The end of June brought the end of the school year and a long summer to enjoy. At the used book store on Kensington Avenue, Mickey spent a long time choosing his comic books for the next two months. He had less money saved than usual because, after the fiasco with Uncle Tony and Marsha, Mr. Herlicksmann didn’t let him back in the store, so Mickey lost his once-a-week job getting groceries for Mrs. Demarco. From what little he had overheard when his uncle and mom talked of the incident it was confusing as to what exactly had happened. Evidently, Uncle Tony and Marsha spent more than a hour on her step, talking, and her father woke up and started yelling at them. Soon, Uncle Tony was hit in the head with a bottle. He didn’t fight the old man, but he did try to fend him off. A neighbor called the police, which brought the rest of Marsha’s family outside.
The final result, for Mickey, was that he and his mom were no longer welcomed customers. He didn’t think Mom cared. She had gotten into the habit of shopping at the super market. Once, while passing on a Saturday afternoon, Mickey stopped to say hello to Mr. Tanasdof and Mr. Jacobs. In the warm weather they were once more enjoying chess outside at their small table. Mr. Herlicksmann came rushing out of his store and chased Mickey away. As he hurried off, he heard the older man tell his son-in-law, “He’s just a kid, Morris. Just a kid. Let him be.”
The two then started arguing in Russian and somehow the chess set was overturned and Mr. Jacobs got knocked down when he stooped to retrieve the pieces. After that, Mickey only nodded hello and never stopped to talk to the two old men when he saw them outside the grocery store.
With his comics finally selected, Mickey wandered to the magazines stacked one atop another in the back. They smelled musty. Occasionally, a multi-legged creature scurried out from between the yellowing pages. With their covers intact, Mickey was greeted by lurid scenes of women in torn clothing fighting off tigers or screeching in horror with a glowering gorilla overpowering them; in some, women were tied to torture racks or held aloft by chains and crazed villains threatened them. Inside, the stories didn’t really describe what he saw on the covers, but they hinted at the deeds and at the virtues of these women and the qualities of the heroes who saved them.
More expensive than the comics, Mickey was able to buy only two. He expected the stories to last him a few weeks. He just hoped the paper didn’t crumble so much that he wouldn’t be able to finish what he started. Another fear was that he’d be kept too busy doing other things, either for Mom or for Uncle Tony.
“He needs to get a job,” Mom suggested on the last day of school.
Uncle Tony scoffed at the idea. “He’s not even eleven. Who’s gonna hire him?”
“He can sweep floors, run errands.”
“Who’s going to hire him? He’s under-aged.”
Mom turned to Mickey, who was sitting at the kitchen table. Supper had consisted of fried liver and potatoes. Uncle Tony didn’t eat much. He smoked during most of the meal. Mom had a bottle of wine and she drank half of it before they sat down. Earl and she had had an argument over the weekend, Mickey knew. It sounded stupid, he thought, but Mom wanted to go to Atlantic City for a weekend around the time of her birthday. Earl thought they should just spend time together at a motel outside the city. The mild disagreement became a full-fledged fight, with Mom throwing clothes and towels and cups at Earl and he slapping her to make her be quiet.
“I’ll give him a job,” Uncle Tony said, and grinned at Mickey. “You want to be my helper?”
“Sure,” Mickey agreed, not knowing what else to say.
“A lot of good that does,” Mom said. “It doesn’t bring any more money into the house. I want him to get a job where someone else is payin’ him, not us.”
“I can use the help. It’ll save me giving some neighborhood kid a buck or two to lift stuff.”
“That’s all you need to give him, then, is a buck or two. Don’t waste money. We can’t afford it.”
Uncle Tony glanced at his plate. “With a new helper, maybe I can start going further, try some new neighborhoods, get better stuff.”
Mom laughed. She finished her glass of wine. “Yeah, teach him the junk business. Just what he needs, learn how to be a junk man.”
