic an hour earlier when Perry hadn't shown up for dinner. She'd called his friends' houses, then the police, and she was just about to call the morgues when they waltzed in on a cloud of tranquilizers. They watched benignly as she ran in small circles around her son, staring in horror at the cast.

  "Relax, Ma, it's only a busted wrist, I don't got cancer."

  She continued to circle around him, eyes now toward the ceiling, clapping her hands slowly, calling on divine help. "Help me, Saint Ant'ny. Saint Ant'ny, help me, I'm gonna die, I'M GONNA DIE, EEE!!!"

  Joey giggled.

  "Ma."

  "It's only a broken wrist," she informed the refrigerator. "Ma."

  "Don' worry, it's only a broken wrist," she reassured the cold, greasy hamburgers—Perry's dinner.

  "Ma."

  "It's only a..."

  "MA!" Perry shouted.

  She jerked erect as if she'd been slapped.

  "Ma, it's only a broken wrist. I went to Jacobi wit' Joey an' the doctor said it would be O.K. in a couple of weeks." He dug his good hand into his tight black dungarees and pulled out a Nembutal. "Here. The doctor said you should take this pill or my wrist'll get worse."

  ***

  Joey sat down to dinner. His mother brought wine to the table for Emilio, sat down herself, and waited for her husband to start eating. Emilio was in a decent mood tonight because he'd just gotten paid and his two-week vacation started on Monday. Joey and his mother waited until Emilio cut a piece of steak, chewed and swallowed, and started on a second piece before they began to eat.

  "Was a fire today on Bathgate." He downed half a glass of wine. "Carried out two kids." He tore off a piece of bread from a long loaf. "They was cooked more well done than this." He tapped the steak with his fork. Then he finished the wine in his glass. Joey and his mother were silent. They often had to listen to Emilio's horror stories at dinner. He was a fireman, and he would always compare somebody's burned body to something on his plate "Hey." He stared at Joey. "You playin' football tomorrah?"

  "Yeah. Joey didn't look up.

  "What?" He put his silverware down and stared at his son.

  "Yes." Joey made the "s" hiss. Emilio grabbed his son's chin and jerked it up, his fingers digging deep into Joey's cheeks and jaw. "Yes. I am playing football tomorrow." Joey was scared because he wasn't sure what his father wanted.

  Emilio dug his fingers deeper and pointed at Joey's nose. "You look at me when you talk."

  Joey tried to meet his father's burning stare, but the pain was distracting.

  Emilio turned his attention to his dinner. Joey's mother had learned never to interfere. "Whadya play, water boy?" Emilio laughed at his own wit.

  Joey had no trouble staring at his father this time. "I'm halfback."

  "Who you play ... cripples?" He laughed loudly, slapping the table. "Cripples," he chuckled, returning to his meal. Joey controlled himself, although he'd lost his appetite.

  "Joey, eatcha dinner," his mother almost whispered.

  "Yeah, eatcha dinner so you can get big an' strong an' beat the cripples."

  "Whynchoo come down tomorrah an' watch me play?" Joey said with a mixture of anger and pride. Emilio looked amused. "Twelve-thirty at French Charlie's field."

  Emilio was stumped
for a comeback, so he just chuckled, mumbled something about cripples, and ate in silence.

  Friday nights before the Saturday games were the best part of the football season. Each team in its own neighborhood would have a torchlight parade with banners, chants, and crowds. If the neighborhoods overlapped one procession would often collide with another, and nuclear war would break out. This happened in the past season between the Velvet Sharks of Olinville Avenue and the Red Devils of Gun Hill Road. The next day the game was canceled since the entire Red Devil backfield and half the Velvet Shark defensive team were in the hospital.

