Hard City

by Clark Howard

  “Uh, yeah, stick around a minute, will you?” Lew said. “I’ll be right back . . .” Lew went into the storeroom. Chloe rolled her eyes toward the ceiling thinking, Keen—I have to hang around here while Gorilla Grubb relieves himself.

  Turning to her desk, Chloe busied herself by restraightening everything on it. A couple of minutes later, Lew called her from the storeroom. “Chloe, come here a minute, will you? I wanna show you something.”

  When Chloe walked into the back, Lew stepped from behind the door, closed it, and stood against it. Grinning, he had his fly unbuttoned and was exposing an erect penis.

  “What do you think of this piece of pipe?” he asked.

  “Lew, for God’s sake,” Chloe said, more disgusted than frightened.

  “Wait’ll I get it in you.”

  “You’re not going to get it in me,” she assured him. Rape had not even occurred to her. “Please open the door, Lew—”

  “Ed’s been plumbing your girlfriend Estelle and says Southern nookie is sweet and wet. I wanna see for myself—”

  “Lew, what Estelle does is her own business, but I am not about to—”

  “Yeah, you are,” Grubb said before she could finish. Grabbing Chloe’s arms, he twisted them behind her and nibbled her neck.

  “Goddamn you, Lew! Let me go!” Chloe tried to pull away but Grubb’s big hands and powerful arms held on almost without effort. His unshaved cheek raked against her neck. She smelled whiskey on his breath. Calm down, she thought. Reason with him. Instead she said, threateningly, “Lew, you’ll get in trouble over this—”

  “Not if you wanna keep your job, I won’t. ‘Sides, you’re gonna like it. . .” He pulled at the front of her dress, sending buttons flying; exposing her slip, he tore the front of it away from its shoulder straps. Chloe screamed. “Cunt,” Grubb muttered. Spinning her around, he slapped her hard across the face. Chloe stumbled back but managed to scream again. “Shut up!” Grubb hissed urgently. Closing his hand into a fist, he hit her solidly on the jaw. Chloe dropped like a wet sponge.

  On the cold linoleum floor, Chloe was vaguely aware that one of Richie’s toy trucks was under her back, pressing painfully into her. Lew Grubb pushed her skirt up around her waist, held her hips up, and pulled down her step-ins. Kneeling beside her, he put one hand between her legs and rubbed while he moved the other hand up and down his erection.

  “You got lots of hair,” he praised. “That’s good. I like nookie with lots of hair—”

  Standing, Grubb dropped his trousers and shorts down around his boots and used both hands to force Chloe’s legs apart. Getting between them, he lay heavily on her, reaching between them with one hand to work himself into her.

  “God, no . . .” she said dizzily, her face throbbing with pain from the blow, Richie’s toy truck beginning to cut her back.

  Presently Grubb was inside her, but not thrusting as she expected him to do, not moving in and out; rather, he was violently shaking one booted foot to produce enough vibration to make his erection tremble. Closing his eyes, he groped at the breast in her brassiere with one hand and drooled into her ear as he made a humming-grunting sound, keeping with the rhythm of his foot.

  Suddenly, Chloe saw a shadowy figure looming over Lew Grubb. The figure’s hand, clutching a length of pipe, raised up and came down on Grubb’s head with a muted thud, like the single thump of a rabbit’s foot multiplied in volume many times. Groaning, Grubb dropped limply onto Chloe, his chin digging into one of her eyes.

  “Get him—off of—me!” she yelled as her senses snapped back.

  The length of pipe was dropped and two hands grabbed Grubb and rolled him on the floor. Then the hands were helping her up and draping a coat around her shoulders, and for the first time Chloe recognized who it was.

  “Come on, let’s g-g-get out of here,” Jack Smart said.

  8

  “Okay,” said Stan, as usual very serious and all business when it came to stealing. “First place we try is a cigar store I seen on North Avenue. There’s two machines outside the front entrance, one gumball, one peanut, both on the same stand. The peanut machine is closest to the sidewalk. And listen to this,” he flashed a quick grin, “from inside the store, you can’t see the peanut machine because the gumball one is in the way. If we can get it, the guy in the store might not even know it’s gone until somebody tells him.”