“You thought it was a good idea to open a store.”
“Know what, Tony? You sell junk, then junk is what you make. Sell Cadillacs and you’ll make Cadillacs.”
“Earl tell you that?”
“He knows how to run a business. You run this store like pop ran his shoe repair. Too many favors. Too much credit. Prices too low. Pop didn’t have a business. He had a hobby. That’s what you’ve got, Tony, a hobby.”
“It pays the mortgage.”
“When was the last time you paid the electric bill? Or paid for the coal? Or the water?”
“It pays the mortgage,” Uncle Tony repeated in an even tone of voice. “That’s all we can expect.” He fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. “Stop arguing about money in front of the boy.”
“He oughta know about this stuff. You don’t live nowhere for free.” She finished the bottle of wine. “In fact,” she began, and leaned close to Mickey. Her breath was hot and rancid. Her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks sagged. Bits of caked makeup clung to the tiny craters near her chin and her hair was wild, every strand and curl out of place. “From now on, you give me a buck a week to cover your room-and-board. Don’t pay me and you ain’t eating.”
“That’s crazy, Joanne.”
Mom laughed. “Let him learn what it’s like,” she said to her brother. Then, turning back to Mickey. ‘You’re going to learn what it’s like. You think you got a free ride here? You ain’t got no free ride. This is gonna be like where those Herlicksmanns live, with everybody working and paying their way. Maybe we’ll get rich. You’d like that, Tony. The old man won’t throw you off his step if you’re a rich dago.” Mom put her head back and shook and laughed and spat out the wine that regurgitated up from her stomach and made her cough as she laughed and shook her head and tried to light a cigarette at the same time.
Mickey enjoyed getting up at four in the morning that first week. He liked riding with his uncle in the old station wagon. It rumbled and sometimes shook. It belched black clouds from its rear exhaust and there was always a loud rattle when they cruised the main streets and avenues at high speed. On the small streets, where row homes were packed together one after another, some with three stories and others with only two, they moved slowly past the trash left at the curb for pickup.
Once a week, they went downtown to the more affluent neighbors near the historic district. There were always tables or chairs or bookcases worth salvaging. There were fans with burned out motors and broken lamps and sometimes even a television. Uncle Tony can repair anything, Mickey thought. And, as his uncle told him, what couldn’t be repaired could be disassembled for its parts. He had several small barrels full of cogs and grooved wheels for pulleys, angled pipes, small motors, and various magnets.
As the summer days passed, Mickey learned how to solder wire using an iron that his uncle heated on the kitchen stove. He learned about using flux and how to clean the parts before soldering them. He learned how to determine which tubes in an old radio might be useful. He took on the job of going to the hardware store with a bag of tubes and putting them in the tester, a large machine at the front of the store that Mickey had always thought of as complicated. With his uncle’s help, he discovered that it wasn’t complex at all. Every tube had a number and every tube had a socket to fit into. The machine told him if a tube was completely dead or if it still had some life. Amazed, Mickey found himself helping his uncle repair a table top cathedral model radio from parts and tubes salvaged from many others. He was proud of himself when the radio was put on display in the window and soon sold for three dollars.
When there weren’t customers to help or browsers to watch or things to repair or errands to run or chores to attend to, Mickey had time to read his comic books and magazines. He delighted in the adventures of his favorite characters and was fascinated when he explored the new world of printed stories in magazines such as Weird Tales and Argosy and Astounding. At the library, he checked out collections of short stories and brought the books home, read through them quickly, then returned them before his mom found out. Even though he was nearly eleven, she was still afraid he’d lose a borrowed book and she’d be forced to pay for it.
Once a week, Mickey received two one dollar bills from Uncle Tony. Over Friday night dinner, he handed one over to Mom. The other he spent on himself, but any loose change left over at the end of the week went into a mayonnaise jar he kept under his bed in his school bag. He hoped to save enough to buy something special, like a balsa wood airplane with a plastic propeller or a model ship with cloth sails or a race car with a battery-powered motor.
