The Heart of the World

by Nik Cohn

  A group of four awaited him – three Hispanics of varying shades and one light-skin black. Sasha Zim knew them all. ‘Refugio and Willie, Indio, Sinbad, and this here is Stoney, you saw him already on ferry,’ he reeled them off, then introduced me in turn. ‘Nikolai Normanovich, he comes with,’ he said.

  ‘He cool?’ Stoney asked.

  ‘Is total dummy, believe me.’

  These were the Liberty Boosters. They met downtown on Broadway one morning weekly, either in Roy Rogers or some other fast-food joint, the more impersonal the better. Then two of them, picked from a hat, would go pick pockets on the ferry.

  Technically, they were misnamed. Boosters were meant to be shoplifters, not street-workers. But Liberty Booster was too fine a title to pass up: ‘It got that ring, that certain smile,’ Stoney said. ‘Make any man proud to partake.’

  The boosters came in two distinct styles. Indio and Sinbad wore hooded tracksuits, Nikes, and dead-eyed stares, the props of streetfighting men. But Stoney, Refugio, and Willie were decked out as civilians, in tans and drabs and beiges, outfits as neutral as Spam. The contrast made them look like opposing teams – Saints vs. Sinners – on some TV game show.

  Stoney was their leader, their self-anointed spokesman. Physically, he was hard to define, could have been almost anything, a light-skin black or a dark-skin Mediterranean – a Syrian, say, or an island Greek. His features were bland, his expression blander. But when he got to talking, his authority was absolute.

  Liberty boosting, he said, was not stealing, just carrying out the statue’s own intent. ‘Listen up to the lyrics, the message be in the song,’ he said. ‘Liberty mean freedom, just like the man say. Give me Liberty or gimme Dead. So everybody be free. So every thing be free.’ He flipped his wrist, he smirked, like a conjurer calling forth rabbits. ‘Stand to reason,’ he said.

  ‘Liberty, free for all,’ Willie said.

  ‘Is Heartbeat of America,’ said Sasha Zim.

  Stoney’s father, the Reverend Abraham Lincoln Bisonette, had been a preacher near Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and Stoney was his true-born son. ‘The neighborhood where I was raised, we had a self-service market right down the boulevard, and every night when I was small I used to go by that store with my mamma, help buy the family’s dinner,’ he said. ‘I was the youngest out of nine, two sisters and six brothers, three living, so I was kind of my mamma’s pet, she liked to keep me safe by her. Anyways. At the market, right out front, they had a big painted sign, it was a picture of the three little pigs, and they was styling in front of this steaming bowl of swill, fixing to jump head in, and these three little pigs, they wearing these signifying, shit-eating grins, I mean we talking raptured, like they just died and went to heaven first class. And on that painted sign, the man with the plan, he wrote up just two words.’

  ‘What words?’

  ‘HEP YO’SEF,’ Stoney said. ‘So I did. So I do.’

  The other Liberty Boosters had clearly heard the fable before, many times. While it was unfolding, they passed time by pulling faces and pouring salt into each other’s sodas. ‘We just like a rock band, only we don’t play no music,’ Stoney explained.

  They’d been together for almost a year. Before the Liberty Boosters, they’d known each other in Spanish Harlem, had run the same streets together. They had belonged to the same gangs, graduated from the same holding pens. Above and beyond all that, they shared one problem – none of them were crackheads.

  In their own place and time, it was a fatal lack. Within El Barrio, just the same as other ghettos, crack now ruled with such a tyrannical fist that any blood who opted out was ostracized as an alien, and aliens on these mean streets did not live to be old. Refugio’s kid brother Ozzie had been shot dead outside a bodega over $3.50; one of Indio’s cousins, Conchita Concepcion, had had acid thrown in her face. There were murders on every block, in every cup of news. So the boosters had moved out, come downtown to Loisaida, the Lower East Side, where failure to get hooked was only a misdemeanor, not yet a capital crime.

  Their exact personnel and numbers varied, said Stoney, according to availability. ‘He mean who be in jail,’ Refugio supplied.

  ‘Correctional facility,’ Stoney said sternly, making it sound a privilege. But facility or jailhouse, getting locked up was no big deal. On average, a booster got busted once a month. Nine times in ten, he was out the next day. ‘That’s the system, you understand,’ Stoney said. ‘We don’t kill nobody, we don’t mess with the messer, so we don’t do no time. Every five dollars we take, we put one aside for expenses, like a road toll, and all the rest be gravy.’

