by Sol Yurick
“He won’t take it,” Hector shouted back and shrugged his shoulders.
Dewey came up beside Hinton, bent down and peered at the candy. He said, “Dust. A few hairs, man. A little soot. Some snot. Only some spit. You look,” he said and took it and passed it to The Junior, laying it on his comic book.
The Junior took great care not to touch the candy. He brought it close to his face, peered, and said, “It’s not so dirty,” to Dewey. “It’s not so dirty, Lunkface,” he yelled.
“Don’t go jiving me. Don’t go putting me down,” and Lunkface’s fists were closed; he looked in Hector’s direction. Hector made sure his mouth was closed, his face was serious, and that he was judging the whole thing impartially. The train crawled down into the tunnel; the heat closed around them; the wind that was blown in from the windows was hotter, damp, carrying strange smells and sounds. The stink of burning insulation permeated everything, irritating their noses, watering their eyes. The fan wheezed and beat against the air, stirring floor dust from the aisles. The train stopped; more people got on. They gave the Family that look, as if they recognized what they had to deal with and tried to keep in the other part of the car. Because they knew they were being watched, they acted it a little wilder, pretending there was no one else in the world. The doors closed. The train tried to start, made a few jerks and stood still, the motor vibrating under their feet. They began to worry a little that they might have to go through that change-over again. Finally the train moved out and they turned their attention back to the candy comedy.
Hinton held the paper with the candy out; Lunkface knocked it aside. Dewey said, “Man, you’re littering. That is a crime, you hear now; a misdemeanor; they can fine you for it. Now you don’t want to get fined, do you?” Lunkface was looking at him with that stupid bull look, getting ready to snort; the trick was to see how far they could jive him without him coming down on them. Hinton and Dewey turned away, as if they had lost interest in the game. Lunkface sat down. The train passed men working in the tunnel. Lunkface turned to look. Hinton leaned over and put the piece of paper and candy on Lunkface’s lap so softly that he didn’t even feel it. Lunkface turned around but didn’t notice what they had done. The Junior had to hold his comic book close to his face to keep from showing his laugh.
When the train came to the next stop, the candy slipped and fell off and Lunkface saw what they had done to him. They all laughed, except Hector, who stilled it under the impartial leadermask. Lunkface saw he was made a fool. He got up and made the stupid, furious face at all of them trying to decide who did it to him. They tried to give Lunkface the old I’m-innocent-officer look, but Bimbo couldn’t keep it cool, cracked and giggled. Lunkface came up in front of Bimbo and reached behind his own ear, pulled his war cigarette out and held it horizontally with both hands, three inches in front of Bimbo’s eyes, broke it and flung the pieces in front of Bimbo’s feet and stomped on them. He turned and walked away, down to the other end of the car, facing the window, his back to the Family, having as good as told his immediate superior, his Uncle, and so the rest of them, to fuck themselves. Bimbo didn’t know what to do; he shrugged his shoulders. In ordinary circumstances this called for group punishment, and the whole Family would come down on the offender. Bimbo sat there, puzzled, looking at Hector, waiting for his Papa’s decision.
Hector saw that it had become serious and he had to do something about it. He got up. The others watched him walk down to Lunkface and put his arm around Lunkface’s shoulder. They watched him trying to talk to Lunkface. Lunkface jerked away. Hector patted Lunkface’s shoulders. Hector offered some candy to Lunkface. Lunkface turned partly away and folded his arms on his stuck-out chest. Hector got in front of him, held Lunkface’s arm, and talked. Hector kept conning Lunkface, facing back toward the Family, but talking into Lunkface’s ear. The men saw that he was grinning behind Lunkface, but every time Lunkface turned to look at him, staring suspiciously out of those piggy little eyes, Hector’s face became grave.
Then, suddenly, Lunkface nodded his head and turned and started coming back down the aisle toward them. Hector came with him, half-holding him back, soothing him, patting him on the back like he was calming down an animal, placating this wild man. They were all a little nervous because they knew the way Lunkface could get. The other people in the train were grinning at the whole play. Lunkface stopped in front of one, put his hands on his hips, as if to say, What’s funny? The joker stopped grinning. After all, was this Family a show for the Other? The train came to a station and Lunkface stopped while more people got off and on; the car was filling up. When the train started, Lunkface came back to the Family. Hector followed.