For Mom’s birthday, Mickey did what he knew would be safe and bought her a small piece of jewelry she could pin on her collar. To augment the dollar he got that week, he scrounged for soda-pop bottles he could return to a candy store. The small bottles fetched two cents and the large, quart-sized ones were worth a nickel. Some of the neighborhood stores welcomed the returns; others insisted that they only accepted bottles for brands they stocked. Now and then, Mickey had to venture to the west side of Kensington Avenue, near where he went to school, to find returnable bottles.
As his own birthday neared, Mickey spent time peering at the display at the hobby store down the street. Plastic fighter jets hung from the ceiling, enticing him to go inside. Race cars and speedboats and three-masted schooners beckoned. Mickey wasn’t sure what he’d buy himself this year. Last August 11th, when he turned ten, he bought a small tank that he put together. With it and a couple of lead soldiers that he found in the store, he was able to wage war against giant monsters that he fashioned from pieces of wood and cardboard.
Being engrossed in his comics and his plans, kept busy with chores that his uncle gave him and the errands that sometimes kept him away from the store for hours, Mickey didn’t notice what Uncle Tony was doing in the yard. He went into the shed a couple of times and peeked out, but his uncle always chased him back inside and told him he had to watch the store in case a customer came in. Some evenings, Mickey went into the backyard when the store was closed and his uncle and his mother sat outside on the top step at the side door. Alone, he looked around for clues to what Uncle Tony may have been busy with all day. He suspected it had something to do with his upcoming birthday.
When that day arrived, he found out he was right. While Mom gave him a new shirt, Uncle Tony presented him with a two-wheeled bicycle.
“What kind of present is that?” Mom asked. “And get it out of the kitchen. Take it down to the shed.” She shook her head several times. “He doesn’t even know how to ride it.”
“Yes, I do,” Mickey countered, though he wasn’t so sure that was true. He had ridden a friend’s bike several times in the school yard and had fallen every single time. He’d get up on the seat, wobble forward a little, try to pedal to keep his balance, then crash. Once, he tore his pants and had to go home and show his mom what had happened and listen to her scream at him as she used a belt on his backside. There was nothing worse, Mickey knew, than ruining clothes.
“He can learn,” Uncle Tony said. “We’ll go out to the –“
“Learn in the street?” Mom countered. “He’ll get hit by a car.” She glared at Mickey. “You think we’ve got money for doctors and for hospitals? You think I’m spending money if you break your arm?”
“We’ll go to the playground,” Uncle Tony said, and shook his head. He picked a stray bit of tobacco from his tongue. He struck a match and lit his cigarette.
“And why you’d spend money on a bike when we’ve got bills I can’t pay….” Mom didn’t finish. She stood and went to the cupboard and got a bottle of gin. “Birthdays,” she said. “You won’t think they’re so great when you’re older, that’s for sure.” She got two glasses and filled them. She gave one to Uncle Tony.
“Can we go out now and try it?” Mickey asked.
“I told you,” Mom hissed, “take that damn thing downstairs. I don’t want it in the kitchen. You’re not going to keep that bike very long if you don’t do what I tell ya.”
Uncle Tony gestured to Mickey, who picked up the bike and carried it down the stairs and into the store, then back to the shed. There wasn’t room for it there, so he put it outside, close to the overhanging roof so that if it rained the bike wouldn’t get rusty.
From upstairs came Mom’s voice, like a roll of thunder. “Two kids, that’s what I got. You and him. My little brother and my little bastard. Both of ya, nothing but kids. Why would you buy him a damn bike?”
“He’s eleven-years-old, Joanne. Don’t you think the kid can use a bike?”
“I hope he gets hit by a car. That’ll teach him a lesson. That’s what he needs. He needs to learn a lesson.”
