Thrill Kids Page 12

  “Oh?” She nodded pleasantly. “And what did he say?”

  “He told me how to make the cage warm for him this winter. My room gets kind of chilly, and the temperature’s very important. You see, kings catch cold easy.”

  Manny reached down beside him where the box was and he said, “Did you notice I was carrying something when I came in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” Manny said, suddenly a little bashful now, but proud too, and anxious to see the doctor’s surprise, “it’s Sincere. I got him with me. Want to see him?”

  The doctor’s face was placid and she said, hesitating only for a moment, “Certainly I want to see him. I’ve heard so much about Sincere.”

  Manny took the top off the box and lifted Sincere up, and Sincere wrapped his long body around Manny’s arm and flicked his forked black tongue. Dr. Mannerheim sat quietly in her chair, drawing the smoke in from her cigarette, looking at the snake.

  “I’ll put him down here on the table so you can see him in the light,” Manny said, pushing aside the glasses, placing the writhing snake there. “Lookit him now. Isn’t he a beauty?”

  The snake trailed his black slackness soft-bellied down over the edge of the table, and Manny shoved him back up on top of it.

  “Stay there, fellow,” Manny said. “The doctor wants to look you over, boy. See if you got any complexes.” Manny chuckled and glanced at the doctor, who was moving her chair slightly back from the table. “Like him?” Manny asked, pleased.

  “He’s f-fine,” the doctor said, but she edged her chair farther back, and her face was a little taut, her fingers liightening on the sides of her chair. “Sh-should he be loose ike this, Emanuel? It won’t make him nervous or upset or anything?”

  “Naw!” Manny exclaimed. “Sincere’s a real trooper!

  He’s been on the subway and everything today. He’s a world traveler, aren’t you, fellow, hmmm?” Manny gave Sincere a pat, and beamed at him with bright, shining eyes.

  The snake lopped around the bowl containing the ice cubes, flicked his forked tongue again, and arched his hose-shaped head up in a curve, his dead eyes musing a moment, his body still.

  “ ‘At’s right, boy, you look the joint over.” Manny laughed. “Lookit him! He wonders where he is. What a curious character you are, Sinny, boy. Lookit him, Dr. Mannerheim.”

  “I’m looking at him,” the doctor said in a strained voice, but Manny didn’t notice that her tone was different this time from any other.

  He said, “Want to pet him? He’s got real silky skin.”

  “N-no, Emanuel — thanks. I haven’t washed my hands and — “

  “Oh, your hands are clean enough, Doc. Cripes, your hands are plenty clean. Don’t you worry ‘bout that.”

  “No, Emanuel, really,” the doctor said, as Manny started to steer Sincere’s body around to the edge of the table facing her. “I think not!”

  Then Manny noticed. He looked at her strangely, as if there were something about her sound that he could not understand, and he said incredulously, “Is something wrong about Sincere?”

  “Emanuel, don’t be silly. Of course not. I — I like Sincere. You know I like him.” She kept staring at the wiggling snake. “We’ve talked about him so often, Emanuel. You know I — “

  “But you never saw him before,” Manny said in a thick sort of voice. “Today was the first time and you’re acting funny. You’re acting funny,” Manny said, as though he weren’t really talking to her, but to himself now, still looking at her. “You’re acting like other people.”

  The doctor’s face was pale, and her lips moved to protest with the right words, but the snake slid off the table then, writhing like lightning, a part of him that was left behind convulsing in undignified haste and then disappearing to the floor.

  “Emanuel!” the woman called out, jumping quickly from the chair and backing away. “Get him! Don’t let him loose like this, Emanuel. Emanuel!”

  For a moment Manny was frozen numb. He saw Sincere gliding on the thick carpet, innocuously going along the way he did all the time, the way he was made to do, moving on his ribs the way a snake does, because there’s no other way for him to move, and then he saw the woman’s face. There was nothing soft about her any more; her brow was creased in hard lines and her lips tightened. Her voice had a shrill edge on it:

  “Get him back in the box, Emanuel!” she said. “Will you get that snake!”

