01 The Big Blowdown

by George Pelecanos

  Mamakos looked down at the rowboat, then pointed his chin towards Hains Point. “What we ought to do, maybe we ought to take that over to the Speedway, go for a swim while we’re at it.”

  “I can’t swim,” said Karras.

  “Sure you can.”

  Peter Karras spat between his feet, watched the spit hit the water with a soft click. “I can’t.”

  Mamakos nodded, glanced thoughtfully across the channel. “So who’s gonna win the fight tonight?”

  “My pop says Schmeling. Says Max Baer ain’t nothin’ but a bufo.”

  “Your pop says.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He thinks Baer’s a clown? Maybe. But he’s a clown with a right.”

  Karras squinted in the sun. “You gonna listen to it?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Mamakos looked over at Karras, smiled as he studied the mop of blond hair, the blue eyes. “You don’t look much like a Greek, you know it, Pete? Except for the ilia, maybe.”

  Karras touched his finger to the prominent black mole to the right of his lip. “My pop’s village, in Sparta, they all look like this. Pop says we never got overrun by the Turks. It’s the Turk blood makes other Greeks dark—”

  “Your pop says.” A drop of sweat fell from the blunt tip of Steve Mamakos’s nose. “Sure is hot, though. We ought to take that little boat out.”

  Lou DiGeordano had been listening to the conversation. He turned around, made a kind of pushing motion with his hands. “You wanna take the boat, take it. I know the guy who owns it. He owes me a few dollars, anyway. But bring it back soon. You hear, Karras Jr.?”

  Mamakos had lowered himself down into the rowboat before Peter Karras could protest. Karras followed, freeing the loop of line from the piling. He pushed off on the bulkhead, noticing the meager flex of his biceps. They floated out into the channel then. Mamakos peeled off his shirt and took hold of the oars. His arms rippled on the stroke. Karras pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it in the boat, and kicked his shoes off as well. He looked at the thinness of his own arms, told himself that he would grow.

  “I’m telling you,” said Mamakos, “it’s going to be Baer. Then Baer will take the title from Camera after Camera beats hell out of Sharkey in July.”

  “I hear you,” said Karras, who suddenly felt closed in on the boat. It reminded him of the Murphy bed he slept on in his parents’ apartment.

  “You looked good in the gym this morning, Karras. Maybe you got a little Max Baer in you, too. But you got to remember to keep your hands up, and breathe. Breathing’s real important.”

  “Okay, Steve.” The boat rose and dipped over the wake of a passing skiff, and Karras felt a flutter in his stomach. Now that they were out in the channel, it didn’t seem so cool after all. Karras still felt hot and a little bit sick.

  “This is good enough,” said Mamakos, pulling the oars from the water.

  “What’re we gonna do now?” said Karras.

  “Now,” said Mamakos, “I’m going to teach you how to swim.”

  “I can’t. I know I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. Once you’re in there, you make like a dog. Move your hands and feet like hell. Kind of paddle, like, and keep paddlin’. It’s simple.”

  “I can’t, Steve.”

  “Stand up, boy.”

  “Steve—”

  “Stand up and jump off the front of this boat.”

  Karras went to the bow, stood there. He knew that he would do it, on account of being a chicken in front of Steve Mamakos was the last thing he would ever want to be. And it did feel awful close in the tiny rowboat, real close and uncomfortable. He wanted to take a deep breath first, but he couldn’t seem to keep one in. He would do it, but not just yet. He needed to wait.

  The easy laughter of Mamakos filled the air as Karras felt the weight of a large hand on his back. He was falling then, and almost as he touched the water he slipped beneath it, and he waved his hands and kicked his feet frantically, and just as quickly as he had gone under his head came out. He heard his own voice, a kind of humming sound. His hands swirled and his feet kicked. He saw the green of Hains Point, the gulls gliding at its edge, the white puff of clouds against the perfect azure sky. He took the warmth of the sun on his face, and felt the stretch of his own smile.

  “Swim, you Greek bastard!” said Mamakos.

  Swim. Yeah, it was simple.

  Chapter 2

  Peter Karras pushed the covers off his bed. He sat up and touched the bruise at the edge of his temple, the bruise given to him by his father the night before. Dimitri Karras, who worked a fruit and vegetable stand at the head of an alley on the 1700 block of Pennsylvania, had heard from One of his friends on Maine Avenue who had seen his son swimming in the channel. Dimitri had come home that night with the idea of teaching the boy a lesson. He had taken off his belt, and he had beaten his son with it, and the buckle had caught the boy on the side of the head. Dimitri Karras stopped when he saw what he had done. During the whole thing, the boy had never cried.

