“I'll run that coon the hell out of here,” said the wheel-chaired Greek, waving his fist. “I come to see a ball game.”
“That's right,” said the tall boy, pimples flaring, beginning to ignite. Suddenly, his face softened. He grabbed Stern's collar and shouted, “We got someone. This guy here will play. Don't mind his fat ass.” To Stern, he said, “I didn't mean that. I know you can't help it.” He turned to the Puerto Rican girl and said, “Hey, a man brings home a donkey, see. So all day he goes around patting his ass.”
The girl smiled, showing salt-white teeth with only the tiniest chip on a front one. She lay back, putting her head on the tall boy's lap and waggling a leg lazily, so that a gleam of Puerto Rican underwear caught the sunlight. “Boredom and you are ever enemies,” she said to the tall boy. “Please sneak out and take me dancin'.” The others in the stands were cheering for Stern now, and he stood up, afraid the tall boy's pimples might sputter into violence again and also not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings. It was easy to just start trotting out toward the field. He fully expected to turn back with a big smile and say, “I'm not going out there. Not when I'm sick.” But he found himself jogging all the way out to center field, unable to get himself to return. Winded, he stood in a crouch, hands on knees, as though capable of fast, dynamic spurts after balls. He hoped the Puerto Rican girl was watching and would see him as being potentially lithe and graceful, equal to the tall boy. Feldner ran out in his bathrobe and slippers and said, “Do you know what will happen to you? With what you got? You play and you're dead in a minute and a half.”
Stern motioned him back, saying, “I'm not sure I have what you had. Everyone's got a different kind of thing.” But when Feldner turned away, discouraged, Stern was sorry he had been harsh to a man in a bathrobe.
From the stands, Stern heard the Greek boy shout, “You show 'em, fat ass,” and Stern hoped the girl would not think of him only as a man with a giant behind. The austere Jamaican umpire checked Stern, looked at his rule book, said, “Legalistic,” and turned stoically toward the wind.
The second hitter hit a pop fly to short center field, and Stern, since childhood afraid to turn his back and go after balls hit past him, joyfully ran forward and caught the ball with his fingertips, so thrilled it had been hit in front of him he almost cried. He did a professional skip forward and returned the ball to the infield, wishing at that moment the kike man was there so he could see that Jews did not sit all day in mysterious temples but were regular and played baseball and, despite a tendency to short-windedness, had good throwing arms.
A sick, reedlike cheer came from the torn people in the grandstand after Stern's catch. At the end of the inning, he trotted toward the dugout and heard the Greek boy say, “Nice one, fat ass, baby,” but he averted his eyes with DiMaggio-like reserve and sat on the cash register team's bench. Feldner came over in his bathrobe and said, “What did I tell you?”
“What do you mean?” said Stern.
“Look at yourself. You should see your face.”
“I look all right,” said Stern. “And I'm playing now.” Sitting among the lean, neutral-faced cash register team, he was ashamed of Feldner's bathrobed presence and motioned him away. But, as Feldner left, Stern again regretted his curtness and wanted to shout, “Come back. You're more to me than these blond fellows.”
Stern got to bat in the inning. Afraid the dry cleaning pitcher had discovered his Jewishness and planned to put a bloodflower between his eyes, too, he swung on the first pitch, hitting it on the ground. Forgetting to run, he stood on the base path and actually squeezed with his bowels, hoping the ball would get past the third baseman. When it filtered through the infield for a hit, Stern hollered “Yoo” and ran to first, sending home the runner in front of him and tying the score. His team won in that inning and the patients gathered round him on the field. “You clobber their ass, baby,” said the Greek boy with genuine sincerity, reaching up from the wheelchair to pat Stern's back. The tall boy, with gentleness in his lips, the ticking in him fading, said, “No fooling, you get around good. I mean, for a guy with a can like yours.” The Puerto Rican girl, still lying on the bench with gaping skirt, said, “We're all goin' dancin' tonight. Either alfresco or in my place. The group has much charm.” Only Feldner had misgivings. “You signed your death warrant out there,” he said, and for a moment Stern felt a bubble tremble outward inside him; he was certain he was going to have to pay for his indiscretion by starting from scratch with a brand new ulcer, slightly larger and a fraction more formidable than his first. But the bubble fluttered and withered, like a wave breaking, and the patients kept congratulating him. He had struck a blow for sickness. As a reward he got to carry Rooney back to the porch for evening “milk and cookie.”
