He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners

by Jimmy Breslin

  The Papal delegate then said that he was going to Seattle for some time, because the cardinal there had performed as all hated Americans do in Rome’s eye and had of course been disciplined. In the meantime, this Cosgrove was to receive neither money nor special consideration. “He is a tired man who is accompanied by a friend. They should enjoy the rest.”

  So they had come to America. Cosgrove and the huge black, Great Big, were driven along desolate streets at the end of an El line in East New York. Cosgrove was astonished. There were old abandoned two-story brick houses and homemade wood houses often flanked by empty lots that were covered with auto tires, old couches, bottles, garbage cans, and scrawny but mean dogs yanking at garbage. Many abandoned buildings had doors and windows covered with cinder blocks to keep them from being used and set afire by crack smokers.

  The cabdriver asked a cop in one patrol car for directions and drove for a couple of blocks, each block getting worse and the cabdriver more nervous, until he turned onto a street that seemed to be a country lane. The street dipped into a black gully and the driver backed up and drove out of the area and onto a more populated but particularly horrible street, Dumont Avenue, where there was a row of dingy stores, fronts covered with iron grates. The corner store was burned and abandoned. Inside, in the rubble, a boy stood with his hands over a fire that was coming out of a steel drum. The boy had on a white baseball cap worn backwards and a black jacket and pants. Cosgrove had the cabdriver stop. Cosgrove shook off the depression at finding himself not in a city of gold but in one of misery and he said, happily, “Bright lad in his clubhouse. He’ll know.”

  The cabdriver refused to wait and demanded money. Cosgrove paid him $12.50 and had Great Big stay with the suitcase on the sidewalk while he stepped into the burned-out store to see the boy. Cosgrove’s foot caused piles of broken glass to chime. The boy, wiry and silent, watched Cosgrove approach.

  “Good lad. What’s your name?”

  “I be Baby Rock and I be bad.”

  “Suppose you tell me exactly how to get to Saint Lucy’s.”

  “Don’t know.”

  “It’s somewhere right near here, I’m told,” Cosgrove said.

  The boy began to whistle and beat the palms of his hands on his pants legs as if playing the drums. He looked out the open storefront. “Somethin’ real bad be comin’. I don’t look for trouble. I just stay here till trouble find me.”

  “Well, you certainly have a fine clubhouse for yourself,” Cosgrove said.

  “No club here. This be my house,” the kid said. He went over to a couch with the insides coming out of several holes and suddenly jumped into the air and landed on the couch. He pulled a torn khaki blanket over him. “Good night!” He closed his eyes. Then he bounced up. He wore white sneakers with the laces open. “Only thing I can’t do here is eat. I’m waitin’ for the brothers bring me somethin’. They eatin’ at the federal program. I can’t go there and eat. I be too old.”

  “People are never too old to eat,” Cosgrove said, smiling. .

  Baby Rock shook his head. “You got to be under fourteen to go in the federal lunchroom. You be over fourteen, they don’t let you in. They say your mother get food stamps for you.”

  “Then just go home to your mother.”

  “She be havin’ no room.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Be believin’ one thing,” Baby Rock said. “You stay here, little old man, they vic you.”

  “Vic?”

  “They be makin’ you a victim.”

  The boy began beating his hands so rapidly that the slapping sound echoed on the vacant street, causing small dogs with nervous eyes, who had been rooting in the garbage, to jump at the curb. Watching the street in its silence, Cosgrove felt sure that the place was an error, an aberration in one corner of New York, one so insignificant that it was, overlooked in the rush of life in a place that had to be so rich and busy.

  “My friend Calvin be here, he vic you for sure,” Baby Rock said. “Calvin passed away, Calvin don’t care about nobody. He be robbin’ and stealin’. That’s why he passed away. Calvin tries to vic a cop right in the schoolyard. If my other friend come around here — he be Manslaughter— he vic you for sure. What your name, little old man?”

  Cosgrove introduced himself. Instead of listening, Baby Rock clutched his stomach. “Growlin’ like a bear. Know what I had to eat all day? Had nothin’.”

