He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners

by Jimmy Breslin

  “I have 719-G forms,” the woman said.

  Disco Girl grabbed, looked, and snapped, “Where’s the carfare?”

  “This is only carfare authorization,” the woman behind the window said. “It’s got to be signed by two people.”

  “We need emergency, too,” Disco Girl said.

  “Oh, then you need an E check,” the woman said. “That is Form W661-A and that requires three signatures and of course I must take this upstairs and they must interview you so that we can see if you are eligible for emergency funds and if you are and we have the three signatures you may wait for your E check. You must do all that tomorrow.” She disappeared. They stood for some time. The woman returned and pushed two tokens onto the counter for Disco Girl. “What do I use to get back here tomorrow?” Disco Girl asked.

  “When you come here tomorrow we will give you more carfare,” the woman said.

  “I don’t have the carfare to get here to get the carfare,” Disco Girl said.

  “That is your business, I am sure.”

  When she pushed a token at Cosgrove, he, too, complained and the clerk said, “I cannot give you two tokens because if you do not use the token to come back here tomorrow, it means that you are a welfare fraud and cheat. In order to protect the public against such fraud, we can only give you carfare when you return tomorrow.”

  Cosgrove smiled amiably. “My dear woman, I truly think tha —”

  The curtain swung over the window, and in the waiting room Disco Girl screamed, “She went home in his face!”

  “She went home in my face!” Cosgrove shouted.

  Later, as Cosgrove, exhausted and nervous, came down the street to the rectory, he heard a window opening and the old woman from across the street looked through her grillwork and said, “I got oxtail soup. I got leftover. You want?”

  The old lady gave him a caldron and Cosgrove rushed to the rectory with it. He took only the smallest amount for himself and filled two large bowls and brought them down to the basement that ran beneath both church and rectory. There Great Big sat with Mr. Frankie Five Hundred, who was writhing. His bound hands reflected a lack of circulation. The gag in his mouth had him on the edge of insanity. His pants were sopping; Great Big didn’t care if the man drowned in his own urine. Great Big pulled out the gag and held the bowl to Frankie Five Hundred’s mouth and poured until Frankie choked. Great Big replaced the gag.

  Cosgrove, watching Great Big eat, thought that his friend was becoming rank. In solitary confinement, with only a gagged man in a dim, cold, damp basement, with the candles burning low, Great Big took the passing of a few hours as if they constituted a month. Cosgrove was surprised at how even the outskirts of civilization had caused Great Big’s patience to deteriorate. “Once we had to wait a whole year for rain,” he said to Great Big. “And now you cannot sit here for two days.” Cosgrove decided that there was something about taking Great Big out of a natural landscape, even one as barren as the bush, and suddenly placing him in a concrete room that might well be a jail.

  In the morning, he finally decided over prayers that the ‘doctrine of quisquis agit, agit propter finem was vital. He had been deserted by his superiors, yet he had a mission to fulfill. He would attempt the welfare lines for another day or so, but then he clearly would have to move. Therefore, he would develop an option.

  He went directly to Baby Rock’s corner, where he found Seneca, schoolbooks in the crook of one arm, talking to Baby Rock, who was on his couch, staring at the fire in the oil drum. Cosgrove asked Seneca for a sheet of paper out of the looseleaf book. He walked down to the bodega for the address, came back, and, using the building wall near Seneca, printed a note. The rough surface under the paper caused the printing to be uneven, which he felt was good because it made it impossible to trace. He wrote a note, which said:

  To the Chief:

  We have your friend. The name in his wallet says that he answers to the name of Frankie Five Hundred. We need more than that of course if you are to see him again. If you want Frankie Five Hundred back, go to the telephone pole in front of the bodega at 177 Delta Street at nine P.M. and there will be a note telling you what to do on the next step.

  Cosgrove thought for a moment. He wrote a second note:

  To the Chief:

  You have shown interest in getting Frankie Five Hundred back. My gang has Frankie Five Hundred in its clutches. We will let him out of our clutches for the sum of fifteen thousand dollars. That is not a great amount of money for the Mafia. But we are a benevolent gang. Frankie Five Hundred will attest to that upon his return. Leave fifteen thousand in an envelope on this very same telephone pole by midnight. Also, do not let us catch you hanging around this telephone pole or we will kidnap you, too.

