Bloodbrothers

by Richard Price

  "It was the Indian?"

  "Right after that, the tapping stopped, for years nobody heard nothin' ever again. Except last year when I was walkin' around the hospital outside I heard somethin' like tappin'."

  "Was it him?"

  "I didn't hang around to find out, I'll tell you that much ... but I wouldn't worry about it; it was probably a woodpecker or somethin'."

  "Ah bet it was him!"

  "He only go after bad guys, right?"

  "Hey listen, you know somethin' I just realized? Tonight's the night! This is the day a the year he got killed in the cave-in!"

  "Is he comin' here?"

  "Ah'll kung-fu that motha!"

  "Look, I got a confession to make. That Indian was my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, so if he comes around I know I'm safe because I'm his blood, but what can I do to protect you guys?" Stony screwed up his face in concentration. "I know! I'll make you all spit brothers!"

  "What's that?"

  "It's like bloodbrothers, but it don't hurt. O.K., everybody take your thumb and spit on it like this." Stony pressed his thumb to his lips and made a blow-dart sound. All six of them followed suit. "O.K. Now hold up your thumbs." Stony pressed his wet thumb against theirs.

  "Naka-Maga-Walla." He solemnly passed from one recipient to the next. "Naka-Maga-Walla." When they had all received communion, Stony stepped back. "We are now all spit brothers, safe from any danger. The Indian ghost is on our side. Whenever you're in trouble just hold up your thumb an' say, 'Naka-Maga-Walla!' and the ghost Indian will help you out. An' in case he's busy an' can't make it, since you're all spit brothers, you gotta help each other out, so any time you hear anybody say, 'Naka-Maga-Walla,' you come runnin', O.K.?"

  They nodded seriously.

  "And the next time you see any a your friends or any a the nurses or the doctors you make 'em spit brothers a yours 'cause the more spit brothers you got, the better off you are. So just spit on your thumb, hold it up to theirs an' say—"

  "Naka-Maga-Walla!" they finished, more or less in unison.

  Stony looked at his watch. "Jeez, it's four-thirty, I gotta go, kiddos, see you tomorrow." As Stony left the day room, two nurses coming in to take the kids back to their rooms for dinner were assaulted by thumbs and Indian chants. Stony watched as the two confused and amused nurses were initiated in a solemn ceremony, expanding the Naka-Maga-Walla spit brotherhood to nine.

  Stony whistled as he soft-shoed into the locker room. Weekend coming up. He and Annette were going to Bear Mountain tomorrow and could have a nice time if she'd just shut her yap about his family. He got a half ounce of Ciba-Ciba from Chili Mac, and they was going to do some communing with nature. "Ah said le's hear it for da com-mu-nin' wit' nature!" Stony clapped his hands and did a James Brown slide over to his locker in the deserted room. Three aisles over, out of Stony's sight, sat a totally stoned orderly grooving on his combination lock which he couldn't remember the combination to. "Naka-Maga-Walla!" Stony cackled. "De Coco da Indian!" He slipped out of his whites. "Cove-dwellin' Indian!" The orderly gave up on his lock and decided to blow some more hash. He took out a corncob pipe from his shirt pocket and sluggishly tried to scrape out the ash with his finger. "Ah said watch out for da cave-dwellin' Indian!" The orderly rapped the pipe on the long bench to clear out some crud. The slow, hollow tapping echoed through the locker room. Stony was in the middle of lacing his boots when the sound froze him in mid-crouch.

  "Mothafuck!" The orderly weaved on the bench like a cobra coming out of a basket as he caught the blur of Stony running half-dressed and wild-eyed through the exit. He squinted at his chunk of hash and nodded. " 'S' good shit."

  16

  CHUBBY SLEPT LATE Saturday, got up at noon. He ambled to the john, pissed and studied his face in the mirror. Good day for a haircut.

  ***

  "Hey! Bobby B!" Chubby came grinning into the hosiery store.

  "Hey, Chubby! Long time no see." Butler extended his hand over the counter. Chubby gave it a squeeze, a shake and a light slap. A cigarette hung between his lips and he squinted through the smoke.

  "What can I do for yah?" Butler winced from Chubby's grip.

  "Nothin'. I just came down to try out that barber across the street, the guy up at Co-op cuts hair like he got some kinda palsy."

  "You gonna go to Domenick?"

  "Whatever his name is," Chubby said. "Is he good?"

  "You're askin' me?" Butler hadn't had his hair cut in more than a year.

