The Warriors

by Sol Yurick

  Lunkface, whose sense of tradition was at war with his patience said, “Hurry that up, man, they’ll be coming down on us.” But they all gave Lunkface the cold look because this was the important moment. Bimbo took the third cigarette, puffed it, and tapped Lunkface. Lunkface kneeled in front of Bimbo and Bimbo gave Lunkface his cigarette to puff. Lunkface said the words, stuck the snuffed-out cigarette behind his ear, and took his drink. They were beginning to feel a little better now, getting tight and cool, their fear growing into anger, and they began to bounce a little on the balls of their feet, working themselves up.

  The other sons went through it, sticking the cigarettes into the backs of their hats. As each man said that this brother would serve his Family till he died, they felt, more and more, the fighting spirit uniting them into one, till they could take on anyone; feeling drunk with it, drawing closer, closer, Father, Uncle, brother-children, all together tight, because they had all sucked from one another’s lips, were one, gang-person-family, blood-united, ready and able to stand up to any fucking Other in the whole fucking world. Hector, speaking loud, chanting angry; “I mean we come down here and we want peace and we’re not no Commies jiving sounding putting down anyone of them and they come on like they have to have war because of that slut.”

  They all said “Yes.”

  “Well, now we move out like a war party, even though we wanted peace. Anyone could tell you we wanted peace. Well, now it’s too late for that.”

  “Yah! We wanted peace,” they shouted.

  The bottle was finished. Bimbo flung it far into the air toward where the trailer and the bitch skulked. It arched and shone high, but splintered short of the mark; the bitch and the Blazer bounced high over the fragments slivering along the sidewalk.

  Now they moved out, swiftly, leader and brothers, all knowing exactly what to do, bonded into One. Muscle tightened, compressing body a little so that biceps bunched, and triceps tensed, fist balled, shoulder hunched, legs flexed, trunk tilting, every part taut to sense.

  The Family considered going down one of the side streets and moving parallel to the main street till they came to the station. But the side streets were smaller. If the Borinquens had a tank to bring up, they could come blazing down on the Family, catch them, and who knew if there would be doorways to dive into? If they were japped from the roofs with Molotov cocktails here, it was a matter of deploying into the middle of the street, under the elevated tracks where they would be shielded. A scout, The Junior, moved out at a trot till he was a block ahead. No one told him to; he knew. Hinton dropped back about a block to bring up the rear. Scout and Rear stayed on opposite sides of the street so they could command more space as the eyes of the war party. The slut and the trailer followed. They could see her white skirt in the dimness, moving in and out of the street lights. A string of small-arms firecrackers fired off to their left; they startled; head ducked down and around, heart pounded faster, sweat beaded out in sudden spurts.

  A soft, hot wind sprang up in front of them, opposing them with a stream of damp air. They leaned forward. The Family eye kept busy searching for anything to form weapons fast in case of a jap. If the attacking army came in a tank, or outnumbered them, the Family might make it to a fire-alarm box and pull the lever; cops and firemen would come and they could be saved; but that was the extreme thing to do. They kept alert for the orange lights that showed where the alarm boxes were.

  The Family saw cars—good—car antennas to break off for flails. Garbage cans were everywhere—covers good for shields. It was pointless to run. Who knew how far they would have to run, and they couldn’t lose face under the enemy fire. The point spotted nothing suspicious ahead; the rear signaled that they were still being trailed. The Family sweated now; the moving air was getting stickier; the closeness of the air smelled of a near enemy. The wind was gusting dust and papers into their faces. Tension was beginning to strain their muscles. Every time a car drove by, someone jumped and they looked carefully to see how old the man driving it was. They watched every passerby, but there were very few of these and they wished the streets were crowded.

  They passed an apartment building. A lot of broken furniture was lying around in the street. It worried the family. Might mean an assembly and ammunition dump: tables with legs fixed to come off easily, couch springs for wire whips, guns stashed away in the fluffy arms of busted-down easy chairs, ash-can covers for shields and ash cans full of broken Coke bottles to fling, rocks, used light bulbs, pipe ends, loosened spikes in the iron fence, old-fashioned spear-headed cast-iron floor lamps, stacked bricks, and oiled excelsior bunches to fire and fling from the rooftops. All the enemy had to do was to boil out of the doorways, race up from behind the stoops and the whole arsenal—nothing the cops could call weapons—was ready for them. The Family would have to run a gauntlet under the fort. But the houses were very old here, and there was a reason for throwing out furniture, and a street this wide was never a good place to ambush anyone. It couldn’t be blocked off from the ends; it couldn’t really be controlled from the roofs and, for that matter, the cops could easily come down on everyone with their superior tank force, cordon off the whole battlefield and take both sides in.

  Lunkface broke formation and ran over to the pile and started to tear loose a table leg.

  Hector told him to drop it and remember they still moved in peace. “Give them Blazers no cause.”

  “Well, man, you’re not going to trust them to care about that, are you?” Lunkface asked.

  “The Family makes no move yet.”

