The Deadly Streets

by Harlan Ellison

  If you asked me to explain it today, how it happened, or why it started, I’d look at you and shrug my shoulders. I can’t. I was with Jerry Marchand the night it happened—right out of a clear blue sky, like they say!—and I still don’t understand it.

  I don’t even know if there’s any meaning to the thing. It’s just life…one of those things you know can never happen, but does happen. Over and over and over again to some poor, innocent slob, like Jerry.

  I was there, I saw how it happened, but it remains in my mind only as a rapid-fire series of incidents. A bunch of odd circumstances that all tied together, and like I say, might have no real point.

  Except that they started out quiet—and ended up with a real screaming hell!

  We were driving home. Jerry had closed his optical shop a little early and picked me up where I worked. We were going to take in a ball game that night.

  I knew Jerry had been worrying pretty heavily, and I’d wanted to get his mind off it, at least temporarily. So I’d hornswoggled him into buying a couple tickets to the Yanks-Indians night game.

  Jerry’s wife, Bev, had called him that afternoon and told him if he wanted, she’d fix a cold dinner and we could eat it before taking off for the Park.

  So we were driving out to Jerry’s home.

  “She worries about the damnedest things,” he said, watching the evening road. He was talking about the way Beverly bugged him, on things like eating and wearing a topcoat.

  He was a big guy, with deep-set eyes and hair thinning a little on the sides. A real steady, easy-going sort that got the job done without yelping and bellowing the way most guys would. I liked him very much. We’d been friends—Jerry and Bev, my wife Harriet and myself—for almost five years. I couldn’t have liked the guy more.

  “She figures I’ll get triple heartburn if I don’t eat at home.” His eyes were dead on the road. He drove the way he lived: restful, easy, getting there without skids or aggravation. A good, steady life; a good, steady driver.

  “Well,” I said, just filling in the conversational gap, “you know how it is.”

  “Yeah.” He chuckled, little lines of amusement springing up around his mouth when he smiled. He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with his thumb.

  We drove on up Silsby Road a few more minutes, quiet, each of us thinking our thoughts. I knew Jerry was wondering how the baby was.

  Jerry and Bev had two children. Loren, who was just five—and a demon—and the new baby, Lisa, only three weeks old.

  Lisa had been coughing, and Smetters, the doctor, had been around with concern and a little black bag.

  I knew Jerry was wondering how the baby had been while he had been in the shop that day. I could see it had put him on a knife-edge nervousness, and his joking was mere cover-up. I was trying to decide whether to be a clown and try cheering him up, or be smart and keep my big mouth shut.

  That was when it started…

  We were riding quietly, as I say, when the hot-rodder came the hell out of nowhere and honked up behind us, doing at least seventy-five.

  He had dual mufflers on his car, and a horn that sounded like the death moan of a whale.

  He came up behind and blew his head off.

  It was a thin, two-lane road, and we couldn’t pull over very well. I started to wonder why doesn’t he pass, when he did…

  Around the right.

  He swerved out and cut alongside. Jerry’s face went white and he spun the wheel hard to the left. We went over and into the opposite lane, and I saw a pick-up truck from Sears Roebuck getting monstrous in the front window.

  I jerked my head to the side and saw the kid go screaming past in his car. I only got a quick swipe of a view, crew-cut, sport shirt collar turned up, cigarette dangling out of his mouth, and a big crud-eating grin plastered across his adolescent face.

  Then the wheel spun again. Jerry’s foot came down with a thump. The car kicked, jerked, and roared right in front of the pick-up truck—and off the road.

  We bumped across the shoulder and up a slight incline. By this time Jerry had control of the machine, and he braked it to a stop. He was shaking like a thistle in a windstorm. His face was beet-red, and I could feel the air charge itself with some strange emotion.

  “Why that stupid, miserable, little bastard!” he said, so low I could hardly hear him. “That…that…”

  He couldn’t speak, he was that angry.

  The pick-up truck hadn’t even stopped. Probably cursing us out, a mile down the road. Silsby lay silent and empty behind us. The kid could easily have waited a minute to pass us properly.

  I turned back to Jerry. He hadn’t even cooled off an Iota. His face was red, getting even redder as the anger swam up from his collar.

