Before My Life Began (15 page)

When, afterwards, Rickey was proven right—when pitchers threw at Jackie's head, when fans called him nigger, when bus drivers made him sit in the backs of buses, when hotels turned him away, when restaurants made him get his meals in paper bags at back doors, when his own teammates wrote petitions to Rickey declaring that they would not play if Jackie did—Jackie kept his part of the bargain: he took all the jeers and taunts and insults, all the hatred and injustice, and he didn't fight back, he didn't show his anger.

Whenever Jackie would come to bat and get a hit, or when he'd make a spectacular play in the field, or steal a base, my heart would swell and inside my head I'd be screaming
Good for you, Jackie! Good for you—
you
show the bastards!
—and I'd have to fight to hold my tears back, to keep my feelings inside.

I imagined Rachel comforting Jackie at night, his head on her bosom, her stroking his hair and forehead, kissing his eyes. I thought of how she must have wept inside herself because she alone knew how helpless Jackie felt—how much strength it took for a man of his courage
not
to fight back. Whenever I went to a game with my father or Abe or my friends, I'd look for Rachel and Jack Junior—their first child, born the previous year—in the box seats behind home plate, where the Dodger wives sat. Mostly, though, I'd keep my eye on Jackie and try to bore my thoughts into his skull so that I could feel exactly what he was feeling. When he knocked the dirt from his spikes with the end of the bat and took a practice swing, eyeing the pitcher, did he think of his childhood then? When a pitcher dusted him off or a catcher called him nigger, did he escape then by letting his mind remember those parts of his childhood that he never spoke about? If you'd had a miserable childhood, could you still love it and dwell on parts of it simply because it was yours?

Once, when I was at a Dodger-Cardinal game, I could tell from the way Jackie stared into the Cardinal dugout that they were riding him. Earlier in the season the Cardinals had threatened to go out on strike rather than play against Jackie, but baseball Commissioner Frick warned that he was willing to wreck the entire National League if he had to, in order to protect Jackie's right to play. The Cardinals called off the strike. Now, with Cardinal runners on first and second, I saw that the players had turned their attention to the Dodger shortstop, Pee Wee Reese. I stared at their mouths. They were calling Reese, a southerner from Louisville, a nigger lover. Jackie kicked at the dirt around first base and pounded his glove. Reese called to the umpire for time-out and motioned to Jackie. They walked toward the pitcher's mound and the Cardinal players came out of the dugout, onto the steps, and razzed Reese some more. Reese looked up, smiled at them, and then, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, he reached over and put his arm around Jackie's shoulder, the way any player would. The jeering stopped. Reese slipped his glove down along his wrist, rubbed up the ball for the pitcher, tossed it back to him. Jackie nodded to Reese, retreated to first base. My fists were clenched as tight as I could get them. I didn't tell anybody what I felt.

Beau Jack liked stories about hunting and fishing, and I'd read through his magazines—
National Geographic
and Argosy and
Field and Stream
and
The Police Gazette
—and we'd talk about the pictures and the stories. Sometimes he talked about hunting and fishing in the sewers of Brooklyn, about the alligators and crocodiles that supposedly lived below the city, set loose there by people who'd kept them as pets in fish tanks. In one of his magazines there was a story about unwanted babies being dropped into sewers or flushed down toilets—black and Puerto Rican children born to unwed thirteen- or fourteen-year-old mothers—and Beau Jack believed the stories. He never smiled when he talked about the wild children who might be growing up in sewer tunnels, roaming the city underground like packs of wolves.

Beau Jack also got the
Daily News
and
Daily Mirror
and I'd read through them, starting at the back with the sports pages. I knew Beau Jack didn't like my uncle, so I wasn't surprised when he gave me the
Mirror
one morning folded open to an article on page three about the gang wars my uncle was supposedly involved in. According to the article there were carloads of hired thugs riding around Brooklyn shooting at one another. The article said that residents in several Brooklyn neighborhoods were afraid to go out into the streets. The Brooklyn District Attorney promised that, using whatever means he had to, he was going to gather enough evidence to end the reign of terror that the rival gangs were inflicting on innocent citizens.

