The Warriors (18 page)

She took his hand in hers and was rubbing it all over her big
breast and he tried to pull free, but she was strong. She kept telling him what a fine thing it was for a young man like him to have things to do with a fine, mature woman like she was. The other hand was holding him close and stroked hard all up and down his back, from the back of his head down to the bottom of his buttocks, and she squeezed him there, almost painfully, because she was such a big-handed, powerful woman that she held one buttock in one hand like he was a child. And her bag was hooked onto that wrist and was banging him in the back every time she stroked up and down. And she was beginning to thump his body against her, and swaying more and more, hitting at him, and he could feel himself hard and erect and uncomfortable in his tight pants, but he couldn't pull free so he could swing it out and show her
hombre.
But she was so frenzied for him now that she didn't let him go, and it was getting him wild with anger and frustration because he was being choked and was sweating and was covered with her sweat.

Lunkface was right behind her, on her right, and his eyes were small, mean, almost drunk, his face frozen into the lust-grin. Bimbo was on the other side of her and his expression was almost idiotic. Lunkface signaled for Hector to step free. But, Hector thought, angrier and angrier, who was Lunkface to signal
him?
Wasn't there a natural order to these things? Father down to the last son? So he pretended he liked the woman and put his lips to hers and began to move with her motion and feel of his own volition and went up and down and swayed with her. Lunkface came around and put his hand to Hector's shoulder and tried to pull him away. Bimbo was giggling. They were all moving around in the dimness, stumbling on the uneven ground. It wasn't completely dark here because there were too many lights shining all around, from the buildings on the hill, from the shore across the river, from the lamps set along the drive and in the park. She kept muttering little endearments to Hector, and trying
to do something about it and they were just not connecting right. He was repulsed by her because she was pouring out sweat and heat now and the powder stink was stronger and she smelled like a hospital because she was a nurse, to say nothing of the liquor stink on her. Bimbo was sure she must have liquor in her bag and was trying to get to it. She felt the tug and broke loose suddenly and swung at Bimbo; he just ducked under her swing, giggling at the whole thing.

But her motion sent Hector back a little. She turned back to him and said, “Sweetheart, get rid of these Niggers, will you?” and reached. Lunkface, hot and strong now, came on with the heat in him so fierce that nothing could stop him, no loyalty, no sense of precedence, of right and wrong; only the feel of it in her would make it right, and he unzipped his pants and grabbed for her. She tried to shove her way clear, but they were at her, pushing at her, pulling at her clothes, ripping the buttons of her uniform loose, the three of them working as one now—Bimbo to trip her, Hector to help hold her arms, and Lunkface to fuck her—holding, stroking her, trying to maneuver. And she was half-angry, half-willing now, and by this time the need for sex had mingled with the drunkenness and she became a little drunk with the want of it. And so she let herself be pushed over by the boys and fell gently, onto the soft grass, and onto her back, her legs starting to draw up and open, and she giggled a little and said, “Don't tear now, sweetie, don't tear,” and her hands swung and grabbed Lunkface like no other woman had ever grabbed him before, one hand on his jacket lapel, tearing it a little, and the other powerful hand ripped downward on his pants, pulling them down with one astonishing jerk of her hand, tearing the cloth that held the clasp that fastened his pants.

Hector was sitting cross-legged beside them, his penis in his hand, ready to jump on as soon as Lunkface was through. Bimbo was stretched out, prone, his face an inch away from
Lunkface's and the nurse's faces, peering at them. His penis was out, too; he was lying arse-arched, rubbing it in the dew-cool grass. They were on the verge of connecting. And she, her great and powerful legs splayed out, was trying to adjust herself away from her undergarments so that the boy could do it, but he squirmed so much, and she laughed a little, feeling somehow, drunk or not, it might be wrong, but still, the excitement was so strong in her and she wanted it so badly, that she knew she was going to take on the three of them, and then the three of them again, and then—then, it might just be enough.

