He beat for Tom-Tom’s.
It wasn’t still there. The Cougars were in, full force. He took a fast look through the glass doors to spot Candle, before he entered. But Candle was not there.
He shoved in, and the gang stopped their noise for a moment, awkwardly, before the rumpus started in again. Three couples were doing the fish, close together on the aisle between the booths. The juke was going loud—one of the boys must have turned it up, over Tom-Tom’s fat objections—and Rusty identified a rhythm and blues number he was fond of. There were at least twenty kids in the malt shop. Lockup and his broad, Margie. Tiger, Greek, Shamey and that broad with a million miles on her, Caroline. He saw the Beast slouched way back in a booth, beating time with his massive hairy hands, his drooling face swinging back and forth.
Rusty edged down the counter, and came over as Fish beckoned to him from a booth.
“How goes it, man?” Fish asked.
Rusty slid in beside him, spread his hands to indicate so-so. “Where’s the apple?” Rusty asked, meaning Candle.
“Out. Went off in Joy’s heap with her. He’ll be out for the rest of the evening. She just came off the rag and Candle ain’t gonna waste no time.”
Rusty nodded understanding.
“You seen my drag?”
Fish shook his head. Weezee had not been around all night. “I think she’s scared out, man.”
Rusty agreed. “She’s okay. I don’t blame her.”
Fish shrugged. He couldn’t care less.
The number ended, and the couples slunk off the floor, the girls clinging to their partners. Rusty felt alone, as usual. It was strange how these kids who had been his best friends, almost his whole universe, a few months before, were now nothing to him.
Fish was speaking, jerking Rusty back to where he was. “What you gonna do about tomorrow, man?”
“Whattaya mean?”
Fish arched his eyebrows. Rusty was playing it maybe too cool. “What about the stand with Candle?”
“Whattaya think? I’m gonna be there.”
“He’ll eat ya up, man. That’s a rough apple, that Candle. You see him in that rumble with the Cherokees, couple months ago?”
Rusty shook his head. “What?”
Fish tensed his puffy fish-like lips. “Uhuh! He got one of them studs down on the ground and stomped the boy’s head in with his one foot, man. Made me puke to see it. Took away that Cherokee’s eye on the left, I think.”
Rusty dragged out a cigarette, lit it by snapping his thumb against the head of a kitchen match. It flamed abruptly, casting a bloody shadow over his face. “He don’t fear me none, Fish. I don’t wanna fight to begin with, but I don’t back off for no man, specially not that punky.”
Fish shrugged. It wasn’t his problem, but Rusty had been a good friend, and Candle was now Prez of the Cougars. It was smartest to stay out of it.
Caroline showed then.
She came around the edge of the booth and her huge, pointed breasts aimed over his head. She was a worked-out trick, with bags under her eyes, and there wasn’t a stud in the club who hadn’t sampled her offerings.
“Wanna dance, Rusty?” she said. Her voice was a nasal bang, and it grated on him. He thought of Weezee and her smooth, clean face, and the sight of this girl ate on him.
“No.”
The juke started up then. A mover named “Blueberry Hill,” Fats Domino singing, and she began hip-switching, moving her plushy, soft body in a suggestive rhythm. “Aw, come on, Rust. Let’s go. Dance with me.”
“I said no! Like move out, or I’ll chop you out. Go!”
She said something nasty under her breath and slid away from him. In a minute she had another boy in her grip, and they stepped out smartly to the song. She pressed her fleshy breasts against the boy at every close-in, and he didn’t pull away.
Rusty was sick to his belly. All this, every night, night in and night out. It was all a waste. It was a loser from the top.
He started to leave.
Fish stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Where you off to?”
“Nowhere, just out.”
“You wanna get a little up tonight? I hear Boy-O got a little good-cut on him. Sound interesting?”
Rusty didn’t particularly want to get high on pot or Horse tonight, but if he went home, all he’d get would be the beat-ears treatment from Ma and that goddamned TV. He slid back into the booth, plopped down heavily.
