Overnight, everyone agrees, Eddie changed. His royal blue eyes turned stormy. His eyebrows drew together into a permanent V. He looked wounded all the time, ready to fight. When the Italians started to encroach on Irish Town, Eddie decided it was his job to hold them off. He was forever muttering about them Eye-ties, them fuckin Dagos. Every other week he was in another hellish battle.
The first time they meet, Willie sees only Eddie’s courage, not his pain. Something about Eddie reminds Willie of polished, martial steel. Also, he seems equally loyal and lethal. And Eddie sees Willie through the same rosy lens. Assuming Willie’s many bruises are from street brawls, not his brothers, Eddie grants Willie his deepest respect. Willie, in need of a friend, doesn’t set Eddie straight.
Happy never had to earn Eddie’s respect. They’ve been friends since birth. Their families live across the street from each other, their fathers are thick. That’s why Happy is always laughing at Eddie’s bad temper, because he remembers the old Eddie. To Willie, laughing at Eddie seems like asking for trouble, like the lion tamers at the street circus putting their heads between those pink dripping jaws. But Eddie never snaps at Happy. Happy is so happy, so damn good looking, it’s hard to be mad at him.
Some say Happy was born happy. Others say he’s happy about the way he looks. Unbearably handsome. Unfairly handsome. Most agree that some percentage of his constant cheerfulness is traceable to his family’s nest egg. The Johnstons aren’t rich, but they’re among the few Irish Towners who don’t live on the rusty razor’s edge. Happy’s father got hit by a trolley years ago and the family won a settlement. Moreover, they were smart enough not to put their windfall in a bank, hundreds of which have gone bust.
Daddo asks Willie about his new friends. He’s heard Happy’s voice from the street. He says Happy sounds handsome.
He is, Willie says. He has black hair and black eyes and the girls in school all love him.
Daddo chuckles. Bless him. What I wouldn’t give. And the Wilson boy?
Yellow hair. Blue eyes. He gets in fights. And steals sometimes.
Be careful, Willie Boy. Sounds like he has a bit of the Old Nick in him.
The what?
The devil.
Willie doesn’t understand what Daddo means. Until an older boy down the block, Billy Doyle, gets pinched. Housebreaking, shoplifting, something minor. What makes it major, what makes it the talk of Irish Town, is that Billy has given up the names of his confederates. The cops beat the names out of Billy, but that’s no excuse. Not in Irish Town.
Right after the cops turn Billy loose, he sits on his stoop, his jaw broken, his left eye purple and running with pus, a rotted plum. He’s a pitiable sight, but people walk past all day long as if he’s not there. Even mothers pushing prams give him the standard Irish Town treatment for rats. Silence.
Eddie, who grew up with Billy’s brothers, and likes him, watches from up the street for hours. After a while he can’t take it anymore. He crosses, walks up to Billy, asks how he’s feeling.
Not so good, Eddie.
Eddie leans in, puts an arm on Billy’s shoulder, tells him to hang in there.
Billy looks up, smiles.
Eddie spits in his eye.
Weeks later Billy Doyle drinks iodine. There is no funeral.
Sutton sees a family walking along the street, dressed for church. Dad, Mom, two little boys. Father and sons are wearing identical suits. In the old days, Sutton says, his voice weak, the worst thing you could be was a Judas.
Reporter glances into the backseat. Are you referring, by any chance, to Arnold Schuster?
No.
That whole ratting thing, that whole Code of Brooklyn—where does that come from?
Sutton taps his chest. From in here kid. The deepest part. When I was ten years old the cops found a man lying in the middle of our street, a baling hook in his chest. He was a stevedore, got crossways with some of the boys on the waterfront. As the cops took him to the hospital they asked who did this to him. He told the cops to go fuck themselves. Those were his last words—imagine? Three days later the whole fuckin neighborhood turned out for his funeral, including the guys who offed him. There was talk of petitioning the city to name a street after him.
All because he didn’t name the guys who murdered him?
People are clannish, Sutton says. We didn’t become human a million years ago until we hopped out of trees and split into clans. You betray someone in your clan, you open the door to the end of the world.
