The Vulture (12 page)

‘I'm goin’ t'bed,’ I told her.

‘Goodnight,’ she said tolerantly.

I wanted to leave and get out of the way of her latest kick. She complained now that I was trying to embarrass her in front of all the parents in the neighborhood. My behavior was not an indication of the way I had been raised. I was turning out to be my father's son.

I passed my little brother's bed and looked down on him. There was no question about whose son she wanted him to
be. Draped over the back of the bed was the baseball shirt with the number seven. I could never tell him enough about baseball, and particularly Mickey Mantle. Once or twice he had talked me into going with him to see the Yankees. But his interest was more the thrill of going somewhere with a million people than the game. He was only seven. He had had pneumonia the year before, when it was time to start school, and missed a year. Now all I could hear about lately was starting school. No more Mickey Mantle. I was a Mets fan anyway, if I was anything. The Mets were losers from the word ‘go.’ The only kinds of records they set were for the most games lost and most people coming to the game. Shea Stadium was a madhouse. The people got more hits than the team did. Somebody would get high and start cursing, and the next thing you knew, whole sections were being kicked out. The Man was ruthless. The Mets were the team that the Negro and Puerto Rican people could identify with. They were the ones with the whipped heads and the kicked asses. They were the underdog on the streets of New York, like the Mets were on the baseball diamond. The fans who got drunk and swung on the Man when he tried to quiet them down were heroes, because they were striking a blow for underdogs everywhere. When they were finally subdued and beat into unconsciousness, it was a sad, proud moment. They had not given up.

Junior’s Dream

‘First and third, and nobody out here in the bottom of the fourth. There’s no score in the ballgame. Both teams had scoring opportunities earlier, but strong defensive plays turned the tide . . . Kranepool is the hitter. Eddie’s batting .274. He grounded out to Javier in the first . . . They’ll be pitching away
from his power, trying to make him hit the ball to left. Brock shaded toward the line.’

‘So what you been into, Junior. I haven’t been seein’ you.’

‘Nothin’ much. Been too hot.’

‘I heard the guys tellin’ you Clarice was lookin’ for you. Why don’ you give her a play?’

‘I ain’ got time to be bothered with Clarice.’

‘Well, all right. I guess you said that.’

‘. . . pitch on the way to Kranepool is outside. Mets baseball is brought to you by Rheingold, the extra-dry lager beer. Also by Winston, America’s largest-selling filter cigarette. Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.’

‘First and third, an’ nobody out. Bet the bastards don’t even score.’

‘They gon’ get a run,’ I said.

We were sitting out on the sidewalk in front of José’s store. In the middle of the block between Eighth and Ninth avenues on 17th Street, there are many walk-up apartments that open onto the street. Ricky, the guy I was sitting next to, lived between José’s store and Isidro’s house. I had been playing dominoes with José and a few of the other men before the game came on. Kids and old ladies had been all over the place. I knew it wasn’t late, but everyone had left. Ricky asked me if I wanted some Colt .45, and we had since waded through the last two innings of the first game of a double-header, and almost four innings of the second game. We had also put two six-packs away.

‘. . . there’s a fly ball to left field. It’s deep enough to score the run. Brock makes the catch, and Harrelson scores, with the first run of the second game. The Mets lead one to nothing.’

‘I told you they were gonna score,’ I said.

‘It sure is a nice night. I wish we could get a breeze like this in my place every night. Last night was so goddamn hot I couldn’t even move. José is gonna have to do something about that fan. I bought a fan three weeks ago, and that sonuvabitch
is busted already. It never did stir up a helluva lotta air, but, damn, now I can’t get a thing.’

‘One to nothing,’ I said. ‘I shoulda bet you.’

‘You want some more beer? I got more upstairs.’

‘Naw, man, I’m fulla beer.’

‘I’m gonna get myself another one. Don’t you take my fifty-dollar radio.’

‘Fifty dollars my ass! Twenty-five on Forty-second. A 42nd Street gyp joint.’ I picked up the radio and looked at it closely, but I couldn’t make out the name for some reason. A drop of rain hit me on the nose.

‘. . . ground ball to Maxvill at short. Over to Javier for one and to Cepeda completes the double play. But the Mets got one run on two hits. There were no Redbird errors, and no one left on base. We go into the top of the fifth with the score: The New York Mets one and the Saint Louis Cardinals nothing. Now for a word about . . .’

