Young and Violent (6 page)

Gober sticks his thumbs into the loops of his trousers and stares down at her, unsmiling. She wears a tight black orlon sweater under which her apple-shaped breasts swell, a black wool skirt which has lint caught over it, the same worn black patent leather pumps, and around her neck a gold chain with a cross hanging on it. Her nail polish is blood-red and chipped, and she sees Gober looking at her nails, curls them into her palms, and sits with her hands knotted into fists.

“We here to discuss card tables, or what?” Gober demands.

“I don’t know. You’re the one brought me here.”

“Whata you jumpy about, if you don’t know?”

“I’m not! Gober, you don’t have the right to talk to me like this.”

“You’re pulling at your bag, aren’t you? You’re peeling all the leather crud off the strap of your bag!”

Babe’s hand drops the strap and goes to the gold cross. She says, “You’re not even like yourself any more. That’s why.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning since you been interested in someone else, I don’t get the time of day.”

Gober drags on his cigarette and lets the smoke through his nose; his nostrils flaring angrily; his voice still calm; his face mean. “I want to go on record, Baby. I’m crazy to go on record. You want to hear?”

“Yes.”

“I want to go on record I’m not interested in someone else. That’s for the record. You get it?” “You don’t even say it nice.” “Next time I’ll sing it.”

“I saw you up there hanging around her, Gober. Me and Marie saw you.”

“You didn’t see nothing. You didn’t see one thing!”

“I don’t see why, if you don’t — well — want
me
any more — why you don’t let me off the hook, Gober.”

“Because you’re my girl, Baby — and there ain’t a Jungle breathin’ don’t know it. Even Flat Head Pontiac, who ain’t breathin’ seeing as he’s got a hole in his head the air leaks out — even he knows you’re my girl!”

“Everybody knows it but me,” Babe Limon says. “I’m glad the news is out. I’m going to hear it any day now.”

“You don’t know it, huh?” Gober walks over to her.

“No.”

“You don’t, huh?” He stands spread-legged, the smoke from his cigarette spiraling up past her face; his eyes fixed on her. She has her head bent, looking down at his feet, his black trousers, and his long arms dangling at his sides, his fingers with the cigarette clutched between them.

“Gober, I’m only human — a girl.”

“You sure you’re human, Baby. Or are you just all — ”

“You talk to me in this kind of voice and expect me to know I’m your girl. Well, I don’t! I’m tired of being treated like something less than the dirt on this floor!”

“You don’t know it, huh?” Gober says again.

“No. No, no, no, no! I don’t!”

Gober tosses the cigarette down and grinds it out with his heel. He bends over and pulls her up by her arm. Her pocketbook falls open, the contents spilling out of it. She tries to pick it up, but Gober jerks her to him. He holds her by her shoulders. “You’re going to learn it,” he says. “I’m going to teach you it, and you’re going to learn it, and you’re going to remember it!”

Gober grabs her; pulls her down with him on the couch. His mouth finds hers and he kisses her, and under him she struggles, writhes in protest while his lips still hold hers. His hands come on her sweater, yanking it out of her skirt. Then Babe Limon fights less earnestly; her movements change from the bolting, frantic ones they were, to slower, more rhythmic ones. Her smooth arm slides around Gober’s back, and she pushes her lean body up against his.

He says finally, “I’m going lock the door first.”

“Do you love me, Gober?”

“Sure,” he says. “Sure.”

He gets up and walks across the cellar, ready to slide the nail on the door, into the hole. “Get your gear off!” he tells her quietly.

She says, “You can be nice, Gobe. When you want to, you really can.”

• • •

Down 102nd Street Junior Brown goes like sixty. His eyes are big as mushrooms and his face is soaked in sweat, but he stops for no one. He runs like crazy.

“Hey! Hey, where you think you’re goin’, Nothin’ Brown,” the news dealer over the Kings’ clubhouse shouts as Nothin’ streaks past him, “Hey, you little jigaboo, you know you ain’t allowed down there! Hey, you — hey!”

Down the cement steps Junior Brown races, nearly tripping over the cartons stacked at the bottom, and reaching the door, he hears a lock being slipped into place; and he shouts, “Don’t lock up, Gobe! I’m friendly. It’s me, Nothin’. I gotta tell you somethin’!” He pounds on the door. “It’s me, Gobe. I gotta tell you somethin’!”

Then the lock slips back, the door opens, and Gober steps outside of the clubroom.

“Nothin’ Brown, you going to get your face slammed into that wall, if this ain’t damn important!”

“I swear!” Nothin’ says, panting. “I swear. I run the whole way.”

“Well!”

“She want see you, Gobe. She want see you.”

“What! Jesus Christ, Nothin’, what the hell you saying! C’mon, man, spit it out!”