Mickey sat on the bottom step, his chin in his hands, and waited for his mom to stop talking. She’d eventually go into the living room and watch TV, with an electric fan to cool her down.
Riding without wobbling and then falling, keeping his balance and pedaling hard enough to remain upright, wasn’t easy, Mickey found. He’d sometimes go ten feet, then fall. He’d sometimes mount the bike and have it topple sideways. He bruised his elbows, but, luckily, he didn’t tear any of his clothes. Because Front Street was busy with cars and buses, which had replaced the trolley, he rode on the sidewalk. Uncle Tony hadn’t yet found time to help him, so he hadn’t gone to the playground where there was a lot of space to maneuver and learn how to ride. Besides, working in the store took up most of his time during the week and the only day he had all to himself was Sunday. He was glad Mom was back with Earl, who was out of town in July, but returned as August came to an end, because Mom would be gone from the house most of Sunday, leaving Mickey free to do as he pleased.
With school about to start up, Mickey thought he might want to ride his bike instead of walking to school. He would need to get a lock and chain, so he checked the hardware store, noted the prices, and decided to save his money. He had nearly enough already because he hadn’t bought himself anything at the hobby shop.
Carefully, walking the bike part of the way, riding it a little the rest, Mickey made his way to school as a way of practicing the ride before summer vacation ended. Once he got to the school yard, he tried riding his bike around in circles to get used to keeping his balance. He soon found he could stay up for several minutes at a time.
“When did you get a bike?” John Perry asked. He stood on the other side of the wrought iron fence surrounding the school yard.
Mickey straddled his bike, like he’d seen other kids do. His feet just about touched the paving. “Got it for my birthday.”
“Let me try it out,” Perry said. He climbed up the fence, carefully avoiding the decorative spikes, and leapt into the school yard.
Mickey started to back off.
“Come on,” Perry insisted. “I want to try it.” He put a hand on the handlebars. “I ain’t gonna take it. I got a bike.”
Mickey slipped one leg over the crossbar and let Perry take the bike. The older boy mounted it, stood with his feet on the pedals, then wheeled himself away. He pumped hard, knees rising, standing and not sitting, and raced away from Mickey, to the other end of the school yard, around the fist-ball diamond, to the wall where they played dodge-ball, and off to the far end of the yard, behind the school building and out of sight.
A moment passed. Mickey swallowed and blinked. He waited and smiled when he saw Perry return. The boy raced directly for him, then used the pedal-brake to come to a sliding stop.
“Too bad you ain’t got gears and stuff,” Perry said. “Good bike, though. Thanks.”
“Hey, you goin’ to Hatter Junior High next week?” Mickey asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be going there next year.”
“Yeah.”
Mickey walked the bike as they headed for the gate and left the school yard. “I’m gonna ride. Okay?”
“You oughta come by my street some times,” Perry said.
“Sure.”
“I could’ve taken that bike, you know.” Perry grinned and his freckled cheeks reddened slightly. “But you’re okay, Junk Store. You’re okay.”
“Thanks,” Mickey said, softly.
“Come on by Water and Huntington sometime. You can meet everybody. You’re okay and I want you to hang out with us, with me and my cousins and the guys.”
“Sure,” Mickey agreed. “See ya.” He mounted the bike, prayed that he didn’t fall, and rode off. He wanted to stand up like Perry had, but he was afraid that showing off would bring disaster, so he remained firm on the bicycle seat as he pumped his legs and sped away.
With the start of school, Mickey found himself passing Water and Huntington all the time. He didn’t ride his bike as planned. Mom didn’t like the idea and threatened to lock the bike up if he took it to school. Instead, as usual, Mickey walked. In the afternoons, he stopped off to talk to John Perry if he saw him. Sometimes John wasn’t there, but one or more of his cousins or their friends were and they welcomed Mickey, especially when he brought them cigarettes, which he rolled himself from his uncle’s supply of papers and tobacco.
