Father Divine's Bikes

by Steve Bassett

  “We did it! Hot damn, we did it!” shouted Richie, reaching down to grab Marvin’s hand and help him up. “You can keep the game ball, you earned it.”

  Marvin nodded.

  “Nice game. Lucky, but nice,” Bob said to Richie. “You too,” he added looking at Marvin as he rubbed his neck.

  “Let’s hit Milt’s,” said Richie. “A real victory bash.”

  Milt listened to the babbled accounts of the game that came from the big booth in the back of the room after he served them with a soda each, on the house. Everyone, including Profanity Pump, joined in. Everyone, that is, except Marvin, who silently rubbed the lump next to his Adam’s apple. The Pump had nudged herself to one side of Marvin after pushing Eight-Ten aside and almost out of the booth.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, “You got some big-ass lump.” She tenderly pressed a bar towel filled with ice Milt provided against the spreading black and blue welt on Marvin’s neck. “It looks like a big fucking hickey that’s come out to say hello.”

  Everyone laughed. Even Marvin. The Pump always had the right words waiting.

  “Now get yer asses outta here,” Milt said to the kids an hour later. “Ya told yer story. I got a business to run.”

  Richie walked Marvin to the front of his house. “See ya later. Hell of a game. I had a feelin’. I just had a feelin’. Glad ya showed up.”

  Marvin didn’t seem to hear Richie’s words as he walked up the steps to his front door. Without saying a word, he opened the door and disappeared inside.

  Richie was overcome by a swirling giddiness. “Bejesus H. Christ,” he shouted. “Bejesus H. Christ. I did it. I did it.” He shadowboxed with a utility pole, throwing two left jabs and a right cross.

  Inside his house, Marvin stopped before climbing the stairs to his bedroom. He fingered the growing knot on his neck and giggled. He couldn’t help himself. Three months earlier he was a stranger at Milt’s, and today he had the seat of honor in the big middle booth.

  In 1919, Alexander Bancik, a thirty-nine-year-old uneducated Montenegrin, arrived in New York with his fifteen-year-old son, Josef. They were stupefied by what they saw at Ellis Island. Propelled by a dream that hard work and education would pay their fare on the dizzying ride to equality and democracy, it didn’t take long before they learned how much the ticket really cost.

  The father and son cleared customs and were met by two dumpy men in ill-fitting suits. Josef remembered that they had dark skin and moustaches. Each wore a hat with a small feather in it. Their dark suits, vests, high-button shoes, and stiff, high collars were identical. They seemed ill at ease. They spoke in Croatian, but with an accent Josef couldn’t make out. Later he learned they were communists, and that his father was the ideal recruit worthy of being sponsored to help spread the movement across the Atlantic. Ten years of killing Ottoman Turks had earned Alexander Bancik a reputation as a fearless warrior.

  From Ellis Island, the quartet went to a small Bulgarian restaurant in Manhattan. Josef was told to sit at a table near the front door. His father and the two men joined a fat woman in a black dress, black stockings, and no shoes at a rear table. She also had a moustache. The conversation was animated and lengthy. Finally, Bancik was given a piece of paper and some money. He and the woman arose at the same time. She put her hand on his shoulder and uttered the only words Josef was able to hear: “Sre’cno, sretno,” good luck.

  One of the men accompanied them all the way to Newark, by ferry, train and trolley. It was dark when they arrived at the tenement on Morton Street. Sophie Crno, a widow from Cetinje, greeted them. She had a Greek lover, Zerkorian, and a twelve-year-old daughter, Catherine.

  The Crnos helped the Banciks with the grace of countrymen ushering their own kind through a labyrinth that they themselves were only beginning to understand. The widow gave them an old mattress, and kitchen essentials. Catherine taught Josef English, as much as she knew. The elder Bancik—proud, stubborn, and strangely reluctant— refused to learn any more than a handful of necessary words and phrases.

  It didn’t matter much.

  The job he had waiting for him at the Pennsylvania Railroad freight yards required little human communication. Bancik, the red-bearded warrior hailed throughout Montenegro for his bravery, now retrieved paper and other debris from along the tracks. He watched for cinders from passing locomotives and was always available for the backbreaking tasks that others shirked. He was “Big Dumb Alex.” Twice he was goaded into fights. The second time, he almost killed the man, a thick-necked Mick from Hoboken. Then they left him alone.

