A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) (11 page)
The tears came to my eyes as I spilled the dirt over her. Do you say prayers for dogs? I didn’t know, but I said a prayer for her. It passed my lips soundlessly in the night and at last the earth lay evenly on her. I smoothed the ground with my feet. The moon had risen and its cold winter light cast eerie shadows in the yard. She liked the cold weather; it made her brisk and frisky and want to run. I hoped she would like the weather wherever she was.
I don’t know how long I stood there, the shovel in my hand, but I was chilled through when I turned away. The tears were streaming silently down my cheeks.
I went back into the house and without thinking went up to my room. I put the shovel against the wall and went over to where my bed used to be. By the bright moonlight that came in the window I could see the markings on the floor where Rexie used to sleep under my bed. I lay on the floor and cried. The bitter salt of my tears rolled into my mouth as my body responded to my grief. At last I was spent and rose to my feet dully. Without looking back, I left the room and walked down the stairs and out of the house.
Fat Freddie Conlon was coming home as I walked out of the
driveway
. He looked at me in surprise. “Danny! What are you doing here?” he asked. “Did you leave something behind?”
I pushed past him without answering, leaving him standing in the
street behind me. Yes, I had left something behind all right. More than I had expected.
The clock in the window of the jewellery store near the corner of Clinton and Delancey Streets read nine o’clock when I turned down the block. I was moving as if in a dream. People were pressing around me and there was noise and confusion, but I didn’t see it or hear it. My body seemed to be throbbing with a dull aching pain and the side of my face was sore where I had been kicked.
I was on the steps of the house when suddenly I seemed to waken. I could hear the noises of the traffic, the voices of people. I looked around me as if I were seeing it for the first time. The light from the candy store on the corner seemed to beckon to me. A group of boys were still hanging out in front of it. I went down the steps again and started for the corner.
There I stopped and looked at the gang in front of the store. He wasn’t there. After watching them quietly for a few minutes, I was just about to turn away when I saw him. He was inside the store, sitting at the counter drinking an egg cream.
I walked slowly into the store. His back was toward the door and he didn’t see me. I tapped him gently on the shoulder. He turned. A look of recognition spread quickly on his face.
“Outside.” I gestured with my hand.
He looked at me, then at the other boys in the store. I didn’t give him any time to think. My hand prodded at his shoulder again, this time roughly. “Outside,” I said, my voice harsh and flat.
He pushed his drink away from him and stood up. “Save this for me, Moishe,” he said to the counterman in a cocky voice, “I’ll be back for it in a minute.”
I picked up the glass and emptied it in the sink behind the counter. Its chocolate flowed into the dirty water. “Forget it, Moishe,” I said in the same flat voice. “He won’t be drinking this.”
I turned my back on him and walked out into the street. His footsteps sounded behind me on the concrete floor. At the kerb I stopped and turned. “Put up your hands,” I said almost casually.
He looked at me for a moment, then stepped very close. His lips bared over his teeth in a half snarl. “Tough, eh? Think yer tough, huh?” he sneered.
That crazy feeling I’d had all day began to explode in me. “Yeah, tough enou——” I started to answer when I suddenly remembered.
I moved back quickly, but not quickly enough. His knee caught me in the groin and his fist lashed across my face. I fell forward on my hands and knees. I saw his shoe coming at my face and tried to roll
away from it. The toe of his boot caught me behind the ear and I went flat on the ground.
The noise of the traffic seemed to be coming from far away, there was strange dizziness in my head. I shook myself and got to my knees again.
He was laughing at me. “Tough, huh?”
I grabbed a hydrant near me and pulled myself up. I shook my head again. It was clearing rapidly and I could taste the warm blood running down inside my mouth.
He was still laughing, still taunting. “Think yer tough now, Shmuk?”
I watched him cautiously, still clinging to the hydrant. Let him keep talking; he was doing me a favour. He was giving me time. I could feel the strength coming back into my legs.
He came toward me again, slowly, deliberately, taking his time. He was full of confidence.
Still stalling for time, I moved around the hydrant. All I needed was a few more seconds. For once I was glad Sam had taught me to gauge my strength and how to save it.
He stopped and sneered again. “Yella, too?” he taunted. “Jus’ like yer dog!’