  “Now take it easy, Jerry.” I tried placating him with a hand on his arm.

  He shrugged it off angrily. “Mind your business, Arnie…” he said quietly—deadly quiet. “I’m all right! I’m just plenty damned mad, that’s all! That could have piled us into the truck. That damned kid could have killed us! The little fool!”

  He was really flushed, and biting down hard on his temper. I hadn’t ever seen him go off the deep end like this, and I could only attribute it to the worrying he’d been doing the past week.

  “Take it—” I started to ease him again.

  “Look, Arnie…” He turned on me, eyes angry, lips skinned back against his teeth. “If I want your advice on how I should behave, I’ll come calling. Till then, let me handle things my own damned way!”

  He was more than angry. Jerry just didn’t swear. To make him let fly like this, there had to be concern and frustration and a week’s worth of nervousness behind it. He was more than angry. Not the minute-spanning kind of thing that most people pass off for anger, or the kind of thing that husbands feel for their wives when the women won’t make them a pot of coffee late at night, or any of the other look-the-same substitutes. This was the real thing, and it scared me. I figured to keep my mouth shut and let it wear off on its own.

  But it didn’t wear off.

  But it didn’t wear off.

  The longer he sat—and it couldn’t have been more than three minutes since the kid had shoved us off the road—the madder he got. It was almost unnatural. It was as though he was letting all the fear and worry of the past week simmer up in this one big bubble.

  And he was directing all that fury at the wiseacre kid in the hot rod.

  Suddenly, before I quite knew what was happening, the bubble burst!

  Jerry threw the car into reverse and backed recklessly onto the highway. Without looking to see if anyone was coming. I knew something was going to happen. Even then, right then, I knew something bad was going to happen.

  “Listen, Jerry,” I pleaded with him, “don’t be foolish! I don’t know why you’re so hepped-up about this, but he was only a kid, for God’s sake. Let’s get over to your house. Bev’s waiting dinner for us. We don’t…”

  But he had backed into the proper lane and before I could finish my sentence he’d gunned the car so hard I was shoved back against the seat.

  He tore off down Silsby, and I watched with a sort of numbed, growing horror as the speedometer inched past 50, past 55, nudged 60, then 65!

  What the hell was going on! What did he have in mind? Jerry’s face was a solid mask of intent fury. His eyes were big and staring. He watched the darkening road as though it were the only thing in the world.

  Dusk was settling fast, and the road was becoming hard to see.

  A pair of headlights came toward us over the rise of a hill, and a horn bleated from between them. “Turn on your lights,” I said, carefully controlling my voice.

  He didn’t seem to hear. He kept watching the road, squinting to catch the line of it in the gathering darkness.

  “Your lights, Jer! Your lights; turn them on!”

  He threw me an annoyed glance, and slapped at the dash. The twin pillars of his lights slapped onto the road ahead of us.<
br />
  He was doing sixty-five and pressing higher.

  “Look, Jerry,” I said, my voice almost clogging in my throat, “if you’re going after that kid, forget it! They just don’t know any bet…”

  He tossed me a fast, scathing glance, and I shut up.

  It looked as though I’d have to play this out with him, the way he wanted it. It was just so damned strange, is all. A quiet guy like Jerry! It would really have taken a thing like a week full of worry and a whackball kid to toss him off the tracks like this.

  We barreled down Silsby till we saw the kid’s tail-lights skittering, a mile ahead, down the hill, turning off onto Belvoir. I knew it was the kid—there hadn’t been anyone passing us, and there weren’t any side-streets this far out.

  “Little bastard,” Jerry mumbled, and gunned her harder. He was so caught up in this thing, finding such a release in it, he couldn’t stop now if he’d wanted to…and he didn’t want to. We were doing a cool 70 per, and I was scared white.

  Jerry was no kid. He was pushing forty, married, and two kids. This wasn’t the kind of sport for a guy that age and temperament to be tinkering with. I started to say something again, but caught the look in his eyes as he leaned across the wheel, the light from the dash highlighting his cheekbones and forehead. The scream of air ripping past the car was setting me further on edge.