But the people who murdered him were in his clan? Didn’t they betray him?
Ratting is a hundred times worse than murder.
It all sounds kind of—barbaric, Reporter says. It sounds like people making life harder than it needs to be.
No one is making anything kid. It’s just how human beings are built. Two thousand years later, why do we know the name of Judas and not the soldier who nailed Christ to the cross?
In 1913 Willie’s brothers move out. One gets a job at a factory in West Virginia, the other joins the Army. They give Willie one ferocious goodbye beating in the shadow of St. Ann’s, but Willie doesn’t feel it. Knowing they’ll be gone in a few days, knowing they won’t be part of his world anymore, makes the blows bounce off. But the Lord was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. Watching Big Brother and Bigger Brother saunter away, Willie picks up his hat, licks the blood from his lip, laughs.
Sutton kneels on the cobblestones at Sands and Gold. He looks as if he’s about to propose to Photographer and Reporter.
Mr. Sutton—what are you doing?
St. Ann’s, my grammar school, used to be right here.
A gust of wind sends a few loose newspaper pages fluttering like birds. Sutton pats the cobblestones. These are the same cobblestones I walked on as a kid, he says in a half whisper. Time—the subtle thief of youth.
What? Who’s a thief?
Time. Some dead fuckin poet said that. Father Flynn quoted it all the time. Made us memorize it. He probably stood right there, where you two are standing, saying that line, which is pure horseshit. Time is a thief, but he’s not subtle. He’s a thug. And youth is a little old lady walking through the park with a pocketbook full of cash. You want to avoid being like youth? You want to keep time from robbing you? Hold on for dear life, boys. When time tries to snatch something from you, just grab tighter. Don’t let go. That’s what memory is. Not letting go. Saying fuck you to time.
Photographer puts a Newport between his lips. Uh—Willie?
Sutton looks up. Yeah kid.
Willie, this isn’t really working for me—creatively? You, at the site of your former school? It’s static, brother.
Static.
Yeah. Also, you’re kind of freaking us out.
Why kid?
Well. You’re talking to yourself, for starters. And you’re not making sense. Compared to you, most of the cats I met at Woodstock were acting straight.
Sorry kid. I’m just. Remembering.
Reporter steps forward. Mr. Sutton, maybe you could tell us some of what you’re remembering? Share something about your early life? Your childhood?
I don’t remember much.
But you just said—
Okay, Sutton says. Let’s go. Stop Number Three—Hudson Street.
Photographer helps Sutton to his feet. Willie, can you at least tell us the point of Stop Number Two?
Youth.
Youth?
Yeah. Youth.
What about youth, Willie?
She’s just fuckin asking for it.
There are no ball fields in Irish Town. No playgrounds, no gyms, no rec centers. So the neighborhood boys all gather at the Hudson Street slaughterhouse. In their short pants and vests, their collarless shirts and ragged shoes, they hang around the loading docks, mooching hooves and feet, heckling the animals on their way to die.
None of the boys respects the slaughterhouse like Eddie. None but Eddie roots
for the butchers. If there were trading cards of butchers, Eddie would collect them. He cheers when the butchers slit a pig’s throat, laughs when they stab a cow in the eye or lop off a sheep’s head. He gazes worshipfully when they dip a mug into the raw blood at their feet and slurp it down for nourishment.
In 1914, however, Eddie sees something at the slaughterhouse that haunts him. One black castrated male sheep leads all the other sheep up the ramp to the killing door. At the last minute the black sheep does a shifty little sidestep, saving himself.
What’s with that sheep there? Eddie asks.
That’s the Judas sheep, a butcher says. It’s actually a goat that looks like a sheep.
Sutty, get a load of this fuckin sheep. Look how he double-crosses his buddies.
He’s just a sheep, Ed. Or a goat.
Eddie punches his palm. Nah, nah, that rat knows what he’s doin.
