Web of the City

  She seemed to melt, then, and she was a child who had lost a dear loved thing. She did not cry, because that would have been easy, that would have been a release. She was numb and trembled under dry, wracking shakes that were a product of disbelief, of confusion, of searching. Rusty realized how much he needed his mother, how much she needed him, and he lay her head on his chest, said to her softly, “Mom, Mom, please. It’s okay, you’ll see, it’ll be okay, we’ll be all right, just take it easy, Mom; and it’ll be okay.” He said it again and again, in endless strings of words that started nowhere, ended nowhere, and soothed himself alone. He knew they did not reach her, but he said them more and more, hoping.

  “Do, do you remember, she was ten then, just ten, and she come home, said the other kids wouldn’t play with her ’cause she was Puerto Rican and slammed the screen door on her knee. You remember, just ten, and she cried, god how she cried, and I wanted to tell her it don’t matter honey, ’cause you’re good too and prettier than any of them whites…You remember that?”

  Rusty remembered. He remembered all the stupid people who had hated the Santoro family, the trouble they had had getting squared away in the new neighborhood, the way Pops had done them so low with his drinking and all, and the way Dolores had grown beautiful and ripe like a flower, just the same. A spot of pretty in the gray of the streets.

  Moms stiffened in his embrace and suddenly she shoved against him, threw him back with hatred. Her face was transformed. It was like a scream in the night. Bright red flash in the gray. He felt attacked, he countered with fright. Why that expression?

  Her eyes were livid pits of slag and her mouth was a raw, wounded gash that opened and snapped closed with hatred and vehemence. “You! You did it! You made her join that gang. You killed her. Like the knife was yours, you killed her. You’re the one. Oh, god!” She tore at her breasts, at her belly, screaming, her hair wild and streaming. “Oh, god! I gave birth to you, you filth. You scum, you bastard son of mine! Oh, god, I wish you’d died in my womb, died, god, died! If you’d never touched her with your filth—if you’d never touched her she’d be alive now, she’d be alive!”

  Rusty could not speak. What could he say? Was she hysterical or was it the truth? Was he to blame, indirectly?

  “I wish you was dead, dead and in the grave and buried under six feet, and she was here, and God I’d make it up to her, I’d treat her fine and damn her father for his wild ways…

  “But it was you, you that killed her as sure as if you put that knife in her breast! Get out, get out of my house. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you sleeping in the same house where she slept or ate off the table—or—get out! Get out!”

  Her face was livid, her hands claws that tore at the air. She came toward him haltingly, with that loathing burning in her face. Her hands moved out for him and Rusty was frightened at the abrupt change the space of a minute had brought. Her mouth opened and no words came this time, but a spatter of drool oozed from one corner of her thin gray lips. No words came out, though the fire burned high and bright in her cheeks, but Rusty knew what was being said.

  You killed your sister. You did it. You’re responsible.

  Rusty stared unmoving as his mother came toward him and suddenly she lashed out with both hands doubled. Her fists thundered against his face and he felt pain that rocked his head. All her fury went into those blows, as she mumbled over and over, “You! You made ’er join that gang! If you’d of left her alone, she’d be alive! You did it to her! Murderer! Murderer murderer murderer…”

  Rusty turned and fled.

  The street was filled with Sunday crowds of housewives, slobbering dogs, sweating trucks. There was a steady beat in the streets and sidewalks—the sort of beat that makes you fall asleep over tiresome desk jobs; the kind of beat that makes the loners in the pool hall toss down their cues, gather up their winnings and slump against the Coke machine. The sort of beat that makes the old men lounging on the stoops in front of the buildings think they’re catching a tan. The sort of beat that brought euphoria to Rusty. He walked aimlessly.

  He remembered having seen Pancoast sometime that afternoon. He remembered having seen Pops, too, but that was a memory he wanted to slip away and he did not dwell on it.

  Pancoast had been annoyed at him. Sullenly annoyed, and he had not come right out and called Rusty a turncoat. The boy remembered the red-haired teacher, the way he had sat in the modern contour chair—an inexpensive replica of a Paul McCobb original—and sucked on the dry, split end of a metal-stemmed pipe. He remembered the dark gray eyes as they turned up to him and the worry lines about the man’s mouth and eyes.

