by Packer, Vin
Manny snickered too, unenthusiastically.
“Then what do you want? What do you want?” The boy’s voice became more desperate.
“What’s your name, mister?”
“Carlos. Carlos Rodriguez.” He was shaking. The girl sat behind him, her hands folded tightly in her lap, her wide, wet lips quivering.
“Carlos, let me ask you a question. Why did you bring this young lady here? Will you answer that?”
“Yeah, man,” Flip put in. “Like, what do you think this is, a hotel or something? This ain’t a hotel. This here’s a park.”
“We walked here,” the boy answered.
“I don’t think you understand, Carlos. Why did you bring her here? For what purpose?”
Johnny said to the girl, “You don’t have to be scared of us.”
“Naw,” Manny said.
The boy trembled. “I — I brought her here to — smooch.”
“To smooch,” Bardo said disgustedly. “To smooch.”
“Man, like I think you was intent on more than smooching with this dame, Carlos.”
“My colleague is right,” Bardo said.
“What’s the matter?” the boy said. “What’s the matter?”
The girl whined, “Don’t hurt us. We didn’t do anything.”
“The matter, mister,” Bardo said, “is that you intended to molest this girl, mister. You brought this girl here to molest her.”
“Cripes, Bardo!” Johnny turned his back on the girl and picked at a piece of bark on a scrawny young tree beside the bench. Manny listened to Bardo without moving or looking at the girl any more.
“It’s against the law, mister,” Bardo said. “You can go to prison for that.”
“Man, like, he ought to have some discipline,” Flip said.
“You are one hundred per cent correct, Herr Heine.”
Johnny shot a quick look at Flip to see his reaction, but he saw only a smile and bright, self-assured eyes. Maybe he had not heard.
“Leave him alone!” the girl suddenly shouted, jumping to her feet. She punched Flip’s leg with her fist. “Leave Carlos alone! Bully!”
“No,” the boy told her, trying to push her back with his nervous hands. “No, Linda. No.”
Bardo put his arms behind his back, clasping his hands there, standing very erect. “Linda,” he said coldly, “I want to know something.”
“Bully! Bully!” she shouted at him.
Flip grabbed her by the arm and held her tightly, hurting her. “Watch your crazy tongue!” he said. “You want it cut out of you?” He reached into his pocket.
“I want to know something,” Bardo persisted. “I want you to tell me something, Linda.”
“You’re hurting me,” she said to Flip. He had something in his hand that was ebony-colored and shining in the dim light.
“I want to know if you came here with Carlos this evening to smooch.”
“Sure. Sure. We came together. There a law? Oww, Jesus,” she whined. “My arm!”
Johnny whirled around and started to say something; then he saw the knife Flip held, the blade clean and brilliant. Flip held it right under her left breast, which pouted impudently through the sheer blouse. Johnny just watched then, the same way Manny did, with surprise and wonder too great to permit concern.
“You shout, you scream,” Flip warned, “you get this — pronto!”
“Oh, God, God,” the boy moaned. His whole body was wet with sweat now, and his knees were rubbery. The girl cried.
Manny spoke softly. “Where did you get the knife, Flip?”
“You brought this girl here to rape her, is that it, mister?” Bardo walked over to Carlos and leered up at him. “Is that why you brought her here?”
“No, no. God help me. No.” The boy was crying too now.
“No, he didn’t,” the girl sobbed. “No, he didn’t.”
“How’d your shirt get unbuttoned, mister?”
Carlos’ fingers shook as he felt for the buttons; tears streamed down his face. “I — I — “
“Like, little Linda here did it, huh, man?”
“Leave us alone,” the girl begged. “Oh, please, please. My mother’s sick.”
“She’d be sick if she knew where you were,” Bardo said. “She’d be sick if she knew you were lying on a bench in a park letting a young buck maul your whole body. Your mother’s sick! Why aren’t you home with your mother?”
“She’s waiting for me,” the girl cried.
Flip still held her arm, the knife in his hand. Manny was frowning, hanging behind Bardo, and Johnny was frozen to the spot near the tree.
