On the Waterfront

by Budd Schulberg

  Katie was in bed, trying to fall asleep. Pop was out with Moose and Jimmy and the door was latched. “Keep the door locked,” Pop had told her, “and don’t let nobody in. I don’t care if it’s God Almighty Himself.”

  “Katie! Hey, Katie!” Terry shouted through the kitchen door. Katie didn’t answer and Terry called her name again while pounding on the door.

  Katie ran to the door to make sure it was latched. “You can’t come in. Get away from here!” she shouted angrily.

  “Katie, please open the door. I gotta talk to you.”

  He kicked at the door and she screamed, “Stop it! Stop it! Stay away from me.”

  She made sure the latch was fastened and hurried back into her narrow bedroom and tried to push her metal bed over against the door. She was terrified by the sound of Terry’s body crashing against the flimsy wood of the kitchen door. Then she heard the sound of the latch giving and Terry was rushing in on her. She tried to pull the bedclothes over her. His hair was wild and his arms were flailing. His eyes frightened her.

  “Get out of here—out of here!” she shrieked, and when he tried to come close to her, whimpering, “Katie, lissen …” she shook her head and said, “If Pop finds you in here, he’ll kill you. You’ve got to stay away from me.”

  As he came closer she leaped from the bed and hurled herself against him, trying to push him back out of the room. He held her off, gripping her arms hard and shouting into her face, “You think I stink, don’t you? You think I stink for what I done.”

  She wrenched herself free and said furiously, “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want you to …”

  “I know what you want me to do,” he cut in.

  “I don’t want you to do anything except get out of here and—let your conscience tell you what to do.”

  “Shut up about that conscience.” He beat his right fist viciously against the metal bedpost Katie had tried to use as a barrier. “Why d’ya hafta keep usin’ that goddamn word?”

  She backed away, still fearful of him, but fearful for him too.

  “Why, Terry, I never mentioned that word to you before. Never.”

  He stopped, surprised and dazed.

  “No?”

  She shook her head. She was no longer afraid of him. No longer did he seem a vicious hunter animal running wild in the street. Rain-soaked and wind-swept, he seemed more like some smaller, hunted animal, bewildered by his uncertainties as to where to turn.

  “You’re beginning to listen to yourself,” she said. “That’s where that word is coming from.”

  “Katie,” he said quietly, “don’t get sore now. But I—I guess it’s somethin’—somethin’ what ya feel when, well, when you’re in love with somebody.”

  Again he wanted to put his arms around her and hold her close and kiss her and bury his face in the sweet warmth of her neck. But he stood there, staring wildly at her. And strangely for Kate, Terry Malloy was like the dark, evil dream of carnal sin that would come to her in her bed at Marygrove—never the nice boys she met at the outrageously over-supervised school dances, but the fierce, rowdy specter of naked male passion that would steal into her room and press down upon her until some nights she would actually turn on the light and get up out of bed and plead with Mary to protect her from this stain. There was an overwhelming impulse in her now against every habit and belief to throw herself, barely dressed, shamelessly into his arms.

  “Terry, please—not now—let’s talk about it—some other time,” she said. “Now you have to go—please.”

  “Okay, okay, forget I said it,” Terry mumbled. “I got no right …” He started to turn way. “I’m sorry about that door. So much has been happenin’. I guess I can’t take it so good.”

  “I’ll put you in my prayers tonight,” Katie said seriously.

  “Boy, c’n I use ’em!” Terry said.

  From the courtyard behind the tenement came a muffled cry, “Hey, Terry. Hey, Terry …”

  Startled, Terry hurried into the kitchen and peered down the fire-escape. He couldn’t see anybody in the darkness, but he heard the voice, louder this time.

  “Hey, Terry, your brother’s down here. He wants to see you.”

  “Charley…” Terry said.

  “Hey, Terry,” came the cry from four stories below, “come down and see your brother.”

  “Terry, don’t go down,” Katie begged.

  “He may be in trouble.”

  “Lock yourself in your room,” Katie said.

  “Charley?” Terry called out the window into the courtyard.