  Three times the dumpy little men from Ellis Island came to the tenement, and Josef was told to go out and play. After the third visit, his father’s spirits were higher than at any time since they had come to the new country. He picked up Josef and almost crushed him in his arms.

  Day after day he waited for the two men to come back. Finally, after two weeks, Josef accompanied his father to the Bulgarian restaurant in Manhattan. The fat lady with the moustache told his father that the two men had to leave the country. He should go back to his job, and consider himself lucky.

  Not long afterward, two other men came to the tenement. They spoke only English and talked to Bancik through the widow Crno. They said they were sent by the United States government. They worked for a man called A. Mitchell Palmer.

  They said he was an important man in Washington, the attorney general. Josef watched from the top of the stairs as the widow Crno relayed this information to his father. No, his father told the widow, he knew nothing of the two men, hadn’t seen them since that first day on Ellis Island. They left, but said they would probably be back.

  They stepped to the sidewalk, and the smaller man tapped two cigarettes from a pack of Chesterfields, offering one to the other man. They lit up, inhaled deeply, and surveyed both sides of the block in a bored manner that showed clearly they had seen it all before.

  “What did you think, Bolshies?” the smaller man asked.

  “I don’t know. Those Bolshevik bastards have gotten a lot smarter since we started shipping their asses back home. Christ, I’m still amazed they thought they’d get away with setting a bomb off outside the boss’s digs.”

  They never returned.

  Where once his father could stare down any man alive with pride, Josef noticed that he began to look mostly at the ground. His father once walked with the full-chested stride that was a boast of his manliness. Now he shuffled along, sullen and sad. Josef vowed that this would never happen to him. With Catherine’s help, he learned English and got an eighth-grade education. He got a job at Pennsy and worked his way up to switchman. He and Catherine married and had a little boy, Josef. They got a larger apartment and his father came to live with them.

  Josef and his wife decided to build their lives the American way. Except when speaking to his father, he and his wife spoke only English at home and didn’t teach their son Croatian. They abandoned their Eastern Orthodox religion, became Catholics, and sent their son to St Mark’s school.

  By the age of twelve, Joey was just like any other American son of immigrants, complete with inherited prejudices and hate.

  “Ya want no breakfast?” asked Joey’s mother as he burst into the kitchen. She was pouring coffee for the bent old man at the kitchen table.

  “Didn’t I tell you? I’m receiving this morning.”

  He and Billy Spratlin were serving as altar boys at the six-thirty Mass, and Joey had decided to take advantage of the opportunity to receive Holy Communion.

  “This somethin’ new, Communion durin’ the week?” She brushed past him on her way to the communal toilet at the end of the hall. She carried a roll of toilet paper.

  “No, Mother, it isn’t new. I’ve done it before,” replied Joey, speaking slowly, enunciating every syllable. More and more, Joey slapped his parents in the face with the correct diction of a son who was ashamed of his immigrant parents. Just as suddenly as Joey had turned on his contempt, he turned it off.
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  “Gimme a cupla sheets o’ that,” he said, reaching for the toilet paper. “Gotta little cold and no hanky.”

  “Be home after school?” she asked, ripping off some sheets of paper.

  “Nope, saved a few cents for a coffee ’n donut. I’m meeting my friends.”

  His mother was at the door of the toilet, as her Negro neighbor was coming out. She’d never had to share a bathroom with anyone at their other apartment, and now they were sharing with niggers. She and her husband hated what was happening to them. He urged her to find a place for them to move.

  For a few short months, Catherine Bancik and her son sampled the sweets of life. Joey accompanied his mother on most of her apartment hunting trips. It was always the same. They were either too late or the rent was too high. When the rent was out of the question, it only served to put her into high gear. No trip was wasted. She always wore her Sunday dress, and Joey’s shoes were always shined.

  “Make ’em think we got dough. Bring the kid. Let ’em know we got a kid. Don’t mention the ol’ man, though. What for? Everything above board from the start. Let ’em know we ain’t goin’ to screw ’em,” advised Josef Bancik.

