John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“About friggin time with this WAR!” says Nub, who is a fiend for red-hots and always has two, one with onions and one with pickle relish, laid on thick. “I mean shit or get off the friggin pot.”

“This is gonna be big,” says Ikey, pushing the scoop of vanilla under the surface of his root beer with the spoon. “You remember how we sold when they sprang the Señorita?”

“That was only the Journal. ”

“So? This’ll be good for everybody.”

The Journal made a big deal out of this beautiful Cuban Señorita the Spanish bastids had violated and tortured and locked up in a dungeon in Havana, got the Women of America to write letters to their king or queen or whatever they got over there, then finally lost patience and sent their own guy, just a scribbler, down to spring her out of the joint with a ladder and some men’s clothes for disguise. Boy Willie hogged the headlines for a week.

“Well it’s a damn sight better than that Cross of Silver malarkey they were floggin. Jesus, Mary, an Joseph, how’s a guy spose to sell papers, they can’t make up better news than that?”

“You at least need a society dame floatin in the river. Or a riot where the Army gets to blast away—”

“Like that Pullman strike.”

“Okay for a week,” says Chezz DiMucci. “But them labor things burn out quick.”

“What about that Coxey’s Army circus?” says Beans.

“Or Dr. Holmes who croaked all the people in Chicago?” says Yid Slivovitz.

“Most of youse weren’t born yet,” says Slow Moe Hershel who is flipping burgers behind the counter, Moe who used to be a newsie himself when the Sun was the hottest rag in town, “but when they brung Geronimo in off the warpath, that was a story . Couldn’t print em fast enough.”

“And leave us not forget—” says Nub Riley, spreading his hands to signal he’s got the topper, “Remember the Friggin Maine .”

They all have to pull their faces out of their feedbags for that one. What a day that was, what a week.

“I had a guy bought my whole bundle, gimme a buck. Couldn’t of been more than fourteen, fifteen left.”

“Jeez, the way they played it out — Day One, the ship blows up. Day Two, who blew the ship up? Day Three, we think we know. Day Four, we sent down our experts, here’s the facts — and on and on and on—”

“The extra where they printed the names of the diseased—”

“You mean de ceased .”

“You sure?”

“Diseased is your mama’s bunny hole. Deceased is them unfortunate sailors on the Maine. ”

“But WAR!—”

“ WAR!—”

“Fellas, I been in the newspaper business a long time,” says Yid, who is thirteen, “but nothing we been through in our lives has prepared us for this.”

Slow Moe lays a burger down and the Yellow Kid flips the lid and dumps ketchup on it. It comes with potatoes cooked in the same grease and half a kosher dill.

“Over in Europe, China, Italy, places like that,” Yid continues, “they got a massacre every day of the week. But here in America, what—” he looks to Moe. “When was our last big WAR!?”

“Week ago Saturday,” says Moe, not looking up from the grill. “The Eastmans took apart a social function the Five Pointers was hosting.”

“Friggin numbskull. Don’t you read the papers?”

“Even when I sold em,” says Moe, “I never looked past the headlines.”

“It must have been the Civil WAR!, that they put up all the statues about,” offers Ikey.

“Yeah,” says Chezz. “When we took over Mexico.”

“I bet Boy Willie goes down there to Cuba himself, bags a couple Dagoes for the front page.”

“Yeah, then what’s Jewseph Pulitzer gonna do? He’s too old to ride a horse.”

“Any stunt Hearst pulls, Poppa Joe’s gonna try to top him. If we’re sellin this good already and nobody’s fired a shot yet, just wait’ll the lead starts flying. We just gotta pray they can keep it going awhile.”

The pie is hot and full of apples and cinnamon and his stomach is full, tight even, like the chocolate fizzer is still bubbling inside him when they cross the street to Newsome’s Palace of Pleasures. Music blasts them as they enter, the Coinola Orchestrion that Gruesome Newsome who owns the arcade feeds to attract business pumping out a version of Down Went Mc Ginty , piano tambourine bells xylophone woodblock triangle snare bass and cymbal all-in-one mechanically slamming out the song punched on the paper scroll. Ikey and the Yellow Kid march straight down the center aisle, past the bagatelle games and the Big Six slots that never friggin pay off and the Electro Shock Machine and the Fortune Teller and the Automatic Billiards and the Lung Tester and the Skill-Shooter Pistol Range and the box-ball setups and the Scientific Punching Machine and all the Black Diamond Gum vendors to the last Mutoscope viewer on the left.

“This is the one,” says Ikey, pointing at the photo card above it that advertises the view. “I seen it the other day, twice.”

The Kid feeds it a Lincoln and gets on his toes to get his eyes to the slot. They put the ones that are spose to be for adults up on a board to make them taller, but not really so tall you can’t look if you want to. The light comes on and he starts to crank, nice and steady, so the Lady Undressing for Bath moves a little slower than normal.

“Careful you don’t run it out,” says Ikey. “She don’t ever make it into the tub.”

The Kid cranks it backward then, which Gruesome Newsome says you can’t do cause it hurts the machine but really cause he doesn’t want anybody getting more than a minute view for their penny, but what fun is it to see the lady put her clothes back on?

He cranks it forward again, real slow, till what must be nearly the last card flips into view and holds it there.

“Nice melons.”

“What I tell you?”

The woman is down to her unders, a white corset cinched tight in the middle and black stockings you can follow all the way up to her—

Whap! His cap flies off as Gruesome smacks the back of his head.

“What I tell you little shits?”

“Hey, I paid!”

“That don’t mean you can park yourself there with your tongue down the slot.”

The Kid bends to retrieve his cap. “Don’t cost you nothin extra.”

“You monopolize the machine, nobody else can see it.” There is ten or eleven of the guys in the joint at the moment, and plenty of machines to go around.

“Besides, you got the same crappy pitchers every week,” says Ikey. “Even Fine changes his once in a while.”

Fine runs the Garden of Delights two blocks down, but it’s smaller and dirtier and there’s a character they all call Creepy Drawers who seems to hang there all day long.

“You don’t like it,” says Newsome, “you can hit the bricks.”

They stroll around a few more minutes just to show him he can’t boss a paying customer, and then the Kid has to blow.

“I told my sister I’d come by,” he says.

The Yellow Kid, running, always running in the daytime cause there is money to make if you are quick on your feet and loud and fearless, cuts across Worth Street, the morning’s pennies rattling in the grouch bag tied around his waist and stuffed into his crotch, four more in his pocket in case the guinea kids catch him when he hurries past Mulberry and Mott and he needs something to surrender, running all the way to Chatham Square where he stops in front of Altgeld’s to look at the crates.

All the downtown Social Clubs buy from Altgeld when one of their brothers kicks the bucket, the crate from Altgeld and flowers from Kil-murray’s. There are three in the window now, two full-size and one cut short for kids. One of the full-size is the basic model, a wood rectangle with no metal fittings like the old-country hebes have to use, but the other is a real beauty, a polished box that juts out wider at the shoulders, with the shiny brass handles for your pals to hang on to and all kinds of fancy carving on the lid. If he’d had the dough he’d have popped for something like that for Maminka, instead of her riding the damn barge that might as well be a garbage scow up to Hart Island where One-Nugget Feeny says they just dump you in the common trench, shoulder to shoulder packed three deep with the other dead. Or worse, give you to the junior croakers to cut apart and learn their trade. But there was no dough and the Old Man fell apart, stupid Bohunk bastid, so there she was.