One of these sites was the Fort Greene Projects. I was walking down the street near there when suddenly I heard my name called.
“Davie! Preacher!”
I turned and saw two fine-looking young soldiers approaching me at a run. They were wearing neat, freshly pressed uniforms and their shoes shone till it hurt the eye.
I stared. “Buckboard! Stagecoach!” I hardly recognized them.
“Yes, sir,” they said together, coming to a snappy attention. “Look good, eh, Davie?”
Buckboard, Stagecoach, and I had a great reunion. They told me they were doing well. They told me they quit the gang after our street meeting and never went back.
“In fact, Preach,” said Stagecoach, “the Chaplain gang broke up for the rest of the summer. Nobody felt like fighting.”
I left Buckboard and Stagecoach with real regret. I was surprised at the strength of my own reactions to this unexpected meeting. I had liked these boys and missed them more than I had known.
But the great surprise was ahead for me.
I set out down Edward Street, past the lamppost where Jimmy and I had preached, looking for Israel and Nicky. I saw a young lad I thought I recognized and asked him if he knew the whereabouts of Nicky and Israel of the Mau Maus.
The boy looked at me oddly. “You mean those jitterbuggers who turned saints?” He meant it as a joke, but my heart leaped.
“Nicky’s crazy!” the boy continued with a disdainful snort. “He’s going to be one of those nutty preachers.”
I stood on the street with my mouth hanging open. “Nicky wants to become a preacher?”
“That’s what he says.”
I took off and looked for Nicky. I found him a little later, sitting on some apartment-house steps and talking to another boy.
“Nicky?” I said.
Nicky turned around, and I stared into a face I didn’t know. Where the hard, defensive exterior had been, there was openness and animation. Now his eyes lit up with real joy.
“Preacher!” He hopped up and ran toward me. “Davie!” He turned to the boy who was with him. “Look, man! This is the preacher I told you about. This is the one who bugged me.”
It was wonderful to see him. I asked Nicky if it was true that he wanted to go into the ministry.
Nicky looked down at the sidewalk. “I never wanted anything so bad, Davie,” he said.
“This is terrific news!” I said. “Tell me, have you done anything about it yet?”
“I don’t know how to start.”
I was overflowing with ideas. I offered to write to some theological schools. I wanted to sponsor him myself. I wanted him to go to a voice clinic for his impeded speech. I even had some thoughts about raising the necessary money for all this. I had been invited to speak to a church group in Elmira, New York, a few weeks from then, on the problems of young people in the cities. It struck me as ironic that in that same city, Luis Alvarez had been imprisoned. He would be transferred by now; I had no idea where he was.
“Nicky,” I said, “will you come with me to Elmira? Will you tell your story to the people there? It could be that they’ll be able to help you.”
I had no sooner made the suggestion than I began to have qualms about it. Nicky’s story, as it had come to me in bits and pieces, was an exceedingly ugly one, full of brutality. I was accustomed by now to chilling sights and sounds on New York’s streets, and even I found his story shocking.
Still, I argued with myself, the Elmira church had expressed a desire to learn about the gangs; here indeed would be a speedy introduction. For me it would mean a chance to hear Nicky’s story from start to finish as I had not yet done.
A few weeks later, Nicky stood on a platform in Elmira, New York, to relate the story of his life. I had spent some time introducing him, stressing the poverty and loneliness that spawned boys like this so that the audience would not judge him before they heard him through.
My precautions were unnecessary. From the moment he began to speak, that roomful of people was with him. His own words, the sad narrowness of his experience, the flat recital by a boy who did not exaggerate or embellish, spoke volumes about the world he came from.
“I was mostly in the streets,” he began, “because my parents had customers coming where we lived. They would come at night or in the day and then all of us kids had to go out. They were spiritualists, my parents. They advertised in the Spanish papers that they would talk with the dead and cure sickness, and they would also give advice about money and family problems.
“There was only one room at home, so us kids were in the street. At first the other kids beat me up, and I was afraid all the time. Then I learned how to fight, and they were scared of me and they left me alone. After a while I got so I liked it better in the street than I did at home. At home I was the youngest one. I was nothing. But in the street they knew who I was.
“My family moved a lot and mostly it was on account of me. If there was any trouble, the police would come around asking questions and then the superintendent wherever we lived would go to my parents and say we had to move. They didn’t want their building to have trouble with the police. It was that way if the police just asked a Puerto Rican boy a question. It didn’t matter if he did anything, the minute the police came around asking about him, he and his family had to get out.
“I didn’t know why I acted like I did. There was a thing inside me that scared me. It worried me all the time, but I couldn’t stop it. It was this feeling I got if I saw a cripple. It was a feeling like I wanted to kill him. It was that way with blind people, too, or real little kids—anyone weak or hurt—I would hate them.
“One day I told my old man about this. He said I had a devil. He tried to call the devil out of me, but it wouldn’t come.
“The crazy thing in me got worse and worse. If someone had crutches I would kick them, or if an old man had a beard I would try to pull it out, and I would rough up little kids. All the while I would be scared, but the thing inside me was laughing. The other thing was blood. The minute I saw blood I would begin to laugh and I couldn’t stop it.