“ ‘At’s right! She want see you. She say you come the luncheonette and she talk to you. She say you come there, Gobe. She say it all right cause her old man gone be out.”

“When!”

“Now, Gobe. Right now. That why I run so fast. She say you come between five ‘n six and her old man be outa there, ‘n it five after five right now.”

But Junior Brown does not have to say it another time, for like a shot Gonzalves has taken the steps by threes. Nothin’ stands before the door of the clubroom of the Kings of the Earth, where he has never been before. Inside must be wonderful things; guns and swords, secrets — all clubs have secrets — and things. Junior Brown cannot be sure exactly what kind of things, but gang things, wonderful things. He listens to hear a noise from inside; but he hears none. Eyes had told him up at Dirty Mac’s that Gober was at the clubhouse. “Alone!” he had emphasized, “and he wants to stay alone! So you am-scray, Nothin’ Brown. Leave Gobe be.” Nothin’ knew enough not to tell Eyes why he had to see Gobe. Nothin’ was wised up to that deal. Now Nothin’ stood on the threshold of the clubhouse of the Kings of The Earth. And Gober had not locked the door behind him. Very cautiously; very stealthily, Nothin’ Brown sneaked to the door, opened it, and entered.

At first he did not see the yellow couch.

“What took you?” a voice said behind him where the couch was, “What was it took you so long? Hurry on over, hon. Your baby’s waiting — all ready.”

Then Nothin’ Brown did see the yellow couch; and lying spread upon it Babe Limon, stark naked.

God-dog! Did he run!

U
SUALLY
, nothing much is doing in Dan Roan’s office until after ten, eleven at night. Then there is always more doing in the streets. Most of the time Dan spends working in the streets, but around seven or eight, a couple nights a week, he works at his desk, reads — maybe plays ping-pong with a kid hanging around there. His office is one of these store-front places in the early hundreds, over near Third Avenue. Besides the small, square cubicle containing his desk, bookcases, and phone, there is the larger outer area where the boys can come in any time to lounge, watch T.V., listen to the phonograph, play table tennis. It is a shabby room, the furniture either contributed to the Youth Board, or bought out of the limited funds available.

Now the place is deserted save for Dan. He sits at his desk, glancing over a postcard he received this morning from a former classmate in graduate school — Ernst Leites — a Fulbright Scholar studying in Paris. A slight sardonic grin tips Dan’s lips as he reads:

Dan flinches suddenly at the sound of the voice behind him.

“Hi, dad, what gives?”

Turning, he sees Flat Head Pontiac leaning against the doorway, shuffling a deck of cards in his massive and well manicured square hands. Pontiac is sweet and cool; sweet in his charcoal gray trousers, tight-cut and clean; his white linen jacket; and the gleaming collar of his pink shirt set off by his narrow knitted black tie.

Dan shoves the postcard under the blotter and swings his chair around to face Pontiac. He says, “You look happy, Pontiac.”

“Groovy, dad, real groovy.”

“Is that so?”

“I’m on the fleece, dad.”

“I didn’t know you touched the stuff, Pontiac.”

“Maybe you ought to make a study of the Jungles and put the Kings down. Jungles got more color to them.”

“Maybe so. Sit down?” Dan watches as Pontiac eases himself down into a plastic-covered armchair beside his desk. Pontiac looks around the small office, still shuffling the cards, his long legs sprawled in front of him. “This is a real gas, dad, this place. This is Endsville, dad.”

“It’s okay, I guess.”

“Not much business tonight.”

“Not much.”

“Too bad. Jungles would keep you busy. Kings are dead heads.”

“You just on a social call, Pontiac, or you have something on your mind?”

“Social, dad. Just getting to know my neighbors better. A kind of good-neighbor policy.”

“Fine.”

“Groovy, huh? Never been in this place. Always wondered about it. Used to think,
man
— those Kings must be big men to have their own special social worker assigned just to study them. Big men! I used to think that. Maybe my opinion’s changing. I don’t know. What do you think, dad?”

Dan lit a cigarette and offered one from his pack to Pontiac, who took it, inspected it, handed it back. “I only smoke filter tips, dad. Don’t want to get hung with the cancer kick.”

“Horse doesn’t improve your health either, does it?”

“It doesn’t give you cancer, dad.”

“Dan’s the name, Pontiac.”

“So maybe I miss my old man or something, dad. You know I saw him last time when I was pushing nine. Haven’t seen him since.”

“Um?”

“He’s a four-time loser, cooling his heels up in a place called Pontiac. That’s why I took the name Pontiac. Sounds like home. You know the song? Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like prison.” For the first time Flat Head smiles; then guffaws. Dan sits smoking, letting him play it his way. “Yeah,” Pontiac continues, “he was a real creep, my old man. You psychologists got a better word for creep, dad?”

