Heshy Perlmutter and I were assigned to the bull gang. On a construction site it was considered, by the men, to be the lowest form of life. Reserved for klutzes, misfits, and rummies. Since I did not consider myself to be any of these, I was offended. What’s more, as a college man who had just finished my sophomore year, I pouted that I was not considered to be skilled enough to be thought of as mechanic material.
All things considered, Heshy thought our designation to be appropriate. I didn’t see it that way at all.
For example, of the three other members of the gang, one guy, Tommy (the Turnip) Annunziata, had a withered arm; another, Louie (Man-Mountain) Maloney, weighed at least 300 pounds, very little of his bulk visibly the muscle required to move heavy equipment; and Marty (the Parrot) Martinova, who spoke not a word of English, had reputedly never uttered a word of any known language—continuously emitted a sound, a single unrelenting one that was more like a bird’s than anything human.
Then there was the notorious Eddie (the Bull) Ribori, chief of the bull gang, who was so thick in solid girth, as compared with Marty’s rolling blubber, that the “bull” in bull gang could easily have been eponymously chosen.
Forget for the moment what Heshy had to say about the situation, he was after all ensconced at Brooklyn College, while I, as an about-to-be Columbia University junior, was certain this was not where I belonged. Admittedly it was only for the summer, but still.
However, as with so much else I would soon discover, Heshy turned out to be right. In retrospect even I have to acknowledge that. We were in truth given an appropriate assignment by Lou Wasserman, the foreman to whom everyone, including Eddie, at least in theory, reported. And thankfully so because my life would have turned out quite differently if I had pulled rank and gotten us assigned to a traditional tin knocker mechanics crew. Which I could have arranged since all the mechanics, helpers, and bull gang members worked for my Uncle Sunny.
He was what we today would call the CEO of the Apex Sheet Metal Company, a business he inherited from his father, which in his day installed tin ventilator fans in the tenements of the Lower Eastside when indoor toilets were first installed. To family members he was just Uncle Sunny who sat alone all weekend in the library of his mansion on Long Island Sound watching Cisco Kid reruns on TV while sipping a glass of Chivas Regal on the rocks that was perpetually kept filled by his youngest daughter Francine. But in the world of heating and air conditioning, he was the king since Apex, during the early years of air conditioning, was New York’s largest heating and ventilating contractor. When a new office tower was to be erected in Manhattan, they called on Apex to install the complex heating and air-conditioning systems.
During summers some of Uncle Sunny’s men drifted to jobs in other cities and he always needed some fill-ins to bridge the gap until they returned in the fall to their jobs and their wives. And so that summer he asked if I wanted “to work construction.” I leaped at the chance since it seemed an ideal way to stay in shape, which I needed to do since I was an oarsman on the Columbia crew. And I could use the money—the job paid fifteen dollars an hour, time-and-a-half for overtime. A fortune for a summer job.
But, Uncle Sunny said, if I wanted it I had to bring along another “college kid”—he needed two men for a job in Manhattan, the Tishman Building, a fifty-story tower that was going up on Fifth Avenue. I did my best to recruit one of my college friends, but they were all either so physically inept that the thought of using any tool other than a slide rule terrified them or they were from backgrounds so affluent that their parents insisted they not work with their hands but rather hang out at their Long Island country clubs and find someone appropriate to marry.
My best friend from the neighborhood, Dicky Traub, the older son of Dr. Traub, also turned down the offer. He would be accompanying his parents on a tour of England, France, and Germany—his father wanted to show them where he had been and won his medals. “That kind of a job is not really for me,” Dickie said, “If I wasn’t going to Europe, I’d much prefer to hang out at the stable in Canarsie and take care of my horse.” He was an excellent rider. But Dicky encouraged me to take the job, “It will be good for you, and you can sure use the money.”
So I turned to Heshy. His father, Mr. Perly, was the neighborhood glazier and resident Communist and this assured that there was very little money available for the Perlmutter children. Everyone had to work if they wanted sneakers much less a private college education. I thus suspected that fifteen dollars an hour would sound as alluring to Heshy as it did to me, though thankfully half my tuition was covered by a scholarship.
He had been my best friend until high school, when we began to go our separate ways—I, reaching for a life beyond the neighborhood, managed to get into Brooklyn Tech, which I thought would transport me to a different world; while Heshy remained close to home and attended the local high school, Tilden. During our first fourteen years we were always together, our buildings separated by a vacant lot which we attempted to bridge through the use of hand and mirror signals; a rope line that we tied to our beds so that every morning, by tugging on it, we could wake one another to make sure we started the day together; and a rubber hose through which we whispered to each other—amplifying our voices late at night, bedroom to bedroom.
As Heshy and I became more technologically proficient, we linked apartments via homemade bell-wire phones, following instructions we found in a Popular Mechanics magazine and together built radios from used parts, powering them with car batteries. These electronic concoctions never managed to pull in a station, though one time we did manage to bring in the fire department when we set my bedroom curtains on fire when all the radio’s tubes exploded.
Heshy perceived me as the “rich” one. Though my father was the owner of a series of marginal businesses, he had the appearance of success, which was what counted, since he was tall, well dressed, born in America, and drove a series of almost-new cars, all distinguishing qualities on a street of men who owned just one suit, had accents, and were never more than five-six in height. My mother was a first grade teacher at the elementary school we both attended and was thus the only “professional” woman in the neighborhood. But in spite of the class-consciousness that he inherited from his father, the only overt subscriber to the Daily Worker in East Flatbush, Heshy never held our being “rich” against me. In fact, even at that tender age, I suspected he had bigger economic plans for himself as he saw his life unfolding, and was as interested in what he could learn from studying my family’s surfaces as in what he could learn from his father about the Revolution.
In spite of the realization that Heshy and I had begun to drift along different paths, we had seen even less of each other during our initial college years, after being snubbed and even laughed at by my roommates, “Construction work? You’ve got to be kidding,” I turned to him as my best bet for the partner I required if I was to be working on Fifth Avenue.
He jumped at the chance—there was the money but also the opportunity, ironically, on the Upper East Side to be a union card-carrying member of the exploited working class; though as I saw it, fifteen dollars an hour didn’t seem all that exploited.
And thus we found ourselves in Eddie Ribori’s meaty hands.
* * *
But before turning to Eddie’s bull gang, allow a brief digression about heating and ventilation systems and their construction so that those who might be uninitiated in these matters can acquire some perspective about the world in which Heshy and I were soon to labor.
In the old days, to heat a building there was a coal or oil furnace in the basement, a huge tank of water that the fire in the furnace heated and turned to steam, and a series of pipes that carried that steam to radiators which heated the rooms and offices where they were situated. And at that time, to make a home or office cool one opened a window. Some would place a fan in that window, which, if you stood right on top of it, would evaporate your perspiration, which everyone who has taken high school physics knows is “a cooling process.”
Then eventually came was air conditioning. If you could afford a window unit, it would help make the fierce Augusts in Brooklyn endurable. Families would cluster around these life savers even more urgently than by the early TVs—life itself was often at stake, which is not to make light of Uncle Milty.
With technology pioneered by the Navy during the Second World War, commercial air conditioning came into its own. To make life at sea bearable for sailors who had to work and sleep below deck where the air itself was rank and superheated, they first brought something resembling fresh air to their stacked bunks via steel ductwork that connected to ventilating fans. This circulated air, made possible by those sheet metal ducts hung from the ceiling, was as essential to winning the war at sea as K-rations were to victory on land.
And then a bit later, when refrigeration systems were attached to the fans and ducts, cooled air could be delivered even to torpedo rooms on submarines. If we had only told the Japanese about this secret weapon, in the face of Yankee ingenuity, they would have surrendered without us having to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In the early 1950s, my Uncle Sunny had the brilliant and profitable insight to adapt this military technology to civilian projects. For large office buildings, he reasoned, on every twenty floors or so place giant fans between compressors that chill the air in summers and heaters that provided warm air during winters, and have those fans propel the cooled or heated air to each floor through sheet metal ducts that Tin Knockers would fabricate and hang from ceilings and thread from floor to floor so that “climate controlled” air could be delivered right to the executive suite and typing pool. No more ventilators for tenement toilets. That day was over. Apex was moving on into the modern HVAC age. And the rest, as they say, is sheet-metal history.
But even before that felicitous inspiration, I first learned about Uncle Sunny’s contributions to the war effort from his brother, my father. He told stories about how Sunny managed to secure coveted government contracts to install ventilation systems on warships being constructed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. These were not so much stories about how by doing this Uncle Sunny was contributing to the defeat of the Nazis and Nips but how he was managing to keep some of the sheet metal designated for the naval work for his other, non-military, civilian business.
At a time when even sugar was being rationed so the men fighting overseas could sweeten their coffee, construction-size sheets of galvanized steel, you can only imagine, were not readily found. That is, except on the Black Market.
Without revealing too many family secrets, especially about a good uncle who in later years was generous enough to employ an all-thumbs nephew on a Manhattan building site, suffice it to say that he did very well. So well in fact that even before the war was over, Uncle Sunny and his family of five, from what he was able to provide, with a house full of servants, moved into a twelve-room house, under a slate roof, on the North Shore of Long Island.
And his talented wife, Aunt Lola was able to secure the services of Monsieur Maurice, at the time America’s best known interior designer (decidedly not “decorator”) with whom she created the first in-home living-room museum complete with velvet rope across its entrance so that the various nieces and nephews who descended upon them on weekends would be held back from entering that fashionably sunken room and sitting on and thereby crushing the down pillows so fluffed and swollen on their Louis Quinze chairs that they looked more ready to give birth than provide comfort.
* * *
“If I’m gonna have to baby-sit you two for three months,” Eddie Ribori, at first meeting, growled at Heshy and me, “you’ll need names like the other guys have.” He flapped one of his massive arms at them and they gathered in a circle like a conclave of the afflicted. We trembled in fear because though we had been on the job for less than half an hour we had already been warned by foreman Lou Wasserman not “to cross him” because a building under construction can be “a very dangerous place, if you know what I mean by very” and don’t “expect your Uncle Sunny, or me,” he was quick to add, “to protect you here,” since Eddie “as a union man hates bosses.”