A few nights later Eddie rousts Willie and Happy from their beds and drags them down to the slaughterhouse. He jimmies the lock on the door to the loading dock and leads them into the filthy pens where the river barges unload the animals. In a far corner they find the black Judas sheep lying on its side. The sleep of the innocent, Eddie says, grabbing a board and giving the sheep a whack on the head. Blood goes everywhere. It spurts into Willie’s eyes and sprays the front of Happy’s white shirt. The sheep scrambles to its feet and tries to run. Eddie chases. Come here, you. He swings the board like a baseball bat, hits the sheep on the backside. Where you think you’re going? He gives the sheep another whack, and another. When the sheep is down, Eddie leaps on it, puts a tourniquet around the fleecy neck. Happy holds the kicking legs while Eddie slowly tightens.
Sutty, grab that board, give him one.
No.
Willie could never hurt a defenseless animal. Even an animal that rats out other animals. Besides, the sight of Eddie and Happy holding down the Judas sheep reminds Willie of his brothers. I seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks. Willie keeps his distance, though he doesn’t look away. He can’t. He watches Eddie and Happy torment the sheep, watches Eddie pull out a knife and stab it and stab it until the frantic baaa becomes a pathetic ba. Eddie and Happy are his best friends, but maybe he didn’t know them until now. Maybe he’ll never know them. He watches them laugh at the sheep’s lacquered black eyes going white, then pearly gray. He closes his own eyes. Tattletale gray.
Sutton paces up and down Hudson Street. He inhales deeply through his nose. Wet hide, offal, blood. Smell that, boys? Somehow that stench didn’t bother us as kids.
I don’t smell anything, Photographer says to Reporter.
Sutton points to his feet. Daddo said Eddie had the devil in him—I found out on this spot what that meant. Eddie’s first kill.
Now we’re talking, Photographer says, pushing Reporter out of the way, shooting as Sutton points to the ground.
Reporter sets down his briefcase, clicks it open, pulls out a stack of files.
What are those? Sutton asks.
The newspaper’s Willie Sutton files. Some of them anyway. There’s an entire drawer devoted to you, Mr. Sutton. You mentioned your grandfather. I saw him in one of these files. Was he the actor?
No. The actor was my father’s father. Back in Ireland. They say he knew most of Shakespeare by heart. I’m talking about my mother’s father.
Photographer keeps shooting. But who got killed here, brother?
A sheep, Sutton says.
Photographer stops, lowers his camera. A what?
There was a slaughterhouse here. I used to come with my best friends, Eddie and Happy. One night they killed a sheep. Or a goat pretending to be a sheep.
Why?
It ratted on the other sheep.
Photographer rests his camera on his hip. The sheep ratted, he says to Reporter. You hearing this?
Mr. Sutton, you mentioned Eddie. Do you mean Edward Buster Wilson? With whom you were arrested in 1923?
Yeah.
In this one clip, the judge said you were like outlaws in the Old West.
Nah, the judge said that about me and another guy. But it was sure true of me and Eddie.
Reporter flips open a file. Okay. Here we go—Sutton and Wilson. Unlawful entry, armed robbery.
Sounds about right, Sutton says.
And Happy—now, Mr. Sutton, is that William Happy Johnston? With whom you were arrested in 1919?
The same.
Burglary. Larceny.
Good old Happy.
Kidnapping. Wait—kidnapping?
You had to be there, Sutton says. You had to know Happy. Not that anybody really knew Happy. Not that anybody fuckin knows anybody.
Who did you and Happy kidnap?
Chronological order kid.
FIVE
As Willie listens from the hall, Father and Mother sit up all night, a gas lamp between them, going over the family account book. Mother asks, What will we do? Father says nothing. But it’s the way he says nothing.
First it was those newfangled bicycles everywhere, now it’s these accursed motorcars. Not long ago people said the motorcar was a fad. Now everyone agrees it’s here to stay. Newspapers are filled with ads for the latest, shiniest models. New roads are going in all over the city. The fire department has already switched to horseless hose trucks. All of which means hard times for blacksmiths.
The summer of 1914. Despite his troubles at home, despite running the streets with Eddie and Happy, Willie manages to graduate from grammar school at the top of his class. There’s no thought of high school, however. The day after he gets his diploma he gets his working papers. His mother’s dream of him in priest robes gets shelved. His own dreams are never mentioned. He needs to get a job, needs to help his family stay afloat.
