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

“You got such a fancy friend,” Minnie taunted. “He’s going to the graduation. He’s a mensh. Why doesn’t he teach you to be a mensh ?”

“Who asked you to bring Larry into it? Nobody. So shut up.”

If he ever got around to it, Ira thought, he’d like to ascertain who were the pugilists who fought in the featured final bout on the night of his graduation exercises. He would append the information in a footnote. Whether it was Harry Greb or Gene Tunney. . perhaps both. . or neither. Well, let some scholar, if interested, dig up the data. About one thing he could rest assured — nay, two things: that the earnings, his pretext for depriving Mom of the pleasure of beholding him on the platform with fellow graduates in rented gown and mortarboard, could not have exceeded five dollars, and probably not more than three dollars. And that the inimitable Joe Humphrey was there, was there standing in the middle of the ring, and by dint of straw kelly and stentorian voice, quelling the boisterous fight crowd, while he announced the names and weights of the contenders, delighting the lowbrowed fans with his high-toned Bostonian “hawf-pound.”

XXIII

Ira lost track of Billy completely that summer of 1924. He never called Billy again on the phone, nor made any effort to get in touch with him; nor did he ever hear from Billy again, by letter or picture postcard. (Ira remembered vaguely something Billy had said about expecting that his father would get him a job on the survey crew of a new dam in Pennsylvania.) Perhaps he was already in Pennsylvania or somewhere, but their friendship was over with the end of high school, of their participation in the gun club, of their carefree hours of outdoor sports and “roughing it,” and with the irreparable breach Ira had caused by his egregious outburst — but more than anything else by his burgeoning attachment to Larry. When Ira looked back, the element of chance seemed to play a great role in his life. Still, it was inevitable that sooner or later he would have found someone with whom he could communicate, communicate those many new stirrings within him, fuzzy aspirations and wobbly ponderings. But then again, who could tell?

Larry stayed home that summer, giving his older brother Irving a hand in the ladies’-housedress-manufacturing plant that he operated. On one or two occasions, Ira walked with Larry to the factory, only blocks from Ira’s apartment. It occupied the entire floor of a typical loft building, and everywhere women worked at sewing machines, perhaps a hundred in all, sat and sewed ladies’ housedresses. It reminded Ira of the time, years ago, when he was still a young boy on the East Side, and would sometimes ride with Pop on the milk wagon: times when he would climb up the stairs to a factory loft with an extra tray of pints of milk to be distributed among the scores of women working at their sewing machines, under sweatshop conditions for all he knew. But they were jolly, and of course, they were immigrant, mostly Jewish, and they chaffered with Pop, and made much of Ira, and there was a sound of laughter. But now, these women were clearly not Jewish, Italian most of them, assuredly still immigrant, with a scattering of other nationalities, fair-haired Poles and dark-skinned Puerto Ricans. No one laughed, or smiled. A confused conjecture whirred in Ira’s mind that the faces lifted from the sewing machines toward the two youthful newcomers, himself and Larry, were fraught with animus, because they were presumably better off — both of them, which wasn’t indeed true. He couldn’t avoid feeling intensely self-conscious because of mistaken identity — and because he and Larry were Jewish: rich Jews, a category in which he was included, exploiting the poor wage slaves. More than anything else, though, he was aware that on the countenances of some of the younger women when they looked at Larry, a cruel hunger seemed suddenly to possess their features, an almost vengeful desire which he never dreamed that women felt or would reveal; only men would harbor such resentment, he thought.

The summer had begun for Ira with the accustomed routine of the ballpark. But that lasted no more than a week or ten days. Izzy Winchel, the very one who had persuaded Ira to hustle soda pop at the ball games, was now instrumental in dissuading him from doing more of the same. Izzy’s older brother, Hymie, after a short apprenticeship, served with his father, an independent plumber with headquarters in a little, sleazy store on grubby Park Avenue. Now married and with a son, he had to sally forth as a journeyman plumber, come what may: he had to break in as a nonunion plumber, as Izzy said, get a job with a building contractor putting up those new two-story frame houses, hundreds of which were going up in the further reaches of the Bronx. All brand-new housing, Izzy assured Ira. No dirty jobs, no cleaning clogged flush toilets or slimy sink drains, no running “snakes” through gunked-up soil pipe or wrestling with rust-frozen fittings. None of that shitty work. No, sir. Everything was brand-new and real clean.

“Yeah?” Ira asked, vaguely forewarned.

“Hymie wants you for a helper. It’s twenty-five a week.”

“Why me? You’re his brother.”

“I don’t like that kind o’ work. The same kind o’ work all day. You know what I mean? I like hustlin’ at the ballpark. I like all that excitement. Seein’ what I can make. You ain’t like that. You’re different. You just ain’t a hustler.” Izzy’s shallow blue eyes rested on Ira fondly. “Hymie wants you.”

Ira wavered. Izzy was too right about him: he could never lose himself in hectic pace and single-minded fervor of competition. He never ceased to feel ashamed foisting a lukewarm soda pop on a fan as if it were a cold one. He was always at the bottom of the list of hustlers checking in earnings at the end of the day. But for more than any of these reasons — and without the initiative as usual — he was beginning to wish for other kinds of work, because he was becoming increasingly loath to be seen in the garb of a soda hustler, a peddler of soda pop, recognized by former teachers and classmates, he who soon expected to enter college. The change in work proposed to him by cunning Izzy found little resistance in Ira.

“You don’t have to know nothin’ to be a helper.” Hooked proboscis, sandy hair in his service, Izzy stoked Ira with inducement. “Hymie’ll show you everything. What d’ye have to know? Cut pipe or a nipple, thread it, use a scale. How did I learn? I learned from my father. C’mon over to the shop. I’ll teach you in half an hour, how you set up the dies in a stock to thread the end of a pipe. I’ll show you the fittings, what they’re called, what they’re for. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“The shop. Hymie talked himself into a job for Monday,” Izzy said. “Tomorrow. He’s gotta have a helper.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Ira followed Izzy along to the shop.

And thus it was he became a plumber’s helper. The job wasn’t easy — as Izzy would have him believe — but at eighteen, the intrinsic joy of one’s own muscular resilience relieved novel toil of much of its laboriousness. In time he became a novice plumber’s helper, a barely acceptable one.

He saw a great deal of Larry, sometimes after work, though most often on weekends. Larry was admiring of Ira’s new vocation; his parents were amused — but approving too: of the indigent Jewish boy taking any kind of arduous toil in order to win a college education. So they were more than tolerant of the growing friendship between Larry and himself: by his seeming perseverance, his willingness to submit to any kind of toil to better himself, Ira set their son a good example. Respectful, bearing the proper attitude toward them, and always appearing clean-shaven and as decently dressed as he could, Ira was welcome in their home. He began to feel more at ease, his friendship with Larry and Larry’s with him becoming something indispensable for both, growing into a deep need for each other’s companionship.