  Cosgrove felt certain that the boy was using his youth well, for of course America was not Africa and nobody was hungry, nor was it the O’Connell Street bridge in Dublin, where the tinkers show you babies and claim they are starving. But, fair game, Cosgrove thought. Smiling, he pulled a couple of singles out of his watch pocket. “Good lad.”

  “My man!”

  Baby Rock took the money and ran through the glass piles and stopped dead when he saw Great Big outside. “What team you play for?” When Great Big didn’t answer, Baby Rock shook his head. “You way bigger than Jabbar.” Baby Rock ran for the corner and was gone. Cosgrove and Great Big were left on an empty sidewalk and had no idea of which direction to walk when a car with lettering on the front door saying AL DI LA CAR SERVICE stopped. The driver called, “What do you want, get beamed up?”

  Cosgrove didn’t answer.

  “You want crack? You don’t get no crack here. I’ll take you get some.”

  “I’m looking for Saint Lucy’s Church.”

  The driver, noticing the collar, decreed that he had merely been fooling about the crack and told Cosgrove to get in. But when Great Big followed, the driver jumped out onto the street. “He’s a savage,” the cabdriver said.

  Said it with a tone and face that prompted Great Big to growl. Not a low growl, either, but one so advanced that it had already reached Great Big’s throat. Cosgrove, in sheer fright, shouted at the driver. “This is my charge! You are to drive him with me! Do you understand!”

  The cabdriver, surprised by this intensity, chortled. “You act like it’s a matter of life and death.”

  Cosgrove said, “It certainly is!”

  The cabdriver shrugged and got into the cab. The cabdriver wore a blue windbreaker with a New York Mets insignia and the name “Buster” printed on the front. “I’m just like Keith Hernandez. I never got convicted for drugs. That’s my name, too. Buster. You know why they call me Buster? Because I bust people in the mouth.”

  Baby Rock came racing back around the corner with a can of grape soda in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other. “You goin’ for a ride?” When Cosgrove said yes, Baby Rock said, “I be ridin’ too.”

  He tumbled into the back seat and offered the bag of bright orange potato chips. Great Big got two fingers into the bag and removed half the chips.

  Baby Rock hid the bag behind him, then slapped his thigh. “Manslaughter’s tool. Manslaughter axed me to hold on to his tool. Manslaughter told me hold it till he be around lookin’ for his tool. He just have to wait for me. Say, my man.” He looked up at Great Big. “When you play on the team, they go get you a whole lot of fine white females?”

  At this, the cab turned a corner and was at the Chief from Howard Beach’s restaurant. “I got to see a man,” Buster announced. “You know who I’m going to see? Look at you, you don’t even know where you are. You think I’m just a driver? Huh. I’m connected.” He studied Cosgrove. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? I’m in the big outfit.”

  “Is that your cab company?” Cosgrove said.

  “No, great big outfit. You think we just got cabs? You think Big Paulie got such a big outfit in Staten Island? Forget about it. We’re the big outfit. Big Paulie don’t like it, he could go screw. I say what I want about Big Paulie, if I make Big Paulie mad, even better. I’m with the Chief. The Chief got class.”

  The cabdriver swaggered into the restaurant and, through the window, Cosgrove saw him stand frozen, listening to orders, then bolt for the door. “You got to get out right away unless you want to
wind up in the city,” Buster yelled as he ran to the cab. “I go straight to the city for the Chief. I can’t go a block out of my way, even for a priest.”

  “I be stayin’,” Baby Rock said. “I never saw the city in my whole life.” To Brooklyn, the city is Manhattan.

  “Why, that is a grand idea,” Cosgrove said. “We’ll ride to the city with you and then you can get us home.”

  Buster the Cabdriver had the car moving when he said, “It’ll still cost you. The Chief don’t lose a dollar. They seen from inside that I had people in the back. They make a fortune using these cabs with no customers in them. The Chief is a multimillionaire, he still wants twenty dollars.

  “Even with all that’s coming in right here in this cab, and I’m not talkin’ about you, I mean real business, he got twenty of these cabs, you think he cares, he still wants everything down to loose change. Don’t ever go into a candy store with the Chief. He embarrasses you till you die. The Chief steals butterscotch rolls! How do you like that? How do you like him? How do you like the Chief? I tell you what else he does, he gets in a candy store. Then he takes the fuckin’ newspaper. Excuse me, but that’s what he does. He takes newspapers he don’t even want to read. Just as long as he can rob them. I shouldn’t even tell you because I took an oath not to say anything.”

