Brighton

by Michael Harvey

  The boy’s face flushed. “You don’t have to apologize to me, Gram.”

  “Like hell I don’t.” She slid her hands under the collar of his coat and felt the weight of it between her finger and thumb. “You sure you’re gonna be warm enough in this?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She let go of the collar, smoothing it flat. “Ask Bobby why he didn’t stop in this morning.”

  “I don’t like asking him that.”

  “Ask anyway.”

  The boy fidgeted in his sneakers.

  “You like Bobby a lot, don’t you, Kev?”

  A shrug. “Bobby’s cool.”

  “You think so?”

  “Heck, yeah.”

  “Look at me.”

  He did.

  “You know I’m not always gonna be around.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’m not in the grave yet. I’m just saying, someday.”

  “All right, someday. Way in the future.”

  “When it does happen, things will change.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but there’ll be a void and it’s just human nature to want to fill it. The point is I think you’ve got ‘special’ written all over you.”

  “Gram . . .”

  “That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy. There might still come a time when the whole thing could tip one way or the other. And you won’t know which way to push. Or even if you should push at all.”

  “I’ll know.”

  He was always so certain. Late at night, it’s the thing that scared her most. “You won’t know, Kevin. You’ll think you know, but you won’t. I want you to promise me you’ll trust Bobby. He’ll know. And he’ll do what it takes. All right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bobby. No one else.”

  “I got it.”

  “Good. Now, give me a kiss.”

  He leaned in. She searched his face the way she always did. Then she let him go and the boy was gone.

  Mary Burke watched her grandson pick his way across the backyard toward the cab office. When he was halfway there, she drew the shade and pulled down a strongbox she kept on the top shelf of her china cabinet. Inside was a stack of cash held together by a thick rubber band and a thirty-eight-caliber revolver with winds of gray tape wrapped around the grip. She picked up the gun and felt the weight of it in her hand. Then she shook her head and put it back up on the shelf, a hard, dark lump alongside the box of money.

  5

  FIVE BLACK taxis stood sentry outside the cab office. Massive Detroit machines, with bumpers made of iron and headlights as big as hubcaps, doors heavy enough to knock you over when they swung open and engines that shook the ground under your feet when they turned over. Each of them had OLD TOWNE TAXI stenciled on the side. Kevin found the key to the back door of the office under a rock and let himself in. His grandmother’s wooden desk sat silently by the window, looking back at the three-decker sunk down in the yard. On the desk was a stack of papers and an enormous phone with a silver rotary dial. Kevin picked up the handset and stared at the cab company’s number, ST2-6400, stamped in thick red letters on the receiver. Kevin’s grandmother owned the cab company outright. Her five brothers drove. Usually they made it to their destination. Sometimes they found a drink and hit a tree instead. Kevin hung up the phone and wandered out of the main office, headed toward the second floor.

  “Who’s that?”

  Kevin jumped and looked down at his feet. The voice came from what his grandmother called the mouse hole—a half circle cut into the wall near the floor. The mouse hole was usually sealed up. This morning, however, it was wide open, a shaft of white light streaming through.

  “Hey, Aggie. It’s just me.”

  Aggie was Kevin’s great-aunt and his grandmother’s only sister. She lived in a one-room apartment that shared a common wall with the office. Aggie never came out of her apartment and no one ever went in except Kevin’s grandmother. All of Kevin’s conversations with Aggie took place on his hands and knees, staring at a slice of her face through the mouse hole.

  “Hi, Kevin. Take this, will you?” An empty plate with some crumbs on it and a teacup came sliding through. Kevin hated it but bent down so his face was nearly flat against the floor. A large blue eye rolled his way.

  “You working today?”

  “Yeah, Aggie.”

  The eye drifted. Now Kevin was looking at a piece of inflamed ear fringed by white hair and a stretch of moving red lip.

  “I took my goofballs when I woke up. Four of ’em.”

  “Are you supposed to take that many?”

  “Doctor says I should, but they make me crazy.” The blue marble rolled back into its wooden socket. Kevin blinked and believed every inch of the power of the goofball.

  “Where’s Mary?” Aggie said.

  “She’s not in yet.”