  The voices that had been there came back as they had been; strong, clear and filled with hidden emotions.

  “You let me down, Rusty.” It was a statement.

  “No.”

  “What were you doing there if you weren’t waiting for the rumble?”

  “My sister… I was… was looking for her.”

  “I know. I heard a while ago over the radio. It made the papers.”

  Rusty knew the conversation had gone on from there, with his position strengthening and the teacher’s calm trust flowing back. He had been glad about that. It had helped him a little and for a few minutes he saw a clearing in the fog. But the teacher had been a shadow, really, and the recurring image of Dolores, so small and pretty, kept returning to eat at his mind. He had assured Pancoast nothing more would happen, and had left, with the teacher making a gun of thumb and forefinger, aiming it and saying heavily, “Be good, son. They’ll find the bastard.”

  Rusty had left and walked some more and the afternoon had softened into evening without notice. He recalled seeing Pops, slouching in a doorway, a bottle empty beside him. His eyes wandered away quickly. His steps carried him to the opposite side of the street, for fear the old man would see him, and in a few moments he had passed the spot.

  He still saw the man’s eyes, however; rimmed with black and deep pools of red that beat at him ferociously. He remembered one night the old man had come home from a drunk and found him sleeping on the sofa. In his besotted state he had clubbed Rusty with a rolled-up magazine and sent him reeling. That had been one of the last times Rusty had allowed himself to get close enough to his father for the man to strike him. That had been a long, long time ago, and Rusty tried to exclude Pops from his world, as much as possible.

  It was three or four days, sometimes, before the old man impinged on his consciousness. Then it was a shock and a sharp wrench to blank out the old man again.

  That had been hours before and Pops was far behind, far uptown, and Rusty walked Times Square like a hungry animal. His feet marked the paving blocks, ticking them away, one after another till he was sure the next would mark the end of the world, and he would step off into quiet oblivion.

  His mind was tormented; he had to do something.

  The walk downtown had taken a long time, and Times Square—the cesspool of 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues—drew him like a quicksand bog. He stumbled into the neon and blare of the area hardly knowing he had been unerringly aiming at it all day. The Strip was crowded, as only a Sunday night crowd in New York can be a crowd. One gigantic, pulsing, living mass, moving, surging, pressing, hot and sweating, carrying along with it the fever of lechery and the stink of bad hot dogs, good papaya juice, tired feet. Rusty joined the tide and let it carry him along.

  He paused before an open-air restaurant where bright cards hung above the soiled counters, enticing Rusty to dishes of fish and salad. He turned in and passed the bar. No beer now. He knew instinctively that his stomach would not take it. He passed down the counter to the hot table, and got in line. He stood silently waiting for the people before him to get their meals, and as the swarthy, muscled cook looked across tiredly, Rusty said, “Shrimp plate.”

  He watched the stocky man smoothly gather up the shrimp from the grease bucket, the salad, the potatoes from the deep, snapping fat and empty them all into
the paper plate. It was a remarkable thing, Rusty thought, the way the cook could handle all those things, so fast, so agilely. It was very much like the way a man handled his own life. Some men better than others. Some men not at all.

  He paid across the counter, received his change and carried the plate to a table. Beside him a fat man in a dirty white shirt, open at the neck and showing curling strands of wet hair, watched as he set the plate down.

  The fat man turned back to his own nearly empty plate, and concentrated a piece of bread on a puddle of gravy. He licked his lips with a tongue-tip, and leaned across as Rusty settled into his food. “You, uh, you wanna pass the salt, please?” he asked. His eyes were tiny and very white at the outer edges.

  Rusty hardly glanced at the man and passed the salt shaker across. The man tried desperately to touch Rusty’s hand as the shaker passed between them, but he failed.

  Rusty concentrated on eating, and the fat man toyed with the scraps on his plate, finally leaning over, breathing warmly into Rusty’s neck, and saying, “You, uh, you like movies? Huh, kid?”

  Rusty turned, seemed to notice the man for the first time. He saw the plump, moist hands, the greasy folds of skin that wattled the neck, the tiny, piggish eyes and the movement, movement, movement of the lips. The man’s crew-cut, Prussian look startled the boy. At once he knew the fat man for what he was.