Late that night, the tall, blond boy and the wheel-chaired Greek came for Stern as he sat alone on the porch. The others had gone to bed and the tall boy said, “We're meeting the kid with the boobs on the outside tonight. I figure we get a few beers and, later, diddle her boobs.”
“I take her upstairs and do some jazzing,” said the boy in the wheelchair.
Stern, flattered at being selected by the two, and not really sure how to say no, got up from his chair, giddy and dangerous in the night. The trio started down the corridor and then heard Lennie rasping and clattering after them, a man with a machine shop going full blast below his waist.
“There is to be no disobedience of the nighttime rules,” he said, and, as the boys turned to face him, Stern wondered which side he would be on in a fight. He imagined Lennie standing against the wall, looking patiently at Stern, while the tall boy bent his contraptions and tore out his clamps and gears and the Greek boy hit him many times on the head to no avail. Stern pictured himself watching this, frozen to the side, asking Lennie, “Do you need any help?” And then Lennie, his machinery mangled, finally turning from Stern with great calm and slowly rising up, trunklike and great-armed, to hug the breath out of the two boys, subduing them for the night.
As it was, the Greek boy merely wheeled around, saying “Coon fucker” under his breath, and the tall boy, with great sweetness, said, “We were just being happy with Mr. Stern for getting a hit with a fat ass.”
The two boys returned to the dormitory, and as Stern walked after them, the Negro stopped him and said, “There can be a little staying up later sometimes. If authorities come, though, I didn't see you.”
Stern said, “Thank you,” but he felt very uncomfortable about the favor and wanted to do a thousand quick ones for the Negro. He wanted to tell him that if he ever got into trouble with the police, he could hide in Stern's house, or if he ever wound up helpless and drugged on Welfare Island, Stern would go take a taxi in the middle of the night and cut through red tape to get him into a decent hospital. But the Negro clattered off in a metallic symphony and Stern sat guiltily on a chair, staring off at the winking lights of Rosenkranz. He stayed up late, sucking in the dewy air, exulting in its freshness, aware there were only a few days before his return to the kike man and yet thrilled that there were those few days. He wished that he were clever enough to stretch his mind so that he could turn those days into eternities, fondling each second, stretching it, cramming a lifetime into it before yielding it selfishly for the next one. Perhaps if he stayed on the porch and stared at the night, pinned it with his eyes, he would be able to hold it there and forever block out daylight. Across the field he studied Rosenkranz and wondered whether at some future date he might not himself be taken there, ulcer-free but a mindless urinator now, squatting beside the others, filling the corridors with a giant stream and cackling at the walls.
The following night, the three evaded Lennie and dashed drunkenly at midnight across the lawn toward the main gate, the tall, blond boy propelling the Greek ahead, as though the wheelchaired youth were a wild street hoop. “We meet that coon fucker tonight,” said the Greek, his vehicle skidding across the wet grass, “he and me going to tangle asses.” Stern kept looking back ov
er his shoulder at the main building, as though he were a child running away from home, taking one giddy step and then another but always remaining close enough to dash back and say he was only fooling. He wondered what punishment Lennie would mete out if they were caught—and could he protest it to a higher authority without appearing to be anti-Negro? If Lennie made him stay in his room, for example. Since there were only a few days left, he would probably stay in there and let it go without fuss.
The tall boy suddenly released the wheelchair and flicked his body to the top branches of a tree like a whip, swinging easily in the wind. “Aren't I a crazy bastard?” he said from above. “That's what the guys said when I was working on high wires. I never used a safety harness. I don't care if I fall down and break my head.” He swung from branch to branch like a lean night animal and the Greek boy said, “I'm cutting out. I don't want to do no stuff on trees. I want to do some jazzing.”