  Every afternoon, Aggie and her sister sat in Aggie’s apartment, watching Candlepins for Cash and eating bowls of ice cream. Something went wrong once and they rushed Aggie to the hospital with tubes up her nose and eyes gone back in her head. For three weeks after that, Kevin’s grandmother ate ice cream alone, just her and the sound of pins falling on the black-and-white in a small kitchen at the back of the office. Kevin watched once from the dark hallway but left without saying a word.

  “Tell Mary I got peach today,” Aggie said.

  “Peach?”

  “Ice cream. She knows cuz she bought it. Make sure you tell her.”

  “You got it.”

  “Gotta go. Bye, Kevin.”

  The mouse hole snapped shut and Kevin was left on his hands and knees. He got up from the floor and took Aggie’s cup and plate into the kitchen. His great-uncle, Shuks, sat at the table. He had the Herald laid out in front of him and a large black coffee beside it.

  “Hey, Shuks.”

  “Hey, kid. What did Aggie want?”

  “Nothing. She just gave me her stuff.” Kevin dumped cup and plate in the sink. “Bobby up?”

  “Haven’t seen him.”

  “He’s gonna let me drive one of the cabs.”

  “Good for you.”

  Kevin could have said he was gonna drink a case and a half of beer and piss off down the Mass Pike blindfolded and Shuks would have been all in. Dukie was the youngest and most naturally Irish of the five brothers, with curly hair of iron gray, long, sharp features, and a nose you wouldn’t forget. He was also probably the best-looking, which wasn’t saying a whole lot unless you said it to him. Shuks, on the other hand, wasn’t pretty. His face was lumpy like soft potatoes. His hands were huge, with doorknobs for knuckles and thick, coarse fingers stained with nicotine. Still, he was Kevin’s favorite. Shuks had been a wild man back in the day—boozing and brawling his way through most of the Irish joints in Boston until he finally decided to let his fists earn him a living. Kevin had seen one of the old boxing posters, so he knew it wasn’t the usual family bullshit. Shuks at twenty-three, crouched in front of the camera, tight blue eyes stitched above a set of black gloves. Underneath, the script read NEW ENGLAND JUNIOR WELTERWEIGHT CHAMP, 1937. Most of Shuks’s fights were at places like the Taunton Civic Center or the Allston VFW. Twice Shuks fought in Filene’s window. He told Kevin those were the best-paying bouts. They’d set up a ring in the big window on Washington Street and people would stand on the corner and watch. Shuks wasn’t the type to brag, but Kevin liked to hear about the fights. And he thought Shuks liked to talk about them. Why the hell not? Kevin slapped his glove on the table and pulled out a chair.

  “Sox win?”

  “Three to two. Lynn hit a home run in the eighth. Goin’ all the way this year, kid.”

  “They always blow it.”

  “Not this year.”

  “You think?”

  “I got a feeling.” Shuks reached for a pack of Lucky Strikes on the table, shaking out a cigarette and pointing the business end at Kevin. “Don’t start. Cuts down on your wind.” He
always said that before he lit up. And Kevin always nodded.

  “You got practice today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What time?”

  “Eleven. We play Dorchester for the title next week.”

  Blue streams of smoke issued from the tunnels his great-uncle called nostrils. “I’ll be there.” Shuks lived by himself in a cheap studio across from Tar Park and never missed a game. Rarely missed a practice. He didn’t say much. Just sat on one of the benches drinking tallboy cans of Schlitz. Drank and smoked. Smoked and watched.

  “It’s down at the Commons,” Kevin said. “Bobby told me they announce your name over a speaker.”

  “You gonna be nervous?”

  “Probably.”

  “You don’t look it out there.”

  “No?”

  Shuks shook his head and pulled again on the Lucky. Kevin could hear the tobacco crackle and burn.

  “When I played baseball, I was a wreck,” Shuks said.

  “Come on.”

  “Ask your grandmother. I’d shake like a leaf with that bat in my hands, praying to Christ they didn’t hit the ball my way in the field. Course they always did.”

  “You were a professional boxer, Shuks.”

  “Boxing’s nothing but a fistfight. No time to think about what can go wrong. Baseball’s different.” He tapped his temple with a knobby finger. “Gotta have it up here. Grace under pressure.”

  “You think I got that?”

