The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  “Eugene, what are you talking about? What man did you ‘kill’ last night? Take your time, boy, slowly now. Tell me.

  And Eugene told about the encounter, carefully, discarding all the various versions he had played through the night, focusing on what had actually happened.

  Father Kelly felt his hands begin to shake and his own breathing increase, the need for a full, deep breath aching in his chest. The boy spoke for no more than a few minutes, and then he waited, as cold and translucent as a cake of ice.

  Father Kelly leaned forward, reached out, and touched the back of Eugene’s hand as it rested along the arm of the chair. The hand was cold and felt as lifeless as wood.

  “Gene, I want you to listen to me, all right? I want you to listen to me very, very carefully.”

  The boy nodded, but there was no way out. He had done what he had done. It was all over. He was all over, finished.

  “Last night, shortly after eleven o’clock, I was summoned by one of the patrolmen from the precinct. He told me I was needed to administer last rites. To Walter Stachiew.”

  The boy jerked, his mouth fell open. It was murder then. The man was dead. It was all real, not some part of a terrible dream.

  “Listen, Gene. I went with the policemen and administered provisional absolution. And standing there, beside the bloody mess that was once Walter Stachiew, was Stanley Paycek. He was yelling, for anyone to hear, about how he’d followed Stachiew from the tavern where they’d had a quarrel, and how he’d bashed his skull in with his own shovel. There were a bunch of witnesses from the tavern, standing around, all nodding. Paycek was obviously still drunk, but his drinking cohorts confirmed hearing his threats. He not only confessed, Eugene, but the most believable witnesses in the world will testify to what they saw.”

  “Who, Father? What do you mean?”

  “Two of the lads from the precinct were coming back to report on something they had checked out down on Bathgate Avenue. They were driving up the hill—you boys call it Snake Hill—and they saw Stanley Paycek. They saw him kill Walter Stachiew. They saw him bashing Stachiew’s head in.”

  “They saw that?”

  “They saw the murder, Eugene:”

  Reaching out swiftly as the boy fell forward in a dead faint, Father Kelly caught him in his arms, surprised that the slender body was so muscular. He eased him down to the floor, quickly elevated his feet on a stack of telephone directories, loosened the jacket and shirt from around Gene’s neck. He brought the cup of bitter, cooled coffee under the boy’s nose; the strong smell seemed to bring him around.

  “Lie still for a minute, don’t try to get up. A few deep breaths, son, lie still and let the blood get back to your brain.”

  He eased Eugene into a sitting position when the boy was ready, offered him the cup, and studied the change, the return to life of a face that had seemed cold dead.

  Finally, seated across from the boy, the priest spoke quietly.

  “This man, this Stachiew. He was a bad case. A drunk and a bully and a tyrant, as is Paycek. Two of a kind. They deserved each other.” His eyes narrowed, and for the first time Eugene avoided his frank and questioning gaze. “Is there some other part of this whole thing, Gene? Some part you feel you are having trouble with?” When the boy nodded, the priest continued. “Would you feel better, would it be easier for you now for us to go into the confessional? All right, you go ahead. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  In the dark, familiar safety of the confessional, Eugene O’Brien struggled with the terrifying reality of a sexuality he could not understand. He separated himself from his self-disgust and emotional embarrassment with a clean, cold, clinical description of the response of his body to the advances of a man he considered subhuman, brutal, and monstrous. He felt his soul in mortal peril because of the betrayal of his flesh. He felt himself to be two entities struggling for dominance. He knew the depths of his own intelligence, the passion of his religious feelings. But at times they became as vaporous as air, as insubstantial as words, without strength or power over the flesh. He wanted to punish, subdue, and mortify his body, which was beginning to betray all that was himself. He felt the terrible duality of his nature and the threat inherent to his eventual survival.