But it’s hard times for more than just blacksmiths. America is mired in a Depression, the second of Willie’s young life. Willie applies at the riverside factories, the downtown offices, the dry goods stores and clothing shops and lunch counters. He’s bright, presentable, many people know and admire Father. But Willie has no experience, no skills, and for every available job he’s competing with hundreds. He reads in the newspapers that crowds of unemployed are surging through Manhattan, demanding work. Other cities too. In Chicago the crowds are so unruly, cops fire on them.
Daddo asks Willie to read him the newspapers. Strikes, riots, unrest—after half an hour Daddo asks him to stop. He mutters into the potato sack curtains:
Feckin world is ending.
To save money the Suttons quit Irish Town, move to a smaller apartment near Prospect Park. They have so little, the move takes only one trip in a horse-drawn van. Then Father lays off his apprentice. Despite slower business, despite an arthritic back and aching shoulders, Father now puts in longer hours, which aggravates his back and shoulders. Mother talks to Daddo about what they’ll do when Father can’t get out of bed in the morning. They’ll be on the street.
Father asks Willie to join him at the shop. Big Brother, thrown out of the Army, is helping too. I don’t think I’m cut out for blacksmithing, Willie says. Father looks at Willie, hard, not with anger, but bewilderment. As if Willie is a stranger. I know the feeling, Willie wants to say.
After a day of shapeouts, interviews, submitting applications that will never be read, Willie runs back to the old neighborhood. Eddie and Happy can’t find jobs either. The boys seek relief from the rising temperatures and their receding futures in the East River. To get in a few clean strokes they have to push away inner tubes, lettuce heads, orange rinds, mattresses. They also have to dodge garbage scows, tugboats, barges, corpses—the river claims a new victim every week. And yet the boys don’t mind. No matter how slimy, or fishy, or deadly, the river is sacred. The one place they feel welcome. In their element.
The boys often dare each other to touch the sludgy bottom. More than once they nearly drown in the attempt. It’s a foolish game, like pearl diving with no hope of a pearl, but each is afraid to admit he’s
afraid. Then Eddie ups the ante, suggests a race across. Perched like seagulls atop the warped pilings of an abandoned pier, they look through the summer haze at the skyline.
What if we cramp up, Happy says.
What if, Eddie says with a sneer.
The mermaids will save us, Willie mumbles.
Mermaids? Happy says.
My Daddo says every body of water has a mermaid or two.
Our only hope of getting laid, Eddie says.
Speak for yourself, Happy says.
Willie shrugs. What the hell have we got to lose?
Our lives, Happy mumbles.
Like I said.
They dive. Tracing the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge they reach Manhattan in twenty-six minutes. Eddie is first, followed by Happy, then Willie. Willie would have been first, but he slowed halfway and briefly toyed with the idea of letting go, sinking forever to the bottom. They stand on the dock, dripping, gasping, laughing with pride.
Now comes the problem of getting back. Eddie wants to swim. Willie and Happy roll their eyes. We’re walking, Ed.
Willie’s first time on the Brooklyn Bridge. Those cables, those Gothic brick arches—beautiful. Daddo says men died building this bridge. The arches are their headstones. Willie thinks they died for a good cause. Daddo also says this bridge, when first opened, terrified people. It was too big, no one thought it would stay up. Barnum had to walk a herd of elephants across to prove that it was safe. Part of Willie is still terrified. Not by the size, but the height. He doesn’t like heights. It’s not a fear of falling so much as a queasiness at seeing the world from above. Especially Manhattan. The big city is intimidating enough across the river. From up here it’s too much. Too magical, too desirable, too mythically beautiful, like the women in Photoplay. He wants it. He hates it. He longs to conquer it, capture it, keep it all to himself. He’d like to burn it to the ground.
The bird’s-eye view of Irish Town is still more unsettling. From the apex of the bridge it looks slummier, meaner. Willie scans the chimneys, the ledges, the grimed windows and mudded streets. Even if you leave, you never escape.
We should take the BQE, Photographer says.
Sutton Page 6
