The Warriors (16 page)

He had another thought. What if he had
not
gone up the same way they had come down on the train? What if he had gone up some spur that went on forever, or branched off into many tunnels? He would be lost forever, alone in this blackness. Except, of course, for the rats. They were here. He could hear them
rustling. And except for that . . . whatever
it
was, moving, always moving when he moved, stopping when he stopped.

He passed a blue light. Everything looked blue. What did blue lights mean? He knew what the red and green and yellow lights meant. It made his hand-skin look strange, old, covered with blue sweat. He wondered how it would be if people had blue skin. Like being dead, he thought, like not really being people. So maybe he was dead and had turned blue. The tunnel kept curving—maybe he had come back on his track and was walking in circles. Was that possible? He darted a few steps. It winded him, too quickly. Was there some kind of gas here; some kind of secret, unnoticeable poison gas? It smelled funny. The noises were louder. Or maybe the rats had an army down here.
Here
was
their
turf. Maybe they fought in gangs too? Maybe they were massing to come down on him and swarm over him. There was nowhere to hide.

He heard the sound of sobbing. The crying voices multiplied from everywhere till this whole world was filled with a chorus of sobs. Who was crying here? He stood still. And he cried now, and screamed, and waited for
IT
to take him. And if he shrieked, it would finally be over, because
IT
would know just where he was and come to get him quickly. He began to run and slipped and fell and got up and kept trotting the way he had been going. But the sound of sobbing and crying followed him with all the footsteps, mocking, filling the tunnel with weeping and crazy laughing at the same time, and the sound he couldn't help making betrayed him to the world as a coward and a weakling. What would Papa Arnold have done? What would Hector have done? He was a man, he told himself. A man! Hadn't he rumbled and held his own? Hadn't he been drunk? Hadn't he stayed cool? Hadn't he stolen and not been caught? Didn't he ball that bitch . . . too? Hadn't he wasted his man? Was that the kind of man that little-babied so easy? Didn't he learn long ago that to
tear-up is to get laughed at, even by your own mother, or that motherfucker, Norbert, his mother's boy friend. It was better in this world to dry your tears before they left your eyes, and stifle the howl-sounds from the earliest on, because it was only going to get you put down.

But
IT
didn't come as easy, or get anything over with. There was no one here—nothing at all. Only the blackness, and he was part of it, and he was more alone than he had ever been. And now he became like a little baby, making howl sounds that he had never permitted himself to make. He heard himself and promised that as soon as he caught his breath, he was just going to start laughing at himself for the kind of Dominator he hadn't been. Just suppose that the others had gotten away too, and were behind him, jiving him, sneaking up on him, to watch him, to test him, the way they had tested him when he had first come into the gang. That stopped him. He turned and looked back. He called out, “All right, I know you're there. Come on out. I was only joking.”

He caught his breath and listened. He heard nothing but rustling and rumbling and humming. He saw nothing but a few big water bugs scuttle in and out of the circles of light.

He was muttering, “Fuck them, fuck it, fuck them.” And he got madder and madder and he was yelling with rage at what that mothering Family was doing to him, and he tore off his hat and threw it down and stamped on it, and the pin, and he went over to the wall and finger-wrote in the crusted dirt, “Hinton D. shits on the MF Dominators from the Father and the Mother on down, and on all his brothers.”

And he thought, all right, he would just pack himself into a niche and wait. He didn't know what he'd wait for, but he would wait. He would curl up and put his head on his knees and wait till the cops, or his Family, or
IT
came and got him. He would do just that because he hadn't been in a quiet spot for days and days now.

But what he had just done terrified him, because it so completely cut him off, and though they couldn't see it, it was as though the Family would somehow
know
what he had done, and he would be out, but good. He got his hat, straightened it, fidgeted with the pin, taking it off, brushing it, pinning it back on the hat, straightening the damaged war cigarette. He wiped off what he had written with his sleeve and took out the Magic Marker and wrote, instead, the Name of his Family, to show that there was no place in this city, even this tunnel, where his Family was not or had not been. The act comforted him and he went on.