I let go of the hydrant. I was all right now. I stepped in front of it.
He came at me swinging, leading with his right. He didn’t know it, but that was his second mistake, and par for the course. His first was in giving me time.
My left brushed aside his right lead, my right hand tore into his belly just below his belt. He started to bend forward, his hands going down, and I caught him with a left uppercut on the side of the jaw. He half turned sideways and started to go down. I hit him eight times on the face and jaw before he hit the sidewalk.
There he sprawled at my feet. I bent over him. He must have been as strong as a horse, he was trying to get up. I kicked him in the side of his head and he went out flat.
For a few seconds I watched him; then I turned and started away. For the first time I became aware of the crowd of people that had gathered around us. I sensed rather than heard a sudden movement behind me.
Quickly I whirled. He was on his feet after me. Something shining in his upheld hand slashed down at me as I jumped aside. I could feel it ripping down my sleeve. Switch knife. He carried past me with the momentum of his swing and I rabbit-punched the back of his head.
The crowd parted in front of him as he staggered against the side
of the building. I followed him quickly. I couldn’t give him a chance to turn around.
I gripped his knife hand and pulled it back toward me. He screamed. I pulled again and the knife fell clattering to the sidewalk. I kicked it away and turned him around. His face was contorted with pain and fear.
A wild violence was running through me, a savage joy. For the first time in my life I liked fighting. My first punch flattened his nose. He screamed again.
I laughed wildly and hit him in the mouth. When he gasped for breath I could see a hole where some teeth had been. I was happy. I had never been so happy before. Blood was running down the side of his face. A red haze settled over my eyes and I was laughing and hitting him and yelling for joy.
Then I felt hands tearing at me, pulling me away from him. I fought them. There was sudden sharp pain at the back of my head and I felt curiously weak. I let him go and he fell forward to the ground at my feet. Arms pinioned my hands to my side. I looked up to see who was holding me. As the red haze began to lift, I saw the dark-blue uniforms of the cops.
They took me to the station-house just off Williamsburg Bridge and threw me into a cell. A man came in to see me, a doctor, who put some adhesive tape on my arm where I had been cut. Then he left me.
I sat there almost four hours before anyone came near my cell again. I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep. My eyes were heavy, but they wouldn’t close. All I could do was think. All I could see in front of my eyes was a little reddish-brown puppy trying to scramble up the side of a pit after me.
The cell door clanked. A cop stood there. “Your father’s come to get you, son,” he said gently.
I stood and picked up my coat from the bunk behind me. It was almost as if I had done this many times before, but I was past all feeling. Slowly I followed him down the grey-painted corridor and up the stairs. He opened a door and motioned me through it. My father and a man were sitting there in the room.
Papa jumped to his feet. “I’ve come to take you home, Danny,” he said.
I stared at him dully for a moment. Home? To that place? It would never be home to me.
The man beside my father stood up and looked at me. “Lucky for you, kid, we found out what happened. That boy you beat up
will be in the hospital for weeks. But he’s no good and maybe you did us a favour. Go along now and don’t give us any more trouble.”
I didn’t answer him, but started out the door. My father’s voice behind me was thanking the man for what he had done. I walked through the station-house and out into the street, where my father caught up to me and fell into step beside me. At Delancey Street we waited for the traffic light.
“Your mother and I were frightened, Danny. We didn’t know what happened to you.” His voice was husky, but he was trying to speak easily. His usually ruddy face was pale in the glow of the street lamp. It seemed to me that I had heard those words before. Another time, another place. I didn’t answer.
The light changed and we crossed the street. On the other side he tried to speak again. “Why did you do it, Danny?” There was anguish on his face. Something had happened that he did not understand. “It’s not like you to do something like that.”
Maybe it wasn’t before, but it was different now. I was in a different world and maybe I was a different Danny Fisher. I didn’t know. Again I didn’t answer.
He tried to speak once more and then fell silent. We walked two blocks and turned up our street. At the corner we hesitated for a moment and caught each other’s eye and then looked quickly away.
Up the block the street was empty now and dirty and filled with garbage left by the day. Our footsteps clattered on the sidewalk.
