Corky's Brother (5 page)

We nodded and mumbled that we did, but for some reason none of us could accept what he'd told us as the whole truth. Nobody said so right away. The next night, though, Izzie and Corky started in again with their descriptions of what he was probably doing to her. Even I joined in now—not making up stories the way they did, but just pointing out things, such as the fact that it didn't get dark until late and that our neighborhood was pretty well-lit and safe. I could see why he might not want to take her walking late at night—but what was unsafe about going down Linden Boulevard or into Prospect Park on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon?

The first two weeks in June came and went and we realized that Joe's wife hadn't been seen for six full months. We held a meeting in Marty's house and talked about going to the police, but we were afraid to. Not only for what they would do to us if we were sending them on a wild-goose chase, but because they might tell Joe about us. We didn't want to cross him. Kenny suggested going upstairs to Joe's apartment and saying his mother needed to borrow something—but after he'd suggested the idea, he chickened out. What if Joe came to the door—

“There's only one thing to do, then,” I said after a while. “We've got to climb the fire escape and get a look around.”

Everybody admitted that I was right, and since it was my suggestion, I was elected to do the climbing. The next afternoon, after school, I changed into my sneakers and met the other guys in the courtyard behind Joe's building. Kenny pointed out which window was Joe's. We stationed guys at the entrance and exit to the cellar, inside the cellar, and on the street in front of Joe's building, forming a relay team to send a message in case there was any trouble. We didn't see Joe's delivery cart around anywhere, and it wasn't six o'clock yet, when he'd be finished with his deliveries, so we figured it was a safe time.

The guys who weren't on the relay squad waited below the fire escape. A few of them sat on the ground reading comic books and sports magazines. Izzie and Kenny played catch with a rubber Spalding and the other guys stood in a line, making believe they were playing Chinese handball against the side of the building, but keeping their eyes on the windows and doors that led to the other buildings.

“If anybody sees us,” I said, “start making a lot of noise or fighting or something so they don't look up at me.”

Then I started up the fire escape. My heart was pounding. “Are you okay?” Izzie asked when I got to the second story. I nodded. At the next level I almost knocked over somebody's potted plant. When I got to the fourth story, I looked down and had to stop for a few seconds, I was so scared. The guys looked small and funny from where I was. “Go on, go on,” they called, whispering. “Go on—”

My fingertips were cold and I almost lost my grip as I started up toward Joe's floor.
I was doing it
. That was the sentence in my head, and it kept me going. I think even then I knew that for months—maybe years afterwards—the guys would always talk about the time I'd climbed the fire escape to spy on Joe. I looked down, then walked carefully up the ladder to the fifth-floor fire escape. I shot my head up quickly, then lowered it. The shade was up and I could see straight into the window. Keeping my head down and moving on my hands and knees, I managed to get to the side of the window. I rested for a few seconds in a deep knee-bend position. There were a few old bricks and flowerpots on either side of the window and on the ledge, and there was a stack of old magazines. I looked down through the spaces between the iron rails and I saw that the guys were all standing there, watching me. I waved frantically at them, and they got the hint and started playing again. I took a deep breath and crawled in front of the window, slowly raising my head.

To my relief, Joe's wife was sitting there, her back to me, watching television. She was eating a banana. She looked very peaceful, I remember, just sitting and eating, not knowing I was spying on her. She seemed to have gotten much fatter, but somehow I felt she was happy, I don't know why. I watched her for a while, then looked around the room. The furniture was the same as it had been, except for the walls. All of Joe's drawings were gone and in their place were neatly framed pictures of flowers and landscapes.

The room looked nice. On the orange couch at the side there was a pile of clothes, and next to it an ironing board had been set up. I don't know how long I watched Joe's wife sitting there—though I do remember that after she'd finished the banana she immediately picked up an apple and started eating it. All I know is I was suddenly aware that the guys were trying to get my attention. I looked down, but the crisscross of the rails blocked my view and I couldn't hear what they were whispering. I motioned to them to wait a minute. Then I got onto my hands and knees and started to crawl toward the staircase. Just before I passed the window, though, I wanted to get one last look—to assure myself again that nothing was wrong. I turned my neck around to look in through the comer of the window—and Joe's huge head was glaring at me through the glass. I screamed like a madman and grabbed onto the side of the fire escape. I could see myself falling the five flights. The guys in the yard were yelling. Joe's face got redder and redder, his chest bigger. I heard my heart going, loud, and I didn't know what to do.

“Hey, what are you doing up there?” some woman called, I didn't know from where. “Get down offa that fire escape.” Other windows opened. I looked at Joe. Neither of us could move. We just stared at each other. His eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of his head. His mouth turned but I didn't hear anything. There was more silver in his hair. Finally I let go of the side of the fire escape and scrambled across it, skinning my knees, but making it to the ladder before Joe got the window open.

