What Makes Sammy Run? (34 page)

Shirley counted the money carefully and left a little more bitter than she came. “Thanks, you cheap bastards,” she said
.

Sammy ran after her. “Hey, that ain’t fair! I oughta get my four bits back.”

But that was the initiation fee Sammy had to pay to be inducted into the mysteries of life
.

After the war, prices went higher, but there was no change in the pushcart business. The talk at meals was always money now. The Glicksteins were behind in their rent. A newsboy’s take was no longer enough to complement the old man’s income. The boys had to find regular jobs
.

Sammy and Israel both answered a call for messenger boys. There were hundreds of others. For hours they cussed and fought each other for places near the door because their parents had sent them all out with the same fight talk, spoken in English, Yiddish, Italian, and with a brogue—Sammy, Israel, Joe, Pete, Tony, Mike, if you don’t get that job today we don’t know what we’ll do
.

Israel was just ahead of Sammy. They had been waiting since six in the morning for the doors to open at eight. They were chilled outside, nervous inside
.

When the doors opened at last and Israel was finally standing before the checker, he was told:

“Sorry, kid—ain’t hirin no Hebes.”

As Israel hesitated there, crying inside, Sammy suddenly threw himself at him and knocked him down
.

“What the hell you do that for?” said the checker
.

“That dirty kike cut in ahead of me,” Sammy screamed
.

The checker looked at Sammy curiously. Sammy stood there, small, spiderlike, intense, snarling at Israel
.

“Fer Chris’sake, you look like a few-boy yerself.”

“Oh, Jesus, everybody’s always takin’ me for one of them goddam sheenies,” Sammy yelled. Then he broke into gibberish Italian
.

At twelve years of age Sammy made one bat out of hell of a messenger. For the first few months he just did a good fast routine job. Then he began to catch on to ways of branching out. He started dropping in at the cat-houses on his way home. He would ring the bell—any bell—and tell the maid:

“Willya find out who rang for a messenger boy?”

In a couple of minutes the maid would return and say, “Can’t find nobody who says they called you, sonny.”

Then he’d put up his squawk. “Mean to tell me I hadda come allerway down here for nuttin ’? Somebody in here musta called—the boss sent me down here on the double-quick. Whatta you wanna do, get me canned?”

He’d keep this up good and loud until the madame came out. The kid is probably right, she’d figure. Maybe one of the men did it for laughs or got drunk and forgot
.

The gag was almost always good for two bits anyway. And lots of times the madame would yell, “Anybody want the messenger boy before he goes?” Then some of the customers would remember to wire their wives or the girls would want to send out for ice cream or a magazine
.

After Sammy got inside he had another stunt that nearly always worked. He would stand in the middle of the main room and start singing a song. His voice was lousy, but he wasn’t shy about using it and he usually sang something with a gulp in it, like “You made me what I am today—I hope you’re satisfied,” which always got the girls. So the guys would toss him something to please them—or to shut him up. Sometimes on Saturday nights he’d take in more that way than from his regular weekly wage
.

It made Sammy feel pretty good hanging around with the guys on the corner Sundays with a little dough in his pocket. One Sunday morning Sheik singled him out. Sheik already had the secretive, mannered poise of a racketeer
.

“Follow me over tuh the park,” Sheik said. “ I wanna talk tu ya.”

Two years before when they had been the heads of rival gangs, Sammy’s men had cornered Sheik on a roof. Everybody knew what Sammy had taken from him and they were all ready for Sammy to tell them to send the Sheik back to his block with a hole in his head. But Sammy just looked at Sheik kind of funny and said, “Go on, get runnin’, you bastard, get the hell outa my block.”

It meant that Sammy was beginning to understand the secret of power. Having Sheik beaten to a pulp would only have evened the
score. Without ever having thought it out, Sammy seemed to know intuitively how this gesture would leave him one up on Sheik
.

Over in the park Sheik said, “Listen, Sammy, I watched you a long time. You got balls. You’re O.K. with me.”

