The Wanderers (7 page)

"Joey, eatcha dinner," his mother almost whispered.

"Yeah, eatcha dinner so you can get big an' strong an' beat the cripples."

"Whynchoo come down tomorrah an' watch me play?" Joey said with a mixture of anger and pride. Emilio looked amused. "Twelve-thirty at French Charlie's field."

Emilio was stumped for a comeback, so he just chuckled, mumbled something about cripples, and ate in silence.

Friday nights before the Saturday games were the best part of the football season. Each team in its own neighborhood would have a torchlight parade with banners, chants, and crowds. If the neighborhoods overlapped one procession would often collide with another, and nuclear war would break out. This happened in the past season between the Velvet Sharks of Olinville Avenue and the Red Devils of Gun Hill Road. The next day the game was canceled since the entire Red Devil backfield and half the Velvet Shark defensive team were in the hospital.

At ten, the Stingers assembled in Big Playground. Joey and Eugene had the rolled-up banner, a twenty-foot-long, six-foot-high piece of canvas, each end sewn around a mop handle. Two guys carried it through the streets, stretching the canvas so the road was blocked. Twenty team players were there, fifty or sixty younger kids, some older guys living in the project, a few curious adults, girl friends, and a few neutrals from nonfootball playing gangs. Every Stinger was there except Perry, who was K.O.'ed on Nembutals and couldn't have played the next day. Mops, brooms, and baseball bats were distributed. Joey sprayed lighter fluid on the mops and brooms, and everybody lit their makeshift torches. Dozens of small, fiery whoosh sounds were drowned out by a tremendous roar from the crowd as the banner was unfurled. It was a beauty. Lenny Arkadian fixed it up. The banner had STINGERS in dripping red letters. By each of the "S's" Lenny had painted (riant black and yellow bees wearing white gloves on tight fists, scowling faces, and a week's growth of beard stubble. The bees had giant cigars clamped between dagger teeth, and stingers coming out of their asses like golden scimitars. Lenny got the idea for the faces from the Woody Woodpecker racing decals.

Joey and Perry were supposed to carry the banner, but Joey wouldn't carry it without Perry, so the Tasso brothers were recruited. George and Vincent Tasso were twins, non-Wanderers, and according to consensus, good guys. They were the split ends—tall and fast, hands like baseball gloves. Joey stood in front of the unfurled banner, the roaring torches, the roaring crowd. He raised his hands. Silence except for the crackle of flames.

"GIMME AN 'S!"

"S!"

"GIMME A T!"

"T!"

They roared back the letters in lusty bellows.

"WHAT'S THAT SPELL?"

"STINGUHS!"

"WHAT'S THAT SPELL?"

"STINGUHS!"

"LOUDER, YOU MOTHERFUCKAHS!"

"STING-GUHHS!"

"LOUDER, YOU CRIPPLE BASTADS!"

"STING-GUHHHS!!!"

"LAUDAHHHH!!!!"

"STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS!"

Joey was crying and screaming, and the crowd marched down the street chanting, torches blazing, the banner held high. Joey bellowed and roared, his neck veins swollen with blood and hate, and they caught his passion, trading him howl for howl. Even the little kids were foaming at the mouth.

"STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS! STTNG-GUHS!"

Every twenty feet they would pick up a few more people—people who didn't even know who or what the Stingers were but were swept into the radioactive net of emotion. They marched down Burke Avenue across White Plains Road. Joey stopped them in front of his building.

"STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS!"

Joey looked up at the windows of his apartment through red eyes. "LAU-DAHHH!" He screamed until he couldn't hear himself anymore, but no one came to the three windows on the third floor—although almost every other window had a face in it. They marched twice around the projects, and people started getting tired. Joey still screamed but they weren't screaming back as loud anymore, and people dropped off at every block. Finally, the Tassos rolled up the banner and torches were snuffed.

"STING-GUHS! STING-GUHS!" Joey was the only one chanting now. "C'mon, Joey, it's bedtime."

"C'MON, YOU GUYS!"

"HEY, JO-WEE!" Eugene shouted in his ear. Joey acted drunk. "C'mon, Joey, it's eleven-thirty."