  At the end of a half hour, Rickey O came in, more baleful than ever. His fur hat was off, revealing a shaven skull, and his milk-white eye glared sightless, a basilisk. The Japanese had tricked him. Rickey O had got the wallet, no problem, but it contained no cash, no credit cards, nothing but a lock of coarse white hair and a snapshot of an aged man drinking soup, beaming vacantly behind steel-rimmed glasses.

  Nothing to do but start afresh. Refugio and Sinbad set off to ride another ferry, the others scattered; Sasha Zim returned to his Checker. ‘Got to go hurt me somebody,’ said Rickey O. Then he too was gone, head down into the wind, with his Russian hat pulled low, a red bandanna over his mouth, like a masked avenger.

  Stoney remained.

  It was ten past eleven: ‘The bar be open,’ he said.

  He led me down Broadway, swung me through an alleyway, and we were back at the Killarney Rose. By daylight, the place was transformed, a great bustling rialto, full of stenos and junior brokers, off-duty moneymen. Stoney drank Grand Marnier, a 7UP on the side. His gaze grew solemn. ‘So what do you think?’ he asked. ‘Should I get ordained?’

  It was in his blood. Bisonettes had preached for generations, his father and his father’s father, his Great-Uncle Hubert, and all of them were younger sons, just like Stoney himself. ‘God-entitled mouths,’ he said.

  Among the devout, they were a Carolina institution – ‘not famous, you understand, just reputed.’ It was true they had never thrived in Rocky Mount itself, but they were known throughout the backcountry, the dirt roads and piney woods. For fifty years and upwards, Bisonettes had preached in tents and sanctified tin shacks, by mud holes for instant baptisms; at crossroads. And they were respected for it. Saved women honored them, love children favored them. But something was lacking. ‘All those long, hard years of believing,’ Stoney said, ‘they never figured out what they be believin’ in.’

  He had inherited the curse. As long as he could remember, he had been driven to testify. Not just urged but consumed, a blood-deep hunger to rise up and speak what he knew. But what did he know? He didn’t know.

  It was a confusion; his brief history was filled with confusions. His father, the licensed man of God, had been shot dead while robbing a liquor store. Stoney was seven years old, a seventh son, Martin Luther Bisonette, but his mother could no longer afford him, so he was packed off north to New York City, to go live with his Aunt Clara on the Upper West Side, Ninety-eighth Street, a block off Broadway.

  Today, that would be a chic address, aswarm with Upwardly Mobiles. But times were different then. Back in the early seventies, the neighborhood was as scabrous as any in the city. Aunt Clara’s block was strictly SRO, single room occupancy, which was sweetmouth for Dump City.

  Clara herself was a junkie who hooked to support her habit. She meant no harm, had always treated him friendly. But she had no space for him. When she wasn’t hustling, she was partying. Either way, Stoney waited out in the hallway.

  Many times she left home, was gone for days on end. Then Stoney would sit in her room with the TV on, an old black-and-white Panasonic. The only other furnishings were a sofa bed, a fridge full of spoiled milk and half-eaten Hershey bars with the almonds left out, and an altar put together by Aunt Clara’s last live-in boyfriend, Humberto. This featured a 3-D picture of Christ crowned with thorns, the drops of blood so fat and real that Stoney kept wanting
to reach out and crush them, like ticks, between his thumb and forefinger. Also, there were candles, glasses full of different-colored water, a necklace made out of animal teeth, hanks of hair, a sequined crucifix, and one spent bullet, all ringed by festoons of fairy lights.

  After nightfall, Stoney would switch these lights on, turn out the naked bulb that hung down over the Panasonic but leave the set itself on, and in this flickering dimness, he spoke in tongues.

  He’d had no message, even then. All he did was imitate, try to echo the same sounds he’d heard his father make and that he now heard Sunday mornings on gospel TV. Most times it was just play acting, to help time pass; but sometimes the spirit would burst out inside him for real, bear him away, so that he fell down on the floor, out of his body, out of his own self.

  It was not a thing you could explain. Though he was only gabbling, making noises at random, sometimes words would come together, as if of their own accord, and for a moment they almost made sense. But he never could quite catch them, hold them down. When the rapture left him, so did the words.

