The Amboy Dukes (7 page)

The moon came up hot and orange, and Frank stretched out on the Manhattan Beach jetty and cradled Betty in his arms. The black waves with their white froth broke gently across the narrow beach and swirled in among the rocks. Across the bay the revolving searchlights of Floyd Bennett Field stabbed the darkness in wide circles of light, and the red signal lamps on the small craft winked and bobbed with the movement of the waves. Frank stared up at the moon as it climbed higher into the sky and faded from orange to white, and then he closed his eyes and was at rest. Betty lay close to him on the rough blanket, her right arm across his chest, her breathing soft and relaxed. There was no need to speak, to say anything, for they both understood. And as they lay there Frank resolved that things would be cleaner with Betty, with sharp incisive lines and no ragged edges of telling the guys or even Benny how he had made out. Some guys like Crazy Sachs or even Mitch or Larry Tunafish wouldn’t understand how he felt, but it wasn’t any of their business. Sometimes they were too damn smart for their own good, with their hooting and jeering at everything which did not conform to their brutal, vicious, mean gang-world, and tomorrow when he had a chance he was going to break up his gun and start going to school regular.

Betty moved gently and kissed him. “What’re you thinking about, honey?” she asked.

“You. Us.”

“I’m glad,” she sighed. “I like you a lot.”

“I like you too.” He kissed her. “And I don’t want you dating other guys.”

“I won’t, Frank.”

Somewhere in the darkness they could hear Benny and Ann laughing and scuffling, and Frank smiled at Betty. “I guess they’re going at it in a big way,” he said.

“Your friend doesn’t waste any time,” she agreed.

“Maybe.” He pressed her shoulder. “I don’t know. I like you”—he rolled over and looked down at her—“and I’m in no hurry. I feel different about you,” he added. “Understand?”

She stroked his hair with both hands and kissed him. “Yes. Now let me lie in your arms again. It’s nice.”

Offshore the waves rolled onto the narrow beach with a smooth hissing of water, and the moon rode through the April night white and serene.

Frank drove the car back to Brownsville while Benny continued to maul Ann in the back seat as he bragged about what a tough mob the Dukes were, until Frank told him to shut up before he put his foot in his mouth.

“Here we are.” Benny stood up as Frank pulled the emergency brake. “I live here.” He waved at the tenement. “It’s a dump, but I don’t pay the rent.”

“Shut up.” Frank handed him the car keys.

Benny looked at him quickly. “All right. Come on, let’s go.”

Frank watched Ann smooth her skirt, and he hated the way she waited on the sidewalk for Benny to take her upstairs and the way the lipstick was smeared on her face. “Give me the keys.” He held out his hand. “I’m taking Betty down the club.”

“Why?” Benny asked him. “Sam won’t cut into our party.”

Ann tugged at Benny’s sleeve. “Who’s Sam?”

“My brother. This is his car.”

“You giving me the keys?” Frank asked sharply.

“Sure.” Benny laughed. “We’re wasting time. Just bring the car back in a couple of hours. Say about three o’clock, so I can take Ann home.”

“I will. Come on, Betty.” He turned to her. “Get in.”

They drove up Pitkin Avenue, and as the car stopped for a red light she asked him, “We going down your club?”

“No”—he looked straight ahead—“I’m taking you home. And don’t say anything.”

He kissed her briefly as they stood on the sidewalk before her house. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said to her. “I haven’t got a phone, so I’ll call you about four. Good night, Betty.”

“Good night.” She returned his kiss. Then she ran lightly up the steps of the porch, turned to wave at him, and was gone.

Mr. Bannon looked sharply at Frank and Black Benny as they entered the noisy classroom and found it difficult to control the rage which burned within him with a heat that left him choking and mad. He watched them swagger to their seats while they kidded with the other boys in the official class about deciding to give the school a break and about the swell picture they had seen at the Paramount. Young smirking wiseacres, he would have enjoyed beating each one of them with a baseball bat.

Mr. Bannon slammed down on his desk with an eighteen-inch ruler and the class was stilled. He surveyed the hostile faces that stared at him, and he hated every one of them.

