Sleepers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “He’s down in a basement apartment on 47th Street,” King Benny said. “Near Ninth Avenue.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s not alone,” he said.

  “I know that too,” I said.

  “You want some dinner before you go?” he asked.

  “What’s it gonna be?”

  “Pasta and snails,” King Benny said.

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “It’s good for you,” King Benny said.

  “I should go.”

  “One thing,” King Benny said. “Before you go.”

  “What?”

  “The business with the Greek,” King Benny said. “It stays between you and me.”

  “He’s gonna ask where I got the money.”

  “Lie,” King Benny said.

  “Can’t,” I said.

  “He lies to you.” King Benny pushed his chair back and stood up, cup clasped in both hands. “All the time.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?” Now King Benny walked to the bar, his face free of emotion.

  “He’s my father,” I said.

  “Think he cares?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I care.”

  King Benny nodded and turned, walking behind the bar, his right leg dragging across the floor.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said, his voice even.

  “Only if I get to deal,” I said.

  “We’ll cut for it,” he said, washing his cup in the sink under the counter.

  “You’ll win the cut,” I said. “You always do.”

  “Can’t trust a thief,” he said, drying off his hands. “Or a liar.”

  “Which are you?”

  “Both,” King Benny said.

  He folded a hand towel in half and laid it on the bar. Then he walked over to the small wooden door at the end of the hall, turned the knob, and went into the kitchen, closing it softly behind him.

  Winter 1966

  13

  THE PIZZERIA WAS empty except for the four of us at a back table and Joey Retard at the counter, shaking black pepper on a hot slice. Mimi was working the ovens and the register, his white shirt and work pants stained red with sauce.

  “I’m gettin’ another slice,” I said, wiping my mouth with a napkin.

  “Me too,” John said.

  “Get me a soda,” Tommy said. “Orange. Lots of ice.”

  “You lose your legs in the war?” I said.

  “I got no money either,” Tommy said.

  “Want anything?” I asked Michael.

  “Half of Tommy’s soda,” he said.

  John and I walked to the counter and stood next to Joey Retard. Joey was fourteen, with an honest face and a ready smile. He was always well dressed and was friendly with everyone in the neighborhood. He spoke slowly, stuttering his way through difficult phrases, his manner gentle, his eyes dark as olives.

  Joey was adopted, taken out of a West Side orphanage by a childless Irish couple. He went to a special school on Ninth Avenue and earned pocket money washing cars for King Benny. He was shy around girls, loved pizza with extra cheese, cheap horror movies, and sewer-to-sewer stickball. Every Halloween he walked the streets dressed as Stooge Villa from Dick Tracy.

  “What’s doin’, Joe?” John asked him.

  “Good,” Joey said. “I’m good.”

  “You want anything?” I asked. “John’s buyin’.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” John said.

  “No,” Joey said. “Thanks.”

  John ordered and I asked Joey how school was.

  “I like it,” Joey said.

  “Am I really payin’ for this?” John asked me, watching Mimi take the pizza out of the oven.

  “You got money?”

  “I’ll take the Fifth,” John said.

  “I’ll buy tomorrow,” I said, grabbing a paper plate with a slice.

  “Swear,” John said, reaching a hand into his jeans pocket and pulling out two crumpled bills.

  “Swear,” I said, taking my pizza and soda back to the table.

  “Grab the change for me,” John said, patting Joey on the shoulder, reaching for the second slice.

  “Can I keep it?” Joey asked.

  “Knock yourself out,” John said.

  Joey was on his second slice when the burly man walked through the door.

  He stood at the counter, hands in his pockets, ordered a large Coke, and watched Joey dust his pizza with black pepper.

  “That’s not too smart,” the man said, taking a sip from his soda. “It’s gonna taste like shit.”

  “I like pepper,” Joey said, shaking some more on the crust. “I like pepper a lot.”

  “There’s enough on it,” the man said, reaching for the pepper shaker.

  “No!” Joey said, pulling back, still holding the pepper in his hand. “My pizza.”