  It was heaven. Apartment managers and owners ushering them through newly painted apartments well out of their reach. Catherine checked the stove, closet space, bedroom size, and whether the windows rattled. She asked questions about the schools, churches, and neighbors. She even perfected a little routine for the fantasy tour.

  “I really don’t know if we’d get all our furniture in. What’s the size of the parlor again?”

  “I wouldn’t wait. It’ll be gone by tonight. There’s a war on, you know. A little deposit will hold it.”

  “Let me call my husband, see what he thinks. You’re here all day? That parlor size again, twenty by seventeen?”

  The excursions stopped when Josef Bancik lost his job at the Pennsy in late ’43. The siding and right-of-way switches were now all electronically controlled, and Josef was forced to the loading docks. A slipped disc put him out of work completely. He was given a small disability pension and an introduction to despair.

  During those first weeks, it was a daily, early-morning ritual for Catherine and Josef to pore over the Help Wanted columns, “Skilled and Unskilled Labor.” This morning, the paper was on the kitchen table. Josef was still snoring in bed.

  The old man had been no trouble. He had been more than able to take care of himself since he retired at sixty-five the year before. With his pension from the railroad, it was the old man and not Josef who kept the Banciks barely afloat.

  Joey walked down the hall, past the door of the Fitzsimmonses—the door an obstacle that Joey would never get passed. “Fitzsimmons, what a god damned laugh. Whoever heard of an Irish coon?” his father said the day the black family moved in. The plight of the Banciks made his father’s words an anthem to which Joey would march with increasing stridency.

  “But Mr. Rogovin, the roof’s been leakin’ for a month now,” said Catherine Bancik. Jacob Rogovin, a big, heavy-shouldered man, moved to the back of his jewelry store on Prince Street. “We never had to wait that long before.”

  “Things’ve been tough. It’s 1943, there’s a war on, and roofing materials are hard to come by.”

  “We’re only askin’ for a little patchin’ on the roof. Give us the stuff, and my Josef’ll fix it.”

  “Your Josef’ll fix it? God damn right he’ll fix it. Not only should he be happy to do that, but with what you’re paying for rent, he should be kissing my ass. S’cuse me, Mrs. Bancik, if I sound a little pissed, because I am. The government takes the shirt off your back. Okay, okay, your Josef will get the stuff. Here’s where he’s to go. It’s a warehouse down by the river. I’ll phone.” Rogovin handed Joey’s mother a piece of paper.

  “Thank you, Mr. Rogovin. My Josef will do a good job.”

  “I bet he will. This’ll probably be the last time. I’m thinking of bailing out.”

  It wasn’t long before Rogovin told his tenants that he would no longer repair broken mailboxes and windows, unclog toilets, or replace stolen garbage cans. And from now on, the rent would be either mailed or brought to his jewelry store by the first of the month. He wouldn’t be coming down to the tenements any more.

  “Bastard. God damned bastard,” Josef Bancik snarled when his wife described her experience with Rogovin that afternoon. “I saw it comin’.”

  “Wow, nifty. Let’s take a look,” said Billy Spratlin as he led Joey, Richie Maxwell, and Carl Schroder across the street to join the big kids.

  “Hot damn, who’s it belong to?” asked Mike Suchi.

  “Dunno, but it’s nobody’s round here, ya kin bet yur sweet ass on that,” said Terry McDivit.

  “I think I saw it on Baldwin the last cupla weeks or so,” said Carl. “A big guy, mean lookin’ as hell, was in it.

  Joey peered inside. It was big as a house. He backed away to take in its sweeping lines. It looked half a block long, a black, 12-cylinder, 1939 LaSalle. Its shiny spotlessness was accentuated by the smell of leather wafting through the windows—a classic. It was too big, too monumental for Joey to feel envy. He was awed.

  “Hey, kid, see who drove it?” Mike yelled to the colored boy on a tenement stoop.

  “Big white man. He’s in Milt’s.”

  They all turned toward the store. A shadow was just barely visible at the phone in the rear. They walked across the street to a porch to begin their vigil. They didn’t wait long.