  They rode the streetcar to North Avenue, stopped in an A & P market to steal a large shopping bag, then walked to the store two blocks away. Across the street in a doorway, Stan said to Richie, “Me and Bobby’ll take this first one. You get the guy to the back of the store. When we get it, we’ll head down that alley there.”

  In the cigar store, Richie went to the rear and stood in front of the magazine rack. The man behind the cigar counter watched him for a minute, then yelled back, “What are ya looking for, kid?”

  “My sister sent me to get a movie magazine for her. But she couldn’t remember the name of it.”

  “How the hell ya gonna buy a magazine if ya don’t know the name of it?”

  “She said it’s got a picture of Tyrone Power on the cover. In his Marine uniform.” Richie had already scanned the row of movie magazines without seeing Tyrone Power on any of the covers.

  The man at the cigar counter walked back and started helping Richie look for the magazine. Glancing past him, Richie saw Stan and Bobby move into the doorway, Stan blocking the machines from view and watching up and down the street, while Bobby, facing him, unscrewed the peanut machine from the stand.

  ‘I don’t see no cover with Tyrone Power in his uniform,” the man finally said. “Why don’t you take this one here, with Clark Gable in his uniform?”

  “Could I see it?” Richie asked.

  The man handed him a copy of the magazine. Richie pretended to study it thoughtfully, looking just over the top of the magazine at the store entrance. Usually, unless a vending machine was rusted on, it took less than a minute to unscrew it from the stand. This one obviously had not been rusted on; Stan was already holding the shopping bag open while Bobby carefully lowered the peanut machine into it. Then the two boys were gone.

  “Well?” the man in the store asked impatiently.

  “I better not,” Richie said, with a feigned grimace. “My sister said Tyrone Power—”

  Snatching the magazine from him and returning it to the rack, the man said, “Go on, beat it, kid. Tell your sister to come in herself.” Under his breath, he muttered, “I’ll give her something she’ll never get from Tyrone Power.”

  Leaving the store, not even glancing at the two-machine stand that now only had a gumball machine on it, Richie hurried to the alley Stan had designated. Halfway down the alley, partly concealed by a wooden telephone pole, Stan had pried the bottom off the machine with a chisel and was scooping pennies into a paper bag held by Bobby. “Any trouble?” Stan asked tensely.

  “No trouble,” Richie said.

  When the machine was out of pennies, the boys removed several bags of garbage from a big iron drum, put the machine inside, and covered it up with the bags of garbage. Then they beat it down the alley.

  “The next place,” Stan said as they hurried to the streetcar line, “is a dime store on Belmont. There’s a Dentyne gum machine outside the front door. It can’t be seen from inside by nobody but the woman at the front counter. That’s the candy counter. Bobby, you go in and buy a nickel’s worth of penny candy. You take your time picking it out, see? Richie and me’ll act like we’re waiting for somebody. Whenever there’s nobody going in or coming out, we’ll give the machine a couple of turns. It’s one of them square machines, so it’ll be easy to turn. Should be a cinch . . . .”

  On weekday afternoons, Richie put all other activity aside in order to go to Midwest A.C. and “train.”

  If he was short of money, which became more infrequent after he started stealing vending machines with Stan and Bobby, he took his chances on the street during school hours to filch off
newsstands, steal deposit bottles, or shoplift. If he had enough money for a few days and wanted to go visit Estelle or Mack, he went in the morning and made sure he had plenty of time to get to the gym by two o’clock. The training regimen he had committed himself to was becoming almost as important to him as the search for his father. He somehow felt, without actually putting it into a conscious thought, that if he failed to find his father, what he was learning in the gym might somehow compensate.

  Once, after the first couple of weeks, Richie had overheard Myron, the trainer, talking to one of the pro fighters about him. “I never seen a kid with such moxie in my life,” Myron had said. “Skinny as a rail, don’t look like he eats too good, and he definitely ain’t the best-dressed kid I ever seen. Don’t have no training equipment of any kind, nothing. But he works harder than any of the four kids on my team. Trains like a guy with a title shot.”

