The Wanderers (2 page)

"Yeah."

"I don't want this filth in my house."

"It's a great book."

"It's filth. Don't talk back."

"Did you read it?"

"I don't read filth."

"Then how do you know it's filth?"

"I worked my way up from nothing. There were times when your mother and I had to go through all the clothes in the closet just to find a quarter to buy milk."

"Hey look, Pop, it's a classic."

"Oh yeah? Read page two-sixty-seven, that's classic filth."

"I thought you didn't read it."

"Goddamn smartass. You break your back to send them onwards and upwards, so they could be and do and have things you never dreamed of, and they reward you like this." He slammed the book down on the table.

"Louis! Get that book off the table! We're eating!"

"You see? Now you've got your mother upset!"

The family ate in silence. No one laughed at Dick Van Dyke. Richie finished and excused himself, heading for the door.

"Sit down and have dessert."

"I don't want dessert."

"Just have some cooked fruit."

"No, seeya."

"Hey, Professor Filth, where you going?"

"Over to C's."

"You coming back this week?"

Richie slammed the door behind him and headed across the projects.

"You lazy sonovabitch I refuse to clean this shithouse anymore if you keep trackin' mud and godknowswhat on my new carpet every time you come in this house. THE NIGGER MAID AIN'T WORKIN' HERE ANYMORE, YOU UNNERSTAN'?"

"Stop your bitchin'. You don't get off your ass all day anyhow, an' don't call me a sonovabitch in front of my children. I GOTTA GET RESPEC' IN MY HOUSE. I AM ... THE ... BREADWINNER HERE."

Richie rang the doorbell. Utter silence.

From the living room. "Yeah?... whozzat?"

"It's me." He hated yelling through a closed door.

C's old man opened the door. He was fat and bald and mean and short. He was indifferent to Richie. C's parents resumed their argument.

Richie walked through the foyer to C's room. Her little brother Dougie was hiding in the kitchen eavesdropping on the fight. Richie kicked him in the ass, and he stumbled into the dining room. "Hey, you stupid fuck," Dougie hissed. He scampered back to the kitchen before he was noticed. Richie continued down the hall. "The Wanderers are faggots, the Wanderers are faggots."

"Dougie, I'm gonna wash your mouth out wit' soap," warned his father.

"He kicked me ... he kicked ... oh, man ... I'm leavin' home."

"Don't forget your toothbrush."

Richie walked into C's room. She was hunched over a blue loose-leaf notebook: "C & RG" and "True Love Will Never Die" on the cover in her fanciest handwriting.

He peered over her shoulder and saw

She hadn't heard Richie come in because her record player was blasting the Shirelles off the walls. He poked her in the ribs. She screamed, wheeled around, and crumpled the paper into a ball. They plodded through her homework for an hour. Richie finally wrote out the whole assignment himself. She was probably the only student in the city who didn't know what office Mayor Wagner held in city government.

He left at nine-thirty and waited outside Big Playground for Antone. He showed up at ten.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You wanna hop a cab?"

"Nah, I ain't got no dough."

"Well, I don't wanna take a train."

They wound up taking two buses over to Fordham.

Even though most of the stores were closed, thousands of shoppers were still walking through the massive shopping area. In the middle of the busiest intersection, on a large traffic island with both navy and army recruiting centers and a row of twenty public phones, lounged the Fordham Baldies, heads shaved and gleaming in the fluorescent overheads, black jackets showered with silver buckles, chains, and studs. They draped themselves over the phones, leaning back lazily, chewing gum or smoking cigarettes in slow motion, their studied poses out of pace with the hustle of the night shoppers.

Both Antone and Richie felt intimidated by the Baldies' sullen presence. Terror spotted them and sauntered over. Richie's stomach grew knuckles. He expected anything, was prepared for nothing. Antone's face was defiant but bloodless. Terror weighed three hundred pounds and stood six-four. His bald head revealed a thick roll of fat at the base of his neck. An asthmatic condition made every breath sound like it came from a steam Dress He was a high school dropout or kickout because he'd creased a shop teacher's head with a file when he was fifteen. "Whada, you want here?"

