The afternoon is fading into dusk, a prime time to be invisible but still have light by which to paint. They circle the fenced-off perimeter of the yard, gazing through the ten-foot chain-link fence at rows of rust-colored trains slumbering nose-to-ass. RISK has pieced here once or twice a month for the past year. Whenever somebody can get a car, this is the spot of choice.
BRONX’s glance floats to the rolls of razor wire atop the barricade. “You don’t expect me to climb that, do you?”
RISK finds what he’s looking for: a four-foot flap some writer surgeoned open with bolt cutters years ago. He pulls it back, beckons his grandfather inside.
They half-jog toward the first row of trains, RISK glancing over at BRONX every two seconds to make sure he’s all right with the pace until the old man grunts, “I’m fine.” They high-step the junction between two boxcars, the left one already covered in ugly silver Krylon throw-ups, probably the work of some kid from West Clusterfuck, New Mexico, whose backyard opens onto train tracks. That’s the problem with freights: too much access and not enough accountability. Toys use them as practice walls, and nobody can find the culprits to backhand some sense into them.
There are only a few feet of space between the rows of trains. RISK and BRONX are well hidden, but at the expense of being able to see well themselves. No matter; RISK has painted in pitch-black before. He shakes the can of white sideways, leans over to BRONX, and continues the tutorial in a whisper. “Imagine painting a forty-foot, fifteen-color mural under these conditions—only it’s darker, the trains are closer together, you’re underground, and cops might raid you anytime.”
He steps up to the train, raises the can above his head, then freezes at the sound of boots crunching over gravel. RISK flattens against the train, looks to his left. Three figures are approaching. His instinct is to grab his grandfather and break out, but yard security doesn’t roll that thick. RISK has been chased here only once in twenty-something missions, and it was by a single patrolman, whose darting flashlight beam gave him away before he got within a hundred feet. These must be other writers.
“Get down,” RISK hisses. “Hide.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees BRONX comply, scuttle between two train cars and disappear from sight.
Writers are like Siamese fighting fish; whenever two squads meet in an enclosed space, things could get ugly. That’s why crews formed to begin with: not out of camaraderie, but for protection, because dudes running alone got jumped and robbed, or extorted for spray-can tributes. Not that this is the Washington Heights Ghost Yard circa 1979. The vast majority of cats out here in Connecticut are pleased to make your acquaintance. It’s just freights; there’s room enough for everybody. You usually end up trading stories and phone numbers, not mouth shots—although the very provincialism of the scene makes some dudes feel the need to start shit, just to prove that they’re true to the spirit of the thing. The most enduring stories in graffiti are about fights, after all, not art.
The trio stops short of the light slashing in between the cars. Two skinny kids on the flanks, RISK’s age or younger, each holding a shopping bag bulging with paint. One sports a messed-up Afro and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, down almost to his knees. The other wears a hoodie, his free hand sheathed elbow-deep in the sweatshirt’s front pocket. The guy in the middle is bigger, thicker, older. He carries nothing. Two apprentices, one master.
“Hey,” says RISK, standing in full view now. “Nice day to paint, huh?”
The master walks up to him and folds his arms over his chest.
“What chu write?” he demands. The standard question: name, rank, and serial number rolled into one. It can be asked a lot of ways, most of them more pleasant than this.
“RISK ONE. How ’bout you?”
“I never heard of you. Look like a cop to me.” He turns to his cohorts. “You ever heard of RISK ONE?” His tone makes the desired answer clear.
Instead of delivering it, the kid with the Afro scratches his scalp. “You was in IGT once, right?”
“Yeah,” RISK says hopefully. Being known is the better part of being respected. IGT is International Graffiti Times, aerosol grandfather PHASE 2’s sporadically published newsletter, and getting a flick in there is the crowning achievement of RISK’s career to date. Of course, smacking up a known writer carries infinitely more cachet than stomping out some toy, so it’s also possible that this kid’s photographic memory has just fucked RISK right in the ass.