  Manny just stood there. “You hate him,” he said. “You hate him because he’s a snake. You didn’t mean it when you said you liked snakes. You wanted to trick me.” He said it the way a person who has to convince himself of something says things, the way a person says things when he can’t believe them, because he does not want to. “You’re afraid of him. You never even listened when I explained he couldn’t hurt you,” Manny mumbled. “You never even — “

  Sincere was near her now, and she screwed up her face and shook the chair and tried to scare him off with the motion. Then Manny moved. There was a vacant look to his eyes, as though he were sleepwalking, and his body moved that way too, stiffly, but surely, crossing the room, past her where she stood near the wall, cowering.

  “He’s under the couch, Emanuel,” she said.

  Manny said flatly, “I know where he is, Dr. Mannerheim.”

  Then he got down on his knees and picked Sincere up gently, saying, “C’mon, fellow,” and he carried him to the box, and he put him in it.

  He stood there holding the box, and though he did not look at the doctor, he could tell she was smoothing her hair with her hands, moving away from the wall where she was standing; and he heard her sigh. It seemed a long while before she said, “Our session wasn’t very successful today, was it, Emanuel?” She sounded sad somehow, and tired.

  “I don’t know about sessions. I don’t know about them,” Manny answered her. He ran his fingers along the box, caressing it, as though that would soothe the snake inside. He wouldn’t look at the doctor; he couldn’t and he didn’t want to.

  “You see, Emanuel, we try to hide our fears sometimes to help other people. But we still have them. They’re only masked and — ”

  Manny didn’t listen to her. He didn’t care what she told him now; he didn’t even hear her voice. Sincere was moving in the box and that was the only thing Manny cared about; that was what life all boiled down to — Sincere.

  “Do you understand, Emanuel?” she asked him ten years later.

  Manny shook his head silently. “And we’re still friends?” Manny shrugged.

  “You think about what I said, Emanuel, and next Tuesday we’ll try to talk it over together.” She said, “I won’t keep you any longer today.”

  Manny nodded.

  At the door, she offered her hand when she said good-by, but Manny was holding the box with both of his.

  14

  … and so, ladies and gentlemen, one week after their first venture into the park, these four had a second, final rendezvous. What was it that each boy looked forward to as he made his way there so determinedly? It is a tragic and deplorable fact that Bardo Raleigh, Hans Heine, John Wylie, and Emanuel Pollack, four most unlikely companions, were seeking one and the same thing — a kick, ladies and gentlemen, a thrill. And the only way they could find this thrill was through violence.

  — Prosecuting Attorney Leogrande’s summary

  IN THE POOL HALL some wise guy had swiped his cap and called him Goldilocks, and he had been afraid to try to sell the stuff. It was still in his back pocket. Now he had no money; only fourteen cents, because he had spent a half a buck on another cap, and sixty-four cents was all he had had when he’d gone to Leemie’s. What the hell was he going to do? He could never go back to Leemie’s. He didn’t even have enough to ride out the night on the subway. In a pawnshop up on 120th Street he’d tried to sell his duffel bag and everything in it, and the man had said, “You kidding, Bud? You couldn’t pay me to take this crap!”

  He was hungry. He had dr
unk all the water he could to fill his stomach, and he had his pants belt as tight as it would go.

  It was the worst time in his life. And it was hot. It was so hot his whole head was dripping with sweat under his cap. He was tired because he hadn’t slept, and he was scared ever to go home again, and scared not to.

  He was coming down from 120th, on his way to meet Bardo and Manny and Johnny, and he knew he wouldn’t have the nerve to tell them about it, to ask them for a buck or two, or a bed for the night, or food. He would rather tell anybody but them.

  That night, all Flip Heine wanted to do was hang around with them, keep up the act, and never let them know that his heart was as shorn of hope as his head was of hair.