Everybody went home. Joey stared down the street. He tried to shout one last time but bis throat felt like a razor strop. He staggered to his apartment. Just let musclehead say one word. His father was probably shitting pickles. He didn't come to the window because he was scared, scared bad. Cripples, yeah, they sounded like cripples all right. There's gonna be some changes around here. Joey found his mother's note on the kitchen table.

Joey

We went to the movies. Be back late.

Love you
Mom

"That movie was sick," Emilio declared. Sitting in the dinette, he lit a cigarette and studied his wife's ass while she made coffee in the kitchen. Twelve-thirty. "It was filth." His wife didn't answer. She never knew how to answer her husband. Eighteen years of walking on eggshells. "It was pornography." He picked a crumb from his mustache. She brought in the coffee and a box of Danish. "Cream."

She got the cream and sat down, taking a cigarette from his pack. He trapped her hand. "Where's yours?"

"I forgot to buy some."

"You forgot to buy some? You just had a full pack this morning."

"They're gone."

"Gone? Whadya mean gone? They vanished? They marched out of the pack into the elevator and took a train somewhere?"

A headache the size of a dime settled behind her eyes. "I smoked them."

"Ah. Ah. You smoked them," he said with mock enlightenment.

"Could I please have a cigarette?" Her hand was still caught under his—the pack under everything.

"You smoke like a chimney." She said nothing, the headache branching out. "You're like a junkie, you know? Like a drug attic'. You're a tobacco attic'." Her free hand fluttered up to her forehead. "See? You need a fix!" He took his hand away. "G'head, junkie, have your fix." As she lit the cigarette he poured coffee. She was surprised that he poured her a cup too.

Joey's mother was a beautiful woman. She had the tight, smooth skin of a twenty-year-old girl and clear, large brown eyes. The constant fear and tension of her domestic life kept her slim. Her manner was gracious and graceful. She never raised her voice. The only time she had defied her husband, the only time she stood up to him, he had beaten her so badly she couldn't get out of bed for a week. She knew he wasn't a cowardly woman beater. He'd fight anybody, man, woman, or child, with equal fury and violence. She had forgotten what led up to the beating, but Emilio liked to remind her of "what happened when you got out a line that time."

Emilio saw his wife was having one of her headaches that hurt so badly she sometimes cried. He felt guilty and decided to be a little nicer. "Hey, junkie ... you want another fix?" He offered her the pack. She smiled no. She was still smoking the first one. He left the pack on the table and went to the bathroom.

Emilio undressed and stepped into the shower. He liked to feel the water on his body. He loved his body. He still worked out with weights every other day at the firehouse. He stepped from the bathtub, admiring himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. His muscles and his cock always looked bigger in the mirror, although, God knows, he didn't need any mirror to look big. He had kept the physique that won him the title of Mr. New York City twenty-two years ago as well as a forty-eight-year-old man could. His waist was only thirty-two, his chest measured forty-seven-and-a-half, biceps holding steady at eighteen inches, cock at nine, although it fluctuated between eight and ten. He knew muscle-bound guys with dicks the length of his little toe. There were plenty of those guys around too. Not him though. He was hung like a grandfather clock. He massaged his dick until it got hard. He tensed all his muscles, flexed his biceps, watched them dance, watched his thighs undulate at his mental command. He made his pectorals rotate under his skin. His erection stiffened—at least ten inches.

His wife waited patiently for him to finish in the bathroom. She hoped he wasn't going into one of his body-beautiful routines. They sometimes lasted half an hour. She had a weak bladder, and coffee made her pee. Once when Emilio was in the bathroom she had to go so bad that she dropped her drawers and sat in the kitchen sink. Then he came out as if he'd been waiting to catch her. It took two years for him to stop digging into her about that. Once at a party he'd told all their friends. She felt so ashamed she didn't do laundry or go shopping for a week. She'd given up Wednesday mahjong for good. Now, ten years later, she still flinched when she thought about it. She waited, listening for the noises that meant Emilio was finishing up.

Emilio lightly patted his body with a towel. He put a hand under his balls and contemplated their weight. Meatballs. That's what they were—meatballs. Two meaty balls. Must weigh a pound each. Maybe a pound and a quarter. He slapped his buttocks. They didn't wiggle. They were taut and hard. And small. When he was in the navy some chippy told him he had an athletic ass. And he'd made sure his ass stayed nice and athletic ever since. He thought of Joey. He had to admit that Joey had an athletic ass too, but that hardly counted because the rest of him was so goddamned puny. The only time he'd seen his son with a hard-on he almost puked. It couldn't have been more than five inches_maybe five and a half.