  Buster drove to a parkway and onto a boulevard and soon they were on a bridge coming into midtown Manhattan in the full of evening. Lighted glass towers pierced the night blue sky. At the summits, the white light of the glass towers was so intense that it flooded the sky, turning it in places into gold. Or this is what it looked like from a distance, and it was a most important perspective, for the sky is the most important property in New York in the 1980s. Great Big hung his head out the window like a huge dog and pretty soon his hand came out waving at the sight. Cars in the next line either swerved away or slowed down so they would not have to ride near this apparition.

  Baby Rock was on his feet and leaning out the same window. In the excitement, he dropped his potato chips on the floor. As he bent over, he again patted his thigh. “Manslaughter come to find his tool, find me be gone. He be so riled, he get another tool and shoot me.”

  “Over a tool?”

  “This be a tool.” Baby Rock pulled out an ugly black pistol and held it up.

  Buster the Cabdriver saw this in the mirror. “The little nigger heists me.” He stopped the cab so suddenly that Baby Rock was thrown to the floor.

  Cosgrove snatched the gun. Buster jumped out and dodged through the bridge traffic. Cosgrove followed him out of the cab, waving his arms. “It’s all right. Please come back!” In one of Cosgrove’s waving hands was the ugly black gun. Buster sprinted for the other side of the bridge.

  Cosgrove noticed the gun in his hand. In headlights and horns, he stepped to the bridge rail and looked at black water that was far down. The edges of the river were ablaze with light, but in the middle the water was black and soundless, yet even through the night air, Cosgrove could see that the black water was running smoothly.

  Baby Rock came alongside him, reaching for the gun. “Be Manslaughter’s.”

  “We can do without this,” Cosgrove said. He was ecstatic that he could make such an understatement at a moment of high fear. He was terrified to touch the gun and he held it far away from him. “Yes, we can do without this.” He flipped the gun out into the air.

  Baby Rock wailed, “Manslaughter’s tool.”

  Cosgrove followed the gun through the night air; he saw nothing but thought he heard a splash. He threw his arm around Baby Rock. “Isn’t that a beautiful sight? A gun going to its death. You must always remember that it is the only thing to be put to death. You must respect life. You must never use birth control.”

  Baby Rock looked at him. “You don’t have a gun?”

  “Wouldn’t touch one except to do this.”

  The boy looked at Great Big. “You ain’t dressed, either?”

  Great Big didn’t understand the question. As he did not answer, Baby Rock took it for a negative.

  “Don’t care how big a man is, he ain’t big unless he be dressed. Got himself a tool. Manslaughter, he smaller than me and he blew away man big as a door.”

  Baby Rock jumped into the front seat of the cab and said he was going to drive to the city. Great Big got in, and Cosgrove was half in and pausing to say he thought this was a bad idea when Baby Rock got a foot on a pedal and that was it. He made the cab leap forward and Cosgrove pitched onto his stomach on the back floor. Baby Rock sent the cab whistling down the bridge and onto streets ablaze with light.

  Baby Rock went through red lights and green lights with equal speed, and then he decided to stop the cab while running at top speed. The cab screeched and Baby Rock screamed with glee, as it spun completely around and stopped with an explosion against an island in the middle of the street. The street was a ground fire of light and had flower beds in the middle. A street sign said, PARK AVENUE. Baby Rock left the motor running. “Gotta get me another soda from the store. Drivin’ make me thirsty.” He rattled the few chips left in the bag. Good lad. I’ll buy him another bag at the next store, Cosgrove thought. The three walked the avenue and Great Big stepped into one of the plots and threw himself on the grass and gazed up at the glass buildings, each of which reflected another’s light, and the series of reflections met in a sky that to his eyes was a fiery gold. When there was no candy store in sight, the three walked back toward the cab and saw two patrol cars parked at it.