In the evening, Mickey sometimes went out and wandered to Water Street to be with his friends. Mom never stopped him and Uncle Tony asked him once in a while where he was going, but Mickey always had an excuse. Sometimes he said he was going to look for “empties” so he could return the bottles for the deposit money; sometimes he said he just needed to go for a walk and promised to be careful. If he thought Uncle Tony was watching, he took the long way around to Perry’s hang-out, walking a block out of his way when necessary.
John Perry didn’t let his little brothers stand with them outside their father’s corner candy store, so Mickey was the youngest there. The other kids were in Junior High with Perry or were friends who were repeating sixth grade. To prove that he belonged with them, Mickey joined in when they coerced a passing kid into going into the store and buying something. It was like a game. If the kid did it, okay; if not, you had to take a punch in the arm. The first gang member to come up and grab you got the privilege of delivering the blow. It was usually John Perry.
At first, Mickey didn’t like being punched. Soon, he enjoyed doing the punching himself and he vied with John to be first to grab the culprit until one of Perry’s cousins warned him off.
“You ain’t a real member of the gang until you get us some wine,” Perry said one evening. It was a late September night. It was warm and the sky was clear and darkness had come at seven o’clock.
“What you gotta do…” one of the Perry cousins explained, and described the initiation rite that all the other kids had endured. Mickey had to go to the State Store on Front Street, find one of the alcoholics who hung around, and get him to go in to buy a bottle of muscatel, a cheap wine that cost seventy-five cents. He had to promise to give the drunk money for himself after he bought the bottle.
The boys dug into their pockets and found nickels and dimes and quarters. They gave Mickey the seventy-five cents he’d need. “What do I give the drunk?” he asked, slightly confused.
The other kids laughed. “You don’t,” one of the cousins explained. “You grab the bottle, then run off. You ain’t givin’ him no money.”
“Just don’t pick no drunk who’s already falling all over himself,” another suggested.
“Yeah, he ain’t gonna get no bottle from the store.”
“Make sure he’s sober enough to get served,” John Perry warned.
Mickey nodded several times to indicate that he understood his instructions. With the gang trailing far behind him, he walked through Water Street, down Cumberland, then over to Front Street, taking a round-about route so no adults from his block would see him.
The State Store was at the top of a high flight of stone steps. It sported a blue keystone logo on its large windows. Inside, men and women stood at the counter and clerks took their orders, then disappeared down the aisles to fill the requests. Now and then, the manager emerged from his office and checked someone’s driver’s license to make sure they were twenty-one.
Mickey found a grizzled old man sitting on the sidewalk, near the alley, his back to the wall. His clothes looked worn, but he didn’t stink like some of the drunks. He held out a hand, palm up.
“Want to make seventy-five cents?” Mickey asked.
“Doin’ what? I got me a bum leg. Can’t go running every which way.”
“Just go in and get me a bottle of muscatel and I’ll give ya seventy-five cents when you come out.”
The drunk stood. He looked down at Mickey. “What’s a kid like you want wine for?”
“My dad. He told me I gotta get it for him.”
“You? You ain’t old enough.”
“My dad’s been drinkin’ all day,” Mickey lied, enjoying himself now. “He don’t even know who I am. But I gotta bring it home or he’ll kill me.”
“Give me my money and I’ll do it then.”
“You get the bottle first. Last time I did this the guy ran off with my money.”
“I ain’t runnin’ nowhere. I got a bum leg.”
“Get me the bottle. Come on. You do that and I’ll give you seventy-five cents for yourself.”
The drunk held out his hand. It shook. His nails were broken and encrusted with dirt. The lines in his hands were black with soot or ink. Mickey gave him seventy-five cents in coins.
“Be right back,” the drunk mumbled, and lumbered up the steps to the store. He returned a few minutes later with a quart bottle of wine wrapped in a brown paper bag. He held it out of Mickey’s reach.
