A Hero Grows in Brooklyn

by Jeffrey Rubin

  There’s a new guy with this group of older gentlemen who strikes Steve as somehow different from the others. He begins to study him. Mersh and his friends, they sound like your typical Brooklyn guys except for the gentleman over there they call Sol. Sol’s got a strong Yiddish accent. This new guy’s very distinguished looking, with white hair and an accent kinda like the guys on the news shows.

  “So, Dr. Johnson, when are you going down to Florida this year?” Mersh asks the new guy.

  “Right after the Christmas holidays.”

  Hearing this, Steve turns to Dr. Johnson and says, “Doctor, last night I went bowling for the first time and my thumb is all sore. Is it better to put ice on it, or heat?”

  “Oh, I’m not that kind of doctor, young man. I’m an anthropologist.”

  “Anthro...anthro what?” asks Steve.

  “Anthropologist. It’s a scientist who studies human beings as they function in their culture.”

  “Oh,” says Steve scratching his head.

  One of the gentlemen is folding a second cuff on his pants as he prepares to put Pete to work. “Sol, ya think the 49ers got any chance against the Giants today?” he asks.

  “With Y.A. Tittle, come on Bernie, what are you, meshuga?”

  “Bernie, you look like a big guy,” says Mersh, “You ever play football?”

  “Na. Basketball’s my game. When I was young, we played at Wingate. That’s all we ever wanted to do. When it got dark, we moved the cars over and lit the court with headlights. Saturday mornings I couldn’t wait to get up and run over there. I played basketball on court one, a privilege I got by being one of the best. It was three-man ball, one basket. Great, great games, great ball players. You played till you dropped. I remember how the girls, sometimes, would come down, and then, no matter how tired you were, you’d get a burst of energy and show off.”

  “What about gangs?” asks Steve thinking about the gang he heard about the night before—the one that Ron said knifed a kid. “Did you guys have gangs when you were young?”

  “Gangs were popular in the downtown area,” answers Mersh fingering his chin. “They were organized according to territory and neighborhoods. Gowanus had the Gowanus Dukes. The Kane Street Midgets were the kids twelve and under. The Kane Street Stompers were fourteen and older. Rumors said they were into stealing hubcaps—prank stuff.”

  “I lived on Taylor Street between Bedford and Wythe,” says Sol. “The Hellburners were on one side of Bedford Avenue, and the Phantom Lords, they were on the other side. It was a guarding the turf thing. Sometimes someone got beat up, and then things would start to get pretty hot, but mostly it was a lot of talk and guys would rarely go out of the way to start something. So tell me Steve, why are you interested in gangs, if I might ask?”

  “We used ta be in a gang in our old neighborhood,” says Pete as he begins to rapidly swing from right to left to right his long white cloth against Bernie’s brown shoe. “Steve was the leader.”

  “Yeah. The guys picked me ‘cause I never told anyone what to do,” Steve responds smiling.

  “That wasn’t the way it was,” says Pete. “He was picked because he could take anyone in the neighborhood.”

  “My Uncle Ricky, the last couple of summers, signed me up for these self defense classes,” Steve tries to explain. “When some of us guys from the neighborhood would go down to Brighton Beach to play handball, we’d cool off in the ocean, and then rest under the boardwalk, you know, because it was a little cooler under there with the shade. And then, before long, we’d start to roughhouse, and I would use a few moves I learned from the classes on the guys, and so they got to thinking I was a lot tougher than I really was. But the gang we were in, we were really just playing like we were a gang. We were really just some guys that said, ‘Hey, we’re the 82nd Street boys, so ya better watch out.’“

  “Come on Steve,” says Pete. “We were the toughest guys around. Nobody would dare mess wit’ ya if they knew ya were in da gang.”

  “Some guys who might have got picked on otherwise,” says Steve, “probably found that a few of the bullies were more likely to stay away from them.”

  “To get a reputation did you have to do a lot of mean things?” asks Dr. Johnson.

