The Boy Who Granted Dreams

  “Come on, what the hell are ya doin’?” said Joey, tugging at his arm.

  Just at that moment Chick cried “Sticky!” He’d stopped his nervous skipping.

  “Shitty cocksuckers, I got you now!” shouted a short solidly built man in his thirties as he came out of the back door waving a pistol, followed by two other armed thugs.

  “Get goin’!” cried Joey as the first shots were fired and puffs of dust came up from the courtyard as bullets hit.

  Joey was the quickest through the opening in the fence. Christmas reached it at the same time as Chick. Panic-stricken, he shoved him out of the way and came out on the street. Chick stumbled from the push Christmas had given him, stood up and then suddenly screamed and fell to the ground. Christmas turned back. His eyes met Chick’s terrified stare. Christmas crawled back inside the fence. Bullets were ricocheting off the speakeasy’s wall. He pulled Chick out through the hole.

  “I can’t do it,” sobbed Chick.

  Joey came back, too, took Chick by one arm and lifted him off the ground. “Run, Chick, or I’ll kill ya myself,” he shouted. Christmas took Chick’s other arm and they began to run, the three of them enlaced, while the pug-faced guy got tangled in the fence wire, cursing.

  The three boys ran for two blocks, Chick kept getting heavier. They tumbled into a narrow alley, gasping for breath. Christmas and Joey stared at one another, pupils dilated, nostrils quivering. Neither of them was brave enough to look at Chick who had sunk to the ground, whimpering.

  “I’m bleedin’,” said Chick, lifting one red hand in the air.

  The other two turned towards him.

  “Where’d they hit you? You’re a real pain in the neck, know that?” asked Joey in a trembling voice.

  “My leg,” sobbed Chick. “It hurts bad.”

  The boy’s pants were completely soaked in blood from the knees down. Joey pulled something that might once have been a handkerchief out of his pocket and tied it tightly around Chick’s bony thigh, just above the wound.

  “What’ll we do?” Christmas asked, frightened.

  Joey peered around, looking out of the alley. “We’ll take him to Big Head,” he said. Then he leaned over Chick. “You got to walk as far as da pool hall, you little shit. If you can’t do it, I’m leavin’ you in da street, an’ Buggsy’ll chop you t’ pieces. Got it? And quit that whinin’.”

  Chick tried to swallow his tears. Christmas thought he looked even smaller now and that his eyes were the eyes of a child. Another thought began to take shape in his head. But he shut his eyes, as if to chase it away. He said in a hard firm voice, “Come on, get movin’, pantywaist.”

  When they reached the poolroom on Sutter Avenue, Chick was very pale. Christmas and Joey had to carry him up the stairs. The men in the room turned to look at them when they came in. They were criminals, used to seeing blood. But they still stiffened because the first thing that every one of them thought was that most of the time, blood called for other blood. They looked at the three boys, wondering if they ought to leave or could they finish their game.

  “What the hell are you doin’ here?” asked an ugly man, sitting at a corner table shaking dice. His head was huge, almost deformed on one side, where his temple and part of the forehead were grotesquely swollen. Everybody called him Big Head.

  “The mole set us up,” gasped Joey. “Buggsy was there, waitin’ for us.”

  “I told you to take care of this job by yourself. What got into your head, bringin’ Chick? Sonovabitch, you know he ain’t worth nothin’. And who’s this other one?” asked Big Head, resting a huge hand on Joey’s shoulder.

  “That’s Diamond, from the Lower East Side. He’s got his own gang,” said Joey.

  Big Head looked Christmas over. “What? Did you come over to Brownsville just to break my balls, kid?”

  “No sir,” said Christmas. Then he said, “Chick’s hurt.”

  “Take him in the office,” said Big Head, indicating a little room at the far end of the poolroom. “Get hold of Zeigler,” he said to one of other men at the dice table. “And I mean get a move on.”

  Meanwhile Joey and Christmas had carried Chick into the room. They were laying him on a stained and rickety sofa when Big Head came in.

