William McGivern - Savage Streets

“He did okay in school. He was on some teams too — football and basketball. He’s good at things like that.” Mr. Resnick smiled, and Farrell was again surprised by his white teeth. “There’s no money in games, I told him that, but they keep a boy out of mischief. He doesn’t have a steady job, and I just don’t know what his plans are in that way. But he makes good money caddying.” Mr. Resnick laughed. “Damn it, but it beats me the way grown men will pay a kid five dollars to carry a pack of golf clubs around for them. But if they’ve got it to waste, I guess it’s all right. Duke pays board, but that’s his idea, not mine. I’m happy to board him, but he likes to be on his own.”

“You know, sometimes that kind of independence can be an act,” Farrell said. “A boy may want help and direction the worst possible way, but can’t bring himself to ask for it. It isn’t easy to ask for things like that — ideally, they should just be there for the taking, like fresh air.”

Mr. Resnick looked surprised. “Well, I don’t see why if a person’s got a tongue he can’t speak up for what he wants.”

“It’s not that simple,” Farrell said. “At least that’s the opinion of people who study these problems. If a child has been pushed too quickly into maturity — if a lot is demanded of him through the death of a parent, for instance, he may feel guilty about asking for the help he deserves. What I mean is that a child can feel that it’s a sign of weakness not to stand on his own two feet. Even when that’s too much to expect of him.”

“Is that so?” Mr. Resnick said, scratching his ear with the stem of his pipe. He laughed. “I guess kids do some pretty funny thinking, all the same. You see ’em running around and hollering and you wouldn’t think there was a thought in their heads. Now you talk about understanding Duke. Well, I can’t say I understand him myself. I’ve tried to, I’m the boy’s stepfather, after all, but he never likes to talk things over very much. And his teachers had the same feeling, so I guess I’m not the only one. But a funny tiling, he always had friends. Other kids always flocked after him.”

“Perhaps they admire things in him we don’t understand!”

“Well, that could be the truth of it,” Mr. Resnick said and nodded thoughtfully; he reacted as if Farrell had quoted an incontestable proverb. “Kids like to pal around together, don’t they? Well, Duke will get himself a steady job one of these days, and get in with a serious crowd of fellows. That will straighten him out. I was lucky, see. I got on at the railroad yards when I was eighteen. Working as a laborer around the rip track. The yardmaster told me to put in for a switching job, and a couple of years later I made the extra board. I bucked that board...” Resnick scratched his ear again with the stem of his pipe. “Well, let’s see. Four years anyway. Had to be up every morning and report in case somebody turned up sick. Finally I piled up enough seniority to work steady. Nights at first, until I had enough time to buck me a day job.” Mr. Resnick was smiling at these memories, his eyes brightening behind the rimless glasses. He seemed to have forgotten about Duke. “I saw a lot of funny things in that yard. Now that I’m retired I get to thinking those were pretty happy days. The yardmaster used to go duck hunting out on the Island, and he made a stew he called Duck Bergoo. Lord knows what all went into it, but when he got a lot of birds he’d make a big mess of Duck Bergoo and bring it down to the yard piping hot in gallon lard cans.”

Mr. Resnick pointed his pipe suddenly at Farrell. “Dangerous work, too, if you didn’t keep your eyes open. One night a man in my crew flagged a switch engine to buckle up a couple of gondolas. They were sitting on a curve of what we called the В lead. It led into the В yard, see. Well, the couplings were out of line account of the curve.” He made fists of his hands and bumped them together several times. “Like that, see? Wouldn’t lock. So this fellow reaches in and takes hold of the tongue to pull it into line when just then the switch engine comes back with another little bump. Well, the tongue locked that time all right, and caught this fellow’s hand. The pins turned in the knuckle of course, and that fellow’s whole arm was pulled into the coupling.” Mr. Resnick shook his head. “Round and round, turning slow mind you, flattening that fellow’s whole arm out until it wasn’t no thicker than a piece of paper. Well, he hung there until we could back the engine off and unhook the cars, and you never heard no human being make sounds like he did. Couple of fellows in the crew went off and threw up. I had to get him loose by myself. Funny, but I always had a good stomach. I can go and stare at an accident where people have been hurt and it doesn’t bother me a bit. You’re sorry, of course, a time like that, but not looking doesn’t do anybody any good!

“Well, I got to wandering, didn’t I? Now you was asking about Duke.” Mr. Resnick applied a match to his pipe and peered through the small leaping flame at Farrell. “You just go right on.”

“Well...” Farrell paused to swallow a dryness in his throat. “Do you know these friends of his? The crowd that calls itself the Chiefs?”

“Sure, I’ve met ’em.” Mr. Resnick laughed, obviously amused at some chance recollection. “Look, come out to the kitchen. I’ll show you what I had to do about them Chiefs.”

Farrell followed Mr. Resnick through a stale-smelling dining room to a large kitchen equipped with cupboards and a wall of appliances. Mr. Resnick pointed with his pipe to the cupboards which were secured by padlocks. “Last summer those kids got in the habit of stopping by here after swimming to make themselves iced tea and sandwiches. Remember there used to be a quarry over near where you live? Filled up with rain water in the spring and the kids used it for a swimming hole.”

Farrell remembered; the quarry had been condemned as a hazard by the Rosedale City Council after complaints from a committee of Faircrest residents. It was dangerous for small children, and the Council had agreed to fill it in. Bulldozers did the job in one day.

“Well, they piled in here after swimming,” Mr. Resnick said, still smiling reminiscently. “They brought their own food, but you know how kids are, they don’t leave things very tidy, so I put locks on the cupboards. Put one on the icebox too, so now tilings don’t get messed up. My wife always said I was the real housekeeper in the family.”

“I see,” Farrell said drily. “And if Duke is hungry he has to ask you for the keys?”

“That’s turned out to be the best system. He eats out a lot anyway. You know how kids are. They’ll eat hot dogs and french fries any day rather than a good meal at home.” Mr. Resnick opened a door beside the icebox and pointed to a flight of stairs leading down to a basement. “That’s where Duke sleeps. Talk about understanding that boy. He’s got a perfectly good bedroom upstairs, right next to mine, but he’s fixed up this place instead.” From his angle of vision Farrell saw the foot of a made-up cot, a table with magazines on it, and a few glossy photographs tacked to the wall. “He uses the cellar door, comes and goes without any fuss at all. Like I told you, he’s no trouble.”

“I can see that,” Farrell said.

Mr. Resnick accompanied him to the door. Farrell was eager to leave; he felt he could accomplish nothing by staying, and he found the sterile, inhuman atmosphere of the house depressing. Duke’s father lived like a clean, inoffensive animal, comfortable and well-fed; the reward of twenty-five years of faithful service to the railroad represented in his pipes and pulp magazines, plus random memories of a horrible accident and a stew of something or other called Duck Bergoo. He was not a case-history delinquent father — evil, drunken or vicious; but something had been left out of him. Where his heart should have been there was probably a clean, well-oiled metal pump. And Farrell found his indifference discouraging; there would be no help from that quarter.