The Wanderers

by Richard Price

  "Spearchukka."

  "Motherfuckah, ahm gonna chuck a spear at you!"

  Jap wrote them as fast as he could. He laughed low and crazy, but no one heard. They were all shouting again, standing like two opposing armies separated by a ravine.

  "Fuckin' black bastids."

  "Greaseball guinea honkywops."

  "Rug head."

  "Yo'mama."

  "You ain't got one."

  "Fucked yo's."

  "Say that again."

  "Fucked yo's."

  Riot. Perry led the charge. The first victim was Dushie Melnick, who got beaned with a loose-leaf. Peter Udo got kicked in the balls. Books went flying. Curly White stomped Joey, who was down anyhow. Perry almost socked Ray Barrett through a window. Boo-Boo jumped on Perry's back and pounded his head. Sharp watched the fight, debating whether to help the white guys or to beat everybody up. He decided to stop the fight In a sweeping rush he knocked down six guys grabbed Perry by the back of the neck and Boo-Boo by tie front of his shirt, raising them both off the ground. His sudden violence stopped the war. He dropped them, after rejecting the idea of banging their heads together Everybody walked or crawled back to their seats. Sharp straightened his tie and smoothed back his hair. They stared at him with awe.

  "Shoo!" Sharp caught his breath, and tucked his shirt into his pants. "You guys are a bunch of azzoles, all a you." He dismissed everybody with a wave. "You can't fight wort' dick." They laughed, uneasy at his words.

  "Yeah, that's right, I said azzole. You stoopit jerks ... whadya think, I live inna desk? Yeah, I was inna gang too. We coulda took on this whole school. I useta eat guys like you for breakfast. Shit." He sucked air noisily through his nose. "Yeah." He erased the jumble of scrawls on the blackboard. He felt good. Everybody was digging it.

  "Hey, Mistah Sharp, you still gonna gimme a pink?" Curly asked, a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  Mr. Sharp bopped over to Curly's desk imitating his strut just like Joey had. "Wha, sheeeee-it, would ah give man main man uh pink cahd?"

  The white guys were laughing so hard some of them started crying. The blacks didn't see what was so funny. Then Sharp turned to the other side of the room, gesturing with his hand in front of him—fingertips touching. "Ey Ey Ey, whada you thinka so fonny, you stoonatz spaghetti-heads?" He staggered around the room, a brutish, stupid look on his face, talking with his hands and grunting. They rolled in the aisles—all of them except Dushie Melnick, who sat in terror, waiting to be next.

  Mr. Sharp zeroed in on Dushie. He pursed his tips, raised his eyebrows, and shuffled over to Dushie, sitting next to him. Putting an arm around his shoulder, he shoved his face within an inch of the kid's nose. "Tal me, Dushie, do you dink dis iss funny? Nu, so vat could be fonnier?" Dushie giggled nervously.

  At that moment, someone knocked on the classroom door. A black kid bopped into the room, swaggering more like Sharp's imitation of Curly than Curly.

  "Hey, Earl!"

  "Hey, baby."

  Earl waved to bis friends as he made his way to Mr. Sharp. Mr. Sharp met him halfway, bopping like Earl, dragging his left foot. The kid didn't know that Mr. Sharp's imitation of strutting had been considered very hip among the Red Wings. It was called the Cocksackie Shuffle back then. When Sharp had been a teen-ager the shuffle was almost an involuntary action like breathing. "Whutchoo want baby?" Sharp asked The whole class screamed. Earl was perplexed. Mr. Sharp took the white slip from Earl's hand.

  "It's a cawl slip fo' Perry La Guardia, yo got a Perry La Guardia?" Earl asked.

  "Meee, do we gotta Perry La Guardia! Hey Carminootch, whadja do disa time?"

  Perry left with Earl. "What's wrong wit' that man?" asked Earl.

  "Ah nothin'. he's O.K."

  They heard sporadic bursts of laughter from the room. "What's goin' on?" Perry asked.

  "Ah dunno, they's some lady here to see you."

  They walked into the principal's office, and Perry saw his aunt standing by the time clock. She was wearing her coat, her face was a red slash of tears. "Rosie!"

  She hugged Perry, sniffing back more tears. "Whassamatter, Aunt Rosie?"

  She blew her nose and ushered Perry into the hall. Like Perry's mother, she was short and dumpy, had the same old man face. Perry was scared. "P-Perry, your momma had a accident."