  “I know you do. Now, don’t be getting a big head or nothing.”

  “I won’t.”

  Shuks’s chuckle was full of love and smoke and whiskey. “I know. I’m just giving you a hard time.” He licked the side of ham he called a thumb and turned a page to the racing section. “Now, let me see if I can’t make us a few shekels.”

  Kevin watched him mark up the page with a black pen, hesitant to say anything more because it was quiet and peaceful and safe with Shuks and it wasn’t always that way. He took a final drag on the Lucky, crushing it in a tin ashtray and blowing out twin engines of smoke, then stretching his arms over his head and cracking his jaw in a ferocious yawn. Shuks had black rocks for teeth and precious few of those. Kevin remembered the night he’d seen one pulled. It happened at the same table where they were sitting now. Kevin was eight and had snuck into the back of the low-lit room. His great-uncle was slumped in a chair, rag stuffed in his jaw and a bottle of Paddy’s on the table. Three of his brothers sat in a shiftless row along the wall. Kevin’s gram stood over Shuks, a long, red-handled plumber’s wrench in one hand. Shuks pulled out the rag and took a belt of whiskey. Then he nodded and Kevin’s grandmother didn’t wait. One of the brothers turned away as she worked the pliers. The other two watched and winced. She slipped once, ran her upper teeth over her lower lip, and got a better grip. Shuks’s huge blue eye never left her, big man’s hands twitching by his side, left foot tapping out a beat. Kevin remembered the god-awful crack and belly moan. Then the pliers were back on the table—rotting tooth, horned roots and all, in their gory maw. Shuks spit blood and went hard for the bottle. Kevin’s grandmother sat down in a chair, slightly out of breath, and reached for her cigarettes. That was when she noticed Kevin. His eyes must have been as wide as the world because she hustled him out of the room, swearing he’d go to a dentist when the time came and to forget what he’d seen. Fat chance. Kevin’s first trip to Dr. Foster ended when he gave the dentist a busted lip. Kevin’s mom was mortified. Shuks had been proud as all hell and told him he had a good right hand. Kevin studied the creases in his great-uncle’s face, suddenly desperate to commit them to memory for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom. Shuks turned another page in his Herald and made some more notes.

  “Got a nice one today, kid. Three fifteen at Suffolk.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Kevin crowded closer.

  “Name’s Gun Hill. He’s been out for a couple of months with an injury. Dropping down into the claimers for the first time.”

  “Horse belongs in the fucking glue factory.”

  Shuks and Kevin looked up as one. Bobby was slouched in the doorway, wearing faded jeans and a Sox sweatshirt, black hair curling and still wet from the shower. He came over to the table and picked up the pack of cigarettes. Bobby shook one out and stuck it behind his ear.

  “What do you know about Gun Hill?” Shuks said, grabbing his smokes off the table.

  “Stay away from him, Shuks.” Bobby winked at Kevin, turned around one of the chairs, and sat down. “You already owe Fingers a hundred for the piece of shit you bet on last week.” In addition to driving cabs, Bobby hustled part-time for a local bookie named Fingers. “On top of that, you owe another twenty for the nigger pool from last week.”

  “Speaking of which . . .” Shuks pulled off an enormous lump of black boot and fished out a slip of paper he’d stuck in the heel. “Here’s the number for this week. Twenty bucks.”

  “Forget it.”

  “How much was the payout last week?”

  “Five fifty.”

  “I missed by one number.”

  “Everyone misses by one number, Shuks.”

  The nigger pool was a neighborhood lottery run by the local bookies. The winning numbers were taken from the last three digits of Saturday’s take at Suffolk Downs printed in the Sunday paper. Shuks played every week. So did all his brothers and Kevin’s grandmother. She hit the number once, and it was the only time Kevin had ever heard her laugh without any strings attached.

  “Just put the bet in. I’ll have Fingers’s money tonight.” Shuks flipped on the TV. A reporter stood in front of Charlestown High, talking about the new school year and the first full week of busing. The news report cut to videotape of a white kid wearing a Barracuda jacket inside out and throwing a bottle at a school bus stopped at a red light. Three more white kids pulled a kid with a yarmulke off the bus and beat him to the pavement. One of the kids started toward the camera with a bat, then everyone ran across the street. Two black faces peered out of a dry cleaners. The kid in the ’Cuda lobbed a brick through the front window and they poured in. A couple of cops on motorcycles rolled up as they cut back to the reporter still in front of the high school and talking a blue streak. Shuks turned down the sound.