But Bimbo couldn't leave it alone. He thought maybe she had money and liquor in her bag. His head was propped up on one hand and he reached out with the other hand to slip her pocketbook toward him, pulling the strap along her arm till it was close. Then he unsnapped the bag. She heard the
click.
The sound made her angry and she jerked her hand away quickly and turned toward Bimbo, half on her side, almost spilling Lunkface off, and shouted, “Let that alone, you little thief!”

Lunkface, his moment spoiled, raised himself up on one arm and hit her in the face with the other hand to make her lie still. She turned and her knee smashed up and caught Lunkface in the side and knocked him off, onto the grass. She sat up and her hand shot out and her backhand caught Lunkface, and his head rang as he tumbled back to the grass. She was trying to get to her feet when Bimbo dived at her from his knees. She rose, Bimbo holding onto her shoulders, turned, and shrugged him off. Hector was laughing when she turned in his direction and whaled him with the flailing pocketbook, knocking him back, and at the same time, she began to deliver a long, screaming tirade about a woman not being safe anywhere, and these spics, these Niggers, these foreigners, were no respectors of age, or motherhood, of gray hairs, of gentility.

It stopped them for a second and they stood there like little
children while she scolded them and they almost backed off, but the voice began to get shriller and they couldn't let themselves be put down like that, not by a woman, and Lunkface tried to hit her in the mouth to shut her up, but he half missed in the dimness and she was knocked to her knees by his body and began to scream “R
APE
” in a voice that was louder than celebration explosives and was going to reach from here to the other side of the Hudson and back, and if there were fuzz within a few blocks, they had to hear this wild old bitch.

Hector scrambled away and got to his feet. Bimbo was getting up and Lunkface was trying to recover from his swing to take her out again. She swung out with her bag and caught Bimbo in the face and his nose began to run blood over his mustache, making him madder, and he was reaching into his pocket for the slice. Who was this old cunt to do this to him, a man, to bloody a good man like him?

She was standing there, her uniform open, her ripped slip bunched around her waist, one great breast free of her brassiere, and swinging in time to her lashing out, while she kept shouting “R
APE
.” And Hector was trying to pull Lunkface away. Lunkface hadn't pulled up his pants yet and was trying to launch himself at her. Her thick legs were planted far apart as Bimbo came up behind her to push the slice into her and prick her with something real when the wide-swinging bag caught him in the ear and knocked him down again and he lost the knife in the grass and he groped for it, getting kicked under all those legs.

“R
APE
!” she boomed out, her cap bouncing on her gray head, still held on by the hairpin. “R
APE
,” she woke the dead. Hector charged, head down, but her open hand cracked his face and he went down. “R
APE
!” she screamed, and they knew it was time to clear. Hector crawled away, scrambled to his feet, and tried to run away from her. He yelled for them to follow him. Bimbo ran around her, shaking his fist at her, and began to run with Hector.
But Lunkface wouldn't give it up. She came to him. He tried to grab her. She slapped him, one and two, screaming “R
APE
,” all the time without a stop and knocked him tripping over his pants which were still around his ankles. He tried to crawl away. “R
APE
!” she bellowed and kicked him with her white shoe. “R
APE
R
APE
R
APE
!”

“I'll kill you. I'll kill you,” Lunkface screamed while she kept on beating down at him, dancing around him, kicking his bare arse, her arms flailing, her bag swinging, her tit bouncing. The others came back from either side, hit her, and that knocked the wind out of her. And she shrieked a soundless “rape.” They grabbed Lunkface, pulled him to his feet, and started to run away. But she caught her breath and was screaming again. Her glasses were gone and she followed after the half-seen shapes. Bimbo and Hector were ahead of Lunkface now. They couldn't hang around and wait for the Busters to come. And Lunkface hopped, trying to run, trying to pull up his pants, wanting to get away from her. But he wasn't able to do it.