  “No. I don’t dig movies. Never go.” Rusty started to move to another table.

  The fat man’s pudgy hand snaked out and touched the boy’s. A sharp intake of breath came from the man, and he wet his lips again. “You don’t wanna go to a movie with me, huh?”

  Rusty shook his head, tried to get away. The man held fast, like some sort of porous plaster. Rusty grew panicky, and he received a clear memory picture of the day a snapping turtle had fastened on his finger and not let go till he had mashed it between two rocks. He grew more frightened as the seconds grew and finally he jerked at the grip.

  The man slid closer. His free hand went beneath the table, as though trying to escape the revealing light. It came to rest on Rusty’s knee, and the boy’s face went gray.

  “Leggo!” Rusty snarled, and his hand found the handle of the fork. The fat man was immersed in technicolored fantasies of his own; his fingers clenched the boy’s flesh. Rusty struggled, but was blocked by the man’s terrible hold and angle of chair and table. He grasped the fork tightly and before he knew what he was doing, swung the utensil overhand with ferocity.

  The fork caught the fat man in the hand, and the four prongs went into the soft, flabbed skin with a ripping and scraping. The fat man’s eyes unfilmed and a gurgle rose up in his mouth. He bellowed something unintelligible, and struggled back up out of the chair.

  The fork still hung from his hand, loosely, but imbedded and surrounded by spraying blood. He clenched his teeth, bit his lip and pulled the fork loose. He threw it from himself, and went back, back, back, as though an innocent and delicate child had attacked him.

  He did not look at Rusty, but though he looked elsewhere, his surprise and horror were directed at the boy. Rusty slid his chair away from the table and as the fat man cried and moaned he ducked out of the restaurant, and quickly lost himself in the tide that flowed toward Eighth Avenue.

  The movie houses all looked run-down and too glossy for any fun. He caught a disjointed view of a million neon words wriggling across marquees, and decided he did not want a movie now. Perhaps later, but not now. Now he would try the shooting gallery. Yeah, that was it. The shooting gallery.

  Playland was open—always open, never closed, always open—and through the big front glass windows, he could see all the tourists and hangers-on, spending their dimes and nickels on Pokerino and skeet ball.

  He walked in, and leaned against the counter, watching the bald, ugly man behind the printing press making fake newspaper headlines in the white empty spaces on dummy papers.

  BEN AND WALLY HIT TOWN

  GIRLS RUN FOR COVER!!

  ARMY LETS GEORGE LIPPOLIS OUT

  U.S. FRIGHTENED

  MARGIE AND FRANCINE AVAILABLE,

  BOYS STORM N.Y.

  He read the samples upon the walls, and chuckled dryly. It was all a bad dream. There was no forgetting. He turned to the balding, ugly man and said, “How much?”

  “What?”

  “I said, how much for one of them papers?”

  “Fifty cents. Anything ya wanna say, I’ll put it on.”

  Rusty knew he was doing something he shouldn’t… knew he was sinking himself deeper into his own misery, but he told the man, “Put, ‘Dolores Santoro murdered.’ Then, uh, write, ‘Her brother killed her. He’ll get his.’ ”

  The balding, ugly man looked at the boy strangely, and said hesitatingly, “That’s more’n I can get on two lines.”

  Rusty shoved off, walked away, the man behind him yelling across the floor, “Hey! You! Don’choo want that paper? Hey, c’mon, I’ll figger some way to get it on—aw hell!”

  Rusty stopped at the booth and changed a dollar into nickels and dimes. The attendant fished a fistful from a dirty white hip apron, and two-finger counted them into Rusty’s palm. The boy turned away and considered the machines. Instinctively, he went to one of the target machines and fingered the metal barrel of the rifle. The background behind the glass showed a forest with levels in which a few scattered rabbits and turkeys stood, a b-b shoot center in each. He slid a dime from the heap in his hand and put it into the slot. The machine clicked, banged and lights went on in the forest. Bunnies popped up, turkeys popped up, a white-goateed farmer with a corn-cob pipe popped up, clutching a straw hat, a bear peered from behind a tree, weaving left to right, and out of sight around the trunk. A timer began snapping off the seconds.