“You”—he motioned to Frank and Benny—“come up here. Hurry!” he said as they shuffled slowly toward him. “Move as if it were three o’clock and you were hotfooting it to the poolroom. Quiet!” He hit his desk again with the ruler and cut short the ripple of snickers. “Now,” he said to them. “Where’ve you been?”

“I’ve been sick,” Frank said.

“And you?” Mr. Bannon asked Benny.

Benny clutched his stomach and rolled his eyes. “Me too. I got the crut.”

The room exploded with laughter, and Mr. Bannon gripped the ruler until the steel edge cut into the palm of his hand. He smashed down on his desk with the ruler, and the force of the blow snapped the wood in two. The class rocked with laughter as his face flushed, and Mr. Bannon wearily passed both hands across his forehead in a gesture that was becoming characteristic of his impotence.

“Hey, Teach’,” one of the pupils in the back of the room yelled at him, “you’re a regular Samson.”

“Quiet!” He flung the broken halves of the ruler into the wastebasket. It was no use. All his pedagogy was no damned use. How in the hell could he keep his temper when these little bastards made his life so miserable? Why couldn’t he haul off and clout that smirking Benny Semmel in the mouth? But no, he had to use all the damned instructional tools and psychological approaches that were successful in the textbooks and were never designed for his official class at the New Lots Vocational High School. How in the world was he going to cope with a classroom full of bastards who didn’t give a damn about school or what they were learning or him? And they were keen and caustic, knew how to get under his skin with neat precision; and cooperation, being square, playing the game, were words and phrases to which they responded with Bronx cheers. If only he could keep his temper, but it was no longer possible. This class was also his first class in mechanical drawing, and there were two more classes of M.D., where he had to devote more time to keeping an eye on the equipment than instructing the classes; then lunch, at which he had to spend thirty minutes policing the lunchroom and breaking up fights, then two classes of elementary principles of aviation, and finally it was three o’clock, and he could slump at his desk and wonder how in the world he was going to get through another day.

“Quiet!” he shouted again.

Frank swung around to the class. “Hey, bums,” he shouted, “don’t you hear the teacher? He wants quiet! Understand?
Quiet!”
he screamed hoarsely.

“Quiet!”
the class roared back at him.

“That’s enough out of you, Goldfarb.” Mr. Bannon’s voice trembled.

“I was only trying to help,” Frank said innocently.

“Sure, sport,” Benny agreed, “he was only trying to help. I’d help, too, but I’m still sick.” He clutched at his stomach again and stuck out his tongue. “If you were regular you’d let me go home. I’m liable to die right in the class.”

“I wish you would.” Mr. Bannon bit off each word.

Benny moved his head in mock surprise. “Don’t you like me, Mr. Bannon? Hey, guys”—he turned toward the class—“Teach’ doesn’t like me! Now I ask you, is that gratitude?”

“No, Lord”—the class swayed in unison—“that ain’t gratitude!”

“Is that religion?” he went on.

“No, Lord”—they chanted and clapped their hands—“it ain’t religion!”

The class stamped and sang and paid no attention to Mr. Bannon’s shouted orders for quiet, and as they realized intuitively that he had lost control of the class the bedlam and uproar became more wild and violent, more rowdy and gross. He looked at them furiously and rushed out of the classroom and to the office of the assistant principal.

“Mr. Hayes”—Bannon burst into the office—“do you want my resignation? Do you?” he fairly screamed.

Mr. Hayes teetered back in his chair. “What’s the trouble, Bannon?”

“Trouble!” Bannon acted as if he were ready to plunge into insanity. “That’s an understatement! I’ve got a classful of congenital hoodlums and they’re completely out of hand! If you don’t come back with me right now and straighten them out I’m resigning as of now. And look, Mr. Hayes,” he interrupted, and his hands trembled, “don’t tell me that I’m not a good disciplinarian and that this is my own fault. I’m not the only teacher in the same boat and you know it. You just let me take a couple of healthy swings at my pupils and I’ll show you discipline!”

“You know we can’t do that.”

“I know,” Mr. Bannon subsided weakly, “I know, but are you coming with me”—his inflection hardened—“or do I resign?”