It was 7:30, a half-hour before the work day would begin. In the plywood shanty where the men changed into their overalls, Heshy and I, attempting to be invisible, had already pulled on our new steel-toed boots and were ready to join the rest of the bull gang. I knew from my uncle that a ten-ton fan was to be delivered that morning and suspected that would be the bull gang’s assignment for the day—to position it in place in the twentieth floor fan room. So for whatever reason Eddie Ribori was gathering his crew around him, I was eager for it to be over so we could get our hands on that giant fan. I already knew, again from Uncle Sunny, that moving these fans required more skill than anything else a bull gang was called upon to do; and I was eager to test myself by getting right into that kind of action.
When Eddie’s three henchmen were in place at his side, he began the mock baptism to their ribald laughter and whistles. Pointing at me, while his men shuffled and smirked, he announced, “You’re the easy one—‘Joe College’ fits you like a new rubber. So that’s what I name you, Joe College.” The Parrot shrieked as if he had just been given a fresh cuttlebone to knaw on.
“That Greek fag you’re studying in college.” He turned to Louie Man- Mountain as if for colleagueship, “What’s his name, Arcamedia?” Louie nodded his gelatinous head, “Who bragged he could move the earth if he could place his pry-bar where he wanted to and had one long enough? What he called a lever. Well, with this here pry-bar of mine,” which he clutched at his side like a massive battle staff, and though the summer never relinquished, “and these three pipe rollers here,” each eight feet long which he had leaning against the shanty, “with just these I’ll show you how to move a fan that weighs ten, fifteen tons into a space with just inches to spare on either side. Just with you two bums and those three rejects over there.”
He next gestured toward Heshy, not turning to acknowledge him, “And your pal over there, the other college boy, I gather from one of the tin knockers, Joe Muri, who lives by you guys in East Flatbush, that he already has a name from the neighborhood, though I can’t imagine how he deserves it from the looks of him,” he was nodding and winking at his crew, signaling to them to listen up because they would really like this one.
“They say you have some three-piece set on you, some special e-quip-ment, right pal?” While giving special emphasis to the three syllables, he poked Heshy in his thin chest with such force that he stumbled backwards. But before crashing into a half-fabricated wall, Eddie caught hold of him by his belt buckle; and, with astonishing strength, lifting him off the ground, confirmed the name Heshy’s friends back in East Flatbush had given him years ago in acknowledgement of his early sexual development—“Big Dick will do here too,” Eddie proclaimed, contemptuously looking down below the crunched belt, “that is until we get a chance to check it out.”
He then let go of Heshy, who collapsed in a heap on the newly-poured concrete floor. Roaring at his own wit, he turned to face his raucous band and received their applause. “And after we give it a good look, if we can find it, then I think we’ll have something more appropriate to call the Dick.”
From all this excitement, it looked as if the Turnip’s inert arm was set aquiver. Certainly, Man-Mountain seemed ready to erupt; and if the Parrot could have flown as well as he screeched he would have flapped himself up to alight on the building’s open steel framework, thirty floors above where the naming ceremony had concluded.
* * *
“Now let’s get to work,” Eddie bellowed, signally the fun was finally over, “and you two, Joe College and Big Dick, there’s a truck waiting on the street by the hoist for you to unload. And make it quick. The driver has half a load for us and then he has to take the rest to another job downtown.”
“But what about the fan?” I stammered at Eddie Ribori’s back as he and his band of three had tuned toward the elevator that would take them up to the twentieth floor.
He wheeled to glare at me. “I told you two that there’s a truck that needs unloading. Let’s see if you can get that done before the end of the week or one of you slices off a thumb. So be sure,” he roared, “at all times to keep at least one thumb stuffed in you ear or up your ass!”
And again to gales of derisive laughter Eddie and his men marched off, leaving us on our own, with our new names, to deal with the truck. Which as promised was waiting on 54th Street by the construction hoist, a makeshift-looking elevator structure of metal piping, wire, wood beams, and slats that rose the full height of the building and was used by bull gangs and laborers from all the trades to hoist from the street cinder blocks and mortar, coils of electrical cable, wall boards, pipes, kegs of iced beer (it was hot after all), and, in our case, sections of sheet metal ducts that had been fabricated in Apex’s shop in Long Island City and which now needed to be off-loaded from Uncle Sunny’s truck and delivered to the seventeenth floor where a gang of tin knockers awaited their arrival so they could assemble them, screwing them together, seven-foot section to seven-foot section, until they were joined into long lines of ducts that they would then hang, affixed to steel rods that had been inserted into the underside of the poured concrete eighteenth floor, and where, when installed, they would wait, hidden from view and awareness, behind finished and buffed dropped ceilings, the eventual arrival of typists and file clerks who would be cooled by the silent rush of air through hot summer Augusts and made toasty by heated air during the depths of Decembers.
The Apex truck was double-parked and causing such an early-morning nightmare for the coagulating cross-town traffic that its driver, Archy Slotman, when we finally arrived, was already in such a state of agitation that his entire body was shaking as if he had just emerged from a long season of shock therapy. He was so roiled by the commotion in the street that he had lost his battle with what we subsequently realized were nervous tics. They moved in waves from his feet to his head and, for him, were so seismic that he could not make himself understood, except though strings of twitches in his face, where they were most expressive. This was also how he earned his nickname, Twitch.
It was clear from his condition, if we wanted to get the truck unloaded before he required resuscitation that we had better jump up onto it and get started.
There would be no instructions, no orientation about how to unload a truck. Nothing of the kind I had received about how to use the equipment in the chem lab at college. It was simply, “Get the fuck up there. I can’t wait all day for you faggots to get going. I’ve got steam fitters waiting to use this friggin hoist in an hour.” Just this from Vito (The Provolone) Provenzano, the hoist operator, who we later learned required twenty dollars cash to allow Apex or All City Electric to use his equipment even though Uncle Sunny and his contractor colleagues had to pay $100 an hour, on the books, for its use. Lou Wasserman slipped The Provolone the former; Apex’s comptroller the latter. It all worked very well.
Heshy and I, on the other hand, didn’t. While attempting to hop up onto the truck bed with the ease and grace of someone who had been doing it for twenty years, Heshy slammed a leg into the rear of the truck with such force that he was thrust back into the street where he fell under the wheels of a rampaging taxi which had just finished crawling toward the corner where we were and was in a such frenzy to at last make it across Fifth Avenue that, if he hadn’t managed to swerve, that Monday would have been Heshy’s first and last day on the job.
With considerable embarrassment, accompanied by shrieks of pleasure from the very amused Provolone, Heshy picked himself up from the pavement and managed to scramble up onto the truck to join me with the help of a boost from the equally convulsed Twitch, a leg up which he had already administered to me, so that now both of us were in place and ready to unload the ducts that were standing on-end as if in columns.
Twitch had lashed them with ropes to the truck body so they would not come crashing down as he bumped his way from the shop in Queens to Manhattan. But when I finally managed to untangle the rope, with the unforgotten skills I had acquired while a Boy Scout, which Twitch had secured with no less than a dozen improvised knots, when I then with visible pride turned to be acknowledged by Heshy and maybe even Provolone for my achievement, the entire bundle of ducts came crashing down on me, with one of them slicing into my left thumb. This sent blood spurting and Twitch racing as if in a seizure to get the first aid kit from the cab of the truck, something he regularly needed to do for new bull gang members since the ends of sheet metal ducts were as sharp and raw as scalpels and show-off klutzes like me were always self-amputating body parts their first week on the job.
Fortunately, my cut, though deep, closed quickly under the butterfly bandage that Twitch applied, and I still had both thumbs.
I thought then that maybe we had in fact been offered a little orientation from Eddie Ribori—from then on, though I didn’t keep at least one thumb in my ear, I did get a good pair of work gloves and kept my eyes more on the ducts than on Twitch or Vito Provolone. It was just get the friggin ducts onto the hoist and move on to the next thing.
* * *
We spent the entire first month pretty much doing nothing other than unloading trucks which were arriving with fuller loads and, after our first week, twice a day since the pace of work had picked up—the Tishmans’ wanted to have their building completed and occupied ahead of the original schedule to take advantage of the increasing demand for office space. The city was booming while I was floundering. It wasn’t as if I kept slicing off my fingers—I had solved that problem with the gloves and by keeping a lookout for duct avalanches--it was more that I was feeling frustrated that we were still mired in the routine work of unloading trucks and schlepping ducts to the hoist. I had not forgotten about the true work of the bull gang—moving those mammoth fans. I wanted to put my hands on them.
True, Eddie and his three senior crew members were so occupied with those blowers, now working up on the fortieth floor, also the result of the Tishmans’ accelerated schedule, that they left us more or less alone, except in the mornings, having just the time then, at the shanty before work started, to shoot us a few zingers—
The Man-Mountain, “Hey Joe College, read any good books lately?” He paused to set up the punch line. “I mean the ones without the pictures.” Even our defender Lou Wasserman liked that one and couldn’t help chuckling.
The Turnip, “Say Big Dick, I hear you sit on the back of the truck all day trying to look down girls’ dresses.” He would then turn to the Parrot knowing he would really like what was coming, “or is it the dresses not the tits you’re interested in?” That in fact was always the Parrot’s favorite and send him into bursts of high-pitched whistles.
The Bull, Eddie Ribori surprisingly joined the ribaldry only occasionally. If I thought he was capable of such an emotion, I would have said he seemed sad, even depressed. But not depressed enough to deter him one morning from savaging us before all the assembled mechanics. “Everyone here is busting their chops to get this fuckin job done. Working ten, twelve hours overtime every week. In this heat. Their kids are home from school and the guys come home dragging their tails so tired they can’t play with them or take them to a ball game or nothing. And what do I hear from that Ginny Provolone? That you guys are either sitting on your asses or taking so long to hoist a load that the mechanics up on the twenty-third, twenty-fourth floors have to sit around waiting for the tin to get to them so they can get the job done and get home to their people. No one’s complaining about the overtime money. Everyone likes a little sweet time; but unless you clean up your act, I don’t care, Mr. College, if Uncle Ralphie Boy is your rabbi. As I told you once, and I don’t intend to tell you again, if you get my drift, construction is a very dangerous place to work.”