I don't know how I did it—I don't remember going down at all—but the next thing I knew, I was at the first landing. “Jump!” somebody yelled, and I jumped the last eight or ten feet, not bothering with the hanging ladder. The guys were all standing in the archway that led to the cellar and the street. Something crashed near me. Some of the guys ran. I looked up and saw that Joe was out on the fire escape now.

I stood up and walked into the middle of the courtyard to get a full view of him.

“Are you crazy!?” one of the guys yelled. “Get under cover! He's out of his mind—!”

Joe stood at the rail now, hanging over, bellowing out words that I couldn't understand and hurling down bricks and flowerpots and fruit—whatever he could get his hands on. None of them came close to hitting me. Windows were open all over—the women were yelling across the courtyard that Joe was going crazy, the guys were yelling at me to make a run for it, but I just stood there, transfixed. Finally I cupped my hands over my mouth and yelled, “I'm sorry, Joe—I'm
sorry!”
as loud as I could. I don't think he understood me. He just kept shouting and throwing things. He never even tried to follow me down the fire escape. The things he shouted were blurred and thick, and I couldn't make them out. It even seemed to me that he was crying. I felt so bad and wanted so much to be able to do something, but I knew there was nothing to do, and after a few minutes I shouted again that I was sorry and then I ran through the cellar and out into the street, looking for my friends.

The Application

I
T
HAD
STARTED
RAINING
again, a thin mist-like drizzle through which the workers passed as they filed slowly into the Indiana Auto Works, droning conversation to each other. In the few minutes when most of the men on the first shift were washing up and the second shift had not yet started, the usual fierce noises had subsided to a dull rumble.

Josh walked to his locker and changed from his neatly pressed black double-breasted suit to his factory clothes. When he arrived at his three-cornered stool, next to his welding press, the paper was already there:

So that the fight between Emmett and Josh that everybody had been anticipating for three years finally came. It had been brewing slowly, simmering, aging, until the moment came when both were ready to make their immense stores of inner hatred visible, tangible, explosive to themselves and to each other. It was only waiting for an excuse befitting the amount of hatred in each. Just any excuse wouldn't do. Over the years the workers had often speculated about the fight—how it would come, when it would come, who would win, what implements of battle would be used. Around the toilets, in the cafeteria, the Union Hall, in local taverns, at the Coke and coffee machines, and even in the foremen's offices and toilets and dining room, the speculation went on, coming up every now and then as a topic of conversation, a natural remark passed as a part of the day's work—another item to relieve the monotony of the work, to vary tried, tested, and tired conversation pieces as the half-assembled trucks moved down the lines.

Emmett had been open about his hatred. “He makes my blood boil,” he would say. “Some day I'm gonna break his ass. The way he never says nothin' but looks at ya like he'd spit on ya and now wanted ya to beg his pardon fer bein' in the way o' his spit—black bastard. I'd give a month's pay for a chance to bloody that skin o'his…”

Josh never said anything. But in his mind, behind his blood-veined eyes, simmering beneath his haughty, dignified, proud demeanor, he hated Emmett every bit as much as Emmett hated him.

Not even the few friends he had knew the depths of his hatred. But day after day, sitting on his three-cornered stool, pressing the buttons that made the top half of the press meet the bottom and weld the two door sections together, he had his eye on Emmett. And he vowed to himself that if he ever killed a white man it would be Emmett Rumple. Because in Em-mett's eyes he saw that look of savage disgust he remembered from his childhood, from the white men of Bullett and Troy (Alabama) when a nigger “forgot his place,” that supercilious hateful glare, mixed with, arising from, fear of niggers like Josh who wouldn't stay in their place but assumed the walk and talk and attitude of any man.

He wondered now. Exactly when was it that he had made his vow? When he was already on the bus heading north? When he was working in the garage? When he'd left school? When he was twelve years old and his father had strapped him for talking back to a white man? He didn't remember and it didn't matter. It might have been at fourteen and it might have been at forty. Or it might have been none of those times. That was more likely. It was more likely that the vow had never been made but had simply been there; the vow that some day he would pick out a single white man, would
select
him. Many nights, walking the streets of the Indiana city, he'd seen men who almost qualified. He'd hated them all, and had almost hated those who'd smiled at him or nodded to him more than those who ignored him.

Long nights alone in his apartment, the thought had kept him alive. In fact, he knew that if the thought hadn't been there during those nights, hadn't sustained itself through wonderful dreams of revenge and blood, he'd have been in many fights long before this. Fortunately, though, he'd noticed the way Emmett had looked at him one day. Not indifference in that look. It was the look, the face, that could fill the dreams; and daytime, thinking of Emmett, of spreading his white man's blood on the coal-black floor of the factory, Josh had developed the twitching habit of touching his side pocket to feel the knife, of laughing. Aloud. He knew many of the men mocked the habit and the laugh, but he didn't care. He'd have the last laugh.