  God, was he big. The kids began their appraisal. The guy wore a hat, son of a bitch if it wasn’t a derby. A trench coat hung from his shoulders, cape style, and he wore a navy blue pinstriped suit with white shirt, vest, and light blue tie. It was a beautiful getup.

  The man took a cigar out of an inner pocket and unwrapped it. The big man lit the cigar, spotted his audience through the smoke and smiled crookedly. He wondered how many of them he would see later, in their kitchens and living rooms or peering through the doors of their bedrooms.

  He turned and walked toward High. The big man could feel the kids’ eyes on him as he turned up the stairs of the corner tenement house.

  “Wonder what he wants,” said Joey, watching the big man disappear into the building.

  “Who knows,” said Billy. “Hell, with that car, mebbe he’s buyin’ the whole block for all we know.”

  They gave the LaSalle another long, admiring look and then went their separate ways. It was the first of the month, Joey was due at four that afternoon to help Sister Joan clean votive candle holders and to dust around the altars at St. Mark’s.

  Two hours later Joey was finished, closed the door of the church sacristy and headed home. Across town, the door of the Bancik apartment was opening.

  “Mrs. Bancik? My name is Cyril Hennington. I represent the new owners of the building. My card.”

  Catherine was stunned and speechless. The huge specter filled the entire door. The heavy face atop the large shoulders smiled crookedly at her. A furrowed brow ended at the thick, black line of a single eyebrow that ran the width of the broad face. The eyes were small, just big enough to catch the light that flickered through the shadows of the deep sockets. In one hand he held a business card, in the other was a finely brushed brown derby.

  The big man was amused by what he saw. He noted Catherine’s cheap print dress and frayed cloth slippers, the thick ankles, tired face, and dull eyes. Her brown hair, now mostly gray, was pulled back severely in a bun. Her hands, one on the doorknob, the other holding a threadbare kitchen towel, were big-veined and thick-fingered. The fingernails were broken. Foreign scum.

  Catherine looked at the card but didn’t take it. A card. Did he take her for a fool? Anyone could have a card. The new owner, what new owner?

  “It’s the first of the month. You know what that means,” the big man said. “I represent Property Managers, Inc. I can assure you that it is one of the top real estate firms in the city.”

  “Josef! Jos
ef! Commere, hurry!” A kitchen chair scraped on the floor.

  “Damn it, whadaya want? I’m eatin’.”

  “Mr. Bancik, my name is Cyril Hennington. I’m here to collect the rent.”

  “The rent? Wha’cha talkin’ bout? Our rent goes to nobody but Rogovin, in person, at his store. Jes who’re you? Get lost, mister,” said Josef, emphasizing each point with a feeble jab of his right index finger.

  “Here’s my card. I offered it to your wife, but she didn’t care to take it.”

  Hennington extended his hand. The small white card slipped from his fingers, fluttering to the floor. “I’m sorry. Here, let me get it.”

  As he bent down, the man called Hennington seemed to stumble. He fell forward, his enormous head catching Josef in the stomach. Josef was driven backward, landing on his back in the middle of the living room.

  “How clumsy can a guy get? Let me help you.” As he reached to assist Josef, the big man stumbled again, this time catching himself by throwing his right foot forward splintering the spindly leg of a straight-back chair. The chair remained stationary during impact, then collapsed when its underpinning was ripped from under it.

  “There I go again. I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m sorry, truly sorry.” Hennington righted the chair and propped it against the wall.

  “Now about the rent, it’s twenty-eight dollars, isn’t it?”

  “Ya know damned well it is.”

  “Well, here’s some good news. We know you’re having trouble, been out of work for a while. We’re going to make it easier on you. From now on, you can pay by the week, in installments. So, beginning right now, it will be nine dollars a week.”

  “Nine a week? Ya can’t do it and ya know it. There’s rent controls. The OPA won’t let you.”

  “The Office of Price Administration? Don’t be a fool.” The big man bent down and picked up the broken chair leg. He fingered the splintered end then tossed the leg onto a sofa across the room. “What can the OPA do? Really, what can they do?”

  “Get it. Give it to ’im. God damn it, go get it,” Josef ordered his wife as he arose from the floor. It was over in less than a minute.