A Hero Grows in Brooklyn

by Jeffrey Rubin

  “Sure.”

  Now Mr. Imperiale turns very serious. “Steve, students who need to prove they’re real men by starting fights with other students don’t stay long in this school. I’m not going to put up with that kind of behavior. The community has decided that this school is to be for students who want to get an education. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Steve nods. Then Mr. Imperiale smiles and shakes Steve’s hand.

  CHAPTER 16

  As Steve leaves the principal’s office and hurries down the long hallway of Cunningham that leads to the exit closest to his apartment, it flashes into his mind that Warren might be waiting for him out on the streets. The image of Warren, heavy and lumbering after him, comes to Steve. Hey, I gotta be faster than him. I was the fastest guy in my last school. If I see Warren, I’ll just scram. Yeah, that’s it, I’ll just… Uh oh! What if he manages to grab me by hiding somewhere and suddenly jumping out, like from an alleyway? Well, in that case, I guess I’ll have to try out some of those “breaks” I learned in the self defense classes I took the last couple of summers. They’re supposed to be good for breaking free if someone grabs you. Let’s see if I can remember them. Well, one of them you press that spot right behind the ear. Then there’s that one where you bend the guy’s pinkie. Most of them you just yank away from the weakest point of a hold. As long as I can free myself, I can run away. Maybe I’ll get a few more scratches, but I guess I can handle that.

  Steve peers from the exit door. There are a few alleys over to the right. I better stay alert as I pass them. Okay, the coast looks clear. Here I go.

  Dashing out the exit, a twisting in his stomach accompanies his thoughts of Warren sitting behind him in shop class all year, his back facing the monster, day after day.

  Hurrying home and then bounding up the steps to his apartment, Steve comes to his brown door. He searches his pocket for his key, finds it, and before opening the door, he takes a deep breath and lets it out. After what I went through in school, he says to himself, I don’t know if I can handle it if Pete gives me a lot of crap about being late.

  He inserts the key, turns the tumbler, and as he enters the doorway, Steve sees Pete sitting at the kitchen table staring out the window.

  “How’d it go, Pete?”

  Pete ignores him.

  “Come on, Pete. I’m sorry I’m late. Tell me how your day went.”

  “Terrible! This kid, Glen, made fun of me for havin’ a free lunch pass and I lost my temper and I got sent to the principal’s office. Then when I got out of there, Glen got his big brudduh aftuh me. He says if I don’t watch it, he’s gonna clobber me. And then aftuh his brudduh left, Glen starts ta hassle me saying I gotta take it or his brudduh’s gonna do me in. I said, ‘Yeah, well I got a big brudduh, too.’ Steve, ya gotta go straighten ‘em out for me.”

  As Pete is saying this, he begins to notice Steve’s bloody neck.

  “What happened?”

  “Aaaa, this big kid grabbed me by my neck, and when I yanked it free, it got all scratched.”

  “Hey, Steve, don’t you worry ‘bout me. I’ll play along with Glen for a while until we get our strength back. In Bensonhurst, no one would touch us. You’ll see. We’ll be on top again. We’ll be da biggest, da toughest.”

  Steve smiles. “I’m not so sure I wanna be the biggest. Ya gotta pay an awful big price for the kind of respect you’re after, Pete.”

  As Steve is saying this, he attempts to get Pete a drink of milk for some nourishment. “Look at this,” he yells, “the stupid refrigerator isn’t working! Marone, the milk turned way too sour.”

  “Yeah, I know,” says Pete, “and I ain’t eaten nuttin since we finished up the container of orange juice at breakfast.”

  Steve looks around the kitchen. It’s awful, with water stains that run up from the sink to the ceiling. All over the rest of the kitchen, paint is peeling, cracked, and dirty. Steve gets up, goes to the closet, gets out all of the shopping bags his mother has saved, writes a note to her to let her know where he and Pete are heading, and then says: “Come on, Pete, we’ve got something we gotta go do.”

  “Do? What do we have to do? Where we goin’, Steve?

  “We’re gonna go make some money.”

  “Ya got us a job, Steve?”