  • • •

  Emanuel Pollack wanted to take his snake home. He was afraid something would happen to it. It was in the box under the bench in the children’s park, where he sat beside Bardo, waiting for Flip. He had gone to Bardo’s directly after he left Dr. Mannerheim’s office, and Bardo had said:

  “That snake, mister, is the most handsome creature Bardo Raleigh ever laid eyes on! Notice the way he winds himself around my arm? Do you know what that is? That’s grace, mister. Your Sincere is infinitely graceful.”

  Manny had telephoned his father to receive permission to eat dinner with Bardo, and he and Bardo had eaten in the Raleighs’ kitchen, while Sincere roamed around the linoleum floor.

  “Always take care of that snake, Pollack,” Bardo had said. “People who neglect their pets and go off and leave them — people like that are the scum of the earth, mister.”

  “Don’t worry, I know that, Bardo.”

  “You bring him right along with us tonight, mister.”

  “I ought to take him home first, Bardo.”

  “You bring him along, mister. That’s the best thing.”

  “You can come with me if I take him home.”

  “Pollack?”

  “What?”

  “Why do you suppose I asked you to bring him along? Do you suppose it was because I’d eat my heart out while you were running home with your snake?”

  “No, I just thought — ”

  “Mister, I was wet-nursed and weaned some time ago.” “I know that, Bardo.”

  “No, you don’t, mister. You don’t know that at all. You only know what I tell you. And I tell you if you care a tinker’s damn for your pet, you’ll just bring him along, Pollack, and keep an eye on that priceless creature.”

  “You really like him, don’t you, Bardo?”

  “Anyone in his right mind would appreciate the infinite majesty of that snake, Pollack. Anyone in his right mind!”

  Manny had said, “You bet they would! Sinny’s just like his name, all right. A king!”

  Now all Emanuel Pollack wanted to do was to take Sincere home, and then come back and have fun.

  Still he sat there, trying to learn the words to the song Bardo was teaching him.

  Mine eyes have seen the vagrants on the benches in the park

  And the bums that haunt the pathways while they’re roaming in the dark …

  What made him remember the first time he had ever seen one? What made him think of that evening in Trevor Park up in Yonkers, when he had gone for a walk with his grandmother? How old had he been, and why did he remember it now?

  He had a yo-yo, a yellow one, and he couldn’t work it, so they sat on a bench and his grandmother tried to show him how. She said, “You just let it go up and down, Bardy. See? Like this.” And then she said, “You aren’t even watching me, Bardy. Watch me.”

  But he was watching something else, something across from them — a man stretched out on the bench across from them.

  How come he could remember so clearly?

  The man was asleep, his arm dangling toward the ground. A battered hat with stains on the band dropped from his fingers. He wore a white shirt that had vomit dried to the front of it and a collar ringed black. The rolled sleeves exposed flesh that was filthy and scaling. And the pants! Baggy brown, ripped at the knees, open in front, where he held his hand. There was a smell from him so foul and strong that it had made Bardy Raleigh want to gag. And the man’s nose was running, his mouth agape.

  “You aren’t even watching me, Bardy.”

  “What’s that man, Gran? Is that man sick?”

  “Don’t look at him, child.”

  “Is he sick, Gran?”

  “No. No, Bardy. He’s just a bum.”

  A bum?

  What was a bum?

  Why did it have a familiar sound? And who had said it to Bardy Raleigh before?

  • • •

  He sat there in the darkness on the roof saying her name to himself: “Lynn Leonard.”

  After tonight he wouldn’t be a kid any longer. He wouldn’t know a day such as this day had been ever again.

  It had started when he had answered the telephone in the morning and told Bardo Raleigh he wouldn’t be along with him and Manny and Flip, because he had an appointment. His mother had asked after he’d hung up, “Where’s your appointment tonight, Johnny?”

  And he had answered, “I’m taking Lynn Leonard to a movie.”

  “Well, that’s very nice.”

  He’d checked the papers for a movie he could say they’d been to, planning how he’d get the blanket up on the roof, and the pillow, and the pop he was going to buy.