  After he testified, he’d fall asleep on the floor, a dead spent slumber that lasted until morning or until Aunt Clara came home. When she didn’t return at all, he went out on the streets, taught himself how to pick pockets.

  Right from the first time, he loved it. Loved everything about it, the ritual as much as the reward. First the eye contact, the zoom when you saw a score and knew it was for you; then the casing and the circling, zoning in so natural and easy you didn’t seem to move; and suddenly you were there, the mark seemed to sit up begging, saying, ‘Now, right now.’ Then all you had to do was reach out, let it fall into your hand, it was yours. ‘Like ripe fruit, or a woman. But better,’ Stoney said. ‘Less mess.’

  It was a gift, God-granted. Stoney called it allure. Serious thieves – cannons, whizzes, kick-reefers – did not have greedy hands, and they never chased. All they did was make themselves available. Then they had only to wait, and the score would come to them.

  Their whole skill lay in jumping on the right thing, passing by the wrong. ‘Patience and recognition; recognition and patience,’ he said, mantralike. ‘The picking itself, any fool can do that. Just leave it to the good-hands people, and the poke is history.’

  Under pressure, he admitted that the fancy words were not his own. He owed them to a player named Aaron Harris, who used to hang out at juvenile court and later became his tutor, his personal larceny school.

  Aaron was much older, maybe twenty-five when Stoney was turning ten. A skinny Hasid out of Mount Vernon, he had been a cannon himself, and a good one for many years – called himself Sol Sharkey – till he got caught trespassing on the wrong people’s turf, and the wrong people broke his hands, so now he could only watch.

  Watch he did. Every time that Stoney was brought up for arraignment, Aaron Harris would be seen to be sitting in the exact same seat, three rows from the back, right on the aisle. Finally, he introduced himself. ‘Why get caught?’ he asked.

  Good question. Stoney could not read his own name, still sucked his thumb, and already he was a three-time loser. If he’d had proper papers, he would have been locked up. But Aunt Clara had seen to that. On his first night on Ninety-eighth Street, she had given him her best and only advice. ‘Don’t give your right name,’ she’d said, and helped him burn up all his documents, feed them to the candles. She had sprinkled his forehead with black water that smelled like a dead animal; given him a hunk of rubber to hold, to symbolize his own erasure. Then she’d shown him the door.

  Officially, this meant that he did not exist. Haled into court, he would be shuffled off from one city agency to another, but none would have any part of him. In the end, there was nothing to do, just kick him back on the streets, pretend he had never occurred.

  So he had a free ride. Still he kept on getting busted. And for why? Mulishness; a perverse pride. Instead of just making his score, then vanishing, he had to stick around and showboat. Unless he flaunted, stuck his tongue out, it seemed he could not be satisfied. ‘Which is garbage,’ Aaron Harris now told him. ‘Talent like yours, you oughta be a shame.’

  To some, their meeting might sound suspicious, a grown man taking up with a ten-year-old. But they were two artists, was all: ‘Same shapes, just different sizes.’

  Like a cross between Fagin and one of those all-wise Zen masters in the kung-fu films, Aaron took Stoney in hand, became his street demonstrator. Polished him, taught him to read and how to handle himself, how to stay by himself and like it: ‘I’m a tellya, the man was a kingship,’ Stoney said. ‘Man could walk and chew gum, man could talk for ten. What I’m saying, if the man laid down the law, the law stayed laid.’

  Aaron Harris lived in a cellar on East IIIth, right in the heart of the barrio; and when he got Stoney down in that cellar, he got to talking, and he talked, and he kept on talking still. And when he talked theft, that was where the Zen came in. To Aaron, picking pockets was an art, a most high discipline. Dipping, he called it – an antique term that he loved to savor – and dressed it up in rhetoric, all kinds of fortune-cookie sayings: ‘Dipping is not taking, just consenting to receive,’ he’d intone. Or again, Stoney’s own favorite: ‘To catch the thief, first conceive the thievee.’

  So deep in love with larceny, Stoney had small time or wish for the rapture. Even so, there would come moments without warning when he rose up signifying, talking out of his head. Just walking down the street sometime, or drinking Aaron’s homemade kosher wine, deep in the midnight hour, spirit words would catch him by his throat and fling him down headfirst, prostrated in the dirt.