I was watching Orlando Cepeda chase a foul ball on the TV screen. The color was great, but there was no sound. I kept getting up to turn the damn thing up, but I could never hear the description. Ricky was in the kitchen talking about something that I couldn’t translate either. I kept thinking he and I were on TV too, because everything in the room was the color of something on the screen. I was drinking some Scotch from a glass that reflected my face in the bottom. I kept thinking that as soon as I finished that drink, I was going to leave, rain or no rain, but every time I tried to drain the glass and looked back, there was as much as I started with.

I was getting sleepy. ‘Ricky, fix the damn sound.’

I was half-lying back on the couch, and I could hear Ricky singing in the kitchen. I wanted to sleep, but his singing kept me awake. As I hollered for him to shut up, he came through the door saying that he hadn’t opened his mouth. I closed my eyes and cursed the silly bastard. Of course he
had opened his mouth, or someone was in there opening it for him.

I could feel his hands on me. He was unzipping my fly, and I knew that he couldn’t say he wasn’t doing it. I kept thinking I was going to raise up and knock the hell out of him. You find out about people when you get high with them. They start to come out from where they really see things. Ricky was a faggot! Just a second, you scroungy bastard, trying to get me high and feel me up like a bitch! That’s the only thing I knew for sure. I didn’t know you were a faggot, Ricky, because I wouldn’t have come up here and had a drink with you or sat outside and rapped with you if I had known you were a faggot. Ricky, you know how everyone looks on faggots, and I’m going to be the man, and I don’t want nobody to think that the man is a cootie-loo. I would’ve drank your stuff outside and told you I was leaving when it started raining, like I didn’t know what you were up to, because I
didn’t
know what you were up to. You got to string them queers along so you can use them. They got money and fine cribs an’ . . .

‘You can dig that, can’t you, Junior?’ Ricky whispered. ‘You got a nice long one for such a young man. Ahhhh, the youth of America.’

I could hear the rain beating against the window, but it wasn’t cooling anything off. It was hot in Ricky’s stuffy little place with all the colors. I didn’t even open my eyes, but I could picture the dingy little room. It was dingy and gray with chips of plaster on the floor. Ricky didn’t have any clothes on, and his pecker was stiff.

‘I want you to touch me, Junior,’ Ricky gasped.

‘You’re crazy!’ I said, opening my eyes. ‘Ricky, you a fag! I didn’t know you wuz a fag! I’m gettin’ the hell outta here.’ I looked down and reached for my clothes that were scattered all over the rug. All of the color had come back to the room.

‘You know you don’t really want to go, Junior. Look at you.
You want everything I can give you. You’re conditioned by society not to like the thought of a male-to-male relationship, but nobody is entirely heterosexual, because if he was or she was, they couldn’t stand to sit down for a minute with a member of their sex. Junior, we’re all the same!’

‘Then I’m gonna kick our ass instead of just yours,’ I shouted. I’m screaming and running down the hall with good old Ricky right behind me grinning.

‘You like it, Junior. You like it, and you know you like it, but you think you can run away because of society. I’m gonna run with you, Junior.’

I turned and swung at Ricky and thought I had broken his face into a thousand pieces, but I had slammed into the wall and knocked a hole in the plaster. The hole revealed Ricky’s grinning face. He had somehow sneaked away from me. I ran down the stairs three at a time, and when I looked up at the next landing, Ricky was ahead of me going down the stairs backwards. I tumbled down the stoop in a head-long dive and landed in the middle of 17th Street traffic. I thought it was ten o’clock at night, and it’s the rush hour. There is a traffic cop. What’s he doing on a side street? I think I’ll ask him which way I turn to land back at ten o’clock. Everyone knows that the Man is a friend of the people and not a rotten pig like they’re made out to be by hippies and militants. They aren’t really the kind of men who spread Vaseline on your body and then beat you so that your body won’t show any marks. ‘Hey, Mr Cop, Man, Fuzz, Sir,’ I said, but I felt silly. Now back inside my head the weekend man that gets in my bottle when I drink hammered away at the bass drum and said: ‘But who would believe that only minutes ago you were listening to the Mets game in Saint Louis, where they were playing a twi-night double-header? Just because you think some fag is behind you or in front of you. Why don’t you turn on the radio?’ Okay, I think I will.

