- rusty santoro
- Dolores
- the war
News spread down through the neighborhood like a swollen river rushing to the sea. By the time he got home, after the many congratulations in the streets—as though he had actually accomplished something—Dolores was waiting, pride and affection shining in her face. She rushed to him as he entered and kissed him warmly on the mouth.
"I heard," she said.
He grunted a noncommittal answer and shoved past.
Dolo turned uncomprehending eyes on his back, and said, "What's a' matter? You got the botts or somethin'?"
Rusty flopped into the chair beside the TV, and threw a leg over the arm. "I don't like you runnin' with the Cougie Cats."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"I just don't like it is all."
She bristled and flipped her ponytail insultingly. "That doesn't much matter to me. I got my life, you got yours. You wanna stand with Candle like that, you do it. I wanna split with the kids, that's my biz, none of yours."
Rusty slung the leg to the floor and leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. He stared intently at the pretty girl with the brown hair. He loved her more than anyone he had ever known. Since she was old enough to talk he had been her self-appointed guardian. Her addition to the family had not been a loss of affection from his mother and father, for there had been little enough of that to begin with.
Instead, she had been a light toward which he could direct his own affection. And she had needed it, received it with gratitude. But as she had grown older, with the poison of the neighborhood in which they lived flowing through her young veins, she had changed—grown apart from Rusty. He needed her as he knew she needed him. His relationship with Weezee could never have been complete, or deep, for they took each other lightly, as playthings; but his love for his sister was a completely realized thing. Now he was deprived of the one outlet for his warmth and having introduced her to the Cats, he felt more than just responsible for her. He felt as though he had given her cancer.
Today had taught him something. The break had to be a violent and final one. No one gradually grew away from the streets. To gradually grow away meant you became a different kind of street bum—one of the fat slugs who sat on the front stoops with cans of beer and listened to the cha-cha music beating out of the windows. That was no good, either. It was a dead end. And he wanted something better for Dolores than a quick lay in a back alley or a police record.
"You got to stay away from them kids, sis."
"They're my friends!"
"Friends, hell! You got to drop 'em."
Her face flamed. "Mienta!"
Rusty snapped at the swear-word, leaped from the chair and cracked her solidly in the face. Dolores stumbled back, her eyes went wide with disbelief. It was the first time her brother had ever hit her.
She had hardly known what she was calling him, had regretted it the moment it had left her lips, but he had not given her the opportunity to take it back, to apologize.
Now the barrier was erected. Solid as the Great Wall of China, older than life itself and insurmountable. She backed away, turned and ran into her room. He heard the skeleton key turn in the lock and he slumped back dejectedly, hating himself for his temper.
This was indicative of what the gang had done to him; he could no longer reason. Violence was the only answer he knew; violence was the only approach. He had to learn to curb his temper, to stamp out that blood-hunt in his veins.
He let his head flop back-against the cushions and tried to stop thinking.
Perhaps dinner would kill the animosity, the fury, the hatred boiling in the house. But he knew it wouldn't.
Dinner was a silent affair, all tinkle of glasses and clatter of silverware. They ate in silence and Moms looked from one to the other with a knowing hesitance. Should she ask what was the matter? No, stay out of it.
"Where you goin' tonight?" the gray-haired woman asked her daughter.
Dolores did not answer. Her eyes lifted sidewise from the plate to stare at her brother for an instant, then they returned to the plate.
"I ast ya where you was goin' tonight."
Dolores looked up again and a flash of defiance coursed across her dark eyes. Her long lashes lowered and she addressed the inch of table just beyond the plate. "To a dance."
Rusty butted in, "Where at?"
"What're you, the F.B.I.?"
"No, just askin'."
"The clubhouse."
"The Cougars' rooms? Down in the bowling alley?"
She nodded. "You know any place else they hold their dances?" Her fork skewered a piece of meat, shucked it off.
Rusty looked across at his mother and she sensed his concern. Her own words were carefully chosen, carefully selected in softness. "You goin' with anybody we know, Dolores?"