  “Fucking assholes,” Bobby said.

  Shuks twitched a thumb and blinked. “How’d you like to get bused through Dudley Square every morning?”

  “Half those kids aren’t even in school. They just want to crack some skulls. And if the skulls are black, so much the better.”

  Shuks rolled an eye toward Kevin. “You expecting trouble?”

  Kevin went to Boston Latin School. Latin was the oldest public school in the country and offered its own entrance exam for prospective students. If you got in, it was free, at least until you flunked out. Every fall, eight hundred kids of every color and creed enrolled in Latin’s seventh-grade class. Six years later, about a hundred graduated. Kevin didn’t tell anyone when he applied to Latin. Didn’t tell anyone when he was accepted. A month before school started, his mother found the letter in a drawer. She sat him down in the kitchen and asked what it was all about. When he told her, something stirred in her eyes, something fierce and young and bright and proud. Then his father banged through the front door and the spark was snuffed. She jammed the letter in one of Kevin’s pockets and started hunting around in the cabinets for a box of mac and cheese. Two flights up, his grandmother taped the letter to her fridge and took it off every time anyone visited so they could read it and marvel.

  “I go to Latin, Shuks.”

  “It’s on the other side of the city and you take a bus.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Shuks glanced at Bobby, who shrugged and dangled a set of keys. “I’m gonna get him some time behind the wheel.”

  “Donnie Campbell needs a pickup at nine.”

  “Where’s he headed?”

  “Logan. Said he’d be waiting on the porch.”

  “Got it.” Bobby turn
ed to Kevin. “You ready?”

  There was a sound outside in the lot. Three sets of eyes looked to the door. Kevin’s grandmother wasn’t expected into work for at least another fifteen minutes. But sometimes you never knew.

  6

  BRIDGET PEARCE sat in the kitchen, chin six inches off the table, shoveling Sugar Pops into her mouth as fast as she could. Her father sat across from her, fingers black under the nails from working on carburetors all week. Her mother was in between, clasping and unclasping her hands, a sure sign she was getting ready to speak. Shut up, Bridget thought. Just shut up.

  “It’s only up the hill, Jack.”

  “Up the hill. My ass, up the goddamn hill.” Bridget’s father picked up the blue-and-white ceramic shaker and tapped a sprinkle of salt over his eggs. Her mother moved the butter dish closer so he could reach it. They watched while he buttered, then dipped a corner of his toast in the yolk and took a bite, licking at a smear of yellow on his lip and taking a suffering sip of coffee before setting the cup back in its saucer.

  “She has friends in Newton, Jack. She plays up there all summer.”

  “What’s wrong with her friends down here?” The old man salted his eggs a second time and chewed noisily on a piece of bacon wrapped in a fold of yolky toast. Bridget could see the remains of breakfast in his teeth as he spoke. “Maybe Brighton’s not good enough for her?”

  “No one said that.”

  He beckoned without looking. “Come here.”

  Colleen was silhouetted in the doorway, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

  “I said come here, goddammit.”

  Bridget’s mother gave the slightest of nods, and Colleen edged into the room. He swept her between his legs and pulled her close to his body, turning her around so she was staring at her mother.

  “You’d love to go up the hill with her, wouldn’t you, Kate?”

  Bridget’s mother’s eyes ran on tracks in her head, from husband to daughter, hunting for an escape where there was none. “It’s got nothing to do with that.”

  Lie. It had everything to do with that. And she damn well knew it. Bridget remembered the day last summer when she left, cheap clothes on wire hangers slung over her shoulder, Kevin’s dry whispers in her ear, Colleen’s screams taking the paint off the walls as she scraped at her mother’s skirts, Bridget dead-eyed and blinking, watching her father in the flat heat as his wife went out the front door. She was gone three days, the old man sitting sentry in the living room the whole time. Bridget snuck out of bed on the first night just to see if he was still there. She watched the glow of his cigar pulse in purple clouds of darkness, counting ten pulls before she allowed herself to slip back into bed.