  At ten, the Stingers assembled in Big Playground. Joey and Eugene had the rolled-up banner, a twenty-foot-long, six-foot-high piece of canvas, each end sewn around a mop handle. Two guys carried it through the streets, stretching the canvas so the road was blocked. Twenty team players were there, fifty or sixty younger kids, some older guys living in the project, a few curious adults, girl friends, and a few neutrals from nonfootball playing gangs. Every Stinger was there except Perry, who was K.O.'ed on Nembutals and couldn't have played the next day. Mops, brooms, and baseball bats were distributed. Joey sprayed lighter fluid on the mops and brooms, and everybody lit their makeshift torches. Dozens of small, fiery whoosh sounds were drowned out by a tremendous roar from the crowd as the banner was unfurled. It was a beauty. Lenny Arkadian fixed it up. The banner had STINGERS in dripping red letters. By each of the "S's" Lenny had painted (riant black and yellow bees wearing white gloves on tight fists, scowling faces, and a week's growth of beard stubble. The bees had giant cigars clamped between dagger teeth, and stingers coming out of their asses like golden scimitars. Lenny got the idea for the faces from the Woody Woodpecker racing decals.

  Joey and Perry were supposed to carry the banner, but Joey wouldn't carry it without Perry, so the Tasso brothers were recruited. George and Vincent Tasso were twins, non-Wanderers, and according to consensus, good guys. They were the split ends—tall and fast, hands like baseball gloves. Joey stood in front of the unfurled banner, the roaring torches, the roaring crowd. He raised his hands. Silence except for the crackle of flames.

  "GIMME AN 'S!"

  "S!"

  "GIMME A T!"

  "T!"

  They roared back the letters in lusty bellows.

  "WHAT'S THAT SPELL?"

  "STINGUHS!"

  "WHAT'S THAT SPELL?"

  "STINGUHS!"

  "LOUDER, YOU MOTHERFUCKAHS!"

  "STING-GUHHS!"

  "LOUDER, YOU CRIPPLE BASTADS!"

  "STING-GUHHHS!!!"

  "LAUDAHHHH!!!!"

  "STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS!"

  Joey was crying and screaming, and the crowd marched down the street chanting, torches blazing, the banner held high. Joey bellowed and roared, his neck veins swollen with blood and hate, and they caught his passion, trading him howl for howl. Even the little kids were foaming at the mouth.

  "STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS! STTNG-GUHS!"

  Every twenty feet they would pick up a few more people—people who didn't even know who or what the Stingers were but were swept into the radioactive net of emotion. They marched down Burke Avenue across White Plains Road. Joey stopped them in front of his building.

  "STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS!"

  Joey looked up at the windows of his apartment through red eyes. "LAU-DAHHH!" He screamed until he couldn't hear himself anymore, but no one came to the three windows on the third floor—although almost every other window had a face in it. They marched twice around the projects, and people started getting tired. Joey still screamed but they weren't screaming back as loud anymore, and people dropped off at every block. Finally, the Tassos rolled up the banner and torches were snuffed.

  "STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS!" Joey was the only one chanting now. "C'mon, Joey, it's bedtime."

  "C'MON, YOU GUYS!"

  "HEY, JO-WEE!" Eugene shouted in his ear. Joey acted drunk. "C'mon, Joey, it's eleven-thirty."

  Everybody went home. Joey stared down the street. He tried to shout one last time but bis throat felt like a razor strop. He staggered to his apartment. Just let musclehead say one word. His father was probably shitting pickles. He didn't come to the window because he was scared, scared bad. Cripples, yeah, they sounded like cripples all right. There's gonna be some changes around here. Joey found his mother's note on the kitchen table.

  Joey

  We went to the movies. Be back late.

  Love you

  Mom

  "That movie was sick," Emilio declared. Sitting in the dinette, he lit a cigarette and studied his wife's ass while she made coffee in the kitchen. Twelve-thirty. "It was filth." His wife didn't answer. She never knew how to answer her husband. Eighteen years of walking on eggshells. "It was pornography." He picked a crumb from his mustache. She brought in the coffee and a box of Danish. "Cream."