With that ominous warning hanging in the dusty air, and to complete silence, in single file like a wounded platoon, Ribori led his men to the elevator and back up to fan room on the fortieth floor.
Heshy and I were made nervous enough by Eddie’s threat and took it so seriously that we struggled furiously all morning with a full load of ducts to get them off the truck and onto the hoist in, for us, record time. We had images of tin knockers sitting on their asses all over the building site talking about how our laziness and incompetence was leading to an increase in the divorce rate of sheet metal workers all over the city and causing their kids to turn to drugs since their dad’s never had time any more to take them to a ball game at Yankee Stadium.
The Provolone, though, appeared to be dragging his feet even more than unusual that morning, busting our chops if there were too many ducts piled on top of each other on his hoist--the twenty dollars cash extorted by him for each truckload was supposed to help him not notice these “safety violations.” It was as if word of what Ribori had threatened had filtered down to him and thus if he could help slow things down enough so that we wouldn’t be able to get the ducts up to the men so they could get home in time to have dinner with their kids, then maybe he would be witness to just how dangerous a construction site might be for two wise-ass college boys. That would break up the monotony of his day.
But in spite of The Provolone’s best attempts to hold us back, with the extra rush of adrenaline shot through our systems by Ribori, we did manage to get the load to the men before lunch and thus felt we had dodged a bullet, perhaps literally, at least for the morning.
So over lunch, which was a gulped-down pepper-and-egg hero and a can of Ballantine, I counted the number of workdays remaining before the start of the fall semester. Unfortunately, though I counted three times to be sure, there were still twenty-eight very long and dangerous days to go. I couldn’t quit—forget the money--I would never again be able to face my Uncle or father if I wimped out. And there was no way I could tell Uncle Sunny about what Ribori had said. That would be worse. I needed to find a way to stick it out while not getting killed.
We made it through the next two hours and then later that day, during the afternoon break, when all the men were gathered in the street beside the hoist where the coffee wagon was set up, just as I caught myself again counting days, thinking that maybe I had missed a holiday, no such luck, Joe Muri the mechanic from our neighborhood came to squat beside the moping and exhausted Heshy and me. Joe Muri, who had told Eddie Ribori about Heshy’s nickname. Something that was still so rankling Heshy that he turned his back to him when Muri sat down.
“I hear you guys are having a few difficulties,” Joe had never spoken to us before either on the job or back in Brooklyn. He had been a semi-pro football player before tearing up his knees and becoming a tin knocker, and on our block the status of both was such that there was no way that he would acknowledge much less speak to losers such as the two of us. Also, as one of the few Italians in our decidedly Jewish neighborhood, he held those of our persuasion in thinly-disguised contempt. Nothing personal, or even especially bigoted, but that was just the way it was. So it was unusual, perhaps unprecedented that he would approach the likes of Heshy and me.
“Looking at me now,” and he looked at himself as he sent a wave of flexing muscles across his body—from his bulging tri- and biceps to his astonishing pecs and on down to his famous six pack, “I know you will not believe this but when I was in your shoes, an apprentice mechanic just beginning, I made a mistake during my first week, also working trucks, that cost my partner an eye.” Heshy, not believing his ears, this confession of fallibility, turned back toward Joe.
“I know, you think I’m making this up, but trust me this is a true story. I almost quit. Me, Joe Muri, offensive guard for the Brooklyn Mavericks thought about quitting. I, who once played a whole half on a broken ankle. Believe it. I gave it serious thought.” Heshy looked at him skeptically, as if he doubted Muri’s capacity to give anything serious thought. We Jews, also, didn’t think very highly of the Italians.
“So what happened?” Eager now to find out, we leaned closer so as not to miss a word. “I’ll tell you what happened. There was this guy, I think your uncle would still remember him, at the time, and I’m talking ten, fifteen years ago, the only one of you co-religionists on the job, this fellow Milty Shapiro, I think they called him the Weasel he was so smart and slippery, well Milty took me under his wing and showed me a few things and the next thing you know I was a full-fledged mechanic, even a crew leader.”
I was puzzled, wondering why he was even talking to us at all much less telling us these things about himself—this neighborhood legend who was reputed to have been shot in the stomach once but not wounded because the bullet couldn’t penetrate his rock-hard solar plexus and had thus that day earned, not been given, but earned the nickname Superman. “I’ll tell you why I’m telling you these things,” it was as if he had read my mind—even in that he had Man-of-Steel powers--“It’s because one time Lloyd,” he even used my real name. “after I was injured and down and out and feeling sorry for myself,” he peered at me; were there tears inconceivably forming in his eyes, “It was during that time when your father and his Uncle Herman owned that parking garage in Park Slope, remember that, well he took me on and gave me a job just when I needed it more than anything. I’ll never forget him for that. And then later, when I was all healed up from a knee operation, your father, without me asking him, talked to his brother about helping me get into the tin knocker’s union.” I had not known any of that.
“So now I’m going to return the favor and help you out. And him too,” he said, tossing a gesture in Heshy’s direction. He had regained his composure and was Superman again. “I’m going to show you a few tricks about how to get a truck unloaded and the stuff up to the guys in time for them to get the job done. And I guarantee you that this’ll also get that clown Ribori off your back.”
And he did. After work that day he took Heshy and me to a workers bar back in Brooklyn and gave us the orientation that we had craved that first day.
He told us that as an old bull gang member he had been observing how we worked. Our problem, he said over his second beer, was that we were working separately, as individuals and not as a team. He put his arm around my shoulder. It was so dense with bands of muscle that I almost collapsed under its weight. “The one thing I learned from being on the Mavericks is that no matter how good you might be what really matters is how you play together as a team. I know, you’re thinking right now, ‘Big deal. To tell us such obvious bullshit he sat us down in this ginmill.’ Well, you may think you know that but, from what I seen of you, you sure aren’t puttin’ it into practice. You’re workin’ like you don’t even know each other.” And during the next half hour he critiqued our truck and hoist techniques and gave us a dozen pointers about how to work as a team.
After Joe paid and left, thinking further about what he had had to say about our shortcomings and what he told us was required to do the job well, I had to admit that I should have perceived on my own that what had seemed such a simple, even menial job was actually quite complex and to be successful not only required coordinated effort but also considerable thought. Having seen myself as existing on a higher plane than the other men, analytical thought, was not something I had assumed working on a bull gang required. In my mind it had simply been about fifteen-dollar-an-hour schlepping. Heshy, enigmatically, simply smiled at me when I made this confession. I needed another beer.
The next morning we began to implement Joe’s suggestions. One involved my no longer working on my own up on the truck disentangling the ducts and then one by one tossing or pulling them to the open end where Heshy, standing on the street, waited for them before walking them to the hoist where he, by himself, would stack them. Now we both jumped up onto the truck and did the disentangling together; and then, after having pulled aside enough to constitute a full hoist-load, hopped off and together carried the ducts, three at a time to where The Provolone stood, no longer smirking since even he had to acknowledge that we were working together like a real crew. And since we carried the ducts to the hoist also as a team of two, by selecting which to bring we could pick three--a large one, which we carried between us, and two smaller ones which we each could carry with our free arms. Three for the price of two.
We were feeling quite proud of ourselves as it was clear as immediately as lunch break that day that by working as Joe had taught us we had increased our production so that even Provolone was off our backs. And by the end of the day, when we returned to the shanty to change back into street clothes, for the first time since we had begun, now a month ago, Eddie Ribori and his men ignored us. Which we took to be a good sign.
* * *
Most evenings after work I was so exhausted from laboring in the blazing sun and suffocating air, it was turning out to be the hottest, most humid summer on record, I devoured a quick dinner (“He’s still a growing boy,” my father would proclaim), watched a ball game on TV, and fell asleep on the sofa before the fifth inning.
But on weekends, I would take the subway to the City to be near Sigrid. Heshy remained in the neighborhood to help out in his father’s store—Perly’s Glass Works—and to see his voluptuous girlfriend, Rochelle, one of the Siegel Twins, who lived around the corner. She was someone Heshy had had his eyes and hands on since elementary school.
Sigrid was a year ahead of me at Barnard, studying Existential Philosophy, and had a job working with her professor assisting him with a paper he was preparing on Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (L’Être et le Neant) to be delivered in French at a conference in the fall, in Fontainebleau. Something about how consciousness is transcendent. She did not need the five dollars an hour he was paying her—she had all the money she required for her apartment on West End Avenue; her twice-weekly riding lessons in Central Park; her british racing Green MG; her devotion to fine wines, exclusively French; and her much-celebrated dinner parties, soirées, for which she did all the cooking and featured, at the end, her famous chocolate bavarian, which she served in the shape of a dark mountain in her great-grandmother’s silver tureen.
The money arrived discreetly each month from Düsseldorf, transferred to her personal banker on Madison Avenue by her widowed mother, who carefully nurtured the family fortune ,which, Sigrid hinted, was largely derived from ancestral lands. Though Sigrid may not have needed his money, Professor Evan Anthony needed her to translate his academic English since, she told me privately, he barely “had” French because, like me, he was from Brooklyn and originally had a name that had as little to do with an Evan and even less an Anthony than my newly acquired ability to pronounce Long Island as two separate words.
I met the Baroness Sigrid von Hauptmann after my roommate Jerry Tuba ended his torrid affair with her and disappeared. She had remembered me as Jerry’s friend when she found me one afternoon in the Columbia Music Library, struggling haplessly with the score to one of Beethoven’s late quartets. Without Jerry to guide me I was pretty much lost.
A cappuccino (she took me to her café) quickly led to dinner (she picked the restaurant, Le Côte Basque); she chose the wines (a lovely Sancerre Sec to begin followed by a properly aged Puligny Montrachet); paid for the two of us (les escargots et entrecots were both trés cher); took me to her apartment (with the sweeping views Jerry had languidly described); which in turn, before that glorious first day was over, led to her taking me into her arms, her bed, and to erotic places I had up to that time only imagined during endless adolescent nights of self-administered release.
