On the Waterfront (23 page)

The moment Pop heard Katie’s footsteps in the hall he grabbed the knob from the inside and threw the door open. He was boiling mad. Having Katie up at Marygrove had been a strong rope to hang onto. It justified the back-breaking work, the anxious mornings in the shape-up and all he had to take from Big Mac.

“C’mere,” he said to Katie. With his suspenders hanging down over his pants and his upper body stooped in its dirty white long underwear shirt, he led the way from the kitchen to the cell-like bedroom. On the bed, next to Toesie, Katie’s alley cat, was a small suitcase that had been packed in furious, careless haste.

“Ye’re all packed,” Pop yelled. “An’ here’s yer bus ticket. Ye’re on yer way back to the nuns.”

“Pop, I’m not ready to go back yet,” Katie said.

Pop cursed privately, under his breath. “Katie, for years we pushed dimes ’n quarters into a cookie jar t’ keep ya up there with the Sisters, to keep ya from things like I just seen out the winder. Me own daughter arm-in-arm with Terry Malloy.”

“He was only trying to help me, Pop. There was—there was a little trouble down at the church …”

“I could of told ya,” Pop said.

“… and he was nice enough to help me get home.”

“Nice enough!” Pop shouted. “Jesus, Mary ’n Joseph. You know who this Terry is?”

“Not exactly. Who is he, Pop?”

“Who is he?” Pop mimicked in an angry falsetto. “The kid brother of Charley the Gent, that’s all he is. Now go ahead, ask me who Charley the Gent is. Johnny Friendly’s right-hand man and a butcher in a camel’s hair coat.”

Katie was stroking the ugly, heavily pregnant Toesie. “Are you trying to tell me Terry is too?”

“I aint tryin’ t’ tell ya he’s Little Lord what’s-his-name.”

“Sure, he tried to act tough,” Katie said, “the way they all do. But there’s something in his eyes …”

“Somethin’ in his eyes.” Pop’s voice could be heard all the way down through the four floors of the tenement. “Hold your hats, brother, here we go again. You think he’s one of those cases you’re always draggin’ in and feelin’ sorry for. Like that litter of kittens. The only one she wants to keep has six toes and it’s cockeyed to boot. Look at her—the lazy bum!”

“This place would be crawling with rats if it wasn’t for Toesie,” Katie insisted.

Pop, in quieter moments, had boasted about the hunting abilities of their odd-looking pet, but he was in no mood to admit anything. “If only I knew what it was in ya that keeps pullin’ you toward these goddamn misfits,” he went on shouting.

“Pop,” Katie tried to interrupt.

“Six-toed, cross-eyed cats! Well, don’t think this Terry Malloy is any six-toed, cockeyed pussycat. He’s a bum. Johnny Friendly owned him when he was a fighter. And when Johnny rings the bell he still goes into action and don’t ya forget it.”

“He asked if he could see me again,” Katie said, drifting along some channel of her own.

Pop’s anger propelled him forward, a taut, livid figure of wrath. “See this arm …” He stuck his thin, stringy-muscled arm in front of Katie’s face. The pitch of his anger made both his voice and the arm tremble. “This arm’s two inches longer ’n the other one. That’s years of workin’ and sweatin’, liftin’ and swingin’ a hook. And every time I heisted a box or a coffee bag I says to meself—this is fer Katie, so she c’n be a teacher or somethin’ decent …”

Katie put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Pop …” But he pushed her away. “I promised your Mom, Katie.”

The sudden anger had swept through him and passed by, leaving an old, tired man full of aches and pains and disappointments. Katie thought of all the mornings he had pulled on the same worn work clothes and gone down to the pier, in frost-bite weather and suffocating summer heat, accepting the lowly hatch work when the hiring boss favorites copped all the rest. Lifting machine tools, bananas, hemp and bags of coffee, cocoa, cement … Lifting and waiting and borrowing and cutting down his smokes for Katie’s education money. Katie could see how the years had worked their erosion in his face, in his fleshless chest and his stooped shoulders.

She put her arms around him, kissed his stubble cheek and said softly, “Pop, don’t think I’m not grateful for all you’ve done, for giving me the chance and keeping me away from all this.” She kissed him again, but hurriedly, as if to prepare him for what she had to say.

She backed away from him, for she knew his anger was quick and violent, especially when it was tied up with his ideas of right and wrong. She had felt the sting of it on her cheek when she was younger. “I’m going to stay, Pop. I’m going to keep on trying to find out who’s guilty for Joey …”

“You aint gonna go to no more of them crazy meetin’s,” Pop raised his voice. “That Father Barry oughta have his head examined, encouragin’ ya, stirrin’ everybody up like that. For what—so Moose, or Jimmy or somebody else winds up in the river with a pair of cement shoes?”

