Thrill Kids

by Packer, Vin

  “… convinced that his inability to concentrate and his dreamy attitude during class sessions are rooted in a

  basic personality problem. The faculty recommends that Emanuel apply for consultation with a psychologist at the Jewish Children’s Clinic …”

  “You don’t have to go, son,” his father had declared. “You just forget all about it.”

  But his mother had said he certainly was going to go.

  “Not if he doesn’t want to, Ruth!”

  “Well, he should want to!” and then turning to Manny she had said, “Don’t you want help? Do you want to be backward and stay behind another year? You want help, don’t you, Emanuel?”

  “What about it, Emanuel? Do you?”

  Emanuel said, “I don’t know. I — What do you think?”

  “I think,” his father said, “that you should do as you please. You should do whatever you think is best, Emanuel.”

  As he remembered these things, Manny’s reflection frowned back at him. His face was gaunt and somewhat sullen; his gray eyes were always rather timid-looking. A teacher once described Manny by saying that he had the face of a melancholy seventeenth-century poet and the build of a professional football tackle. His hair was chestnut-colored and curly, and now still wet from the shower. As he took his comb from his trouser pocket, he heard Flip’s familiar whistle outside. Without bothering to part his hair, he grabbed the coat of his tan summer suit from the wire hook on the wall and began to run up the basement steps. Midway, he suddenly remembered the humiliating episode of less than an hour ago. It was funny that he had forgotten all about it, and funny too that as he recalled it, he was unable to recall his anger at Flip. The incident, he realized, was a dead issue, buried now in a graveyard of past and similar incidents.

  • • •

  Coming up Lexington Avenue, approaching the club entrance, Johnny Wylie wondered who the third boy was with Heine and Pollack. He saw Manny shaking hands with him while Flip stood by, grinning inanely and pushing the yellow strings of hair back off his forehead.

  Johnny was the baby of the crowd; he had five months to go before he would be sixteen. He was five feet seven and clearly handsome, with thick black hair he wore close-cropped to his head, sparkling dark eyes, and a smooth, creamy complexion. Above his full wide lips he was cultivating a thin line of mustache.

  “Where’d you get the ‘tash, Johnny, hmm?” Lynn Leonard, the girl across the hall, had said shyly to him that morning as they met at the mailboxes in the apartment-house entranceway. “It’s nice.”

  He had tried to keep his eyes off the tight white halter she filled too well for a girl of fifteen.

  He said, “That’s a funny name for it — ’tash.” He stared down at his shoes, afraid to raise his head for fear his eyes would never reach her face, but stay fixed there below her neck. He could smell the faint lilac fragrance she wore, and he was keenly aware of bare flesh at her shoulders and back, though he had not seen her fully.

  “It’s nice,” she repeated. “It’s a nice ‘tash.”

  “ ‘Tash!” He feigned a gruff tone. “I never heard one called that before. Never!”

  She laughed, tossing her head back so that her long, soft dark hair fell to the small of her back, and Johnny stole a glance at the halter. He looked squarely at her there, and then away quickly, his face flaming. He turned so she could not see.

  “See you around,” he mumbled.

  “So long, Johnny.”

  • • •

  “Do you stay in bed very long in the morning after you have once awakened?” Father Farrell had questioned Johnny after he had blurted out his confession twenty minutes ago, when he had stopped off at church on his way uptown.

  “I won’t any more, Father.”

  Johnny felt better now, after having talked about it with someone.

  As if to dismiss these scraps of thought from his mind, he squared his broad shoulders, drew a deep breath, and held his head up high. He wore a brown cord suit and a natty yellow bow tie, which was clipped to the collar of his white shirt. The taps on the heels of his heavy ox-blood shoes clicked more insistently as he stepped up his pace, waving now at the boys who were waiting for him. Johnny took the club steps by twos. He slapped Flip across the back and gave Manny a mock punch in the stomach. Then he shook hands with Bardo Raleigh.

  “Let’s all cut out for the store,” Heine said, and as the sun slipped back behind the skyscrapers to the west, casting their jagged shadows in the path, the quartet ambled lazily along Lexington Avenue.

  2

  Hello, young fellow — hi!

  You’ve got somethin’ in your eye.

