“You can learn a lot about life by watching a wrestling match,” Angelo said. “Rigged or not. You got your good guys and your bad. You got those that are friends and those that are enemies. But then, the wrestler you think you can trust the most turns against you, betrays you to another group and leaves you out there by yourself. And all that does is make you want to come back looking for revenge. It’s all there for you to see, Gabe. It might be buried under the theater of it, but if you look for it, you won’t have too hard a time finding it.”
“Is that why you guys come to the matches?” I asked, taking a sip from my cup of Coke.
“We got our lessons from a different ring,” Pudge said. “If there’s anything that needs to be learned here tonight, it’s you who’s got to learn it.”
“You can choose and be like the people that are sitting around us,” Angelo said, his hand placed gently on my knee. “Now, if that’s the direction you go in, then you only need to treat tonight for what it is, a little bit of fun, a break in your routine. But if you decide to come away from it with something more than another night out, then pay attention to what you see. It may come in handy one day or it may not. Either way, you make the time spent work in your favor and not against.”
I turned away from Angelo and looked up to watch Johnny Valentine put a neck grip on Gorilla Monsoon and, after several minutes of cries and groans, force him into submission and bring the match to an end. The audience erupted into wild cheers as Valentine strutted around the ring, his arms raised to the lights above. Pudge nudged an elbow against my side, leaned over and shouted into my ear. “I’ll give you better than even money the two of them are having dinner together after they leave here tonight.”
“What if somebody sees them?” I asked. “Won’t they get into any trouble?”
“For having dinner with a friend? That day ever comes around then we’ll all be in big trouble.”
I smiled at Pudge then turned to look at Angelo but all I saw was an empty seat. “Don’t worry,” Pudge said, sensing the question I was about to ask. “Angelo’s not one for crowds. He’ll be at the restaurant when we get there.”
“Which restaurant are we going to?” I asked as I took Pudge’s hand in mine and followed him down a ramp that led out of the arena.
“There’s only one kind of cooking that goes down easy after sitting through two solid hours of wrestling.” Pudge made a right past the ramp and out through a set of double doors. “And that’s Chinese. How’s that sound to you?”
“It sounds great,” I said, walking at twice my normal pace in order to keep up with Pudge’s accelerated speed. “Well, I don’t really know how it sounds. I’ve never eaten Chinese food.”
“It looks to me like we got to take you from the top to the bottom, little man.” Pudge turned his head toward me as we both stood on the corner of Fiftieth Street and Eighth Avenue. “Try and make up for lost time and teach you everything you need to know. Does that sound like a good deal to you?”
“Yes,” I said and then I lifted my arms and wrapped them around his neck. It was the first time in my entire life I had ever hugged anybody, let alone a man, and I never wanted to let him go.
Pudge returned the hug and then lifted me off my feet and carried me the rest of the way to the restaurant, keeping me safe and warm, shielding me from the cold harsh winter winds.
• • •
GANGSTERS FEAR LEADING a normal life and do all they can to denigrate such an existence. They are constantly pitting their chosen lifestyle up against that of a working man and must walk away from such discussions needing to feel superior. They find themselves compelled to justify, in the simplest of terms, the reasons they are career criminals and they willingly color the truth in order to reach a conclusion that bends in their favor. They do this with all that they see and hear, coating it with the brush of a harsh lesson in order to give weight to the reality of their world.
That is why treating me to a night of wrestling meant more to Angelo and Pudge than a few hours of fun. It was a way to illustrate to me how life really functions, that someone perceived as being good can easily shift toward evil and that no one should be trusted beyond the moment. They would impose such lessons on me throughout my childhood years, regardless of where we went or what we would see together.
“Find me any gangster and keep in mind he doesn’t know shit about the theater, but he’ll tell you that his all-time favorite play is Death of a Salesman.” Pudge told me that as we were sitting through yet another production. “Now, I know it’s a lot of other people’s favorite play, too. But they like it for the writing or maybe for the acting. Gangsters don’t care about any of that. Instead, what we walk away with after watching it, is how living the decent life and following all the rules and working hard every day of your life in the end does nothing but screw you and leave you for dead. Willy Loman is every gangster’s biggest fear. He lived his whole life for nothing but empty pockets and then his only way out was to wrap a car around a tree trunk and hope the insurance company came through with the cash. If that’s what an honest man can hope to get at the end of the road, then you can have it and keep it all, with interest.”
• • •
I WALKED OUT of my last class of the day, my book bag filled to capacity, eager to get out and meet Pudge at the pizzeria around the corner from the school. It was near the end of my second month as a transfer student at St. Dominick’s at Thirty-first Street where my foster parents had placed me, hoping a parochial education would do more for me than a public one. While I had adjusted to the heavier workload and the stricter rules imposed by the Catholic Brothers who taught us, I still had no real friends, keeping a safe distance from the others in my grade. I never knew when I would have to move again and did not want to risk becoming part of any group I would have to be torn away from, despite the many assurances I got from Pudge that this would be my last stop. My stubborn stance didn’t seem to pose much of a problem, though, since the others students still did their best to avoid me. By now, I had spent enough time alone that I had grown comfortable in the role, content to watch from a distance the friendly antics that went on between the other kids around me. My background was well known to the students and teachers in my grade. There are few secrets that can be kept from the peering eyes and acute ears of a tenement landscape, and mine was no exception. By staying silent and keeping to myself, I simply gave them all a little less to talk about, knowing that would only further fuel their curiosity.