“Come on, what d’ya want?” said Sammy. “What’s on ya mind?”

“I’m fed up with this stinking hole,” Sheik said. “I’m gettin’ outa here. I’m gonna pull off one little job and head west. And I wanna cut you in.”

Sammy listened to the plan. It was just a glorified version of the old pushcart snitches. Sammy was to go into Levy’s and ask for something that would make Levy go back into the storeroom to look for it. Then Sheik would run in and lay one on him and tie him up while Sammy was rifling the cash register
.

Sammy listened soberly
.

“Not me,” he said. “That’s sucker stuff. Why the hell take a chance goin’ up the river when there’s plenty better ways, if you’re smart?”

“Like what?” said Sheik
.

“Lookit Johnny Maloney,” Sammy said. “He’s off your block. His kid brother tol’me Johnny makes a couple a hundred smackers every election day—just for takin’ people around ’n’ votin’ ’em. And lookit Salica. He ain’t so much older ’n’ us. Salica must be gettin’ richer ’n’ a bastard. Every time a guy gets laid around here it’s dough in his pocket. What’s the percentage in havin’ the cops against yer when you can do something like that and have ’em with ya?”

Sheik succeeded in getting away from there all right. He got three years in the State Reform School. So did Leo Kaplan, the kid Sheik got to take Sammy’s place
.

Three weeks before Sammy’s thirteenth birthday Papa came in too upset to eat
.

“Tonight when I come out of
shul
the rabbi wants to talk to me. ‘Max, my heart is like lead to tell you this,’ he says, ‘but your son
Samuel cannot be
bar mitzvah.
He never comes to
cheder.
He does not know his bruchas. The
melamed
says he knows no more about the Torah than a goy.’ ”

Bar-mitzvah
is the Hebrew ceremony celebrating a boy’s reaching the state of manhood at the age of thirteen. He shows off all his knowledge and makes a speech which always begins, “Today I am a man …” and everybody gives him presents and congratulates the father and feels very good. It is as vital to the Orthodox Jews as baptism is to the Christians
.

“Oy voy!” Papa cried. “That I should live to see the day when my own flesh and blood is not prepared to become a man.”

“Aw, what’s that got to do with becomin’ a man?” Sammy said. “Just a lotta crap. I been a man since I was eleven.”

“Oh, Lord of Israel,” Papa said,” how can You ever forgive us this shame? That I, a man who went to synagogue twice every day of his life, should have such a no-good son.”

“Yeah,” Sammy said. “While you was being such a goddam good Jew, who was hustlin’ up the dough to pay the rent?”

“Silence, silence,” Papa roared
.

“I guess I gotta right to speak in this house,” Sammy said. “For Chris ’sake I’m bringin’ in more money ’n you are.”

“Money!” Papa cried. “That’s all you think about, money, money …”

“Yes, money, money,” Sammy mimicked. “You know what you c’n do with your lousy
bar mitzvah.
It’s money in the pocket—that’s what makes you feel like a man.”

The day that Sammy was to have been
bar-mitzvahed
Papa went to the synagogue and prayed for him as if he were dead. He came home with his lapel ripped in mourning. He would have liked to lock himself in all week because he couldn’t face the shame of it. But the next day he had to be out in the street again, an extension of his pushcart
.

People saw him push his cart through the street with his eyes staring dumbly at nothing. The driver who hit him said he sounded his horn several times, but the old man did not seem to hear
.

When he was carried upstairs to his bed Israel and Mama sat there crying and watching him die
.

Afterward, Israel didn’t know what to do, so he went up on the roof to look at the stars. He found Sammy there smoking a butt
.

“Is it over?” Sammy said when he saw his brother
.

Israel nodded. He had not really broken down yet, but the question did it. He cried, deep and soft, as only Jews can cry because they have had so much practice at it
.

Israel was eighteen, but now he was a little boy crying because he had lost his papa. Sammy was thirteen, but he was a veteran; he had learned something that took the place of tears
.

When Israel realized that he was the only one crying he became embarrassed and then angry
.