  In the afternoon he’d gone across town to a strange neighborhood drugstore and asked for one.

  “They come in a package, Romeo,” the clerk had kidded him, and the worst thing about it was that the clerk looked about the same age as Johnny.

  “I don’t know what size,” Johnny had mumbled.

  “You don’t know nuthin’, bub! You think they come in sizes?”

  Johnny didn’t know, but there was the night to come. And then he would, and it would all be different from this day on.

  He shut his eyes and wondered how it would be.

  First they would talk (what would they say?) and sit side by side without kissing or even holding hands or anything. They would talk and look up at the stars, and he would be able to smell her perfume; and every sentence she would say would have his name at the beginning or the end.

  They would lie back with their heads on the pillow, and her black hair would spill onto his white shirt. Their fingers would touch, lightly, then more tightly, and somewhere a radio they wouldn’t hear would be playing in the summer air.

  Turning, they would face each other, and look into each other’s eyes, and he would touch her then, and kiss her and then it would begin. (Should he explain to her that he had one with him? Did men say that?)

  He sat there in the darkness on the roof thinking about it and saying her name and his name together; and he thought that when he was eighteen he would ask her to marry him.

  He sat there listening for her footsteps, imagining that he heard them, watching the sky, and waiting.

  And he waited, and he waited. He waited a long, long time, because he had believed her when she had promised, and he didn’t want to believe what he was finally forced to admit — that she wasn’t going to come at all.

  15

  These are not murderers, gangsters. These are children who went looking for mischief and found it.

  — Summary of defense counsel

  THEY STOOD INSIDE the children’s park by the swing. After they had sung the song two or three times together, Bardo said suddenly to Heine, “Say, mister, what happened to your hair?” He scrutinized him carefully in the half-light from the street lamp.

  Heine grinned broadly. “Man, like, I cut it off!” He felt his head around the sides of the cap. “You know?” he said. “Big gag!”

  “What’d you do that for, Flip?” Manny asked.

  “Big gag, I told you! Wonder what Wylie’s doing. Why ain’t he coming?”

  “He has another engagement,” Bardo said. “Now, let’s proceed. We’ll sing sotto voce.”

  “I thought we were going to sing yo
ur song,” Flip said.

  “Sotto voce means ‘quietly,’ Heine.”

  “It’d only take me a minute to run home with Sinny, Bardo,” Manny said as Bardo started to lead them from the park, up toward the pathway between the road and the reservoir.

  Bardo whirled and snapped, “Look, mister, I’m losing patience with you!”

  “I only thought — well, I have to keep carrying this box, Bardo.”

  “When a man carries something he loves, Pollack, it should seem to him to be the lightest thing in the world.”

  “Hey, that’s pretty good, man. You read that somewhere?”

  “Gee, Bardo, I never thought of that. I mean — ” “Onward!” Bardo said glibly. “Singing as we go.” “Whata we need to sing for?” Flip said as he followed Raleigh.

  Bardo answered evenly, “Because, Heine, we’re not a pack of disorganized hooligans. We’re on serious business tonight. A mission!” Heine agreed, “Crazy!”

  “Look!” Manny said, holding one hand around the box, his free hand pointing up at the summer sky and the stars clustered there in thick, brilliant patches. “The Dippers are out, both of them, and there’s Orion. He’s the hunter. My brother Irv knew all about that stuff.”

  “He must have been an astute observer,” Bardo commented. “Very few people know anything about Orion.”

  “That’s for sure, man. I didn’t even dig the name.”

  “Sure,” Manny said. “You can always tell Orion by those three bright stars there. See them? All in a row. That’s his hunting belt.”

  “Yeah?” Flip said. “Geez, all the things to know in the world. You just never could know all the things.”

  “Orion,” Bardo said in his flat monotone, “is probably the most famous hunter in all of classic mythology. He cleared a whole island of wild, filthy beasts. He used a club for the purpose. He clubbed those loathsome beasts!”

  “The island began with the letter D — Dios, or something like that,” Manny said.