“How’d your blouse get disheveled, Miss Linda?” Bardo said. “It was disheveled, was it not?”
The girl couldn’t talk.
Flip said, “Half off her. He was feeling her.” “Is that the most interesting thing you can think to do with your leisure, mister?” Carlos only whimpered.
“Is that what your shallow mind invents for your diversion?”
Flip hooted. “Man, oh, man, how you carry on!” He grinned at Bardo with admiration.
Bardo said, “Herr Heine, we’re going to discipline these two juvenile delinquents. Herr Heine, I put the method of discipline for the female member of this duet in your capable hands. My experience has not been along those lines.”
The girl began to cry hysterically. Flip jerked her to him. “Shut up!” he said. “Shut your yap!”
Manny said, “She’s afraid, that’s all, Flip.” His voice sounded far off in the distance.
“Want to kiss her, Wylie?” Flip asked Johnny.
Johnny had a funny look in his eyes, as though he were hypnotized. He couldn’t say any words; he just shook his head. He was standing by the tree.
“Ladies first,” Bardo said. “Deal out the punishment, mister.”
“Yeah.” Flip scratched his head. “Like, what’ll it be? Got to think this one over.”
The boy stood cowering before Bardo, his nose running, his face streaked with tears. “Her mother’s got asthma,” he murmured.
“Is that any reason for you to molest her, mister? Is that any reason for you to try to remove her blouse and look at her, mister? That’s what you were doing. She was looking at you and you were looking at her.”
“No,” the boy blubbered. “No, no.”
Flip squared his shoulders in a decisive gesture. He said, “That’s right. You want to see her and she wants you to, huh? That’s right. That’s the way it was.” He turned to the girl, still gripping her by the wrist, his knife in his other hand. “Sure,” he said. “That’s the way it was. All reet! I dig it now.” He stood back from her, letting go of her wrist, but pointing his knife at her as he directed, “O.K., Lady Godiva, take off the blouse.”
She stood motionless, unable to answer or to move.
“Go ahead,” Flip said. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’m just giving you your wish. Like I’m your fairy godfather.” His voice grew more terse when she still did not move. “Unbutton that piece of nothing and take it off,” he said.
The boy’s shoulders slumped and he began to groan, his head down, his hands rubbing his face. “Brace, mister!” Bardo shouted. He put a fist in the boy’s gut, and the boy sank to his knees in the dirt, weeping helplessly. Bardo said, “O.K., green-belly, stay there. Your turn comes next.”
Dazedly the girl undid the buttons of her blouse. Flip reached and yanked it off her shoulders. He rolled it into a ball and held it in his hand. She stood there quivering, her pink slip plain and worn. Behind them, Manny began to cough. Johnny was rooted to the spot where he stood watching. Bardo watched the scene disinterestedly, the boy crumpled at his feet.
“Let the straps down,” Flip said to the girl.
“Please. Please. I only want — ”
“Do what I tell you,” Flip said. He held the knife menacingly. The boy began to pray softly in Spanish.
She raised trembling fingers to her bare shoulders and slipped the strap
s over them; the top of her slip, and her bra, fell to her waist. She wailed, “Please. Please.”
Flip laughed, looking at her. “Now your boy friend don’t have to do it, ‘cause there you are. Ain‘t that pretty, now? Ain’t you just too pretty for words, now?”
Manny said, “Let her go, Flip. You ought to let her go now.” He looked once at the girl and then away.
“I ain’t going to touch her, man.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Bardo said to the girl. “You ought to be filled with shame for what a sight you are! Half naked! Half naked in a park!” He jerked the boy by the shoulder. “Is this the dirty thing you came here for, mister? To do this to this girl?”
“Pity us,” the boy wailed. “Think of God.”
“I pity you!” Bardo said. “You’ll never know how I pity you, mister.”
The girl just stood there, tears brimming from closed eyes, her head down, trying to cover herself with her hands, but unable to.
“Want to pinch her, Wyle?” Flip giggled at Johnny over his shoulder. “Come on, Wyle. Here she is!”
