A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) (16 page)

I
LOOKED
at my face in the mirror. Outside of the small bruise high on my cheekbone I didn’t show any signs of the fight last night. I grinned at my reflection. I was lucky.

I finished combing my hair and left the bathroom. As I approached the kitchen, I could hear Papa’s voice. I went into the room smiling. “Good morning,” I said.

Papa’s voice stopped in the middle of what he had been saying, his face turned toward me. He didn’t answer.

“Sit down, Danny,” Mamma said quickly, “and eat your breakfast.”

I slipped easily into a chair. Papa had been watching me. Each day had brought more Lines to his face, lines of worry and hopelessness. His eyes seemed veiled with a curtain of despair that vanished only in the heat of his temper and anger. It seemed to me that Papa’s temper was displayed more and more frequently as time went on, as if he found some sort of relief from his worries in giving way to it.

I put my hand in my pocket, took out a ten-dollar bill, and tossed it on the table. “I made a few bucks last night,” I said casually.

Papa looked at the money, then up at me. His eyes began to glitter. I knew the look: it was a sign he was working up his temper. I bent my head over my plate and began to shovel the oatmeal into my mouth rapidly. I wanted to avoid the scene I knew would follow.

For a moment Papa was quiet, then his voice, strangely husky, rasped at my ears: “Where’d you get it? Fighting?”

I nodded without looking up from the plate. I continued to spoon the cereal quickly into my mouth.

“Danny, you didn’t?” Mamma’s voice was anxious, and her face had set in worried lines.

“I had to, Ma,” I said quickly. “We need the dough. Where else we gonna get it?”

Mamma looked at my father. There was a faint white pallor showing beneath his skin. It gave him a sick, unhealthy look. She turned back to me. “But we told you we didn’t want you to do it,” she protested weakly. “You might get hurt. We’d manage to get along somehow.”

My eyes were on her face. “How?” I asked matter-of-factly. “There are no jobs anywhere. We’d have to go on relief.”

Mamma’s face was set. “That might be better than you taking chances of getting yourself killed.”

“But, Ma,” I said, “I’m not taking any chances. I’ve gone through thirty of these things already and the worst that happened was that I got a scratch over my eye that healed in a day. I’m careful and the dough is handy.”

She turned hopelessly to Papa. There was no use arguing with me. I had all the logic on my side.

Papa’s face was completely white now, his fingers trembled against the coffee cup in his hand. He was staring at me, but he didn’t talk directly to me, he spoke to Mamma. “It’s his girl,” he said in a flat, nasty voice. “She gets him to do it. She doesn’t care if he gets himself killed as long as he has a buck to take her out and give her a good time.”

“It is not!” I flared hotly. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had known this was coming from the moment I saw him this morning. “She doesn’t want it any more than you do! I’m doin’ it because it’s the only way to make a tuck that I know!”

Papa ignored me. His bright, feverish eyes were the only thing in his face that seemed alive. His voice was freezing with contempt. “A shiksocha whore!” he continued, his eyes fixed on me. “How much do you have to give her for the nights you spend with her in hallways and on street corners? A Jewish girl is not good enough for you? No, a Jewish girl won’t do the things she does. A Jewish girl won’t let a boy fight to get money for her, let a son become a stranger to his own parents. How much do you pay her, Danny, for the things she gives to her own kind for nothing?”

I felt a chill hatred replace the heat of anger in me. I rose slowly to my feet and looked down at him. My voice was shaking. “Don’t talk like that, Papa. Don’t ever say things like that about her again. Not where I can hear them.”

I could see Nellie’s white frightened face dancing on front of my eyes, the way she had looked when I first told her I was going to pick up some dough fighting. “She’s a good girl,” I went on, barely able to speak, “as good as any of our own and better than most. Don’t let out on her your own failures. It’s your fault we are where we are, not hers.”

I leaned over the table glaring into his eyes. For a moment he stared back at me, then his gaze dropped and he raised the coffee cup to his lips.

Mamma put her hand on my arm. “Sit down and finish your breakfast. It’s getting cold.”

Slowly I dropped back into my chair. I wasn’t hungry any more. I was tired and my eyes burned. Chill and drained of feeling, I reached for my coffee and drank it quickly, its hotness running through me, warming my body.

Mamma sat down next to me. For a while there was a smouldering tense silence in the kitchen. Her voice cracked into it. “Don’t be angry with your father, Danny,” she said softly. “He only talks for your own good. He’s worried about you.”