Lunkface stopped in front of Hinton. That meant that Hector had selected Hinton for punishment. Hinton knew it was because of what he had said about the insignia. As soon as they stood there in front of him, Hinton put a serious face on because it wasn’t a joking matter any more and the moment of trouble had come. But if Lunkface was going to lay one hand on him, he was prepared to go Something Else. Everyone respected the wild man because he didn’t care for anything and there was nothing he couldn’t do. Hinton had learned that a long time ago. Lunkface reached into Hinton’s hatband and pulled out his war cigarette. As he did this Hinton, responding, reached into his jacket pocket, took out his pack of matches, tore one off, and held it poised to light the cigarette. Lunkface put Hinton’s war cigarette into his mouth and Hinton lit it for him instantly. Lunkface puffed once, twice, blowing smoke contemptuously upward where it was shredded by the fans. Then he pinched the coal out to the floor, and stepped on it carefully, twisting the sole of his foot once, twice.
Hinton’s good-looking face was wet, his lip sweat-beaded, but he would give Lunkface the satisfaction of no other expression, even though the insult of this older brother had been a strong one. But Lunkface had the right as an older brother because he was the third, after Hector and Bimbo. Hinton hoped he showed the proper expression. No one smiled or looked at him funny, though they were entitled. Lunkface stuck the war cigarette back into Hinton’s band, the smudge end down, deliberately dirtying the crown of Hinton’s hat.
Hector gave Lunkface another war cigarette and Lunkface brought it to Bimbo. Bimbo didn’t bother to punish Lunkface, but stuck the cigarette back behind Lunkface’s ear. Lunkface turned back to Hinton, and they saw that he hadn’t been satisfied.
But Hector was ready for Lunkface; he proposed a game to see who was the most Man of the group. They would play chicken, and the way they would play it would be for them to stick their heads out of the window and the one that came the closest to the passing wall outside would be the winner and the Man With The Most Heart. That got them, especially Lunkface, because he had a new way to prove to them he was the biggest man, not only with the most heart, but with the biggest cojones. He forgot about Hinton as they turned to the window. They all participated, except Hector who was the judge, and The Junior who was back in his comic book now.
The contest was won by Hinton. He had to win it, and his fuzzy hair was scraped off the top and there was a gray smudge where the hairs were scraped, broken and whitened by the tunnel walls outside. And they admitted that this showed a great deal of heart because Hinton’s kinky hair lay closest to the scalp.
The Junior had followed the adventure story through the pictures. They had fought every inch of the way; the heroes were on the way home. The heroes were, The Junior could see, the hardest men in a hard world, admirable but, he thought, he wouldn’t like to be in their place, even though he envied their adventures. He sighed, turned back to the beginning as the train went through the echo-y tunnel, and the roaring darkness was getting hotter and hotter.
July 5th, 3:00–3:10 A.M.
Their train pulled into 96th Street. The doors slid open. The train waited. Everything went wrong.
The 96th Street station is an exchange point. Two lines merge there: the Broadway 242nd Street local, and the Seventh Avenue express. There are two pl
atforms which the local and express flank. If it pulls in first, the local waits for the express. Since it had come first, their express was waiting for the local. Local and express rarely ever arrive at the same time. There is an underpass connecting the north ends of the station. On the south end of the platforms, you merely walk upstairs and are outside. On the rear end, however, you have to go downstairs first, walk through the underpass, up the staircase to the opposite side. Because it is a four-line junction, the station is always full of people; because there are many people, there are sometimes fights. Transit patrolmen are around all the time.
It got hotter now, the heat of the train motors drifted up. The Family was fagged out, but too tired, too uncomfortable to sleep on the sticky vinyl and foam-rubber seats. They sat, restlessly waiting for the train to move, too beat to complain. A bright, four-color, three-dimensional platform advertisement advised them that this squarish symbol was the sign of the Chase-Manhattan Bank, your symbol of confidence and friendship, and that it was 3:00 A.M. How nice it would be to have already made the Times Square change-over to the Coney Island line, to be over with that long ride, to be back home—even if it was The Prison—sleeping. Dewey was itchy from mosquito bites; The Junior scratched at dried sweat. Now it was only a matter of drudging it through.