Mr. Hayes sighed and stood up. “I guess so, but this is setting a bad precedent.”

“I don’t care what it sets.” Mr. Bannon opened the office door. “Come on.”

They could hear the class singing and hooting as they approached the room at the end of the corridor, but as Mr. Hayes entered the room the impromptu spiritual petered out to a low defiant undertone of murmurs and whispers.

Mr. Hayes wasted no time. “All of you,” he began, “are suspended from school until you bring at least one of your parents. And if you don’t have them here by Friday afternoon, which gives you practically three school days to get them here, I’ll declare every one of you a truant. Mr. Bannon, you’ll send me a list of all the pupils in this class so that I can check it personally, and I want you to mark each boy whom you believe to be a serious disciplinary case. Now you’re dismissed. And any of you found loitering in the halls or the schoolyard will be turned over to the police.”

“You mean we all gotta bring up our mothers and fathers?” someone asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Hayes said, “and by Friday afternoon, or I’ll turn you over to the truant officer.”

“But my mother and father work,” another boy protested.

“Mine too,” Frank said.

“And mine.”

“And mine,” Benny said. “They’ll be sore.”

“You should’ve thought of that.” Mr. Hayes was inexorable. “Now take your things and leave the building.”

The boys filed out of the room silently. They had never expected that Mr. Bannon, the son of a bitch, would go for the assistant principal.

“I’m thoroughly ashamed,” Mr. Bannon broke the silence. “But I just couldn’t handle them any more, Mr. Hayes.”

Mr. Hayes walked to the window and watched the group pass out of the schoolyard into the street and break up into small excited clumps of boys. “I know,” he finally said. “We’ve got a job. And sometimes, Bannon, I wonder if we’re doing the right thing.”

“My opinion is that we’re not. These kids are restless and tough, and somewhere along the line we’ve missed the boat.”

Mr. Hayes took his pipe from his pocket and rapped the bowl with his hand. “I guess you’re right. But”—he shrugged his shoulders—“we’ll see what happens when they bring their parents up. Get that list on my desk before you leave today.”

“I’ll do that, Mr. Hayes, thanks.”

Frank and Black Benny walked aimlessly in the sun, unable to understand why their humor had backfired. Imagine Bannon getting so sore at them that he’d gone for Hayes, which proved to them conclusively that a teacher was always a rat.

“Hell”—Benny kicked a stone that lay in his path—“we didn’t do anything we never done before. The clown doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

“We roughed him up plenty before,” Frank agreed. “Gee, my old man is going to hit the ceiling.”

“Must we tell them?”

“You heard what Hayes said. He’ll turn us over to the truant officer if they don’t come in by Friday afternoon. We’re really caught with our pants down.”

“And how. Say”—Benny paused before a small liquor store on Sutter Avenue—“I could use a drink. This sorta’s taken the wind outa me.”

“I don’t want any.” Frank began to walk on.

Benny took two dollar bills out of his wallet. “Wait. A couple of drinks’ll give us some guts. I’ll be right out.”

Frank walked on to the corner, and soon Benny came up to him with a small wrapped package. “I got some Schenley’s.” He shook the bottle and it gurgled. “Let’s go down to the club and drink it.”

The clubroom was dim and cool in contrast to the heat of the day, and they felt better as they listened to the radio and swigged drinks out of the bottle. Frank smoked one of his reefers and gave one to Benny. They sat on separate sofas, drinking and inhaling the reefers, and soon they were floating in a world where everything was funny. The whole scene in the school was etched into the ceiling of the room, and they laughed as they saw and heard the class rocking and swaying in rhythm. It was only fun; they hadn’t meant to be mean to Mr. Bannon; and, in fact, they had always considered him to be a regular guy. How, they asked each other, could he have gutted them so? Why, hell, they weren’t any worse than any of the other guys in the school, and some of the official classes made a hell of a lot more racket than they did, and their teachers never got them suspended. That just went to show them what a louse Mr. Bannon was. Nothing he’d ever do would convince them that he was a regular guy.

“You know”—Benny wiped his lips—“I’ll bet he doesn’t realize what he’s done. You know that he’s holding up the national defense?”