It had begun to snow. I pulled the collar of my jacket up around my neck. From the corner of my eye I could see my father walking beside me. It was then I first caught a glimpse of what would be: my father and I were strangers as we walked silently through the night.
BOOK TWO
P
APA
looked at his watch as we came out of the dark hallway on to the street. He thrust it quickly back in his pocket and glanced at me awkwardly. “Quarter to three,” he muttered. “I gotta hurry or I’ll be late.”
I looked at him without interest. Five months of living down here and it seemed as if years had separated us. Since the very first day we moved, nothing had gone right. Now Papa had a job, in a drugstore on Delancey Street. Twenty-three a week.
“Walking my way?” Papa asked.
I nodded silently. Might as well. I was going to meet the gang on the corner near the five-and-dime. My step quickened to match his as he hurried off.
The memory of those five months were fresh in our minds. The days I came home from school and found him sitting in the kitchen of the dingy apartment, staring at the walls, an expression of
hopelessness
and despair painted on his face. I had tried to feel sorry for him but I couldn’t. He had brought it on himself. If only he had been a little smarter.
Still there was something about his expression the night he had come home a few days ago and told us about the job he had just been offered. Twenty-three bucks a week for a registered pharmacist with twenty-five years’ experience. It wasn’t right. It was barely
eating-dough
.
We turned the corner at Delancey and were in front of the store where Papa worked. He stopped and looked at me hesitantly. I could see he wanted to ask me what I was going to do the rest of the
afternoon
, but he was too proud. I didn’t offer to tell him.
“Tell Mamma I’ll be home by two-thirty,” he said at last.
I nodded.
He opened his mouth as if to say more, then closed it as if he had changed his mind. Instead he shook his head slightly and, squaring his
shoulders, walked into the store. The clock in the window showed exactly three as he walked in.
I had some time to kill, so I leaned against the store window and watched the people walking by. A voice from inside the store came to my ears and I turned and looked in.
A man was coming out from behind the drug counter, taking off his jacket. “There you are, Fisher,” he was saying in that quiet kind of voice that carries twenty yards in front and not one inch behind. “Am I glad to get out of here! The boss has got his tail up; he’s been giving me hell all day.”
Papa took the jacket from him silently and looked up at the wall clock to check his time. An expression of relief crossed his face.
A small, pompous man with an irascible face came out of the back room. He peered up through the store, his thick glasses shining in the light. “That you, Fisher?” he queried in a thin, irritating voice. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Snap it up,” he continued, “I got a couple Rx’s waiting for you.”
There was a sound of fear and meekness in Papa’s voice. I had never heard it before. “Yes, Mr. Gold,” Papa answered. He hurried toward the back of the store. His hat and jacket were already in his hand as he turned toward the little man with an apologetic look. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting, Mr. Gold.”
The little man looked at him contemptuously. “You could get here early, you know. It wouldn’t hurt.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gold,” Papa said abjectly.
“Well, don’t stand there like a fool, Fisher,” Mr. Gold said, thrusting two slips of paper into Papa’s hand. “Put on your jacket and get to work!” He turned his back and walked away.
Papa stared after him for a moment, with no expression on his face at all. Then he looked at the prescriptions in his hand and walked slowly to the prescription counter. He put his hat and jacket on a chair and slipped into the store jacket quickly.
He placed the prescriptions on the counter, smoothed them with his hand, and studied them again for a moment. Then he took a bottle and a measure from the shelf. I could almost hear the thin, rattling sound the bottle made against the glass measure as he poured some liquid into it with trembling hands.
Suddenly he looked up and saw me staring at him. Embarrassment came into his eyes and a quick shame crossed his face. I let my eyes go vague and blank as if I hadn’t seen him and turned away casually.
The gang was already waiting when I got there. Quietly we moved
away from the corner. We didn’t want to drag any eyes. I didn’t waste any time with them.
“You know what to do,” I said in a low careful voice. “We drift in easylike. Two at a time. Quiet. When we’re all in there, I’ll give the signal an’ Spit and Solly will start the fight in the back of the store. When everybody’s lookin’ that way, the rest of you get busy. An’ remember these things. Don’t grab no junk; only stuff we can sell. Don’t hang around to see how the other guy made out. As soon as you made your snatch, blow. Don’t wait for nothin’. Get out fast! You all know where we’re meetin’ afterwards. Kill an hour before you show up.”