And after a while, he came around another curve and there was the station. He slowed and sneaked up on it, looking to see that there were no cops on the platform and that no one spotted him. He looked around and when the few people that were there didn't notice, he climbed the ladder at the platform's end and was on the I 11th Street station.

Now it was only a matter of getting to the Times Square stop and changing for the Coney Island train. He would meet the Family there. If they had gotten away, that's where they would meet him. He was sure.

He jittered. He was ashamed of himself. He had gone through something he didn't understand. He was glad no one had seen him, but he felt as if it was there, marked on his face, on his clothes for everyone to know what he was. He asked himself, how many of the others could do what he had done—walk through that darkness alone? The answer didn't comfort him.

After a while the downtown train came and he got on. In the clear train light, mirrored in a window he saw that his clothes were water stained, plaster smeared, spotted all over with chalk. He didn't sit yet. The back of his right sock was rubbed away and the flesh of his ankle was abraded raw. The shoe was still held together by the narrow band of frayed leather and he had to keep his toe cramped when he walked. One of his palms was scraped bloody and they were both dirty. He took off his hat. Water had
mottled it. The shine of his insignia was dulled, and his cigarette was partly split and tobacco sprayed out over the band. He remembered what Lunkface had done to him. He wondered if Lunkface was enough of a man to walk through that darkness. Of course: Lunkface would come through, but strong. The best thing in life was to be like Lunkface.

Hinton sat down. He leaned back, unhappy, uncomfortable, not daring to sleep in case he missed his stop.

Dewey and The Junior escaped the transit cop by bounding down the stairs. They swung off right into a short underpass smelling of piss. They pounded a few steps and cut off to the right again, bouncing up the staircase to the platform. They heard Hector, Bimbo, Lunkface chasing behind them. Across the tracks, on the downtown side, the train had pulled out; they could see the transit-chaser wheezing after them in a slow, clumsy pursuit, and it was a miracle they weren't seen.

A train was waiting on the uptown local tracks. They whipped in and sat down away from the doors, backs to the window, half-scrunched down to avoid being seen, not looking behind them. The Junior pulled out his comic book and stared at it, trying to look like he'd been reading it for hours. He didn't see a thing;
he couldn't read past one panel which showed a three-colored Greek warrior with his raised spear, ready to shove it into a skin-wearing enemy's throat. He kept expecting to see, out of the edges of his eyes, the great black flat feet of the headbusters coming to close in on him. Dewey pursed his lips like whistling, but didn't make a sound; he sat there, blowing air. He tried to keep his hands classroom-folded, but they fidgeted, picking at him, finding dirty places to brush off and creases to straighten out, refolding and beginning again. Where were the others; probably in one of the other train cars.

The doors closed. The train started. They didn't know where they were going, they didn't even dare to look up at the destination sign. The thing was to do nothing for a little while; surely Hector would show. The train came to the next station, 103rd Street. The Junior wondered if they had come downtown this way. They hit 110th Street. The Junior became confused. The next stop was 116th and The Junior knew they were going a different way. But the third stop was 125th Street. They knew they had passed this station on the way down, but this was out in the open, high up on a trestle. They were confused now. They got up and went from car to car, looking for the others and found that now they were alone. Had the fuzz captured the others? They sat down and tried to figure out what they should do.

Dewey thought it would be a good idea to ride on for a while and then to go back. After all, he told The Junior, they knew—to change for the Coney Island train at Times Square—the BMT it was, Dewey remembered. They would go on for a while, cross over and double downtown, and meet the others where you get the Coney Island train. They would wait there for a while; if the others didn't show, that could only mean that the busters had really taken them and they would make it home themselves.

