God's Pocket

by Pete Dexter

  Mickey said, “Bird, you was always nervous.”

  “The secret,” he said, tapping his head, “the secret is I don’t give a fuck. That horse is going to come in tomorrow, and if they don’t want me doin’ business in Philly, I’ll go somewheres else and do business. They don’t own the world, Mick. Fuck, they don’t even own Miami. Somebody else owns that. Sophie’s friends all moved down there anyway.”

  Bird was bouncing his feet on his toes, holding onto the desk top, like the teacher wouldn’t let him go piss.

  “This horse is a nice horse,” Mickey said, “and she’s in with a bunch of shit, but it’s still a horse, Bird. Little bitty ankles, ugly teeth, shits in balls …”

  “She’s a lock,” Bird said.

  “There ain’t nothin’ that weighs half a ton with little bitty ankles that’s a lock,” Mickey said. Bird winked at him again, like it was a joke between them. His nephew had finished with the first side of beef. He’d packed it in cardboard boxes, carried them back to the truck. The colored boy was faster, and he was working on the meat they’d taken off the semi.

  “You don’t understand,” Bird said. “I don’t give a fuck. Just like that horse don’t give a fuck. She don’t know and I don’t care, that’s what makes it a lock.” He looked at Mickey again. “You don’t see it, Mick?”

  Mickey shook his head. “What are you going to do if she don’t run? What if they scratch her?” But he could see Bird wasn’t hearing him. Hell, maybe he wasn’t hearing Bird.

  “The reason I’m tellin’ you,” Bird said, “is you’re my man, Mick. You helped me out, and now I’m tryin’ to help you, mentally. But if you don’t wanna lissen, it’s on you. I can see things so clear, you know? Like you wonder how you didn’t see them before.”

  Mickey nodded toward the semi they’d stolen. “They’re going to want their truck back,” he said. “At least take them the truck.”

  “Yeah, you got to settle accounts,” Bird said. “But my friends come first. When we get straightened out in Miami, you always got a place, Mick. You know, if you got to disappear for a while. Right now …” He shrugged and looked around the warehouse. “All I can do right now is hide you here. They can’t touch us, Mick.” And he began to laugh again.

  Mickey had heard that Indians were afraid to kill white men if they were crazy, but he didn’t think the people who were running things now were. “You can’t see it,” Bird said. “Mick, I swear on my mother’s grave, it’s so clear.…”

  As he said that, the band saws stopped and the lights went out. For five seconds the place was dead still and solitary black. Then Mickey could hear Bird breathing through his teeth. Tony and the colored boy hadn’t moved, like they were waiting for the people who ran things now to come in with flashlights and shotguns. Bird was breathing louder. Mickey couldn’t see his face, but he knew it was awful. Ever since he’d walked into his house yesterday and found Jeanie crying, he’d been knowing shit.

  He got up off the box. Nobody said a word. A door opened toward the front, and there was a flashlight. “Arthur?” she said. “Arthur, the electric went out again.…”

  Bird’s breathing got choppy. “We’re over here, Mrs. Capezio,” Mickey said.

  “Is that you, Mickey? I didn’t know you was here.”

  “Yeah, we’re all over here in the dark. Right, Bird?” Bird didn’t say anything. So he said, “We’re all over here,” again, and the old woman found them with the light.

  “It’s the whole block,” she said, coming toward them. “Same as before. Arthur?” He didn’t answer.

  Tony the nephew said, “Hey, how long is it going to be? I can’t do nothin over here without light.”

  “You hush,” the old woman said and came the rest of the way to Mickey and Bird. When she put the flashlight on Bird’s face, Mickey saw it was frozen. She said, “You hush,” softer now. She handed the flashlight to Mickey and pulled Bird’s head into the lap of her dress, and patted the back of his head. It was still dark, so Mickey didn’t have to find something to do with his eyes.

  In about five minutes the old woman said, “You hush,” again, and Bird did. His breathing smoothed out, and a minute later he stood up, smoothing his hair, wiping at his forehead with the backs of his hands. “Jesus, Mick, I don’t know,” he said.