Johnny had never seen a girl this way before. Until that evening, he had never touched one. He could not stop staring. He could not stop thinking with a flood of amazement that a girl looked so different. He had seen statues, and photographs of girls, but it simply was not the same as this.
“Come on, Wyle,” Flip urged. “Pinch ‘em.” Manny said, “You could hurt someone with that knife, Flip.”
“Relax, Pollack.” Bardo looked over his shoulder at Manny.
The boy on his knees prayed plaintively, “Merciful God in heaven, see our misery.”
Manny said, “I’m relaxed, but — ”
“What are you worried about, Pollack? We’re just teaching these two juvenile delinquents a lesson. Don’t you understand that, mister?”
“Yes,” Manny answered. “I understand that.”
Flip said again, “Come on, Wyle. You afraid, John boy?”
Johnny moved away from the tree and came slowly forward. The girl shrank back as he approached her. “Put your hands at your sides!” Flip yelled. “You hear me?” The girl obeyed, and Johnny came closer. He stood looking at her. Her body was shaking with the sobs inside of her.
“Go on, Wyle. That a boy!” Flip slapped his knee with his hand and chuckled. Bardo stood watching apathetically, his lip curled in revulsion.
Johnny put his hand out, and the girl shrank back again.
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t.” Tears ran down her face and dropped to her bare flesh.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Johnny said solemnly. “Don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not going to,” Johnny said. His speech was thick and husky.
“Get it over with!” Bardo said impatiently.
Very slowly Johnny brought his fingers to her and touched her breast. His palm flattened on her there, and then as though he had felt a burning coal, he jerked his hand away.
“Big thrill, huh?” Flip said. He had suddenly lost interest in the girl, and he turned away from her, looking back at Manny. “What you doing, Manny?”
Johnny said to the girl, “I didn’t hurt you. I said I wouldn’t.”
“Leave me alone,” the girl wept. “Let me go home. My mother’s sick.”
Manny answered Flip, “Nothing. Just standing here.”
“Pollack has dignity!” Bardo said. “Don’t you, Pollack?”
“I don’t know, Bardo.”
“But you have no dignity, mister.” Bardo poked the boy at his feet with his shoe. Flip watched Bardo and so did
Manny. Johnny stood away from the girl, but facing her. He said, “I’m sorry about your mother….” His voice trailed off. He didn’t look at her any more. He looked at the ground.
“Let me go home,” she said. “Please. Please. Can’t I go home.”
“On your feet, Carlos!” Bardo said.
Johnny touched Flip’s shoulder. “She wants to go home,” he said. “Let her go home.”
Carlos struggled to his feet, while Bardo reached into his back pocket.
Manny said, “She needs her blouse.”
The girl was pulling her straps back up, the knuckles of her hands rubbing her wet eyes.
“Let her go home, why don’t you, Flip?” Johnny said. “Give her her blouse.”
“This is going to be short, sweet, and simple,” Bardo said.
Flip stared with fascination at the ring Raleigh held in his hand. He tossed the balled-up blouse at Johnny indifferently. Johnny took it and shook it out. He handed it to the girl, who snatched it from him. “Here’s your blouse,” he said. “It’s just wrinkled a little.”
The girl began to run. Johnny watched her go.
“Grab your ankles, mister,” Bardo directed the boy. “Bend over and grab your ankles with your hands.” The boy did as he was told.
Bardo took the ring and placed it on a handkerchief on the ground between the boy’s spread legs. He said, “Bend and squat, mister, and kiss that ring!”
The boy tried, but he was crying. He lost his grip on his ankles.
“Keep ahold of those ankles, green-belly,” Bardo shouted. “Kiss that ring!”
Grunting, weeping, the boy bent, straining his thin bones, the blood rushing to his face, until gradually and at last his lips touched the gold ring. Then Bardo, behind him, drew his foot back violently and kicked the boy in the groin, sending him sprawling forward, his face buried in the dirt. The boy’s screams of pain rent the still air of the summer night. He lay with his face in the dust, blood trickling from his nose.
Manny sucked in his breath and gaped at the figure lying there.
Flip said, “Man, you really dish it out!” Johnny said, “Christ, Bardo! Christ!” Bardo bent over and picked up the ring and the handkerchief. He put them back in his pocket. “Come on,” he said tiredly.