The main dude turns back to him; he seems to have decided that RISK is worth impressing at least. “CLOUD 9, RTW,” he reveals, proclaiming his name and his crew’s as if the words part seas and shatter boulders. They come close. Rolling Thunder Writers is one of the most feared collectives of the eighties. They ran the Coney Island Yard, the biggest in the city, handed out beat-downs like raffle tickets. CLOUD 9 is a lesser light, not in the class of RTW all-stars like MIN, BOE, RICH, and SAGO. But he got up. Straight letters, mostly—not a master of style, but a workhorse with a nice clean hand, the kind of guy whose pieces you’d see in magazines by virtue of their sharing a car with burners by his boys. Had a famous fight with KYTE 202 from Psycho Artists at the Hall of Fame. Knocked him the fuck out.
“Oh, word?” RISK tries to sound impressed but casual, keep the fear out of his voice.
“Word. And who the fuck is that?”
RISK turns to find Tristan walking toward him, and his stomach drops.
He gives the old man a baleful stare. “My grandfather.”
“Fuck he doing here?”
RISK cracks his knuckles. “He’s about to get up. First time ever.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nah, for real.”
“What chu write, Grandpa?” CLOUD 9 shouts, as if he suspects the old man might be deaf.
“BRONX,” says Tristan, just as loud. It’s the same authority-freighted voice that might boom forth from behind his study door, telling a visitor that he is too busy to socialize. But it sounds more vital out here, in the open air of the dark train yard—sounds, perhaps, the way it did fifty years ago, on some steaming city block.
“You from there?” calls the Afroed kid, incredulous. His fellow apprentice shoots him a screw face.
“Born and raised.”
CLOUD 9 shifts his stance. The gravel rasps beneath him. “How old are you?”
“I’m sixty-eight. And you?”
CLOUD 9 cracks a smile, drops his arms and lets them dangle by his sides. RISK nearly pisses himself with relief. “I’m twenty-five.”
Tristan walks up to him. “Well, that’s nothing. I was in Baghdad when you were in your dad’s bag, kiddo.”
CLOUD 9 throws back his head and laughs. “Shit. Y’all motherfuckers crazy,” he declares, and swings a splayed hand toward RISK, who startles, then recovers in time to extend his own. Their palms meet with a satisfying clap. CLOUD nods at the old man. “Go ahead, BRONX, do your thing. You ’bout to make the record books. Oldest writer in the history of this shit. Hope you appreciate I’m here to bear witness.”
Tristan takes a can from the knapsack. “Only thing I’ve ever painted is a lawn chair,” he apologizes, squaring off before the train.
“That’s okay, BRONX. All gotta start somewhere. My first piece was wack as hell.”
Tristan depresses the nozzle, and an inch-thick caterpillar of color wiggles up the train.
“Paint top to bottom,” CLOUD instructs. “Control the drips better that way.” He bends at the waist, peers forward. “Whoa. Bermuda Blue?”
“Yeah, man. I found it in his toolshed.”
“Damn.”
Tristan steps back to examine his handiwork. A wobbly bubble-letter B floats before him, bleeding Bermuda Blue. It looks like a relic from 1970: the dawn of history, when guys first switched from homemade purple-ink markers to spray cans refitted with oven-cleaner nozzles. The old man shakes the can, then sets to work on his R.
“You live out here now?” RISK asks CLOUD as they watch.
The kids hustle to his side, offer RISK pounds, mumble their names. MEGA and SCRIPT. Thirteenish, upon closer inspection. Their handshakes are loose, no muscle behind them yet. No bluster, even. “Okay, now get to work,” CLOUD commands, and they scurry down the line.
CLOUD shoves his hands into his pockets. “Lucky thing you brought the old man out tonight. I mean, you cool. It’s all love. But see, I wouldn’t have known that.” He gazes past RISK at SCRIPT and MEGA, both consulting sketchbooks as they paint their outlines on the next car over. “These kids, they’re fuckin’ art students. They read the mags, think shit is sweet. I’m tryna make ’em understand that if they wanna write, they gotta pay some dues. Be ready to throw hands. Maybe catch a few bad ones, like I did coming up.” He laughs. “I brought these kids out here straight looking for a fight. Not giving a fuck whether they won or lost. Just so they’d realize graffiti ain’t no weekend sport.”