  We turned screechingly off Silsby, onto Belvoir, and shot after the kid. About half a mile up Belvoir we saw him turn in.

  Jerry didn’t slack up as we approached his turn-off.

  It was a drive-in restaurant, and the kid was parked at the curb. A car-hop was just walking away.

  We skidded into the drive, pulled up alongside, and Jerry jumped out without closing his door, stalked over real fast to the kid’s car.

  Now this is the way it happened—all of it.

  Jerry yanked open the door on the driver’s side, and made a pass at the kid. The kid had lit a fresh cigarette, and must have already ordered from the car-hop, because his window was still down.

  “Why the hell don’t you drive more carefully?” Jerry yelled at the kid, and yanked him out of the car.

  The kid didn’t even say anything. He looked scared and surprised as hell for a second, then his face changed while I watched it, and a look as mean as anything I’ve ever seen came across it. Then his hand dipped into his jacket pocket and came up with a big switchblade knife.

  Jerry didn’t even get a chance to see it, and the kid dragged loose, pulled back and swung that blade high and ugly.

  I saw the flash of the steel, heard a ripping, and Jerry screamed. Next thing I knew, Jerry was lying on the gravel of the drive, all covered with blood, and the kid was piling back into his car.

  I jumped then, and got across real fast. The kid was thumbing the starter when I reached in through the open window and chopped him across the neck. He slumped over against the wheel, and then fell sidewise.

  I dragged him out, and five minutes later, when the squad car pulled up, I was still beating him in the face, crying like a baby.

  The car was stolen, and the cop told me to come down to the station to sign a statement. I told him I’d come down after I’d made sure the ambulance got Jerry to St. Luke’s. I went with them, drove Jerry’s car, and waited in the hospital till I got word the kid had stabbed him in the chest, but that it didn’t look fatal.

  Then I called Bev. Harriet had come over earlier, thank God, so it made it a bit easier. I heard her scream over the phone and tried to plead her back to quiet. Then Harriet got on the line and I told her what had happened. But it was so crazy, all of it, I couldn’t tell her why or what had really happened, or anything.

  Then I went down to Central Police Headquarters, and made that report.

  Then I went back to the hospital.

  Now that’s almost all there is to it. And you can say, “Well, what the hell’s the point of that?” and I don’t know, so help me God, I just don’t know!

  It’s only something that happened, and it had a real miserable twist at the end, which was this:

  The cops told us we’d get a commendation from the police department for helping out as good citizens in a case like this.

  Which was fine, except that the crazy, sonofabitchin’ kid got Jerry right in a nerve-center, and it’s paralyzed Jerry’s whole right side.

  Commendations are fine. Hell yes, but how’s a guy going to provide for a wife and two kids when he can’t move one arm, when one leg is paralyzed, when the right side of his face hangs lifeless every time he starts to talk?

  Yeah, fine. A commendation, and the kid gets out in five years if he doesn’t rattle the bars.

  A crazy, pointless episode you say?

  Maybe, but there’s got to be a moral there someplace.

  There’s just gotta be.

  BUY ME THAT BLADE

  Wally Genaro was Trick’s buddy. Just ask Wally, and he would hook his thumbs into the back pockets of his tight jeans, spit onto the sidewalk and say, “Yeah, like Tricky and me is close, y’know? Like I watch out for the kid; he’s not so bright, and he’s not so big; so I gotta protect him.”

  That was the way it was. And in the Lancers, that was good enough to protect Tricky from all harm, and get him into all the rumbles and heists. Whenever a job was on. Tricky tagged along beside big Wally, with the crew-cut, and when Wally sapped a lush or mauled a broad, Tricky got his licks. He stood in line, and got his licks.

  So that night, when Wally said to Tricky—well, not exactly to Tricky; he always spoke to someone else in a manner which showed Tricky he was supposed to listen—and suggested they go down to the Village, and mug a couple of queers, Tricky was glad. He didn’t like fags. And it was a hot night, so why the hell not?