• • •
I SLAMMED DOWN on the iron bar and opened the red wood door that led out to the street. My foot touched the top step when a hand reached out and pushed me forward, causing me to lose my balance and drop my book bag. I caught myself with one hand on the railing, the other scraping against the center of a concrete step. I looked up and saw a circle of boys standing above me, all smiling and waiting for me to get back to my feet.
“Which one of you pushed me?” I asked, wiping the blood off my hand on the knee of my pants.
A pudgy kid with an oval face and thick red hair flipped a toothpick from his mouth and walked down a step. “You’re looking at him, orphan boy,” he said, standing with his feet square apart, his closed hands at his side. “I saw that you were in a hurry so I thought that maybe I’d help speed you along.”
The cluster behind him laughed and snorted their approval, while a skinny Hispanic kid gave him a gentle nudge on the shoulder. The pudgy boy’s name was Michael Cannera and I had seen him a few times in the playground during lunch and recess, and I was in a religion class with him, but we had never exchanged a word. He seemed the leader of his pack and was always pounced upon by the Brothers who were quick to dole out their brand of punishment with a leather hand belt. He was on the hunt for a fight, more out of pleasure than any sense of dominance or threat to his little domain. I had seen him in a few of his street-corner battles, usually matched up against smaller kids, and he always came out of the scrap bloodied but a win
ner. I also noticed that regardless of who he was up against, his back was covered by at least three of his buddies, ready to jump in if asked. As I looked at him glowering down at me, I knew I was nothing more to him than a convenient target.
He already had one advantage over me even before any punches were thrown. I was a state-sponsored foster child and as such had to be on my best behavior, both in the home I was sent to live in and at the school I attended. A street fight, especially one on school grounds, was sure to be brought to someone’s attention, and that could easily earn me a ticket out to a state home.
“It’s not a problem,” I said, as I leaned down to pick up my book bag. “I wasn’t looking to get in anybody’s way.”
Michael walked down two steps closer to me, his face locked in a tight sneer. “Only a punk would turn his back and walk from this,” he said. “Is that what you are, orphan boy? That must be what happens when you gotta go and pay somebody to make believe they’re your parents.”
“Why don’t you go and look for trouble somewhere else?” I said, lifting my bag and turning my back. “You’re not gonna find any here.”
“I don’t let anybody tell me what to do,” he snarled, running with full force down the remaining three steps. “Especially no little punk ass orphan boy.”
He landed square against the center of my back, the blow pushing the air out of my lungs and causing me to lose the grip on my bag. I landed face first on the sidewalk, Michael leaning against my shoulders, his weight holding me down, his fists landing blows across my neck and head. I lifted my head and tried to regain my focus, tasting the thin lines of blood that were dripping into my mouth from a slash under my eye. My bag and books were scattered off to my right, one of them resting flat on its spine, its pages flapping open in the wind. I stretched out my hand and reached for the nearest one, a thick geography text resting on its side, up against the base of a thin tree surrounded by a dry patch of dirt. My upper body was burning from the storm of punches pounding down on it. I closed my eyes and grabbed for the book, gripping my fingers around its pages, using my free hand as a balance.
The pace of his punches was slowing down, his energy sapped by his explosive assault. I could feel him rocking back on his heels, one hand grabbing the crook of my collar and lifting my head off the ground. He was breathing hard and heavy, his mouth swallowing gulps of cold, fresh air. I leaned forward on my right shoulder and tightened my grip around the book. I turned and swung it against the side of the boy’s pudgy face. I caught him flush on the ear, the edge of the book catching a corner of his eye, and sent him tumbling off my back and onto the sidewalk, where he landed on his side. I rose to my knees and began to throw my own punches against the boy’s face and chest. One hard blow caught the center of his nose, sending a wide spray of blood flying onto my shirt and face. I reached down to my right and picked up the geography book and brought it down hard against the boy’s nose and mouth. I didn’t stop until the flat of the pages were lined red with his blood.
I tossed the book to the ground and got to my feet. My back and shoulders burned and were weighed down with pain. I stood over him, watching as he ran his fingers across the front of his face, his nose red and clogged, blood running out of the corners of his mouth.
“Is this what you wanted?” I asked him, surprised at how quickly my own violent instincts had surfaced. I turned away just to make sure none of his friends were looking to make a move against me. They were all where I had last seen them, on the top steps of the school exit, huddled together, the eager smiles wiped from their faces. “Is it what you and your pals expected to see?”
He spit out a mouthful of blood and glared up at me. “This has got a long way to go till it ends,” he said.