  “Come on down—he’s watin’ fer ya,” the strange voice answered from below.

  “I gotta go down,” Terry said, climbing out to the fire-escape.

  “Terry, be careful,” Katie called.

  “I got this,” Terry said, patting the invisible gun.

  “Terry, please be careful,” Katie cried out after him as he started down the fire-escape through the sleeting rain.

  “We’re over here, Terry, over here,” the muffled voice rose through the darkness.

  Katie could hear Terry’s metallic steps hurrying down the fire-escape. Across the narrow courtyard, strung with clothes-lines, a window opened two stories below. A woman put her head out and looked up toward Katie. It was Mrs. Collins. Katie didn’t recognize her for a moment with her hair tight around her head in a hairnet.

  “You hear that?” the woman called.

  Katie nodded, holding her arms around her shoulders against the bitter cold.

  “It’s the same way they called my Andy out the night I lost him,” Mrs. Collins said.

  Katie ran to the closet and pulled out her cloth coat. Then, heedless of Mrs. Collins’ cries, she started down the fire-escape, crying down into the winter night. “Terry! Terry!” When she reached the bottom landing, a shabby, indistinct figure shuffled toward her out of a coal shed. To her amazement he was singing at the top of his hoarse, cracking voice an old popular song meant to carry a gay beat but which was now rendered like a dirge.

  “Tippi … tippi … tin … tippi … tin …”

  Katie recognized the neighborhood derelict Mutt Murphy. He had an almost empty bottle of wine in his hand and he was singing toward the lighted windows.

  “Tippi … tippi …”

  A ground-floor window opened and an angry voice shouted out, “Shetup!”

  “Tan …”

  Another window opened on the rubbish-strewn court and a furious voice shouted, “Drop dead!” An old shoe, aimed at the staggering figure of Mutt, backed up this suggestion.

  Mutt shook his fist at the offending windows. “Spit on me, curse me ’n stone me,” he shouted hoarsely, “but I suffer fer yersins …”

  The man who had thrown the old shoe shouted back loudly, “Go suffer somewhere else, ya bum.”

  The windows banged shut. Under the fire-escape Katie had been looking around for some sign of Terry or his caller, but the raw night seemed to have swallowed them.

  “Terreee …” her small panicked voice echoed down the squat row of tenements. Mutt staggered toward her, brandishing the bottle of wine. His slobbering lips horrified her.

  “I seen him. I seen him …”

  “Which way did he go?”

  “I seen it happen. With me own eyes I seen it.”

  “What? What did you see?”

  “I seen ’em put ’im to death! I heard ’im cry out!”

  “Who—who did you see? Tell me—tell me!” Katie grew hysterical.

  “His executioners. They was stabbin’ ’im in his side. An’ his soft eyes was lookin’ down at ’em.”

  His reddened St. Bernard’s eyes began to leak great tears down his bleary, unshaven face. “Oh, I weep fer ’im—I weep fer ’im.”

  “Who? You mean Terry?”

  In his right hand Mutt raised the bottle aloft in a grand, apostolic gesture.

  “Our Lord Jesus when He died to save us …”

  Katie pushed him away with lo
athing. “Oh, get away, you—you slob!”

  Mutt drained a last swallow from the nearly empty bottle and crashed it against the tenement wall. “Tippi … tippi … tan … tippi … tan …” He picked up his persistent lament and wandered back into the coal shed to sleep off his fears and burrow in his visions.

  The space between the tenements, built back to back, led into a narrow alley. Katie thought she heard a sound in that direction and hurried toward it, calling Terry’s name. As she neared the alleyway, Terry answered her in a strained, hurt voice. “I’m over here.”

  She ran toward him and found him staring at the lifeless figure of Charley Malloy, hanging by his camel’s hair coat collar from a cargo hook fixed to the wooden alley wall. The usually spotless golden-tan coat was soiled and blood had stained the lapel. Katie gasped but made no other sound. Terry was trembling with hatred.

  “I’ll take it out of their skulls,” he said.

  “Terry, come back inside.”

  “I said I’ll take it out of their skulls. I’ll take this out of their skulls.”