Throughout that year with Sigrid, she seemed more interested in my, to her, exotic life than in any of my ideas or interests, much less anything I was capable of doing for her or to her in what she referred to as her “chambers.” As we lay together, smoking Galoise, in what was now my moonlight, she would ask me, “Lloyd,” my name never sounded so luscious as when Sigrid rolled it out in two syllables, “when Ll-oyd vil you take me to see your Brooklyn. You always promise but then, my sweetie, you never do. You are teasing me, no? I want to see that baseball field where the Dodgers play and Coney Island where I want to ride on the roller coaster. I never did that as a girl in Germany, it was so terrible there. And I want to see your house and meet your friends. Not your Columbia friends. They are such boys. I want especially to meet that Heshy, is that his name, the one about whom you tell such funny stories. Did you really, in your school, have a class in how to shower? That is so amusing.” She, all of her, as she lay against me, quivered with laughter.
* * *
And so we picked a weekend for her visit. Though she pressed me to use her MG, even generously saying I could drive it, I preferred to take my father’s car into the city to get Sigrid. It was respectable enough, a two-year old yellow, black-topped Chevrolet convertible. I was, as might be expected, nervous about bringing her into my world since I was interested in getting as far away from it as Manhattan and Columbia would allow. But she was so eager, so casually calm about what might be awaiting her, and I was so giddy from infatuation, that I put aside my doubts and, after picking her up, drove us proudly back over the Brooklyn Bridge, with the Baroness by my side, with the Brooklyn wind whipping her incredible, blonde Arian hair.
* * *
I had been driving us all over Brooklyn to show Sigrid the sights—the elegant promenade in Brooklyn Heights with its ecstatic views of lower Manhattan, the shabby remnants of the once-glorious Coney Island, the truly exotic flavors of the Arab quarter on Atlantic Avenue, and the rich but dangerous Black enclaves of Bedford Stuyvesant--but more, in truth, this extensive drive-about was to avoid the inevitable encounter with my origins.
“But Lloyd, this is such a charming street,” Sigrid oozed, sensing my nervous hesitation, as we turned off Church Avenue onto my block, East 56th Street. “I love these little houses with their, what do you call them, stoops? And their gardens . . .“
“I would hardly call them ‘gardens,’ Sig,” I would have preferred her to stop trying so hard, to just let things happen, to let us get it all over with so we could get back to her chambers to both hide out and do other things, “They’re more like patches of dirt.”
“But look at those urns everywhere filled with succulents,” every stoop and front garden had at least two balanced on brick columns or pedestals, “Are they made from cement? They make everything feel so secure and indestructible. That is important for growing up—to have a sense of permanence, a lack of threat. You were so lucky my sweet boy.” She slid closer to me, pressing herself to me. I could feel her heat and her trembling, as if she were remembering her own devastated childhood.
As we approached 205 East 56th Street, my house, I put my free arm around her to show both comprehension and compassion for that remembered fear. She nuzzled my neck, right there in full sight of everything that had been at the center of so much of my life. This amazing, forgive me, creature from another world was nipping my neck. And everyone was out there on the street, filling their porches or leaning perilously from second floor windows to see everything—whatever was to transpire was to be extensively witnessed and then recapitulated and gossiped about after we left for months, perhaps years. It was not every day on this block, on a hot day in late July, that a Sigrid would arrive in a blazing yellow car with the top down.
There was no spot for the car right in front so we needed to park next door by the Ruby’s former house, which meant we needed to run a short gauntlet of eager eyes. I attempted to hurry us along, to pull us into the shade and sanctuary of my parents’ apartment, whatever the consequences; but Sigrid moved at her own languid pace, turning like a giant ballerina on the sidewalk to take in the full arc of 56th Street, things to me so familiar as to be beyond noticing--the huddled two family houses, the occasional punctuation of s six-storey apartment house where the Italians lived, the asphalt street softened by the fiery sun (my boyhood playing field demarked by the sewer covers I had told her about that served as our bases and goal posts), and the vacant lots where the rival gangs built their scrap-wood shacks and waged their internecine wars.
Taking in all of this so excited Sigrid that she glowed like a second sun, so radiant and comfortable in her body and on that street, this Saxon goddess right there among them, us, that I could almost hear gasps of appreciation emanating from those gathered to take in her entrance, appreciation for her endorsing ease and comfort.
The house in which we lived was the most substantially constructed on the block. Or at least it appeared to be that way from its surfaces. We lived on the second floor, and though renting it, from its glossy exterior and my father’s snappy wardrobe of checks and stripes and a series of seemingly flawless cars, we derived the undeserved benefit of appearing to be in much better circumstances than my parents’ actual struggles would suggest.
The house itself was owned by Willie Pollishaw, the Lumber Baron, who with his family lived on the first floor. He spared no expense when building it, especially when it came to the externals—we had the slickest face-brick façade, each glazed brick allegedly cost two dollars, and wrought iron, which enclosed and encircled every square foot of side walkway, the driveway that led to the two-car garage (which side my father was assigned to use always causing fierce disputes), and the two tiny weed-strangled plots that constituted the front “gardens.” The steam heat, on the other hand, hidden from street view, never worked. Or perhaps the Baron never turned it on. So my father had a ball peen hammer hanging on one of the radiators that was directly above Willie and Pauline’s bedroom, which, on below-zero nights, he would use to bang on the pipes, yelling, “Willie you cheap bastard turn up the heat!”
Sigrid, at her insistence, was about to enter into this world.
* * *
“Sorry we’re so late. The beach traffic was impossible.”
“Whaaa?” This familiar sea-gull caw emanated from, I was shocked to find, my Aunt Madeline. She was so notoriously hard of hearing, actually quite deaf, that her reaction to anything that was said, not shouted, in her presence was a universal “Whaaa?” My parents hadn’t warned me that she would be there, but in truth it should not have been a surprise, considering she had the unerring ability to sniff out a major family event and find a way to thrust herself, uninvited, into the middle of it, especially if she could make trouble and take delight in its reverberations and consequences for years to come. So there she was ready to further complicate an already complicated afternoon.
“The beach traffic,” I hollered back in her direction as she crouched near my parents, a little behind my father as if seeking his protection from this Nordic apparition.
“The beach? You went to the beach. It’s so bee-u-ti-full there. You went swimming?”
“No Aunt Madeline, we got caught in beach traffic. That’s why we’re so late.”
“I’m glad you went swimming. The water in Brighton Beach is the cleanest. No one flushes their toilet there.” Sigrid appeared to be enjoying my tiny, unpredictable aunt, glowing at all of her hollering. We both, though, sensed my parents’ growing embarrassment. This was to be their afternoon, not Madeline’s.
“I love the water there. I swam there from when I was your age.” Aunt Madeline was totally devoted to the beach, forcing her brother Danny to drive her there all throughout the year. She was a strong swimmer who routinely ventured far out beyond the undertow, past the line of breaking waves to swim relentlessly and effortlessly for hours, back and forth in quarter-mile-long laps. And she was equally devoted to the sun, spending even more hours baking in it, ignoring her doctor’s warnings, so that her skin had assumed the color and texture of a fine, but textured Italian pocketbook.
“We can’t stay too long. I have to get Sigrid back to the city. She’s doing research for her philosophy professor and has to complete a project for Monday. And we also need to see Heshy. Sigrid wants to meet him.” Though Sigrid was clearly enjoying Madeline and bathing her in an affectionate smile, I couldn’t be sure things would continue this well.
“Isn’t it time you introduced her to your parents?” This finally from my mother who stood with her arms folded across her chest. “Have you forgotten already how you were raised?”
“Of course, I’m sorry, Mom, this is my friend Sigrid von Hauptmann. . . .”
“Whaaa? What’s he saying?”
“My friend, Aunt Madeline, Sigrid von Hauptmann.”
“She’s who? I never heard such a name like that. She’s an American?”
“No, Aunt Madeline, she’s from Germany. She was born there but goes to college in New York. And Dad,” I struggled to move ahead quickly before Madeline needed further attention, “this is Sigrid. I told you about her. The Barnard senior. Sigrid these are my parents. Mr. and Mrs. Zazlow”
Sigrid appeared to curtsey to them, “I’m so very pleased to meet you after all this time. Lloyd cannot stop telling me about you and his brother, who I know is away at summer camp, and your wonderful family, your wonderful brothers and sisters. Your brother Carl,” she said to my mother, who was now smiling at just the mention of his name, “He sounds like such a fine man. So generous.” With this reference to the “sainted brother” my father stopped smiling though it was obvious that he was in his own way as fascinated by Sigrid as Madeline.
“And your brother Sunny,” she then turned to my father.
“Sunny?” Madeline barked having heard her brother’s name clearly enough. “My brother? He’s coming too? He never comes to Brooklyn. Does the mountain ever come to the molehill?” she spat.
“I only meant,” Sigrid picked up, now including both Madeline and my father in her radiance, “I only was trying to say, my English is not so perfect, yes?” to which my mother nodded, “that your brother, Uncle Sunny was so kind to let Lloyd and Heshy have such good jobs for the summer. They are learning so much, making so much money,” my mother nodded again, “and look at the wonderful muscles Lloyd is developing.” She reached over to touch my biceps, which I could not help but alternately tense and flex to accentuate their enhanced definition. “His coach will be so pleased when he sees him in September.” This again engaged my father who had dreams for my athletic glory and thus he resumed his open adoration.
“Since you have to run so soon,” my mother said, “maybe you want a bite to eat. I prepared some salads and brought in smoked fish from the appetizing store. We also have fresh bagels and bialys.”
“We already ate at Nathan’s in Coney Island. I wanted Sigrid to try their hot dogs. She ate two of them. So why don’t we go into the living room and talk for a few more minutes and then I’ll take Sigrid over to Heshy’s.”
“What did she eat? What?” Aunt Madeline interjected yet again.
“We had hot dogs, Aunt Madeline, “frankfurters at Nathan’s. You know Nathan’s? We used to go there together.”
“I never liked the Germans. Even before the war.” I began to think I needed to find a way to get us to Heshy’s in the next few minutes.