  The Family sense was better attuned to this land now. They were not jumpy, only battle tense, sorting the sounds into innocent and dangerous. The wind bugged them. They came to the Freeman Street station, but it was blocked off and they went on. Hinton had lived around here once, but it didn’t look familiar anymore. The Family hoped the territory of the Borinquen Blazers would end here, but the chalked wall-signs told them they were still deep in enemy country. A bus passed them packed full of track-loonies from the train. Lunkface pointed and they saw the Professor standing there; he looked like he was still making his speech to no listeners.

  Hector had an idea. If they could only capture the Blazer, they could hold him as a hostage. Or better, they would let him go and that would show the Borinquenos that their intentions were honorable. They wouldn’t even touch the slut. Whatever they did to her, no matter how innocent, that bitch was going to say that they had fingered her and insulted her and spit on the honor of the Blazers. But they couldn’t stop to jap the right way because they had to keep moving at a raid pace, keeping alert for any party coming down on them. How could they trap the trailer here? Hector wondered. If they moved into the next land, they could alter their strategy and spring the snare right. But where were the borders?

  They passed undershirted men seated in front of an apartment house. There were tots still playing in the street. The men had brought out chairs and boxes and set up a bridge table. A wire from a ground-floor apartment was strung out and two lamps lit a too-hot-to-sleep card game. A baby was sleeping in a carriage; one of the players rocked with one hand and held his cards with the other. The men froze their play and looked the Family over, carefully without staring insultingly, as they passed. The radio played pachanga music to keep the card game gay: drums, bongoes, and cowbells echoed down the very still street. As they passed they heard the players begin to talk.

  They waited for the attack as they moved; the tension became acute again; the muscle ached; the senses dulled with the strain of being at attention too long, and they probed harder into the dangerous night. The wind died down. The dust settled. It seemed stiller. There were fewer explosions. The air became almost palpable; the sweat was drenching their shirts to their jackets again. And now, as they passed another shut-down station, the sounds they had learned to interpret as nonhostile began to become suspicious again. An explosion like the smash and thud of a Molotov cocktail breaking into flame jumped them. Somebody with a
grease gun was beginning to spray them and Dewey started to throw himself prone when he realized it was a string of firecrackers rattling off. Not being packed for any action, not even having one knife among them, they worried that they wouldn’t be able to get hold of any defensive weapon on time to fight back if they came. Or if they came down in a car—everything would be lost. The way the lead’s head was turning, in sudden jerks, meant he was alarmed at everything. If he broke and ran, they would all panic. Hector had to get them out of it. He didn’t know how much further they had to go. Mysterious open windows, black, looked down on them from the apartment houses. A sniper would lurk in any one of those windows, ready to pick them off. It was not like being on a raid in traditional rivals’ territory—territory that was as well scouted as their own, where they knew a lot of ways to get home, and when they did there were a million covers to be safe in if there was a chase. Where could they go now?

  Then Hector came up with the plan. He gave Bimbo, Lunkface, and Dewey the word. Bimbo faded back to tell Hinton. At the same time Dewey ran down and gave the action to The Junior. The girl’s white skirt still swirled behind; if the trailer had any idea of giving it up and cutting out, that cunt was going to keep him going to make up for her honor; she was going to get a pin tonight, Hector thought. Bimbo and Dewey came back.

  The Junior increased his pace to double time. Hector, Bimbo, Lunkface, and Dewey quick-marched. But Hinton slowed up just a little. They began to draw out of sight of their trailers. It helped when the tracks turned a corner and the train route left Southern Boulevard and kept on going down along Westchester Avenue. As soon as they were around the corner, the men fanned out and holed into store doorways. Then Hinton passed and caught up with the slowing-up Junior. A few minutes later, the bitch and the Blazer followed along. When they passed the ambushing men, The Junior and Hinton turned and began to charge the tailers who turned and began to run away, as the four Dominators rose out of ambush, surrounded, caught, and held them. The trailer knew enough to stand still but the girl threw herself around, cursed them and shouted for them to get their hands off while Dewey said, laughing, showing his teeth very big, World War II Jap style, “Ah ssso, Captain Sssstrongheart. You are sssurprissed?”

  The girl began to noise it loud when Lunkface, who had her, clapped his big hand over her mouth.

  Hector told her, “You keep raising your voice and we’ll give you something to raise it about. Stand still in front of this Family, you hear?” And she stopped fighting.

  And then Hector told them he didn’t want any war. Did they understand that? And the bitch said that they didn’t need any war; why didn’t they just give her one of the pins? The trailer told her to shut up and she called him stupid because he had let himself be japped in this simple-minded way. Hector tried to explain it again and asked them if they were going to take back the word to the others that they passed in peace, or was the Family going to have to take them along as hostages, for safety? Lunkface wanted to take the Borinqueno’s hat away, but Hector wouldn’t let him. The trailer said that as far as he was concerned, they could move in peace: he would bring back the word. The girl said what kind of man was he to surrender to these hick warriors from the hills of somewhere else? The trailer should ask for a fair one right here and now. The trailer told her to shut up because she was going to get him wasted if she didn’t shut her big bitch mouth. And while she didn’t raise her voice, she kept sounding them all and telling them what nowhere characters they were—halfmen—and if they wanted to get home in one piece, all they had to do was to let her go and to give her one of the pins.