  “Lemme have the pepper, you fuckin’ retard,” the man said, grabbing Joey’s hand until the shaker came loose.

  “My pizza!” Joey said, his voice breaking from the strain, his eyes blinking like shutters. “My pizza!”

  “There’s your fuckin’ pizza,” the man said, pointing to the counter. “Nobody touched it.”

  “I want pepper!” Joey said, his words coming in short bursts, his hands by his sides. “I want pepper!”

  The burly man smiled.

  He looked over at Mimi, frozen in place behind the counter, and winked. He unscrewed the top off the pepper shaker.

  “You want pepper, retard?” the man said.

  Joey stared at the burly man, his body quivering, his eyes filled with tears.

  “Here,” the man said, pouring the bottle of pepper out over Joey’s pizza. “Here’s your fuckin’ pepper.”

  Joey started to cry, full sobs rising from his chest, his hands slapping his sides.

  “What’s your problem now, retard?” the man asked.

  Joey didn’t answer. Tears ran down his cheeks and over his lips, snot ran out of his nose.

  “Go on,” the burly man said. “You fuckin’ retards turn my stomach.”

  Joey didn’t move.

  “Go,” the man said. “Before I slap the shit outta ya and really make you cry.”

  Michael walked past Joey and stepped to the counter, next to the burly man. He reached for the salt shaker, loosened the top, and poured the contents into the man’s soda.

  “You can leave now,” Michael said to him, stirring the drink with his finger. “You and Joe are even.”

  “A tough little punk,” the man said. “Is that what I’m lookin’ at?”

  “A dick with lips,” Michael said. “Is that what I’m lookin’ at?”

  Tommy put an arm around Joey and moved him from the counter. John stood behind the burly man, hands in his pockets. I was across from the burly man, arms folded, waiting for his move.

  “Four tough little punks,” the burly man said. “And a cryin’ retard.”

  “That’s us,” Michael said.

  The burly man lifted a hand and slapped Michael across the face. The blow left red finger marks on Michael’s cheeks and an echo loud enough to chill.

  Michael stared at the man and smiled.

  “The first shot should always be your best,” Michael said. “And your best sucks.”

  “I’ll show you my best, punk,” the burly man said, moving off his feet and taking a full swing at Michael. “Your fuckin’ teeth are gonna be all over the floor.”

  Michael ducked the punch, throwing his body against the burly man’s stomach. Tommy and John jumped on the man from behind, pulling at his hair and neck. I grabbed the pizza slice with all the pepper on it and rubbed it into his eyes.

  “Take it outside!” Mimi screamed.

  John chewed on the man’s ear, his bite hard enough to draw blood. Tommy started pounding at his kidneys. I took a red pepper shaker and rammed it against his face.

  “My eyes!” the burly man said, trying to shake us off. “My
fuckin’ eyes.”

  Michael picked up a counter stool and started ramming it against the front of his legs. John had grabbed his thick hair and was knocking his head on the edge of the front door. I kept hitting him with the red pepper shaker until it broke above the bridge of his nose. Shards of glass mixed with blood ran down the front of his face.

  The pain brought the man to his knees, one hand reaching for the counter.

  “Never come in here again,” Michael said, kicking at his crumpled body. “Hear me? Never.”

  Mimi ran from behind the counter and grabbed Michael around the waist, pulling him away.

  “You no wanna kill him,” he said.

  “Don’t be too sure,” Michael said.

  OUR LIVES WERE about protecting ourselves and our turf. The insulated circle that was life in Hell’s Kitchen closed tighter as we grew older. Strangers, never welcome, were now viewed as outsiders bent on trouble. My friends and I could no longer afford to let others do the fighting.

  It was our turn to step up, and we were led, as always, by Michael.

  Outside events meant little. In a society changing radically by the hour, we focused on the constants in our own small, controlled space.

  It was the ’60s, and we watched the images scattered nightly across TV screens with skepticism, never trusting the players, always suspecting a scam. It was the way we were taught to look at the world. Life, we had been told, was about looking out for number one, and number one didn’t waste time outside the neighborhood.

