Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

Ira ordered — frugally as usual — a roast beef sandwich and a glass of near beer. That consumed, and a nickel tip left, he accompanied Izzy back to the ballpark, or rather to its immediate environs across the street. The sun at its height shone down on a bare tract of ground, a large parking lot. Empty at present, as it would be for the next hour — by which time they would have to report back — the area lent itself to a “handball” game. Only too aware of his hamminess, Ira stayed out, but Izzy played, and so did the swarthy workmate around the peanut hamper, Steve, who was not, as Ira learned from Izzy, from Puerto Rico, but from the Philippines. He had been a lightweight boxer, was a dependable and aggressive hustler, and this season had been advanced to selling peanuts. He belted a ball, fielded a ball, with the same pugnacity he did everything else, bagging peanuts, tossing a bag to a fan in the middle of a row — and as redoubtable in concentration, catching the dime thrown to him afterward. Ira found himself wondering what a lone, or seemingly lone, Filipino did in New York. He couldn’t imagine, but knew better than to ask.

On the same ground where the hustlers now played, several dwellings, “railroad flats,” had evidently stood before, and had been razed to the ground, the rubble cleared away to make room for a parking lot. The only house still left standing, the one overlooking the parking lot, was a five-flight “dumbbell” tenement. Bereft of its former neighbors, it presented an expanse of rough, mortar-slopped brick wall, almost shaggy in appearance, and without a single window in it, except for those in the recess where the airshaft had been. In the windows of the recess on every floor sat Negro men, women, and children quietly watching the activities below.

Though Ira accorded little meaning to the sight, social meaning, and did not even consciously try to remember it, it would remain in his mind always, preserved by contrast or innate pathos — or simply by inherent design.

The rough, mortar-spattered wall from which the bricks of an abutting wall had obviously been torn away left a grayish-red, crude expanse. And opening on El and street and ballpark, a row of windows occupied by black faces, one above the other, framed in a vertical succession to the ledge atop the roof. Below them, on the bare dirt of the parking lot, Harry Stevens’s hustlers in their white uniforms played ball.

Across the way, under the El, fans were already lining up in front of the ticket booths. Gates would be opened in an hour or so — which behooved the players to end their game, and to go in for their assignments. He soon found out that meant the hustlers had to assemble in front of the window where both assignments and “checks” were issued. Once again, he followed Izzy to the big wooden portcullis, already lowered, behind which with pencil in hand and pad in front of him on the counter sat Walsh. He was in charge, an Irishman, in his early thirties, and with a crimped bridge of nose that spoke of a prizefighting past. Beside him, his assistant, Phil, sallow, Jewish, chain-smoker, who continually hawked up yellow-green phlegm and spat it on the floor. On the other side of the counter, in the dusk under the grandstands, the white-coated hustlers waited, a half-moon bunch, for the wares that Walsh and Phil would assign them to peddle for the day. Together with the assignment of wares they were tossed a menu card, on which was printed in bold letters the item the hustler sold, and its price; this was worn above the visor, affixed to the white cap. At the same time a numbered badge and a small stack of “checks” were issued, ten of them, square aluminum tabs, each indented on the edge and stamped “$1,” all held tightly together by a rubber band.

Preference was given those who were to vend popular or favorite items. First to be chosen were the peanut vendors, many of them young Irish kids; then the ice cream vendors, the hot dog vendors. Last to be chosen, and composing the majority, were the soda pop hustlers, lowest on the scale of hustling. Even here, though, preference was shown to the more aggressive veterans by calling out their names first, which entitled them to fill up their trays at the depots before those called after them, which gave them an edge in selling. Izzy was called about midway among those assigned soda, but he stayed with Ira until the very end, when only two or three novices were left, in order to vouch for his friend. Ira was now equipped, except in temerity, to sally forth into the world of baseball fans, proclaiming his shibboleth, as inculcated by Izzy: “Gitcha cold drinks here!”

A quarter hour still remained before the gates were opened. Empty of fans, the green grandstand seats stretched about on both sides, and from box seats next to the playing field to the high tiers in the back. They had their choice of seats, and Izzy and Ira joined the scattering of white coats at the side of the safety net up front watching the Giants finish their batting practice. McGraw was with them — who could fail to recognize that bloated figure that filled his uniform as if pumped into it? “Atta boy, Kelly,” some of the kids among the scattered hustlers cheered the Giants’ first baseman. “C’mon, high-pockets, slam one right over the fence!” Others picked up the cry. It was pleasant sitting there: warm and yet in shade, and so near the players in their white pin-striped suits one could see every move. Ira had watched a big league team, certainly, never been so close to big league ballplayers, seen their grace and dazzling fielding, their unerring throw — from catcher to second, from third to first. “Yay!” he tentatively joined Izzy in cheering.

A sudden rigor seemed to fall on the field; the figures on the diamond became motionless. His coarse, mean face hardened into a scowl, McGraw turned away from the players, strode toward the railing before the box seats, his wrath seeming to swell with every step. “Who the hell’s askin’ you fer yer two cents? If you Jews don’t shut up, I’ll have you thrown outta the park. Shut your goddamn trap!”

He turned his back on them, strode toward the players before the net. Ira would never forget the expression on the face of the young pitcher warming up next to the rail. It was beyond finding words for: a mixture of youthful embarrassment, boyish apology — within the enforced respectful mien. Ira and Izzy sat there another second or two, stunned by the outburst, and then all of them got up and went elsewhere. In the bewilderment of his own silent rancor at the affront — that the manager of the world-famous Giants would talk like an ignorant slum-bred mug, a 119th Street hard guy — unbelievable, vicious — Ira couldn’t help wonder what the Irish kids thought, what the Irish kids felt, called Jews for the first time in their lives. He tried to imagine the kind of double rejection that may have gone on in their minds. Or the moment of indignant identity the epithet may have enforced. One thing was sure: he knew he would never root for the Giants as long as he lived.

So began his first day with his steel tray loaded with twenty bottles of soda pop, according to directions given by Izzy — orange in the ascendancy, lemon, grape, cream soda, root beer, sarsaparilla, carefully picked out among the jumble of bottles under and between chunks of ice. And those favored hustlers privileged to load up first were already back again for a second load before he was out with his initial one. He paid the checker at the door with three $1 checks, walked hesitantly out through the dugout: from the muted obscurity under the grandstands into the vast crescendo of daylight flooding the thronging, clamoring stands. Multitudes in tier upon tier of seats converged on him in cynosure, he thought, a weight of gape and gaze through which he could muster only the feeblest of feeble “Gitcha cold drinks,” a cry that was swept away by concentrated inattention, like a fart, as they said, in a windstorm. Not a soul paid him the least heed.