  Chubby laughed. "So how's the store?"

  "It's slow, you know, the summer."

  Chubby walked around, fished a cellophane-wrapped pair of red slippers with pink pompons from the cardboard box. "How much a' these?"

  "They wouldn't fit yah."

  "Wise guy." Chubby chuckled and tossed them on the counter. "I'll get somethin' for the old lady." He winked. "Keep it quiet on the western front, you know what I mean?" He pulled out his wallet.

  "On the house." Butler laid a hand over the wallet while stooping for a paper bag.

  Chubby grinned and pinched Butler's cheek. "Hey, Bobby, how's Stony doin'? I haven't seen 'im around."

  "He's doin' O.K." Butler put the slippers in a bag and folded the top. "He broke up with Cheri, you hear that?"

  "What!" Chubby grimaced and shook his head. "Is that kid a sap or what?"

  Butler shrugged. "I think they're both better off."

  "Ah hor'shit. She was a real sweetheart. He jus' din't know how to handle her. All you fuckin' kids, you slip 'em the schvance an' you think that's all there is to it."

  Butler smiled uneasily.

  Chubby leaned straight-arm on the counter. "He got somethin' goin' for him now?"

  "Well..." Butler started arranging boxes on the shelves. "He's seein' this chick, Annette, Annette Palladino."

  Chubby's eyes fluttered at half-mast as if someone had just shoved smelling salts under his nose. He looked down at his shoes and shook his head.

  "Hey, you know her?" Butler turned from the shelves.

  Chubby nodded without looking up. "She gives the best underage blowjob this side a Harlem."

  "How do you know?" Something defensive and angry rose in Butler.

  Chubby looked up, gave him a brief, hard stare, then returned his gaze to his shoes. "I'll see you, Bobby."

  "Yeah."

  Chubby walked out of the store without raising his head. He left the slippers. Butler didn't call after him.

  17

  TOMMY AND MARIE planned a small cousins' club meeting for the Sunday family day activity. The house was spotless. Marie broke out the teakwood lazy Susans, filled them with potato chips, pretzels, Brazil nuts, silver-foiled chocolate kisses, Snowcaps, assorted miniature Hershey bars (nuts, no nuts, crunch and semisweet). She laid out the special cocktail napkins with the dirty jokes and big-titted women on them and even took the vinyl slipcover off the couch. Tommy displayed the liquor, bottles of Seagram's, Canadian, Wilson's, Cherry Heering and Early Times. He lined up the bottles beside an army of glasses on a white cloth he draped over the dining room table. He filled three silver ice buckets to the brim and loaded a tall, smoked glass with a fistful of wooden swizzle sticks carved in the shape of big-breasted Ubangi women. An old-fashioned glass held lemon slices and another maraschino cherries. The glasses had a woody smell, because they had spent the last year inside the huge liquor cabinet since the last cousins' club gathering hosted by the De Cocos. As a final touch, Tommy replaced the toilet paper in the john with a roll he had bought in a novelty store. It had dollar bills printed on it with oval portraits of a cross-eyed George Washington. Under each dollar was the legend "It's only money." When the cousins started arriving Tommy greeted them at the door wearing a gorilla mask he picked up with the toilet paper. Among assorted shrieks, giggles, gasps and "Hiya, Tommys" an eighty-year-old great-aunt in a wheelchair fainted when Tommy bent to kiss her at the door. They revived her with a shot of Cherry Heering. Tommy, Albert and Stony wore id
entical sky blue Banlon shirts—a shopping coup of Marie's. Stony bitched and moaned about the party, but as always, when relatives started arriving, he felt a strange thrill in his guts. He loved all the big mouths, morons, assholes and scuzzy aunts, no matter how much he poor-mouthed them to his friends—this was his blood. He especially got off on his aunts and uncles marveling at his good looks, how much he looked like his old man.

  After the ordeal of hugging, kissing and handshaking was just about over, Chubby cornered him by the bar. "Oh, yah so cute! Don' he juza looka lika he faddah!"

  Stony laughed.

  "C'mere." Chubby grabbed his arm. "Inta the bedroom, I gotta talk to you."

  Chubby ushered him through the crowds. They had to joke, laugh and kiss half a dozen women before they made it to the bedroom. Chubby closed the door, partially sealing off the noise. "Whew! I gotta hand it to yer folks, I never would have all these animals up at my place."

  "Just wait, you're next. What's up?"

  "Nothin', I just wanted to shoot the shit for a while. So, ah, how's your love life?"