  Rusty plunked the change onto the wooden frame of the rifle machine, fitted the weapon to his shoulder and took aim.

  The first shot knocked down a rabbit. The second did the same. The third and fourth shots missed. Then the shapes began to waver and shimmer and run like hot tar on a July street. The rabbits were no longer rabbits. The turkeys had no resemblance to turkeys. The farmer with the white goatee was not the farmer with the white goatee.

  The farmer was Pops. The bear was Carl Pancoast, weaving back and forth, trying to stay in sight, but failing miserably. There somewhere, lost in the forest, trying to get out, trying to find a path through the trees and the snarling roots, was Rusty himself. There was Rusty, plunging through the foliage with his scarred forearms crossed before his eyes, his feet piston-pumping, the shadows trailing behind, the tree branches reaching for him. The wind rising in a keening whistle. The moon diving for cover behind cotton-batting clouds, the sky dark and gloating. There was Rusty running like hell, knowing he wasn’t gonna make it, goddammit, not even a little.

  There was Pops, coming out of the woods with that stink smile on his jaw and his hands big as catcher’s mitts, ready to whack. There was Pancoast making imploring gestures, making sneaking, requesting, prodding gestures from behind the big old trees and Rusty running past, ’cause that was the way of it.

  And there was Dolores.

  It had to be. Crap yes. It had as hell to be. There she was swingin’ from a tree limb by her neck, with her tongue stuck out of the corner of her crooked mouth, black and swollen. There were her eyes, bugged huge and starting to water and all the flies on her. The flies that looked like Candle and Boy-O and Fish and Poop and all the rest. There was even a bunch of girl flies that looked like Cherry and Caroline and Weezee. And a big horsefly that was the Beast. She was swingin’ in the wind, with the fraykin’ night beatin’ on her and a scream coming out of her throat but how could that be if she was lynched and dead and swingin’? But it was. It was a scream. And it came up from the bottoms of her feet, high over Rusty’s head, and it rose through her twisted body, and it came out of her mouth, past that lump of charcoal that was her tongue, and it sounded like…

  TILT TILT TILT TILT TILT TILT TILT TILT

/>   “Looks like I shoved too damned hard,” the kid at the pinball beside him said lackadaisically.

  Rusty moved his head slightly, shaking his brains back into shape. It had been so real, so deep, so interesting. He was there and he was here. The machine had already clicked off all his seconds and he noted a ridiculously low score. He leaned against the machine for a moment, steadying himself, feeling a strangeness inside himself, where the sorrow dripped into his blood stream.

  Dolores gone. It didn’t seem possible. It was all a big joke, and soon someone would give him the clue-in, and he would laugh. But now, now, it was real, too real, and he had to get away from thinking.

  He moved on down the line to the next machine, ignoring the kid at the pinball game who had slid another nickel in.

  It was an hour before they palled on him and he felt the tugging inside. He had to move on. Move fast and run far. He left the Playland, not in the slightest satiated, the terror of emptiness and loneliness haunting him. Times Square was no better. At eye level it was a rippling obscenity of crowd motion and neon emergencies. Above the glare, the buildings rose in dirty spires. And above that—as though it had wandered into a private party and was too shy to make itself known—the night sky swirled past impregnated with dust and smoke.

  New York has no stars.

  Rusty walked carefully. The sidewalk was peanut butter. The movie loomed up overhead and reflex took over. It was a Jayne Mansfield picture and he realized that he wanted to see it… before what had happened had happened. He saw two girls getting tickets. His thoughts were not his own. The same crazy emotions that had drawn him here were drawing him into actions he knew he did not want to commit. He bought a ticket and followed the girls into the lobby.

  One was brunette, her hair worn in the frowzy pageboy style of the Forties, unkempt and straggling about her face. She had pimples and her legs were very heavy. She wore her sweater and skirt badly; her breasts were monstrous under the pink argyle. The other was prettier, in a mousey way. At first glance she had seemed about eighteen, but a closer look, as they stopped before the candy counter, showed Rusty the other girl was over twenty. Some indeterminate age between high school anxiety and the frenzy of pre-marriage. They were on the loose and Rusty made the same sort of mental note he always made when he was stalking broads.