  “Uncle Ricky once took me to Battery Park in Manhattan,” Steve explains on the way to the Avenue U Train Station. “From there, we caught the ferry to Liberty Island where the Statue of Liberty stands. Anyway, as we walked through the park toward the ferry, I noticed it’s a great spot for finding empty deposit bottles. I’m hoping we could earn some money by collecting them.”

  When they get to the station, halfway up the steps that lead to the El, Steve stops and grabs hold of his little brother. “Listen-up, Pete. We ain’t got no money for tokens, so here’s what we’re gonna do. When the train is almost pulling into the station, we gotta make a run for it. We gotta run past the guy in the token booth. He might start yelling and stuff, but just follow me, okay?”

  “Sure, Steve! Sure! Don’t worry about me! I’ll just keep running!”

  “As soon as we get past the token booth we gotta dive under the turnstile, then run up the other stairs, and then into the train. Follow me when I say, ‘Go’. Okay!”

  “When you say go, Steve, I’m gonna go like crazy!” Pete goes into a crouched position, as if he’s preparing for a sprint. His eyes are wide open, and his fingers are wiggling wildly.

  As Steve attempts to hear the rumbling of a coming train, a truck below the El is growling, belching and screeching. Steve turns his ears up toward the tracks trying his best to distinguish the street noise from the rumbling of a coming train. Not yet. Uh oh, there’s a police officer down the block.

  “Not yet, Pete. It’s…wait, now I hear it. Let’s give it a couple of seconds to get closer…Ready. Set. Go!”

  As they run past the token booth, nothing is said. When they cut in front of a man in a business suit, he hollers, “Hey! You two! Where do you think you’re going over there?!” When they dive under the turnstile, the yelling gets louder.

  Steve keeps running. Pete is close behind. They hustle up the last set of stairs, and just manage to slide through the closing train doors. Huffing and puffing, they grab a hold of a pole and look around to see if anyone is after them. As the train pulls out of the station, they breathe a sigh of relief.

  * * * *

  When they reach Whitehall Station in lower Manhattan, they get off the train with a few other passengers. Hundreds of other people pile into the car they were in, and it is packed pretty tightly as the doors close.

  “I ain’t never seen so many people,” says Pete.

  This part of the train system is underground. Dark tunnels stretch out toward mysterious places, and black and white tiles make bland patterns on dirty walls.

  From the train platform, they go up a set of stairs and slide through a heavy turnstile with a crash and roar. Off in a darkened corner a derelict sleeps with an empty pint bottle behind his head, dried blood and spittle on his cracked lips and his fly is wide open. People walking by completely ignore him.

  Walking up a set of steps that smell of urine, the boys emerge back in daylight on a street with a stream of taxicabs rushing by. When the corner traffic light turns green, they cross a large thoroughfare and enter Battery Park.

  From this long narrow park on the edge of New York Harbor, one gets a beautiful view of the Statue of Liberty. In addition to a ferry that goes to Liberty Island, there’s also one that goes to Staten Island. Because of the view, the nearby skyscrapers, and the ferries, thousands upon thousands of people pass by every day, sometimes stopping long enough to sit on a bench and drink a soda. For many of these people, the two-cent deposit that one gets for returning soda bottles these days means nothing. Consequently, they either leave them by their bench or throw them away in the trashcans scattere
d about the park.

  Steve opens up one of his shopping bags and begins picking up bottles by some benches. When he gets to the first garbage can he begins to rummage through it.

  “Ugh!” says Pete. “Gross! What are ya doin’, Steve?”

  “Remember how I taught you to shine Dad’s and Uncle Ricky’s shoes?”

  “Yeah. That was fun.”

  “Well, Pete, I’m betting we could go on the boardwalk on weekends and shine shoes and make some money doing it. If we make enough dough we could paint the kitchen. I can’t eat in that kitchen the way it is. It makes me gag.”

  “But goin’ through trashcans? People are lookin’ at us, Steve.”

  “We gotta get the money for the shoe shining materials doing this just for a couple of days,” says Steve, and he proceeds to collect the bottles. Yes, he notices the people staring at him through the corner of their eyes. Yes, his forehead is burning in the chilly November air.