  “It’s nothin’,” Mickey said. “Nobody knows what they’re doin’. Get yourself a beer. I gotta go back to the house, see about the funeral, but I’ll come back and drink one with you.”

  “The funeral?” Bird said. “Shit, I forgot. My brains ain’t payin’ attention to me. How’s Jeanie doin’?”

  “She’s with her sisters,” Mickey said.

  “That’s good,” Bird said. “You don’t appreciate your family, then somethin’ like this happens, right? She takin’ it all right, though?”

  Bird seemed normal again. He wasn’t frozen up and he wasn’t hugging anybody. He seemed like somebody you could talk to. “Actually, she’s got some idea somethin’ else happened out there,” Mickey said. “I don’t know where it come from, but there it is.”

  “Let’s get outta here,” Bird said. He took the flashlight from Mickey and led them all out into the flower shop. Aunt Sophie, Mickey and Tony. The colored boy said he’d as soon wait in there. They walked through the shop and out the front door, and it wasn’t until they were outside that Mickey got a look at Bird’s face.

  He made up a rule of life: don’t ever say somethin’s normal until you can see their face.

  If Bird’s eyeballs had puckered and whistled “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” he couldn’t of looked crazier than he did then. Shaking and scared and pissed and worried all at the same time, and no focus to any of it. He held onto himself as much as he could and said, “I’ll be okay in a minute. I just got to remember how to get back.”

  Mrs. Capezio took his sleeve. “Where you want to go, Arthur?” she said.

  He talked to himself. “I don’t give a fuck, I don’t give a fuck.…” She looked at him and frowned. “You got a nice home, Arthur,” she said. “You got no reason to talk like that.”

  He held onto himself as much as he could. “I can’t remember now,” he said.

  Mickey said, “I shouldn’t of worried you about Jeanie.”

  Bird began to breathe through his teeth again. “I’ll find out about that for you,” he said. “I swear to Jesus. I tried to cut your meat but the electric went off.…”

  Mickey said, “You can’t do nothin’ about the electricity.”

  Bird put his hand on Mickey’s arm. “I’ll find out about Leon for you,” he said. He allowed his aunt to put an arm around his waist and walk him across the street toward their house. “I’ll do that, Mick,” he said. “You got my word.”

  Mickey said, “Don’t worry about Jeanie, she’s a little funny in the head right now. It happens.…” He wanted to tell him to stay out of the business about Leon, but it mattered to him to say he would help. Mickey watched him follow the old woman into the house, and he thought it would be a long time before Bird could help anybody.

  Aunt Sophie tried to put him to bed, but Bird went into the bathroom instead. He brushed his teeth and changed shirts and spit on his shoes and wiped them off with a towel from a motel in Phoenix, Arizona. Where was Arizona? Who gave a fuck?

  That was more like it.

  He stood up straight and looked at himself in the mirror. He oiled his hair and tucked it in behind his ears, and he could feel it snug against his head, like a cap. Aunt Sophie knocked on the door with a water bottle. “You feelin’ better, Arthur?”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’m goin’ out for a little while, Doll. Be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Arthur,” she said, “you oughta rest. You didn’t look too good.”

  He opened the door and showed her he was handsome again. She put her hands on her hips.

  “You looked worse,” she admitted. She liked oily-haired men. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, and she squeezed the
back of his arm. Bird went out the front door and found the new Cadillac parked against the curb. Nothing down, the first payment—$448—due June 15. They’d give him two weeks, so he’d have the car till July. If they came earlier, who gave a fuck?

  He got in and hit the buttons until all the windows were rolled down. He drove fifty miles an hour all the way to Snyder and his hair never moved. He made a right turn, then double-parked beside a heavier, darker Cadillac in front of Vinnie’s Italian Bakery. He walked past the girl at the counter, feeling strong, and went right to the office and knocked on the door. Vinnie would be there, he was always there this time of day. If he wasn’t, who gave a fuck about that either?

  Vinnie answered the door himself, even though there were a couple of his nephews in the room with him to do that. He was pissed off at his nephews. He said, “Yeah?”