  On television, the young protesters we saw spoke about how they were going to change our lives and fix the world. But we knew they didn’t care about people like us. While they shouted their slogans, my friends and I went to funeral services for the young men of Hell’s Kitchen who came back from Vietnam in body bags. That war never touched those angry young faces we saw on TV, faces protected by money and upper-middle-class standing. They were on the outside yelling about a war they would never fight. To me and my friends, they were working the oldest con in the world and they worked it to perfection.

  Civil rights had become the battle of the day, but on our streets it was a meaningless issue. There, gangs of different ethnic backgrounds and skin colors still waged weekly skirmishes. A growing army of feminists marched across the country, demanding equality, yet our mothers still cooked and cared for men who abused them mentally and physically.

  Students would be killed on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy would be shot dead. Governor George Wallace would take one in the spine.

  Whole sections of American cities were about to burn to the ground.

  The summer of love was set to bloom.

  Drugs would go beyond the junkie.

  The country was on a fast-ticking timer, ready to explode.

  For me and for my friends, these developments carried no weight. They might as well have occurred in another country, in another century. The mating call of a new generation, one whose foundation was to be built on peace, love, and harmony, simply floated past us.

  Our attention was elsewhere.

  The week the students at Kent State were shot down, Tommy’s father was stabbed in the chest in Attica prison and was put on a respirator for three months.

  Michael’s mother died of cancer during that summer and Carol Martinez had an uncle who was shot dead in front of an 11th Avenue bar.

  While thousands of angry war protesters filtered into Washington, D.C., we sat with Father Bobby in a third-floor hospital ward, praying for John to recover from a punctured lung, a gift from one of his mother’s over-zealous boyfriends. The man had had too much to drink and John said more than he should have about it and was given a severe beating as a result. He also suffered an asthma attack and was lucky to escape the night with his life.

  One of the earliest lessons learned in Hell’s Kitchen was that death was the only thing in life that came easy.

  WE WERE DOWN 7-5 in the last inning of a late winter afternoon game of sewer-to-sewer stickball against Hector Garcia and three of his friends.

  Tommy was at the plate, shaved-down broom handle in his hands, facing a thin, scar-faced Puerto Rican with a nasty spin to his spauldeen. We were in the middle of 50th Street, looking down at the piers, foul lines shaped by a yellow U-Haul on our left and a rummy sorting through a stolen A&P cart on our right.

  I stood a few feet behind Tommy, legs straddling a sewer, eating a Ring-Ding and backing up the Puerto Rican’s pitches. Michael and John were sitting on the hood of Fat Mancho’s black Chevrolet, waiting their turn at bat.

  “We need a hit,” I told Tommy.

  “Thank you, Casey Stengel,” Tommy said, spitting across the sewer.

  “Look at how that ball of his curves,” John said, watching a pitch fly past Tommy for a swinging strike. “He’s great.”

  “Maybe we just suck,” Michael observed.

  “He ain’t that good,” I said loud enough for the pitcher to hear. “We’re makin’ him look like Sandy Koufax.”

  “You asswipes make everybody look like Sandy Koufax,” the Puerto Rican said with a big smile, holding the ball, wiping his face with his upper arm.

  “Another fan,” John said, winking at the pitcher. “We got ’em everywhere.”

  Tommy swung at the third pitch and lofted a high fly straight down the middle of the street. Hector, playing so deep he had to dodge street traffic, took two steps back and made a basket catch. Tommy tossed the broom handle back to me and walked over to Fat Mancho’s car, head down, arms across his chest.

  “Couple inches more and that ball woulda been there,” Tommy said.

  “Couple inches more and Hector woulda been laid out by a van,” Michael said.

  “You shitheads wanna quit now, you can,” the pitcher said, smile still on his face.

  “How do you say ‘blow me’ in Spanish?” John asked him.

  “C’mon, Shakes,” Michael said as I stepped in to take my swings. “Shove it down his throat.”