The girl flipped her hair again, insolently, defiantly, "Just by myself is all. Just alone, with some of the kids."
Rusty said, "You know there's been trouble with the Cherokees. I heard over at Tom-Tom's they might crash the drag tonight." Rumors had been flooding the neighborhood, not only about Rusty's stand with Candle—which somehow had been kept from Moms—but of a proposed war that seemed about to break. Rusty was worried. The Cherokees had been bested in a battle three weeks before and the winds had it they were still nursing their wounds.
"You never can tell," Moms said, picking at her food nervously. "You better go to a movie tonight, or something."
She waited for what she knew must come.
"I'm goin' ta the dance. Alone."
Rusty inched forward, till his hard belly pushed the edge of the table. "You know what happened to Margie?"
Dolo decided to play it cool. "Margie who?"
Rusty stared at her with exasperation. "Come off it. Lockup's stupid broad. You know she had it right on the school grounds and put it in a paper sack an' left it leaning against a tree."
Margie's stillbirth had been the talk of the school for months. Her miscarriage had been a big thing in the Cougars social whirl. Rusty feared a like situation with his sister. The main job of the Cougie Cats was to keep the Cougars' studs happy. Rusty wanted nothing like that to happen to Dolores.
"You want somethin' like that to hit you?"
Dolores shoved back from the table, anxious to bluff high and snappy, not yet ready to storm away. She dropped her fork with a clatter and her mouth twisted venomously.
"You got a dirty mouth," she snarled.
"I'm just tellin' the truth. An' Paulie Ricco's sister got a busted spine in that Prospect Park thing a few weeks back. You wanna spend the rest of your life in bed like that? You keep runnin' with them girls, that's what's gonna happen."
"Don't you chop low on my friends."
"Friends, crap! They don't know from friends!"
Moms had been sitting there, her faded gray eyes open wide at these tales of horror from just beyond her walls. She had sensed the crowd with which Dolores ran was a wild one, but she had never suspected that they were—were likethis . Her heart stopped beating, she was sure, and she was sure her daughter heard the silence. This was her baby, her Dolores, just baptized and just having her first party and just wearing her first high heels and now suddenly grown, and playing with a deadly sort of fire.
She had to stop her.
"Dolores, I forbid you to go there tonight. You gonna stay home and dry dishes with me, then we'll go take in a show, huh?"
The girl sensed the time for total retaliation had come. She leaned over, as if to clamp down on everything her mother had said, and she came back with, "Can't you ever leave me alone? Can't you let me have a little fun once in a while? I'm not hurtin' you. I don't care if I never see my old man or if you got no time for nothin', always here in the kitchen, andyou ," she turned on Rusty, "yougot big crazy ideas, the big brother thing all the time, and just cause you was yellow, you think I have to be. Well, it ain't gonna be that way. Leave me alone, both of you crapheads!"
The word hit Rusty with all the force of a steam drill. He saw the effect it had on Moms and for the second time, hardly knowing what he was doing, his hand came out and cracked hard against Dolores' cheek.
She fell back against the chair and her face told everything there was to tell. It told the past was rotten and the future was a disappointment and the present was the rock that lay in the pit of her stomach. She slid back the chair and ran from the room, yelling, "I'm never comin' back here again! Never!Never! "
Then the sound of the vase on the shelf near the door smashing to the floor and the sound of the slamming door, then that going-away-forever sound of Dolores hitting for the street.
The word "never" hung like fog in the kitchen! Rusty avoided his mother's eyes until he heard her crying.
By then it was too late. They were all lost to one another down a dark lonely road that led nowhere. She cried too easily, damn her. Cried too easily, showed she was human, fallible, too easily. There's only one way to escape the hurt; that way is the safe way. Just keep it locked in, down inside you somewhere, where they can't get to you. No mother, no father, no sister, no one, because when they know they got you suckered, they know they can hurt you. And ain't no one who doesn't like to play God once in a while. No one who doesn't like to hurt when they know they can be God and so they try it every once in a while. So play it cool, play it steady, keep it back where they can't see it. Let the others—the mothers, the fathers, the friends—let them make the move, then you can play God! That's the way.