“Talk to the man. See if it’s top stuff or just crap. All I got on me tonight’s round money, man, so if he wants the moon for it, no go.” He drew forth a handful of coins, jiggled them meaningfully. Among the coins was a souvenir Spanish silver dollar his mother had given him. He put it inside his wallet as Fish watched.
“I’ll talk to him,” and Fish stood up.
Rusty watched him walk toward Boy-O. They were so different, those two. Fish was slim, dressed sharp, had a quick wit and an innate fighting man’s senses. He was murder with a gloveful of quarters—he had seen Fish bring down a mark with one swing of the glove many times—and yet he had long, slim fingers, excellent for picking locks on candy stores, or working in clay. They had been in the same fine arts class at Pulaski last semester, and Rusty had been amazed at how talented Fish was, working with clay.
Boy-O was something else.
He dressed like a wharf-rat, with a stink on him that came from alleys and taking his fun under bushes in Prospect Park. His face was a puffy thing, all slides and fattiness, without a real expression ever pausing on it for very long. His eyes were junkie eyes, and he shook like a tree in a storm when he couldn’t knock off a stick or two for a few days. He had a record longer than Seventh Avenue, in and out of Lexington Narcotics Farm for the treatment. He was more yo-yo than human being. His arms were cheeseclothed with needle holes. But he was the pusher in this turf, and if you wanted a fast sky-trip, Boy-O was the one to see.
In a while, Fish came back. He held a thin brown tube in his fist, and dropped it into Rusty’s lap. “Mex. But not bad.”
Rusty picked up the dark cigarette, smelled the weed. “Pyeew… how much?”
Fish held up one finger.
“A buck? For this?” Fish shrugged, that was the way of it. A buck or no sock.
Rusty nodded okay, tossed a buck’s worth of change on the table. Fish slid it off into his hand, then to his pocket.
“I figured you’d buy in. I paid him already. I got mine. Where you wanna hit for?”
Rusty felt rotten, felt nasty, felt rebellious. “Anything wrong with right here?”
Fish looked uneasy. “A fuzz walks in here, man, we’ve but had it.”
“Cops don’t bother me tonight. I stay here.”
Fish still looked restless, unhappy about borrowing trouble. “You still under the hand of that Pancoast cat?”
Rusty replied, “Yeah. Cops put me under him for a year.”
Fish tapped the table with authority. “Then what d’you wanna pull more trouble for? The fuzz are hard enough as it rides now. We better hit for the clubhouse and puff in the basement.”
Rusty was adamant. “Here.” To accentuate his words, he flicked a match alight, and put it to the end of the Mexican marijuana. He slumped back in the booth, putting his feet up on the seat, sinking into the cool leather of his jacket.
Fish shrugged, lit up also.
Around them the Cougars danced and chattered, while Tom-Tom cursed silently, and wished for sanctuary in the Village.
It took a longer while than usual for the stuff to hit. Rusty never liked the taste of the stuff, but the sock was more than enough to make up for the ratty taste. Pretty soon the world got fuzzy on the edges, and spanged out long, like what was at the end of your hand was way out on the top of the moon. Distances became distorted, and the shop spun a little bit, then settled right side up.
His vision grew even stranger, and way the hell off in never-never land Fish was puffing, too. Fish’s kisser was like the faces in the funny mirrors a
t Coney, and Rusty knew he was edging away from all his worries.
Worries? Man, they were nowhere. This was gonna be a real dream night. Top, top, top!
He wanted to dance, because the music of the juke was roaring in his head like the front end of the Super Chief. He slid out of the booth—man, it took a whole year to get up, and he swayed unsteadily. Between his lips he could feel something puffing, like it was that dynamite stick, and it was goosing him more and stronger every second.
In front of him he saw Lockup—a buddy, that goddamn Lockup; he loved him like a brother—and Caroline rubbing up and down each other, rocking to the music from The Clovers in the juke. It was a solid cutting and he wanted that Caroline bitch more than anything.
“Hey man!” he called to Lockup, and his voice echoed down and down and down a long corridor, over and over. “Hey. Man. Let. Me. At. That.” He held out his hands, and even through the smoke that enveloped the universe, he saw comprehension on Lockup’s face. He was on a stick and Lockup saw it.