“When we moved into the Fort Greene Projects, I went in with the Mau Maus. They wanted me to be president. But in a rumble the president has to give orders and I wanted to fight. So they made me vice president.
“I was also sergeant-at-arms. That meant I was in charge of the arsenal. We had belts and bayonets and switchblades and zip guns. You steal a car aerial to make the zip guns. You use a door latch for the trip hammer and they shoot .22 shells.
“For rumbling I liked a baseball bat. I’d cut a hole in a garbage can to see out, then I’d put it over my head and swing the bat. The Mau Maus would never fight alongside me because when I got crazy like that I would beat on anybody.
“I also learned how to stick with a knife, which is when you cut someone but don’t kill him. I stuck sixteen people, and I was in jail twelve times. Some of those times my picture was in the paper. When I walked down the street, everyone knew me, and the mothers would call their little kids.
“The gangs knew me, too. One day when I was waiting for a subway, five guys came up behind me. They got a leather belt around my neck and kept twisting it. I didn’t die, but I used to wish I had because after that I could never talk right. There was a funny noise in my throat. I had this hate of people who had anything wrong with them, and now it was me.
“One day our gang was in a store on Flatbush Avenue. There were six of us, drinking soda, when seven Bishops walked in. The Bishop gang was at war with the Mau Maus.
“One of the Bishops went up to the counter like he owned it. I walked over and I shoved him. He shoved back and then everyone was fighting. The owner’s wife started screaming. All the other customers ran out. There was a butcher knife on the counter. One of my boys picked it up and cut a Bishop five times through the scalp. I saw the blood and I started to laugh. I knew he was dead and I was scared, but I couldn’t stop laughing. The owner’s wife was telephoning th
e police. Another one of my boys picked up that butcher knife and hit her right in the stomach. Then we ran.
“I never touched the knife so I didn’t go to jail. But my parents had to go to court, and I guess it was the first time they looked at me. They got scared when they saw what I was. They decided to go back to Puerto Rico. My brother and I went to the airport to say good-bye to them. On the way back from the airport in his car, he gave me a .32 pistol and said, ‘You’re on your own, Nick.’
“The first thing I had to do was find a place to sleep. I held up a guy with the gun and got ten dollars. I rented a room. I was sixteen then. That’s how I lived after that, holding up guys for money or something to hock.
“During the day it was all right. I was with the gang. Whatever the president and I told them to do they would do. But at night, when I had to go into that room, it was terrible. I would think about the two dead people in the store. I would bang my head on the floor to stop thinking about them. I started waking up in the middle of the night crying.
“I turned eighteen in July 1958. That month the Dragons from the Red Hook Projects killed one of our boys. We were going down on the subway to get one of them. That’s gang law: If one Mau Mau dies, one Dragon dies. We were walking the street on our way to the subway station when we saw a police car stopped and a whole bunch of Chaplains hanging around. The Chaplains are another gang in Fort Greene. We had a treaty with them that we wouldn’t fight and we would work together if another gang invaded us.
“It looked like action so we went over. The Chaplains were all standing around two guys I never seen, one had a bugle and the other was a real skinny guy. Then somebody brought an American flag and the police car drove away. All it was, the two guys wanted to hold a street meeting.
“As soon as the flag came, the skinny guy got up on a chair, opened up a book, and this is what he read out of it: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.’
“‘Now,’ the preacher said, ‘I’m going to talk to you about “whosoever.” “Whosoever” means African Americans and Puerto Ricans, and especially it means gang members.’
“I’d had enough. I said, ‘Come on, you guys, we got business.’
“Not one of them moved. It was the first time they didn’t follow me. Then I got scared, and I called that preacher every filthy name I knew. He paid no attention, just kept on talking, a long time.
“The next thing you knew the president of the Chaplains flopped down on his knees, right there, and started crying. The vice president and two warlords got down beside him and they cried. One thing I couldn’t stand was crying. I was glad when the Chaplains left. I figured we would go, too.
“But then this preacher comes up to Israel—he was president of the Mau Maus—and starts shaking his hand. I figured he was trying to bust us up.
“So that preacher heads for me. ‘Nicky,’ he says, ‘I love you.’
“No one in my life ever told me that. I didn’t know what to do. ‘You come near me, Preacher,’ I said, ‘I’ll kill you!’ And I meant it. Israel and the preacher talked some more, but at last he left and I thought it was over.
“But later this preacher came back and he talked about this big meeting for gangs they were going to have up in Manhattan, and how we should come. ‘I’ll send a bus for you,’ says the preacher. So then Israel said we’ll come.
“I said, not me. I’d rather die than go to that meeting. But when the gang went, it turned out I was with them. I was scared not to be with the gang. When we got there here were three rows of seats right down front roped off for us. The preacher said he’d save us seats but I never figured he’d do it.
“A lady was playing the organ and I got the guys stamping and shouting. Then a girl came out on the stage and began to sing. I whistled at her and everyone laughed. It was all going my way and I was feeling good.