  “Hey hey, what the fuck are you doin’, jerkoffs?” he brayed. “That’s my fuckin’ couch. Put him on the floor and get lost.”

  Christmas and Joey exchanged a glance.

  “Out!” roared Big Head.

  The two boys came out of the office and stood in a dark corner of the poolroom. All the players raised their cues and stared at them briefly. Then they went back to their game. Christmas and Joey didn’t say a word. Christmas was thinking. He couldn’t help it. He’d gotten to the fence at the same time as Chick. He was bigger and stronger. Chick was a little kid, skinny and frail, and he’d shoved him out of the way so he could get through first. And Chick caught the bullet. That was what Christmas kept thinking. Chick had taken the bullet that was meant for him. That fate had reserved for him.

  Zeigler, maybe fifty years old and looking like a postal employee in a straw skimmer, came into the pool room, escorted by Big Head’s man. Zeigler had an unsteady walk. But he wasn’t drunk. He just had the shakes. Perpetually. A long yellowish face, with dark teeth in stripped gums. The black leather bag dropped out of his hand and popped open. Surgical instruments tumbled across the floor. Zeigler clawed them back into his case, shut it and continued to twitch toward the office.

  Christmas sneaked a glance at Joey. He had downcast eyes and was twisting his hands nervously.

  “Here,” said Christmas, holding out the broken switchblade.

  Joey stared at it, made a face and then took it without looking up at his friend. “Sorry, Diamond,” he said softly.

  Christmas didn’t answer. After a minute he saw the guy who had brought Zeigler to Chick come out of the office and go into a storeroom. He came back out with a canvas billiard table cover and went in the office. Christmas moved slowly, step by step, towards the office. Joey grabbed his arm, but Christmas twisted violently out of his grip. He didn’t want anybody to touch him. Joey followed him. As they reached the half-open door, Big Head was coming out. He looked at the two boys.

  “From now on, Buggsy and the mole is two rats,” he said. “I’m takin’ care of them personally.”

  Christmas looked into the office. He could see Chick crying, stretched out on the billiards cover.

  Big Head reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. He gave Joey a hundred dollars. “This is for Chick’s momma. From now on he’s crippled. Buggsy got him in the knee. Make sure she gets the dough,” he said. Then he peeled off two fifties and gave one to Christmas and one to Joey. “And these is for you guys.”

  Zeigler came out of the office, jittery. “You got something for me?” he muttered at Big Head.

  “Yeah, I got advice,” said Big Head, not even looking at him. “Get the fuck outa here, and go get your shit from the chink.”

  “I’m broke …”

  “I said get out,” snarled Big Head, still not looking at him. Then — as Zeigler left the pool hall with his doper’s unsteady walk — Big Head pointed a finger at an old man sitting on a chair by the spittoon, and shouted, “Hey, motherfucker! Waitin’ for somethin’ to do? Go clean the fuckin’ blood off my floor!”

  The old man leaped up, went to the storeroom, and came out with a bucket, a mop, and rags. He shuffled tiredly into the office. Chick had been carried out of the office and set on a chair. His eyes were swollen from weeping; his pants had been cut off above the thigh. His knee was heavily bandaged. Blood clotted in his sock.

  “What you two waitin’ around for?” Big Head asked Christmas and Joey. “A good night kiss?”

  Joey took Christmas’ elbow and steered him out of the Sutter Avenue pool hall.

  “I better take a vacation till Big Head gets rid o’ the two rats,” said Joey once they were in the street. “Who knows, maybe I can fi
nd me some East Side place to roost.”

  Christmas nodded vaguely. He couldn’t think about anything but Chick. Chick who liked to bounce from one foot to the other, as if he had springs in his legs. And all he could hear was the shuffling sound of Chick’s quick feet.

  Joey rolled the fifty-dollar bill around his finger. “It takes Abe-the-Schmo six months to make fifty bucks,” he said, trying to laugh.

  “Yeah,” said Christmas, not hearing what he was saying. He just wanted to go home. He was alive. And Chick was crippled because of him.

  Joey went back to rolling the fifty around his finger. He rolled it, unrolled it and rolled it up again. “See ya around, pal,” he said at last.

