The Wanderers (15 page)

"Jeez, what a skank," Joey said defensively.

"I seen you wit' worse."

Perry and Joey anxiously watched Eugene. Eugene and his girl were talking and laughing like old friends. The music started again. Eugene and his girl started dancing.

"Fuckin' Eugene."

"That guy mus' brush his teeth with Spanish fly."

The next song was slow. In a controlled panic, the stag guys pushed through the crowd asking first the nice-looking girls, then anything without a dick to dance. Joey got a girl right off. Perry got shot down straight across the dance floor. The song was half over, and Perry started to sweat. He checked Joey out—Joey was dancing close but he wasn't grinding. Eugene was dancing like he should be wearing a Trojan. A girl stood next to Perry smiling into space her hands clasped in front of her. She had orange hair and the biggest tits Perry had ever seen. He tapped her on the arm.

"'Scuse me." She didn't notice him. He felt like everybody was watching. "'Scuse me." She smiled dumbly. "You wanna dance?"

She put her arms around his neck and socked right in there. Yes. She was grinding. And her tits were like two fireballs pressed into his chest. He moved his leg between hers for two beats, then she moved her leg between his for two beats. Joey saw him. And Perry was in heaven. Too soon it was over. They separated.

"Ah, you go to Columbus?"

"Yeah, do you?"

"Nah. Tully."

"Do you know a guy named Steve?"

And so it went. Three dances. Then another slow one. They forgot the two-beat grinding rhythm in a delirium of new-found passion and stood in one spot frantically banging crotches. Perry's boner. He wanted to split for the John to jerk off, but he was afraid she would find someone else before he came back. He smiled at her as they waited, sweating, for the next dance. She looked up at him.

"Are you Jewish?"

Cave-in. "Ah ... no." He noticed the Jewish star around her neck—heavy enough to kill—and kill it did.

"Uh, 'scuse me, I wanna see where my friends went." She smiled. Perry stood there drowning.

"She wasn't your type," said Joey, "she was nice."

Eugene and his girl were making out against the wall. Richie and Buddy were irrelevant—they had dates.

The band was a piece of shit. Little Domenick and the Sharktones. Three guineas and two niggers—couldn't harmonize for squat. The drummer used only one drumstick because he'd lost the other one. Eugene and his pickup won the twist contest with Buddy and Despie taking second—a Wanderer sweep. Richie and C smooched it up in a corner. Joey and Perry stood in the middle of the dance floor not even bothering to ask anybody to dance. Two shattered egos, having been shot down a total of twenty-six times. Perry cupped his hand in front of his face, checking his breath. Joey pretended to look at the back of his shirt and checked his armpits.

***

Hang On Sloopy and Cookie took the el to Pelham Parkway. They finished the Tango on the train. When they got off they were staggering drunk. They saw two girls walking to Bronx House and followed them, making sucking noises and discreet inquiries into their sex lives, family heritage, and toilet training. The girls walked briskly through the storm, the Baldies stumbling six feet behind like two retarded snow demons. During the last block, the girls broke into a genteel trot for the safety of bright lights and a crowd.

"You wanna go in?" Sloopy proposed.

"Nah." Cookie was self-conscious about bis baldness. "Too many Jews."

"Bullshit. C'mon."

"Nah."

"Lissen, man."

"I don' wanna. You deaf?"

"Fuck ya!" Sloopy marched in, leaving Cookie outside in the snow.

The minute he got inside people cleared a path. He was older, he was drunk, and his skinhead and Baldie jacket were more obvious than an American flag. Oblivious to everyone around him, he started dancing alone like a monkey, hunching his shoulders, eyes closed, head bouncing in tune to the music. Joey nudged Perry. "Look who's here."

"Oh Christ, what an asshole."

Sloopy fell down, scrambled to his feet, and continued dancing.

"Who let
him
in?" Eugene asked, his arm around his new girl friend. Joey and Perry stared at this new addition to Eugene's long list of conquests. "Oh yeah. Fred, this is the guys. This is Fred."

"My real name's Frederika but everybody calls me Fred," she giggled.

Joey and Perry nodded dumbly.

Eugene stared at the ceiling. She'd said that five times in the last two hours. Perry noticed she wore one of those Jewish thermometers they taped in doorways. He wondered if Eugene had told her he was a rabbi. Eugene looked more guinea than the Pope.

"Hey, Eugene," Perry started, "you gonna mass tomorrow?"

"What?"

"You gonna mass? You know, church? Mass?"

"What're you talkin' about?" Eugene hadn't been to church in four years.