  “Swing that stick, loser,” the pitcher said to me. “I can use the breeze.”

  “Chew my big one, you skinny prick,” Fat Mancho shouted, his back against his storefront window, holding a sixteen-ounce can of Rheingold wrapped in a paper bag. “No way a little woman like you beats my boys.”

  “You the cheerleader?” the pitcher said. “Ain’t you got no pom-poms?”

  “You gonna be pullin’ ’em outta your ass,” Fat Mancho said. “Unless you throw that fuckin’ ball.”

  I swung and missed the first pitch, the ball bouncing to the right, down and away.

  “Wait him out, Shakes,” Michael said. “You can hit him. Just wait him out.”

  I looked at the next two pitches, broom handle never off my shoulder.

  “You gonna swing at anything, chump?” the pitcher asked. “Or you just like to watch me throw the ball?”

  “Take it slow, Shakes,” Michael said. “Swing at what you want.”

  I let another pitch go by, rested the broomstick against my legs, and wiped both hands on the front of my jeans. A circle of old men stood in front of Fat Mancho’s store, a case of beer by their feet, lit cigarettes on their lips, jackets zipped against the wind.

  “Next one’s the one, Shakes,” Michael said.

  “How do you know?” I said.

  “He’s not gonna waste more throws,” Michael said. “Look how pissed he’s gettin’. He’s gonna put down a fat one, let you hit it. Figures somebody’ll catch the ball.”

  “He might be right,” I said.

  But he wasn’t. I hit the ball hard, a line drive that went out over the head of the pitcher and was scooped up on two bounces by a teenager with a shaved head.

  “Easy double, penis breath,” John screamed out, clapping his hands and kicking his feet against the sides of Fat Mancho’s car.

  “Kick that car again, you little fuck,” Fat Mancho said to him, “I’ll pull your legs off with my tee
th.”

  “Pull this off with your teeth,” John said to him, holding his crotch.

  “Ain’t big enough to shadow a fly,” Fat Mancho said, taking a long drink from his can of beer.

  John scooped up the broom handle and stepped in, ready to hit. He planted his feet and squared his shoulders, the broom handle held just above his right ear. The first pitch came in low, to the far side of the sewer cover, fast and hard. John swung and connected, the ball bouncing past the pitcher for a single.

  “They gonna take you down, you no-talent fuck,” Fat Mancho screamed at the pitcher.

  “Just playin’ with ’em, Fat Man,” the pitcher said. “That’s all.”

  “Lick me,” Fat Mancho said, popping the lid off a fresh can of beer.

  “He’s all yours,” I said to Michael, handing him the taped end of the broom handle. “Time to make Fat Mancho proud.”

  The best way to win at sewer-to-sewer stickball was to hit the ball hard and far. There were no walks and a batter was allowed three swinging strikes. We didn’t run any bases, since the street was already crowded enough. So the length the ball traveled determined the type of hit. Anything past one sewer was a single, two sewers counted as a double, past the U-Haul was a triple, and a home run landed somewhere on the 12th Avenue side of traffic. Michael was the only kid on our team to ever hit home runs.

  Michael banged the broomstick against the sewer cover and took three hard practice swings. He bent his knees and brought the broom handle to eye level, staring over at the pitcher, the smile now gone from his face.

  “You the one I want,” the pitcher said to Michael, rolling the spauldeen against his thigh.

  “Good thing, ’cause I’m the one you got,” Michael said back to him.

  “C’mon, Davey,” a young woman in a wheelchair shouted out at the pitcher. “Strike this chump out. He’s got nothin’.”

  Michael turned to his left and stared at the woman, her dark hair turned back in a bun, her face tanned and unlined, her arms limp by her sides. A short, overweight old lady stood behind her, elbows resting on wheelchair handles, unfiltered cigarette in her mouth. The young woman was chewing gum, both her legs cut off at the knees, dead flesh half-hidden by a pair of A&S shorts.

  “Who is that?” Michael asked.