  "Whatta you, an Ultra-Brite commercial?"

  "No, I just heard you broke up with Cheri." Chubby picked up a copy of Jaws from Stony's desk. "This any good?"

  "It's awright, where'd you hear that?"

  Chubby flipped the pages absently, tossed the book back on the desk. "I heard, I heard around."

  "Yeah, I was just thinkin', things were gettin' too much. I felt more like a goddamn watchdog than a boyfriend. Jealousy's a humiliatin' emotion. I felt like shit. So, like ah, so like I rehearsed." Stony started pacing the room. "I rehearsed for hours, for days what I was gonna say to her, things like 'Ah, Cheri, I think it's time we went our separate ways'; 'Ah, I know we love each other but I think we have two different ideas in our heads what that means'...ah, who knows, it was all a buncha shit anyhow. If I had balls I woulda said, 'Cheri, you fuckin' tramp, if you wanna run with me you stay locked in your room whenever I'm not around. You spend all your time thinkin' about me, you hereby get the hots just at the mention a my name.'"

  Chubby leaned his ass on the corner of the desk, his arms folded in front of him. "So what happened?"

  "So I call her, right? And I got this whole jive speech worked up about why we should split and I say, 'Cheri, I think the time has come when we should go our separate ways,' and then she says 'O.K..' just like that. That was the whole thing. An' I was sittin' there, you know, like waitin' for the bomb to drop, the pain, the remorse, the whatever. Nothin', nothin' at all. I'm sittin' there thirty minutes just waitin'. Finally, I realize, what the fuck am I doin', if you don't get slammed, just go with the flow, so I go. Jump into some nice threads, run down to D'Artagnan's an' I party all night. After closin', I go out with Chili Mac, you know, that spade cat I run with sometimes? We go down to the Village, bop aroun'. I din't get home till seven in the mornin'. I guess I got sick a runnin' around like a mope allatime." Stony sat on his bed and lit a cigarette.

  Chubby frowned. "So how's Annette?"

  "Where'd you hear about Annette?" Stony felt something rising inside.

  "Around."

  "Around, around, around, what the hell is this, a village? Who'd you hear about Annette from?" He stood up, ditched his cigarette.

  "What's the difference?"

  "I wanna know, Chubby. Who the hell is goin' aroun' reportin' my business to the papers?"

  Chubby shrugged. "I ran into your friend Bobby."

  "Butler?" Stony stamped around the room. Chubby hooked his arm. "Hey, don't get your balls in a uproar, it just came out in conversation. It's no big deal. I just wanna know, how serious are you with her?"

  "Whadya mean serious? We just racked a couple a times, I have a nice time with her." Stony was shouting.

  "Easy, easy. There's people out there."

  "Whatta you drivin' at, Chubby?"

  "Look, I just been around a little longer than you, and I been through a lotta different things, an' there's women you get involved with, an' women you don't. Now, I hear things about this Annette, I don't hafta go into details, you know what I mean."

  "What, she's a village pump?"

  "Now ... O.K. You wanna call a spade a spade, yeah, that's what I heard. Now, you wanna have a good time, she's a good lay, whatever. Enjoy yourself, but don't ... fuckin'... get ... involved. The minute you split she probably takes on the janitor for the month's rent. A chick like that doesn't even need carfare. You remember once you said to me Cheri uses her cunt like spare change? Now that was a exaggeration, you know it too. O.K., maybe she played around with a guy or two, maybe not even that, but a girl like Annette, she really uses her cunt like a fuckin' Master Charge an' I seen guys get hung up on tramps like that too. It's heartbreaking to see these guys, an' I just don't want you to be one a them. Like I said, have all the fun you want, but if you think you had heartache with Cheri, God have mercy on your soul if you fall in love with this one."

  All through Chubby's talk Stony was getting sick to his stomach; now the nausea was creeping into his face.

  "Whassamatter?"

  "Huh? Nothin'."

  "You O.K.?"

  "Yeah, yeah!" Stony forced a laugh. "You know. Chubby, you're talkin' like I'm plannin' to marry her."

  "Not even in a joke, Stony."

  "Yeah." Stony shrugged. "No sweat."

  Chubby gripped Stony's wrist. "Stony, you know I love you like a son, I'd cut off my balls for you. I just don't want to see you hurt, do you dig what I'm tryin' to say to you?"

  Stony felt something click off inside him. "Yeah, sure. She is a village pump, I know that."

