Thrill Kids (11 page)

“You see, Emanuel, we try to hide our fears sometimes to help other people. But we still have them. They’re only masked and — ”

Manny didn’t listen to her. He didn’t care what she told him now; he didn’t even hear her voice. Sincere was moving in the box and that was the only thing Manny cared about; that was what life all boiled down to — Sincere.

“Do you understand, Emanuel?” she asked him ten years later.

Manny shook his head silently. “And we’re still friends?” Manny shrugged.

“You think about what I said, Emanuel, and next Tuesday we’ll try to talk it over together.” She said, “I won’t keep you any longer today.”

Manny nodded.

At the door, she offered her hand when she said good-by, but Manny was holding the box with both of his.

I
N THE POOL HALL
some wise guy had swiped his cap and called him Goldilocks, and he had been afraid to try to sell the stuff. It was still in his back pocket. Now he had no money; only fourteen cents, because he had spent a half a buck on another cap, and sixty-four cents was all he had had when he’d gone to Leemie’s. What the hell was he going to do? He could never go back to Leemie’s. He didn’t even have enough to ride out the night on the subway. In a pawnshop up on 120th Street he’d tried to sell his duffel bag and everything in it, and the man had said, “You kidding, Bud? You couldn’t pay me to take this crap!”

He was hungry. He had drunk all the water he could to fill his stomach, and he had his pants belt as tight as it would go.

It was the worst time in his life. And it was hot. It was so hot his whole head was dripping with sweat under his cap. He was tired because he hadn’t slept, and he was scared ever to go home again, and scared not to.

He was coming down from 120th, on his way to meet Bardo and Manny and Johnny, and he knew he wouldn’t have the nerve to tell them about it, to ask them for a buck or two, or a bed for the night, or food. He would rather tell
anybody
but them.

That night, all Flip Heine wanted to do was hang around with them, keep up the act, and never let them know that his heart was as shorn of hope as his head was of hair.

• • •

Emanuel Pollack wanted to take his snake home. He was afraid something would happen to it. It was in the box under the bench in the children’s park, where he sat beside Bardo, waiting for Flip. He had gone to Bardo’s directly after he left Dr. Mannerheim’s office, and Bardo had said:

“That snake, mister, is the most handsome creature Bardo Raleigh ever laid eyes on! Notice the way he winds himself around my arm? Do you know what that is? That’s grace, mister. Your Sincere is infinitely graceful.”

Manny had telephoned his father to receive permission to eat dinner with Bardo, and he and Bardo had eaten in the Raleighs’ kitchen, while Sincere roamed around the linoleum floor.

“Always take care of that snake, Pollack,” Bardo had said. “People who neglect their pets and go off and leave them — people like that are the scum of the earth, mister.”

“Don’t worry, I know that, Bardo.”

“You bring him right along with us tonight, mister.”

“I ought to take him home first, Bardo.”

“You bring him along, mister. That’s the best thing.”

“You can come with me if I take him home.”

“Pollack?”

“What?”

“Why do you suppose I asked you to bring him along? Do you suppose it was because I’d eat my heart out while you were running home with your snake?”

“No, I just thought — ”

“Mister, I was wet-nursed and weaned some time ago.” “I know that, Bardo.”

“No, you don’t, mister. You don’t know that at all. You only know what I tell you. And I tell you if you care a tinker’s damn for your pet, you’ll just bring him along, Pollack, and keep an eye on that priceless creature.”

“You really like him, don’t you, Bardo?”

“Anyone in his right mind would appreciate the infinite majesty of that snake, Pollack. Anyone in his right mind!”

Manny had said, “You bet they would! Sinny’s just like his name, all right. A king!”

Now all Emanuel Pollack wanted to do was to take Sincere home, and then come back and have fun.

Still he sat there, trying to learn the words to the song Bardo was teaching him.

What made him remember the first time he had ever seen one? What made him think of that evening in Trevor Park up in Yonkers, when he had gone for a walk with his grandmother? How old had he been, and why did he remember it now?