RISK goes quiet, considering this. “Sorry I couldn’t help you out.”
“Shit.” CLOUD laughs. “BRONX looks like he might still be able to whup some ass. Bronx Jews were nothin’ nice back in his day, huh?”
RISK stares at his grandfather’s back, lulled by the slow, arthritic arcs of his right arm, the soothing pssht of the paint. “How do you know he’s Jewish?”
“Shit.” It seems to be CLOUD’s all-purpose way of opening a sentence. “How do you know I’m black?”
BRONX has finished his outline. It looks like something a third grader might carve into a desk. He turns, walks over. “So now I fill it in?” he asks, sounding embarrassed to be proud. His hands are caked with paint. They look like Smurf gloves.
RISK nods. “I’d go with the white. And don’t worry about fucking up the outline. You’re gonna go over it again anyway.”
BRONX hands the Bermuda Blue to his grandson, picks up the white, and trudges back to the train. He fills in the B, then takes a break to check out MEGA and SCRIPT’s car, which is coming alive with color as they apply fills, cuts, and blends to their intricate outlines.
“Amazing,” RISK hears his grandfather exclaim. “How old did you kids say you are?”
RISK shakes the Bermuda Blue, then passes it to CLOUD. “For you,” he says, thinking that this gesture of friendship could just as easily have been one of submission.
“Thanks.”
“Do something dope with it.”
“No doubt.” CLOUD looks at the train. “I can’t believe you’re not taking flicks.”
In a world of chemical buffing agents, vandal squads, and rival writers playing cross-out, cameras are a writer’s best friend, photographs the difference between immortality and empty boasts.
“Aw, fuck. You didn’t bring one, did you?”
“Shit, I’m a professional.” CLOUD reaches down and pulls a compact automatic from the cargo pocket of his camouflage pants. “Yo, BRONX,” he calls. The writer turns. “Let me get a shot of you next to your piece.”
BRONX looks indignant. “Well, I’ve got to finish it first. That’s like asking to read a first draft. Take one of my grandson and me instead.”
CLOUD lifts the camera to his eye. “Say ‘Gorgonzola.’” RISK throws his arm around the old man’s shoulders as the flash goes off.
BRONX squeezes his grandson’s wrist. “Thank you, Tris.”
“Thank you. Now get back over there and finish your fill.”
An hour later, Amalia Farber will pace her foyer, Tristan’s note in one hand and a cordless telephone in the other, wondering whether she should call her daughter. When she does, the phone will ring and ring. Linda will already be in her minivan, en route to her parents’ house to relieve them of the burden of their grandson, ashamed of her own selfishness in dumping him there. As if her mother needs more crap to deal with.
When Linda arrives, BRONX and RISK will be sitting in a nearby steak house talking graffiti history with CLOUD 9, SCRIPT, and MEGA, the old man having insisted on treating all of them to dinner. The Brodsky men will come home several hours later, to be confronted in the foyer by RISK’s mother and grandmother, BRONX’s wife and daughter. The women will be holding white mugs of hot peppermint tea, their concern dissolving into anger as the front door opens. The two writers will pocket their paint-crusted hands and insist that they’ve merely been out to eat, that the note they left behind was nothing but a joke. The empty spray cans rattling in RISK’s backpack will put the lie to that.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Soon, Tristan thinks, staring out the taxi window as the Bronx recedes behind him, the neighborhood would have been right. It might have taken as little as another month or as much as another year, but before long, Tristan Brodsky, fabled scion of Maimonides, dashed hope of the Jews, would truly have lost his mind. Already, just twenty-one, he has been considered a failure for three years. A crackup. “That Brodsky boy, he refuses to take a job,” the matrons whisper in the fetid stairwells, when they aren’t fretting over the rumor that every Jew in the German-occupied world is being made to wear a Star of David, or cursing Lindbergh and Coughlin for speechifying that their people are leading America toward war. At the greengrocer’s, they shake their bulbous heads. “A college graduate, and for three years he’s done nothing, day and night, but sit in his room. Watching the paint peel! A regular meshuggener!”