  Karras glanced over at his father, sitting at the table wearing only his union suit, his hand touching a cup of Turkish coffee. His father did not look up. At the foot of Peter Karras’s bed, a lobby card from a movie house lay on the wood floor. The photograph, bent and wrinkled, showed two actors, James Dunn and Zasu Pitts, from a picture called Hello Sister. So his old man had gone up to the Savoy to see a late show, and taken the photograph off the wall. And then probably gotten drunk. A present for his son, and a cockeyed one at that, as if Karras would want a photograph of Zasu Pitts. What would he do with it, anyway? Well, it was a gesture, at least. It was something.

  At the kitchen stove, Georgia Karras crumpled feta cheese into the frying pan which held the scrambled eggs she cooked for her husband. She wore a dark housedress, one of three identical housedresses she owned, with her long brown hair tied up tightly in a bun. On her feet she wore a pair of cord-fabric sandals with leather soles and Cuban heels, which she had saved for and bought at Goldenberg’s for a dollar and nineteen cents. A cat sat beside her, its nose touching her calf, listening to the hiss of the eggs congealing in the pan.

  “More cafe, Yiorgia,” said Dimitri.

  “It’s coming,” Georgia said tiredly. “I’m going to bring the eggs and the coffee together. I’m going to give it to you all at once.”

  “Uh,” said Dimitri.

  “Ella na fas, Panayotaki,” said Georgia to her son, with a come-on gesture of her hand.

  “Don’t have time to eat. Ma,” said Peter as he tied his shoes and pulled on the shirt he had worn the day before. “I’m gonna meet my friends.”

  “What friends you gonna meet?” said Dimitri.

  “Perry Angelos, and Billy Nicodemus. Jimmy Boyle, and Joe Recevo.”

  “Recevo,” said Dimitri. “The Italos.”

  Georgia served the eggs to Dimitri and refilled his coffee. She wiped her hands dry on her housedress.

  “Come into the bedroom, Panayoti,” she said, “before you go.”

  Peter Karras remade his bed and pushed it up into the wall. He passed his father, who smelled of coffee and cigarettes and booze, and faintly of the Wildroot tonic he wore in his thick, graying hair, and went into the apartment’s sole bedroom. The shades were drawn, as they were drawn in all the rooms, the red light coming from a candili suspended from the ceiling in front of several icons hung on the wall. Among the icons was a framed magazine photograph of FDR.

  His mother stood by his father’s dresser, pushing coins off the top of it into her hand. Peter stood beside her, admiring his father’s Bowie knife, which he kept on the dresser. Next to the knife sat an American-Bosch radio, and next to that two empty bottles of Gunther’s beer. Georgia reached over and took her son’s face and turned it in the light. She looked at his bruised temple and sighed.

  “It’s okay. Ma. It don’t matter.”

  “O patera sou eine kalos anthropos. Aco
us? Don’t be mad at him, boy. He only wants you to be safe. He worries, Panayoti, thas all. Hokay?”

  “Then hirazi,” he repeated in assurance.

  She blinked her eyes and pressed the coins into her son’s palm. “Pick up a chicken from the butcher on your way back home. I’m gonna boil it, make an avgolemono soup for tonight.”

  “I’ll get it at the Piggly Wiggly, Ma. They got ‘em fresh killed.”

  “They all say fresh killed. Get it from the butcher down the block, it’s cheaper.” She pushed him softly on the back of the head. “Go on, boy. Pas sto kalo.”

  Peter walked from the room. She watched him go.

  Out in the living room, he passed his father once more. Dimitri pushed his empty plate to the side and struck a match to a tailor-made cigarette. He looked at his skinny son, getting taller now, almost ready for his balls to grow heavy, to get the feelings of a man.

  “You see the photographia?” said Dimitri.

  “I saw it,” said Peter. “Thanks, Pop.” Peter kept walking, opened the front door.

  “Don’t forget about the chicken,” said Dimitri, as the door closed.

  Outside the door, the iceman, a narrow-chested American in white duck trousers, arrived. Karras faked a punch as he passed. The iceman flinched, mumbled something about Greeks. Karras laughed, headed down the stairs, thinking that he caught the scared little guy the same way every day. It was easy to take control, if you acted like a guy who didn’t care.