He was shouting now, temper-shaken, frustrated, sorrow-racked. Afraid that tears might squeeze into his eyes, he stomped to the icebox for a beer.

“Be a good goil, Katie,” he pleaded. “On the memory of yer mother, God rest her soul, lissen to yer old man. I know as much about the waterfront as anybody. And I know it’s something you don’t fool with—if ya wanna keep alive.”

W
HEN THE MEETING IN
the church basement broke up, Runty sprinted down River Street to the Longdock. In a few minutes, Moose and Jimmy, having chosen a more circuitous route, joined him. None of the customers around the bar had been to the meeting, but it was a live subject in their minds. Each one had decided for himself how he was going to handle it. Old man Gallagher, for instance, who knew and liked Moose, barely grunted a greeting and edged away so as not to be drawn into conversation. He lived in the same house with the Doyles and liked them; his big-hearted wife Mary would do anything for them; all the more reason for Marty Gallagher to be careful.

Runty, Moose and Jimmy felt themselves a three-cornered island connected to the others by underwater reefs of experience and even sympathy, but separated by channels of caution and self-preservation. As the three downed their drinks and talked among themselves they knew they were being both respected and resented, as anyone with the courage to stand up is respected on the waterfront, and as anyone who dares to tamper with the delicate status-quo is bitterly resented.

The meeting of a dozen longshoremen with an agitating priest was a tiny pebble tossed into the river. But even a pebble can set up an ever-widening circle of ripples. Already it was all over Bohegan that Father Barry’s pitch had been to urge the boys to co-operate with the Crime Commission as the only way to blast the corrupted union and clear the way for a new organization. In a few hours the name of Father Barry had become a dirty word to the waterfront bosses, and even the ordinary dock wallopers were wondering out loud why he had to go pushing his nose into their business.

Truck Amon and Gilly Connors, after beating their pavement chorus outside the church, had watched for Runty to come out and had tailed him to the Longdock. They took up a strategic position at the short side-section of the bar where they could keep an eye on Runty, Moose and Jimmy. On any ordinary night they were to be found over at Friendly’s. The musclemen never entered the Longdock unless they were tracking trouble. Runty caught them out of the corner of his eye and went right on making his jokes and laughing his chesty laugh.

He was rebel Irish to his toenails, and the blood quickened in him, made him feel desperately, gaily alive at the prospect of a good scrap.

Moose was different. He had a family and his hulking, over-two-hundred-pound physique concealed an unexpectedly nervous temperament. The needle of his courage swung the full arc from hurricane to doldrum. He had nights when, impulsively lion-hearted, he would get up and tell off his persecutors in loud heroics, be beaten down the stairs into the street, rise and try to fight his way back into the hall again. Next morning all the nerve would be out of him and he’d be riding the rim of fear, bruised and muscle-sore and terrorized by the possible consequences of his resistance. Nor would his wife, Fran, shore up his spine by bawling him out for messing himself in “politics” when there were five mouths to feed, and healthy eaters all of them, no matter who ran the waterfront. Then big Moose McGonigle would be a good boy until the next time something set him off again.

Jimmy Sharkey was still another kind of fish. He was straight, tough, quiet, direct. He never went looking for fights like Runty and never exploded into them like Moose. He simply took them as they came, as hard, unavoidable facts of life in the harbor.

The two groups, goons and rebels, were like actors on a stage, laughing and drinking and small-talking and once in a while casually glancing over at one another, while the rest of the drinkers made up the audience, watching intently though pretending not to. The trio from the church meeting had three or four more drinks, kidding with Shorty, the night bartender as if this was just another good-time evening. Then they said their good nights and strolled out. Truck and Gilly finished their drinks, left a fat tip on the bar and followed them out.

Outside, Runty, Moose and Jimmy started down River Street toward their homes. Runty walked along with them although he lived in a furnished room only a few doors down from the Longdock. The footsteps of Truck and Gilly were behind them. The night was cold and Runty blew a little cloud of his own warmer air into it. Suddenly, in his best bravadeero manner, he stopped and turned around and waited for the well-named Truck and his rangy side-man to approach.

“Whad d’ya say, fellers?” Truck said, the bristle skin around his eyes crinkling into a slit-eyed smile. His tone sounded like a bass gargle but was meant to be friendly.