He began to walk away, and Flip went with him. Manny still stared at the boy, who was lifting his face now, moving his legs.
“You — hurt?” Manny said.
“He kicked him too goddamn hard,” Johnny said. Bardo yelled, “Come on, you two! He’s got a nosebleed, that’s all.”
Side by side, Johnny and Manny stood for a moment more looking down at Carlos. The boy was getting to his knees, his face bloody and striped with tear lines. He said, “God in heaven, leave me alone. Oh, my God, my God.”
“Come on,” Johnny said. “He doesn’t want us around gaping at him.”
Manny followed Johnny, looking once and then again over his shoulder at the boy. Then he looked straight ahead, the same way Johnny did, and neither of them said anything for a long time. They could hear Bardo’s and Flip’s voices ahead of them, and the sound of the cabs whizzing by, the way they had been doing the whole time while the four of them were off in the shadows by the bench with the boy and girl. At the end of the walk, up where the lane swerved closer to the reservoir, they could feel the slight breeze from the water and see the pumpkin moon through the trees. They turned out of the park at Ninety-first Street, going on to Fifth Avenue again. The street lights were bright. A man passed them walking a bulldog.
Johnny was the first to speak. He said, “I might as well go on home. It’s eleven-thirty.”
“Maybe I ought to, too,” Manny said. “What are they going to do?”
Bardo and Flip were standing on the sidewalk, midway between Ninety-first and Ninety-second, waiting for Manny and Johnny to catch up.
“I don’t know,” Johnny said dully. “I’m going home.”
“That was sure something, wasn’t it?” Manny said, looking down to see the expression on Johnny’s face.
There was no particular expression there. He said, “Yeah.”
From somewhere off back in the bushes behind the stone wall along Fifth, a cricket chirped. Flip called, “Hurry up, you guys.”
Manny said, “Supposed to rain tomorrow. Sky doesn’t look like it.”
“She was scared stiff,
” Johnny said.
Manny said, “She thought we were going to hurt her.”
When they reached Bardo and Flip, Flip still held the knife in his hand, the blade snapped inside of the handle now.
“They’re outlawed, I think,” Manny said, looking at it.
They stood there in a group on the sidewalk.
Bardo said, “Yes, mister, they are. You ought to put it away before someone gets hurt.”
Flip tossed it in the air, caught it with one hand, and jammed it into his pocket. He said, “Boy, am I going to catch hell when I get home!”
“Why?” Manny said.
“I just am.”
Johnny sighed wearily. “I got to beat it.” He looked at Flip. “Going my way?”
“Might as well,” Flip said.
“You go my way, don’t you, Pollack?” Bardo asked. “Yes. I cut over Ninety-fourth.”
They stood there a moment, looking idly around them, at the cars waiting for the light at Ninety-first Street, at the two doormen lounging at the entrance of the apartment building on the corner, and at the dog-walkers going along the grass near the wall on their side of the avenue. Flip stretched and yawned noisily, and Johnny socked the palm of his hand with his fist in a persistent, offhand manner. Manny was pulling a loose button from the jacket of his summer suit, and Bardo was rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.
Finally Bardo said, “Well, gentlemen, let’s call it a night.”
“It was kicks,” Flip said.
“We ought to get together next week. You gentlemen free?”
Flip said, “If I’m living, man.”
Johnny didn’t say anything, and Manny said he guessed he would be.
“We’ll keep in touch during the week,” Bardo said. “We ought to keep in touch.”
“Crazy!”
“If you call me and I’m not home, you can always leave a message,” Manny said.
Flip clapped his hands across Johnny’s shoulders.” ‘Mon, Wyle, boy,” he said. “Let’s cut out. Christ, am I going to catch hell!”
“So long,” Johnny said.
The pair turned and went down Fifth toward Ninety-first Street.
Manny and Raleigh went silently along, Raleigh humming “March of the Men of Harlech,” Manny playing with the button he had got off his suit. Once Manny said, “I hope that boy’s all right. Not hurt or anything.”