“Give me,” Mickey said.
“You give me first.” The drunk grinned, put his fingers on the bottle’s screw cap.
“Hey! Don’t open it!”
The drunk took his hand away from the cap. “Where’s my money.”
Mickey pretended to dig through his pockets. The drunk leaned close to him, the bottle lowered to within reach. Mickey grabbed it, kicked the drunk in the shin, and ran. Behind him, the drunk bellowed. Passersby looked at him, glanced at Mickey, and some laughed while others ignored the pair.
When he reached John Perry and his cousins and the rest of the gang, Mickey was out of breath. He looked back. The old drunk was limping towards them, but he was too far away to worry about and the boys turned and walked away, passing the brown paper bag wrapped bottle of wine back and forth, keeping it low and bending when they drank so no passing police would see what they were doing.
“You’re okay, Junk Store,” John Perry said, his arm across Mickey’s shoulders. Other kids slapped him on the back, some in a friendly manner and others with force bordering on an attack, but Mickey only smiled and endured the blows and took a swig of wine when the bottle was passed to him.
School was boring, but the nights were full. For Mischief Night, the night before Halloween, Mickey snuck out of the house after midnight, met up with the gang and helped soap windows up and down Front Street. Another gang was on the street as well, so they broke antennas off several cars and used them as whips and charged the other kids. The fight was quick and decisive, with The Perry Gang running the intruders off. One kid stumbled and John Perry and his cousins caught up to him and whipped his back bloody. The scream of sirens signaled the arrival of several police cars, which scattered the kids from both gangs, including those who had returned to try to rescue their friend.
Mickey hid in the alley for a while. When the streets seemed clear of police, he made his way home, keeping close to the sides of the buildings so he was in the shadows and not easily seen.
Uncle Tony was waiting for him in the store. Mickey unlocked the side door and tried to void his uncle by hurrying upstairs.
“You’re runnin’ with those Perry boys, ain’t you?”
Mickey stopped. He turned around and looked down into the dark. His uncle’s cigarette glowed. The red embers traveled from his waist to his mouth, and back down. “Just out with my friends.”
“They ain’t the kind of kids you should be hanging around with.” Uncle Tony gestured with his cigarette hand. Mickey’s eyes were starting to become accustomed to the dark and he could see his uncle’s outline, like he was a specter in the dark. “Get down here. I want to talk to you. I don’t want to wake your mom.”
Mickey snorted. Mom was in bed. Nothing would wake her. She had been drinking from the moment she got home lately. The only nights when she didn’t get drunk watching TV were the nights when Earl took her out. Then, she’d wait until he brought her home before she started her heavy drinking.
“I heard about that thing you did to buy a bottle of muscatel,” Uncle Tony said. “Come on. Get down here so we can talk. I ain’t gonna hit ya.”
Mickey descended the stairs. He smelled the beer on his uncle’s breath. He smelled tobacco and sweat and grease as well. He stepped into the store and his uncle steered him to the work table, where he sat.
“You smokin’ yet?” Uncle Tony asked, offering him a cigarette.
Mickey shook his head. He had been smoking with the Perry Gang, but he didn’t like it. The smoke made him dizzy. Once, it made him throw up on his way home.
“Then why are you stealin’ my cigarettes?”
“I ain’t,” Mickey lied.
“You are. I don’t care. If you’re smokin’ them, okay.”
Mickey shrugged, afraid to admit that he was giving his friends the cigarettes. He sat on his chair. He noticed there were still comic books piled under it, along with several of his old magazines.
“We were just having fun,” Mickey explained. “Didn’t you go out on Mischief Night and do stuff?”
“Sure,” Uncle Tony said. “And my pop whipped my ass for it when I got home.”
Mickey didn’t say anything. He didn’t remember his grandfather. He knew he had met him once, but it was long ago. What he did remember was a white beard and white hair and a voice that spoke in a language he didn’t understand.