Everything was so quiet in Beau Jack's apartment below ground that it was hard for me to believe that in the world outside our building cars were actually rolling along streets in the broiling heat, full of men with loaded guns. When I imagined the cars cruising up and down half-empty streets and when I saw pictures in my head of Little Benny and Avie Gornik and the others staring out of car windows, tommy guns and .45s on their laps, the pictures came to me without sound—as if I were watching a silent movie, as if I were deaf.

When I went upstairs late that afternoon, my mother was in her bedroom, asleep on top of the bedspread, nothing but a washcloth over her eyes, a yellow towel across the middle of her body. I tiptoed into the kitchen and telephoned Tony Cremona.

“What do you want?” He sounded angry.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just to talk. I've been cooped up in my building for over a week now. I just wanted to talk to somebody.”

“I think you chose the wrong guy. Your uncle finds out, he'll cut your cork off.”

“You listen to the Dodger game today?” I asked. “They really creamed the Phillies, eleven to two. I bet they'll win the pennant easy.”

“Hey listen, Davey, do you know what I really think?”

“What?”

“I think you're crazy, calling me. That's what I think. I mean, I really think you're nuts. Or else—”

“Or else what?”

“Or else you're trying to trap me somehow. I'll see you around, okay?”

“Nobody told me to call you,” I said. “And nobody's listening to me. I just felt like talking to you about the game and things. That's all.”

“Bullshit.”

“You don't have to believe me, but I'm telling the truth, Tony. I still have some of that good paper you gave me, and I've been making a drawing I think you'll really like. Maybe when I get out of this house again and we're back in school, I'll show it to you. Would you like to see it?”

“Jesus Christ, Davey. Are you for real? If my brothers came in now, you know what they'd
do
to me? Do you? They been after me all week about that creep Gornik and if you ever made me visit him, and I don't think they believe me when I tell them no.”

“How about if I write a note and sign it, saying you never did?”

There was a brief silence. Then Tony started laughing and I did too. He told me that I really cracked him up, to say a thing like that, and he left the phone for a few seconds to make sure the doors were all locked so no one could know he was talking to me. After he came back and we kidded around for a while, making jokes about me giving him notes for his father and brothers and Mr. Fasalino to read, and him giving me notes to give to Abe and Little Benny and Spanish Louie and Mr. Rothenberg, we agreed that we were glad all the trouble between them was taking place before school started, because both sides would probably have had guys spying on us there to make sure we never talked to each other. I tried to find out why his brothers were interested in Gornik, but he said he didn't really know, just that he thought Gornik had had some kind of meeting with Mr. Fasalino. I said that my uncle used Gornik as a messenger a lot and that maybe that meant they were close to a peace settlement.

Tony whistled. “Not from what I hear,” he said. “I think they got something on Gornik. I think that old bastard got trouble going both ways.”

“What kind?”

“I don't know. Trouble, you know? Just trouble. Only one question I got for you, though, Davey—”

“Yes?”

“Did he ever get funny with you?”

“What do you mean, funny?”

“I don't know.
Funny!
I think he gets funny with guys and it don't matter to him if they're from my neighborhood or yours, if they're Italian or Jewish or black or white or yellow or purple. From what I hear, whoever gets him first—your uncle or mine—is gonna have a good time with him.”

“Jackie Robinson got three hits today. It puts his average over .300.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I bet he wins Rookie of the Year.”

“So what?”

“Nothing. When you said black, I thought of him.”

“You really dig that spook, don't you?”

“I suppose.”

“Victor says that if they ever catch him with his black dingus in a white muff, they're gonna make sure he ain't got balls left to play ball with.”

“Don't you think he's a good player?”