He had a yo-yo, a yellow one, and he couldn’t work it, so they sat on a bench and his grandmother tried to show him how. She said, “You just let it go up and down, Bardy. See? Like this.” And then she said, “You aren’t even watching me, Bardy. Watch me.”

But he was watching something else, something across from them — a man stretched out on the bench across from them.

How come he could remember so clearly?

The man was asleep, his arm dangling toward the ground. A battered hat with stains on the band dropped from his fingers. He wore a white shirt that had vomit dried to the front of it and a collar ringed black. The rolled sleeves exposed flesh that was filthy and scaling. And the pants! Baggy brown, ripped at the knees, open in front, where he held his hand. There was a smell from him so foul and strong that it had made Bardy Raleigh want to gag. And the man’s nose was running, his mouth agape.

“You aren’t even watching me, Bardy.”

“What’s that man, Gran? Is that man sick?”

“Don’t look at him, child.”

“Is he sick, Gran?”

“No. No, Bardy. He’s just a bum.”

A bum?

What was a bum?

Why did it have a familiar sound? And who had said it to Bardy Raleigh before?

• • •

He sat there in the darkness on the roof saying her name to himself: “Lynn Leonard.”

After tonight he wouldn’t be a kid any longer. He wouldn’t know a day such as this day had been ever again.

It had started when he had answered the telephone in the morning and told Bardo Raleigh he wouldn’t be along with him and Manny and Flip, because he had an appointment. His mother had asked after he’d hung up, “Where’s your appointment tonight, Johnny?”

And he had answered, “I’m taking Lynn Leonard to a movie.”

“Well, that’s very nice.”

He’d checked the papers for a movie he could say they’d been to, planning how he’d get the blanket up on the roof, and the pillow, and the pop he was going to buy.

In the afternoon he’d gone across town to a strange neighborhood drugstore and asked for one.

“They come in a package, Romeo,” the clerk had kidded him, and the worst thing about it was that the clerk looked about the same age as Johnny.

“I don’t know what size,” Johnny had mumbled.

“You don’t know
nuthin’,
bub! You think they come in sizes?”

Johnny didn’t know, but there was the night to come. And then he would, and it would all be different from this day on.

He shut his eyes and wondered how it would be.

First they would talk (what would they say?) and sit side by side without kissing or even holding hands or anything. They would talk and look up at the stars, and he would be able to smell her perfume; and every sentence she would say would have his name at the beginning or the end.

They would lie back with their heads on the pillow, and her black hair would spill onto his white shirt. Their fingers would touch, lightly, then more tightly, and somewhere a radio they wouldn’t hear would be playing in the summer air.

Turning, they would face each other, and look into each other’s eyes, and he would touch her then, and kiss her and then it would begin. (Should he explain to her that he had one with him? Did men say that?)

He sat there in the darkness on the roof thinking about it and saying her name and his name together; and he thought that when he was eighteen he would ask her to marry him.

He sat there listening for her footsteps, imagining that he heard them, watching the sky, and waiting.

And he waited, and he waited. He waited a long, long time, because he had believed her when she had promised, and he didn’t want to believe what he was finally forced to admit — that she wasn’t going to come at all.

T
HEY STOOD INSIDE
the children’s park by the swing. After they had sung the song two or three times together, Bardo said suddenly to Heine, “Say, mister, what happened to your hair?” He scrutinized him carefully in the half-light from the street lamp.

Heine grinned broadly. “Man, like, I cut it off!” He felt his head around the sides of the cap. “You know?” he said. “Big gag!”

“What’d you do
that
for, Flip?” Manny asked.

“Big gag, I told you! Wonder what Wylie’s doing. Why ain’t he coming?”

“He has another engagement,” Bardo said. “Now, let’s proceed. We’ll sing
sotto voce.”

“I thought we were going to sing
your
song,” Flip said.

“Sotto voce
means ‘quietly,’ Heine.”

“It’d only take me a minute to run home with Sinny, Bardo,” Manny said as Bardo started to lead them from the park, up toward the pathway between the road and the reservoir.