  Perry got a cold flash. His legs trembled as if he were standing on a nerve. He grabbed her elbows. "What happened? Where is she?" Aunt Rosie let out a thick roar of grief. Perry started crying in anger. He shook her. "What happened?"

  "She's dead."

  Perry saw the walls take off down the hall, and the next thing he knew he was sitting on the floor, his legs straight out in front of him. Rosie was making "mmm" sounds into her handkerchief. He shook his head and looked up at Rosie. "Shaddup!" he bellowed. He felt very rational, very calm. He knew he had to leave school now, so he walked back to Mr. Sharp's class to get his lunch, which was in a brown paper bag in his desk. Halfway down the hall he turned around, yelled "shaddup" again. He pushed the door open strode toward his desk, and extracted the bag.

  "Ey paisan, you gonna eat luncha so early?" The class still laughed. Perry straightened up and spoke in a calm voice. "Shaddup, my mother's dead."

  He stood there trying to put the brown bag in his pants pocket, but the bag wouldn't fit. There was a confused silence in the classroom. Perry stuffed one third of the bag in his pocket and marched purposefully into the hall. He swung his arms back and forth, taking long steps. Joey ran down the hall and caught up with him. Perry kept marching, eyes forward.

  "Perry, you're kiddin', ain'tcha?"

  "Hello, Joey."

  "Perry!" Joey grabbed his elbow, yanking him out of cadence. His lunch fell out of his pocket. He picked it up and tried to lodge it into the chest pocket of his shirt, ripping it. Finally, he gave the bag to Joey.

  "Don't eat it, Joey, just hold it for me." He marched to the principal's office where his aunt, Mr. Kaufman, his counselor, and the school nurse waited for him. "Hello, Mr. Kaufman, did you hear what happened?"

  Mr. Kaufman had a raw, cratered face, with bloodless lips and almost transparent eyes. "How do you feel Perry?"

  "Fine thank you. How are you feeling?"

  "Would you like to lie down?"

  "No thank you, but I would like some water." He marched to the water fountain, took a sip, patted his lips dry, walked back. "I lost my lunch. Could I borrow fifty cents. I'll pay you back tomorrow."

  Between seven-thirty and nine o'clock that morning, there was a power failure in four buildings of the housing project. Perry's mother was alone in an elevator stuck between floors. She rang the alarm bell. No one came, and she was trapped with a screaming, shrill siren for ninety minutes. When the elevator started moving, she went upstairs to her apartment and had a heart attack. She weighed over two hundred pounds and barely stood five feet tall. No one was home. At eleven o'clock a neighbor found her lying in the foyer. The neighbor ran back to her own apartment for a cool damp rag, but Perry's mother was already dead.

  Perry moved to New Jersey to live with his aunt. She ran the funeral, so the Wanderers weren't invited. But they came to the house in Trenton to pay their respects. Buddy couldn't get his father's car, and they had to take a bus from Port Authority. They met in Big Playground. Their mood was strange. It was a school day, and with the exception of mothers and babies the playground was deserted. It was like a horrible holiday. Waiting for Eugene, Joey, Richie, and Buddy sat on a bench, straightening their ties, smoothing back hair, inspecting creases.

  "Hey." Eugene showed up in a green iridescent suit. The rest of them wore black.

  "Where you think you goin', to a prom?"

  Eugene looked at himself. "What the fuck?"

  "You can't go to a funeral in that."

  "Hey!" he said, pissed off. "This suit's a hundred bills." Eugene was a natty dresser.

  "Great. You'll be the life of the party."

  They proceeded in silence to
the el train. Eugene kept examining his suit, flicking off imaginary dirt, lint, and dust. Everybody seemed angry, cranky. The bus ride was boring and long. Joey sat with a narrow, gift-wrapped box in bis lap.

  "What's that?" asked Richie.

  "Candy."

  "Candy?"

  "Yeah, candy."

  "Jesus Christ, you'n Diamond Jim oughta be a team." He nodded in Eugene's direction. "We could have a real circus wit' clown costumes 'n refreshnents 'n everything."

  "Aw, suck my dick," said Eugene.

  "Take it out," Richie challenged.

  Eugene looked to see if anyone else on the bus was watching as he unzipped his fly. Still watching the front of the bus he stood up and whipped it out. He quickly sat down, putting it back. They choked on subdued hysterical laughter.

  "Christ, Eugene, a hundred-dollar suit. Wow, you got class." The mood was broken. They laughed easy.

  "I still say you don't bring no candy to a funeral," insisted Richie.