“No, man. I’m workin’ here right now. Come later.”
An uncontrollable hatred filled Rusty instantly for this wise bastard punk Lockup. He had always hated Lockup. To show how much he hated him, he swung Caroline’s soft, gooey body out of the other’s grip, and shoved Lockup hard in the chest.
Lockup was a dwarfy punk and he went back into another couple. He came back up as fast with something in his hand that Rusty thought might be a knife. But what the hell was that, a knife cut no ice, not now, not on sock! He went at Lockup hard and caught him in the cheek with a straight right. Rusty’s arm came out forever, longer than a telephone wire, and way off down the end of the line it hit Lockup. He brought up his knee then and Lockup doubled with his hands clutching his groin.
He swung round, hard, and a bolo punch erupted from the north end of nowhere, missed Lockup entirely. He tried again and missed again. He was sore, man, really sore, about that punk making him miss such easy swats. Lockup was stumbling around with his hands down around his middle, and finally Rusty took back and whammed one home. Lockup sprawled backwards again, and three Cougars caught him. They helped the boy into a booth, and Rusty heard phantom voices from somewhere say, “Let him alone. He’s on pot. He didn’t mean it. Let him be.”
Then he swung on Caroline, and the scared pasty expression on her face made her all the sexier to him. He wanted to do more than dance with her. He wanted to…
Dance. That was safest. Just dance, right now.
So he gathered her to himself, and felt the two soft areas of her press into his shirt, and it was warm.
It was a long, long dance, but he wasn’t tired.
Then they went out together, and he took her in an alley behind Tom-Tom’s joint.
When he woke up the next morning, he went into the bathroom and puked out his guts.
What a helluva night.
A fight and pot, and then that worked-out bitch Caroline. There had to be a better way to live. Couldn’t he ever get free of all that slop? Couldn’t he shake them off him like flies from carrion flesh?
He didn’t have the answer.
The bedroom was a mess. Clothes were thrown all over the floor, on the chair, on the desk, under the bed. He hadn’t even bothered to shuck out of his underwear. He felt sticky and muggy. Through the window he got a clean, clear view of the airshaft, and the smell of Mrs. Hukaya’s rice and meat, stinking on the stove. He wrinkled his nose and turned to the mirror over the dresser.
His lip, where Candle had cut it, was puffy and queer-looking. It reminded him of what he had to do today.
He tried to put it from his mind, but all during the shower, and getting dressed, and combing back his long, brown hair, he knew he would have to open the bottom drawer of the dresser.
Finally, before he went in to eat, he kneeled down and put his hands to the cool metal pulls of the bottom drawer. He hesitated for a minute, wishing there was some way he could stop himself from doing what he was going to do next. But he knew he was sucked in again.
His life was a sick thing, all caught up with brass knucks and swiped candy and fights in the gutters.
As he crouched there, without his even knowing it, he was reliving all the times he had stood with a knife or a broken bottle or a zip in his hand, and faced another boy. At times like that, just as this time, he felt like speaking some other language than English. Was it his native Spanish, a tongue he had never really spoken—never really appreciated—a third-generation Puerto Rican seemed so irretrievably lost to that slim heritage, or was it some other language? Some more guttural, more distant, more deeply buried language? Perhaps it was the growl and scream of the beast. Did the jungle call to him at those times? After all, wasn’t that what he was reduced to, when he fought?
With nothing left to him but the fang and the claw?
He pulled the drawer open slowly, and stared at it.
He hadn’t used the machine-steel, razor-honed, six-inch blade in over three months. Closed, the knife was dangerous-looking, but when he pressed that button on its side, out sprang six deadly inches of gutting metal. It had reach, that knife. It was sharp enough to slice through three layers of clothing and bite deep into flesh.
It was a kill, that knife.
He had laid it away when Carl Pancoast had gotten him free from the fuzz. He had promised he would never use it again, that he would stop running with the pack, that he would start to build a future, instead of building a sin.