I was breathing fast and shaking with anger. It had gone past the bleeding pudgy boy and his crew of friends. My rage was no longer only directed their way. It was now aimed at all those anonymous faces in all those hallways of all the schools I had ever attended. The ones who pointed at me and whispered words I pretended not to hear. I was a marked child and a focus for their scorn. Many of them came from homes where violence behind closed doors was commonplace. A few were the children of divorce, distanced from one parent because of hatred and discord. A few more were illegitimate but were able to dodge freely past the stigma that often came attached to such births. I was the foster child tossed into their poor puddle and was forced to bear the hatred and fear such a position imposed. Foster children are seldom welcomed into working-class neighborhoods by other kids. They are seen as oddities and threats, not to be trusted and never to be liked. It is why so many foster parents try and keep it a secret. We are not taken in because we are loved or needed. We are taken in because we come with a monthly check attached to our names.
I released all the anger that had built inside me through all those years as I kicked Michael, ripping into his sides and back with the full force of both legs. My black shoes found their mark with each swing, the round tips cracking against bone or bending into rolls of flesh. “No!” I shouted down at him after each kick had landed. “It ends here! It ends now!”
I heard his friends come down the school steps, walking together, watching as their once brazen leader tried to crawl away and hide in a safe corner, next to a row of garbage cans. I continued to kick at him, the pent-up venom spewing out of me in one rush of pure, unrestrained violence. My body was washed down in a chilled sweat, as a small crowd of passersby stood around me, having stopped to stare, mumble and gawk at the bloody scene that was taking place. I landed a solid kick just under his rib cage and heard him grunt and cough, a bloody trail marking the path he had crawled from the sidewalk to the edge of the school building. I reared back, primed to land another hard blow, when a thick arm grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off my feet and away from the boy.
“You won your fight, little man,” Pudge said into my ear. “Why don’t we just leave it at that?”
I turned to look at him and nodded, watching the sweat drip from my forehead down onto the sleeve of his jacket. “I didn’t go looking for it, Pudge,” I said. “They’ll probably go and tell the Brothers otherwise, but I wasn’t the one that got it started.”
Pudge released his grip on me and walked over toward the kids gathered on the school steps, slowly looking at each of their faces. “Pick up your friend and take him to a place where he can get cleaned up,” he told them. “If it were me in your spot, I would make sure it was a place that knows how to stay quiet about this kind of business. The less anybody knows about what happened here, the more it’ll look good for all of you.”
The boys slowly made their way past Pudge, fearfully avoiding his gaze, bent down and lifted Michael to his feet. The front of his shirt was a wet sheet of blood and it stuck to his skin like tape, his head hung down and off to the side, and he had trouble putting weight on his legs. I watched him being dragged away and now, with my anger dissipated, wished I had walked away from this fight much as I had so many of the others before it. I looked down at the ground and saw the thick blotches of red that were the only remnants of what had happened. The crowd around us had quickly dispersed, moved along as much by Pudge’s menacing presence as they were by the end of the action.
Pudge tapped me on the shoulder and nudged his head toward the scattered books behind me. “You better pick those up and follow me out of here,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Pudge. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen the way it did. He was just looking for a fight and I was stupid enough to give him one.”
Pudge stood above me and watched as I picked up my books and shoved them back into my school bag. “He was the one that was stupid. He came out looking for the easy mark and by the time he figured out how wrong he was, he was running a couple of quarts low on blood.”
“He’ll get a few stitches and some bruises,” I said. “Then the worst is over for him. He lives here in the parish. Nothing more can happen to him. That’s not true for me. I’m a foster.
Soon as they find out who beat him, I’ll get tossed out of school and be living in another place by the first of next month.”
“Don’t be too sure about that,” Pudge said, walking alongside me toward Tenth Avenue. “People keep their talking to whispers around here.”
“It’s happened to me before,” I said, my head down, the pain in my neck and shoulders radiating to my back. “At one school I went to it wasn’t even over a fight. I got invited by one of the kids in class to go over and watch TV at his place. His mother sees me there and freaks out. She goes in to see the principal the next day and tells him I’m causing problems for her son. Since they gave money to the church regular each Sunday and my fosters were looking for an excuse to dump me, out I went.”
“That’s old news,” Pudge said with a shrug. “You weren’t with me and Angelo then. You’re not alone anymore. We’ll make sure nothing like that happens here.”
I stopped and turned to Pudge, dropping my book bag by my feet, the knuckles of both my hands red and swollen. “Why?” I asked him. “Why do you even care about somebody like me?”
Pudge put an arm around my shoulders, ignoring the painful grimace on my face. “Because long before you came around, little man, somebody found me and Angelo and took care of us. Maybe now it’s our turn to do the same.”
“Well, I hope you’re getting something out of it.”
Pudge lifted his hand off my shoulder and pointed a finger across the street at Maxi’s Pizzeria. “I love pizza but I hate to eat it alone. So with you around, I don’t see how that’s going to be a problem anymore.”
We both crossed the street against the rush of the oncoming traffic, the smell of oven-fresh pizza filling the air while the memories of a brutal street fight slowly faded.
14
* * *
Summer, 1965