Michael Collins - Act of Fear

‘You’ve got three choices, kid. You can come back with me, hand that ticket over to the police, and let Roth take what’s coming to him. Then you can go ahead and live your own life.

‘Or you can try to keep a jump ahead of Roth. Maybe you’d make it. You’ll live in shacks like this. You’ll hop from town to town taking lousy jobs just to eat. You’ll change your name so often you’ll begin to forget who you are.

‘Or you could try to talk to Roth and join him. Maybe you could convince him that you’re okay, that you want to play his side of the street. I doubt if he’d believe you now, but he just might. You could even kill me for openers to show Roth how regular you are.’

That was a shocker to make him face the life it would be with Roth. Actually, I doubted that Roth would trust him now no matter what he did. It would always be too easy for Jo-Jo to get in good with Pappas by telling on Roth. Jo-Jo was ahead of me.

‘There’s a fourth way, Fortune,’ Jo-Jo said. ‘I could take the ticket to Pappas. That should put me in good. The family, too.’

I nodded. ‘Why not? Only that would be the same as going in with Roth. I’m not even sure Andy would trust you now, or help your family after they tried to hold out on him, but maybe he would. Then you’d be just another punk kid hood who sooner or later would end up on a slab or in the river.’

Jo-Jo said nothing. I watched him. I blew a cloud of smoke. Now I had to try to use him against himself. I had to use who and what I knew he was.

‘Besides,’ I said. I leaned towards him. ‘You could have done that from the start. You could have gone to Pappas in the first place. Only you couldn’t do it, could you? You hate Pappas and all he stands for. You want no part of the rackets. That was why you ran in the first place. You didn’t want to hurt your family by going to the police, but you couldn’t stomach either covering for Roth or going to Pappas. So all you could do was run and hide.’

He sat silent. I had not told him anything he had not told himself. He was a smart kid and a good kid, and he had had a week to think all alone. I just made him face what he knew. Like a psychiatrist. He hated his father’s way of life. He hated what his father had become. He hated Roth and Pappas and all that he had grown up with. He wanted to be free to do what he dreamed of doing. Yet he loved his father and the whole crummy family.

‘Listen to me, Jo-Jo,’ I said. I’m going to tell you a story. There was a kid once a lot like you. He… no, to hell with that. The kid was me, Dan Fortune. I was sixteen, born and raised in Chelsea. A kid no better than any other in Chelsea. It was the Depression, and it was bad. My father was a cop. Yeh, that’s right. He was a cop about as good as any other. If he got a little offer of graft, maybe he took it and maybe he didn’t, it depended. Maybe he was fair to people, and maybe he wasn’t. My mother was a dancer and a beauty. She was alone a lot. One day my old man caught her with a guy and he nearly killed the guy. He was tossed off the force for that. He started to drink. He beat my mother regular. Then one day he left. He never could forgive her, so he left. After that she had to raise me the best she could. She got old, she wasn’t so pretty, she took to booze herself. What could she do to support me? She liked men. So she had a lot of “friends,” many of them on the police force. I had a different “uncle” every couple of months, and a lot of distant cousins in between.’

I stubbed out my cigarette in the seashell this cheap motel called an ashtray. My arm hurt; the missing arm. The arm that wasn’t there ached from my toes to my teeth. I rubbed at it, but I knew that the ache was not going to go away. Not yet. I heard my own teeth grind in my mouth. This was the full story, the real story I never thought about and made up the other stories to hide. Now I was telling it. To save a good kid, and myself.

‘I hated them. My dirty rotten father who didn’t love enough to forgive or even understand. My whore of a mother who could not face life sober or alone. She couldn’t face an empty bed when it got dark. Sure, she told herself that it was all for me, but it wasn’t for me. She just had to have men to tell her that she was a woman even if her man had run out on her. So I hated them, and because I hated them I was going to show them I could do for them what they never did for me. I was going to take care of my mother. I was going to be a big man and show my rotten coward of a father. You know what a kid does in Chelsea if he wants to be big. Sure. He steals, he mugs, he becomes a crook.’

I lighted a cigarette. Another. My arm throbbed and my teeth hurt down to the roots. ‘You do what your society tells you to do to get ahead. If I’d been born in the suburbs I’d probably have quit school to get a job and to hell with any fine future. But I was born in the slums, so I started stealing. I was pretty good. I supported my mother for a year. Then I fell into the hold of a ship I was looting. The cops couldn’t touch me, but I lost my arm from that fall. In the hospital I was bitter at first, then I started to think. One night around 4 a.m. I suddenly got the message. Who was I to set myself up as judge and jury? Because that was what I was doing. My mother and father had lived their own lives, made their own choices. They were what they were. Who the hell was I to sacrifice myself for them? Who gave me the right to be responsible for their lives? I lost my arm stealing for them! I had gone out and done what my world told me to do. It had cost me my arm. And for what? I had no right to judge them, to be a martyr for them. I didn’t want to be a thief. I suddenly asked myself what I wanted? Me. What did I owe myself?’

I smoked easier. My arm did not ache as much. ‘I asked myself what I was doing? I was living their lives. I had no right to apologize for their lives. I had, somewhere, a life of my own. I had a duty to myself. My mother had to live her own life, and my father had to make his own amends. I had no right to suffer for them. When I got out of the hospital I left the city. I never broke the law again. I made my own life, Jo-Jo. Maybe I didn’t make it much, but that’s another story. At least I failed in my own life, not in their life.’

My throat was dry. It had been a long speech. Maybe I should have heard it more often myself and made more of my life. Who knows? All I knew is that I wanted Jo-Jo to hear it. He was young, and I had never had a son.

‘People say that a good man faces his obligations,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s true. Only too many men face every obligation except the hard one. The hard duty is what you owe yourself. When you face your obligations to everyone else the only person you can hurt is yourself. For most people that’s easy. It’s a lot harder to hurt someone else, someone you love, are close to. When you hurt someone for a purpose you take the risk that the purpose wasn’t worth it. Because you have to hurt them before you know you can do what you hurt them to do. You might not be worth another person’s pain. You don’t know until you do it, and if you fail, it’s too late. It’s easier to let it slide, hurt yourself for the sake of others, and feel good and noble and loved. It’s harder to follow your own dream the way the old Vikings did.’

The cabin was quiet. I listened to the cars pass on the highway. Then Jo-Jo smiled. Not a smile of happiness or of triumph or of relief. A smile of simple recognition.

‘They did, didn’t they?’ Jo-Jo said. ‘The Vikings didn’t take handouts. My father even lets them call him Swede.’

It’s his life, Jo-Jo,’ I said.

‘Yeh,’ Jo-Jo said.

‘Win or lose, they have their own lives,’ I said. ‘They made their choice. You can’t live for them. The Vikings left their kids and old folks behind. Not because they were mean or cruel, but because they were honest; and it had to be that way.’