“Finally the preacher came out and he said, ‘Before the message tonight we’re going to take up a collection.’
“I figured I saw his angle. I’d been wondering all along what was in this for him. Now I saw he was a money-grabber like everyone else.
“‘We’re going to ask the gang members themselves to take it up,’ he says. ‘They’ll bring the money around behind this curtain and up onto the stage.’
“Anyone could see there was a door back there!
“‘May I have six volunteers?’ he says.
“Man, I was on my feet in a second. I pointed out five of my boys and we piled down there quick. Here was my chance to make him look silly. He gave us cardboard cartons.
“We worked that whole arena. If I didn’t like what someone put in, I stood there till he gave some more. They all knew Nicky. Then we met down behind the curtain.
“There was the door. It was wide open. Back in the arena some of them were laughing. They knew what we were pulling. My boys were watching me, waiting for the word to cut out.
“But I stood there. I didn’t know what it was; I had a funny feeling. Suddenly I knew what it was: That preacher trusted me. That never happened in my life before.
“Inside, I could hear they were giving him a hard time. They were shouting and stamping, and he was having to stand there and face them, trusting me.
“‘All right, you guys,’ I said. ‘We’re going up on that stage.’
“They looked at me like I wasn’t right in my head, but they never argued. We went up the stairs and you never heard a place get quiet so fast. We gave him the cartons. ‘Here’s your money, Preacher,’ I said.
“He just took the money, like he knew all the time I’d bring it.
“I went back to my seat and I was thinking harder than I ever thought before. He started talking and it was all about the Holy Spirit. The preacher said the Holy Spirit could get inside people and make them clean. He said it didn’t matter what they’d done, the Holy Spirit could make them start new, like babies.
“Suddenly I wanted that so bad I couldn’t stand it. It was as if I was seeing myself for the first time. All the filth and the hate like pictures in front of my eyes.
“‘You can be different!’ he said. ‘Your life can be changed!’
“I wanted that, I needed that, but I knew it couldn’t happen to me. The preacher told us to come forward if we wanted to be changed but I knew it was no use.
“Then Israel told us all to get up. ‘I’m president,’ he said, ‘and this whole gang is going up there!’
“I was the first one at the rail. I kneeled down and said the first prayer of my life and this was it: ‘Dear God, I’m the dirtiest sinner in New York. I don’t think You want me. If You do want me, You can have me. As bad as I was before, I want to be that good for Jesus.’
“Later the preacher gave me a Bible and then I went home wondering if the Holy Ghost was really inside me, and how I would know. The first thing that happened, when I went in my room and shut the door, I didn’t feel scared.
“The next day everyone was staring because word had gone around that Nicky had religion. But another thing happened that made me know it was real. Little kids would always run when they saw me, but on that day two little boys stared at me a minute and then they came right up to me. They wanted me to measure and see which one of them was taller—nothing important. But then I knew I was different, even if it didn’t show except to kids.
“Then, a few weeks later, a Dragon came up to me and he said, ‘Is it true you don’t carry weapons anymore?’ I told him it was true, and he pulled a ten-inch knife and went for my chest. I threw my hand up and caught the knife there. I don’t know why, but he ran, and I stood there, looking at the blood coming from my hand. I remembered how blood always made me go crazy, but that day it didn’t. Words came into my mind that I had read in my Bible, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.’ I ripped my shirt and tied up my hand and from that day blood never bothered me.”
As Nicky talked, a hush fell over the room—bec
ause Nicky’s voice, the straining, stammering voice in which he had begun his story, had altered as he spoke. Gradually the words came more readily, the sounds clearer, until he was speaking as distinctly and effortlessly as anyone in the room. Only now did Nicky himself realize it. He stood on the platform trembling, tears streaming down his face.
I never knew what had caused his speech problem. Nicky, of course, had never considered seeing a doctor about it. I only know that, from that night on, his voice was healed.
That night, too, a collection was taken in Elmira that started Nicky on a remarkable journey.
12
I sat in my study at Philipsburg looking back on the last few months. I had written to the Latin American Bible Institute in La Puente, California, about Nicky’s dream of the ministry. I made no bones about his past, and I acknowledged frankly that he had not been in his new life long enough to prove himself. Would they, I asked them, accept him as a student on probation?
They wrote back that they would. Not only that, but they found themselves so intrigued with this story of transformation in a boy from the streets that not long afterward they invited Angelo Morales to come to school there, too. Buckboard and Stagecoach were doing well, and now Nicky and Angelo were on their way to becoming ministers.
But in the spring of 1959 came news that pulled me to my feet again and put me back on the path I had imagined would be a short one.
Israel was in jail.
For murder.
I drove to New York to see Israel’s mother.
“My boy, he was so good for a while,” said Israel’s mother, rocking from side to side in distress. “He settle down and when school start he do his studies. But then the gang start up again. Do you know what it is, the ‘draft’?”
I knew. When gangs were starting, or when their ranks were depleted for one reason or another, any boy in the neighborhood was simply drafted. He was stopped on the street and told that as of that moment he was a gang member. If he refused?
The Cross and the Switchblade Page 7