“I would love to have something to eat,” Sigrid said, still smiling, not allowing Madeline to upset her or spoil our visit. “Lloyd has also told me about all the wonderful Brooklyn food you make. Your wonderful stuffed cabbage. I lived on cabbage and turnips during the war. It was so terrible there. In Germany.” I cringed—now she was talking about Germany. “My brother and I were sent to our grandmother in the country. To be safe.” Everyone became silent. “So please, yes, let us have something to eat. Lloyd is always in such a hurry. I would like very much to have, what you called ‘a bite to eat.’ Yes, a bite would be very fine.” And with that my mother escorted us to the dining room table, which was reserved strictly for infrequent special occasions.
“Ach, a table just like my grandmother’s,” Sigrid exclaimed as we moved through the swinging door that separated the breakfast room from the dining room. It was massive, of dark wood with sturdy legs. My mother’s pride. “The only good piece I have,” she would say in front of my father when they were fighting about something, when she wanted to particularly upset him, “A gift from my parents when we got married.” Surely not something he had been able to provide. This usually drove him into long, sulking sieges of silence.
“Seeing this table, just like my grandmama’s, it makes me feel so at home, if I may say that.” My mother moved to put her arm around Sigrid, which was an effort since Sigrid was at least a foot taller than she.
“You are always welcome here, dear,” she said, looking up at Sigrid, recognizing what Sigrid was feeling, “If you are a friend of Lloyd’s, this is your home too.” Sigrid stooped so that she could rest her head on my mother’s solid shoulder, letting it linger there for just a moment before quickly regaining her cheeriness.
“I am so happy to be here with all of you. I so much miss my family back in Germany.”
“Whaaa? Germany again?” Aunt Madeline appeared to have no difficulty hearing “Germany.”
I sensed the approach of imminent doom and desperately tried to change the subject, “Dad, tell Sigrid about your chess.” I thought that might work since he was devoted to it, playing out and analyzing the championship games reported each Sunday in the New York Times. “Sigrid plays too. She even competed in a few tournaments, like you. I know she’ll tell you she’s not very good,” I was groping to find something other than Germany to talk about, “but she really is.” Sigrid exchanged a quick look with my father, as if to say, “Isn’t your son still such a silly boy.”
But my father, also perhaps concerned where his sister might take us, picked up my lead, “Well, I do play a little. There is a chess club I go to Tuesday nights in downtown Brooklyn. There are some good players there, but not like in Europe.” He was rarely this gregarious with someone who he had just met, but continued in the same unexpected vein, “In Eastern Europe I mean. Of course, Russia particularly. About Germany, though, I do not know.” I began to shift in my seat, fearing what might next erupt from Madeline. But though he too did not hear well and as a result usually could match his sister in volume, he was careful to pronounce “Germany” in an uncharacteristically muted manner. Madeline did not rouse. She had without ceremony seated herself at the table and was already preoccupied with her food.
My mother, characteristically, had put out a bountiful spread of delicatessen and appetizing store salads and cold cuts. She signaled for the rest of us to sit and began to pass around the platters. Madeline, who typically never ate more than a quarter of a small skinless chicken at any meal, she was so concerned about her weight and what she called her “numbers”--by which she meant her cholesterol; but, in spite of this, that day she filled her plate repeatedly. And since her chewing was so, shall I say, enthusiastic, it generated enough sound that it drowned out for her any awareness of anything that was being said that might ordinarily agitate her. Madeline’s total preoccupation with her cold cuts also provided Sigrid and me with a window of time to eat enough to convince my mother that we appreciated all of her efforts, before excusing ourselves respectfully and heading over to Heshy’s.
But before Sigrid could take a bite or say much about her own chess, much less its status in Germany, Madeline raised her head from her food, where it had been substantially buried. “What did she say? I couldn’t hear because I was eating. Do you have any cake?” she asked my mother.
“You know I do. Why don’t you let the rest of us eat something and talk and then I’ll put it out.” Madeline grumbled but, while waiting for dessert, pulled another scoop of whitefish salad onto her plate.
Sigrid had been telling my father about a young grandmaster who she felt might one day contend for the world championship. He was, she said, at age twelve, already the German national champion.
“She can’t stop talking about Germany.” Since Madeline was still focused on Germany, and reasonably filled with food, I felt we were now rapidly moving toward disaster. I checked my watch. It was nearly 4:00. How much longer before we could escape?
“Mom, I think we will skip dessert. We need to get to Heshy’s house.”
“My Harry, he also was in Germany,” Madeline interrupted, and said to no one in particular, but now in a more subdued mode. Perhaps she was digesting. “He was a soldier, in the army.” Harry was Madeline’s third and last husband, all of whom had committed suicide. But for her it was a love affair. For him she was even willing to spend the money to have her hair done in a real beauty parlor, not as she had for decades at the local barber school. He on the other hand decided he too had had enough after just three years of marriage—life with Madeline for him, as with the others, was literally deadly.
“He saw action over there.” We couldn’t get away from Germany. “But he never told me any stories, except those about how he threw away his knapsack and carried a dice table on his back so whenever they had time he would run a crap game. He came home from the war with a lot of money. He loved to gamble,” she seemed lost in these memories. “But I also know he saw and had to do terrible things. Terrible. I loved him so much, that funny man.” She was actually smiling. “You can see, I am not nice looking. All skin and bones. No, no,” she said as Sigrid rose to protest. “It is true. But he made me feel beautiful.”
And with this she began to sob so uncontrollably that my mother had to snatch away her dish to prevent Madeline from plopping her head into her whitefish salad.
Sigrid was sitting next to her and reached over to try to comfort her. “Leave her alone,” my father bellowed, recovering his full voice, “She does this at the end of every meal. Just ignore her. She’ll stop once she has a piece of cake.”
“But she is so unhappy,” Sigrid insisted, though careful not to appear to disagree with my father who certainly knew his sister. The huge wormwood table was trembling from Madeline’s crying. But my father was right, I could testify--this is what Madeline always did before dessert.
“But you know, your being here,” he looked at Sigrid, “and my sister talking about the war, reminded me of something I haven’t thought about for a long time.” I couldn’t begin to imagine where this might lead. I feared again, not to a good place. “I was too old for the service. The draft board kept turning me down so I volunteered to be an air raid warden. I wanted to do something to contribute to the war effort other than eating rationed meat once a week. They gave me a helmet and a whistle and taught me what all the Nazi planes looked like. From their silhouettes.” I had never heard any of this before and was so stunned that I forgot what Sigrid might be thinking about my family’s continuous talk about Germany and the war.
“My job was to check to see if any lights, even from radio dials, were showing behind the blackout shades that everyone was required to have. Heshy’s father, Mr. Perly, made them. I think it’s the only time he ever made a decent living,” he chuckled at that recollection. “If a light was showing I would ring their doorbell and tell them to pull their shades all the way down or cover their lampshades with towels. So in case the Nazis sent planes over Brooklyn they wouldn’t be able to see any lights on the ground and use them as targets for their bombs.
“And then after everyone was asleep and all the lights were turned out there was no need for us to walk the streets, and so they sent us up onto apartment house roofs to look into the sky through binoculars to search for enemy planes. I spent hundreds of nights on the roof of that building there, right across the street,” he pointed to the apartment house where all the Italians lived. Sigrid, equally riveted by my father’s story, even got up to peer at it through the window, seemingly imagining what it must have been like on that roof top those pitch-black nights when who knows what she had been doing at the same time on the other side of the ocean.
“In the winter,” he now turned to me, “to keep me warm through the nights, your mother sent me out with a thermos of hot coffee. Also to keep me awake. Because some of the men fell asleep. To fall asleep on that roof, I felt, was to let my neighborhood down, my country down.” He paused and all we could hear was Madeline still crying with her head still resting on the table.
“You know what was the worst?” We all looked toward him, no one speaking, “it was the silence, the utter silence. It was not a restful, peaceful silence, but a silence filled with threat. I longed to hear even a simple dog’s bark. To break that sense of danger. To pull me back into the familiar world of family and going to work and listening to a ballgame on the radio. Just the thought of the sounds of a game late at night coming in all the way from St. Louis. If we could only get back to that I thought we would all be safe. Especially you and your brother. All I wanted was for you two to be safe.”
And with that, Madeline arose from the table shouting, “Where’s the cake. I’m ready for the cake.”
My father at that human bark emerged from his reverie and said, “I think maybe it’s time for you to go over to Heshy’s.” He was protecting me again. “I know you have to get Sigrid back to the city.” And with that it felt all right to say goodbye, exchange hugs and kisses, and leave.
Heshy’s was just across the way. Just on the other side of the vacant lot.
* * *
I said, “Let’s walk. Let’s leave the car where it is.” It was covered with kids who were draped on all four fenders, waiting for us to emerge as were all the porches still filled with the neighborhood yentas who leaned forward to get a better look at Sigrid, who would be the featured subject at their coffee klatches for weeks to come. “Heshy’s is just around the corner on Church Avenue.”
Sigrid decided to give them a good show—she pulled herself up to her full statuesque six-feet, plus three inches from heels; and although she had dressed demurely for the sake of our visit with my parents, once on the street she pulled back her shoulders so as to put her perfect breasts on best display and with her hands flipped her skirt to reveal glimpses of waxed thighs as she stretched out her stride. I needed to jog alongside to keep up. Mrs. Tannenbaum, who lived next door, literally slid out of her folding chair, with it collapsing on top of her, as she strained to get a better look. An enterprising kid could have made a fortune selling front-row stoop seats.
We walked by the vacant lot that separated Heshy’s and my bedrooms, the lot we attempted to bridge with various homemade communication devices, one less effective and more dangerous than the other--it was still piled high with discarded car tires that “crazy” Herbie Fleishman in his autistic trance climbed endlessly like Sisyphus; we passed next by John Inusi in his shoemaker’s shop that Sunday to catch up on the work that typically accumulated during the summers, he was still there, as during my childhood, bent a bit now from the years, at his ancient grease-slicked stitching machine that he brought with him on the boat from Italy; he too, who always had an eye for the ladies, squinted out through his crusty store window to take a look at the majestic Sigrid; then we passed quickly by a store piled high with steam boilers and air compressors that represented a neighborhood mystery—no one was ever seen to be there though the rent had been paid for decades; some said it was a front for the Mafia—there could be no other explanation; and after that was the door that led up a flight of steps to the second-floor apartment and office of Dr. Samuel (Sugar) Traub, who both lived and worked there until he made enough money to build the neighborhood’s most expensive and elaborate house across Church Avenue, a “showplace” as it was declared by those same yentas; and at the corner of East 56th Street and Church Avenue, directly across from Krinsky’s candy store, was Dr. Smith’s pharmacy, the only person on the block who appeared not to have a first name—all his diplomas and certificates of certification listed him as “P.K.R Smith, Jr.”-- the “Doctor” we added, he had never earned one, except in the eyes of all of us who he treated extra-medically, at no charge, for deep cuts just short of requiring stitches, gingivitis, epidemics of “trench mouth,” and, I always suspected, the Italians for a variety of unmentionable forms of disease beyond the ken of their family doctors; and finally we passed The Elegant Lady beauty parlor, where my mother went every Saturday morning to have her hair washed and roots touched up, but perhaps more to escape for a few hours to a sanctuary of women who desperately needed respite from their ceaseless chores, and more in truth from their “men.”