But the fuzz had heard and come up in prowl cars on two sides. Bimbo and Hector ran into a bluesuit who stiffed Bimbo in the wind with his night stick and Bimbo doubled down on his hands and knees and began to vomit. The cop's other hand shot out and knocked off Hector's hat and closed around his thick, wavy hair, bringing him up short and almost making his eyes pop out of his head, and his feet slid out and he was held up on his toes by the Fist's grip. Another cop wheeled his patrol car onto the grass behind them and came running out and caught Lunkface, belted him on the bare behind with his pistol barrel, pulled him up, and made him stand there, his hands folded on top of his head, his pants still down around his ankles.

“Pull up your pants,” a cop said. Lunkface bent. Another cop kicked him. He pitched forward. A third cop pulled him up by the arm and threw him toward the others. More cars came and illuminated them in the headlights. Fuzz blanketed the place.

They asked her what was the matter. She was all teary. Her shaky hand held the lapels of her uniform together while she told a story of taking some air and being set on by these sex-mad hooligans. Wasn't a woman, any woman, even a mother, a grandmother, safe anywhere anymore? What wouldn't these beasts stop at? The cop smelled liquor on her breath, but seeing Lunkface standing there like that made him mad and he nodded sympathetically and patted her on the shoulder and told her, there, there, she was safe now. They would get what was coming to them.

Bimbo and Lunkface didn't say anything; they knew it was pointless. But Hector tried to explain that she had given them the old come-on, and that so infuriated one cop that he knocked Hector back and forth and bloodied his mouth and broke his nose and knocked a tooth loose. One of the cops said mildly, leave him alone, but the others were mad—boys assaulting a woman like this. And they slapped the boys around a little more as they herded them into the patrol cars. The boys said nothing else. And so they went down to the station house where it was going to be much worse.

“My, what a pretty pin you have,” the voice sweet-toned into Hinton's ear as he went by. It was like casting dirt on the mark of a warrior: filthy honey. He half-saw the fag out of the corner of his eye, cut him, and moved on. They always bothered you; they never let you rest. Soon he would go back to the BMT train. If the Family wasn't there by now, he would go home alone. The Family had probably been taken and he alone was left. Or he had missed them and they had gone straight home. He couldn't hang around here with these people bugging him. He moved.

He wandered through underground galleries twisting in and out through the Times Square subway complex, staring around him, puzzling out the direction signs. You could get lost so easily
here. Four train lines here—hidden rooms—long tile-lined corridors. He wondered if the fag who whispered into his ear, seeming to be a part of the passing crowd, was the same fag who had given him the come-on twice before that night. He wondered if he should take off the pin. But it was his mark; it showed he was not like the Other. He wore it proudly now. Still, you had to be careful because the fuzz covered everything: club-swinging patrolmen stood around in twos; plain-clothes gumshoes crept around and cased the creeps. That fag might even have been an enticer from the Law looking to fat up his arrest record. They
would
pick on a no-pay stranger.

He had come down from 110th Street without trouble, and gotten off at the right stop asking where the BMT Coney Island train was. They had told him where to make the change. He had walked over to the right platform, but none of the Family had come yet. He had stood around the almost empty platform, trying to look inconspicuous. When a few trains went by, he was sure a multi-hardhand was giving him the eye on suspicion. And still the Family didn't come. He got hungry and filled his pockets from the vending machines. He had eaten about fifteen penny chocolates and two fruit-nut bars, but it wasn't enough. He had two Cokes in paper cups from an automatic machine to help the candy down and then he had run out of coins. The newsstand on the platform was closed; he couldn't get any change; he had to sit, stand, then wander, limping because of his right foot, from one end of the platform to the other, looking around, always alert. What if the Family was here, looking for him, and he kept missing them, behind pillars, kiosks, anywhere? A rag-bag gang of boys, more a mob, went by giving him the lookover. How without style, discipline, they were, he thought—how coolie—but he looked in another direction because they were wild. Something else, every one of them, smouldering and ready to catch fire and swarm over him if they suspected contempt.

It got hotter and hotter and it was hard to hang around. He perspired and couldn't move right because his clothes were held by a film of sweat-slick all over his body. He could smell himself; the only air that got stirred up was made by the trains coming by. After a while the heat almost made him dance with the itch.