  * * * *

  By the time Steve finishes filling up one shopping bag with bottles and begins opening up a second, Pete starts to open up a bag of his own. He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and sets off in his own direction, working fast, trying not to catch anybody’s eyes.

  As Steve gets in the rhythm of checking behind benches and rummaging through trash cans, his mind begins to examine his day at school. Images of the lunch line and free lunch pass, getting his neck grabbed, the principal, all seem to migrate up from his bitterly sour stomach to his confused mind. Shaking his head, he finishes a trashcan, spots another past a row of trees, and heads over, his mind continuing to wander through the day’s events.

  Wow that Mysterious Jane, the way she jiggles when she walks, Dio mio! Passionately they embrace, their bodies merging, knee and crotch, breast and chest, their mouths moist and sweet, their souls filled with power…

  Just then, from the corner of his eye, Steve notices Pete reach into a garbage can, pull out a half-eaten hot dog in a bun soggy with hot sauerkraut and mustard. Pete looks carefully at it and then takes a bite. Aghast, Steve runs over, grabs the dog from Pete’s hands and throws it back in the garbage.

  “You don’t know who was eating that and how long it’s been sitting there!” Steve exclaims. “It could be spoiled.”

  “That family right over there just threw it out,” says Pete. “I saw them. Look how well dressed they are. They could be friends of our family offerin’ us a bite of their hot dog. I ain’t eaten since breakfast, and I figured if I eat it there’d be more food tonight for Mom.”

  “Pete! Pete! I know you didn’t mean anything wrong. It’s just, well, no matter how down people get, well they always try to maintain as much dignity as they can. If we have to, we’ll eat out of garbage cans. But let’s see what happens first with my shoe shining plan.”

  Pete looks at the garbage in the can. His eyes tear up, his face twists into horrible anger, and then he explodes. “I can’t believe this! I’m eatin’ out of garbage cans! It’s all Daddy’s fault! I hate him! I hate him!”

  Pete throws his bottles down, breaking some; kicks over the trash can and starts running.

  Steve puts his bags down and runs after him.

  The two run side by side for a while until Pete is exhausted. He sits down on a street corner with his feet in the gutter, holding his head, breathing hard. Steve sits beside him. Some drivers honk their horns as they speed by, registering their objections to the two youths sitting so close to the passing rush hour traffic.

  Five minutes go by without either Steve or Pete saying a word. Hundreds of yellow taxis race by, along with a few fancy limousines and regular cars. Hordes of people wait for the light to change, and when it does, they walk across in unison. The sounds of cars honking, masses of people talking, a tugboat’s whistle off in the bay, mark the passing of time.

  Another minute goes by and then Pete stands up and brushes off his bottom. “Come on, Steve,” he says, “let’s finish gettin’ our bottles.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Marie leaves her job at the Metropolitan Insurance Building on Wall Street at 3:30, right at the rumbling beginnings of lower Manhattan’s rush hour. She’s wearing one of her favorite secretary outfits—gray wool sweater, black wool skirt that reaches just below her knees, and black leather pumps that actually don’t hurt her feet.

  On the elevator, a fine looking gentleman smiles at her. Marie fingers her wedding ring.

  The elevator glides to a stop and the large metal doors slide open. The riders stream out into the building’s immense art deco lobby with ultra high ceilings and splendid murals of powerfully built workers. As Marie heads to her exit, she notices how her office mate has discovered that her sweetheart is waiting for her. They throw their arms around one another and kiss.

  Marie steps through one of the six sets of revolving doors, exits onto the street. At the corner she walks down the steps of the subway station and takes the uptown local to her business class at Hunter College.

  Inside the classroom, Marie’s eyes keep wandering out the window to the fancy stone facades of the massive apartment building across the way. Usually Professor Aresti has no trouble keeping Marie’s attention. Even when presenting some of the more bland abstract ideas, he manages to spice them up with delightful stories such as his daughter’s attempt to run her lemonade stand. But today, Marie finds herself checking the clock every few minutes. Pete’s principal sure was angry when he called me out of my meeting. Just wait until I get home! I’ll teach Pete to get into fights at school! And what about Steve! His principal called too. His neck got all scratched up! Oh God!