  The Family gave her the big laugh and wished they had the time to show her what they did with big-mouth sluts and she was asking for it, but good. Still—and they had known some good ones in their time—they had to admit that she wasn’t frightened of them—not one bit—and they had to admit that she had heart, more than the trailer who stayed quiet. They frisked the trailer and found that he had a blade, and they took that away. Spoils of war. They wanted to frisk her too, but they saw the look on the trailer’s face. There was no point in making any more trouble than necessary. They wanted to question the trailer—how many soldiers were coming down on them; were there tanks; which way would they come from? But the trailer called on the honor of his band and wouldn’t say anything at all. He looked the Family up and down in the cold and Spanish way, angering them. The only thing to do was to teach him with a few lessonslashes with his own knife. But it was pointless to do so.

  And in the meantime, the bitch kept lipping them, one and all, and mostly the trailer. What was he supposed to do, Bimbo wondered? She called him a one-ball, half-cock, stupid man, and it wasn’t the heat he was sweating from, but the hate; he was going to give her that one good, but very good beating when he got her back, for making him out such a fool in the eyes of the grinning Family. The Family had contempt for these Borinquenos; none of them could control their women one shit-worth.

  And then Bimbo had the thought: “what if they were putting on an act to keep them there. It was time to pull out and march on down the line and get out of this hot and dangerous country. Bimbo signaled speed-up warnings. Hector gave the sign to the prisoner-holders, and they let go of the trailer. Hector said, “On your way, amigo, and say only that we march in peace.” The Junior moved out to take his point position. The bitch sounded them and the trailer started to pull her away, but she swung free, slapped him, and lunged back for Lunkface’s pin. Lunkface leaned away a little and she missed.

  The Family started to move out, Hinton lingering to be the Rear, when Lunkface said, “If you want that pin so bad, chick, just come along with us. I mean we’re the men. I mean we, you know, ball the best, and we’re the biggest men in this whole wide city. Everyone knows the Dominators. I mean you’ll be like a sister to us, you know?”

  And that was the wrong thing to say because the trailer gave them a look that, under other circumstances, might have cost him a slash or two, a gun-burning, a chain across the face. Even cautious Bimbo wanted to wipe that irritating Spanish Pride off his face, but Hector held him back.

  “You,” he told the bitch, “move off.”

  The bitch didn’t move. She grinned at Hector and said, “What’s the matter, Chico, you don’t think you’re enough hombre for me?”

  But Hector was cool and used to being sounded, so he didn’t bother to answer her. He waved his arm and the men began to move out.

  “You’ll give me your pin?” the bitch asked Lunkface. He said he would. She told them that she would go with them. The trailer warned the bitch that she would get what was coming to her. And she said that she didn’t know if she was even going to come back to this land of the cuckoos and the capons, and followed the Family. They moved for a block, easier now, faster, but after a while the word was flashed that the trailer was still behind them and they tensed up again. The bitch said not to worry because the Blazers weren’t out in force tonight. Most of the men were busy shooting off those kid-stuff fireworks somewhere or other, scattered, and she doubted if they could muster more than five or six men. And anyway, they would soon be over the border.

  They passed walls on which the contending Castro Stompers and Borinquen Blazers insulted one another in multi-colored chalks, while the Intervale Avenue Lesbos said they sucked and had more manhood than any little-boy.

  After two more Borinqueno blocks, they crossed into a new country. The bitch said there was a truce between the Borinquens and the Jackson Street Masai. Soon they would be coming to the station where they could take the train out.

  “Don’t let these Masai coons funk you, because the Blazers have them in control,” she said. Dewey looked angrily at her.

  Lunkface told the girl again that she could be a sister to them and she gave him a look. But he explained what being a sister was and she grinned and said she would, brother, so long as he gave her the pin to show her he really loved her like a sister. They laughed at that. Hector only hoped she wa
sn’t going with them to bring down the others.

  They were almost out of it, but muscle couldn’t untense; body remained crouched; fist clenched; moving through the heat, wanting to knock and smash at anything, to let it out, loosen, because there had been no fight. Bimbo felt the girl looking at him and hammered the side of his fist against a sign. Her little smile rewarded him. But Lunkface, jealous, strutted stiffly, looking to hit something bigger, to let out the choked spasm. To show her, to live up to her spunkiness. The Junior kept turning back to look at her; Hinton rear-guarded too close. Dewey sulked apart, still angry. Hector watched: A woman on a raid was always trouble. Trust Lunkface to initiate it. Did she give him a wink? Lunkface frowned at Hector and pulled her closer. There was nothing to do but to get rid of her as soon as they could. Hector angrily signaled The Junior and Hinton to watch carefully. He didn’t know how he was going to pry her away, because Lunkface was going to fight for the snatch. Maybe just leave the two of them.

  They saw the next station a few blocks ahead—the station from which they could get the train home. A man looked them over for a second as he passed. Lunkface, whose arm was around the bitch’s neck left her and walked over to the man, caught his arm, turned him around and said, “What you looking at?”