  “Na,” Steve answers. “The meanest thing we ever did was when we saw this group of guys hanging around a bench by Seth Low Park. About ten of us guys from the gang, for some reason, yelled, ‘Let’s get them!’ and then we charged at these guys by the bench. They thought they were finished, but we pulled up and said, ‘Aw, we’re just goofin’ on ya.’“

  “Ya should have seen those guys,” says Pete laughing, his eyes glowing. “They thought they were goners for sure.”

  * * * *

  A little later, under a pavilion, Steve and Pete find a group of men talking politics.

  “Hey, Bengy, what do you think about Nelson Rockefeller running for president?”

  “I never liked him as our governor; I should like him better as president?”

  “Shoeshine gentlemen?” Steve asks.

  Several men check their shoes, put their hands in their pockets, jingle some change, and then signal Pete and Steve to go to work.

  As they place their boxes under a couple of pairs of shoes, Pete and Steve listen to the men.

  “Kennedy’s a commie! He supports labor at the expense of employers.”

  “Yeah, he increased the minimum wage to a dollar fifty an hour.”

  “It’s none of the president’s business what an employer pays his workers.”

  “A good president should stay out of the lives of people. He’s got us spending more and more on these gad damn social programs.

  “What social programs?”

  “What about his increasing Social Security benefits to several hundred thousand children?”

  “This isn’t the government’s business? We should let kids starve to death in this day and age?”

  “You start paying for kids when their parents can’t afford to, pretty soon no one has to work anymore. They’ll figure, let the government take care of the kids. Why should I go knock myself out? Now Kennedy’s authorizing the selling of 150 million bushels of wheat to the Russian commies. I tell you he’s as red as a hooker’s lipstick.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

  * * * *

  Around noon Steve and Pete walk over to Nathan’s Famous and buy a bag filled with hot dogs, French fries, and orange drinks.

  Leisurely, they eat their lunch on the beach.

  “Pete,” says Steve, who has taken his sneakers off and is pushing cool sand between his toes, “this is where I come sometimes when I feel like being alone. I come here to listen to the waves.”

  “It’s a nice place, Steve. Tomorrow we gotta go back to school. You worried about meeting up with that guy who scratched your neck?”

  “A little.”

  “You can take him, Steve.”

  “He’s pretty big.”

  After Pete takes the last bite of his hotdog, he carefully begins to work his way along the line of mossy breakwater boulders that are just a few feet from where Steve is sitting.

  There is a row of the rocky breakwaters that begin near the water’s edge and jut out about a hundred feet into the ocean every hundred yards along the beach. The irregular crags of massive black and silver stones test Pete’s agility, and as he climbs further out, he finds some of the life formations clinging to the rocks fascinating to look at.

  Steve, still munching his fries, nervously eyes Pete. “Careful over there, Pete!” he shouts out. “You’re gonna kill yourself.”

  Soon Pete makes his way back from the far reaches of the boulders and returns to the safety of the sand.

  As Pete picks up shells and skips them on the water, Steve relaxes. He gazes out toward the east and it’s so clear he can see the silvery bridge that connects the end of Flatbush Aven
ue to the Rockaways. The ocean, the color of iron, sparkles like millions of diamonds.

  * * * *

  After their lunch-break, Steve and Pete return to work. Within a few minutes, they run into a small group of guys—Puerto Ricans—who are talking about their big dates the night before. When they spot the shoe shiners, they cry out,

  “Mira aqui!”

  “Oye! Oye!”

  “Mira aqui!”

  They all wear these pointy black shoes, and every one of them wants a shine.

  “You should see the sweetheart I was with last night,” says one. “She had melones out to here,” and as he says this he stretches his arms out in front of his chest as far as he can reach. “Man was she sweet.”

  “She was OK, I think, but the girl I was with, oh she sent me to the heavens! Dios Mio!”

  * * * *

  That evening after supper the boys’ work for the day isn’t quite over.

  “How do you get these paint cans open?” asks Pete trying to pry a lid off with his finger nails.