“How you going to get up here?” said the tall boy. “With your bony ass?”
Stern wanted to tell him not to make fun of the young Greek's missing leg, but the tree swings had intimidated him and he had no desire to run up against the tall boy's explosive wiriness. Dropping easily to the ground, the tall boy flung the wheelchair on ahead of him and said, “Did you see me up there? Aren't I one helluva crazy bastard? I don't care what happens to me.”
Stern said, “You were very good up there,” and the boy said, “But sometimes everything stops in me. I lay in bed for six months and I can't get out. My kid sister brings me soup. It's in my veins. That's what I'm in here for.”
There were no guards at the gate, but as they rolled toward it, Stern had a sudden fear that Lennie had been watching them all along; the instant they passed the gate, he would have them picked up in trucks and initiate punitive measures.
“They don't like you to go through this gate,” Stern said, but the Greek boy, wheeling right through, said, “I got to hop on something. Then I'm happy.” And Stern raced along after the pair. The three of them traveled seven blocks in darkness, and when they came to a small bar and grill the blond boy said, “I can taste that brew already. I can't go no more than a few days without a few brews.” The Puerto Rican girl was waiting for them in a booth, and it seemed to Stern that she was more like Tierney than ever, Tierney after a session with two longshoremen who'd been paid to rough her up a little, not to kill her but to change her face around a little. She wore a bulging black sweater, and her paper-white teeth were chipped a little. Stern, drunk with the danger of having run away from the Home, wondered what her teeth would be like on sections of his body; perhaps they would nibble erotically at him in the style of some primeval creature of the Puerto Rican rain forests.
“And so ends my solitude,” she said as the blond boy slid in beside her.
Stern, a weakened, dropping, off-balance feeling coming over him as a result of her literary flourish, took a seat across the table. The Greek boy swung close, chewing on his nails, examining the chrome and red leather décor. “This place stinks,” he said. “We got better places in East Harlem.”
“Get this,” said the blond boy, poking the girl in the ribs and winking at Stern. “You know what a kiss is? An upper persuasion for a lower invasion.” The girl pecked at his ear with her chipped teeth and said, “Forever play the jester.” The proprietor, a tall, toplike man who looked out on the street as he spoke, came over and asked, “What'll it be?”
“We're just in here nice,” said the blond boy. “We came in here nice and all we want to do is drink nice. Nobody bothers us, we don't bother nobody. Right, Mr. Stern? Didn't we come in here nice?”
“Yes,” said Stern, smiling at the man, feeling the air charge up and wanting to stop whatever was about to happen. The brocade of tenderness appeared suddenly to girdle his stomach. He was not sure he could take any trouble, and he imagined himself collapsing and having to be carried back to the Home by his two friends, the Puerto Rican girl walking contemptuously behind, aware now that Stern had the least romantic disease of all.
“Brews all around,” the blond boy said, his mood suddenly sweetening. When the proprietor returned to the bar, the blond boy squeezed the girl's breasts and said, “How they hangin', doll?”
“Hey, George—motorboat,” he said, waggling his head from side to side against her breasts and making a droning sound in his throat.
“I don't go for that,” said the Greek boy, eating deep down on his nails and leaning forward on his wheelchair, as though watching a tense horse race. “I like to do some real jazzing.”
The girl sat patiently through this, running her fingers through the blond boy's hair. “The physical side,” she said to Stern, who nodded back at her, his heart in his throat, as though he too considered breast-nuzzling a bore.
The proprietor brought the beers and said, “Pay now.” The blond boy said, “Remember what I said when we came in? I said we're coming in here nice. Nobody pushes us around, we don't do any bumping either. Now you come over and you say pay now.”