  The subway wasn’t crowded, but Wally stood anyhow. He stood hanging on the strap, swaying with the rhythm of the train, his eyes closed, his full lips pursed in a hum that could not be heard. When the local pulled in at 4th Street, they got off; Tricky, Wally, and another boy Tricky did not like, a simp named Rally. Tricky did not like Rally because the thin boy liked his potatoes-and-blades. Tricky had seen Rally in a couple of rumbles, where the boy took a bunch of double-edged razor blades, shoved them into a raw potato, and ground the thing into a stud’s kisser. It was messy and unnecessary, as far as Tricky was concerned, so he didn’t like Rally. Tricky liked to make it quick, if it had to be made at all, and not all slopped up with blades and blood.

  They walked up the subway steps, first Wally, then Rally and last of all Tricky. He knew better than to walk in front of his buddy, Wally. That happened once, and Wally had belted him good in the chops. They came up into the evening noise of Greenwich Village, and stood staring out across the street at the neoned front of Jack Delaney’s and the quiet little park off to the left. Then Wally said, “Come on.”

  “Where ya goin’?” Rally asked. Tricky would never have asked. That wouldn’t have been smart at all. Wally would’ve belted him.

  “Wanna get a deck of butts,” Wally answered, looking annoyed.

  “Okay, man,” Rally answered, pressing for no good reason, “but let’s get kickin’. I wanna pick up some scratch tonight.”

  Wally started to answer, decided there was no sense to stomping Rally here and now, and glared silently for a moment. Then he started across the street to the cigar store. It was quiet in the store, and Wally got his cigarettes without any trouble, though he slapped a hand at the metal racks of paperbacked novels, and set the racks to moving. The shopkeeper took no notice. Wally tried a little harder; he moved the rack with his foot, bending the cover on one of the novels.

  “Okay, kid,” the man behind the counter snarled, “that’s all. Take your butts and get outta here before I call a cop.”

  Wally liked that. Tricky watched him from the door and knew something was going to happen pretty chop-chop.

  “Oh, you gonna call a fuzz on me, huh, man?”

  “I said out, wise guy! And I mean out now!” />
  Wally started forward, a gleam in his eyes, trouble building in him like the July heat, but the man pulled a heavy length of ironwood—a chair leg—from a rack behind the cash register, and moved around, ready for a tussle. “Now get your ass outta here before I wallop it good!” he said low and heavy, and Wally backed down.

  He didn’t like backing down, but the reach on that rod was enough to cream his hand and he knew it. “Okay, dad, take it easy. Take it easy. Like I’m goin’.”

  Wally turned, and started for the door. As he neared it, he lunged to the side and shoved over one of the racks, spilling books in all directions. Then he was out the door, running like hell, and the other two trailing him close. The shopkeeper stood in the door for a moment, yelling obscenities, then went back inside. By the time they cleared the side of the little park, they stopped breathing heavily, and had a good laugh over it.

  “That was cool, Wally,” Tricky said happily. A real buddy.

  “Shut up,” Wally said, and shoved the smaller boy. “Who asked you.” It was obvious he was angry within himself at being frustrated by the shopkeeper. He had wanted to cream the slob, and had instead settled for a little annoyance. He was sore, and Tricky was the one to take it out on.

  “I—I didn’t mean nothin’, Wally,” the boy said.

  “Oh, shut ya face!” And he shoved the boy again.

  “Come on, come on, let’s ankle. I wanna find some fags,” Rally said. Wally again started to buck him, thought of the potato he knew was in Rally’s jacket pocket, and agreed reluctantly.

  They moved on down the street, forcing pedestrians into the gutter if they wanted to pass by.

  As they passed the little alley-street known as Gay Street, Tricky burst into muted laughter. Wally spun on him, senseless anger blazing up in his cheeks. “What the hell you bloopin’ about?” Tricky pointed to the street sign, and when they made out what it said in the dim light, Rally laughed, too. Wally was silent.

  “We came down here to find gays, not to yuk at a street sign, so move your butt.” They continued walking. They turned left at the thoroughfare, and moved downtown again. The streets weren’t completely deserted, but few people moved along them. They watched carefully, and only once did they see anyone who looked like a fag. He was going the other way, on the other side of the street, hurriedly, and there was no sense to crossing over. He didn’t look as though he was heeled anyhow. And it wasn’t only the fun of stomping a queer they wanted; it took dough to get kicks, and queers had dough, usually.