  Bird stepped inside. Vinnie had known Arthur Capezio forty years, but it wasn’t friendly enough between them to come in uninvited. One of his nephews moved toward Arthur, but Vinnie shook his head. He didn’t want nothin’ from his nephews. “What is it?” he said.

  Bird sat down on a chair beside the window where he could keep an eye on the Cadillac. He said, “Vinnie, I got a favor to ask.”

  Vinnie said, “You don’t mind if I sit down.…” Everybody had a favor to ask, nobody had time to show a little respect. Vinnie Ribbocini had been like Angelo’s right hand, but since the new people started running things, that didn’t count no more. Actually, they wasn’t new. They’d always been there, but nobody noticed. They was muscle or go-fers mostly. Sons and nephews of men with brains and experience and balls, who’d used that to come into the business, but nobody ever took them serious. Angelo didn’t—to him they was like children, in a hurry for everything, always pushin’ to get into the shit business—and look what it got him. And now Vinnie’s own nephews, tellin’ him he ought to go along, that it looked bad ’cause he wouldn’t kiss ass. The new people had discovered respect, and they was in a hurry for that too.

  “Lissen,” he said to Bird, “I know things is dryin’ up for you right now. You don’t have to come pushin’ in here like some fuckin’ punk kid to tell me that. I’m in the middle of business here, where’s your fuckin’ manners?”

  Bird shook his head. “It ain’t that, Vinnie.”

  “And where’s my fuckin’ truck? I throw you a bone, you gonna keep my truck to show you appreciate it?”

  Bird explained. He said the electric went out so he couldn’t unload it. “I got a favor to ask,” he said again. Vinnie threw open his arms. “There was a problem down at Holy Redeemer,” he said, “buildin’ a new hospital or somethin’, and this guy got killed. Leon Hubbard. Nice boy. And the boy’s mother married a guy who works for me. A good guy, and his old lady’s goin’ crazy ’cause they ain’t tellin’ her what happened.”

  “So what?”

  “So maybe you could send a couple guys over and find out. I don’t mean do nothin’, just to find out. Bounce somebody around a little bit so they’ll talk to you.”

  “Then what?” Vinnie said.

  “Then nothin’. Then I tell the guy, and he can tell his wife or do what he wants with it.”

  Vinnie scratched the bottom part of his left ear. The bottom part was all he had left on that side. The truth was, he didn’t know what was going to happen one day to the next, just like the old men he knew who been around forever, and walked around now talkin’ about Angelo like he was still alive. Vinnie didn’t particularly like Arthur—at the bottom he was weak—but he didn’t have nothin’ against him either. “And that’s all?” he said. “There’s no problem over there, just a couple of guys to push around?” It was straightforward and easy, the way things used to be.

  “That’s it,” Bird said.

  Vinnie shrugged. “When do I get my truck back?”

  Peets knew Old Lucy wasn’t coming to work, but he kept looking for him. That was how he first spotted the men across the street. There were two of them—Jews or Italians, he could never tell which was which—sitting in a black Thunderbird with a roof that looked like rippled water. The Thunderbird was parked on the side street in the no-parking zone at the end of the block, where buses stopped.

  Peets saw them about three-thirty, and then he noticed them again just before four. One had sunglasses and one of them didn’t. Outside of that, you couldn’t tell them apart. Peets didn’t wonder what they were doing, he was thinking about Old Lucy and the seconds he’d sat in the cherry picker watching while Leon was flashing his razor in front of the old man’s face.

  He thought about it, and he still didn’t know why he hadn’t moved when he could. It was like something you watched because you couldn’t do nothing about it. Something that had to be played out because the time had come.

  He threw that out. In one way it had to happen, but it didn’t have to be there, with Old Lucy. The old man came to work on time, he did his job. Peets owed him his nine dollars an hour, he owed him a place to do his work. He went over it again, how it had looked, trying to decide when he should of gotten off his ass and done something.

  At four o’clock he let the crew go, but Old Lucy was still on his mind. He cleaned up by himself. First the cement mixer, then he covered the cement sacks, then he covered the cinder block. Anything you didn’t cover in the city was gone in the morning.