"We wanna see Joey ... it's important."

Terror's cross-eyes were black pearls. He never blinked. Tommy Tatti once said that Terror's mother was Mexican. No one would ever dare ask Terror about his mother. No one ever seriously talked about anyone else's mother. Even 'How's your mother?' was no good because the guy would think "What should be wrong wit' my mother?' "Joey ain't here ... beat it."

"You know where we can find him?"

"He's screwin' your mother."

Richie and Antone walked away. Terror laughed and walked back to the Baldies.

"Stupid fuckhead," Antone muttered.

Richie was silent. He was scared of Terror—he couldn't even bring himself to talk behind his back. They walked down Fordham Road past the blacked-out stores.

"Hey, there's Joey!" Richie spotted Joey's bald head bobbing up the hill toward his gang.

Antone stopped Joey. "Hey, Antone, what's shakin'? I haven't seen you guys aroun'." Joey DiMassi was tall and skinny. A scar slanting across his eyebrow gave his face a permanently dazed expression. He was the leader of the Baldies. He wasn't the toughest, and he wasn't the smartest in his gang, but he had a good logical head and a great sense of fairness and decency. He had respect.

Antone told Joey about the coming war. Joey smiled, asked some names of the opposition, and told Antone to relax, he'd take care of it. Everyone had implicit faith in Joey DiMassi. When he said he'd take care of it, it was as good as done. Tommy Tatti once said that Joey should run for mayor on the Fordham Baldie ticket.

The next day at lunch, word was out that the niggers had decided not to rumble. No one knew why, but Antone and Richie knew that Joey had a hand in it. The main reaction was a lot of curses and grumbling, palm-pounding and shadow-boxing.

"Ah, I woulda beat their fuckin' skulls in."

"Ah, I had it all planned. They wouldna knowed what hit 'em."

"Ah, them fuckin' coons is cowards."

That night Richie ate two steaks and had two portions of cooked fruit for dessert. After dinner he decided to drop in on the Wanderers' camp—a deserted lot down the block from his house bordered by trees and the backs of commercial garages. The Wanderers had cleared an area about twenty-five feet in circumference where they built campfires and sniffed glue. The surrounding garages were spray-painted with the gang's name and then individual names under that.

A block away Richie sensed something was wrong. He saw too many people standing around the camp. At first he thought they were cops who were always coming around when there was a good fire going, but it was too light yet for a fire. They weren't cops. He raced up to the clearing.

It was the Wongs.

The Wanderers were standing around not knowing what to do or say. Perry ran up to Richie whispering hysterically. "It's the fuckin' Wongs!"

"What's goin' on?"

"I don't know! They ain't sayin' anything!"

The Wongs stood there as if posing for a group photograph, faces expressionless, eyes slits. They didn't move a muscle. If one of them gave out with a judo shout the Wanderers would have cleared the place in ten seconds flat. Richie looked around. His troops were standing in little clusters, staring and nervously rubbing their arms. Finally Teddy Wong, the leader of the clan, decided that enough of the Wanderers had shown up and very softly said "We came up here to warn you guys about me niggers." '

"We thought the fight was off!" Perry's voice cracked. Entranced, Richie stared at the dragon tattoo on Teddy's forearm.

"It is. They're just after one guy. Who's Gennaro?"

Richie swallowed his jaw. He ran up to Teddy. "How come? Whad I do? Whad I do?"

Teddy stared at him contemptuously. The other Wongs sneered at such a breakdown in composure. "Come off it, man. I saw what you wrote on the sidewalk in front of school
and
by the bus stop."

"What! What! I didn't write nothin'!"

Teddy turned to leave. The others filed out after him. Richie wanted to run up and cry on Teddy's tattoo and beg forgiveness; he was more afraid of the Wongs than of Clinton Stitch and the niggers. The last Wong to leave turned to face Gennaro. "That was stupid, man ... really stupid." They walked in formation toward the train station.