  “Don’t open them yet, Pete,” says Steve. “We have to scrape the old peeling paint off the walls and ceiling first.”

  “Wait until I finish the dishes and get them in the cabinet,” says Marie. “This is going to make a terrible mess. You really shouldn’t start until Uncle Ricky gets here.”

  Knock, knock.

  “There he is now.”

  “Uncle Ricky, what’s in the big shopping bags?” asks Pete as his uncle enters wearing worn overalls.

  “Buon giorno! I talked to the Brooklyn Barons and they lent me this painting stuff. It’s buon roba! I got some oil cloths to throw over everything to catch the paint chips and the drops of paint. These here white things with rubber bands are masks for you boys. Dollar Bill says young kids ain’t to be scraping old paint without wearing them.”

  By the very end of Sunday, just about at midnight, Steve, Pete, and Marie go to bed exhausted, their kitchen clean and white.

  CHAPTER 24

  Monday morning, Steve wakes up from a dream in which a huge hand with long, sharp nails is reaching out to grab his aching neck. As he begins to realize it was only a nightmare it suddenly dawns on him that the day has arrived for him to face the monster again.

  “You gonna give it to that kid who scratched your neck, Steve?” Pete asks while pouring milk into his bowl of cornflakes.

  “We’ll see,” Steve replies.

  “Don’t you get into any fights!” Marie hollers.

  * * * *

  The chilly air during Steve’s walk to school has him blowing into his hands. In the schoolyard, Jerry, Ron, and Tom run up to him.

  “You ready for some handball?” Jerry asks.

  Before long, the dashing and swinging during the game warms him up.

  “It’s a tie game,” yells Ron as the line-up bell rings.

  “The ball hit the line,” says Jerry calmly, “we won 5 to 4.”

  “No way, Jerry, it was out by a mile!” hollers Ron.

  * * * *

  “Steve Marino,” calls out Miss Minsk as she checks attendance. After a pause, she looks up from her attendance list and searches the class. There he is looking like he’s off on another planet.

  “Steve Marino!”

  “Oh, I’m here Miss Minsk.”

  “Okay, class,” Miss Minsk says after she finishes calling out the names of Linda Yesner and Judith Zeeman, “the Yearbook Committee needs a few more volunteers. It’s a great way to meet some of the students in other classes. Pretty much any way you want to creatively express yourself can be brought toward creating the feel of what it was like to be a Cunningham student this year. Photography, drawing, painting, poetry, writing, the works! And when you apply to college it’s helpful to put your participation on your application. Now who wants to help out on this very important project?”

  “The Yearbook Committee,” says Ron looking at Tom, “doesn’t that sound like fun?” And with that, he breaks out laughing so hard he falls out of his chair.

  * * * *

  At lunch, Steve sits at his usual spot beside Mysterious Jane. Ron and Jerry are savoring their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  “Why aren’t you eating anything?” asks Jane as she sticks a fork in some lettuce.

  “I’m not hungry,” Steve replies.

  “Well your soul is hungry!” Jane cries.

  * * * *

  Steve gets to Mrs. Kreetch’s class. He hasn’t done his homework because of his busy weekend. She better not make a big thing about it, Steve thinks to himself. Mrs. Kreetch is the only teacher who gave us homework over the weekend. He looks into his assignment book and sees he was supposed to have memorized eight lines from a poem and written three paragraphs about what the poem meant to him. He bites his lip as Mrs. Kreetch tells the students to pass their assignments down to the front of the class.

  “Mr. Marino, I count four assignments in your row. There are five seats in your row. I don’t see your name on any of these papers. Where is yours?!”

  “I didn’t do it, Mrs. Kreetch.”

  “You didn’t do it! You didn’t do it! Maybe it was okay for you to come to class unprepared at your last school, but not here! You get out of my class and don’t you EVER come to my class unprepared! You’re to go down to the office and give this note to the secretary!” After scribbling something on a sheet of paper and handing it to Steve, she yells, “Now get out of here!”