“You’ll just get in trouble if you hang out with those Perry boys. You think I don’t know about that kind of stuff? How do you think I wound up in the army when I was seventeen?”
Mickey shrugged. He looked away, towards the glow of the lamps in the alley beyond the shed and the backyard and its cinderblock wall.
“The cops told my pop he better send me into the army or I’d be in jail. The kids I ran with were just like the Perrys. Mischief night, getting wine, getting into fights. Pretty soon, they were robbing strangers in the neighborhood. Then it was stick-ups. With guns.”
“You stuck up a store?” Mickey asked.
“No. I was in the army by then. They all got caught, eventually. A couple got sent away. A couple of more were made to join the army. Hell, it was World War Two and the army didn’t care what you’d done before, just so long as you obeyed orders. If you didn’t go where they pointed, you got shot. Real simple. Do what you’re told or there’s just one consequence.”
“I ain’t robbin’ nobody,” Mickey said.
“Not yet. Keep it up and you will. Remember when they put you in that group home for a couple of nights? A detention center for kids is even worse. You ain’t gonna like it if they put you away in one of those.”
“That wasn’t no group home,” Mickey retorted. “That was a regular jail and I did okay, didn’t I?”
Uncle Tony cocked his head sideways. “Did you?”
Mickey stood. “I gotta go to bed. I’m tired.”
Uncle Tony nodded slowly. “You’re a smart kid, Mickey. You know when you’re doing the wrong thing.”
Mickey hurried upstairs to the room he shared with his uncle. If it ever got to the point where John Perry wanted him to rob somebody or go into a store and steal something, he’d quit the gang. He knew right from wrong, he told himself. Some things were just plain wrong. Other things were done just for fun.
Just to keep his uncle from complaining, Mickey didn’t go out the next couple of nights. But Friday came and he wanted to be with his friends. Someone else might bring the wine. He thought he’d give a cigarette another try. It couldn’t be that hard to get used to. John Perry claimed he had started smoking when he was ten.
After supper that night, Mom changed, put on fresh makeup and waited for Earl to pick her up. She wasn’t sure if she’d be home that night. Earl might want her to stay at his place this weekend. Once she left, Mickey ran downstairs, his jacket flung over one shoulder.
Uncle Tony stopped him.
“I won’t stay out late. I just want to hang out with my friends.”
“Didn’t you understand anything I said the other night?” Uncle Tony asked. He took hold of Mickey by both arms. “I don’t want you hanging with those kids.”
“You ain’t my pa,” Mickey said. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
Uncle Tony slapped him.
Shocked, Mickey raised his hand as though to strike back. He felt another slap across the same cheek.
“I am telling you what to do,” Uncle Tony shouted. “I don’t care what I am or am not, pa or no pa, I’m telling you what to do. Don’t hang with that Perry kid. He’s nothing but trouble.”
“You didn’t have to hit me,” Mickey said, slowly. He sucked back his tears, surprised that they hadn’t come immediately. Maybe it was the shock. His uncle had spanked him several times when he was little, usually at his mother’s insistence, but he had never slapped him, had never gone wild with anger and beat him with his hands. A few slaps on the bottom had been more like saying that he cared. This, these slaps, were something else entirely.
“You gonna get upstairs now?” Uncle Tony asked. “I’ll stand here with you all night. I’ll put a chain around you and locked you in. Whatever I gotta do, I’m gonna do. You ain’t going out, not tonight or ever.”
Mickey turned and ran upstairs. “You and Mom are both the same,” he shouted down at his uncle. He held his hand to his sore cheek. He tasted blood on his tongue. “All anybody does around this house is take things out on me!”
All night Mickey stayed in his room. Even when Uncle Tony came in to go to bed Mickey didn’t talk to him. He considered sneaking out while his uncle was asleep, but he knew he would have to wait a while and during that time Mickey fell asleep himself and didn’t wake until the morning.