Frank nodded solemnly In agreement. “That’s right. What’s more important, my mother packing ammunition or her coming to school because we kidded around a little bit? I’m askin’ you, what’s more important? You can tell me the truth, Benny; what’s more important?”

“Bannon.” Benny ignored Frank’s questions and thought for a moment. “That’s Irish. And the Irish aren’t in the war. I bet he’s a Fascist or German agent. He knows that most the kids’ folks are working in war plants, and that’s how he goes around sabotaging the war effort, the son of a bitch.”

“A first-class bastard.” Frank broke his third reefer in two and threw a half to Benny. “What the hell does he care about the war? And why the hell isn’t he in the Army?”

Benny sucked on the reefer. “I don’t know.” He held the bottle to the light. “All gone.”

Frank staggered as he stood up. “I’m hungry. Let’s go out to eat. Goddamn bastard Bannon. Why the hell isn’t he in the Army? I wish I knew his draft board. I’d sure tell them a mouthful about his sabotaging the war effort. Tell me, Benny,” he continued owlishly, “if Bannon ain’t a bastard.”

They rode back to Pitkin Avenue and were feeling pretty good as they passed through the revolving door into Davidson’s. It was past one o’clock and the noon crowd had thinned out. The vivid picture of the class rocking in unison as they sang still made them laugh, and interspersed with their laughter were short periods of righteous outraged anger. Frank ordered two bacardis at the bar, then Benny ordered two more, and as they sat at their table eating Hungarian goulash and cursing Mr. Bannon, the assistant manager of the restaurant had to ask them to quiet down. Benny gave the assistant manager what he intended to be a tough look, but Benny was so drunk that he could not focus, and he grinned stupidly and placed a forefinger to his lips. The assistant manager laughed and walked away. He was too busy to bother with kids who were half tight.

“You know what?” Benny waved his fork.

“What?”

“I got a good idea.”

“What?” Frank repeated.

“Let’s go back to the school and have it out with Mr. Bannon. Let’s tell him that if he does this to us he’s a heel and we won’t ever consider him a regular guy again.”

Frank sipped his coffee. “You’re crazy.”

“No, I’m not,” Benny insisted. “Come on. What the hell’ve we got to lose?”

“You’re drunk.”

“Don’t you tell me I’m drunk, Frank. I don’t like it.”

Frank’s lips twisted into a sneer. “So what’m I supposed to do, wilt?”

“Aw, forget it.” Benny put out his hand and Frank shook it. “I’m telling you it’s a good idea. We’ll go talk to him and maybe he’ll give us a break. Honest, I don’t want to tell my old man or my mom. They’ll be sore as hell, and maybe Sam won’t lend me his car any more.”

“It’s after three o’clock,” Frank said. “Maybe he’s gone home.”

“So if he’s not there we haven’t lost anything. Come on.”

“I got to call Betty,” Frank said.

“You’ll call her after we get through. Come on.”

The ride on the Pitkin Avenue bus cleared their heads, and when they got off at Pennsylvania Avenue they had mapped out what they were going to say. The schoolyard was deserted and the corridors of the building vacant as they trudged up the two flights to their home room.

Mr. Bannon sat at his desk, and they hesitated before they knocked at the door and entered. He looked at them for a moment and then returned to reading and correcting the drawings. Frank and Benny waited for him to acknowledge them, and as he continued to ignore them Benny coughed.

“And to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” Bannon asked sarcastically.

“We want you to give us a break,” Frank began.

“A break?” He stared at them. “Why?”

“Well”—Frank hesitated—“because we didn’t mean anything.”

“Sure,” Benny added, “we were only kidding. Honest.”

Mr. Bannon walked to the window and looked down into the yard. His mouth twitched and his hands were cold. For more than a minute he stood with his back toward them, attempting to regain his composure. He hated them more now than he ever had.

“No.” He finally turned around. “Mr. Hayes set the punishment. I had nothing to do with it. I’ll have to ask you boys to leave this building and not return until you are accompanied by a parent.”

“You know you’re screwing up the war effort?” Benny asked him.