“Hiya, Truck, Gilly,” the three muttered.

“Lissen, we’d like t’ talk t’ ya a minute,” Truck said.

“Ye’re talkin’ to us right now, aintcha?” Runty said.

“Wise-guy,” Gilly growled.

Runty was midget-sized alongside Gilly’s six-foot-one. Gilly glared at his dwarf antagonist and then appealed to Truck: “What’s with this little bassard? Always has to be such a wise-guy.”

“What do you want to give us so much trouble for?” Truck asked earnestly. Any defiance of power disturbed him. “No kiddin’, you better straighten yourself out, Runty.” Truck was almost pleading with him. “You’d be working three-four days if you could only learn to keep that big yap of yours shut.”

“It’s the fault o’ the nuns,” said Runty, laughing.

“Nuns?” Truck grumbled. “What the hell’ve nuns got to do with it?”

“When I was knee-high to a bar-stool,” Runty went on, enjoying this skating on thin ice, “the nuns used t’ say t’ me in school, ‘Runty, we can’t understand a word you’re sayin’. Ye’re talkin’ through yer teeth like you got a mouth full o’ fish-cakes. When ye’re talkin’, Runty me lad,’ they said, ‘talk with yer mouth wide open.’ So tha’s all I’m tryin’ t’ do—folly the advice o’ the nuns an’ talk with me mouth wide open.”

Runty winked at his friends and the three of them laughed.

“You better not talk so the boss c’n hear you,” Truck said, a little confused by Runty’s eloquence. “You know how Johnny is.”

Moose looked at Runty with a warning in his eyes. There were Fran and the kids home waiting for money he’d have to borrow off the shylocks. Johnny’s shylocks. What was he doing here sticking himself out in front of all the rest of them anyway? What was he doing letting the priest get him all worked up? Why buck for the bottom of the river? Would the rest of the boys appreciate it when he took the knocks for them? Did they appreciate it when Andy Collins got himself killed or Peter Panto over in Brooklyn? Why couldn’t he stay away from Runty Nolan, who was so brave he was crazy? Forget about Joey Doyle. Listen to Fran and make his peace like so many other longshoremen who had no love for Johnny Friendly or Charley the Gent, but who went along to keep food on the table. There was no law said you had to like Johnny, but it sure made life simpler if he liked you.

“C’mon, Runty, le’s go home,” Moose said.

“Good idea,” Truck said. “Go home ’n
stay
home. Next time that priest calls his little prayer-meetin’, you stay home, unless you wanna eat cobblestones.”

“Definitely,” Gilly seconded.

Runty hated Gilly. He could almost taste it and enjoy how much he hated the whole stinking crew of them right up to Big Tom McGovern.

“Y’know why ye’re so tall,” Runty shouted up at his towering opponent. “Your mother was constipated the night she had you and you come out like …”

Gilly took a vicious swipe at Runty. Runty was hard to hit because he was so short. He had become a rough-and-tumble expert at fighting men who stood over him a good foot or more and outweighed him a hundred pounds. He timed a short, mean uppercut to Gilly’s groin and Gilly reeled back, holding himself.

“You dumb harp, you must like gettin’ hit in the head,” Truck said, moving in heavily, feet apart to set himself to punch with his two hundred and fifty pounds swinging with him. Runty raised his knee and caught Truck. Truck bellowed like a wounded bull and made a club of his fist and swung it at Runty’s head, From somewhere behind them reinforcements arrived. Sonny and Barney came into it in time to clobber Jimmy and Moose. “Run!” Runty yelled when he saw them out-numbered.

They took off down the street and around the corner. Runty lost track of the rest of them as he ran like a prairie dog into the park. In his youth he had been a sprinter for his neighborhood club and at fifty-five he could still run with his knees high. But Gilly was known for his accuracy with a blackjack used as a hurling piece and he was on his target this time again. Runty stumbled and skidded forward. After a few seconds, like a dead-game boxer, he started rolling over and crawling to one knee. But before he could gain his feet Sonny and Gilly were on him, holding him for the slow-moving Truck who went about his business with methodical brutality, working Runty over with those club-like fists while Sonny and Gilly held him in position.

Runty let out a yowl like an embattled tom-cat and kicked at Truck’s shins and tried to bite Truck’s hand slippery with Runty’s blood. Then the little man was down on the ground, fighting a wounded animal’s way, grabbing and biting at legs, kicking, scratching, while the heels of the Friendly boys came smashing down on him. “Wise-guy … son-of-a-bitch …”