“He's okay. I mean, he got courage, I guess. Only that don't change that he got black balls and my brothers hating him. They'd love to put him on one of those trucks that never comes back. But listen—you took a chance calling here only you got lucky that I was the only one home, so don't do it again, yeah? Don't be crazy like me and act like a dumb guinea. It'll make sure we both live long enough to see the World Series this year, right?”

“If I can get tickets, would you go with me?”

“The only place I'm going is off the phone. A car just drove up. Hey Davey, you know what?”

“What?”

“I'm glad you called, you nut. They got me pretty locked in too. When this is all over I'll show you the stuff I been making in the cellar, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Don't take no wooden nickels, you hear? No slugs neither. Go fly a kike, okay? Then I'll see you around.”

“I'll see you around,” I said, but he was gone by the time I said it.

When my father came through the door about an hour later, he looked awful. His good eye was bloodshot, his short-sleeved shirt drenched. My mother wandered into the living room, holding a towel around her, at the hip.

“So?” she asked. “Is he dead yet?”

“Who?”

“Abe. Who else?”

“What kind of smart talk is that?” He looked at me, head tilted. “You should have your head examined, talking like that in front of the boy. It makes me very happy I came home, a greeting like that.”

He walked into the bathroom and she followed him.

“Just tell me yes or no, so I can decide if I should go back to sleep or not.”

“Abe ain't dead. They don't kill a guy like that so easy.”

“I'm glad to hear it. So you'll wake me when it's over, right?”

My father came out of the bathroom, his shirt off. My mother was in the bedroom, singing.

“I saw what it said in the newspaper this morning. About the gangs shooting at each other. Is it true?”

He put his eyeglasses on and the lenses fogged up at once. I almost reached out to touch his face, to feel the heat there. He took his glasses off, wiped them with a handkerchief.

“Your mother been letting you go down there all day with the
shvartze
again, right?”

“I guess.”

He grabbed my arm and shook me. “Why all the time with the
shvartze
, huh? Can you answer me that? What's going on down there with you two, huh? What kind of monkey business?”

“Leave me alone,” I said, and yanked my arm away.

“I'll leave you alone when I'm dead,” he said. He grabbed my arm again, and even though his hand was wet I couldn't get out of his grip. He pulled me to the kitchen. “You get in here with me, sonny boy. Abe wants to speak to you.”

He held me with one hand and dialed Abe's number with the other, then handed the phone to me. His voice shifted.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “Watch out for his temper.”

“Davey?”

“Yes, Uncle Abe.”

“All right. I don't have time for anything except the truth, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“The night you saw Sheila, did you notice anything unusual?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“You saw Avie that night, though, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” he said. “That's what I needed to know.”

“Did Avie tell you?”

“I ask the questions, Davey.” Then, “Is your mother all right?”

“The same as always. She's lying down now.”

“I'm glad you told me the truth, that you didn't hesitate.”

“Will Avie get into trouble?”

“None that you made. Listen. You go and take care of your mother now. You be good to her. If things go as planned, you should all be able to leave your building by the end of the week. You tell her I said so.”

He hung up without saying goodbye. I turned and saw my mother standing in the doorway, dressed in a flowered housecoat, smiling at me in a crazy way, singing to herself. Her arms were way up over her head, as if she was going to spin around, as if she was dreaming. I told her what Abe told me to tell her, but she didn't act as if she heard my words. I wondered which way Abe would have hated me more—if I'd done what I'd done and admitted seeing Avie, or if I'd lied. I imagined Abe riding in the back of his black sedan, Little Benny and Spanish Louie on either side of him, the car floating a half-foot above the road, sliding through the heat waves in slow motion, through rainbows of shimmering oil slicks. My mother kept grinning at me, glassy-eyed, and the longer she grinned at me, the more I hated her.

“Listen,” she said, and she leaned her cheek on my father's bare shoulder. “Once you make up your mind you can't be happy, there ain't no reason you can't have a pretty good time, right, Solly? Didn't you teach me that way back?”