  “See you around,” said Christmas, heading for the Lower East Side.

  When he got home, the apartment wasn’t dark, as he’d expected. Cetta was sitting on the couch in the living room. Unmoving. With the radio off.

  “You didn’t go to work?” he asked her, astonished.

  “No,” Cetta said simply. She didn’t tell him she’d been waiting, that she’d begged Sal not to make her work that night, because she knew her son needed her.

  Christmas stood there. Without talking. With the anger of the day still poisoning him. Without managing to stop thinking about Chick. And Bill. And Ruth. And life.

  “Sit down,” said Cetta, patting the place beside her on the couch.

  Christmas hesitated. Sat down. They sat stiffly beside one another, in silence. Heads down, looking at the tips of their shoes. And slowly Christmas’ anger gave way to fear.

  “Mamma,” he said quietly, after many minutes.

  “Yes …?”

  “When you grow up does everything look dirty?”

  Cetta didn’t answer. She stared into emptiness. There were questions you didn’t need to answer. Because the answer was as ugly as the question. She drew her fifteen-year-old son to her. Held him in her arms and began to stroke his hair gently.

  Christmas instinctively thought he should pull away, but then he crumpled in his mother’s arms. Because he knew she was giving him the last caresses of childhood. In silence. Because there was nothing left to say.

  23

  Manhattan, 1913

  Cetta curled amid the sheets while Andrew got out of bed and began to put on his clothes.

  “The strike in Paterson, how it going?”

  “It goes,” said Andrew vaguely.

  “What you mean?” Cetta insisted, with a forced smile on her lips.

  “That it’s going on,” said Andrew, without turning to look at her. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her and laced up his shoes.

  “And you get what you want?” asked Cetta, stretching her leg and stroking Andrew’s back with her foot.

  Andrew straightened his back and got to his feet again. He took his watch from the bedside table and tucked it into his vest pocket. Next he buttoned the vest’s five buttons. “I have to go, love,” he said. “I don’t have time, sorry.”

  Andrew always called her “love,” thought Cetta, watching him as he shrugged into his jacket with patches on the elbows and polished his round eyeglasses with a handkerchief. He always called her love, but he never had much time to stay with her. Not after they’d had sex. He had never even come to her house on a Sunday, to share a meal and meet Christmas. And they’d never gone back to the Italian restaurant on Delancey Street. No more candlelight. Only that room in a boarding house at South Seaport, near union headquarters. Always the same room. On Thursdays. Sometimes on Tuesdays, too.

  Andrew turned to look at her. “Love, don’t get upset …”

  Easy for Andrew to say ‘love,’ thought Cetta. Unlike Sal, who had never used it a single time. But who came to see her in the Fraina’s basement room every Sunday, bringing hot sausages and wine in his blackened hands, and never helping her with the cooking.

  Andrew bent across the bed and kissed her on the lips.

  He always kiss my mouth, Cetta thought again. When they met, when they had sex, when he left — always reminding her to wait a while before she left the boarding house because it was better that they not be seen together. Because he was a married man.

  “Wait ten minutes before you leave,” Andrew was saying.

  “I know,” said Cetta.

  “What’s the matter?”

  She stared at him with hard eyes. “It was better when I making five dollars a fuck, love. That’s what the matter.” She smiled and turned to lie on her side.

  Andrew sighed. He looked hopefully at the door of the room. Then he sighed again and sat down on the bed. He rested his hand on Cetta’s naked back. “You’re so beautiful,” he said.

  Cetta didn’t turn over.

  Andrew lay down beside her. He kissed her back, pushing the sheet away, all the way down to her buttocks.

  Cetta reached back and seized his blond hair. She pulled herself into a sitting position and spread her legs. “Taste me,” she said.

  “What?” said Andrew.

  “Lick my cunt.” Her gaze was firm. And inside she could feel a sensation of brooding violence that she didn’t want to admit; a remote sorrow, persistent as a lament.

  Andrew looked at her, perplexed. “I have to go,” he said. “The comrades are waiting for me at headquarters.”