  "What the hell do you bring?" asked Buddy.

  "I dunno, not candy, that's for sure." Joey frowned and examined the box. "Oh well," he sighed, tearing the wrapper, "anybody want candy?"

  It was a small box and it was gone in fifteen minutes. In higher spirits, they got off the bus and into a cab, but when the cab pulled up in front of Perry's new home, stomachs knotted, ties were straightened, and invisible dirt removed again. They had a brief debate about the tip, then walked up a narrow concrete path separating two large lawns, leading up to the apartment. Perry met them in front of the house. They were scared. He shook hands with them in silence. They had never shaken hands with each other before, and in his nervousness Joey shook hands with Eugene. Perry wore a white shirt without a jacket. He looked older and angry, his face a fist.

  "How you doin', man?" Buddy half whispered.

  "Great," Perry smirked. "Let's stay out here." He extended his left hand as if to intercept anybody trying to make it to the house.

  "Sure."

  "Lissen, ah ... thanks for comin'." He rubbed his forehead with the bridge of his palm. "You hungry or anything?"

  They guiltily remembered the candy. "Nah."

  "No thanks."

  "I could go inside an' make some sandwiches."

  "'S'awright."

  "Well, let's siddown."

  He sat heavily on the stoop, and they followed his cue. Perry rested his elbows on his knees, his hands supporting his head. Lost in thought, he stared across the street. "Aaach." He hunched his back, straightened his arms in front of him, and yawned. "So what's been doin' in the projects?" he asked.

  They shrugged. Joey stared at the yellow-gray lines of sweat half-mooning Perry's armpits.

  The apartment house door opened and a heavily made up grizzly bear came blubbering out followed by her silent mate. Perry turned around, sighed, and stood up. " 'S'awright, Aunt Mary."

  "Awwwww," she whined as a prelude to more tears and smothered Perry in fake fur. "Yah such a brave boy." She crushed him to her bosom, her lipstick-stained, tear-crumpled Kleenex leaving a red blot on the back of his white shirt. "You mama loved you so much."

  "Yeah ... you too, Aunt Mary."

  Her husband looked away and lit a torpedo-sized cigar. "You can't wait, Lou, hah? You gotta smoke right away."

  "Ah, shaddup." He spat neatly into a bush.

  "Perry..." she held him at arms length. "Perry ... you come to our house for a meal and a bed any time you want. I'd make you a ... awwwwww." Her husband looked skyward, smirking.

  "Sure." Perry patted her arm diplomatically and detaching himself held out his hand to his uncle. "Lou?"

  Uncle Lou smiled and shook Perry's hand. "Come around any time, kid." He winked, and when Perry withdrew his hand there was a twenty-dollar bill folded into a chunky square.

  They walked down the path to their car, shreds of an argument wafting back to Perry and his friends on the stoop.

  "That's my people," Perry sneered, sitting down. He unfolded the bill and held it in front of him. He turned to the Wanderers. "Kinda makes it all worth it, doncha think?" They smiled in embarrassment.

  "Hey, Perry?" Joey frowned. "You gonna live here?"

  "Yeah." Perry looked at the ground.

  "'S'a long way, man."

  "I know."

  "How 'bout school?"

  "I dunno. There's some school aroun' here." He crumpled the bill absent-mindedly. "Hey!" He startled them. "You guys don't forget about me!"

  "Whadya mean?"

  "Yeah, whadya kiddin'?"

  "You're our main man, man."

  "Awright," he said.

  They sat in silence, each figuring out how he would come out to Trenton every week, Perry planning trips to New York. But in their hearts they knew this was the end for Perry as a Wanderer. Suddenly, as if to certify that fact and a few other facts, Perry furiously jammed his face into his palms and started to cry. Tears dripped through the crotch of his fingers and rolled down his forearms.

  Tongues thick in their heads, they sat helpless. Joey choked hard, but the tears came. Richie was next. Then Buddy. Only Eugene couldn't cry but turned his face away.

  "Hey, man," Richie sniffed after a while, "we're like a bunch of faggots."

  "Ah, shaddup," said Buddy.

  Perry stopped crying and stared into the distance, resting his chin on his knuckles. "I can't believe it," he said to no one in particular.

  Joey noticed Perry's knuckles on his left hand were red and enlarged. He touched his friend gently on the arm. "Hey, what happened to your hand?"