They sat for a while. Now they were safe and The Junior
could concentrate. He turned a page, forgot what he had been reading, and looked back to the point where the Greek warrior, muscled and big chested, was putting the spear point to the enemy's gut. The Junior saw himself putting the spear point to the enemy fuzz—a bull in blue armor wearing a steel helmet, with a New York City seal shield, coming down the platform, charging down on them. The Greek heroes were climbing mountains and the enemy was japping for them along a ridge. They had piles of rocks in ready-to-cut nets, logs to roll down, which could be set on fire. The leader of the Greeks, cool in a gold glinting helmet with a wavy-fur crest, was trying to parley with the savage leader of the hill tribesmen, only they wouldn't negotiate. The hero said, well, they had come in peace and they wanted to pass in peace, and they were marching through, and if we have to waste you, we waste. If you come down on us, it's on your head because we wanted peace. Remember.

The Junior looked up and saw that the station was 137th Street. He poked Dewey and wanted to know if they shouldn't change yet. Dewey was no help; he was the older brother and he should have given counsel, but instead he said for The Junior to read his literature while he tried to figure it out. The Junior tried to interest Dewey in the book, but Dewey snorted and his eyes were scornful behind his thick, horn-rimmed glasses. “Spears, Man? Who uses spears? I mean the Powerman, or the Atomman, he blows a man's arms off with them cosmic rays; things like that. Or the Rocketman. They punch a bleedy hole in you, big as a melon. Spears? Man!” and he turned away.

The Junior asked if maybe they shouldn't take out their war cigarettes and take off their pins. Dewey looked indecisive and didn't say anything. They couldn't decide it, but they knew that their situation might be desperate. What if they had been spotted? Finally, Dewey said if they did that and nothing happened . . . Remember the way Hinton had been put down.
Those pins, they were the Family sign and they stood or fell with their signs, and it was the mark that a man belonged—they were one. To take them off was to be like any heartless slob coolie who wouldn't take chances; without important affiliations. And so they must go along with the whole bit. It made them men. The Junior nodded and agreed. It was like those Greeks and their crazy haircrest helmets. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Family wore helmets like that? The Junior agreed, and said he was only talking, for the sake of argument, and that he was patriotic.

The Junior was fourteen, Dewey reasoned, and that meant he wouldn't have much trouble anyway if he got caught; he knew that. True, Dewey was sixteen, but then, what could they really prove? What could they
really
prove? None of them had the slice on them. “What do they know?” Dewey asked. “I mean, man, really, like what do they
know?”

“Nothing,” The Junior said. “I was only talking for the sake of the argument.” They felt a little better for having decided to keep on wearing the insignia. It showed that they were men, and more, men in danger, and they were upholding their rep and that rep consisted, among other things, of having killed their man.

“Look at this,” The Junior showed Dewey.

“Man, that's punk-stuff,” Dewey said, but having nothing better to do, he looked at the comic book with The Junior. They followed the story. The heroes marched through deserts; they marched over mountains; they marched in the rains and in snows. They fought every inch of the way. The artist was good because the silver of the spears almost glinted and the red of the blood stood out very clearly.

Hector and Lunkface vaulted over the turnstiles, one hand on the turn bars. Bimbo scuttled after, going down and under the stile bars. They climbed the stairs, two and three at a time, and were out at 93rd Street and Broadway. Because it was the easiest way to go, they turned right and ran downhill in the direction of the Hudson River, though they didn't know where they were or where they were going. They passed chalked-up signs announcing whose turf this was, but they didn't stop to read. Bimbo looked behind to see if that cop had followed. They were in the clear. They didn't run; to run was to bring down Law. When they had crossed the street, Lunkface took off his handkerchief, threw the war cigarette away, folded the handkerchief
around the insignia and put it into his pocket. Hector wanted to know what he thought he was doing.

“Man, I'm taking it off, that's what I'm doing. I'm not going to be spotted,” Lunkface told Hector.

“You can't do that.”

“You think I'm going around and making a show of myself so I'll get picked up? You think I'm going around and saying, here, Fuzzy John, here is Lunkface, sir. Come and get me and run me in, sir. You think I'm going to wear the sign so that the armies who hold this territory can worry us? No, man, oh no.” His face was angry; Lunkface was working himself up into a temper.