  After that, Richie worked even harder. Every afternoon, in a corner by himself, stripped down to his skinny waist, he listened, observed, and practiced, exactly as the four young club fighters did. Eventually they noticed him too. “Who’s that, Myron?” they wanted to know.

  “Just a kid that admires you guys,” Myron said diplomatically. “He wants to be like you guys, but he’s too young yet.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Be nice if one of you guys let him use your jump-rope once in a while.”

  Finally the gym manager noticed Richie. “Who’s that skinny kid in the corner every day?” he asked, around a cigar stub in the corner of his mouth.

  Myron, who always tried to have an answer for every question, on the theory that it prevented further questions, replied, “He’s kind of a mascot. We’re kind of letting him hang around. It’s good for the morale of the club kids to have somebody look up to them. But listen, if you don’t want him around, I’ll tell the guys you said we should get rid of him—”

  “No, no,” the gym manager quickly demurred, “no need to do that. No, he’s okay.” He removed the cigar stub from his mouth and nodded. “Mascot, huh? Good idea, Myron. Good idea.”

  The following day, Myron drew five towels instead of four from the locker-room attendant, and left the extra one in the corner so Richie wouldn’t have to wipe the sweat off his face with his shirt. When Richie came in and found the towel, he looked over at Myron and smiled. The trainer, without smiling back, winked.

  Later, when there was a heavy bag available, Myron motioned for Richie to come over. “What’s your name, kid?” the trainer asked.

  “Richie.”

  Myron handed him an old pair of training gloves. “These are a little big, but they’ll do you. Pay attention and I’ll show you a routine you can use to build up your arms and shoulders.”

  That day was the beginning for Richie and the trainer. From then on, Richie was part of the daily routine. As Myron did with each of the club kids, he selected individual exercises for Richie designed to strengthen particular weaknesses—in Richie’s case just about everything, he was still so run-down. Myron even drew up a food program for Richie to follow. “Now be sure,” he cautioned with his usual worried demeanor, “that your parents don’t think I’m trying to tell your mother what to fix at mealtime. But if you get a chance to eat these particular foods, you should do it. They’ll put some weight on you, build you up.”

  During the instruction periods of the training program, Myron positioned his club fighters with their backs to Richie’s corner, so that Richie could get full benefit of whatever Myron was teaching that day. From long hours spent in the main library, from the necessity of constant deliberation in order to remain vigilant and survive, and from the conscientious reflection he was putting into the search for his father, Richie’s ability to concentrate was honed to a keen edge. He was almost constantly on the alert, ready at split-second’s notice to function at full capacity. In the gym, when Myron spoke, Richie’s mind absorbed his words, thoughts, meaning, like energy from an electrical outlet.

  “Today,” Myron might say, “I’m gonna teach you a little bit about stance. You’ve already learned that the jab is the key blow of boxing, because it’s delivered in both attack and defense. Stance is the basis of being able to deliver that blow, because it makes it possible to do so without losing your balance. And balance is important because it allows you, by the use of footwork, to both move and punch at the same time.”

  In the corner, Richie’s mind, while absorbing and sealing in every word, was also thinking elatedly: Yeah! Sure! Because it all made sense. It exhilarated him to realize that the world was not forever divided into guys who could fight and others who could not. He was beginning to understand that a person could learn to fight.

  Whenever he could, Richie would wait somewhere around Tilton Elementary and spend a few minutes with Linda. If he had on a new article of clothing, she would question him suspiciously, reminding him, “You promised me you wouldn’t steal.”

  “I’m not!” Richie always swore, trying to muster indignation. “I don’t have to, honest,” he would try to convince her. “I’m working two jobs now. ‘Sides spotting pins, I got a job in a gym, helping fighters train. I bring ’em towels and stuff like that. I’m making more’n enough to get by without stealing. Honest, I wouldn’t lie.”

  With reservations, Linda believed him. Because she wanted to. “I’m glad you’re all right, Richie,” she said, holding his hand. “I’m always worrying about you, wondering where you are and what you’re doing.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” he assured her. “I can take care of myself okay.”