  Perry examined his fingers as if he had never before realized there was anything on the end of that wrist. He jerked his head back a few inches and snickered, but said nothing. They sat silently for a long while. Suddenly, Perry raised his fist in front of him, his first two fingers rigidly pressed together. "We were like that ... I mean just like that!" He shook his fist for emphasis, then stood up and paced in front of them.

  "Christ Perry, we're sorry, man ... what can we say?" Eugene asked weakly.

  "What can you say?... she was a goddamn saint ... loved everybody ... she used to cry for people allatime ... people wit' trouble who she hardly even knew ... two weeks after my old man died this lady downstairs lost her husband ... Mom din't even know her last name ... she went down to that lady's house every night for five weeks ... useta clean for her ... cook for her ... and Mom was hurtin' too. Don't you think she wasn't. For two months after my old man died she slept in the living room because she couldn't even lay in the same bed where she useta sleep with Pop. Every once in a while I would walk in on her and she'd be talking to him as if he was there as plain as me. She had a lotta heartache these last few years, don't you think she didn't."

  "From Raymond too, hah?" offered Richie.

  "Ah, don't even mention that cocksucker's name. Christ, I'm tellin' you, what he did to Mom—him and that bitch—I don't wanna talk about it." He spit in the grass at the side of the stoop. "She was a good lady, Richie. A good lady. Every month she couldn't wait to go to the Island to see the kids and every fuckin' time she would leave that house in tears, Raymond and that bitch would make her feel so bad. Like she was some kinda immigrant lowlife, you know? An' I kept pleadin' wit' her—Mom—don't go this month, don't go ... just this month. No ... she forgot what happened last time. Every month she would forget." Stretching his arms over his head, he squeezed out a yawn.

  "Ah ... an' the funeral! Me an' Aunt Rosie had to run the whole show ... that bastard never even showed up at the wake ... he even came to the cemetery late. You know what that hard-on did? He comes by late, right? He rolls up in his big-ass Caddy in the middle of the service ... his wife ... she don't even got the decency to get her ass out of the damn car ... he comes over to me, puts his arm around my shoulder, says ... Terry, I'm sick, I'm sick. I loved that woman so. Oh God what am I gonna do what am I gonna do?' It took all my willpower to hold back from smashing his face in. I just twisted away so his hand fell off my sho
ulder and walked over to the other side of the grave so I'm facin' him You know? Anyways they bring out the casket an' I'm watchin' his face, see, an"he's cryin' little too. I mean most of the people are cryin' mainly old widows Mom's friends Anyways, they bring the casket to the side of the grave an' before anyone could stop him, Raymond runs over to the side of the casket falls on top of it an' starts screamin' 'Momma, Momma, forgive me, forgive me.' I just stood there shakin" just shakin'."

  Perry started trembling, raising his hands, which were shaking too. His face was twisted in a snarl of black rage. "I was gonna murder the bastard! I felt like jumping over the grave an' breaking both his arms. Now he's sorry! Now he's sorry! An' all the old ladies are screamin' and shriekin', they're fallin' all over him an' cryin', 'He'sa socha gooda son, socha gooda son, he lova his mama.' I tell you I was so ... so tight I almost chipped a fuckin' tooth. I was just standin' there. I was cryin' too, but God forgive me I wasn't cryin' for Mom. I don't even know why, but when they helped Raymond up I was so sick. Anyways, after the casket was lowered an' we threw some dirt in an' everybody started goin' home, I went over to Raymond and put my arm around his shoulder. He said, Terry, I loved that woman, I just loved her.' I said, 'Sure, Ray, sure, she loved you too'—an' then I asked him to take a walk wit' me, an' he said, Td love to, Perry. But I gotta go to the office' an' he looks at his fuckin' watch I was controllin' myself, I was cool. I said, 'Just for a minute, Ray, just for a minute. I wanna tell you some of the things Mom said before she died.' Well we walked over to this little area wit' trees around so no one could see us, an' I face him an' I say, 'Ray, I got somethin' for you from Mom' an' I belted him on the jaw so fuckin' hard I almost broke these two knuckles." He held un his hammy fist "An' you wanna know what that bastard did?" he challenged his friends.

  They didn't want to know. They were wiped out by Perry's sudden fury. They sat there staring at their shoes. They wanted to go home. Perry was a stranger.

  "I'll tell you what that ... that pussy did. He sat on his ass 'cause he knew if he got up I'd put 'im right back down again. An' then he pulls out his fuckin' checkbook an' writes Rosie a check payin' for the funeral. Yeah, sittin' right there onna goddamn grass he writes out a five-hunnert-dollar check. You know what I did?"