Rusty wadded up the paper napkin lying unused beside his plate and tossed it into the waste basket. He played with his food for a few moments, trying not to let the sound of Moms sobbing get to him. Finally, he could take it no longer and he slid away from the table, went to his room. It was going to be like that, all day, he was sure.
He turned on the record player absently, letting a stack of 45s start turning on the center post. Without knowing it, he pushed the reject button, allowing the first disc to slip down. Music had become very important to Rusty. When he had no one else around, when solitude was forced on him, he could use the music to stave off loneliness, fear. The words were pointless, the tunes vapid, but he desperately needed the sounds. Nothing more, just the sounds.
Come on over baby,
Whole lot of shakin' going on—
Come on over, baby,
Whole lotta shakin' goin' on—
The music reminded him where Dolo had gone.
He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed letting his arms hang between his legs drawing tightly at the shoulder joints. It wasn't good to let Dolores run loose like that, particularly not tonight. Besides the rumors of Cherokee action, there was always Candle—who might still harbor enough of a grudge to want to take it out on Rusty's sister—and Boy-O with his always handy supply of sticks. There were the girl-hungry Cougars, and the lousy influence of the Cougie Cats, many of whom had police records.
Dolores was clean so far and Rusty intended to keep her that way.
As he sat there he glanced toward the bureau and saw the picture one of the kids had taken of him and Dolo at Coney, last summer. She stood shorter than he, slim and happy in the sun with the crowded beach behind her and the cloudless sky above. And he started undressing, so he could put on some better clothes and follow Dolores to the dance.
He was going to make certain nothing happened to his sister. She had too much to live for, to let any gang of juvies louse her up.
He dressed hurriedly.
Whoever had intimidated Greaseball Bolley into letting the Cougars turn his back rooms into a club, had done a fine job. For the fat man was terrified of the hard-eyed kids who walked through his bowling alley, into the rear. He studied each one carefully, getting to know them by sight and name, against the day they decided to wreck the joint and put him down. He was more than fat; he was gigantic in that seldom-seen fantastic way that brings to mind thick dough puddings and overstuffed Morris chairs. One of the men who bowled regularly in League, Wednesday nights, who was also an avid reader of science fiction, compared Greaseball to a spaceman who had been infected with a spore that had bloated him into moon-proportions. It was a striking analogy, for Bolley's body was not only hasty-pudding squishy, and waggled flappingly as he stumped forward, but the skin was an unhealthy yellow, pimpled and puckered and strewn with moles, pustules, explosions of flesh, that made him look like some weird diseased fruit, overripe and rotting within.
He was well-liked by everyone in the neighborhood.
But someone in the Cougars, years before Rusty had become the Prez, had decided the gang needed a clubhouse, and had decided with equal ease that the back rooms of the Paradise Bowling Alley were the site. So Greaseball Bolley had become unhappy host to the Cougars and their girls' auxiliary. The place resounded to the stomping feet and high-flung wails of rock 'n' roll, and the occasional moan of an apple who had been put down for a while.
Greaseball Bolley was unhappy about the situation, but he maintained a philosophical neutrality, for his size cut away any ideas the gang might have had about causing him trouble. He watched them and they watched him and they hung suspended in a state of alert tolerance. Enough that Bolley allowed them to use the place, as they allowed him to stay in business. It was not at all the same sort of arrangement the gang had with Tom-Tom, who was merely terrorized. This was a grudging acceptance of strength, and a decision to permanently put off hostilities, for the good of the majority.
Greaseball was glad the spanging of pins cut off most of the Cougars' noise.
But tonight, they were doing it up sky-blue. More than usual had tramped past the showcase with its FOR SALE sign, model pins, balls, carrying cases, shoes and other paraphernalia inside. They had all given him the eye of recognition, the two-fingered greeting and gone quietly back to the club rooms.