I looked around at them. Their faces were serious. “Understan’?” There weren’t any replies. I grinned. “Okay, then. I’m goin’ in now. Keep an eye on me an’ don’t do nothin’ till I give the signal.”
The gang scattered and I walked away quickly. I turned the corner and went into the five-and-dime. It was crowded with people. Good, it would make things easier.
I pushed my way through the aisle along the soda fountain to the end of the counter. There I climbed up on a seat and waited for the girl to come up and serve me. In the mirror behind the counter I could see Spit and Solly walking past me.
The counter girl stood in front of me. “What’ll you have?”
“What you got, baby?” I countered. I was stalling for time. Things weren’t ready yet.
She looked at me tiredly, pushing some stray hairs back from her forehead. “It’s all on the signs,” she replied in a flat, bored voice. “You can read.”
I pretended to read the signs pasted on the mirror behind her. Two of the other boys were coming in. “A double-dip chocolate ice-cream soda,” I said. “The dime special.”
The girl walked down the counter and tossed the soda together with a careless, expert skill. So much syrup, so much carbonated water, then the ice-cream—two scoops, with the top of the scoop toward the customer so that he couldn’t see it was really half empty—then some more carbonated water. I looked around the store.
The boys were all set up and ready to go. I waited for the soda, wishing she would snap it up. All at once I wanted to get this over with. It had been a bright idea when we were talking about it, but now I was jumpy. She came back down the aisle and put the soda on the counter in front of me.
I pushed a dime toward her and she rang it on the register. The boys were watching me from the corners of their eyes. I put the straws into
the soda, stirred it, and began to suck on the straws. The taste of the soda was sweet in my mouth when the noise of the fight broke out behind me.
I was grinning to myself as I turned toward the sound. Solly was just falling into a display filled with canned goods. The crash roared through the store and people began running toward it. The boys were working smoothly. The counter girl spoke and I jumped, startled. She was looking past me curiously.
“What’s goin’ on there?”
“I dunno. A fight, I guess.”
“Looks like a set-up to me,” she said.
I felt my pulse quicken nervously. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Those boys ain’t hurtin’ each other,” she said flatly. “I bet they got friends cleanin’ out the joint. It’s an old gimmick.” Her eyes were roving through the store. “Look over there, see?”
She had spotted one of the boys stuffing his pockets at the cosmetic counter. Just then the boy turned and looked at me. He began to smile, but I shook my head quickly and he started out the door.
I turned back to the counter. The girl was staring at me, her eyes wide. “You’re in on it,” she whispered.
I reached across the counter quickly and grabbed her arm, smiling coldly. “What’re you gonna do about it?” I asked quietly.
She stared at me for a moment, then smiled back. “Nothin’,” she answered. “It’s none of my business. Barbara Hutton can afford it.”
I let go of her hand and looked back at the store. All the boys had gone and Solly was just being pushed out of the door by a couple of men. Relief came over my face. Still smiling, I turned back to the soda and took a spoonful of ice-cream. I could taste the chocolate melting there.
“You make a mean soda,” I said.
She smiled again. She had thick black hair, and her eyes were a soft dark brown. Her lipstick was a startling red against her pale thin face. “You’re pretty smooth, all right,” she whispered.
I felt a glow spread through me. I could see I had scored with this kid. “What’s your name, baby?” I asked.
“Nellie,” she answered.
“Mine’s Danny,” I told her. “Live in the neighbourhood?”
“Over on Eldridge Street.”
“What time you get through?”
“Nine o’clock, when the store closes,” she replied.
I stood up proudly. I was very sure of myself. “I’ll pick you up on the corner,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get some chinks.” I didn’t wait for
her answer, but sauntered down to where the men were busy putting up the display that Solly had fallen into. I watched them for a few minutes, then walked back to the counter.
The girl was still watching me. I grinned at her. “See you at nine, Nellie.”
She flashed me a quick smile. “I’ll be on the corner, Danny.”
I half waved my hand to her and walked toward the entrance. I could feel her eyes following me. As I passed the drug counter, I picked up a comb and idly ran it through my hair. Then I went out the door, dropping the comb into my shirt pocket.