There was a curious hurt in me as I looked at her. “But she’s a good girl, Mamma,” I said, bitterness in my voice. “He shouldn’t talk like that.”

“But, Danny, she’s not a Jewish girl.” Mamma was trying to show understanding.

I didn’t answer. What good would it do? They would never
understand
.

“Maybe Papa will get a job and you can stop this fighting,” Mamma added hopefully.

Suddenly I felt old, very old. Those words were lollipops for
children
. I had heard them before. They might as well know it now. “It’s too late, Mamma,” I said wearily. “I can’t stop.”

“What—what do you mean?” Her voice was trembling.

I got to my feet. “I’m through fighting in the dumps. The boys uptown think I’m good. I made a deal with them.” I stared at my father. “I’m going into the Gloves. They’re gonna give me a hundred a month, and when I’m old enough I turn pro.”

Mamma looked at me with a stricken face. “But—”

I felt sorry for her, but there was nothing I could do about it; we had to eat. “No buts, Mamma,” I interrupted her. “I made the deal and it’s too late to back out now. A hundred a month is as much as Papa would get on a job. We can live on that.”

The tears sprang into her eyes and she turned helplessly to Papa. “Harry, what are we going to do now?” she cried. “He’s only a baby. What if he gets hurt?’

Papa was staring at me, a muscle in his cheek twitching. He drew a deep breath. “Let him,” he answered without taking his eyes from my face. “I hope he does get hurt; it would serve him right!”

“Harry!” Mamma was shocked. “He’s our son!”

His eyes narrowed slightly, still burning into mine. “More like the son of the devil, he is,” he said in a low, bitter voice, “than a son of ours.”

I
CAME
out of the dark hallway, my eyes blinking at the bright
sunlight
, and stood for a moment letting the warm spring air roll over me. I felt good. Four months had passed since I had thrown in with Sam. Good months, too. I’d come through the Gloves eliminations and now had only one more fight to go and I would be ready for the finals in the Garden—if I won. But I had no doubts about winning.

I filled my lungs with the fresh air. My collar cut into my neck and I opened it. My collars were always too tight now. It was the training that did it.

If Papa would only realize that it was just another way to make a living, everything would be perfect. But he didn’t, he kept harping on me, blaming the whole thing on Nellie and saying only bums were fighters. Now we hardly spoke to each other any more. He wouldn’t give an inch. He was too stubborn, like just now when I left the house.

Papa had been reading a paper spread across the kitchen table as I walked through the room. He didn’t look up.

“I’ll be a little late tonight, Ma,” I had said.

She had asked anxiously: “Another fight?”

I nodded. “The semi-final, Ma. Out at the Grove in Brooklyn.” My voice was proud. “And after this the finals at the Garden and then no more till next year.”

“You’ll be careful, Danny?” she asked doubtfully.

I had smiled confidently. “Don’t worry, Ma. I’ll be all right.”

Papa had raised his head from the newspaper at my words and spoken to Mamma as if I weren’t in the room at all. “Don’t worry, Mary, he’ll be all right. Listen to what the paper has to say about him.” He began to read from the paper in a low sarcastic voice:

“Danny Fisher, the sensational East Side flash with dynamite in each fist, is expected to take another step toward the championship in his division when he meets Joey Passo in the Gloves semi-finals at the Grove tonight. Fisher, called by many ‘the Stanton Street Spoiler,’ because of his record of fourteen straight kayos, is being closely watched by the whole fighting world. There is a strong rumour that he is set to turn pro as soon as he is of age.

“A slim quiet-speaking, blond boy, Fisher, in the ring, turns into a
cold, merciless killer, going to work on his opponent without feeling or compassion, like a machine. This writer believes without a doubt that Fisher is the most ruthlessly promising amateur he has ever seen. If you fight fans will show up at the Grove tonight, we can safely promise you won’t be disappointed. You will see blood, gore, and sudden death, for when Fisher goes to work with either hand, friend, its nothing short of ‘murder’!”

Papa let the paper rattle back to the table in front of him and looked up at Mamma. “Good words to read about your own son—‘killer, murder, sudden death.’ Words to make a man proud of his child.”

Mamma looked at me hesitantly. I could see she was upset. “Danny, is it true what the man said?”

I tried to reassure her. I felt embarrassed. “Naw, Ma. You know how it is. After all, his paper sponsors the Gloves an’ they try to build it up so’s to sell more tickets.”