Greaseball never went back there. They had their own locks on the doors and they kept their house. He knew about the several bedrooms, about the girls and boys who stayed overnight, about the slashings and the narcotics, but his fear of gang reprisal was greater than that of the police, so he kept his mouth shut and the Cougars made sure they did nothing overt to attract the attention of The Men. It had been that way for a long time now and the days seemed endlessly plodding in danger to Greaseball. But he did nothing to stop them. Far back, before the Cougars, there had been some trouble with a waitress, and a broken bottle, and a long term inside gray walls. So Greaseball Bolley did nothing, but watch and let them sink into his mind's eye. And if someday the balance shifted he would take as many with him as he could. But till then …
He was well-liked by everyone in the neighborhood.
Rusty passed Greaseball Bolley with all the cool aplomb of the days when he had been Prez. He kept his eyes front and his step assured as he walked past the gigantic heap of doughy flesh. But for the first time since he had met the fat man, on taking over the Cougars, Greaseball spoke to Rusty.
"'Ey. You, Santori. C'mere."
Rusty stopped and pivoted slowly. His eyes met those of the fat man and for a minute he had trouble deciding what color they were; so deeply buried in caverns of oozing flesh they seemed to be two raisins thumbed into a paste. "The man's Santoro, not Santori," Rusty stated flatly, starting to go.
"'Ey. When I call you, kid, you come, y'hear?"
Rusty walked back to where the hump of Bolley leaned over the showcase. Down on the alleys only two or three people bowled—none of whom Rusty recalled having ever seen in the place before—and it was apparent the rumors of Cherokee trouble had hit the neighborhood hard enough to keep regulars away from the place.
Rusty realized Greaseball was scared. For the first time since he had known him the fat man was afraid of something. Rusty walked over, close enough to smell the odor of garlic and no bathing, and his nostrils quivered. Then he stopped, drew on his cigarette and waited for the fat man to speak.
"You—uh—you hear 'bout trouble, t'night?"
Rusty let his eyes slide tightly closed. The smoke from the cigarette spiraled up past his face and he liked the momentary warmth of it. Cool, that was the angle, play it cool. It goes further, it slides easier.
"Trouble? Like what trouble, man?"
Greaseball felt fire flame in his huge belly. He would not tolerate these kids stooging it out on him. He reached across with one side-of-beef hand and grabbed Rusty about his collar. The sports jacket Rusty wore wrinkled up as the fat man dragged the boy tight to the counter. Rusty reached up to try and jab free, but the hand was a bracelet of soft, spongy, but terribly invulnerable, flesh. He was held fast and his breath was jagged as he worked his neck in the grip.
"Lemme go! Goddamn ya, lemme go, ya sleazy crumbum!"
The fat man's other hand came about lazily, almost floatingly (he knew his own strength to the smallest fraction) and landed with a heavy plop on Rusty's face. The boy's eyes glazed over and he staggered in Greaseball's grip.
"Now you maybe gonna talk ta me? Huh? You gonna answer straight like?"
Rusty gurgled and his eyes unfogged. The dim scene of the alley pasted itself back in his vision and he tried to speak. Words would not form. The fat man eased off a bit.
Rusty gagged and coughed. Then, "I heard the Cherokees was comin' over for a rumble tonight. That's all the message I got. I don't get the wire no more. I'm outta the gang."
The fat man's line of conversation altered instantly. His interest was heightened by this new subject, as though he had forgotten the brewing of trouble in his alleys. "Yeah," he wheezed, "I heard that. That cat Candle's got your spot now, don't he?"
Rusty nodded silently. What Greaseball did or did not know about the stand that afternoon was of no concern now.
"How come you ain't the President no more?"
"I got too old for office."
Another slap, not quite so hard. Fear still oozed between the fat man's teeth.
"I wanted out, that's all."
"Then what you doin' here tonight?"
"Lookin' for my sister. I wanna get her home."
The fat man let loose entirely. Rusty shrugged down the wrinkled sports jacket, adjusted the tie and shirt. The fat man gave him the nod. "Watch yaself."
The entire incident was a mystery to Rusty. Why was the fat man so interested? Or was it just that he liked to know everything that went on, whether he could control it or not?