  Then the Lord spoke, direct.

  Stoney was trawling in La Marqueta, on the fringe of the barrio. It was his best loved place, a great sprawling street market, all of the colors, sounds, and stinks in creation flung together, with stalls that peddled everything from ceramic saints to plantains, botanica spells, knocked-off Reeboks, salsa records, bacalaitos and rellenos de papa, plastic seat covers, yams. Hot idle afternoons, Stoney loved to cruise the lanes, ‘not serious whizzing, understand, just flexing my fingers, keeping in shape. Anyways. There was this one stall in particular, it specialized in little girls’ bridesmaid dresses, and I don’t know why for a fact, it just always pleasured me. Tucked away in the shade, right next to the record store, and the speakers be blaring Tito Puente and all that good Latin shit, and those cute little girls in their lace dresses, white and cream and powder blue, cotton-candy pink, all those bows and frills, starch petticoats, the works, and the heat burning down on everyone else, but me, in my corner, I was cool. So then. So then one time, I don’t know why, I just reached out my hand to touch. To fan that cool, crisp lace and let it go away with me. Last thing in the world I’m wanting, a fool bridesmaid dress. But what I’m saying, I had the need. Anyways. So my hand snake out, like of its own accord. And I’m just about to fork. And then,’ said Stoney, ‘the Lord speaks.’

  And there the story ended. Sitting sipping in the Killarney Rose, looking back down the years, Stoney made no attempt at a punch line, just left the tale dangling, myself along with it. ‘So what did He say?’ I demanded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stoney said. ‘I couldn’t catch it.’

  ‘Then how d’you know it was Him?’

  ‘It was His voice.’ He seemed put out by the question, as if I’d doubted him. ‘I’d know Him anywhere. But we must of had a bad connection. Or maybe the wires was crossed. So I heard His call, but I could not grasp His word.’ He called for another round. ‘It was the rapture, was all.’

  Afterwards, it was hard to say why, he began to drift apart from Aaron Harris. Somehow the act got old, too much Zen talk, too much talk altogether. But Stoney still bore him gratitude, and always would. ‘Man was a gentleman thief and an actor,’ he said.

  The actor had sprung ready-made from the thief. After his hands got wrecked, Aaron had joined a community theater group, studied mime and jazz dance. Then he’d turned street perfo
rmer. Stripped to the waist, in Turkish pantaloons and a yarmulke, he used to swallow fire outside Broadway theaters. The Great Mephisto, he called himself: ‘Was known, was reputed. I’m a tellya, the man was certified.’

  His speciality was mutation. He had the gift of turning himself into any person he so desired. All he had to do was study them for a few seconds, then catch them unawares, front them, face to face, and he’d be them. Or rather, he would be their twisted reflection. The postures and expressions, all the gestures were photo-perfect. But something beneath the skin made the models squeal, jump back: ‘Like they touched live wire,’ Stoney said. ‘Or they looked in a crazyhouse mirror, they seen their worst nightmare, and it was they own selves.’

  In that moment, Aaron believed, they were his, completely under his power. If he’d been in love with evil, he could have raped and killed on a free license. But he came from a kinder school. So he just dipped.

  The key to the whole trick was anonymity – a face like a magic slate, on which the actor could scrawl anybody he wished, then wipe them off without trace – and Stoney proved a born blackboard. So he became Aaron’s disciple, and in time his superior. By fifteen, he was out on his own, and that’s the way he stayed, a loner, till he fell in with the Liberty Boosters.

  And Aaron Harris? ‘I heard somebody deceased him,’ Stoney said. ‘Some failure to communicate, what I heard, and they blew his shit away.’ At the thought he looked pensive, drank deep. ‘I wouldn’t swear he dead. But I know for a fact he ain’t living.’

  In street years, Stoney was now a grizzled veteran. These last months, since he’d run with the Liberty Boosters, he had a room by himself on Avenue A, but mostly he stuck around Broadway, slept or sat up in all-night coffee shops, and listened to his soul growing old. Two days a week he still worked, and the rest of the time he lay low. Fifteen hundred dollars was a good week, five hundred was bad, but it was not just the money that drove him, he was still hooked on the act, the allure. He was twenty-three years old.