Stephen Dixon - Frog

They’re hanging out on Broadway, sitting against a parked car, night, when a car pulls up, “Hey,” the passenger yells, a friend, the driver another friend beside him, new Olds 98, “Want a ride? Hop in.” They get in, “Where’d you get it?… Whose is it?” and the driver says “A cousin’s,” and Howard says “Nice car… feel the leather,” and the driver’s friend next to him says “Actually, we shouldn’t lie,” and they laugh together, “We saw it doubleparked in front of Tip Toe, motor running, vent window open, keys inside, so pinched it,” and he says “This is a stolen car?” and the driver says “That’s it, babe, now where you want to go?” and he says “Out of it — stop the fucking thing,” and the front passenger says “See , I told you not to pick them up — let the fraidy-cat out,” when they sideswipe a cab, tear of metal, “Holy shit,” the driver says and puts on speed down Broadway, cab following them honking his horn, “What the hell we gonna do now?” front passenger says, through a red light, almost hitting some people crossing, cabby still behind them honking and now flashing his headlights on and off, right on Seventy-seventh Street, “Pull up so we can make a run for it,” guy next to Howard yells, car brakes, stops, halfway up the street, driver runs out his side, front passenger out his, Howard’s door on the left won’t open though it’s unlocked, guy on right has trouble opening his door, Howard looks back, cab’s stopped and driver jumps out of it and runs to their car, right door opens and friend falls out, gets up and runs, Howard’s door still stuck, goes out the other back door, starts running to West End Avenue, hand on his shoulder, “You!” a man says, but he gets out from under the hand, runs to West End, crosses it, Riverside Drive, into the park, through it north, couple blocks away hides behind bushes, everything seems quiet, birds, far-off traffic, that’s all, waits, coast seems clear, goes back to Eighty-third Street but on the other side of Broadway looking for his friends, nobody’s there, walks around the block and comes back, still nobody’s there, walks home, sees a commotion on Seventy-seventh where their car was, figures the cabby never recognized him from the back, goes up the block, cab still there, stolen car, police around, a crowd, he asks a man what happened, “Some kids shot someone on Ninety-sixth, stole a car, crashed into a few of them and wound up here, that cabby over there following them because he was the last one to get clipped, but they got away.” “Jesus,” he says, “anybody hurt?” “I told you, someone shot.” “Oh God, that’s awful. Dead?” “Don’t know. Ask the cop, not that he’ll tell you anything,” and the man leaves and he watches for a while, it’s just a lot of talking between the cabby and the police and some people around him who say they saw most of it, and goes home.

They pick up a Volkswagen and put it into the lobby of an apartment building and wait for the elevator man to come down, open the elevator door and see it. He looks around, through the lobby doors to the street but doesn’t seem to see them. “Hey hey, over here,” they yell, and he shakes his fist at them. They’re all laughing and run away. There’s an old lady in the neighborhood, they call her the Black Widow, always wears black, carries a black umbrella, black hat with a veil over her face, and whenever she sees them she says “Stinking filthy kids, you’ll never be anything, go away, leave this street in peace,” and shakes the closed umbrella at them and sometimes raises it as if she’s going to hit them. They always laugh at her and sometimes dodge around her swinging umbrella and say “Black Widow, Black Widow’s going to bite,” but one day when she’s doing that to them, just shouting and shaking the umbrella, one of his friends comes up behind her and dumps a street can of garbage over her head. Some of it’s dribbling down her and she screams savagely at them, in another language they never heard from her before and can’t understand, and most of them laugh as if they never saw anything so funny and they all run away. When they get together right after at a candy store they go to he says “Really, it’s got to be wrong, she’s just nuts and didn’t deserve that.” They say “Sure she did. She’s a crazy old bag who doesn’t know if she got garbage on her or rain or what.” Next time he’s with them and sees her walking their way he says “Come on, let’s not do anything; let her yell and scream and wave her screwy umbrella all she wants.” “What are you talking about, if she comes after us, and we got to have every day our fun,” and he crosses Broadway and watches the lady walk around them, not shouting or waving her umbrella and looking a little scared, and they chant “Black Widow, Black Widow, Black Widow’s lost her bite.” A gang comes up to them one afternoon after school, they’re from the West Fifties and Sixties, he can tell by the gang name on their jackets, and one of them steps