"I think all good Catholics..." Perry didn't finish because a girl screamed right behind him. Wheeling around he saw Hang on Sloopy grabbing the orange-haired girl and trying to kiss her. She was screaming, trying to give him the straight arm like in the movies. They were surrounded by guys who were afraid of Sloopy, so instead of breaking it up, they just hovered like butterflies around the couple. Without thinking about the pros and cons, Perry busted through the crowd. Grabbing Sloopy by the waist, he yanked him clear off the ground. Sloopy landed on his feet, staring at Perry in amazement. Perry was a big boy. Sloopy was scrawny, mainly window dressing.

He clenched his teeth, shaking his finger at Perry. "I'm gonna
kill
you, motherfucker!" Perry knew he could take Sloopy, but he was afraid of the Baldies. Whatever happened, he couldn't go to Fordham Road anymore.

Sloopy backed through the door, shaking his finger and cursing Perry. Perry felt nauseous with fear. The orange-haired girl ran crying with her friends into the bathroom. Joey came over to comfort Perry. "Now you did it." He shook his head. "Now you
really
did it."

Sloopy staggered through the snow, tears of rage freezing on his cheeks. He was so cold his back hurt. He tripped over a curbstone and split his Up. "SHHTTTT!"—one long cry of agony bouncing off rows of sleeping buildings. "FUUUUUUUUCK!"—roaring in harmony with the elevated train directly overhead.

"CUUUUUUUNNT!" The blood stained the front of his jacket.

Somewhere a window opened. "Shut the hell up, ya bastad!"

Sloopy rose to his knees. "Kiss my ass, ya cocksucka!" He laughed like a cretin.

Another window opened, and the yellow light made the five-story tenement look like a winking giant. "Shaddap, ya moron."

"Suck man cock!" Sloopy got up, took his prick out, and pissed straight up in the air. When he was finished he spread his legs, jiggling it like a rubber cigar. A pot came crashing down through the shroud of plummeting snow.

"Who threw that?"

"Get outta here or I'll call a cop."

Sloopy yelled something back, but bis voice was drowned out by another train.

An egg hit him on the head, splattering over his face and jacket. Sloopy bellowed at the buildings. He roared tears and in his fury started picking up rocks and smashing windows. He ran down Allerton Avenue smashing store windows. He ran down to the park and smashed car windows. Howling like a berserk Indian he ran through snowdrifts and over benches until he came to Webster Avenue. Once out of the park he sat exhausted on a bench near a huge church. Gasping, he listened to his heart pound like a car needing a tune-up. His tongue hung out like a dog's, and he started scraping egg off his head with his fingernails. His jacket was ruined. Totally ruined.

***

Bobby Cuddahy was a Ducky Boy. And like most Ducky Boys he was Irish, under five-foot-six, and crazy. Webster Avenue was Ducky Boy country. They roamed their turf like midget dinosaurs, brainless and fearless. They respected only nuns and priests. They would fight anyone and everyone and they'd never lose. They'd never lose because there were hundreds of them. Hundreds of stunted Irish madmen with crucifixes tattooed on their arms and chests, lunatics with that terrifying slightly cross-eyed stare of the one-dimensional, semihuman urban punk killing machine. And they were nasty—used tire chains car aerials, and the "Webster Avenue walking stick," baseball bat studded with razors.

Their ladies' auxiliary was even meaner. They would attack single guys and sometimes groups of guys. They used car aerials and in a single singing flash could pare a cheek so skin would be hanging down to the neck.

Periodically, the entire Ducky Boy nation would descend and destroy a neighborhood. Neither the Ducky Boys nor their victims knew why or when. It was more a natural calamity, an unthinking massive impulse, a quirk in gland secretions than anything thought out or even mentioned. One moment they would be sitting on stoops quietly drinking beer; an how-later, a housing project, a high school, or a playground would look like London after the blitz—complete with sirens and moaning wounded. And they'd be back on the stoops sipping beer, like they'd never left. They didn't wink, laugh, or bitch.

They ignored injuries. They'd sit there and bleed. Or they'd amble to confession covered with blood. They'd confess things like using the Lord's name in vain or farting in public. And Father O'Brian would also ignore the blood, listen to their droning, and give them a few Hail Marys to do. If he was in a particularly good or bad mood, he would march the confessor to the tiny concrete courtyard in back and administer ten lashes with a car aerial. No one complained. They could barely communicate verbally. Conversation was unknown. The only thing they did along with the rest of the human race was go to church. They'd go six, seven, sometimes ten times a week They loved "Faddah O'Brian," an ex-Fordham University football star, who unlike most poverty area priests didn't give a shit what the youth did as long as they came to church He didn't believe in baseball leagues or social work. He believed in confession and physical punishment. Father O'Brian was one of the original Ducky Boys of the early fifties who made good.