“It's a house rule,” said the proprietor, staring out the window. “Everybody pays now.” Stern, the brocade tightening around his stomach and wanting to do something, put down two dollars and the proprietor took it. The Greek boy said, “You think you got such a hot place here. This place stinks.” He spit on the floor and the proprietor went back to the bar.
“That's what I was telling you,” the blond boy said to Stern with a pleading compassion in his voice. “Nobody gives you freedom. You come into a place nice, you know, and you just want a few brews, and look what happens.”
“He thinks just because he's got a fancy place he can give you shit,” said the Greek boy. “I spit on his ass.”
The blond boy's mood suddenly changed and he took hold of one of the girl's breasts again. “Good set, huh, Mr. Stern?” And Stern nodded sweetly in agreement, looking apologetically at the girl, as though he was only going along with this line of conversation to be polite and really never thought of such things.
“What about the dancin'?” the girl asked, looking over at the jukebox. “Does my love feel a tango within him?”
“Dancing, shit,” said the blond boy. He looked over at the proprietor, who was rinsing glasses, and said, “He comes over here again, we get him. You can be nice up to a certain point.”
“He thinks he has a fancy place,” said the boy in the wheelchair. “I'll cut his balls.”
Stern, his stomach pumping, wanted to say, “Wait. No fighting. You have other things, but I have an ulcer, the kind of thing you shouldn't get excited with. What if I get hit in it and get another new one?” When the proprietor came over to the table, the blond boy arranged his fingers like two donkey's ears and stuck them swiftly in the man's eyes. The proprietor said, “I can't see now,” holding his eyes, and the Greek boy grabbed his hair and yanked the man's head down on his lap, saying, “I ought to cut your balls.” Then he held the man by the hair in a bent-over position and the tall, blond boy began to kick at the man's upper legs, the kicks making sharp, fresh cracking sounds, like new baseballs off a bat. Stern, who had stood by doing nothing, wanted to say, “Stop, you're going too far. The hair stuff wasn't so bad, but now you can do spinal injury.” But a current began snapping through him and he looked for something to do. There was one other person in the bar, a small man with a toothbrush mustache who was eating a heavy soup. Stern ran over and grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms.
“I'm not in this,” said the man.
“That's all right,” said Stern, ecstatic over being in the fight, his stomach free and easy. How wonderful it would be, he thought, if he could be transported in this very condition to the kike man's front porch, the current snapping through him, the same excited sweat in his arms. He was certain he would be able to fight him and not feel a single blow, and for an instant he thought of jumping in a cab and speeding back to his house, gritting his teeth to preserve the mood. The cab fare would be $150 or so, but it would be worth it. B
ut what if the current then began to fade, the sweat dry up, and he found himself nearing the man's house with a growing fright, worrying about being hit in the ulcer? He saw that he would have to get there instantaneously or it would not work.
After many kicks, the proprietor said, “That's enough,” and the blond boy, as though waiting for him to signal with those very words, said, “Let's cut,” shoving his wheel-chaired friend through the door. Stern said, “I'm letting you go now,” to the mustached soup eater and ran out the door after the girl, looking back at the proprietor. He was relieved to see that the man was standing; it seemed to him that only when people were on the floor might there be police involvement. The quartet ran through blackened, neatly shrubbed residential streets, and Stern wondered how running was for the ulcer. Would jogging up and down disengage it and cause it to take residence in another part of him? He was suddenly struck by the incongruity of the quartet—a grenadelike, blond boy with strange vein problems; a wheelchaired Greek; a heavy Jew with ulcer-filled stomach; and a strange, Tierney-like girl who spoke in literary flourishes. And yet they were comrades of a sort and he was glad to be with them, to be doing things with them, to be running and bellowing to the sky at their sides; he was glad their lives were tangled up together. It was so much better than being a lone Jew stranded on a far-off street, your exit blocked by a heavy-armed kike hater in a veteran's jacket.
They slowed down after a while and Stern put his arm around the girl's waist, as though he had been unable to stop and was using her to steady himself. Her neck was wet from the exercise, and the pungent dime-store fragrance of her hair brought him close to a delighted faint.
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