‘Bottom half of the sixth inning, in case you’ve just joined
us. The Mets are leading one to nothing. They lost the first game in ten innings by a field goal and two free throws by Larry Wilson, the Cardinal free safety.’

Well, that proves that everything I said was true, I guess. There is obviously a night double-header going on in Saint Louis right now, and the time difference is not that great, so there must be something wrong with a lot of things, so I’ll talk to the cop who’s . . . gone. I noticed that I was in the middle of a circle of REA trucks on their way in from a day of delivering whatever it is they deliver. I was screaming because I knew they’d hit me, and they didn’t see me. Ricky! What did you put in the Colt .45? I knelt in the middle of 17th Street and yelled at the top of my lungs.

‘Hit me, goddamn you! I don’ wanna stay here no more,’ I screamed.

I peeked through my fingers and saw a truck coming, but it stopped right in front of me. Ricky was driving the truck. The word ‘Clarice’ was painted across the front bumper of the truck.

‘I’ve got to find Clarice,’ I said to myself.

I got to my feet as Ricky stepped on the gas, and I started running toward Ninth Avenue, trying to make it to Clarice before the truck ran over me. I turned one last time to see Ricky closing in on me. I closed my eyes and watched Ricky swerve and hit the policeman, knocking him through the air and over my head, where he bounced on a cloud with springs shooting out of his back and head. I rolled over, and Clarice reached for me. We were in bed naked together. I was throbbing. I moved to her and kissed her. She opened her mouth like Debbie did, but I didn’t dodge. I kissed her as I thrust my tongue against hers in the tunnel formed by our mouths. I felt her hands running back and forth on me lightly, teasing me. She was driving me crazy on purpose, and I wanted to pull back so that I could screw her, but she continued to nibble at my lips
and tongue. I was frozen and shaking at the same time. All of a sudden I felt myself tumbling and my stomach starting to twitch. I had a feeling in my lower belly like the minute you’re through pissing and there seems to be more fluid in your body. It’s a shivering, quivering, nervous excitement. I pulled away and rolled onto the floor. I saw the end of my dick shriveling to normal size.

‘C’mon, Junior,’ Clarice called. ‘You got me all hot and bothered.’ I heard her giggling, and her toes dug into my back. I started pounding my fist against the floor.

‘You and Ricky and Ricky and you and you all set it up because you wanted me to be all fucked up in the head, but it won’t work, because I’m hip to what’s happening, and any girl I know that sets up a plot with a cat that everybody knows is a fag except the guy they’re trying to run this game on, well, that girl has got a lot of nerve going over to all the Junior Jones boys and telling them that she’s in love with this cat she’s just about to make an ass of, because she’s been had by everybody in the neighborhood and everybody knows she’s just a slut, so she should be trying to make a good impression instead of teaming up with a faggot!’

‘I can’t! can’t! Clarice, I’m not a faggot. I just can’t.’

I woke up!

My eyes were stung with tears, and the memories of the dream closed in on me. I was tangled in the sheet, and my pillow was gone. My body was covered with perspiration, and I had come in my pajama bottoms. They felt sticky and slimy against my thighs. I got up and stumbled over to the chair and got a smoke while I pulled off the pajama pants and rubbed the cream off my thighs. I wondered if I had screamed and whether or not my baby brother had heard. Evidently he hadn’t heard a sound. I stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray and dived back into bed.

November 16, 1968

School was two weeks late getting started because of a strike by the New York City schoolteachers. I couldn’t have been happier before school began. I had been hinting that I wanted to quit school altogether, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it. Every time I tried to say something about not going to school but working, she’d bring up the neighbors and the jobs their sons had. All of them had been blessed with seventy-five-dollar-a-week slaves because they had their high-school diplomas. I had more of a feeling that Mom was concerned about what the neighbors would say about her if I just decided I’d had it at the beginning of my junior year.

I always drew the line when she started talking about college and that trash. She wanted me to go because she had never had the opportunity. I’d have a chance to meet a lot of intelligent women. I would also be a thing for her to lay on the neighbors for the next forty years, even if I was unhappy about the whole damn thing.