  “I be bookin’,” Baby Rock said, walking away quickly, jamming the potato chip bag into his pocket, getting ready to race. Cosgrove, feeling it prudent to claim his suitcase at another time, nudged Great Big and they left with Baby Rock. They walked onto a street where restaurants sat blazing in yellow light for as far as the eye could see. At the first, Baby Rock and Great Big pressed their faces against the window. At a table alongside the door, a man in a blue striped shirt was talking to a young woman, who listened intently. The man waved his hands grandly. Baby Rock opened the glass door and reached between the man’s gestures and snatched a piece of roast beef from his plate. Baby Rock walked on and took a large bite of the meat, which was quite strange to him.

  “What you call this?” he said, looking at the meat.

  “My dinner!” the man said, suddenly appearing in the cold without an overcoat. Baby Rock started running with the roast beef sticking out of his mouth and his hands pumping. Great Big grabbed for the meat and missed. Baby Rock’s legs were of such thinness that he could swing them across each other like scissor arms and whisk around groups of people. Baby Rock left Cosgrove and Great Big behind as he ran on his young legs to the corner, where a patrol car rocked to a stop and a cop jumped out with his arms spread. The arms closed like gates on Baby Rock, whose squall was unintelligible because of the roast beef in his mouth. The second cop, the driver, seeing Great Big, pulled out his gun. When Cosgrove ran up, the cop holding Baby Rock said, “Did he rob you, Father?” Cosgrove, thinking quickly, told the policeman, “Oh, no! He’s my altar boy. His idea of a practical joke.”

  The policeman was just about to let go of Baby Rock when there was a noise and here came Buster flying up the sidewalk, flying up so excited — “You stole the Chief’s cab! I could go to Leavenworth what I got in my cab!” — that he failed to notice the police. Buster did not touch Great Big. Buster did throw a tremendous punch into Cosgrove’s face. Buster certainly could punch. Cosgrove went down on the back of his head. One of the cops reached and hit Buster over the head with a nightstick. The nightstick also could hit. Buster went onto his knees like a penitent.

  Great Big, his huge hands only inches away from Buster’s throat, stopped and bent down to assist Cosgrove. One of the cops spoke into his hand radio and soon the street corner was alive with cars and more and more police and one of them, a sergeant, looked at the group and pronounced everyone under arrest. Baby Rock started to run and the sergeant grabbed him by the collar. Several poli
ce, looking up at Great Big, pulled out their guns.

  A police van arrived and they were all pushed into the rear. When the doors were slammed, Great Big kicked so hard that they parted slightly, even against such thick locks. Baby Rock sat and shook his potato chip bag, trying to get more out of it. Great Big reached for the chips and Baby Rock slid into a corner. The van lurched for many minutes and gave one great lurch and stopped. The doors flew open and Cosgrove saw that they were in a garage with police cars and vans. A fat cop with a clipboard looked at Cosgrove’s collar and said, “What are you, a fake priest or a fag priest?”

  Inside, in a large room with pale yellow tiles, a desk lieutenant with gray hair and a long, bored face that needed a shave inspected Cosgrove’s identification and did not look up.

  “What is this about?” Cosgrove said.

  The lieutenant, reading, said, “Order me around in church. This is my place and you do what I want. Right now I want you to shut up.”

  The lieutenant read aloud from a sheet. “You have violated penal code 120.05, assault on a police officer; 205.30, resisting arrest; 147.50, theft; 125.27, attempted murder of a police officer.”

  Buster suddenly cried out, “Are you people crazy? If I touch a cop, I’m a dead man. You know what I mean? I come from a law-and-order outfit. I’m good people. You know what I mean? But this black nigger savage” — Buster swung around and pointed directly at Great Big — “he tried to kill the cop!”

  Great Big was extremely furious at Buster. Over at the fingerprint table, a young man with light hair and a thin mustache and a young woman in a leather jacket were pushed aside for Cosgrove’s group. Buster inked his fingers and rolled them expertly on the fingerprint card. Buster’s rolling motion pleased the cops greatly, as it is poor form to press the fingers straight down. When Great Big put his thumb on the fingerprint card it went right out of the space. The cop taking the prints said, “This destroys the print, don’t it?” Another cop said, “Send it up anyway, I guess.”