Bardo whirled and snapped, “Look, mister, I’m losing patience with you!”

“I only thought — well, I have to keep carrying this box, Bardo.”

“When a man carries something he loves, Pollack, it should seem to him to be the lightest thing in the world.”

“Hey, that’s pretty good, man. You read that somewhere?”

“Gee, Bardo, I never thought of that. I mean — ” “Onward!” Bardo said glibly. “Singing as we go.” “Whata we need to sing for?” Flip said as he followed Raleigh.

Bardo answered evenly, “Because, Heine, we’re not a pack of disorganized hooligans. We’re on serious business tonight. A mission!” Heine agreed, “Crazy!”

“Look!” Manny said, holding one hand around the box, his free hand pointing up at the summer sky and the stars clustered there in thick, brilliant patches. “The Dippers are out, both of them, and there’s Orion. He’s the hunter. My brother Irv knew all about that stuff.”

“He must have been an astute observer,” Bardo commented. “Very few people know anything about Orion.”

“That’s for sure, man. I didn’t even dig the name.”

“Sure,” Manny said. “You can always tell Orion by those three bright stars there. See them? All in a row. That’s his hunting belt.”

“Yeah?” Flip said. “Geez, all the things to know in the world. You just never could know all the things.”

“Orion,” Bardo said in his flat monotone, “is probably the most famous hunter in all of classic mythology. He cleared a whole island of wild, filthy beasts. He used a club for the purpose. He clubbed those loathsome beasts!”

“The island began with the letter D — Dios, or something like that,” Manny said.

Flip said, “I heard of Dios.”

“It did not, mister. It began with C. It was the island of Chios, where Homer lived.”

“Sure,” Flip said. “I heard of Homer. Who hasn’t? Like, in school and everything. You know?”

“You would have liked my brother, Bardo,” Manny said. “He knew things like that, too. Irving would just bring books home and read them. Not for book reports or anything. Just for fun. I mean, he liked it.”

Raleigh gave Pollack an affectionate slap across the shoulders. He said, “And you study herpetology, Pollack, because you like it, and Heine here studies the intricate language of jazz.”

“Gee.” Manny’s voice brightened. “That’s right. We all have our own — ” He fumbled for a word.

Bardo supplied it: “Fortes.”

Flip said, “Man, like that’s the first time I ever heard it put just that way. Crazy!”

“Keep your eyes on Orion, gentlemen,” Raleigh said, “and let the Defenders march on singing!”

In a mood of curious and prodigious camaraderie then, the trio made its way in the night. The summer air was sultry, and busy with the intermittent rumbling of buses along Fifth Avenue, and cars and taxis that took the winding road through the park. Singing, the three went slowly in step along the path, each one now able to quell his peculiar anxiety of the evening, though not forget it. Flip could not forget the fact that he had nowhere to go afterward though his hunger had subsided, the way hunger will when it has gone unsatisfied for too long. Manny could not forget Sincere, and the remaining doubt that his pet belonged there and would not be better back at home, though the doctor and the man he had met a few days ago in the park were blocked out of his thoughts. Bardo could not forget that memory recalled to him so strangely only minutes ago, though the injury of Ivy’s running off to eat with McCoy mere
hours
after she had announced her intention of marrying him (callous!) was less painful. The three were more a whole now than they had ever been before, and who was to say the night did not belong to them? In it, there was some open-sesame that would admit them together, it seemed, to their separate roadsteads. All of them, too, were aware that this was only temporary; but instead of making them desperate or uneasy in the face of time, the realization solidifed them and made their togetherness a vaguely triumphant fact. And they had a song; never mind the words.

“Hey, man,” Flip said when they had paused in their singing, “what’s our mark?”

“We ought to have three stars, like in Orion’s belt,” Manny said.

“Pollack, you’re brilliant!” Bardo stated. “Of
course!”

“Old Manny-man,” Flip said, “never know you flunked anything the way you’re sounding off t’night.” He kicked a rock in the pathway and pulled his hat down on his head more securely.