Then we faced Perly’s Glass Works—no sign announced it but everyone knew that if a kid drove a baseball through one of your windows, or if a cat shredded the tape on a Venetian blind, or if a mirror needed reglazing, you came here to find Mr. Perly, that is unless he was out wandering the neighborhood, clutching his Daily Worker, muttering incomprehensively to himself in a patois of two or three languages.
I had alerted Sigrid to the fact that to get up to Heshy’s apartment, above the store, we needed to use the stairs at the back and thus we might encounter Mr. Perly; and if we did I could not predict what might happen. But if we kept moving, we would find Heshy holed up in his bedroom. She said, “I hope we do meet him. I would love that. This all sounds so exotic.”
I had not been there for some years but everything remained as I remembered—I had spent some time there with Mr. Perly, getting him coffee and cigarettes from Krinsky’s and even occasionally the Daily Worker. The floors were still strewn with half empty putty cans, unfinished shades and blinds hung as if in tatters from hooks screwed into the ceiling, and his work table was even more eroded from the caustic mixes he used to glaze his mirrors. The single unshaded light bulb still hung in the air. But it was the smells compounded from the putty and silver nitrate that evoked for me the strongest memories of the night, very late, when Mr. Perly asked me to help him make mirrors for Mrs. Ruby—she was redecorating again.
Trailing these memories, now years later with Sigrid at my side clutching me, we moved quickly through his shop toward the stairs and made our way up to the Perlmutter’s apartment above the store where we found Heshy, as I always had, in his same room, stretched out on his bed, as he always had been, reading, of course, by the light that filtered in from the vacant lot that separated our houses. When he saw us he slipped the book quickly under his pillow. He was the same old Heshy, I thought, whose collection of “dirty” books was known well beyond our street—who knew what he had been reading and was trying to hide from us.
I introduced Sigrid who couldn’t have been more pleased to finally be meeting the legendary Heshy. He suggested we go into the kitchen where we could sit and have some coffee. Sigrid sat facing the window and said pointing, “Oh Lloyd, look there is your bedroom. Please, Heshy, tell me about the smoke signals you made to each other.”
He was at the stove heating water for the percolator. “We never did that,” he said in a soft monotone.
“But Lloyd told me you did. And the hose you talked through, no?”
“The speaking tube we did try—it didn’t work, the distance is too great and to be heard we had to shout. But never smoke signals,” he still stood facing the stove even though the water was already perking, “Lloyd, you may have noticed, has a lively imagination.”
“Lloyd?” Sigrid turned to me plaintively, “No smoke signals? I thought you made-believe you were Indians. Just like that Indian on the radio you told me about, no? He was Tonto? Heshy, you told me, was Tonto and you were the Ranger?”
Heshy had joined us and now looked directly at Sigrid, saying with some bite, “The Lone Ranger. He always saw himself that way and me as his sidekick, you know, his ‘faithful companion,’ like Tonto.”
“But in my country, there is great interest in cowboys and Indians, especially Indians who are seen to be a part of nature, die natur, not tainted by civilization. We see them to be victims. Cowboys to be their oppressors. From what I felt, if I may say this Heshy,” she was smiling at him in the filtering light, “it felt to me, if I may be honest, as if you did not want to be that brave, that Tonto. This I do not understand.”
“I never saw it that way. Everyone here wanted to be the noble cowboy, not the ‘noble savage,’ the unaccomodated man, advancing on the wilderness, a solitary, beyond the reach of towns becoming cities, uncorrupted and uncorrupting. Quite a myth. Like Cooper’s Leather Stocking. Do you know him? I mean Cooper?”
“Yes I do. I have read much of him. I know many think The Deerslayer is a book for young boys, like Huckleberry Finn was once thought to be, but it is a very profound book about America’s mythic consciousness.”
“I agree. I am also very interested in issues of consciousness.” Things were now going well—for a moment I had thought there would again be problems and I would have to find a way to extract us without unduly insulting Heshy. “In fact,” Heshy continued, “when you came in, I was looking again at Sartre.” I thought, well done Heshy, sure, Sartre is under your pillow. “Lloyd had told me that you were working on a project about Sartre and consciousness.” He peered at her, and she at him. “This interests me as well. No one, in my view, has done better at delineating the contradictions that were the principal consequences of the First World War.” Sigrid was nodding; I was worrying that again soon we would be talking about Germany and her War.
“I do though think he is now feeling a little dated, don’t you agree?” Heshy had picked up and was emulating Sigrid’s syntax—what was he up to? But Sigrid was now nodding vigorously back at him and had placed her elbows on the table so she could get closer to it and to Heshy. I was beginning to think that maybe there were now other reasons to try, very soon, to get us back to the city.
“I think there is some newer, better thinking going on among the current younger generation on the Continent.” Heshy added. “We will here be hearing about them soon. Of that I am certain. That will be good for us here—we need this critique; we continue to be so naïve in our optimism.”
“Yes that is true,” Sigrid said, “It is America’s greatest weakness.”
And just as she uttered those words about America Mr. Perly appeared, looming in the doorway. Ignoring us, more like we weren’t even there, he said, as if to himself, “Coffee.” He went over to the stove and poured himself a cup, and, still not acknowledging our presence, sat down between Heshy and Sigrid. He spread out his paper and muttered, “Dogs. Hunde. It is not the German problem; it is the American problem. Their treats. Their Americanisha bombs. It is a wonder, no, anyone is still alive?”
“Ah, Mr. Perly,” I tried to interject and shift subjects, though I knew from the past that that was not possible, “I want you to meet my friend, Sigrid, from college.”
“There will be a comeuppance, this I assure you,” he rolled his paper into a weapon and slammed the table with it so that I jumped with a start—neither Heshy nor Sigrid moved. She had her eyes locked on him. “Soon, it will be soon. There will be a reckoning, a reckoning I tell you for these running dogs.”
“You know, Mr. Perly, that I am too from Germany,” I leaned back from the table to be closer to the door. “And you are wrong.” He slammed the table again in response, this time with both hands, causing it to shudder on its chrome legs.
“I am telling you that it is der system here. Never the people. The workers here too give both their money and blood to these farstunken fascists in Washington and Wall Street.”
“Yes, I do agree, there is an American problem. I too know about American capitalism. It can be a cruel system. But there is also very much a German problem.” She shifted tone, looking directly at Mr. Perly, not backing off, “I was there. I saw the consequences. I saw the dead. I ate scraps of garbage to survive.” Mr. Perly looked up at her.
“This was not something the Americans did. It was we, the Germans who caused that. My family too.” She was no longer smiling or radiant. Just a little girl in a long body, forlorn in the fading light of Brooklyn.
Mr. Perly sat motionless, no longer flailing. He pushed his chair back slowly and then lifted himself. I slid mine back as well, even closer to the door. It felt as if all the oxygen had suddenly evaporated. He approached Sigrid and stood behind her, totally, unusually still. She was bent, slumped toward the table. I had never seen her in anything resembling that kind of posture.
He then reached out toward her and gently placed his acid-gnarled hands on her magnificent shoulders, the contrast startling. And said, “You will be well, mein kinder.” And more incredibly, leaned over, still from behind, and placed a long kiss amidst the curls of her blondest hair.
* * *
Sigrid asked me to raise the top on the car. She wanted to shut off the outer world. She curled up beside me, and we drove back toward Manhattan. Nestled together. Silent for quite some time.
When we were half way across the Brooklyn Bridge, Sigrid said, “I wish I had grown up with you and Heshy. Then I would have something to remember. Now, I have only things to forget.”
* * *
The next morning, Monday, when changing in the construction shanty, I noticed that Heshy had a book stuffed in his sack that appeared to be written in French while I was still working my way through The Stranger in translation. With everything that was happening, it was looking as if it would take me the whole summer to finish it.
While pulling on our overalls, studiously avoiding any references to Sigrid’s Sunday visit to Brooklyn, Eddie Ribori approached us and said, “There’s a big fan arriving today—they say the biggest ever made, twenty tons, twelve feet tall—today you two’ll be working with me and the men.”
For the first time, the full bull gang, Tommy (the Turnip) Annunziata, Louie (Man-Mountain) Maloney, Marty (the Parrot) Martinova, Eddie (the Bull) Ribori, and now Heshy (Big Dick) and me (Joe College) were united. Packed together in the plywood-sided construction elevator, we were headed up to the fortieth floor fan room. Eddie Ribori had his pry-bar and rollers clutched to his side like battle flags. And as we rose, slowly passing the half-built floors in that creaking apparatus, Eddie began to tell us what awaited.
“The engineers tell me there has never before been a mother-of-a-fan like this one. They had it specially designed for this job. The owners, the Tishmans, wanted just one fan on the fortieth, only one, unlike the other fan rooms where we put in two, even three. But they want just one to be used to heat and cool their executive offices—they wanted it down at the end, away from the Fifth Avenue side, so there would be no vibrations, no sounds up there in their suites.” He paused to let this sink in. “I know what you’re thinking, they’re a bunch of faggots, but what else can I tell you—it for them to decide and for us to dispose. They’re paying our salaries.”