Father O'Brian watched Bobby Cuddahy get up and leave. The priest was sitting on a hard stool below the altar facing the eight Ducky Boys sitting in the front pew. Like every Saturday night only the Ducky Boys showed up for midnight mass. O'Brian faced them like a class and they stared blankly back at him. They'd sit like that for an hour. O'Brian would sigh, swallow phlegm, and crack his knuckles. The Ducky Boys would pick their noses, study their fingernails, and yawn. Sometimes the Ducky Boys would leave, sometimes O'Brian would leave. That Saturday Bobby left first, and fifteen minutes later the rest of them followed. O'Brian watched them get up wordlessly without a signal and silently file out of the church. O'Brian checked his watch. Twelve-thirty. He wondered where they were going He wished he was still a Ducky Boy. He wondered if they were going home or going to kill somebody. He wished he was still a football star. He wished he was drunk.

Hang on Sloopy came out of the shadows as Bobby Cuddahy rounded the corner by the church.

"Hey, yo! C'mere!" Sloopy said. Bobby stared up at the mixture of blood, egg, pimples, and Technicolor teeth that made up Sloopy's blitzkrieged skull.

"Yo! C'mere!" Sloopy was about six inches taller than Bobby. He was still drunk and he didn't realize he was on Webster Avenue. "C'mere. I ain't gonna hurtcha." A curious halfsmile crossed Bobby's thick lips as he approached Sloopy. "Where you comin' from?" Sloopy snake-eyed him. Bobby didn't answer, just stared with that slight smile. "You go to high school, hah?" Sloopy's breath came out in clouds. His teeth chattered. The snow had stopped but the midnight chill was deadly. "You go to high school?" Bobby said nothing, stepping back out of the narrow circle of light cast by the old iron streetlight. Sloopy grabbed his arm. "Kid, you wanna blowjob? C'mon I ain't drunk, I'm serious. You wanna blowjob? We can go inta the park."

Sloopy squeezed Bobby's arm. Bobby's nostrils flared. Something shiny flashed in front of Sloopy's face, and he felt a cool mustache of blood creep into his mouth. He screamed, letting go of Bobby's arm. In a flash he realized where he was, who Bobby probably was.

Bobby's eyes shone. He raised his old-fashioned pearl-handled razor. "Blowjob?"

Sloopy ran down Webster Avenue. Behind him sprinted six Ducky Boys lazily swinging walking sticks. Sloopy ran faster; they continued at the same pace. They made a noise approaching laughter and shouted, "Blowjob?" Sloopy ran on cartoon legs. When he turned around again there were ten. They materialized from doorways, from the park, from the sidewalk. Sloopy came up to a high mesh fence and jumped on it, the force of the leap making the mesh wobble back and forth. He scrambled higher, each step up yielding a noise like clinking chain armor. When he got to the top, about fifteen feet up, and straddled the narrow metal bar, there were twenty Ducky Boys right under him, swishing the air with walking sticks, wandering around, snapping off car aerials, not seeming to pay him any attention. Every once in a while one of them would look up and say, "Blowjob?"

Sloopy was beyond panic. This was the end. The knotted ends of wire sticking up over the bar he straddled cut into his groin. Across the park he saw sporadic lights from apartments in high-rise buildings. He wished, by magic, he could vanish into the blackness and reappear by one of those lights—on a couch, a chair, a bed—safe. He looked down. To his left the Ducky Boys still milled around, ignoring him. To his right, a flat sheet of snow disappeared into darkness. He could barely make out the gallows-like silhouette of a basketball pole and backboard. A playground. He was on the fence of a playground. Staring hard across the playground he made out another fence. Beyond that, rumbles and speeding lights—the parkway. A chance that brought back the panic. If he could climb down into the playground, cut across the darkness, climb the other fence, run to the parkway. He looked to his left again. No one was even looking up at him. Do it. He lifted his leg. It was numb from staying in one position and from the cold. As he started to scramble down the inside of the fence, a Ducky Boy leaped onto the mesh, hands and feet clutching the wire, and thrust a walking stick at his face. Terrified, Sloopy let go and fell headfirst fifteen feet. His forehead struck the ice and concrete. His eyes rolled up under his eyelids.