  This the young priest could deal with. These were familiar, universal terrors and events. This was the eternal battle resolved by boys and young men through all of time by acts of personal defilement, by the ruining of young lives through indiscriminate and stupid couplings outside of marriage. The Church steered its tortured young men to early marriage and counseled its young seminarians to fall back on prayer, cold showers, exercise, determination, and seeking strength from God. It was all available. One had only to seek, wholeheartedly, honestly, accepting the pain, the difficulties.

  “Do you truly want to be a priest, Eugene?”

  The clear young voice coming through the carved grate that separated them was strong and unquestioning. His vocation had been ordained in ways incomprehensible to either of them.

  “There is nothing else I could ever be, Father.”

  The priest asked if there was anything else to confess: derelictions, shortcomings, evasions. He knew the boy’s vanity caused him anguish, his very search for humility was a form of vanity. They had gone through this before. He knew Eugene had a lot to cope with, and that he was at the right place, with the Jesuits, to find his way.

  Before he assigned penance, Father Kelly said, “I think, Eugene, you should return to the seminary. I think you should return as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, Father. Yes. I want to.”

  Leaving the church, on the way to the rectory, to his delayed breakfast, Father Kelly turned and regarded the boy as he knelt, earnestly praying his penance. He stood for a longer time than he realized, as if waiting for some message, some confirmation that what he had done was proper. What came over him was an absolute conviction that Eugene O’Brien was a specially called novitiate. There was a contained passion in the boy that could one day be channeled and focused and used for the greater glory of God.

  That was the conviction with which Father Thomas Kelly was filled as he crossed himself, intoned a quick prayer, and left the dark, mysterious interior of St. Simon Stock for breakfast.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DANTE WAS SURPRISED BY HOW UNINVOLVED he felt in the death of Walter Stachiew. He saw Ben and Charley horsing around with dirty snowballs, and Willie standing slightly away from them, all facing 181st Street, all waiting for him. To tell them how things were.

  He crossed to the bench-lined triangle set into Anthony Avenue on one side, 181st on the other, and the Grand Concourse on the third. He kicked snow off the benches, then sat on the backrest, feet on the wooden slats. The others waited, watching him. He realized no one had yet spoken about what happened last night, after they had gone home.

  Dante confronted it directly.

  “Willie, your father do what they said?”

  Willie Paycek straightened up, his chest pushed out, his head tilted up. He nodded and grinned. “Yeah, he done it. And right in front of the cops, the dumb shit.”

  Charley and Ben glanced first at each other, then at Dante.

  “Exactly what did he do, Willie?”

  “Ya know. Like what they said in the newspapers this morning. He’s standing over Stach, and he’s clobberin’ him with the shovel, and he’s yellin’ his head off—‘Die, ya fuck, I tole ya I was gonna kill ya.’ And the cops jump outta their car and they see him, smashin’ Stach’s head in and he tells the cops, ‘See that, I tole him, the dumb fuck, I was gonna do it and I done it.’”

  Willie did a small dance step, a hop from one foot to the other, probably to keep his feet from freezing, but there was something jaunty, almost joyous in his attitude. He turned and looked at each of the boys, shrugged. So what? What the hell? Something about Ben Herskel brought his jigging to a halt.

  Ben, so much taller and heavier than the others, hatless, his thick hair wild in the
wind, maintained a distance, the mild disinterest of someone aware of an event but untouched by it. Outside of it. He stared at Willie as though at a curious, strange, unknown creature.

  Willie took a deep breath and included Ben in the event. “Hey, Benny, you Jews get any kin’a confession or anything like that?”

  Ben thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his corduroy pants and didn’t answer.

  Willie turned to Dante.

  “Hell, maybe this guy’s gonna feel he gotta go and blab. And maybe he thinks he gotta start namin’ names and stuff. I don’t know about the Jews, ya know.”

  Ben remained silent and waited.

  Dante said, “Willie, we’re all going to just forget it. We were never there.” He looked around and they each nodded. Ben’s cheek bulged as he played the tip of his tongue around in his mouth. He shrugged: Never where?

  “Yeah, but how about O’Brien’s brudder? Jeez, we got us a guy gonna be a priest and all.”