When Joey woke up the next morning he was sure he had cancer of the throat. He sat up in bed with his hands on his neck like a man who'd just taken a shot of homemade redeye. He stumbled into the bathroom, flipped up the toilet cover but not the toilet seat, and pissed. Swallowing was agony. He took the Vaseline from the medicine chest, scooped out a fingerful, and put it in his mouth. Bracing himself, a hand on each side of the sink, he gagged and swallowed simultaneously. He couldn't remember if his grandmother used Vaseline, Vicks VapoRub, or Ben-Gay for sore throats, but he imagined they all tasted the same.

Emilio sat in a bathrobe listening to the radio, smoking a cigarette, and staring out the dinette window. Nine-thirty. Saturday morning sunlight splashed onto the bright red-and-white oilcloth leaving a swath of brightness across Emilio's chin, neck, and seminaked chest. Joey brought in a cup of coffee for himself and sat down in his underwear at the far end of the table. Emilio glanced briefly at his son and returned his gaze to the street and the el tracks, which were eye level with the window. Joey sipped his coffee and watched his father. He was dying for a cigarette but afraid to ask for one.

"Jo-wee! Jo-wee!"

"Fi' minutes!" He dashed into his bedroom, crammed his equipment into a duffel bag, and slipped on a sleeveless sweatshirt and black dungarees. Yanking the bag over his shoulder he tramped into the dinette and gulped down the rest of his coffee standing up. "Twelve-thirty at French Charlie's," he said to his father. Emilio didn't turn around. Joey stood there for a few seconds staring at his father's back, then left the house.

Emilio watched his son emerge from the building. Buddy, Eugene, the Tassos, and Richie waited for him on the bench, duffel bags strewn at their feet. Eugene threw the football at Joey, who one-handed it and flipped it behind his back. A perfect spiral. Emilio felt a strange rage building up inside him, a restless blackness at watching the six boys. He lit another cigarette and turned off the radio. He felt a little better when they tramped up the hill toward Bronx Park. His anger turned to a mazelike boredom. Hearing bis wife in the bathroom, he slipped into the bedroom, dressed quickly, and left the house.

It was a beautiful day, and he decided to take a walk toward Allerton Avenue. The el train roared overhead but he'd stopped hearing it years ago, after he'd moved into the projects. Sometimes his whole life seemed to be made up of loud noises—el trains, sirens, alarms, screams from burning windows, but he didn't mind noise that much, at least he preferred it to the silences in his life. He bought a
Daily News
on the corner of White Plains Road and Allerton Avenue under the el station stairs and walked down Allerton toward the park. A block from the entrance he stopped. He didn't mean to go to the park to see the game He was going to read the goddamn paper and have a smoke' He felt as if he had to convince an invisible audience in his head of this fact. The game had slipped his mind and he was just going for a goddamn walk. He became angry again He cursed Joey Little bastard Can't even go into the park for a little relaxation on a Saturday morning Emilio folded the paper jammedit under his arm and wheeled back toward White Plains Road He went home, made it to the elevator, turned around, stormed out to the street again, his face as red as a blood boil, and walked back to the park. He sat on a bench for ten minutes staring at the sports page without one score or photo registering in his enraged head. He flung the paper onto the narrow asphalt bicycle path, scattering it like tumbleweed. He kicked furiously at a pirouetting page that the wind blew across his legs. He marched back to the newspaper stand. He had nowhere to go. The anger drained away, substituted again by the baffling boredom. He didn't want to go home, but there was nothing to do. He thought of going down to the fire station. He thought of taking a nice ride through Westchester. He thought of going out to Brooklyn to visit his parents. Everything seemed incredibly boring and meaningless and stupid and fuck Joey anyway, the little bony rat, rat shit.

Ten-thirty! Emilio stood at the bar beside Lenny Arkadian in Manny's. Lenny and John the bartender disliked Emilio.
He made them nervous the way most bullies make people nervous. They didn't like him, but they made sure they were nice to him.

"How's your kid?" Lenny twirled the ice in his drink.

Emilio looked away, annoyed. Lenny shrugged. John absently wiped the counter in the subdued almost brown light of bis bar. "What time's the game, Lenny?"