Manny mumbled, “I just know from Irv.” He frowned and held his box more tightly, peeved with Heine for mentioning his failure. He hoped Bardo had not heard; and Bardo hadn’t. For suddenly Raleigh stopped in his tracks and held his hand back, halting the other two.

“Hush!” he said. “Hush! Look!” He pointed with his finger. In the darkness ahead of them, a man sat idly on a bench alone, with a bottle tilted to his lips. He was in shirt sleeves; a thin, middle-aged man wearing dark pants, a white handkerchief knotted around his neck soaking up his sweat.

“A goddamned vagrant,” Raleigh muttered. “Pardon my obscenity, but look!”

Flip and Manny looked.

Manny said, “He’s drinking whisky.”

“Right, mister!”

“Just sitting there drinking whisky,” Flip said matter-of-factly.

Angrily Raleigh declared, “While his wife and children starve!”

“Do you think so?” Manny asked.

“He probably goes home and beats up his kids,” Flip said. “Like, punches them around.”

“He’s a rat!” Bardo said. “Come on. We’ll just pretend to be passing by. Then we’ll surround him.”

“What’ll we do then?” Manny said.

“Come on, gentlemen. This is the first business of the day.”

“You mean the night, man.”

The three boys walked leisurely toward the bench without talking. The man did not look at them while they came, and when they stopped before him he looked up casually.

“Pop to, mister!” Bardo exclaimed.

“On your feet!” said Flip.

Manny put the box down on the ground.

The man laughed. “Punks!” he said. “Young punks.” He took a swig from the bottle, swallowed, and then spat on the ground.

Furiously Bardo said, “Pop to, mister!”

“G’wan home and dry behind your ears, buddy.”

“Got your knife, Heine? This vagrant thinks we’re kidding.”

The blade of Flip’s knife flashed in the air, silver and quick.

Manny said, “We aren’t going to rob you if you get up.”

“Maybe we are and maybe we aren’t,” Flip said. He pointed the knife at the man menacingly. “Pop to, man!” he said, and Bardo’s eyes narrowed on the man.

The man got up. He shoved his bottle into his hip pocket.

Bardo ordered, “Break that bottle, mister. You’ve had the last of that bottle.”

The man grabbed Flip’s arm and twisted it back. “Drop your toy, Boy Scout,” he grunted. “Drop it on the ground!”

Flip’s face twisted with pain.

“Don’t hurt him,” Manny said.

Flip cried, “C’mon, you guys, help me!”

But Bardo simply stood there, his face white with rage, shaking, shouting, “Vagrant! Dirty vagrant!”

The knife dropped to the ground and the man put his foot on it. He gave Heine a shove. “Punk!” He laughed. “You punk!”

Heine stood there, his head bent, his arms dangling at his sides. Bardo backed away. “You haven’t heard the last of us, mister,” he threatened. “We’ll kill you the next time we see you. We’ll kill you!”

Manny said, “Did he hurt you, Flip?”

“Shut up!” Flip answered.

The man walked directly over to Bardo. He took him by the shoulders. Flip just stood watching.

Bardo said, “Take your fool hands off me. This minute!” A vein pulsed in his forehead and his eyes popped with rage.

The man looked at him, still with his hands on Raleigh’s shoulders. Then, hawking, he pursed up his lips in a round, fat bow and spat in Bardo’s face. He said, “Now run along, Captain Kidd,” and he put his hands on his hips and laughed.

Bardo stood transfixed. He was shaking and near to tears. His lips quivered and his teeth were chattering.

“Go on!” the man said. “Get the hell out of here — all of you.”

Flip started first, his hands in his pockets, his head lowered. He touched Bardo’s arm when he passed him. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s cut out.”

Bardo moved as though he were in a trance, wiping his face now with his clean handkerchief. Manny picked up the box.

As Manny began to follow, the man said, “What are
you
carrying?”

“A box,” Manny said, frightened. “What’s in it?”