She wasn’t convinced. “You’ll be careful anyway, Danny,” she insisted.

Papa laughed shortly. “Don’t worry, Mary,” he said sarcastically. “Nothing will happen to him. He won’t get hurt. The devil looks after his own.” He turned to me. “Go on, Killer,” he taunted. “For a dollar you can murder all your friends.”

Those were his first direct words to me in weeks. I had taken enough side insults from him and kept my mouth shut; now I was through taking them. “I’ll kill ’em for the dollar, Pop,” I said, “so you can sit here on your backside an’ live off it!”

I had slammed out of the house and down the stairs, but now in the sunlight and warm air I began to feel better.

As I turned the corner, a voice called to me. Spit was standing in a doorway, waving. “Hey, Danny, c’mere a minute.”

“I can’t, Spit. I’m late,” I called back, hurrying on.

Spit came running after me and grabbed at my arm excitedly. “Danny, my boss wants to meet ’cha.”

I looked at him. “Who, Fields?”

“Yeah, yeah, Mr. Fields.” Spit’s head bobbed up and down. “I tol’ him I knew yuh an’ he says get him.”

The doorway from which Spit had come was a store entrance. On the plate glass of the window were the words:
FIELDS CHEQUE CASHING
SERVICE
. “Okay,” I said. You don’t slough off a guy like Maxie Fields down here. Not if you like being happy. Fields was the big man in the neighbourhood. Politics, gambling, shylocking—the works. He was top dog.

I remembered how envious some of the gang had been when Spit
had told us that his uncle, who was a numbers runner, had talked Fields into giving him a job as an errand-boy. He had shown us his working papers proudly and bragged that he wouldn’t have to go to school any more; that some day he, like Fields, would be a big man in the neighbourhood while the rest of us would be knocking our brains out trying to make a living. I didn’t see much of him after he got the job, but when I did, I couldn’t see that he was doing so well. Like now, he was still wearing the same sloppy clothes he always wore, the saliva-stained shirt, shiny trousers, and dirty, scuffed shoes.

I followed Spit into the store and through a small room with cages in it like a bank. A man behind a cage looked at us without curiosity as we walked through a door in the back. We passed through a horse room, where a few men were standing, idly studying the big
blackboard
. They paid no attention to us as we went through another doorway, behind which was a stairway. I followed Spit up to the first landing, where he stopped in front of a door and knocked softly.

“Come in,” a voice roared.

Spit opened the door and walked in. I stopped dead in my tracks, blinking my eyes. I had heard about this, but I’d never really believed it. This room was out of the moving pictures, it didn’t belong in a partly condemned dump like this.

A big man with a red face, a fat stomach, and the largest shoes I ever saw came toward us. Nobody had to tell me: this was Maxie Fields. He didn’t look at me. “I thought I told yuh not to bother me, Spit,” he roared angrily.

“But, Mr. Fields,” Spit stammered, “yuh tol’ me to bring Danny Fisher here as soon as I saw him.” He turned to me. “This is him.”

Fields’s rage disappeared as quickly as it had come. “You Danny Fisher?”

I nodded.

“I’m Maxie Fields,” he said, holding out his hand.

He had a good warm grip—too warm. I didn’t like him.

He turned to Spit. “Okay, kid, beat it.”

Spit’s smile disappeared. “Yes, Mr. Fields,” he said hurriedly, and the door closed behind him.

“I wanted to meet yuh,” Fields said, walking back to the centre of the room. “I heard a lot about yuh.” He sat down heavily in a chair. “Care for a drink?” he asked casually.

“No, thanks,” I replied. Maybe this guy wasn’t so bad after all. At least he wasn’t treating me like a punk. “I got a fight tonight,” I added quickly.

Fields’s eyes sparkled. “I seen yuh last week. Yer good. Sam’s a lucky guy.”

I was surprised. “You know him?”

“I know everybody an’ everything,” he replied, smiling. “Nothin’ goes on down here that I don’t know about. There ain’t no secrets kept from Maxie Fields.”

I had heard that. Now I believed it.

He waved his hand at me. “Sit down, Danny. I want to talk to you.”

I stayed on my feet. “I gotta run, Mr. Fields. I’m late at the gym.”

“I said sit down.” His voice was friendly, but an undertone of command had come into it.

I sat down.

After watching me for a moment, he turned his head and yelled into the next room: “Ronnie! Bring me a drink!” He turned back to me. “Sure you won’t have any?”