  Billy Nicodemus lived in the same building as Peter Karras, at 606 H. Karras picked him up at his door on the second floor and said hello to Billy’s parents, a quiet couple who ran a soda-bar concession downtown. Steve Nicodemus, Billy’s older brother, smacked Billy on the back of the head as he was going out the door. Billy Nicodemus was a husky, kind kid, with the essential good nature of his father. He never saw the point of a fight.

  “Say,” said Billy, “what’d you have to go and do that for?”

  “A love tap,” said Steve, and tilted his chin up at Karras, who he knew would understand.

  Billy, crazy about baseball, had his mitt under his arm. He and Karras went down the stairs and out onto the street.

  They went around the corner to 703 6th, and took the stairs up to Perry Angelos’ place. On the way up, Karras saw Helen Leonides, one year his junior, playing jacks outside her parents’ apartment while the landlord, Leo Bernstein, stood at the door collecting rent. She smiled at Karras, who looked away.

  Perry, a small, rather homely child with long ears and large, sad brown eyes, was nearly ready when the boys came to pick him up. Karras and Nicodemus talked to Perry’s mother for a while, who offered them some gleeka. They ate the sweets standing at the door of the bright apartment. Perry’s father, who owned a kind of coffeehouse for Greeks near the Navy Yard, worked seven days a week and came home only to sleep and change clothes. The other boys rarely saw him, but imagined they knew the father well, as Perry described him to them all the time.

  Perry gave his mother a kiss. On the way downstairs. Perry saw Helen Leonides, and said hello.

  “Hello, Perry,” said Helen. And then, musically, “Hello, Pete.”

  Helen made Karras nervous, in a funny kind of way. He didn’t respond to her greeting, and he and Perry and Billy took the stairs quickly to the street.

  Joe Recevo sat on the stoop and grinned as the boys approached his building at 5th and H. At twelve, Recevo was the senior member of the group, but had been held back in a year in school for poor performance. The year meant something: Recevo was taller than the others, had a downy row of moustaches, and in the past few months witnessed his voice deepen by a shade. With his dark, dense wave of hair and deep brown eyes, he had it over them in the looks department as well.

  Recevo jumped down off the stoop onto the sidewalk, tilted his newsboy’s cap back on his head. The boys stood around him.

  “Fellas,” he said, and he reached out and flicked a finger at the lobe of Perry’s right ear. It stung a little, and Perry rubbed it. “I didn’t hurt you, did I, Pericles?”

  “Leave him alone, Joey,” said Karras.

  “Sure, Pete, I’ll leave the little bookworm alone.”

  Recevo pushed on Karras’s shoulder a little. Karras brushed Recevo’s hand away. They smiled at each other, neither of them stepping back.

  “So where we headed?” asked Recevo.

  “Let’s get over to the playground,” said Karras. “Boyle ought to be there. Maybe get up some stickball.”

  “All right!” said Nicodemus, punching a fist into his mitt.

  Walking through Chinatown, they came upon a kid named Su. Recevo warned Karras once that Su’s pop was in with the Hip Sings, but Karras didn’t know what that meant, and didn’t care. Karras played often with Su in the alley, and thought him to be a good little athlete. The boys asked him to come along.

  “What about Baer and Schmeling?” said Nicodemus as they headed east. “Wasn’t that somethin’?”

  “It was a wild right,” said Recevo, “that’s what it was. Schmeling turned right into it.”

  “Knocked him colder than a pawnbroker’s heart,” said Perry Angelos, who had read that expression exactly in the morning Herald. He had memorized it after he had finished poring over “Buck Rogers”, “Barney Google”, and “Gasoline Alley”—his favorites—in the funny pages.

  “Steve Mamakos called it,” said Karras. “He said yesterday that Baer was gonna win.”

  “Mamakos,” said Recevo. “What’re you, in love with the guy?”

  “I said he called it, that’s all.”

  “Max Baer!” said Su, who threw a left hook and a straight right at the air as he walked.

  “What’s a Chink know about boxing, anyway?” said Recevo.

  “I know, Lecevo,” said Su.

  “‘Lecevo’,” said Joe, with a chuckle. “Yeah, you know, all right.”

  “I bet George Zaharias could beat Max Baer,” said Angelos.

  “Zaharias is a wrestler, Pericles,” said Recevo. “What a dumbhead.”