  It’s a look I recognize.

  I don’t think you realize

  What’s on your mind….

  — “Love-Bitten”

  BERNIE’S HAD ONE BOOTH, behind the magazine racks in the back, and the four boys sat in it. Flip sat beside Bardo, and Johnny and Manny faced them. All but Bardo were sipping Cokes. Bardo had heard that Cokes rot your teeth. He had a cup of coffee. The jukebox was playing the same song over and over and over: “Love-bitten, smitten, smitten — sittin’ in a daze …” Up front, at the fountain, a lanky fellow with hair the color of a carrot was blowing the paper wrapping from his straw at a dark-eyed blonde who was thumbing through the new issue of “Motion Picture.” When the wrapper whisked by her face, she looked haughtily at him over her shoulder. She told him he should drop dead twice.

  “The dog’s barkin’,” he said. “Somebody let her out.”’

  Two girls straddling stools at the end of the fountain swayed back and forth to the rhythm of the music, singing along with it: … “smitten, smitten — sittin’ in a daze …” Behind them three boys were jamming in the levers on the pinball machine, making the bells ring on a strike, and the red and yellow lights go on.

  “ ‘And if I ever see you kick a dog again, mister,’ I told him, ‘you’ll pop to with this sticking in your yellow gut!’” Bardo patted his rapier emphatically and took a swallow of his coffee. “If there is one thing Bardo Raleigh loathes,” he concluded, “it’s a yellow-bellied bully!”

  Emanuel Pollack said, “Particularly with an animal. Geez, they can’t even call for help or anything.”

  “You musta been a big deal at that academy, man,” Flip said.

  “I was a good officer, and if I get my appointment to the Point, I’ll be even better.”

  Johnny Wylie said, “What’s ‘pop to’? Is that when you stand up straight?”

  “So straight you suck your belly in until it meets your vertebrae!”

  “When will you know if you’re in at the Point?” Flip asked.

  “Any day now.”

  “Old Wyle here’s going to Yale when we all finish up, and make like a lawyer, aren’t you, John boy?”

  “Not if I can help it!” Johnny said disgustedly.

  Flip laughed. “If your old man can, you are. Least mine isn’t on my back about college. I need college like a second head.”

  Manny said to Bardo, “Whatever happened to the guy?”

  “Who? Yellow-belly? He’s still at the academy. He has another year to go. I don’t think he’ll ever kick another dog during his lifetime, though. He learned his lesson.” Bardo leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “We had this other cadet who used to pick on this homesexual. Whenever he could he — “

  “You mean a fairy?” Flip said.

  “If you prefer that word.”

  “What was he doing at the academy?” Johnny asked.

  Bardo shrugged. “There are always two or three homosexuals in any school.”

  “Like, with the lily voice and the chicken walk and all?”

  “Clayton didn’t walk or talk too peculiarly.”

  “Then how’d you know?” Johnny said.

  “Oh, everyone knew. He used to write poetry to men. I remember one called ‘Song to Sydney.’ The first line went: ‘Haunch to haunch in our nude nakedness, we seek eter
nity …’ He used to recite it into a tape recorder and play it back. Then he’d erase it, change a few words, and start all over again. He said — “

  “Haunch to haunch in our nude nakedness!” Flip exclaimed. “Dig that!”

  Johnny grinned. “I know a joke about a fairy. This fairy gets his car bumped by a big truck, see, and he’s sore as hell. So he gets out and goes back and says to the big, burly truck driver, ‘Thay, what do you think you’re do-ing, anyway?’ — see? And the big guy says back, ‘Aw kiss my butt.’ So the fairy says, ‘This is no time for love.

  I’m mad!’ “ Johnny and Flip and Manny all broke into raucous laughter. Bardo just sat there.

  “Don’t you get it?” Johnny said. “This truck driver — ”

  “I get it, mister,” Bardo answered coolly.

  “Well, what’s the matter? Not funny enough?”

  “It was vulgar, mister. Kid stuff.”

  Johnny’s face got red, and Flip spun a nickel on the table. There was silence for several seconds. The jukebox whined on.

  “What happened to that Clayton?” Manny broke the silence. “You were going to tell us about him.”