We stood huddled in silence, exchanging looks—Heshy and I excited about the opportunity that this presented; we would finally be doing something substantial—for the time being, at least, no truckloads of ducts to grapple with in the blazing street. The others probably were thinking it would be just another day at the office. No big deal. To them what did it matter—ten tons, twenty. They’d seen it all. Just another job. But Eddie seemed to be wanting us to understand that this represented something special, minimally a special challenge—to hoist and then move into place the largest fan ever built for an office tower.
We slipped by the twenty-fifth floor. Eddie then addressed his men—“I know you think this is just more of the same—what we’ve been doin’ together for, what, ten, twelve years now. Well before I came up to the shanty this morning I was down on the street, on the 54th Street side, where the riggers dropped it last night, to take a look at that mother. That is one big sucker. It’s filling the whole street.” I looked over to Heshy who was standing dwarfed between the Turnip and the Mountain. He too seemed to be surprised by what seemed like Eddie’s awe. The Parrot began to emit a continuous, unmodulated sound.
Eddie next turned to Heshy and me, “This now is a fan, understand, not just a bunch of ducts. So stay out of our way until I tell you what to do. I don’t want to be makin’ any hospital visits tonight.” We slumped back against the wall and grunted that we understood.
Then again to his crew, “I’m gonna need you to give me a full-day’s effort today. You hear me? I’ll be watching what you have for lunch. Especially what you have to drink. I don’t want no one to be losing any fingers. Particularly you, Turnip, considering you already have only one wing that works.” He chuckled at his own joke. I had never before heard him refer to any of his other men by their nicknames, much less make that kind of fun of them. It for certain looked as if this would be a different kind of day.
The car bumped to a stop at the fan room floor, high above the city, which was struggling to emerge from its overnight haze. We were up above where the “skin,” or walls had yet to be affixed to the open steel structure; and although the air on the ground was still, promising to fire up as the day advanced, up there, in that open web of I-beams, there was a stiff wind which, if it persisted, would hopefully keep us cool as we labored.
Eddie Ribori led us over to the 54th Street side and strode right to the edge, so close that his boot tips literally protruded beyond it; and, without holding on, leaned out into empty space to try to catch the attention of the riggers who, 400 feet below, were waiting for us to be in place so they could begin to hoist the fan.
He waved his arms more and more frantically since he apparently was having difficulty rousing them. “Those fuckers,” he said to us, half turning, still balanced, it seemed to me, precariously at the edge, “They’re probably still asleep in their rigs or checking out the skirts on the office girls coming out of the subway.” He stuffed two fingers into his mouth and began to add piercing whistles to his waving, hoping the sound at least would reach them. But the wind cut through it, blowing the sound back at us. In frustration, he backed off and, swearing under his breath, walked over to where we stood—well back from the edge.
“Marty,” he snapped his fingers in the Parrot’s direction. Marty appeared to be unaware of what was happening, of Eddie’s agita, he was so lost or focused on producing what now seemed more soft cooing than chirps. “Get over here,” Eddie barked. This jolted Marty out of his world of noise. He seemed perplexed that Eddie would address him so harshly after all their years together. Today was clearly unique. “I need you over here,” Eddie signaled. Marty and Eddie then moved back toward the last row of beams and, side-by-side, with Marty being sure to grasp one of those columns, together peered down toward the street.
Marty knew without direction what Eddie required him to do, what he alone was qualified for: thus from him then there exploded such a tumult of piercing shrieks, an entire jungle of sound, that it appeared that the riggers’ hoist began immediately to churn and squeal, as if in natural response to its fellow creature, even before one could plausibly expect the Parrot’s call to have reached them on the ground below.
It looked as if the Parrot’s day might be done since Eddie nodded to him, “Good job,” and indicated with a gesture that he could go over and sit on the shady 53rd Street side until perhaps he was needed again. Which seemed unlikely.
That hoist was situated on a structure of its own, secured to the topmost steel beams, and rose with the steel, floor-by-floor so as to always be placed at the very highest point, to be available to lift from the street the largest of loads, fans as an example, that were too massive or heavy to ride on The Provolone’s more modest contraption. This hoist, in its essence, was also a contraption of its own design, made up of a system of pulleys at the top through which a forty, fifty, sixty-storey-long steel cable was threaded, which in turn reached to the street and to which, via a series of huge hooks and buckles, in the old days called sky hooks, the riggers would clamp their loads and then hoist them, twenty tons of steel beams or equipment, inch-by-torturous-inch, up to the sky where men waited.
At that pace it would take about half an hour for the fan to get to us and so Eddie sent Heshy and me down to the food wagon on the street to get coffee and crullers for him and the men. As was to be expected, The Provolone was first in line and was ordering his usual coffee with six sugars and three cheese Danish, which he would woof down without chewing. “So they got you faggots doin’ a real day’s work for a change. Watch out for them slippery spots, I don’t want you boys doing any swan dives onto my rig. The last college boy here took a flop and I had to spend a week cleaning up his mess. He got his blue blood all over everything.” He waddled over toward the hut by his lift to inhale his food, roaring with laughter so violent that it could probably be heard all the way up on the fortieth floor.
When we got back up to fan room with the coffee, the fan had already arrived. It hung suspended in the air, swaying slowly on the cable that had lifted it. In its bulk it blocked out the morning sun, casting a shadow of its own well into the vast room.
Eddie said it could wait for us until we had our break. We sat on piles of lumber and discarded crates, not able to take our eyes off that machine. Sipping my coffee, I couldn’t figure out how it could be maneuvered from outside, where it was floating in air, seemingly defying gravity, to inside the building itself much less how it could be hauled across at least fifty yards of floor and set in the tight space that had been walled off to house it.
I was snapped out of my musings by Eddie who clapped his hands, saying, “OK, let’s get the job done. Louie, it’s your turn. Marty woke them up down there, now you get that sucker in here.”
Man-Mountain, who had been sprawled out with his coffee and crullers across a pile of tarps, rolled heavily onto his side and somehow through a series of contortions managed to get up onto his feet, also swaying, not entirely unlike the fan which was still blocking our views to the north. He shuffled over toward where it was swinging on the cable in the swelling breeze. Eddie joined him. He had a thick coil of rope around one shoulder, which he wore like a giant shoulder bag. When he got to the edge of the building, not unlike a cowboy swinging a lariat over his head before launching it around the neck of a steer, Eddie swung that rope out over 54th Street in a series of enlarging loops; and when its diameter was about eight feet, let it fly out to where it ensnared the hoist’s cable. It had struck with such velocity that it whipped itself around and around that cable until it was virtually knotted. He then secured the other end to one of the columns.
And as with the Parrot, Louie, without any instruction from Eddie, hauled his bulk right to the edge. From my angle, ten feet back from there, it looked as if his enormous stomach not only hung out well beyond his belt’s feeble effort to contain it, but also well out over the street. Knowing from physics class something about center-of-gravity, I feared he was perilously close to tipping forward and would wind up splattering himself all over The Provolone’s hoist. Just like that college kid.
But with surprising agility and grace he quickly, in one motion, released the rope from the column where Eddie had cinched it and threaded it across his back, under his left arm and over his right shoulder. Now he stood, still at the edge, but with his back to the open air and fan; and he slowly lowered his body into an angle against the weight of the fan, which as a result had begun to twist. And as he bend further forward, Louie’s center of gravity was incrementally more and more shifting into the fan room and less and less out over the street. And incredible, imperceptibly, the fan, hanging on it cable, began to inch toward Louie and thus the building. Louie was snorting from the effort. He was saturated by his own sweat. But he was unrelenting and soon had the fan pulled right to the edge of the building where he held it in place by rooting his legs to the floor as if they were are part of the concrete.
Eddie then unfurled a thirty-foot-long strap of the kind I had seen furniture movers use to wrap large pieces. He somehow was able to scamper up onto the top of the fan itself, pulling the strap behind him. And like those furniture movers, he quickly proceeded to wrap the fan with the strap. That done, he hoped back into the fan room, hooking an additional rope to the strap.
Without pause, there was a limit to how much longer Louie could be expected to avoid a coronary occlusion much less hold that monster in place, Eddie signaled to Tommy, who jumped up to join them. The Turnip, without a pause, snatched two of Eddie’s rollers, stuffing one under his useless arm, and hopped right over to where Eddie stood, who was helping to keep the fan in place by holding on to the second rope, which he had tied around his waist.
I looked over at Heshy and he at me, both of us wide-eyed, and exchanged shrugs which in effect asked, “What should we do to help?” We could think of nothing and I was beginning to wonder why Eddie had asked us to join his men. We could have easily been left behind with our trucks.
But I could immediately see why the Turnip had this role to play—to set the first, key roller in exactly the right place, just at the building’s edge, precisely where the fan was gently nuzzling the building. Placed and held there—the holding was the issue—Louie and Eddie could ease it in, literally one more inch was all that was required, and then the riggers down below, at Eddie’s signal, they were now on the case, could lower it that one inch to where it would begin to nip the first roller. And when that was accomplished, a relatively slight tug on both ropes would begin to roll the fan into the building—such was the power of the roller, or wheel, another lesson from physics class. That twelve foot behemoth, all those twenty tons would now be reduced to mere inches and ounces.
Tommy, with only one good arm had so refined its function, not unlike how blind people find their other senses enhanced, that he and only he of the men on the bull gang was adept enough to get, what I now understood it to be, that magnificent arm all the way under the lurking fan and had the ability to hold it as totally still as it needed to be for the fan to take its first bite of the roller. All the rest would be, as Eddie put it, “a piece of cake.”
And that’s where Heshy and I came in—when things became a piece of cake. That was clearly our theme for the day, pastries, which we ran back and forth for to keep the men supplied, but also to join the effort only when it was declared a piece of cake.
After Tommy had set the three rollers in place and the fan, now fully in the building, was resting on them, the work that remained, moving the fan across the floor and sliding it into its housing, was all about just where and how to place the rollers. As the fan slid forward the back roller of the three would pop out and needed to be placed in front so the movement forward could be continuous. My job was to catch the back roller when it came free and run it up to the front to Heshy, who, under Eddie’s very explicit and precise instruction would tell him exactly how to place it. “A half inch more turned to the left will do it Big Dick. We have to begin our turn right here.” Heshy would make that adjustment and Eddie, using his pry-bar at the back to wedge it forward, the fan began to make it wide-arcing turn to the left, toward where it would eventually reside.