  Seneca lost interest in watching him and left for school. Baby Rock yawned and closed his eyes. Cosgrove went to the bodega and bought Scotch tape with one of the last two dollars in his pocket, taped the second note outside onto the telephone pole, and began walking quickly through the morning-empty streets to the Chief’s restaurant.

  A delivery of several large paper bags of bread, greatest bread, giant loaves of semolina bread with seeds, sat in the doorway. In the middle of a starving neighborhood, they could leave bread in front of the Chief’s door; real fast capital punishment deters all crime. Cosgrove put the first note, announcing the kidnapping, in the top of one of the bags of bread. The presence of two notes would indicate some planning to the Chief, who would act with care as he would feel he was in against professionals.

  Cosgrove went back to the storefront, shook Baby Rock awake, and the two jumped aboard the bus, Cosgrove with great spirit and disdain for the fare box. He considered himself on the way up. Between the ransom note for Frankie Five Hundred and the application for welfare emergency funds, the path would soon soften. If he didn’t get the ransom for Frankie Five Hundred, at the least he and Great Big would have the welfare funds. Arriving at the Flatbush Arms, they saw Mother Agnes on the sidewalk. She was holding a low number, 23, for the morning food.

  “You just missed Disco Girl. They come this mornin’ and say she could have her babies back. They make a mistake with the test. Remember I told you that nobody sex-molested Disco Girl’s baby. That baby play with herself.”

  “And now she must stop doing that.”

  “Tell that to the child. She the one does the playin’ with herself. I sure don’t.”

  “Where is that Disco Girl? I’ll certainly tell her.”

  Mother Agnes shrugged. “She’s out ridin’ in the van for apartments. They take you to three places. The rule is, you got to take one of the three apartments they show you or they put you back at the bottom, they put you in a shelter, and you got to wait your turn to get back here.”

  “When is the all-or-nothin’ drawing for the house Disco Girl gonna get?” Baby Rock asked.

  “Child, nobody gonna be winnin’ a house.”

  “Disco Girl win! I know she does.”

  His exuberance touched Cosgrove and caused inspiration. “What was the last school you attended?” he asked Baby Rock.

  “School be I.S. 234. Why?”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “It be on the way to the welfare center. It be a good walk.”

  “How wonderful. A morning constitutional. We both can use it this morning.” Cosgrove took Baby Rock by the elbow and they walked until they arrived at the old gloomy five-story red-brick school, which sat behind a black metal picket fence and had graffiti scrawled on its double metal doors. “Show me inside,” Cosgrove said, holding Baby Rock’s arm. The boy said no.

  A woman leaning against the fence said, “I sure wish they would just let me sit inside. I leave the hotel with my little daughter at seven-thirty. I stay here all day. I go up to the Lutheran church up there on the avenue for lunch, that’s when I can get in. They only gave me food money once at the welfare center. I stay here and pick up my little daughter at three o’clock and we walk home. They have
n’t given me any carfare for school yet. My asthma’s acting up and I don’t have any Medicaid. I sure wish they’d let me inside. I can’t even go in. You can and you don’t even want to go in.”

  “Do you see how lucky you are?” Cosgrove said to Baby Rock. He pulled Baby Rock inside, where security guards nodded agreeably at the priest and student. Baby Rock took Cosgrove up to the empty hallway outside a third-floor classroom. “In you go,” Cosgrove said.

  Alarm flushed onto Baby Rock’s face. “I can’t.

  “You’ve come this far,” Cosgrove said. “Clutch at the opportunity, lad. Off you go now, there’s a good lad.”

  “English class,” Baby Rock murmured.

  “How splendid. Verb conjugations. We must get you in the correct tense. First person, I am.”

  “I be late,” Baby Rock murmured. He stood on his tiptoes and looked in the small glass window in the door.

  “You haven’t been here in weeks. Actually, they’ll be delighted to see you.”