Panic in the camp. Richie's shirt was soaked with sweat and his underwear stuck to his prick where a little pee had seeped out. Everyone crowded around him. He just kept repeating, "I didn't do nothin'! I didn't do nothin'." His voice broke and the steak and cooked fruit started coming up. Suddenly he jerked around. The others danced away as he puked. Buddy Borsalino ran to get his father's car. The other guys helped Richie into the back seat, careful not to get too close—he smelled pretty bad. They drove to the school and saw in at least seven different sidewalk squares in white paint:

NIGERS STINK
RICHIE GENNARO

He had no idea who wrote it. He had no enemies to speak of. He hadn't had a fight in months. At the bus station the same story—this time on the walls. They went back to the camp.

"Hey, lissen, man, if you gotta fight then we're fightin' too."

"Yeah, we gotta stick together."

"I didn't
do
it, I didn't
do
it." His voice had settled into a tired whine. He wanted to go to sleep.

"Don't worry, man, we won't letcha down."

That night, Richie had a nightmare:

He was naked, getting the shit pounded out of him by gigantic muscular blacks wearing sunglasses, his head slowly sinking into Big Playground concrete. Voodoo drums. He began choking in the pungence of elevator piss. He was being cooked in it—in a big black kettle, with a blazing fire underneath. Clinton Stitch, head of the Pips, stirred the pee around him with a huge ladle that had a skull on the end. Then he was stretched out on a rack getting judo-chopped by the Wongs. Teddy Wong was standing there dressed in an embroidered ceremonial gown and a black silk skull cap. He had a two-foot stringy black mustache and wore eyeliner. His hands were hidden, folded in the sleeves of his garment. Suddenly they appeared with two-inch fingernails painted black He clapped twice and two bald fat Chinks appeared dragging C, nude, hands tied behind her back. She was yanked by the hair and forced to kneel in front of Teddy who parted his gown. His huge prick stood straight out with tremendous fire-breathing dragons tattooed on both sides. C was commanded to suck it, which she did greedily, stopping momentarily to gasp for breath and moan, "I love it, I love it!"

Richie awoke with the biggest hard-on of his life, which he promptly pounded into mother-of-pearl-colored drops that flew around the room like scatter pellets.

The Wanderers arrived at school grim-faced. Richie cursed himself for not at least painting over his name last night. As Richie slaved over "who" and "whom" in the dread
Warriner's English Grammar and Composition,
a fat sophomore came into the English class with a call slip from Mr. Mulligan's office for Richie. He had forgotten about disciplinary action.

Mr. Mulligan, or "Biff," was a huge hurricane of a man. He was dean of discipline, football coach, and top ballbreaker of the school. Richie walked on rubber legs to the basement office.

"You Gennaro?" Richie noticed the two cops. Big and solemn with guns as huge as horsecocks. "Answer me!"

"Yes, sir."

"So you're the sick sonovabitch who did that!"

"I didn't do that, sir! I didn't!"

"You're lying."

"No I ain't, sir."

The cops looked bored, their thumbs tucked into their gun belts. Richie's disciplinary record lay in its beige folder on Biff's desk.

"You ... are ... one ... arrogant sonovabitch. Wipe that smirk off your face before I wipe it off with the back of my hand!" Richie wondered where Biff saw a smirk since he was almost in tears. "You're in big trouble, boy."

"I didn't do it!" His lower jaw started to tremble, a sign that he was going to cry. Biff saw this and eased up a bit.

"Can you prove you didn't do it?"

Richie thought. "For one thing ... I know nigger has two g's."

One of the cops cracked up but quickly regained composure. Even Biff started to smile.

"Another thing I know is that I'm gonna get killed this afternoon."

"Awright, get outta here, go back to your class. This isn't over yet, Gennaro."

As he closed the office door he heard one of the cops laughing and Biff saying, "Ah, the kid didn't do it. I'll get the custodian to tar it over."

In the cafeteria the Wanderers, feeling puny and defenseless, sat hunched over a corner table. Everyone knew about the vandalism now, and it seemed like the whole school was staring and snickering. Every few minutes a black kid would walk past the table with an evil grin. Richie threw his tuna sandwich in the garbage and buried his head in his arms.