  “I know it,” said Perry. “And he’s a Greek, did ya know that? Real name is Vetoyanis. He’s wrestlin’ Jim Londos next week at Griffith Stadium.”

  “Like we need another Greek visitin’ D.C.,” said Recevo. “The town’s already lousy with ‘em.”

  Perry Angelos and Billy Nicodemus said nothing. Recevo looked over at Karras, who seemed to be grinning a little, maybe at the exchange, or maybe just because the guy was enjoying the day. With Karras, Recevo couldn’t tell.

  Jimmy Boyle stood waiting on the playground at 3rd and F when they arrived. Boyle wore threadbare clothes and shoes with holes in the toes and holes in the socks that poked through. His nose ran frequently because he was often sick, and his cheekbones stood out from the set of his face.

  The boys were poor, all of them, Boyle poorer than the rest. They knew there was something called a Depression going on, but the word was just a word to them. They had heard their parents talk about it and argue about it late at night, or the few that read the papers had read about it or had it read to them. The Greeks were better off than most, because they had their relatives and their patriotis, and they were willing to work service and food-related jobs for low wages, and sometimes the food from those jobs came home with them and made its way to the kitchen table. But they were all poor. They were poor and they didn’t really know it, and if they had known it, they wouldn’t have cared.

  They wouldn’t have cared because they were boys. They had beds to sleep in, and friends, and when they felt hungry there was usually something to eat. They knew nothing of sickness or death but to joke of it. The night seemed very far away.

  Recevo kidded Boyle that his shoes were dead man’s shoes, and everyone laughed. They all knew that Boyle’s dad worked as an assistant in the City Morgue. The thing of it was, Boyle’s father had stolen the shoes off the corpse of a boy close to Jimmy’s age, just the night before. Jimmy Boyle smiled uneasily at the comm
ent, then tried to retaliate with an insult directed at Recevo. Recevo lowered his voice to a whisper, asked Jimmy to “come again.” This was a joke they could all appreciate, as Boyle was nearly deaf in one ear. He had caught the fever real bad as a kid.

  “Well?” said Angelos, when they were done laughing. “What’re we gonna do now?”

  Billy Nicodemus punched his fist into his mitt. “Let’s play a little ball.”

  “Babe Wooth,” said Su, who took a swing at the air.

  Chapter 3

  The boys played stickball against the brick wall of a schoolhouse for the balance of the morning, then had a quick lunch at Nick Kendros’s place, the Woodward Grill on 15th. They were due to meet some Negro boys from Southwest down at a field on D Street near 5th. They had rumbled with them in June, and promised to meet on the same day in July to rumble again.

  On the walk downtown they lost Su, who had to get to his father’s laundromat for work, and then Nicodemus, who mumbled something about helping his brother Steve with a soapbox he was building in the alley. They let Nicodemus go, and soon they were on G Street, in front of Murphy’s 5 & 10.

  “I’m gonna go through to F,” said Karras. “I’ll meet you guys there.”

  “Get me some Nigger Babies,” yelled Boyle, always hungry, as Karras pushed open the glass doors. Boyle knew Karras had no money for candy but felt it was worth the try.

  In the Murphy’s, Karras at once caught the warm, brown smell of roasted nuts, and found the concession run by a smiling Tom Andros, known to the kids around town as the Peanut Man. Andros scooped some peanuts into a small paper bag and placed the bag in Karras’s hand. He knew the Karras boy from church.

  “Thanks,” said Karras.

  “Ande, boy,” said Andros, with a sweeping motion of his hand.

  On the street, the boys shared the nuts and walked east and then south. Around the Negro neighborhoods of New Jersey Avenue, Jimmy Boyle noticed a girl with thin brown arms and a bright and beautiful smile.

  Recevo caught the look in Boyle’s eyes, and made sure to rib him about it once they had gotten out of the neighborhood. Boyle just shrugged it off. A ‘32 Chevy went by on the street, a two-door model with olive-green finish, and Joe Recevo had to stop and stare. Recevo loved cars, couldn’t wait to grow up and have one of his own. His father had recently bought a ‘29 Dodge sedan on time from the Trew Motor Company on 14th, but this Chevy, this was the cat’s meow. Perry Angelos’s father owned a Chevrolet Rumble Seat Coupe, tan with full-coat nickel trim, though Perry did not brag about it to his friends. The fathers of Karras, Nicodemus, and Boyle did not own cars. Cars didn’t interest Karras, as he felt that the way to see the city was to get out into it and walk on its streets.