“I’m not a psychologist.”

“No? I heard you was Sigmun Frewd.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay, dad. Don’t let it get you. Yep, you definitely bring back memories of my old man. You know something, dad? You know one day he come home, see — we had a nice home — see? Well, on this particular day I’m stretched out in front of a roaring fire, just sort of relaxing like, see? An the old man, he just come in the door and beat me silly. He was a very sick man.”

“Sounds sick.”

“Just because we didn’t have no fireplace. He gets all burned up. That’s sick, isn’t it, dad?” Pontiac’s sides shake with laughter at his own joke. Dan smiles grimly.

“My mother though, dad, she’s a gas. Real groovy, my mother.”

“Ummm.”

“You see she was always a couple years older than the old man. She was smarter than him, probably because she was older. You know, my mother, dad — we’re celebrating her ninety-ninth birthday come Sunday. Imagine that, dad?”

“Congratulate her for me, Pontiac.”

“Oh, she won’t be in on the celebration, dad. She come down with a cure there wasn’t any disease for when she was twenty-nine. Went just like that — ” Pontiac snaps his fingers, all the time grinning and guffawing.

“Okay, Pontiac,” Dan says, “your routine’s real groovy. Now, what’s the point?”

Pontiac sits solemnly for a few moments, shuffling the deck of cards in his hand, looking at them through his narrowed eyes. Finally, still with his eyes on the cards, he says, “The Jungles feelings are hurt, dad. The Jungles wonder why no worker been assigned to study them, dad.”

“I gathered that, Pontiac. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Well, that’s what we figure. We figure there’s not too much you can do, dad. We know you’re not the boss man or anything. So we’re going to sort of put things in motion on our own, dad.”

“Look, Pontiac, for your information, the Youth Board is sending you a worker in a month or so.”

“Not soon enough, dad. Not nearly soon enough. We got a rep to consider. Of course, we’re not as big a gang as the Kings, but we’re tougher. We’re going to prove that, dad.”

Dan puts his cigarette out in the glass ashtray on his desk, and leans forward. “You mean this rumble coming up is all because the Jungles don’t have a worker assigned them?”

“That’s one gripe, dad. All the tough gangs got workers assigned them.”

“And if you got a worker assigned you tomorrow, then you’d call the rumble off?”

“Dad, you’re real crazy the way you come on. Dad, you don’t get the picture. It’s too late now, dad. We put the seeds down for a rumble and they’re going to grow. We don’t chicken, dad. There’s not a Jungle punk in the lot of us. We got plans. You should know our plans. We got ways and means of breaking up that whole pack of Kings; maybe even sort of absorbing them, dad.”

Dan sighs and leans back in his chair; he picks a pencil off his desk and plays with it as he talks. “So what you’re here to say is that there’s no way to stop this rumble?”

“You’re in Correctsville now, dad.”

“That’s your whole point, Pontiac?”

“That’s my whole point, dad.”

“Just to say you’re going to rumble, come hell or high water.”

“Just to tell you, dad, that it’s too late. Maybe you pass the information on to those ass-high boss men of yours and it won’t come off like this again.”

“And what are you going to gain from it, Pontiac? A shiv in your side? A rock in your head? A vacation up the river?” Dan tosses the pencil down disgustedly. “What are you going to gain from it, you and the other Jungles?”

Pontiac stands up. He tosses the cards into the air in a straight row; catches them with his hand, and snaps them into his palm smartly. He grins at Dan Roan. “I’m going to be promoted, dad. From pupil to teacher. That’s groovy, dad, you dig me? I’m going to teach a bunch of joe colleges a course in juvenile delinquency; its causes and cures, dad. Isn’t that a gas?”

“Then Babe Limon really hasn’t very much to do with it?”

“She is the means by which I reach my end, dad.”

“And just suppose, Pontiac, that Gonzalves no longer goes with Babe?”

“Come off it, dad. You know the rules of the game. Technically she is his chick. Everybody knows that, dad. After I make my play for his broad, a rumble is inevitable. You like that big word?”

“It’s swell, Pontiac.”

“I thought you’d flip over a big word like that. Look, dad, the votes are in, see. It’s in the cards. If the Kings chicken, it’ll be the chicken of all chickens.”

Pontiac lingers momentarily, flipping the cards from one hand to another, leaning in the doorway.

“Good-by, Pontiac,” Dan Roan says emphatically.

Pontiac starts to go. He pauses halfway out, turns, and smirks at Roan. “You know, dad, you’re a
sick
man! I could tell the way you just said good-by. Yes sir, dad. You’re a very sick man.”

Pontiac quits the scene then; sweet and cool as when he arrived.