  “Are you going to tell them you just fuck a whore?”

  “Love, love, what are you saying?”

  “You not tell them all the things you can do with whore?” Cetta continued, her legs still splayed.

  “No!”

  “You not tell how I put you prick in my mouth?”

  “Cetta … what’s happening to you?”

  “You like when I take prick in mouth?”

  “Yes, love, yes, of course I do …”

  “Then lick my pussy. Show me you can be whore, too.”

  Andrew leaped up. “I’m supposed to be running a strike!” he cried.

  “With you wife?”

  “With my comrades! Can you understand that? It’s my life!” Andrew pulled up a corner of the sheet to cover Cetta. “It’s my life.” Then he turned and went towards the door. He took hold of the doorknob and stood there, not looking at Cetta.

  “Then let me be in you fucking life, if I’m not just a whore, e basta!” Cetta shouted.

  Andrew turned to look at her, astonished.

  He have good eyes, kind eyes, thought Cetta. She softened her tone when she said, “You promise you make me be real Americana.”

  He smiled. “You’re like a child,” he said tenderly, coming over to the bed. He hugged her, held her, ran a hand through her black hair. “A little girl,” he said again, cupping her chin. “I have a surprise for you,” he said softly, “It’s hard to surprise a child, though. In ten days I’m going to take you to Madison Square Garden. We’re organizing a show to raise funds, to get public opinion on our side. I’m taking you to the theatre.” Then he kissed her.

  Cetta yielded to his kiss. Andrew’s glasses were misted with their breath when they drew apart.

  Cetta laughed, pulled off his glasses and polished them on the sheet that smelled of their bodies. “A theater?” she said.

  “June seventh,” Andrew smiled. “Saturday. Eight thirty. Madison Square Garden.”

  “Eight thirty. Madison Square Garden,” Cetta repeated, holding him tightly.

  Andrew laughed and backed out of her embrace. “I have to go now. They’re waiting for me.” He reached the door. “Maybe I can get free on Tuesday,” he said.

  “If not, Thursday,” said Cetta.

  “Wait ten minutes before you leave.”

  The door closed behind him. Again Cetta felt the brooding sensation she hadn’t wanted to recognize, a kind of burning. “I go to theatre, is all,” she told herself, trying to mute that remote sorrow, insistent as a lament.

  “They moved me,” said Sal, sitting on the unsteady chair of the visiting room. His head was down; he was staring at his hands. “I won’t be workin’ on engine
s no more. They’re shuttin’ down that part … They moved me to the carpenter shop.” He looked up at Cetta, seated across from him.

  Cetta was watching him in silence.

  “It’s harder t’ get your hands dirty in the wood shop,” said Sal. “All you get is splinters.” He looked down again and started pulling at one of his fingers.

  In silence.

  “Let me see,” said Cetta. She took his hand. She looked at it carefully. “Come in the light,” she said, standing up and going over to the dull and dirty window with its iron grating.

  Sal got up mechanically and stood next to her.

  Cetta took his hand in both of hers and inspected it carefully. “There,” she said. Then she tried to dig the splinter out with her nails.

  Sal stared out the dusty window, beyond which the prison buildings of Blackwell’s Island blurred into huge and ghostly geometries.

  “I can’t get it,” said Cetta. She lifted his hand to her mouth and nibbled it gently where the splinter was just under the skin. “I hurt you?” she asked.

  Sal looked at her without answering. He was pale. And he had a defeated look in his eyes.

  Cetta couldn’t meet his gaze. She went back to concentrating on the splinter. “There,” she said after a few seconds. “Is gone.” She spat it away.

  “Thanks,” said Sal in his rumbling voice. He kept on staring at ghosts outside the opaque window.

  Cetta put her arms around him. “You thinner now,” she said.

  Sal didn’t move.

  “Hold me,” said Cetta.

  Sal didn’t move. “What’s different now?”

  Cetta stiffened. She felt a cold shiver run down her back. “Different?” she asked, hesitant.

  Sal pulled away from her. “I’m talkin’ about New York,” he said, sitting down again.