  “I be late today. Everybody in there.”

  “Then get in there yourself,” Cosgrove said.

  Baby Rock shook his head. Cosgrove put a hand on his back and Baby Rock began to lean backward again. Cosgrove reached for the doorknob and Baby Rock twisted to get away. “They look at me,” Baby Rock said.

  “Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  “I walk in, they all look at me. That’s why I don’t be goin’ to school. Bus get me here late, they all look at me.”

  “Then I shall accompany you.” Baby Rock twisted violently. “That would embarrass you more, will it? Well, you’ll just have to do this on your own.”

  Tears formed in Baby Rock’s eyes. Suddenly, he grabbed the doorknob and pushed the door open and barreled into the classroom. Every face looked at him. Baby Rock stood alone in total silence in the room. He was alone in their glare. The teacher stood in front and she, too, glared, and the silence lasted and now Baby Rock, alone in everybody’s stare, shouted, “Fuck you!”

  The teacher’s mouth opened in exasperation and her eyes became hooded as she regarded the urchin in front of her. “It’s bad enough that you live in a hotel and don’t care about school, but now you disturb the entire class.”

  Baby Rock exploded and the teacher dismissed him with a wave and turned her back and the class was laughing at Baby Rock. Who whirled in the front of the room, looking for something, and his hand went for the woman’s purse, which sat in a bottom desk drawer that the teacher carelessly had not fully closed. His fingers came out with her red wallet.

  Baby Rock was out of the classroom and down the hall, almost to the staircase, when the teacher let out her first howl. And came running. Cosgrove was amazed at her speed. She had on a loose dress and eyeglasses on a chain around her neck. She was about forty-five, with the first little bits of gray showing in her light brown, but she had young energy, plenty of it. Baby Rock, sensing her speed, shouted to Cosgrove to hurry, and Cosgrove did.

  Baby Rock and Cosgrove flew past the security desk on the first floor and the guards jumped up and when the teacher came screaming past them the guards joined the chase. It was some run. After two blocks, the guards quit the chase. The teacher did not. Baby Rock tore down the sidewalk in his white sneakers and Cosgrove ran out of sheer fear. Behind them, grim, determined, persistent, came the schoolteacher. When Cosgrove looked back once and saw that the schoolteacher was running with her elbows tight to her body and her knees high, pushing like pistons, he understood that at least he was going to get grabbed. He let out a strangled call to Baby Rock, who spun, saw the problem, held the wallet high over his head for all to see, primarily the gaining schoolteacher, flipped it high into the sky, turned, and kept running. Cosgrove followed. Behind them, feet slapping the sidewalk, the schoolteacher veered off and went for her wallet, which was in the gutter. As she did this, she was screeching for police. Baby Rock was around a corner and saw a doorway in the back of a row of one-story attached buildings and went flying into it, with Cosgrove right behind him. Three Chinese were bent over pots in a narrow restaurant kitchen. One looked up and said, “You late.”

  Baby Rock, trying to catch his breath, said nothing.

  “You Cat-lick Cha’ties?” the older man said to Cosgrove. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I tell them have boy here at ten-thirty A.M. Now it’s ten-fifty.” He shook a finger at Baby Rock. “Tomorrow, be here on time.”

  “You’ve got a job!” Cosgrove exulted. He asked the Chinese man, “How often does he work?”

  “All day every day.”

  “And he can eat?”

  The restaurant man shrugged. What else do you do in a restaurant?

  “Good boy yourself,” Cosgrove said, clapping Baby Rock on the shoulder.

  The Chinese man pointed to a garbage bucket. “That go outside,” he said. Baby Rock seemed almost cheerful as he picked it up, his first task on his first day of work.

  Cosgrove walked warily. There was, however, no sign of the schoolteacher. Soon he walked jauntily and ripped off his Roman collar, so that when he reached the welfare center he would appear to be just another in emergency need. He thought of how the day’s events had helped Baby Rock and perhaps this same good fortune would assist him today. Cosgrove felt he had the basis for luck. If he could get emergency welfare assistance, there would be no need for Mr. Frankie Five Hundred’s ransom. And surely, it was going to be easier to get emergency welfare than it would be to gain ransom for a Mafia gangster.