  She got the cream and sat down, taking a cigarette from his pack. He trapped her hand. "Where's yours?"

  "I forgot to buy some."

  "You forgot to buy some? You just had a full pack this morning."

  "They're gone."

  "Gone? Whadya mean gone? They vanished? They marched out of the pack into the elevator and took a train somewhere?"

  A headache the size of a dime settled behind her eyes. "I smoked them."

  "Ah. Ah. You smoked them," he said with mock enlightenment.

  "Could I please have a cigarette?" Her hand was still caught under his—the pack under everything.

  "You smoke like a chimney." She said nothing, the headache branching out. "You're like a junkie, you know? Like a drug attic'. You're a tobacco attic'." Her free hand fluttered up to her forehead. "See? You need a fix!" He took his hand away. "G'head, junkie, have your fix." As she lit the cigarette he poured coffee. She was surprised that he poured her a cup too.

  Joey's mother was a beautiful woman. She had the tight, smooth skin of a twenty-year-old girl and clear, large brown eyes. The constant fear and tension of her domestic life kept her slim. Her manner was gracious and graceful. She never raised her voice. The only time she had defied her husband, the only time she stood up to him, he had beaten her so badly she couldn't get out of bed for a week. She knew he wasn't a cowardly woman beater. He'd fight anybody, man, woman, or child, with equal fury and violence. She had forgotten what led up to the beating, but Emilio liked to remind her of "what happened when you got out a line that time."

  Emilio saw his wife was having one of her headaches that hurt so badly she sometimes cried. He felt guilty and decided to be a little nicer. "Hey, junkie ... you want another fix?" He offered her the pack. She smiled no. She was still smoking the first one. He left the pack on the table and went to the bathroom.

  Emilio undressed and stepped into the shower. He liked to feel the water on his body. He loved his body. He still worked out with weights every other day at the firehouse. He stepped from the bathtub, admiring himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. His muscles and his cock always looked bigger in the mirror, although, God knows, he didn't need any mirror to look big. He had kept the physique that won him the title of Mr. New York City twenty-two years ago as well as a forty-eight-year-old man could. His waist was only thirty-two, his chest measured forty-seven-and-a-half, biceps holding steady at eighteen inches, cock at nine, although it fluctuated between eight and ten. He knew muscle-bound guys with dicks the length of his little toe. There were plenty of those guys around too. Not him though. He was hung like a grandfather clock. He massaged his dick until it got hard. He tensed all his muscles, flexed his biceps, watched them dance, watched his thighs undulate at his mental command. He made his pectorals rotate under his skin. His erection stiffened—at least ten inches.

  His wife waited patiently for him to finish in the bathroom. She hoped he wasn't going into one of his body-beautiful routines. They sometimes lasted half an hour. She had a weak bladder, and coffee made her pee. Once when Emilio was in the bathroom she had t
o go so bad that she dropped her drawers and sat in the kitchen sink. Then he came out as if he'd been waiting to catch her. It took two years for him to stop digging into her about that. Once at a party he'd told all their friends. She felt so ashamed she didn't do laundry or go shopping for a week. She'd given up Wednesday mahjong for good. Now, ten years later, she still flinched when she thought about it. She waited, listening for the noises that meant Emilio was finishing up.

  Emilio lightly patted his body with a towel. He put a hand under his balls and contemplated their weight. Meatballs. That's what they were—meatballs. Two meaty balls. Must weigh a pound each. Maybe a pound and a quarter. He slapped his buttocks. They didn't wiggle. They were taut and hard. And small. When he was in the navy some chippy told him he had an athletic ass. And he'd made sure his ass stayed nice and athletic ever since. He thought of Joey. He had to admit that Joey had an athletic ass too, but that hardly counted because the rest of him was so goddamned puny. The only time he'd seen his son with a hard-on he almost puked. It couldn't have been more than five inches_maybe five and a half.