• • •

Coming down 106th Street at eight o’clock that Monday evening are Tea and Eyes. Before they notice the car which is parked up in front of the Youth Board, they talk. Because it is a sticky night, neither wears the black leather jacket of the Kings, but instead, white T-shirts, stamped with crowns; garrison belts with two small gold crowns affixed to them; levis that hang just below their bellies and turn in tight, hugging their ankles; soiled sneaks and sweat socks. This is the informal street attire the Kings favor. Eyes, taller than Tea, looks down at him as they walk; and the two pass lazy tenants of the dilapidated apartment buildings lounging on their doorsteps, fanning themselves, reading, staring, chatting, and kids playing stick ball in the streets; girls in groups, their faces made up freshly, their eyes interested in Eyes and Tea, their laughter high-pitched, their Spanish, fast and soft, like a buzzing sound. And there’s a cop or two pacing with his night stick swinging, and storekeepers in white aprons standing out front to escape the flies inside.

Eyes is saying, “… so I smelled around in Jungle turf solo, Tea, because you didn’t show at Dirty Mac’s, and Gober said we should case them.”

“I was trying to score. I still got a lead where I might yet. I think the heat’s on Ace. If so, I feel a foul-up coming on. Man, like, I can’t goof on the hopheads that depend on me for their snow. I gotta deliver — and take care of me too.”

“You sure are a cat who really loves to boot up, Tea.”

Tea shakes his head and rubs his arms where there are marks of popping for joy. “Yeah, yeah,” he agrees;
“si, si.
So what’d you find out from Jungle land?”

“They’re going to play the rumble by the rules. They don’t figure we’ll jap them; they figure on Saturday night. Pontiac plans to tell Gobe, after he’s come on with Babe, ‘If you don’t like it, show up with your punks Saturday night at Park, in the lot there.’ “

“Who told you this, Eyes?”

“A very reliable source. You know their lookout, Silly Charlie?”

“Sure, he’s a stupido. A moron.”

“Yeah. Well, he doesn’t like the fact they make him lookout, see? And don’t let him in on all their doings, see? So I told him he could be a scout for us, and we’d take him into the Kings as a War Counselor if he proved himself.”

“That’s good tactics, Eyes. Gotta hand it to you.”

“He says Pontiac figures Gober would never jap, because Gober is so straight, you know? Like, Gobe don’t steal or get with the rackets much, so he figures Gober ain’t the kind would jap. Besides, Pontiac wants a big show, see? And if you jap, he figures, you can’t always have a big show, see? You know, you surprise a bunch and there might not be much but a — ”

“Hey, amigo — lookit! Lookit up ahead!”

Eyes and Tea stop dead in their tracks and stare at the shiny new Buick convertible parked in front of Dan’s offices. It is powder-blue, and hanging from the radio aerial is a mink tail with a red ribbon around it. It is sleek and full of chromium; and behind the wheel is Flat Head Pontiac, smoking a cigarette out of an extra-long powder-blue holder. He has the radio turned on and up, and he is just sitting there like that, looking very much like a very big man, a smart money man.

“Idioto!” Tea says. “Ratero!”

Eyes says, “Jesus Christ!”

The pair continue on their way now, walking toward the car, making only inane conversation between them, and cursing, and watching Flat Head.

“I hear that ain’t even his car,” Eyes says. “I got the news was his brother’s car, on loan while he does time up in Auburn.”

“His whole family’s in the clink, I hear,” Perrez says. “Where else you gonna keep ‘em, make society safe?” “Could bury ‘em,” Tea says.

As they come alongside the Buick, neither Tea nor Eyes looks at Flat Head. They pause before the Youth Board. “You going to see Detached Dan, ah?” “Yeah. You coming?”

“Naw, I gotta lead on Wintersville. Gotta case it for snow. I’m really rifty about why Ace never showed.” “Then I see you around tomorrow. School.” “Yeah.”

Just as they salute and start away from one another, Pontiac halts them, by yelling at Tea, “Hey, Perrez. What’s a matter, Perrez? You look pale or something.”

Eyes and Tea give him a cool look.

“You didn’t make your connection with Ace today, did you, dad? That why you’re caving in in the middle?”

Tea shouts,
“Besame el culo!”

“Kiss mine!” Pontiac laughs back.

Tea shouts the vilest of Spanish oaths. Cool as he is, Pontiac steams when he hears it. His face flames in anger. “You’re going to see, dad. Wait until you want a flake from the tall white horse, dad. I dig spic talk, dad.”

“Ah, besame el culo!”
Tea repeats again.

Pontiac turns his key in the ignition, the cigarette holder between his teeth, clamped by angry jaws. He guns his motor. He backs his Buick into the truck parked behind him, lets it ram it, and then gives it the gas, swings the wheel furiously, and takes off.