  At 5:00, Marie heads home via a crowded downtown train. Not only are all the seats taken, but so too are all the straphangers. She maintains her balance, as the train shakes and screeches along, by the press of people on all sides of her.

  About thirty minutes into her ride, her train pulls into Atlantic Avenue and her car begins to thin out. Fifteen minutes later she reaches Church Avenue and she manages to get a seat.

  Six more stops. Six more stops and I’ll be home. The train lurches forward. It won’t be long now.

  Finally the train roars into the Avenue U Station. As she exits the train and steps onto the station platform, Marie begins to walk faster and faster, taking care not to jostle anyone she passes in the station. Upon reaching the street, she begins to run, and then she bounds up the steps to the apartment. Entering the kitchen huffing and puffing, she gasps when she finds no one home.

  * * * *

  “Thanks for leaving a note for me, boys,” says Marie as her sons enter through the apartment door into the kitchen close to seven p.m. “I heard from your principal today, Steve.”

  “Take a look at his neck, Mom,” says Pete.

  “Aaaaaaa!” cries Marie as she goes over to Steve and begins to see his scratches. “Did you wash that good! Come into the bathroom and let me put some medicine on that!”

  “I don’t need no medicine,” says Steve. “I’m gonna go take a hot shower and let the water really clean it out. I washed it out pretty good at school.” Then Steve goes over to his dresser and starts to pick out a change of clothes. As he selects a pair of socks, he notices a white envelope way in the back of the drawer. He peeks into it, sees the Yankee soil, and smiles. “What did Mr. Imperiale say, Mom?”

  “He called me at work and he didn’t blame you for what happened. He did think you could have handled the situation a little better, but he didn’t blame you. Then he says how he’s taking strong action against Warren, the student who scratched your neck. Warren is suspended until Monday. Mr. Imperiale also told Warren that if he gets into one more fight this school year he’s going to be transferred to the six hundred school. That’s a special school for students with serious behavior problems.”

  Steve is relieved that he doesn’t have to deal with Warren for a few days. Instead, he can begin to strengthen
his power at school.

  “What are we gonna do ‘bout supper, Mom?” Pete asks.

  “You shouldn’t even have supper tonight, Pete. I should send you right to bed! Your principal called me and said you were very bad.”

  “That kid, Glen, he had it coming, Mom. I didn’t have any lunch. I’m starving!”

  “Uncle Ricky said he’s going to be bringing something over a little after seven. Tonight and tomorrow morning should be our last really bad food days. When I get paid tomorrow I’ll go shopping. The people at the welfare office said it will take a couple of weeks to process our claim. After that, besides those school free lunch passes that they gave us right away, we should be getting a check each week.”

  Satisfied with this, Pete goes into the living room and turns on the TV. Quickly, he finds a channel with a Popeye cartoon.

  “How did things get to be so bad, Mom?” Steve whispers so his brother can’t hear.

  “Monday, some guys came over to Dad and told him that by nightfall he either comes up with the money he owed them or he sleeps with the fishes. He had to give them the rent money and everything else we own that’s of any value. He still owes them two hundred dollars. He’s lucky to be alive.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The next day, Steve gets up a little early. When he leaves for school, he takes along with him a pink rubber ball known as a spaldeen.

  When Steve gets to his schoolyard and sees Ron DeFelipo and Tom Giordano, his hand involuntarily starts rubbing the spot on his butt where he got pricked yesterday. Both are talking with Jerry Miller who is absentmindedly fingering his Star of David neck chain. Steve walks close enough to them so that they can easily see him. Then he begins to bounce the spaldeen. After a few bounces, he tosses it up against the school wall a couple of times. Steve knows that Ron, Tom, and Jerry pride themselves as being strong and athletic. It’s just about impossible for such a Brooklyn kid to see a bouncing spaldeen without being magnetically drawn to it. First you hear the ball bouncing. Then your eyes instinctively seek out the sound. Spotting it, your body starts to stretch and your brain searches for a plan to get your hands on it.