  He had the gun in his hand. He kept staring at Charley. He didn’t seem aware of Katie at all. He walked over to the wall and lifted Charley down. He stretched Charley out with his hands folded together at his waist.

  “Look at the way the sons of bitches got his coat all dirty,” he said.

  “Terry, you’re crazy,” Katie said. “Give me that gun. You sound like you’re going crazy.”

  Terry pushed the small revolver securely into his pocket. “Go get the Father,” he ordered. “Tell him to take care of Charley. Charley was a Catholic. He’s got to have it right. I don’t want he should have to lay out in this stinkin’ alley too long.”

  He started down the alley toward the street.

  “Where are you going?” Katie called shrilly.

  “Never you mind,” Terry said. “Just do like I say.” He kept on walking, not once looking back to see if Katie was carrying out his orders and hurrying toward the church. She was, however, running sobbingly through the foul-weather night and reaching the church nearly at the same time Terry was entering the Friendly Bar.

  A dozen regulars were lined up at the bar looking at the fight on TV.

  “Johnny Friendly here?” Terry said abruptly from the entrance.

  Jocko, the horse-faced bartender who was a lot smarter than he looked, couldn’t see the gun on Terry, but he sensed that he had one. In his ten years’ service behind this bar he had become an uncanny judge of these things.

  “He’s not in now,” he said curtly. Usually he was a good friend of Terry’s, with plenty of cuff where the kid was concerned. But now he knew things were wrong. He didn’t have to be told. He could smell trouble.

  “You sure?” Terry said and slowly walked the length of the bar to the door of the back room. Most of the customers took their eyes off the television screen to watch Terry. When Johnny Friendly was on the warpath, the harbor of Bohegan was alive to it. Some of the regulars even stayed away from the bars. As Terry approached the back door, Jocko reached below the bar and grabbed a wooden ice-crusher he used for a billy. He held it behind his back, waiting to see what the steamed-up kid was going to do.

  Terry kicked open the door to the back room so he could have his hands free to fire and use the door as a shield. There was only one occupant, “J.P.” Morgan, spreading his loan slips out in front of him and conscientiously making notations in his little black book.

  “Seen Johnny?” Terry said.

  “He’s at the fights,” “J.P.” answered without looking up.

  Terry went back to the end of the bar and waved Jocko over.

  “A double shot.”

  “Take it easy now, Terry,” Jocko said.

  “Don’t gimme no advice. Gimme the shot.”

  Jocko gave a big-shouldered shrug and filled two jiggers.

  “Look, kid, why don’t you go home before the boss gets here?”

  Terry gulped the contents of the little glasses. “I’m not buyin’ advice, I’m buyin’ whiskey,” Terry said.

  “Slow down, boy, down,” Jocko said.

  Behind Terry, “J.P.” was soft-shoeing to the phone booth in the corner to warn Friendly. Terry heard him, whirled around and yelled, “Stay out of that phone booth!”

  “J.P.” did as he was told.

  “Kid, there’s ten bars in every block around here,” Jocko said. “How’s about you go drink somewhere else?”

  “I like it here. I like your beautiful face,” Terry said.

  Jocko shook his head. He had lived a long time on the waterfront. He had seen Johnny Friendly take over the docks just by walking into this very bar and beating down the tramps who had hold of them back in the late thirties. One of the old mob, Fisheye Hennessey, was chopped right outside on the corner.

  Half a dozen fellers had seen it with their own eyes, and when it came to a coroner’s hearing, not one of them could remember who had done it. From that day on Jocko had been impressed with Johnny Friendly. Of course he didn’t bother with these jobs himself any more. But it had been an effective way of establishing confidence in the beginning. Jocko wondered if Terry was taking nose candy or something. What else would spark him into open warfare with a big engine like Friendly?