He chuckled in his mind. His ma had been right. He did talk too gutter-way. “Building a sin.” Getting ready to commit an immoral act. That was the way he talked. Flip, hard, cryptic, so no one would really know what went on inside his head.
He took the knife out and slid the drawer shut with his knee. He stood up, holding the plastic length of it closed in his hand. It felt wrong there, not like it had felt so often in the past.
Then, it had been right. But now he felt more at home with a compass and T-square. Was he actually outgrowing this thing, through the help of the teacher, or was it all an illusion?
He still knew what he had to do.
He bent over and stuck the knife into the top of his desert boot. The gang all wore these shoes, with high, soft tops, in case they had to pack a blade. But he knew Candle carried his knife in his sleeve. So when Candle rose high to let the knife slide out, Rusty would scoop low, and come up with the knife open—gutting.
A full-body swing, straight up from the groin. Slicing heavy and cutting from crotch to navel in one movement...
He stopped himself with a mental wrenching.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! All wrong. He had to stop this. He couldn’t let himself get involved again. It was more than just disappointing Pancoast. It was more than keeping Weezee out of trouble. He suddenly realized he owed a debt to himself. If he threw himself away, he was a waste to everything. He could not get it any clearer in his mind—he knew it was all wrong to be nothing, to get nowhere—but he sensed deeply that he must try to get this stand canceled. He would even back down. Let Candle think he was a punk. It didn’t matter, just as long as he didn’t have to fight, didn’t have to kill.
For he knew in his heart that if he fought today, only one boy would come out of the rumble alive. He was determined to be that one, if they fought—but he wasn’t going to fight.
He had to see Candle. Had to stop the argument now, cold, dead, final. Now!
But the knife felt reassuring in his shoe-top.
Dolores was at the table when he came in. Ma was in front of the stove, stirring a battered pot full of cocoa. “Where were ya so late?” Rusty asked his sister.
She was a pert, slim girl, with shiny black hair pulled into a ponytail like her friends. Her eyes were very wide and very black and her lashes quite long. Yet there was an insolence about her, an invisible smirk that seemed about to show itself on her full lips.
Her body was held proudly, and she rose an inch at his question. “You didn’t show till three o�
��clock. Whaddaya coppin’ low at me for?”
Rusty felt anger rising in him. Since his father had taken to sleeping out—god only knew where he was vomiting and crashing tonight—he felt more and more responsible for the girl. He had gotten her in with the Cougie Cats, and he had to watch out for her. These were bad streets.
“I ast ya something. Where were ya?”
Her face grew more defiant, and she spat, “I was out with the kids.”
“What kids? Where?”
“Oh, fer Chrissakes, gawdamighty! Can’t a person lead a private life without a bunch of snoopin’—”
Rusty’s voice cut through, then was itself cut off as the tired woman at the stove smothered them both with, “Eat. It’s mornin’. Let’s not have it today. Just eat. As long as you’re both home, it don’t matter. Eat.” Her voice was colored with weariness. She hadn’t slept much, Rusty knew, waiting for him to come home. Yet she had not helped him undress.
How far apart they had grown. Again, he felt the tearing in his belly. He remembered the Spanish coin.
“It does matter,” he started again, covering his own feelings. “I don’t want ya runnin’ with that gang no more, Dolo! They’re bad medicine…”
Dolores leaped to her feet, and the chair went over with a snapping bang. “You should talk! You should talk to me. I’m so humiliated ’cause of you. I can’t live it down. They all call me the chickie’s sister. How’d you like it? I can’t get away from it. You got me so humiliated!” Her voice had risen to a shriek. “I hate you! You’re just a coward, is all! I hope Candle creams you today!”
So the word had spread in the neighborhood already.
Rusty heard the spoon his mother had been using drop to the floor with a thunk! and he turned to see her staring at him.
Her voice came out shaded with fright. “What—what’s she mean? You fightin’ today? Answer me, you gonna fight again?” Her hands were wrapped tightly in her apron and her face was the color of the sky outside—pale-sick white.
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