  “Oh, sure. That’s why you’ve always got scared eyes.”

  “What do you mean scared eyes?”

  “Things show in people’s eyes, Richie.” She was talking beyond her years again. “Every time you got picked on in the schoolyard, I could tell how scared you were by your eyes. I bet you’re a little scared all the time.”

  Richie shrugged self-consciously. “Nobody likes getting shoved around. Guys that know how to fight, they had to learn how, you know. Prob’ly their fathers taught them. If mine had been around, I’d prob’ly know how to fight too.” He did not tell her that he was learning how now, from Myron. Instead, someday he’d show her, like the guy in the Charles Atlas ads who went back to the beach and knocked the shit out of the bully who kicked sand in his face.

  “Are you getting any closer to tracing your father, do you think?” Linda asked.

  “I might be. I’m learning a lot about him, I know that. Things I never knew before.” He glanced at her. “What about your dad? He still watch out the window for you to come home?”

  Linda blushed and looked away. “Yes.” She quickly changed the subject, asking, “Did you finish those books yet? From the list I gave you?”

  “Oh, sure.” The list was still in his billfold; he had forgotten all about it. “I been reading mystery books too,” he admitted. “Right now I’m reading one called The Big Sleep.”

  “Who wrote that?”

  “Somebody named Raymond Chandler. It’s real good.”

  “How do you manage to get the librarian to let you check them out? Every time I take a book from the adult section, they always catch it at the desk and take it back.”

  “These aren’t library books. They’re the little books that they sell in drugstores and dime stores, the ones that fit in your pocket. They only cost a quarter.”

  Stopping on the sidewalk and facing him, Linda raised one eyebrow. “If they fit in your pocket, how would you know how much they cost?”

  “I pay for them, honest I do,” Richie protested. He stared at her eyebrow in fascination. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Raise just one eyebrow like that.”

  “I don’t know, silly, I just do.” They resumed walking, holding hands again. At the corner, Linda said, “You’d better stop here. Sometimes if I’m a few minutes late Pa comes out on the porch to look for me.”

  “Okay. I gotta get to the gym
anyway.”

  “Come back to see me soon?”

  “Sure.” Richie started to leave, but Linda did not let go of his hand.

  “Don’t you want to kiss me goodbye again?’ she asked.

  “Oh, sure.”

  They briefly touched lips and then she let go of his hand. Parting, they went separate ways. They looked back frequently.

  Later at the gym, Richie asked Myron if he had ever heard of “scared eyes.”

  “If you mean seeing fear in somebody’s eyes, sure,” the trainer said. “I never heard it called ‘scared eyes’ before, but I guess it’s the same thing. Usually, if an opponent’s frightened of you going in, you’ve got the fight half won. Some sportswriter in New York says it’s a ‘psychological advantage,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean. Way I figure it, all it means is that the guy that’s scared is going to be thinking defense, instead of defense and offense. The guy he’s scared of will be thinking both. That’s the advantage.”

  “And it really shows?” Richie asked. “In a guy’s eyes?”

  “Absolutely. Haven’t you ever seen it in the eyes of some kid that’s been afraid of you?”

  Richie grunted wryly. “No kid’s ever been afraid of me. It’s always me that’s been afraid. But I never knew it showed.”

  Myron studied the boy for a moment, his own pained expression turning almost sorrowful. “Listen, I been thinking,” he said. “If your parents wouldn’t mind you staying out late on Saturday nights, how’d you like to come along to the club fights with me. You can help out in the locker room, maybe even work the corner with me.”

  “Jeez, you mean it?” Richie was thrilled. “Could I? Really?”

  “Your parents have to say it’s okay. I’ll need a note or something.”

  “I’ll ask ’em tonight,” Richie promised excitedly. “It’ll be okay with them. And I’ll get a note saying so.” He’d get the note after school the next day. From Linda, whose handwriting was as good as the teacher’s. “I think I’ll prob’ly have to be home by midnight,” Richie qualified. He had to be hidden inside Cascade when it closed.