  He went to a pile of scaffolding they’d delivered that morning and stacked it. There was a reason to everything. When he couldn’t find it, he stacked scaffolding or books or pennies, or he’d make beds the Marine way, or line up everything in the refrigerator by colors. And after he’d put order to something else, whatever he was trying to figure out seemed to fall into order too.

  He worked half an hour after the crew left, straightening up. And when there wasn’t anything left to straighten, he began to shovel a load of sand out of the pickup, so he could use the truck in the morning. He was standing in the pickup bed when he heard the doors slam, almost together.

  The men came across the street, one of them walking straight to the truck and the other one going around the fence to the front of the hospital, and then coming toward him from behind. The one who had come straight looked around, in no hurry at all, like he was checking the work. “You the boss?” he said.

  Peets did not care for the question. He picked up a shovel of sand and tossed it in the pile near the man’s feet. The man stepped back, checked his pants and shoes. Peets had only seen pants like that on television, on Spanish dancers. The other one was at the side of the truck. “I’m the only one here,” Peets said.

  The one in back of him said, “That’s a fact.” Peets waited.

  “The thing is,” said the one who had come straight, “somebody got kilt here yesterday, and there is some feeling that it didn’t happen the way the cops said.” Peets stared at the man and held onto the shovel. “We was wondering,” he said, “if you was here when it happened.”

  Peets kept his eyes on the one in front and thought about the one in back. “This guy who got it, he was an important guy. He was important to important people, and they don’t think it oughta happened at all, and then not to tell the truth …”

  Peets said, “He always said he was important,” and threw another shovel of sand on the pile on the ground. The man moved back this time. He held out his hands.

  “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said. While he said that, the other one fit his fingers into a set of artificial knuckles. He closed the fist, opened it, closed it again. The knuckles stuck out maybe a quarter inch. The one in front of Peets said, “What’s it going to be, home boy?”

  It was rush hour now. There was blocked intersections and bus smoke and a steady line of nurses and assorted white uniforms coming out of Holy Redeemer Hospital. And nobody looking. Peets had a sudden vision of these two going to visit Old Lucy. He said, “It happened the way I said to the police, and you Jew boys can do it any damn way you want—hard or easy—and it don’t matt
er to me.”

  The one behind him screamed, “Jew boys!” and punched the side of the truck with the artificial knuckles.

  The one in front called him off. “Whatta you want to do this for?” he asked Peets. “We didn’t insult you, right?” And while he said that, the other one climbed into the truck bed behind Peets and pushed him once in the back.

  “Let’s go somewhere we can talk,” he said.

  Peets turned around and stood over the man that wanted to talk. He felt the back of the truck drop when the other one got on behind him. The one who had pushed him threw the hand with the artificial knuckles at Peets’ face, and caught the top of his forehead. When Peets looked, there was a piece of wrinkled-up skin hanging from the metal. The one behind him put an arm around his neck and tried to choke him. Peets kept his eyes on the one with the knuckles. His head burned, and the one trying to choke him said, “Hit him, Ronnie. Fuckin’ hit him.”

  Peets felt an old calm settle in, he noticed the blood dropping around his boots—not a lot of it, about like the drops you get right before a heavy rain. He noticed a man across the street watching. The one with the knuckles had a peculiar look on his face, but he steadied himself and turned to throw another punch.

  Peets reached out and smothered his hand, and then found his face, and then, with the same broad motion you might use to shape an eye cavity in clay, he pushed into the corner of the socket and took the man’s left eye out. The man screamed again, a truer scream than when Peets had called him a Jew. He grabbed for the eye and bent over, trying to somehow take it all back, and now it was sprinkling blood around his feet too.

  And the calm passed and something was loose in Peets.

  The man holding his neck had froze, Peets guessed he’d seen the eyeball. Peets reached behind him and grabbed the waist of the man’s pants. It wasn’t easy because they were tight. The only sounds were the traffic and Peets’ own breathing. He caught another look at the man across the street. He was sitting on a fire hydrant now, watching.