  Charley’s hands came out of his jacket pockets. His fingers reddened with cold, stiff, grabbed at Willie’s collar.

  “My brother’s got nothing to do with you. Or with any of this.” He turned to Dante. “He’s back in the seminary. He left this afternoon.”

  “Now, does anybody have anything—at all—to say? Willie, it’s your father got arrested. You want to say anything? Because now is the time.” Willie’s grin and shrug were a little scary. “Okay, then that’s it. It’s over for us. Agreed?”

  He put out his hand, and each boy placed his hand over the next. Ben quickly pulled his hand away and turned to Willie.

  “Just one thing, Paycek. None of this means anything to me, as far as you’re concerned. To me you were always a piece of shit, just like Stachiew, just like your old man. So you just stay away from me. I don’t know you, I don’t want to know you.”

  He turned abruptly and walked toward his father’s luncheonette.

  Willie watched, his face twitching. “Fuckin’ Jews, they’re all alike,” he said.

  “Yeah?” Dante said. “Why don’t you go over and say that to Ben? Go on, Willie.”

  Willie kicked at a chunk of ice. He didn’t need to see the look exchanged by the other two boys. He knew that nothing had changed for him. There had been no kinship, no special friendship forged that night.

  “I gotta go. I got work to do,” he said, and left them without looking back.

  Danny and Charley walked to the Grand Concourse side of the triangle. They watched the cars splashing up and down the broad expanse of the Bronx’s majestic main thoroughfare. Finally, Dante began.

  “So, whadda you think, Charley?”

  “Jeez, I don’t know.”

  “I mean, how do you feel about what happened? About what we did?”

  Charley shrugged, waiting. He needed Dante to say it first.

  The dark-haired boy, his voice quiet and thoughtful, said, “You know what I find strangest of all in this? Not about Willie’s father. I mean about—you know—that I don’t feel anything. I mean, I just don’t feel anything at all about it.”

  Charley exhaled a loud, breathy whistle. He felt a trickle of sweat, cold and clammy, running down his back, chilling him. “Jeez, Danny. That’s the thing for me, too. I mean, what we did, I mean, aren’t we supposed to feel bad or something?”

  “Guilty, you mean?” He shrugged. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to feel. I just know what I do feel. Or what I don’t feel. I just damn well don’t feel anything.”

  Charley nodded, relieved. “I thought there was something maybe wrong with me. I mean, this bastard was some piece of work. This Stachiew. He’s been foolin’ around with kids for years. Hell, my oldest brother, John, when he came for a visit from Brooklyn last year, he seen Stach across the street and he asked me, ‘That guy ever bother you?’ I just said, ‘Hey, whadda ya mean?’ but John said, ‘Just watch out for him, he’s bad news.’ So I guess everybody knew about him.”

  “He was a piece of garbage. And you know what? So is Willie’s old man.”

  “So whadda you think?”

  Danny slid down from the bench, planted his heavy boots on the wet snow, sat on the ice-covered bench. Charley stood in front of him.

  Dante rubbed his full red lips with his leather-gloved thumb and spoke thoughtfully. “So what about Gene?”

  “Gene went to Father Kelly yesterday morning. They talked. Father Kelly told him he went to the scene, after the cops called him, to give absolution and stuff to that bastard. And that Willie’s father killed him. The cops saw it and all. So Gene went back to the seminary.”

  “You don’t think Father Kelly would let him go back if … you know … if …”

  Charley made a fist and swung playfully at Dante, catching him lightly on the shoulder.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it was crazy. The whole thing. I feel like it never happened. Any of it. Us, I mean.”

  Charley frowned and kicked at a piece of ice, concentrating, buying time. Finally, “Danny, what about Megan?”

  “What about Megan?”

  Quickly, Charley reassured Danny. “Oh, God, she’s more stand-up than anybody. I don’t mean that. What I mean is—”

  Danny spoke softly, intently. It was as though suddenly he had become completely grown up, his voice certain and decisive. Charley looked up, listening intently.

