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

And then one early morning he was sure everything was over for him. He saw himself fired. He saw Pop’s hundred dollars taking wing. Should he blubber? Should he bluff? Clutch at what excuse? Oy, gevald , at home, what? Pop would broil him. Pop would roast him. And Mom—!

First run of the morning, and the bus loaded to the rafters with wop laborers, the bus bowling along Grand Concourse. And behind it, a sedan trailing unnoticed. And in it, who but Mr. Hulcomb, chauffeured by one of the clerks. Oh, God, he must have spotted me! Ira panicked. Inured and deft, he had purloined even more than his usual quota — he couldn’t remember how much, couldn’t give an accounting — but that didn’t matter. If the bus was stopped, if a head count was made, he’d be fifteen or more fares under the clock. It would be just today that that barrel-built, grizzly, fierce old dago anarchist with half-foot handlebars each side of his snoot had posted himself next to Ira and collected fares in every direction, officious helpmeet warden, Cerberus growling at the remiss. “C’mon. Giva de kid.” And dumped the whole handful into the pocket of Ira’s alpaca jacket. Jesus, if Mr. Hulcomb didn’t see that, he couldn’t see anything! It wouldn’t do to ram nickels into the clock now; pinned against the back rail, he’d be seen from the car. And if he tried it when the bus stopped, his two superiors would hear the jitneys jingle in mad succession. They’d know. Ira’s goose was cooked!

“Hey, you! Conductor! Hey, Stigman!” Hulcomb was shouting out of the car window.

“Yes, sir,” he quavered. If only he could blow away like dust. Just leave everybody else on the platform staring back at the pursuing vehicle, except him, vanished from sight.

“Hey, Stigman, you hear me?”

“Yeah. Wha’?” Torture: maybe third degree in a police station, confession and courtroom, maybe judge in black robe, maybe jail, maybe bail, maybe—

“Tell that driver he’s goin’ too fast. He’s way over the speed limit. Tell him to slow down! Tell him I said so.”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, Mr. Hulcomb. I’ll — right away! Hey, lemme through, will you please?” Ira appealed to his passengers. “That’s the boss.”

“Fuck him.” They refused to budge.

“I gotta—” Tony would never hear Ira over the battering of the engine. If he pulled the rope three times, Tony’d stop the bus. No good. “Please, everybody!” Ira pleaded at the top of his voice. “Please! Come on, gents. Please! You up front, tell him to slow down, the driver, please. The boss just told me. Hey, Tony! He’ll lose his job!”

“All right,” they relented. “Hey, Giovanni, hey, Paul, tella de driver de fuckin’ boss is on his tail.” And someone with a croaking voice up front relayed, “Hey, paisan , we don’t wantcha t’ git in no trouble. De kid says slow down. Ye got de fuckin’ boss on yer tail. . Wha? Yeah? Heh, heh, heh. Ye know what he sez?”

“Who?”

“Him. De driver. He says fuck de boss.”

“Yeah?”

“He says tell dat fat sonofabitch to drive dis bucket o’ bolts widout pukin’.”

“Heh! Heh! Heh! Ye hear dat, kid?”

Nevertheless, the bus slowed down to a lumbering speed. The trailing sedan dropped behind, and once out of sight, “Let ’er rip!” arose the clamor within, and once again they bowled along. Never was relief so delirious. Ira had escaped! He could have jigged for joy, hopped anyway, in spite of all the pressure of brawn fixing him against the rear rail. Wow! No, he’d have to cut it out. Even though they knew he finagled. It wasn’t worth it, that’s all. Scared the hell out of him. Ira had nearly died then. He didn’t care what Collingway said. Take the goddamn nickels they shoved into his hand and plug ’em into the clock, that’s all. Feed the clock with them, ring ’em up. Buy the driver his soda pop, his butts, his sandwich, out of his own dough. Be better than this. Don’t tell anybody what the receipts were, make it lower than it was: by two dollars. Still, by the sidelong look Collingway would sneak at his face when he spoke, he knew Collingway suspected he was lying. Would somebody beat him up? Or what? The third week of August came to an end.

It was one of those peculiar instances, Ira thought, instances of diversion that the main narrative could do well without, and yet that never or rarely failed to intersect real life. So it struck him now pondering that past. For he could recall the summer morning in the street, 119th Street, the shafts of early sunlight slanting from tenement rooftop eave to gutter and sidewalk, shafts fraught with motes. Grubby 119th Street, slummy 119th Street, humid with New York summer, though the day was scarce begun, pristine shafts athwart the tenements, in a street still quiet in the early morning.

And there was Izzy Winchel, thorough scamp and unflinching pathological liar, persuading Ira to ditch the bus conductor’s job for a more lucrative, exciting one: a good racket, the one Izzy was plying — hustling soda at the ball games in the Polo Grounds. Ira shrank at the prospect. Hustling, yelling out the names of soda flavors to those mobs of people, in front of those mobs of spectators, calling attention to himself, eyed by thousands. No, not he.

“You can make all you make on a bus all week in just two days,” Izzy coaxed. “On a weekend when the stands’re packed for a doubleheader. They’re so excited, they give you a five for a bottle o’ near beer, and you give ’em change for a buck. I got away with it lotsa times.”

“No. I can’t do it. I don’t have that nerve.”

“How d’ye know ye can’t? Once you get in, you’ll find out how easy it is. If the customer calls you back: ‘Oh, excuse me, I made a mistake.’ The whole thing is to get in. And I can get you in. I know Benny Lass — he comes out in front o’ the ballpark. He’s the guy who picks you out.”

There was no getting away from Izzy. He was attached to Ira, for no reason that Ira could fathom — except because he went to high school, and Izzy had flunked out, because Ira was a whiz in plane geometry, and Izzy had tried to cheat his way through the exam, so flagrantly he was caught and automatically flunked — and then had dropped out of school — or perhaps because they were so different temperamentally, Ira shy, Izzy brazen. Ira studious, Izzy a fake. Ira didn’t know. Maybe Izzy out of his unmitigated perfidiousness felt he had to protect Ira in his timid innocence.

“Come on. I’ll take you there,” Izzy urged. “I’ll get you in. I’ll show you what to do. Getcha father’s hundred dollars back. I’m tellin’ ye. You better get in now.”

“Yeah?”

“You never know what’ll happen to it, that’s why. And hustlin’ soda, you don’t need to make no deposits. They’ll give you a white jacket and a hat free. I’ll bet you’ll hustle in the World Series. That’s where you’ll make a day’s pay without even tryin’. And see the game too, don’t forget that. Frankie Frisch and Babe Ruth and Gehrig and Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson.”

“I’m not so crazy about baseball.” Ira warded off Izzy’s enthusiasm-laden words with a shrug. “I’m a ham. You know.”

“So you’ll sell more.” Izzy promptly closed the loophole. “You like football, don’tcha? Notre Dame plays in the Polo Grounds. Army. Cornell.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s prizefights, too. You get in good with Benny Lass, you can hustle at Madison Square Garden. You can see the champeen bouts: Benny Leonard, what a fighter, and Battling Levinsky, maybe Dempsey.”

That same evening, “I’m gonna ask for the hundred dollars security back,” Ira announced.

“Uh-huh,” said Pop. “What is it? Why? You still have three weeks before school, no?”