“As I told you when you boys began,” now that the hard part was over, Eddie was feeling expansive, “it’s all about simple things. As I said, all I need are these three guys, these rollers here and this pry-bar that has been with me for more than twenty years. You are always making things so complicated,” he made a face as if the idea of complexity made him nauseous. “Where has that gotten you? Or the world for that matter?” Louie and Tommy nodded. The Parrot had fallen asleep, wheezing on the tarps. “I’ve seen a lot of that fucked-up world. My family too.” At that he stood still for a moment as if to take in his own understanding of things, “And I can tell you it’s the guys in suits with their fancy educations that have got us into all this trouble.” He paused again, as if trying to remember something lost in time. But he quickly snapped out of his reverie and became the familiar Eddie again, launching a huge globule of phlegm into the corner where it thudded against the wall.
“Enough of this shit, let’s get this done and grab a few beers.”
We did get it done, without even having to work overtime--we had secured the world’s largest fan in place where it would keep the Tishmans comfortable for decades. But I also think I had learned how the great pyramids of Egypt were built. Simple.
* * *
“How’s Heshy doing?” the foreman, Lou Wasserman asked when I arrived at the shanty extra early, two days after we wrestled with the giant fan and one day after I stayed home from work, suffering from a debilitating migraine. Lou was visibly in a state of upset beyond his daily agitation.
“All right, I guess. I was sick all day and didn’t talk with him. I didn’t see him today either since I came into the city by myself.”
“So he didn’t tell you what happened?”
“No, as I said,” now with mounting annoyance, the day after a migraine was not a lot better than the day they struck, “I was sick and stayed in bed with the blinds closed.”
“I know you were sick, but still. . . .”
“What’s going on Lou?” What happened?”
Lou pulled me over to the corner where he had set up a makeshift desk—a piece of plywood on two saw horses. He whispered so as not to be overheard even though there was no one else in the shanty and was unlikely not to be for at least another half an hour. “Since he didn’t tell you, you better sit down.” Which I did. On his stool.
“So you didn’t hear about what happened to your neighbor, Joe Muri?”
Now totally exasperated, I shouted at him, “No! I was sick as a dog. As a matter of fact I felt as if my head had been split open.”
“I better tell you then before the men get here.” Lou couldn’t stand still so half the time he had his back to me and I had to remind him where I was sitting so I could hear what he was saying.
“It was during lunch break yesterday. All the guys were over on the 54th Street side, which has the shade that time of day. The usual, sittin’ around bullshitting. Ogling the girls.” He was talking to himself, having forgotten I was there.
“What happened, Lou? You’re making me crazy.”
“You know the hoist you used for the fan on Monday?” I nodded. “Well the cable came off the pulley on the roof while the guys were out there having their lunch. More than 400 feet of fucking steel cable that must weight at least five tons.”
I gasped. I had recently seen that cable and was beginning to imagine the effect it would have if it slammed into the street from so high up, “What happened Lou?” The left side of my head began to thump from the residue of the migraine.
“Most of the guys saw it coming and jumped up onto the cinder blocks and ducts piled on the street to get out of the way. But when that cable hit the ground it danced around like it was alive. Like a downed power cable still juiced with electricity. Jumping all over the place. But this cable was also like a, what-do-you-call-it, a sickle or a scythe. Slicing and cutting everything it hit, including eight-by-eight wood beams and fourteen-inch iron pipes.” At the recollection of the cable’s destructive power, Lou shuttered and lapsed into silence.
I knew he had more to tell me, “What else happened Lou? You mentioned Joe Muri.” I held my breath, but I could hear his shallow breathing.
“It was bad, very bad.” I remained still, waiting for him to be ready to tell me.
“It cut off his leg. His left leg. That fucking cable. Sliced it right off. Joe’s leg. Like it was cutting cheese.” He began to moan.
I sat slumped on the stool, shaking from just the telling. The thought of Joe’s leg, his athlete’s leg . . . the horror.
I managed to choke out, “Is he all right? I mean . . .”
“Yeah, he’s alive. Thanks to Heshy.”
“Heshy?” I was stunned. “What did he do?”
“He saved him, he saved Joe. That’s what he did.”
“Tell me Lou.”
“The blood was gushing from the stump and Joe passed right out. In pain I guess and in shock from losing all that blood. Heshy was sitting not far from him. That cable coulda’ killed him to. But he was OK and ran right over to where Joe was and took off his belt and made it into a tourniquet. The cable was still hopping around so it was still dangerous. But Heshy wrapped that belt around Joe’s thigh and tightened it until the blood stopped. I was right there too and watched. I couldn’t believe my eyes--what Heshy did. He would loosen it too, just as they say you have to do to prevent gangrene or whatever. Heshy did that the whole time while waiting for the ambulance.”
Lou needed to pause again to gather himself. My head felt as it was being ripped in half.
“And what’s more,” Lou continued, “while waitin’ for the medics Heshy found Joe’s leg. The piece that had been cut off. It had been tossed across the street by the cable. It was right there by that jewelry store. Heshy picked it up with his bare hands and carried it back across to where we were. All the guys frozen in place, me too I’m ashamed to admit.”
Lou half turned away from me, “Then he asked Eddie Ribori, Heshy did, if he could have his shirt to wrap it up in. To save if for the medics because he said the doctors might be able to reattach it. They can do that now, Heshy said.”
I felt myself fainting.
“And then Heshy went back to where Joe was lying in the gutter, in his own blood, and sat there on the street with him, holding Joe’s head in his lap. Talking to him like Joe was just a kid who fell off his bike or something.”
* * *
I left the shanty before any of the men arrived and wandered around the area all morning. I wasn’t ready to face them and what they’d been through. I felt I had somehow let them down by not being there. That I didn’t now deserve to be a part of what they had together experienced. Yes, I had really been sick and there was no way I could get to work. But still.
And then of course, what would I say to Heshy—“I can’t believe it” or “How are you doing?” or “Tell me what happened” or “I heard you saved Joe’s life” or, more complicated, “Congratulations”?
I had a pretty good talk with myself as I drifted from street to street, hardly aware of where I was. I concluded that it was time to stop doing so much pretending and feeling superior and, frankly, to grow up. I was not allowing myself to learn what I needed to learn. It wasn’t about being at Columbia and parading around with my pipe and beret. And it wasn’t about being pre-med and going to medical school or even becoming a doctor.
And all that time I thought I had things to teach Heshy. How ironic.
So as evidence to myself that I was beginning to understand what I needed to do to become someone I could face in the mirror every day for the rest of my life, rather than slink home and hide from what was waiting back at the job, which is what I would have done in the past—run and hide--I realized what was waiting there was much more than the fifteen dollars an hour that had originally attracted me. So, I thought, I had better get my ass in gear and get back there—it was almost lunchtime.
* * *
They were out on the street as always, but on the 53rd Street side, away from where the cable fell and where Joe was injured. There was not the usual chatter or whistles and sucking sounds whenever a girl went by, running the gauntlet. Accidents were frequent on construction sites—three men from other trades had already been killed on the Tishman job—but Joe Muri? It was inconceivable.
Heshy and Eddie Ribori sat together. Tommy and Louie and Marty, the other members of the bull gang were there too, but they kept their distance. I walked over to Heshy and Eddie. Heshy looked up at me. I offered a clumsy wave of greeting. He nodded his head as if to say, “It’s OK. I understand.” I sat down on Eddie’s other side. Close to him
“So as I was telling you last night, my father probably worked in your neighborhood, in Brooklyn. Paving the streets. You said that when you were a kid there were still dirt streets. Well, he worked for the Sicilian Fucking Asphalt Company. They did all the streets there back then. It was backbreaking work. They didn’t have the equipment they have today. Just shovels and rakes. On days like this it was so hot that his shoes stuck to the asphalt.” Eddie sighed. “But it paid the rent.
“He was a small man. Maybe five-feet, if he could make himself stand up straight. Which he couldn’t. His dream,” Eddie snorted, “was to have tall sons. Can you believe that?”
Heshy said, “Yes I can. My father is also very short.”
“Well, he had two sons, and both of us turned out this way—still working with our hands. But when I got into the tin knockers union, he was very proud. He said, in Italian of course, ‘Only in America.’ He loved America and what he thought it stood for—opportunity. He never heard all the Ginny jokes the ‘real’ Americans threw at us. The ones born here. Either he didn’t understand the English or he closed his ears to them. He wanted so much to believe in this country.” Eddie again grunted ironically.
“Let me tell you I also bought all that bullshit. I had a son too. And I wanted to be sure he never had to do this,” Eddie gestured at the men sprawled out around us. “He went to school, even college. That was my American dream—that he’d be a college boy just like you.” He looked only at Heshy. “And unlike you, maybe he wouldn’t be a doctor, but maybe he would get a good job at a bank or an insurance company. Be an executive. Make a decent living. Own a house, not be a slave to the landlord like me and his grandfather. He’d have kids of his own too. Then my grandkids would be our doctors.”
Eddie then sat for some time, not speaking, staring off at nothing.
“What’s he doing now?” Heshy finally ventured.
More time passed. Then Eddie said, hardly audible, “He’s dead. He was killed. Ten years ago. In Korea. Up by the Inchon reservoir. That motherfucker Truman sent him there. Took him out of college just when he was doing well.”
After a moment Heshy put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder, “I’m sorry.”
Eddie sat there slumped forward, nodding his head at Heshy’s touch, but quickly pulled himself up and squared those bull-like shoulders. “Let me tell you though what I learned from all this. Defiance. Not anger. I got passed that. I know what I just said about Truman. I’m still angry with him. But toward life I stand defiant. Not what happened to Eddie Junior, not anything is going to defeat me. I still believe in the future.”
And then he turned to me and then to Heshy and said, “In you guys for example. I believe in you. Both of you.” He locked eyes with each of us in turn.
He hauled himself up from the nail keg where he had been sitting and said, “It’s time to get back to work. We’re not done here yet. Let’s grab some more of the Tishman’s money.”
But before joining Tommy and Louie and Marty, his men, back up in the fan room, he turned to face us and said, “See you later Lloyd.”
And to Heshy, “You too Doc.”