Hector half-dozed, facing his Family, back to the platform. Their eyes were almost shut, except for The Junior reading his comic book. A patrolling transit cop walked by the open door and glanced at the six of them sprawling. They hardly noticed him, but The Junior saw the flicker of enemy blue and made a mistake, giving Hinton the warning nudge. Hinton passed the nudge on automatically. The cop saw the motion pass along the line; there was a little hesitation in his stride. He kept going, then stopped and looked at them through one of the windows. Bimbo passed Hector the eye-sign; Hector turned and tried to see the Blue Man through the dirty window. Lunkface’s shoulders hunched. Dewey folded his hands in his lap like being good in school. Bimbo’s fingers plucked the tight pants-cloth free from the sweaty inner parts of his legs.
The cop passed out of sight, but his face appeared around the door at the far end of the train, giving them a quick size-up look. How much did he know? Were they looking for the men who had taken part in the meet on the plain? Did they know about . . . Had they found the body? Had the girl told? Well, if she did, she was going to be just as sorry because they were all in it together. Even so, how would they know who to look for? The pins! Were they hunting the Family? Who knew? The thing to do was to sweat it out till it broke or cooled again. Let the headbusters come to them and interrogate.—Who are you? Well, the Family thought, getting the story set . . .
—No one, no one at all. Just six boys out for a ride on a hot night, sir.
—Well, where have you been?
—Here and there, up and downtown. Around. No harm in that, Officer, is there?
—None at all, sonny—the officer would say, giving the Family the thick-faced, jolly-fake, head-patting-for-the-kiddies, friendly-movie-cop-on-the-corner bit.
—Just tell me . . . you can trust me . . . where?
—Uptown and down; all around.
—Where are you from? Are you a gang?
—Not a gang; a social club, Officer.
—What school do you go to? What’s your turf?
—Turf? Turf? What’s that, Officer?
—Where do you live? Let me see your J.D.—I mean identification cards. And you (to Lunkface), you look old enough to be in the army. Where’s your draft card?
—But I’m still a child.
—Why are you so far from home?
—But Officer, we’re only out to see the world, take a little ride. After all, Wallie, our worker from the Youth Board is always after us to get out of the neighborhood, the environment. Go out, broaden your horizons, he say, get around.
—Oh? You have a Youth Board Worker? And you’re not a gang? Let’s see now, were you by some chance tied up in that big rumble uptown a few hours ago?
If that rumble was a few hours ago and the fuzz were still looking, it was serious. But they couldn’t know about the dead bastard yet, could they? It was too soon to know, too far away from here.
—We’re only sightseeing, Officer, we’re not doing anything.
—Sightseeing at three in the morning? Sightseeing in a subway? Now really, boys, help me believe it.
—Well, there was this wrong-way train . . .
They began to tense.
—And now wouldn’t it be better—the cop would say—to do it my way? I mean I don’t want to hurt your feelings, young men, but still, and you can understand my suspicions, what with the terrible things you hear about juvenile delinquency these days.
—Oh, we understand; perfectly normal, Officer . . .
They were alert now.
—Yes, wouldn’t it be better, the fuzz would say—Gentlemen, for you to go into the hood-posture; lean against that bench out on the platform there, hands on the back, feet far back and spread wide apart so you can’t attack me, and that way I can frisk you and . . .
The knife! Who has the knife! Who has that fucken knife? The thought hit and their frantic looks flickered around.
