Pete Hamill - North River

Then she was gone. He thought: Maybe she goes to church. Maybe she has relatives here that she’s never mentioned. Maybe she has a lover.

Delaney and Carlito walked under a cold sun to Astor Place, to pick up the Lexington Avenue local. The boy’s mittened hand was warm, and he gazed at everything he saw. Delaney helped him in the naming of the world. Newsstand. Garbage can. Bus. Taxi. Car. Lamppost. Sidewalk. Street. All nouns. He was still too young for most verbs.

“This is the subway,” Delaney explained, as they entered the kiosk at Fourth Avenue. He glanced left at the many used-book stores that stretched to Union Square. A woman carried a heavy bag of books into one of them, perhaps to raise the cash to eat for three days.

“Ubway,” Carlito said.

“S-s-s-subway,” Delaney said.

“S-s-s-subway,” Carlito said.

“Good!”

“Sssss ubway!”

They passed through the turnstile to the crowded platform. Fewer trains were running on Sundays, to save money, but nobody seemed irritated by the long wait. It was Sunday. Delaney held the boy’s hand more tightly. Many people were reading the Daily News, starting with the sports section in the back of the paper and moving forward. Others were absorbed by Dick Tracy or Orphan Annie in the Sunday color comics. In the distance, they could all hear a train deep in the tunnel, and they shifted, stepped back from the edge of the platform, tucked the newspapers under their arms. Carlito’s eyes widened as the train rolled into the station, its wheels squealing, the air shoved aside, and lurched to a sudden halt.

“Tray!” the boy said. “Big tray! ”

They stepped inside the car, the boy absorbing everything: the many people, their woolen odor. Every seat was taken on the long straw-covered benches, and Delaney grabbed an overhead handle and held on to Carlito with his free hand, after checking the bulk of the camera in his pocket. He did not explain to the boy about pickpockets. Carlito was standing directly in front of a heavy light-skinned black woman with a flowered hat. She was reading a Bible. No doubt heading uptown to church. He looked down and realized that Carlito was staring at the woman. She was not as dark as Bessie, the woman who came to clean. Her skin was more golden than black. The boy looked up at Delaney, and mouthed the word “Mamá” with a puzzled look on his face. Delaney squeezed his hand, thinking: Perhaps he’s thinking of the bronze skins of Mexico. Perhaps this woman reminds him of what was left behind, and thus of his mother. The woman could feel the boy’s stare. She looked at him, smiled, and returned to the Old Testament. Carlito smiled too.

They made all the stops, Union Square, Twenty-third Street, Twenty-eighth Street, Thirty-third Street, and finally came into Grand Central. They turned to leave with almost all the other passengers, but the black woman sat there, determined to go on to a place where she could worship her God among her own people. Carlito smiled at her and said, “Bye.” She smiled back and said, “Bye-bye, little boy.”

Delaney took the boy’s hand to climb the stairs out of the subway. They were halfway to the top when the boy paused and looked behind him, as if memorizing the route. It was as if his eyes were also shutters. Delaney reached down and started to lift him, but the boy resisted: he did not want to be carried. They came to the top, and the boy stopped to watch a man in a business suit getting his shoes polished. What was this?

“Shoeshine,” Delaney said.

“Hoo-shy,” the boy said.

Delaney pointed at his own scuffed shoes and repeated the word, and remembered Rose in her wide men’s shoes.

“Hoo-shine,” the boy said, and they moved on. They saw a small crowd gathered around a bone-thin banjo player who was singing “Swanee” for the New Yorkers. Carlito stared at the man’s hand, strumming the banjo. He stood blinking, remembering something. Does he hear the guitars of Mexico? Is some memory of his father making a move? The boy turned to Delaney and pointed at the banjo player’s rat-colored boots, worn without socks.

“Hoo-shine,” the boy said.

“Yes, Carlito. He needs a shoeshine. But then, so do I.”

They walked on and passed under a wide arch, and then they were in the main concourse, and Delaney felt again as astonished as the boy must feel. He and Carlito just stood there, as some people hurried past them to departing trains while others stared at announcement boards, listening to an amplified voice barking about tracks and times. The voice caromed off such an immense plenitude of marble that it was almost unintelligible, and many people turned to one another, as if saying, “What track?”

Delaney could tell from their clothes and movement which people had jobs. The best-dressed people walked with a sense of destination. The others were in a permanent waiting room. The boy gazed around him, seeing beams of light pushing down from high arched windows to the station floor, and a ceiling that was blue and flecked with stars, and a wide marble staircase rising as if in a palace.

“Grand Central,” Delaney said, waving his arms in an encompassing way, holding the Brownie in his left hand. The boy did not try to say the two words. It was as if the place was so filled with grandeur and complexity that it could not have a name.

Then they walked around the great wide spaces, Delaney wishing there were enough light to make photographs, deciding there wasn’t. Then he saw another shine parlor, with three tall chairs for customers. And thought: Rose was right, I need a shoeshine. I might even deserve it. He led Carlito into the parlor and climbed onto a chair, placing his feet on the polished steel footrests. A small Italian man in his forties started brushing away the stains of winter.

“How’s business?” Delaney said.

“Lousy. Nobody got money for shoeshines.”

“They say it’s getting better.”

“Yeah? I don’t believe dem.” He was applying black polish to the shoes now. The skin of his hands was blacker than the polish.

Standing below him, Carlito was fixed on the process of the shoeshine. A fat man in a velvet-collared overcoat climbed into the empty chair beside Delaney.

“Christ, that’s the best exercise I had in months,” the man said, wheezing. “Climbin’ into this chair, it’s like going to the fifth floor somewhere.”

Delaney glanced at him. The face was familiar, from Big Jim’s club in the old days. And once in a while, at Angela’s. Pink face, veiny nose. He couldn’t remember the name. Delaney nodded a hello.

“Carmine,” the man said, “you gotta make one chair close to the ground. A chair for fat guys.”

“Den where am I gonna work, Judge?” Carmine said. “On my knees?”

They all laughed, and now Carmine was working on the final stage of Delaney’s shine, using saliva to help bring each shoe to a high glistening polish. The boy looked as if he’d seen a magic act. In a way, Delaney thought, given the state of my shoes, that’s what it was.

Delaney smiled in thanks at Carmine and started climbing down from the chair. The fat man paused. He squinted down at Delaney, who passed fifty cents to Carmine’s blackened hand.

“I thought that was you,” the man said. “You’re Big Jim Delaney’s kid, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Harry Flanagan,” the man said, offering a pudgy hand to be shaken. “Please’ to meet ya. I seen you box, before the war, some smoker down Baxter Street. You had a good right hand, I remember that.”

“Thanks.”

“Fast. Right on the button.”

“It’s a long time ago.”

A pause. “It was terrible what happened to your folks.”