  Father Barry was in the small rectory library, answering letters he had received from various people around the harbor who had read of his hard-hitting sermon on the dock. It gave him hope that he and his little group weren’t alone even though they seemed isolated and nearly helpless in Bohegan. An old Italian longshoreman who was under the gun in Jersey City and afraid even to sign his name said he was praying for him. An Irish wife from Manhattan’s West Side said she was for throwing those bums out even if Joe and I and the two kids have to live on relief for a while. There were anonymous letters mailed here in Bohegan from dockers who said they kicked back to Big Mac and had to chip in on all the phony welfare collections but were afraid to protest. This is the way it has been for years, one of them wrote, and you’re lucky you’ve got that collar on backwards or they’d never let you get away with that talk you made. In fact, I hope you watch yourself, Father, because they’ve got too many ways of having accidents.

  As Father Barry paused to consider this, with a faint, weary smile, Katie burst in. Her hair was wet and she was out of breath and almost incoherent.

  But when he heard that Charley was dead and that Terry had a gun and was talking out of his head with grief, Father Barry jumped up and said he’d go out and find him. If Terry was gunning for Johnny, there were only a few places to look—the union office, the Friendly Bar, the local political club.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find him,” Father Barry promised. “Get Father Vincent for Charley. Call your uncle at the station house. Tell him where Charley is. And ask him to see you home.”

  “Be careful, Father,” Katie said.

  Father Barry shrugged. “There isn’t time to worry.”

  It was only when he was trotting down the block with the sleet now turning to wet snow in his face that he wondered if this unexpected mission was a defiance of the Pastor’s orders not to leave the church again on waterfront business. But where did approved Christian charity for the Glennons leave off and a battle for a more Christian life for all of them here in Bohegan begin? Terry Malloy, trying to crawl out of the slime, was part of that battle. Must he love Mrs. Glennon, pious, sick, maternal and long-suffering, more than he loved Terry Malloy, dark-souled, blood-stained and hiding from God and conscience and himself? Oh, it was much easier to console the tearfully grateful Mrs. Glennon. But Terry Malloy was the problem. This seething waterfront was the problem. And Father Barry’s mind raged on to the terrifying boundary of disobedience. Pastor or no Pastor, Monsignor or no Monsignor, yes, Bishop or no Bishop, this was the problem the Church couldn’t afford to duck if it wanted to be a moral force that had the virility of the living Christ.

  Ahead of him he saw the red neon smear of the Friendly Bar, invit
ing men to quick courage or a short cut to well being.

  Terry was crouched down against the bar with his hand ready to reach the gun when the door began to open. Everybody was watching as the door squeaked ajar. Everybody was surprised when in walked a priest.

  Father Barry spotted Terry quickly and he came right on walking until he was halfway down the bar from him.

  “I want to see you, Terry,” Father Barry said.

  “You got eyes. I’m right in front of you,” Terry sneered.

  “Now don’t give me a hard time,” Father Barry said, coming closer.

  “Who asked ya here?” Terry said. “What d’ya want from me?”

  “Your gun,” Father Barry said, close enough now to put his hand out for it.

  “Hah, hah,” Terry gave a forced laugh.

  “Your gun.”

  “Go and chase yourself.”

  “I said give me that gun. I’m not going out of here without that gun.”

  “You go to hell,” Terry said.

  “What did you say?” Father Barry’s face reddened.

  “Go to hell!”

  As a youngster, Father Barry had fought in the streets and the punch he threw now seemed to come from him naturally. It was a right-hand driven hard from the shoulder and it caught Terry by surprise and off balance and knocked him down.

  “Let me help you up,” Father Barry said.

  Terry pushed him away hysterically. “Get away! Keep your hands off me!”

  “You want to be brave?” Father Barry said angrily.

  “It’s none of yer business,” Terry shouted at him.

  Father Barry shouted right back at him. “You want to be a brave man by firing lead into another man. That’s being brave, huh? Well, firing lead into another man’s flesh isn’t being brave at all. Any bum can pick up a .45 in a pawn shop and be that brave.”

  “It’s none of your business,” Terry kept saying, almost sobbing. “Why don’t you mind your own business? It’s none of your goddamn business.”

  “You want to hurt Johnny Friendly?” Father Barry talked right through him. “You want to hurt him? You want to fix him? Do you? You really want to finish him?”