out from the others and says “The Saxons challenge whatever your gang’s name is to a fight.” They say they’re not a fighting gang and have no gripes against them and if they want them to move on, they will. The gang’s about four times larger than their group and some of the members in it older and bigger, though there are a whole bunch of small young kids with them too. The gang calls them chickens and pansies and when they start walking away the gang follows them and then chases them till they see a cop; then they run back downtown. A week later on Broadway again the gang suddenly rounds the corner and runs at them and jumps them. Two are on him and a little one is trying to pull off his shoe and he swings wildly at the bigger ones, rips at their hair, kicks their balls, pulls at and bites one’s ear, shoves the little one into the street, knocks one of the older ones down and picks up the other one in a bearhug from behind while kicking at the one down and doesn’t know what to do with him but the guy’s punching his head so he throws him against a store window they’re up against. The guy goes through it and glass breaks around them. All the fighting stops, the gang members rush to their friend in the window who’s screaming he’s been stabbed, he got it in the face, and Howard, who’s bleeding from a lot of little glass cuts, and his friends run away. Day later they hear from someone who knows a member of the gang that the guy got glass in his neck and almost bled to death and has to stay in the hospital, and the gang’s looking for Howard. They all stay away from the neighborhood for things like hanging around it and going to parties, go to parties in the Bronx and Queens, and a few are escorted by their older brothers and fathers to and from home. Then they’re at a party in the neighborhood, a couple of weeks after their contact with the Saxons says they’ve dropped the matter and aren’t interested in them anymore, lights are out, soft music on, each of them has a girl to neck with, drinking the father’s liquor of the girl who’s giving the party, when they hear from the street “Hey mama boys in there, come on out.” There are about thirty of them, big and little, all in their gang jackets it seems, across the street, in it and on the sidewalk right outside. “Hey, we see you peeking through the windows,” they yell. “Look, don’t be afraid — come on out, all we want to do is powwow.” They stay put, don’t know what to do, maybe call the police but that’ll get the girl in trouble with her folks she says. Then the phone rings. “Someone with a funny voice wants to talk to you,” the girl says, giving Howard the phone. “This is Crazy Louie. We’ll let you all alone if I can have a crack at you on the street this minute, no matter even if you beat the pants off me.” “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve nothing against you and I only fight if my life’s at stake and I don’t see why anything should be like that now. Anyway, you got to think I’m nuts going into the street alone with you and with all your friends, not that I want to any time.” “So I’ll tell you what. I’ll have them all get away. It’ll only be me out here and if you want I’ll even have one of my arms tied behind my back. If you don’t want to come out because you think I’m a better fighter than you, that should give you the odds.” “Listen, I’m sorry for your friend through the glass, but he was picking on me, three to one, so I had to do something. And I heard you use your feet more than your hands, so I’m sure you’ll still kick the shit out of me.” “Hey, baby, I’m going to dust you up bad, very bad, so why not have it done today?” “No thanks,” and he hangs up, tells them what Louie said. One of his friends says “He could be drunk and you might be able to beat him up and then we’ll all be off.” “You out of your head? Where you think he got his name from? There’s no stopping him. He fights like a maniac, butts his head, kicks you everywhere, vomits on you if he has to, pounds your face against concrete till you’re half dead. That’s what I heard. And those guys use zip guns. Beat up Crazy Louie and they could use it on me.” One friend calls his father who he knows has some pretty tough friends over for cards and the men come over in topcoats with the collars turned up, six of them, mostly big guys except for his friend’s father, and each of them keeps his hand in his side coat pocket as if packing a gun, and they say “All right, you kids, we’re cops, so you better beat it or we’re running the bunch of you in,” and the gang takes off. Howard and his friends stay away from the neighborhood for parties and movies and things like that for another month. Then they hear from their contact that Crazy Louie got busted for stomping someone almost to death, some of the older Saxons got drafted into the army, and the rest of them have a gang war going with a gang south of their territory and have sort of lost interest in them.