Saturday afternoon, Mickey went out when Uncle Tony was busy with a customer. He went to Water Street, found John Perry and hung out on the corner with his friends until supper time. When he returned he lied to his uncle and said he’d been to the used bookstore he frequented and had lost track of the time.
After supper, Mickey left the house again. He didn’t know why his uncle didn’t try to bar his way again, but he hadn’t. Later, as it got dark and a chilling wind whipped the air, while Mickey and his friends lounged on the steps to the corner store, Uncle Tony came along. The gang laughed when he dragged Mickey away.
“I told you,” Uncle Tony shouted as he pulled him along the street. “Don’t hang out with these kids.” Mickey struggled, but his uncle was strong. He eventually stopped fighting and walked home without being tugged along.
“You’re gonna have to do this every night,” Mickey said. “Because I’m going out and seeing my friends. Go ahead and hit me. I’m still hanging out when I want.”
“Then I’ll come after you every night. I’ll hit you when I have to. When you make me.”
“Tell Mom. She’ll do it. You can watch!”
Uncle Tony shook his head. “This is between me and you, Mickey. Me and you. Your mom don’t need to get involved.”
Mickey didn’t want to be embarrassed again, so he didn’t go back to Water Street for a few days. At school, he complained to one of his classmates who also belonged to the gang, that his uncle was a lunatic and was locking him up so he couldn’t get out at night. The worst thing that happened was that the gang got into a fight with two rival groups that had come onto Water Street to take revenge over what had happened on Mischief Night. John Perry and two others were in the hospital, while a number of other kids sported black eyes and swollen lips for a few days.
Taking a chance that his uncle would track him down again, Mickey snuck out of the house one Saturday night after he had heard that John Perry was out of the hospital. On Water Street, he found his friends. He brought them a pack of Chesterfields that he had filched from Mom’s pocketbook.
John Perry had a broken arm and a crooked nose. The arm was in a cast and it had been signed by everybody in his class at school as well as by some of his adult relatives and everybody in the gang.
“Give me a pen,” Mickey said. “I wanna sign it.”
“Why don’t you go home before your uncle comes,” John said.
“He ain’t comin’. I ain’t gotta do what he says.” Mickey tried to sound emphatic and brave. How long would it take for Uncle Tony to give up? he wondered.
“You ain’t in the gang no more,” Perry said.
“Why not?” Mickey whined, not meaning to sound like a little kid.
“You’re yellow, that’s why. You heard about the fight comin’ up. You shoulda been here.”
“I didn’t know nothing about it, Perry. Honest.”
“Everybody knew.” John Perry made a wave of dismissal with his good hand. Mickey thought back to the events of a week ago. He hadn’t known. No one had told him.
“Did you tell me?” Mickey asked the kid who was in his class.
“You had to know,” Perry insisted. “Everybody knew. And you didn’t show up.”
“I’m sorry,” Mickey said.
“Get off our corner, Junk Store. Before we beat you up.”
Mickey wet his lips. He clenched his fists. Someone pushed him and he toppled backwards over a boy who had gotten down behind him. The gang laughed. Mickey rubbed the back of his head. He stood and started to walk away. Behind him, the gang hooted and called him names – Junk Store Boy, Yellow Dago, Stupid Wop. Mickey brushed tears away from his eyes. He focused on a figure coming towards him. It was Uncle Tony.
“Where were you?” Uncle Tony asked. “On Water Street?”
“I’m coming home now,” Mickey said in a soft voice. He bowed his head and stepped to one side to get around his uncle. He walked with his head bowed. He heard his uncle hurry to catch up to him, felt his uncle walking beside him. Uncle Tony put an arm across his shoulders and Mickey walked with him, refusing to sob like a child, sorry that he had lost his friends, sorry that he had thought John Perry could really be a friend, sorry that he hadn’t been there to fight like a hero and sorry that he had gotten his uncle angry enough to hit him.