A hush falls over the craps game, even, when Tristan strides toward it—something he’s seldom done of late and never will again, now—as if the fellows expect Tristan to gibber like an ape, or throttle them. Instead, he takes his turn and takes their money and takes his leave, deposits the bills on the kitchen table for his mother to find and returns to his room. He has hated the room more each day, but at the same time he has noticed it less; he looks either at the page before him in the typewriter or else out at the street. When the wash hanging across the block is hauled back in, it is lunchtime. He eats the sandwich waiting for him in the icebox, guzzles a glass of tap water, goes back to work. His neighbors black out their windows, obliterating themselves out of dunderheaded fear that German warplanes will materialize above the Bronx. Tristan blacks out the world, replaces it with what’s inside his head.
Being labeled an eccentric has its perks. Not even his family bothers him with questions anymore except for Benjamin, a college man himself now and still loyal to his brother. He is the only person with whom Tristan speaks of his writing, and only because Benjamin has the good sense merely to listen; he limits his responses to quotations, like the old men arguing the Talmud. He remembers everything Tristan has told him about the novel in the past, and thus he can remind his brother of old insights, things Tristan himself may have forgotten.
It was Benjamin who watched him drink and listened to his perplexity crest into rage two years ago when the first reply from a publisher came in the mail—a man to whom Pendergast had spoken on Tristan’s behalf:
21 September 1939
Dear Mr. Brodsky,
There is no doubt that you possess gifts as a writer. But as we have recently published Mordecai Kaplan’s superb Judaism as a Civilization, I regret to inform that we have decided to pass on your novel. Best of luck.
Norman Jameson
Frontier Press
That was the day the neighborhood chatter intensified. Enough people saw and heard Tristan on his treks to and from the liquor store, finishing a bottle on his way there and beginning another on his way home, to elevate the fallen prodigy to the status of juiciest morsel on the winding shtetl grapevine.
There are other publishers, Benjamin counseled, accepting the bottle when Tristan passed it, rarely drinking from it but holding on until his brother beckoned for the booze again.
Sure, Tristan replied, but none of them is any different. He looked out at the street, imagined hurling his typewriter from the window and watchin
g it explode against the pavement, vowels and consonants embedding themselves in the flesh of gossiping passersby like bits of shrapnel.
Let them talk now, he thinks. Let them stir their words into their bland, greasy soups and slurp them down by the bowlful. Tristan has sold not one but two novels today—both written in that gerbil cage of a room, over the sounds of kvetching from all sides, in the sweltering heat of the Bronx summer and the hand-numbing winter cold—and he does not intend to be seen in these parts again. He could linger to see his success transform his mother’s demonstrative disapproval and his father’s halting diplomacy into pride, but Tristan has no desire to do so. Their contribution has been to leave him alone—out of deference and befuddlement, never faith. He will repay them in kind.
Everything he owns is in this taxi: the suit he wore down to Times Square this morning to meet with his new editor and publisher, the rest of his clothes, heaped into the trunk by the armful, still on their hangers, a box of books mostly borrowed from the New York Public Library, and his typewriter. Plus enough money—on loan from Pendergast, whom he visited after signing the deal, with the purpose of securing an advance against his forthcoming advance—to install himself in a For Rent apartment he passed on his way from the subway to Peter’s writing studio.
“That was fast,” the building’s superintendent says, emerging from a basement bulkhead a few minutes after Tristan pays the taxi fare and rings his bell. He glances at the small mound of belongings by the young man’s feet. “What line of work you say you’re in?”
Tristan takes a deep, exhilarating breath. “I’m an author.”
“No kidding. Ever do a Western?”
“Suppose I’d have to get out west first.”
The super waves a grubby hand. “Nothing out there you can’t imagine. Just throw in a coupla gunfights, bandito or two. Some hard-drinkin’ lawmen. A pretty dame.” He laughs. “Hell, I could probably write one myself. Beats shoveling coal into the furnace. Here, let me help you with your things.”
End of the Jews Page 11