That was the answer and Rusty walked away as the fear submerged itself temporarily in Greaseball Bolley's piggy eyes. He moved his body slightly, and felt the bulk of the ironwood chair leg pressed between his leg and the showcase. If there was going to be trouble tonight he was going to end it before the cops came in to do the job.
Rusty walked past the alleys and the empty racks and made fast for the back door leading to the rooms.
From inside he could hear the beat of music and the sound of girls' laughter. It was as loud as usual and suddenly very necessary. Alone was bad tonight. Stay with the herd and beat the glooms, that was the angle. Cool it!
Margie was just inside the door, in the middle of a group of Cougie Cats—debs—regaling them with the saga of her conception, from start to schoolyard, blow by blow, detailed, painted with adolescent fantasies. Her eyebrows went up as she saw Rusty and the other girls turned too, surprise registering on their faces. This was the first drag Rusty had attended since he quit the gang. If the fuzz found him here, they knew, he would be breaking his custody and back to the can he'd go.
But it was too neat an evening for bombs so they all waved and gave him the eye and Cherry licked her lips hungrily, saying, "Come on back an' see me later, big man."
Rusty smiled vacantly and went deeper into the thick, blue cloud of smoke, catching the telltale muskiness of pot, trying to single out the slim shape of Dolo.
Greek emerged from the smog and stuck out his hand in a heavy salute. "Buddy!" he exclaimed. Greek was the big mouth of the club, and Rusty had great affection for him. The Greek didn't know when to shut up and consequently his outgoing friendliness was a constant warmth in his vicinity. It was good to know a guy like that, every once in a while. An open stud was a relief from all the cool boys.
Greek was fleshy, but not soft. More like a black, curly-haired Buddha than anything else, but with a switchblade, he was nobody's fool.
His face was cheek-marked from a rumble. Another stud had taken a raw potato studded with double-edged razor blades and twisted it on Greek's kisser. It had left raw bloody strips of flesh and the healing had been slow and imperfect. His right cheek looked like a particularly violent case of strip-acne had hit and ravaged it.
"Man, fall down and have a puff with me!" Greek said.
Rusty clapped the big Greek on the shoulder, said, "Not stayin' too long, Greek. Just fell down to find my kid sis—"
"Hey, man, y'know, like your sister's gettin' to be a real knockout. I was gonna try that myself, then I remembered what you told me when she joined up with the debs. That scared me off good."
Rusty started to get mad, then realized he was being spooked and slugged the Greek playfully in the arm. He took the fleshy boy to one side and talked in close.
"Listen, man, I wanna ask you somethin'. See, uh, I'm uh, you know, not in so tight any more and I don't like to shove my nose in where it don't go, but look, is there anyone who's, uh, well, you know, like—uh—payin' a lotta 'tention to Dolo? You know what I mean?"
Rusty was serious and he could only be serious with this boy, and both knew it. But Greek had a distaste for pigeons and he hesitated.
Rusty added hurriedly, "Look, don't goof yaself with nobody, but if there's anybody out to plank her I'd like ta know so I could warn him friendly to stay off. Ya know what I mean? Hell, Greek, she's onny a kid, and she's my onny sister …"
Greek nodded. "I dig."
Rusty waited, then, "Well?"
Greek looked troubled, then shook his head in the negative. "No, not that I know about. She sticks pretty close to the broads. She asks around once in a while who some guy is, when she don't know, but she acts kinda skitty 'round the men. You know what I mean." Then he changed the subject quickly, "Where's Weezee?"
Rusty waved it away fast. "Oh, she wanted to come, mentioned it this afternoon, but I didn't feel like draggin' no women tonight." Greek understood, and a lecherous quirk of his lips indicated he felt the same way.
"I was out to the dumps this afternoon."
Rusty smiled. "I saw ya, ya bastard. You was yellin' as loud as the rest of them apples."
Greek spread his hands in helplessness. He grinned back. "I don't like a blade in my gut any better'n you do, man. Candle's top dog around here and I like the group. No sense my playin' hard man and gettin' stomped. Read me?"