  Bardo said, “It was just that one of the cadets used to pick on him, bully him. Homosexuals can’t help what they are. They’re born that way. But a bully isn’t.

  “You got something there, man,” Flip agreed.

  Johnny was quiet. He ran his fingers along his thin mustache and sipped his Coke with his eyes lowered.

  “So one afternoon when this certain party was riding Clayton particularly hard, I decided to discipline him. I made him pop to and I said, ‘Mister, there must be something deranged about you, the way you bully Clayton all the time. Maybe the trouble with you, Mister, is that you want to be a girl.’ I said, ‘Mister, if that’s what you want to be, you can be.’ Then I ordered him to put a hair ribbon on and get himself out on the parade field with a pair of scissors and a ream of bond. ‘When you’ve cut yourself out a nice row of dollies from every single sheet in that box, mister,’ I told him, ‘you can come back to barracks. Then, mister.’ I said, ‘you can color them.’ “

  “Man, oh, man!”

  “Did he do it?” Manny asked.

  “You can bet your life he did it, mister.”

  “You must have been a big deal, man!”

  Johnny Wylie stood up abruptly. “I have to go,” he said. “It’s five-thirty.”

  “I don’t want to be a big deal, as you so vulgarly put it,” Bardo said. “I simply want to be a man of some integrity.”

  “Be seeing you, Wyle,” Manny said, noticing Johnny standing.

  “S’long, Wyle,” Flip said. “I’m not working next Saturday night. Want to cruise?”

  “Sure,” Johnny said. “I’ll call you.” He was about to turn and leave when Bardo Raleigh stood, his hand outstretched.

  “I’m glad to have met you, Wylie.”

  “Sure thing.” Wylie nodded, taking his hand. He said good-by to the three boys again and started toward the front of Bernie’s. As he passed the fountain, one of the girls perched on a stool called his name.

  “Oh, hi,” he mumbled.

  “Do me a favor, Johnny?”

  “I guess.”

  “Put a nickel in Number Nine for me? Here,” she said, holding the money in her hand. She giggled. “Look how red your ears get when you talk to a girl, Johnny.”

  Johnny said, “Put your own nickel in. I don’t like the song.”

  “It’s Number Two this week, Johnny.”

  “You think I watch the ‘Hit Parade’?”

  “Your ears are just scarlet, Johnny Wylie!”

  “Give me the goddamn nickel,” he muttered, “if you want to hear the song.” He pulled it from between her fingers without touching them and turned to the jukebox. He shoved in the nickel and pushed the button. “Oh, oh, oh, oh! La’ove bit-ten! SSS-mitten!” The lyrics followed him out of the store, and the girl called after him, “Thank you, Johnny Red-ears. Much obliged for your courtesy.”

  • • •

  “Lookit that.” Flip nudged Raleigh when he saw John Wylie talking to the girl. “Man, dames are crazy about that cat!”

  Manny said, “In school they all chase him.”

  “Aggressive women bore me,” Bardo stated flatly. “I like my women to be passive.”

  “You — ever — ” Flip stopped when Bardo met his eyes directly. Flip said, “I s’pose you got plenty of women.”. “Only one, as a matter of fact,” Bardo answered, rubbing the case of his rapier. “She’s older than I am. She’s a mature lady. I can’t stand these ninny bare-legged kids.”

  “Ditto, man!”

  “What’s she like?” Manny said.

  Bardo looked indifferently at him. “What do you mean, what is she like?”

  Unsurely, Manny said, “W-what’s her name?”

  “Her name,” Bardo said, pausing, drawing a breath, “is Ina.” “Oh.”

  “I-na,” Flip sang softly, “is there anyone fina, in the state of Carolina? If there is, will you — “

  “Kindly shut up!” Bardo snapped. “You’re disagreeable, Heine!”

  Heine stopped in the middle of a word and looked dumb-struck at Bardo Raleigh. Emanuel Pollack poured some salt out of the salt shaker he had been fondling in his hands, licked his finger, touched it to the salt, and tasted it, idly, feigning unawareness of the suddenly tense atmosphere.

  “What’d I do?” Flip wanted to know.

  “You act like a kid! I tell you a lady’s name and you act like a kid!”