“A s-snake,” Manny said. Then quickly he said, “Please don’t do anything to it, sir. I — “

“I’m not going to do anything to it, Junior.” He touched Manny’s wrist. “You ought to go home, Junior. You don’t belong with these punks.”

Manny jumped at the touch.

“What’s the matter with you?” the man said.

Manny began to run. “Wait!” he called to the others. “Wait!”

The man looked after them, standing and scratching his neck. He pulled the bottle out and drank. Then he ambled slowly along the pathway into the darkness, away from the trio.

• • •

For a long time no one said anything. They came up to Ninety-first Street, where the pathway ended. On one side of them there was the reservoir, and on the other Fifth Avenue. They stopped there and Flip spoke first.

“That was a good knife,” he said. “It’s back there on the ground.”

“Go and get it, mister,” Bardo answered.

“You think he’s — ”

“Are you scared of him, mister? Go and get that knife!”

‘’Sure,” Flip said. “Sure. I — I’ll be right back.” He sprinted away from Manny and Bardo, and the two stood silently. In the distance a clock chimed ten, and a doorman on Fifth whistled persistently for a taxi.

“You know something funny, Bardo?” Manny said, breaking the silence after several minutes.

“I don’t know anything
funny,”
Bardo answered.

“Well, I didn’t mean funny, exactly,” Manny said. “I meant sort of strange. Last week when I was on my way home I cut through the — “

Bardo interrupted. “I’ll never forget this, Pollack! Are you aware of that? I’ll — never — forget — this!” He stared at the handkerchief wadded up in his hand.

“It was unsanitary to do that. Spit in someone’s face.”

“Correct, mister! It was
vile!”

“People shouldn’t do things without thinking. You never know how it’s going to make the next fellow feel,” Manny said. He set his box down and squatted by it. “I ought to see if Sinny’s O.K.”

“You’ve got a head on your shoulders, Pollack,” Raleigh said. He repeated,
“Vile.”

“Gee, thanks, Bardo. Hi, Sinny! Hi, old boy! He’s all curled up under the grass, Bardo.” Manny smiled. “I bet next year I won’t have any trouble in school. I’m not dumb or anything. It’s just …” His voice trailed off. He said to the snake, “Go to sleep, pal. No one’s going to bother you, pal.”

Raleigh stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the handkerchief still rolled up in one of them. He pressed his lips together and rocked back and forth, looking up at the stars.

“O-rion!” he said emphatically. “Slayer of beasts.”

“Some animals eat snakes,” Manny said, standing up again. “But a snake is smart, too. In
Life
magazine once I saw a picture where a snake actually swallowed a pig. I mean, a little snake swallowing a great big pig!” Manny snickered.” ‘S funny how smart they are.”

“I’ll remember his face,” Bardo said, “and one day we’ll meet again.”

Flip returned breathless, brandishing the knife. “I got it!” He grinned. “Where to now?”

“That was a pretty silly idea, mister, cutting your hair off that way,” Bardo commented, looking again at Flip in the light.

“Whatsa difference?”

“It might never grow back, Flip,” Manny said. “I heard once — “

Flip cut into his words. “Like, I’m tired of hearing all the things you ever heard, Manny-man. Like, what is this? Graduation Day?”

“I just — ”

Flip said angrily, “Well, what are we gonna do? Stand around and yak all night? Cripes, let’s take off.” “Right, mister!”

“Why don’t we take the path around the reservoir? We can cut off down by the bridge,” Flip said.

“That little incident,” Bardo said as the three shuffled up the cinder path toward the reservoir steps, “is permanently engraved on my memory.
Permanently!”

“He musta studied ju-jitz or something like that. Cripes, he was no Atlas, man. I mean, ordinarily I could take a guy like that on. But he knew tricks. You know?”

“A vile bully!” Bardo said.

Manny jogged along a little behind them, carrying his box.

It was Pollack that was the first to spy the second man. Flip and Bardo were ahead of him, going up the stone steps, and Manny saw the recumbent figure in the grass under the bushes a little distance from the trio, just off the bridle path that circled the reservoir.