  When he arrived at the income maintenance center, he bought a bag of Wise potato chips for a quarter and ate them by the water fountain. When the potato chips ran out, he smacked the bag in hopes of getting the 22 percent more. A woman next to him did the same thing. “They forgot to put in my percents!” the woman said, finding nothing more in her bag.

  On line with his application blanks, Cosgrove stood behind a woman who kept patting her hair with one hand. Cosgrove saw baldness showing through the dark hair. She held her papers with the other. “I’m on chemo,” the woman said to Cosgrove. “Chemotherapy. I’ve got leukemia. I feel miserable. I shake. I took the bus here. I had to get off sick.” Cosgrove asked the people in front of the woman if they would let her through and everybody pretended not to hear. Finally the woman reached the window. She fumbled with her papers and the clerk looked up and said, “We’re busy here.” The woman said, “I’ve had so much medicine that I get confused.” The clerk in the window snarled. “Get off the medicine so you’ll know what you’re doing.” With that, she pulled the curtain in front of the window.

  Cosgrove leaped to the closed window and banged on it.

  He turned and placed a hand on the woman. “I am heartsick.”

  The woman shook her head. “I don’t want sympathy. I just want people to be nice to me.”

  By noon, Cosgrove found himself slipping into a daze, not unlike that of one who spends a long time in hospital hallways, and he shuffled forward rather than stepped and lost track of time and sometime in the afternoon found himself at the window and the clerk took his application blank, sniffed, and told him to take a seat. He sat somnolently and a young woman in a black beret sat next to him. She fingered a quarter and spoke to herself. “In case I got to call whoever. Nobody, I guess.”

  A shouting Disco Girl brought Cosgrove’s head up. She ran into the big room, threw open her brown down coat and made her body shake. “I get my babies back!”

  “Where are you going to put them?” Cosgrove asked.

  “My new house.” When she saw that Cosgrove was skeptical, Disco Girl said, “I win the roof today. You don’t think I be winnin’ a new house today? Little man, I be mad at you. You be uninvited.”

  “I guess anything can happen today. You got your children back and Baby Rock got a job.”

  “Where he be?”

  “Working in a Chinese restaurant.”

  “Baby Rock get his belly full of rice. One time he went fifteen places, nobody give him a job so he quit
lookin’. And you get Baby Rock that job? You did? Then you be invited to the house.” Disco Girl spun around and clapped her hands. “I be bringin’ my baby Latasha Yee to visit Baby Rock at work in the Chinee. You know what I say when I walk in? I be sayin’, ‘Mi Ma’!”

  “When are you supposed to get this new house of yours?” Cosgrove smirked.

  “In the three o’clock drawin’.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here. Comes in on the computer machine three o’clock. You be here. You see Disco Girl win the roof.”

  “Oh, I hope so. I also hope you know what you’ll do if you don’t win,” Cosgrove said.

  “I be ridin’ around in the van for apartments since yesterday.” The admission took away some of Disco Girl’s buoyancy.

  She handed Cosgrove a sheaf of paper to do with her housing. The rent at the Flatbush Arms was $2100 a month, but that was emergency housing funds, the form said in bold letters. The federal regulations allowed emergency housing funds at such rates for years, but once a welfare woman was moved out of emergency housing and into regular housing she was under strict rates, and the form showed that in Disco Girl’s case, a family of four, she was allowed no more than $425 a month. The writing on one carbon said that Disco Girl had turned down the first two apartments she was shown. One had no front door and the building had no heat. The other was without a toilet. The form said, “Recipients should regard apartment seeking as similar to baseball. Only three apartments are shown to a client. If all three are turned down, then that is strike three. You are out. Client then must go back to the city shelter (dugout). Remember baseball when you see apartments. For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old ball game.”

  “The apartment van don’t come tomorrow. It come the day after tomorrow. The man say it my last ride. What if I don’t know whether to take it or not?”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Cosgrove said in all lameness.

  “You come with me, little man, and help me decide?”