  “I’m sor-ree!” Flip exaggerated the word. But he was sorry. He smoothed his hair back with his hands and then folded them across his chest. He looked at Manny, who was still intent on licking the salt off his finger, and he said, “You hung up, Pollack, you gotta eat salt?”

  Manny stopped what he was doing without answering.

  “Maybe you want to eat the whole shaker?” Flip said menacingly.

  “I don’t.”

  Bardo Raleigh kept Flip from pursuing it. “Don’t bully him just because I told you to shut up,” he said.

  Flip got angry. “What’s with you, man? Back at the club you’re coming on like crazy ‘cause I tell Manny here to do something and he does it, and now you sound off and say I’m bullying! What kind of an academy you running now?”

  Bardo explained quite solemnly that there was a distinct difference between disciplining a man and bullying a man. “If he’s out of line, then, mister, you discipline him. But if he’s in line, you don’t meddle. If you do, you’re a bully.”

  Flip thought that over while Manny blew off some salt that was still sticking to his finger. Finally Flip said, “O.K. O.K.”

  “You see what I mean, don’t you, Heine?”

  “I said O.K.”

  “You’re all right, mister,” Bardo announced, “but you could use a little discipline yourself.”

  Heine was pleased. He saw more praise in the remark than blame. Reaching across the booth, he tugged playfully at Manny’s tie. “Manny’s a good kid,” he said. “Me and Manny and Johnny gone around together since the year one.”

  Manny grinned and straightened his tie.

  “Some night,” Bardo Raleigh said, “we all ought to get together. What are you all doing tonight?”

  “I can’t make it,” Flip answered. “I’m tied up.”

  “You working tonight, Flip?” Manny asked.

  “I’m tied up’s all. You want a diagram?”

  “I didn’t mean tonight,” Raleigh said quickly. “I have something on myself tonight. Something important, as a matter of fact.”

  “Ina?” Manny said.

  “Pollack, let me ask you something? Do you think you know me well enough to question me about my personal life?”

  “I don’t know, Bardo.” Manny looked hurt. “I don’t think you do, mister.”

  “That’s right, man. You don’t,” Flip agreed. “Bardo here doesn’t ask me what I’m doing,” he sai
d. Flip was glad he didn’t. It was his week to work at the place.

  “I didn’t think I was asking anything wrong,” Manny said.

  “Not wrong, mister. Simply familiar.”

  “Yeah, like you was Bardo’s guard or something, man.”

  “Familiarity breeds contempt, mister. Remember that.”

  “That’s good,” Flip said. “You read that someplace?”

  Manny had a baffled expression on his somber face. He had the top off the salt shaker now, and was poking his finger down in it, watching Bardo. From his inside coat pocket Bardo took out a notebook with a gold pencil attached to its side.

  “Write your addresses down,” he said, shoving the notebook to the center of the table. “I can contact you one evening when I’m free.”

  Flip reached out and scribbled his name and phone number in it.

  “Write mine, too, will you, Flip?” Manny said quietly. To Bardo he said, “I didn’t mean anything by it, Bardo.” “It was just poor taste,” Raleigh responded. “I realize that now.” “Forget it, then, mister.”

  Heine pushed the cowhide notebook back to Raleigh. He said, “I got to check, man. ‘S late,” and he looked up at the wall clock and said, “Jesus Christ, it is not early at all!” Still he sat there. Bardo was reading Heine’s entry.

  “I got to cut out,” Flip said.

  “I’ll walk along with you,” Manny said.

  “You just wrote down your telephone number, Heine,” Bardo remarked. “No address.”

  “I didn’t have time. Man, like, I’ve got to cut. I’m late.” Heine got up.

  “You wrote Pollack’s down.”

  “I’m only a few blocks from where I live now,” Manny said. He was sliding out of the booth to go with Heine. “Going our way, Bardo?”

  “I have a phone call to make,” Raleigh told him. He stood and held out his hand. He gripped Manny’s limp palm unexpectedly. He said, “Pollack.” Then he took Flip’s more certain hand. “Heine. I’ll be in touch with you.”

  “Crazy!” Flip approved enthusiastically.

  Manny said, “If I’m not home when you call, you can leave a message with my folks, and then I can call you back. Only I’m usually around. I’ll probably be home.”