Rusty smiled back, and a mutual respect flitted between them.
Greek changed the subject again. "Wanna find a nice piece? Some fresh stuff from off Cherokee turf here tonight."
Rusty's brow furrowed, and his gray eyes slitted down. "You let that stuff in, when you know the Cherokees are on the prowl?"
Greek thumbed his nose at the ceiling. "Frayk 'em!"
Rusty wagged his head and pursed his lips with a puff. "That's bad biz, man."
"Ah, hell," Greek said, "they ain't comin' down here. The turf's too hot for 'em since the rumble. They won't show their butts in sight for months. And if they do," he patted his jacket pocket, "we give 'em the way out, put 'em down good."
Rusty chuckled. That's all they ever thought about. Laying and fighting and drinking and sipping the tea. It was all pretty hopeless, but wild in a sort of clockwise way.
"Yeah, point out the fresh stuff. Long as I'm down, I might as well socialize a little." They walked into the crowd together.
The first girl—called herself Goofball, but Rusty heard someone yell to her as Mary, and the broad turned to answer—boxed him into one of the bedrooms and Rusty didn't object too strenuously. It wasn't so good. She was strictly nowhere from style, but it was an interlude and by the time they unlocked and came out the joint was rocking high and heavy and the sticks were passed around free.
Rusty stayed off the pot, the Sneaky Pete, the Sweet Lucy, and the other broads and kept looking for Dolo. From time to time he heard the word that she had been there and leeched out so he stayed, hoping she would come back and he could talk her into going home. But she had come and gone. She didn't come back and an hour after he had arrived, Rusty couldn't leave.
The Cherokees showed on the scene.
He was leaning against a wall with a can of Rheingold in his hand, his tie jerked down to the side, collar open and the heat, body odor, smoke and beer fumes of the rooms closing in. The sweet odor of tea filtered around him. He was talking to little Clipper Adderlee about the Prospect Park war, when the sounds of bowling against the wall stopped. A dead silence from outside, and then they heard Greaseball's high almost-feminine voice shouting something incomprehensible.
Fish emerged from the smoke and Connie's embrace and yelled at Poop, "Shut off that squawker!"
Poop slammed the tone arm of the record player aside and in the sudden loss of music there was a total absence of voices in the rooms. They stayed quite still and listened. Then they made out what Greaseball was saying, over and over, loud and high, till he was suddenly cut off with a squeak.
"Cherokees!"
Candle showed from a back room where Lockup had gone to fetch him, and stood with his legs wide apart, his eyes blazing for the fight to come. "Okay you guys, get the goddamn lead out!"
Tiger, whose haircut always left him looking like a Fussiwatti, sprinted through the packed mob of kids and reached a big box set against one wall. He pulled a keychain from his pocket and opened the double padlocks. Then the lid went up, and miraculously everyone had a weapon.
The sounds of argument outside grew more violent, and once the crash of a bowling ball going through the showcase split the background down the middle. Rusty felt someone shoving a zip into his hand and a few .22 slugs.
He tried to hand it back, tried to get to the rear door, but his path was blocked by dozens of Cougars and their debs preparing for the rumble.
Fish had a long pole with a jagged piece of glass on its end, braced against his thigh. He was positioned right in front of the door with the deadly thing angled down at head level.
The others brandished zip guns, switchblades, wrenches, lengths of pipe, homemade knucks, bricks. One girl had a four-foot spike of some sort, stolen from a railroad yard, and she hefted it like an experienced warrior.
"Let 'em come!" Candle screamed, his face swollen with fury and the desire for blood.
Dwarfy Lockup threw open the bolts on the door and before Rusty could help himself, he was being borne forward through the opened door, into the alley proper. The Cherokees were out in strength. The faces of their girls, the Rockettes, were as violent as their own. When the rival gang saw the Cougars streaming out of the back rooms, a wild cry went up and they left the battered shape of Greaseball Bolley—slipping wetly to the linoleum-and charged straight across the polished alleys.
They met head-on in the middle of the twelfth lane.