  “There is no ‘what about Megan?’ in any of this. Megan was never on the hill. She didn’t come sledding with us, we saw her when we came back up to Ryer Avenue and we watched her go home. Your cousin is not in this in any way. Okay?”

  Slowly, Charley nodded. He exhaled, relieved that one part of this thing had been solved. “I’ll talk to her and—”

  “Taken care of,” Dante told him. “I saw her this morning.”

  “And what about that little turd Willie?”

  Dante shrugged. “I don’t think we’ve anything to worry about there. He’s made out really good. He got rid of two bastards, however it happened. So, Charley, we forget about it, right?”

  “Can we do that?”

  Dante reached down, scooped up a handful of snow, kneaded it, and tossed it out onto the Grand Concourse, then turned to Charlie. “I think we have to, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “And I don’t think we should talk about this again. Not ever. With anyone.”

  Charley nodded, then looked directly into Dante’s black eyes. “Danny, do you think we killed that guy?”

  Dante D’Angelo held his gaze steady, his face went blank, and he shrugged. “What guy?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WITH HIS FATHER IN SING SING AWAITING execution, Willie Paycek, for the first time in his life, was accorded a kind of respect by the tenants in his building.

  He stood by his mother. He worked hard, taking on responsibilities and physical labor no one thought him capable of. From being the boy neighborhood kids were told to avoid, he became, through his uncomplaining industry, something of an example. He ran errands, fetched and carried, made deliveries from the various neighborhood stores.

  From his point of view, Willie did what he had to do to survive and to get some time and some money.

  His mother had always depended on men to tell her what to do, when and how to do it. Men had always supplied her with orders, commands, ridicule, and contempt. In this respect, Willie filled in very easily for both his father and Walter Stachiew.

  It was at his insistence—although in truth she was really very glad to oblige—that the four blond kids, two boys and two girls, were placed in a Catholic Protectorate up in Nanuet, not very far from the prison where his father awaited execution. This left Willie, his mother, and little Mischa a privacy and serenity they had never before experienced.

  “You don’t bring no man in here no more,” he told his mother in a thin but firm voice. “And you don’t go sneakin’ off to no bar or nothin’ like that. And you gimme a good meal at night, you want I should sta
y here and help you with the work. See, if you don’t do like I say, I’m gettin’ outta here, and they’ll throw you and the little freak into the streets. So you just do like I say and I’ll help you with the work. You got all this?”

  His mother mopped her sweaty red face and nodded. She started to say something: How could she just eliminate men from her life altogether? Willie was too young to understand, she was a woman. But her words caught in her mouth as her oldest son leaned back against the kitchen table and seemed to answer the protest she had never made.

  “You try to cross me once, just once, Ma, and you are on the street.”

  She understood. All she had to do to survive was whatever Willie told her. Life would be easier, if somewhat empty, without the two men constantly having at her, quarreling, fighting, turning on her without warning. It was easier, actually, with both of them gone.

  Still, she did miss the excitement, the sexuality, the feeling that came with being desired not just by one man but by both of them. Well, there was a long future. She would, for now, do what Willie wanted. She had never realized how much her son resembled his father.

  If he thought that sharing a secret with the others would form a bond of friendship, he was wrong. He was still the outsider, but now he had no time to hang around. He had a life to take care of—his own.

  Nothing much changed for Willie at school. Sister Mary Frances watched him with grim satisfaction. The fruit did not fall far from the tree.

  Once she spotted some dereliction as Willie bent over a composition paper. She glided to his side, leaned in close, and whispered in her malicious voice, “You’ll end up just like your father, William Paycek.”

  Instead of leaning even closer to his blotched paper, instead of hunching his shoulders in anticipation of her hard thump, the boy put his pen down slowly, deliberately, and pulled himself up straight in his seat. He raised his face to hers, and his expression contained such total and concentrated hatred that Sister drew back, intimidated.

  His thin lips stretched over his small grayish teeth into a terrible grimace, and his voice was so low and controlled that it carried no farther than to her.