I shook my head and smiled. No use getting him sore at me. Just then a young woman came into the room carrying a drink. I blinked my eyes again. She was out of place too. Like the apartment, she belonged uptown.

She walked over to Fields’s chair. “Here, Maxie.” She looked at me curiously.

He almost drained the glass with one draught, then he put it down and wiped his mouth on his shirt-sleeve. “Man, was I thirsty!” he announced.

I said nothing, I was watching the girl standing next to his chair. He laughed. His hand went out and patted her. “Beat it, Ronnie,” he said jovially. “Yer distractin’ my friend here an’ I wanna talk to him.”

She turned silently and left the room. I could feel my face flush, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her until the door had closed behind her. Then I looked at Fields.

He was smiling. “Yuh got good taste, kid,” he said heartily, “but yuh gotta be able to afford it. That kind of stuff sets you back twenty bucks an hour.”

My eyes widened. “Even when she’s serving drinks?” I asked.

His laughter roared in the room. When he stopped laughing, he said: “Yer okay, Danny I like yuh.”

“Thanks, Mr. Fields.”

He took another swallow of his drink. “Yuh gonna win tonight, kid?” he asked.

“I think so, Mr. Fields,” I answered, wondering what he wanted.

“I think yer gonna win too,” he said. “An’ so do a lot of people. Yuh know a lot of people down here think yer gonna take the
championship
.”

I smiled. Maybe my father didn’t think I was much, but a lot of other people did. “I hope they’re not wrong,” I said modestly.

“I don’t think they will be. The boys downstairs tell me they took about four grand in bets on you from the neighbourhood. That’s a lot of dough even for me to shell out, but you look like a right guy an’ I don’t mind it now that I met you.” It was a long speech for him and he finished out of breath. He picked up his glass and emptied it.

“I didn’t think you bet the little guys,” I said.

“We bet anything. That’s our business. Nothing too big, nothing too small, Fields takes ’em all.” He finished in a semi-chant, laughing.

I began to feel bewildered. What did he want me up here for? I wondered what he was getting at. I sat there silently.

Fields’s laughter stopped suddenly. He leaned forward and slapped my knee. “Yer okay, kid, an’ I like yuh.” He turned his head. “Ronnie!” he shouted. “Bring me another drink.”

The girl came back into the room carrying the drink. I watched her. She put the drink down and started from the room.

“Don’t go, baby,” Fields called her back.

She turned around in the centre of the room and looked at us.

Fields’s face leered at me. “Yuh like that, huh, kid?”

I could feel my face aflame.

He grinned. “Well, I like yuh, kid, an’ tell yuh what. You win tonight ’n’ then come back here, an’ the treat’s on me. How yuh like that?”

I gulped. I tried to speak, but the words couldn’t get past the lump in my throat. There was nothing wrong with it that I could see, but Nellie had changed a lot of things.

Fields was watching me closely. “Don’t be bashful, kid,” he grinned.

I found my voice. “No, thanks, Mr. Fields,” I stammered. “I got a girl. Besides, I’m in training.”

His voice was persuasive. “Don’t be a fool kid. It won’t kill yuh.” He turned to the girl. “Take yer dress off, Ronnie.”

“But, Max!” the girl protested.

His voice went cold and harsh. “You heard me!”

The girl shrugged her shoulders. She reached behind her and unfastened a button, and the dress slipped to the floor. Fields got out of his chair and walked over to her.

“Take a good look, kid. What d’yuh say now?”

I was on my feet, edging toward the door. Something about him scared me. “No, thanks, Mr. Fields.” My hand found the door-knob behind me. “I gotta be goin’. I’m late down at the gym.”

Fields grinned at me. “Okay, kid, if that’s the way yuh want it. But remember, the offer holds any time.”

“Thanks, Mr. Fields.” I looked at the girl. She was standing there,
her face a mask. Suddenly I was sorry for her. Twenty bucks an hour was a lot of dough, but it couldn’t buy you pride. I smiled awkwardly at her. “Goodbye, miss.”

Her face flushed suddenly and she turned away from me. I stepped outside the door and began to close it. “Goodbye, Mr. Fields,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

I shut the door quickly and ran down the steps. I was glad to get out in the street. Even the dirty streets seemed clean after being inside that room with him. But I had the feeling as I headed toward the gym that I hadn’t seen the last of Maxie Fields.