“Damn you, why don’t you say something?” Israel said. “Why don’t you cry?”

“Well, what’s there ta say?” said Sammy
.

“At least, can’t you say you’re sorry?”

“Sure,” Sammy said. “I’m sorry he was a dope.”

“I oughta punch you in the nose,” Israel said
.

“Try it,” Sammy said, “I bet I c’n lick you.” Sammy sat there dry and tense. “Aw, don’t work yourself into a sweat,” he said
.

“Sammy,” Israel pleaded, “what’s got into you? Why must you go around with a chip on your shoulder? What do you have to keep your left out all the time for?”

“Whatta you take me for, a sap like you?” Sammy said. “You don’t see me getting smacked in the puss.”

“But we aren’t fighting now,” Israel said
.

Israel was right about not knowing Sammy. There were no rest periods between rounds for Sammy. The world had put a chip on his shoulder and then it had knocked it off. Sammy was ready to accept the challenge all by himself and this was a fight to the finish. He had fought to be born into the East Side, he had kicked, bit, scratched and gouged first to survive in it and then to subdue it, and now that he was thirteen and a man, having passed another kind of
bar mitzvah,
he was ready to fight his way out again
,
pushing uptown, running in Israel’s cast-off shoes, traveling light, without any baggage or a single principle to slow him down
.

I was sitting in the corner at the end of the bar and, like all thinkers who are on the verge of a great discovery, feeling miserable.

Henry leaned over the bar and picked up my empty glass.

“Henry, do you know what I’ve been doing for the past two hours?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Henry, “getting plastered.”

“No,” I said, “working out a theory that will end hate in the world.”

“That’s the same thing,” said Henry.

“Now, Henry, I want you to listen carefully,” I said. “Because Fate has chosen you as the first one to hear my message. Do you remember Sammy Glick?”

“Do you ever let me forget him?” Henry said.

“Okay,” I said. “When Sammy Glick first walked into my office he turned my stomach. But just think if when he walked in I’d known as much about him as I do now.” I punctuated my speech with thoughtful gulps. “We only hate the results of people. But people, Henry, aren’t just results. They’re a process. And to really give them a break we have to judge the process through which they became the result we see when we say So-and-so is a heel. Now the world is full of people hating other people’s guts. Okay. Now, Henry, answer me this, what if each of them took the time to go down to Rivington Street—I mean each person’s particular Rivington Street, Henry? We would begin to have compassion in the world, that’s what. Not so much soda this time, Henry.”

“I don’t think you better have any more, Mr. Manheim,” Henry said.

“Okay,” I said, “you patronizing bastard. No great thinker is ever appreciated in his own time.”

I went to the phone and put through a call to Hollywood 3187.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hello,” I said, waiting expectantly.

“Hello
,” she said.

“Remember I said I’d call you if I ever found out why Sammy loves shoes so much?”

“Al, you’re drunk!” And then with a slight reprimand: “Darling!”

“And,” I gloated, “I know why Sammy hates unions and why he treats all women like pros and all men like enemies. Kit, you gave me a terrific steer. And I haven’t only learned about Sammy. I’ve learned something about the machinery that turns out Sammy Glicks.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “Don’t you think you’d better reverse the charges? You can’t afford a long-distance call like this.”

“Of course I can’t,” I said. “Anybody would call you up if he could afford it. But to be unable to afford it and do it anyway—that’s love.”

“You still haven’t changed?” she said.

“No. Have you?”

“No,” she said. “If I ever have a husband you are definitely it.”

“That will be a very comforting thought to go to my grave with,” I said. “Here lies the husband chosen by Kit—if she ever had one he was definitely it.”

“You’re very clever,” she said. “Have you ever thought of coming to Hollywood?”

“Darling,” I said, “for Chris’sake! When do we get together again?”

“As soon as our jobs bring us together again,” she said. “Jobs you should be doing can make worse ghosts than ex-lovers.”

“Now that I’ve got a line on what makes Sammy run, maybe I should begin on you.”