  Chubby slowly began to smile. As he stood up he placed his hand on the back of Stony's neck. "C'mon, let's go join that fast crowd out there, I don't want anybody thinkin' we're goin' queer on each other in here."

  18

  AFTER WORK on Monday as Stony approached Frank's Hosiery House he noticed three police cars converging on the corner at abrupt angles, lights flashing, doors flying open. Stony double-parked across the street, sprinted under the el, waded through the empty cop cars, radio squawk blaring from under the dashboards and raced inside. A half-dozen cops were milling around Butler's Uncle Frank, who sat in a torn vinyl chair in the middle of the store gasping for breath. Without his aviator glasses his face looked blanched and popeyed and old. The front of his red silk sport shirt was ripped and he held a bloody piece of gauze to the side of his neck. He looked scared. "Thirty years," he wheezed, "I been here thirty fuckin' years ... never..."

  Butler emerged from behind the curtain separating the storeroom from the front. He was wild-eyed and livid. "I'll get those motherfuckers!" he screamed at the cops. "Fuck you guys! I'll get them. I know those nigger bastards!" Two cops tried to calm him down. Two others jotted notes from Frank; one examined the knocked-over cash register and one spoke over a walkie-talkie.

  When Butler saw Stony he grabbed him. "We'll get those motherfuckers! Me, you, Chili Mac, we'll tear down that whole fuckin' school."

  A cop nudged Stony. "Who're you?"

  "I'm his friend. What happened?"

  "I'll kill every fuckin' nigger on this block!" Butler screamed. Four of the cops were black, tried to ignore him. Stony seized Butler in an embrace and pushed him back a step. "Ssh, ssh, easy, baby, easy," he whispered in his ear. Butler windmilled his arms around Stony, but Stony wouldn't let up. He patted Butler's back, caressed his neck, whispering all the time until Butler calmed down. Cautiously Stony let him go, but not completely, holding him around the waist. Frank twisted in his chair to look at his nephew. Stony winked.

  Butler tried to catch his breath. "Three niggers from the high school," he exhaled, "come in here, right? Frank's behind the counter ... Pull a fuckin' shiv long as my dick ... I'm in the back. I come runnin' out ... they go..." Butler grabbed Stony's hair, yanking his head back, laid his thumb against Stony's neck. " 'We'll kill him, honky.' I'm fuckin' standin' there like a fuckin' statue. They go through the register, dra
g him to the door and run like the yellow cunts they are."

  "You say you know these guys?" asked a cop.

  "I seen 'em around, yeah."

  "Can you describe them?"

  "No ... no." Butler swung his head emphatically. "You guys take care a Frank, I'll take care a them. Me, him an' some friends." He nodded to Stony.

  "Look, is it O.K. I talk to him private?" Stony asked the two cops. Putting his arm around Butler's neck he ushered him behind the curtain. Stony busied himself adjusting the curtain for a second, then abruptly swung around, punching Butler in the gut as hard as he could. Butler gasped, slid down the wall onto the floor, a pained why in his eyes. Stony lifted him under the armpits and slammed his shoulders into the wall. He held Butler's jaw in a vicelike grip. "Now you lissen to me, you stupid bastard! I ain't runnin' down no vigilante shit. Chili Mac's not runnin' down no vigilante shit, an' you, you dumb cunt, ain't runnin' down no vigilante shit, you got that?" He shook Butler's jaw, Butler held his stomach. "I don't wanna find your ass inna cardboard box behind some soul palace—you got that? Your fuckin' uncle's out there, halfway to a heart attack, an' you're jumpin' around like a fuckin' wild man. So just cool out, you dig? And another thing, stupid! You're runnin' aroun' jumpin' bad about killin' the niggers an' you got four coons out there wit' thirty-eights. If they don't put a fuckin' bullet in your small brain right now, I guarantee you ... I guarantee you, the next time you need a fuckin' cop in here your ass is cream cheese. Can you understand that? Hah? Hah?" Stony viciously rattled Butler's head until Butler nodded. "Good, now first thing, you go out there an' you apologize to them for being such an asshole, then you fuckin' cooperate. You know these guys? Fine, then they'll get 'em then, O.K.?" Stony released Butler's jaw. Butler slumped over, trying to catch his breath. Stony kneaded his shoulders. "I'm sorry I hit you, babe, I just had to get your attention." Stony hugged him, then kissed him on the side of the head. "You know I love you, I just don't wanna go to your funeral yet, you dig?"