Hector wink-signed. Bimbo got up and sauntered over to the door and looked out onto the platform. A few people were standing around; a woman with shopping bags had put them down and was plucking her dress free of her breasts with one hand and fanning herself with a sogged copy of a two days old Daily News. Bimbo leaned himself against the door, half in, half out, letting it out into his back, idle-like, so he could see inside and out. He looked down the platform at the cop’s back. The buster was about two cars down now, patrolling, shoving his head into the train, trying to look unsuspicious, not making a move to alert anyone. But something made him turn around. Bimbo ducked back in, but not before he had been seen. He went back to the middle of the car and tried to see down the train’s length, see through the windows, between the cars, if the buster was still looking at them. He saw nothing. He went back and popped his head back out the doorway. The cop was standing still, hands on hips, club dangling from his wrist, staring right back into Bimbo’s eyes. And Bimbo tried to turn his look into a sightsee, turning his head very casually, as though there was much of interest along the platform. Bimbo’s eyes saw nothing at all, not the people, not even the other side of the platform; all his attention was focused on that transit flat, who watched him, not fooled by the act. Something was wrong now. Hinton got up and drifted down to the front of the car, took his post to look through and into the cars ahead. Dewey went to the rear of the car, looking back. Lunkface was in the center, watching the other side of the tracks to the uptown platform in case the cops were coming up that way. A train was pulling into the local side there. Hector and The Junior sat.
Hector got a penny ready, stood up and drifted out, got himself a stick of gum, quick, from the machine, and drifted back in. He knew he was being watched and he began to wonder if it wouldn’t have been a good idea to have removed the insignia after all. It was too easy to spot them. But the idea disturbed him and he rejected it. Still, he kept being bothered by the idea that he was being foolish. The train pulled in on the local side of their platform; people began to come across from the local to the express. Hector took off his hat and stuck out his head. The cop, four cars away, was still standing there, observing, definitely suspicious now, impatiently shifting his head to see around the people passing in front of him. Hector got back in. The doors began to close. Hector signaled. Lunkface came up and held the door open. Hinton, at the front, saw the cop come onto the train and gave the signal. They all ran out, ducking under Lunkface’s arms. The door shut behind them. They were all laughing because they had outwitted that potato-head T-cop.
But that fuzz must have given out the alarm somehow, because even though one had been out-smarted into the departing train, another cop was coming, trotting in their direction, looking like a little fat blue clown that anyone of the men c
ould have taken, but who was dangerous because he was The Law. They took evasive action: they turned and ran toward the rear. The cop, seeing the move, followed fast.
Hinton, being the fastest, ran first. He was going too fast to take the underpass exit, kept running, jumped off the end of the platform onto the tracks, and continued into the tunnel, sprinting uptown on the downtown track.
Dewey and The Junior ran toward the north end, ran down the underpass stairs, three, four, five at a time, turned the corner to the right, almost banging into the corridor wall, and were gone.
Hector, Lunkface, and Bimbo ran the same way, but at the end, following Hector’s lead, they leaped onto the tracks, crossed to the right behind the iron pillars, taking care not to step on any of the rails, swung up onto the uptown platform, and ran south to the downtown end of the platform and upstairs and out into the street.
July 5th, 3:10–3:35 A.M.
Hinton ran north into the darkness; he ran as fast as he could on the railroad ties, barely seeing where he was going, getting away from the station, the platform lights, the police. The heel of his right shoe was wrenched off when it caught on a tie. He kept running. He could barely see the way ahead; his heartbeat pounded stronger; his wind was soon gone; he gasped and his right side hurt. The pulse throbbed in his eyes, wavering reality, fracturing the tunnel lights into shaky intervals. He sped past a green light and a blue one, and kept fleeing for about another hundred yards before he had to stop. He turned and looked back. He was alone. The men hadn’t followed him. He could see the lights of the 96th Street station; they were much further back than he thought he had run. What had happened to the others; where were they? He waited, gasping, trying to catch his breath. If they were following, they should have caught up. No one was there. What should he do? Should he go back? But that would be dancing into the arms of the headbusters who would be all over the station by now. He knew those cops—always all over everything when it was too late. Should he wait here for a while and then go back? Or keep on going to the next station? The darkness frightened him; a train might come along and roll over him. Where was the third rail? But the cops frightened him more. He could stop—just stand still—sleep. Never move again. He couldn’t. He started to walk along, limping hobble-bound because of the shoe and the queer distance between the ties.