  As Steve’s leaving, he says with strained tones, “You know, Mrs. Kreetch, just because you’re a teacher, that doesn’t give you the right to treat students this way!”

  Mrs. Kreetch, turning purple, screams: “Get out! Get out!”

  * * * *

  Mr. Imperiale frowns at Steve and asks him to take a seat. “You’ve been in my school for three days and you’re sent to my office twice,” he says firmly, but with a hint of fatherly concern.

  Steve explains his current predicament.

  “Steve, you’ll have to do your homework in my office after school,” says Mr. Imperiale.

  “I gotta get right home because my little brother Pete, he has trouble being alone.”

  Mr. Imperiale scratches his chin. “Steve, if you were the principal, what would you do in this kind of situation?”

  “Trust me. I give you my word that tonight I’ll make up the assignment and I’ll do tonight’s assignment too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Imperiale.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, tell me this. How are we going to get you back into Mrs. Kreetch’s class?”

  “Ya got me there.”

  “Well, how about this as a plan. You apologize to Mrs. Kreetch in front of the class for what you said to her about the way she treated you.”

  “It’s not fair! She has no right to talk that way to anyone.”

  “Steve, if you’d like to talk to her with me in a private place, I’ll try to help you make your point. But telling her this in front of the class is wrong because she can’t handle it. Everyone’s not a saint, Steve. Many teachers can’t handle it when students criticize them in public.”

  “Did you ever see John F. Kennedy during a press conference?” Steve asks. “He’s criticized all the time. He keeps his sense of humor. He’s got that great smile. Usually, he argues good if he feels he’s right. Sometimes he’s gotta admit he’s wrong. Why can’t teachers be like that? That’s the kind of teacher I’d respect. And besides, who ever heard of a teacher giving homework on the weekend?”

  “Steve, in my work as a principal, I’m criticized in public a lot and I’m expected to handle it with dignity and intelligence. It’d be nice if all teachers could do the same thing. I’ll work on getting them to do that, Steve. But it’s going to take some time. In the meantime, I want you to apologize for saying what you did in front of the class. You have to get on with your education. If you wait until yo
u straighten out all your teachers before you get on with it you’ll end up graduating when you’re ninety-five.”

  “But…”

  “I know I’m being simplistic, Steve. There’s far more to these issues, but you and I both have some other business to attend to for now.”

  “Simplistic?”

  “Well, what I mean Steve is, well first of all, to be fair to Mrs. Kreetch, she doesn’t give homework on the weekend. Every Monday, students in her class know they have to have a poem prepared for her. You can prepare it any day of the week. If you don’t do it early in the week, and you wait beyond Friday, well then you have to do it on the weekend. But that’s your own fault.”

  “I just got to her class Thursday and she just told me about the poem being due for Monday, on Friday.”

  “Well, I’m just trying to make the point, Steve, that usually you won’t be getting homework on the weekend from Mrs. Kreetch if you plan ahead. I can see your point that because you moved in the middle of the year and were told just on Friday that an assignment was due on Monday, you feel this wasn’t right. Perhaps it would have been fairer to give you a week’s notice as is provided to the other students in your class. Teachers have over thirty-five students per class. Mistakes are going to be made. Now let me say one more thing before I boot you out of here. It may not seem important to you right now to be memorizing poetry. But as you get older, when you are trying to express important but difficult ideas, you’re going to be surprised how much better you’re going to be at expressing yourself because of the experience Mrs. Kreetch is providing you. Now, no more. I have something urgent to attend to. Get back to your class and apologize. Please.”

  Steve lowers his head, puts his hands on top of it, and then looks up at Mr. Imperiale. “She treated me disrespectfully.”

  “Please, Steve.”

  “To apologize when she spoke that way to me...”

  “Listen, Steve, I can change your class and put you with Mrs. Harney, but she has difficulty controlling her class. There, you can goof off, but you won’t learn anywhere as much as from Mrs. Kreetch. I’d hate to do it because I sense that you have real leadership potential. To develop it you are going to have to get an excellent education. You want to goof off, or learn!?”