On the Waterfront (22 page)

They hurried across the street into Pulaski Park. A clammy mist floated over the empty benches and curled around the neglected, bepigeoned statue of the old General, erected by the Polish Society just after the First World War. In the darkness the riding lights of the ships on the river were indistinct yellow sparklers.

It was not until they entered the park that Katie became conscious of his tight grip on her arm and pulled away.

“Thanks,” she said. “Why did you do it?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

She looked back at the dark outlines of the church. “Baseball bats!” She shuddered.

“Yeah, they play pretty rough,” Terry said.

They were following the central path through the block-square park that opened on River Street. She looked at him, puzzled. He was dark, with high cheek bones, and a strange puffiness around his left eye. He would have had a fine, Roman nose if it had not been dented in the bridge. He looked deliberately disreputable. He had a cocky, rolling, yet graceful way of walking. His manner was careless, arrogant, uninvolved. Oh, she knew the type, hated the type.

“Which side are you with?” she asked suddenly.

He raised his shoulders cynically and tapped his chest. “Me? I’m with me—Terry.”

She turned away from him. What was she doing out here, in a park, alone, with a—punk, Moose had called him that. “I’ll be able to get home all right now,” she said.

She started along the path that led through the middle of the park, past the forgotten Polish General who brooded over the empty benches with sad, metallic eyes. Terry followed behind her. Casually, with his hands pushed deep into his pockets, he trailed her. She glanced back questioningly and quickened her steps. What was he up to, protecting or pursuing her? Stay out of the parks after dark, her father always had warned her.

Near the River Street entrance a shabby form rose out of the darkness at her from a stone bench. She gave a short shrill cry and ran a few steps backwards, almost into the arms of Terry.

“A dime. Ya gotta dime? A dime for a cupa cawfee?”

The figure had one arm and a foul whiskey breath. It seemed not only his breath but his whole, ragged, unkempt body was saturated with cheap whiskey, as if he had slept and wallowed in it. Now she recognized him, Mutt Murphy, the wreckage of a human being who had staggered into the wake.

“Cawfee …” Mutt was cackling, his trembling hand outstretched. “One little dime ya don’t need …”

“Some coffee,” Terry laughed as he made the gesture of downing a shot of whiskey. He raised his hand as if to slap Mutt away. “G’wan, beat it, ya bum.”

Ignoring him, Mutt moved several steps closer to Katie, until his sodden face was staring into hers. The look and stench of him was horrible, yet Katie could not bring herself to back away. He screwed up his eyes as if trying to draw her into focus through the fog.

“I know you … You’re Katie Doyle .…” Quickly he crossed himself. “Your brother’s a saint. Oney one ever tried t’ get me me compensation …”

“C’mon,” Terry said, pushing him away. “Let’s get outa here.”

Being pushed was so familiar to Mutt Murphy that he was no longer even aware of the indignity. Pointing a wavering, accusing finger at Terry, he started to say, “You remember, Terry. You was there the night Joey was …”

“Aah, for Christ’ sake quit ya gassin’,” Terry said. “Disappear! You’re botherin’ the lady.”

“You remember,” Mutt persisted, “ya bumped inta me when ya was walkin’ …”

“Yeah, yeah,” Terry said, stepping in fast. He reached into his pocket for a handful of change. “Here’s a couple of shots for ya. Go have yourself a ball.”

Mutt stopped talking to admire the coins in his hand. Terry had scooped them out of his pocket without even bothering to count them—quarters, dimes, nickels. Mutt stared at them incredulously. “I can’t believe it. A small fortune.” He reached down into his frayed jacket and pulled out a little tobacco pouch into which he deposited the coins one by one. Then withdrawing a few feet he raised his cap to Katie with incongruous formality.

“Goo-luck, Katie. Lord’ve mercy on Joey.”

Then he screwed up his face in an ugly grimace and his voice came out full and angry for the first time. “You can’t buy me.” He glared at Terry. “You’re still a bum!”

He staggered off along the path they had taken, stiff-legged, his chin upraised with a last display of dignity.

Terry looked after him, relieved that Mutt hadn’t mentioned the pigeon. Lucky for him that the one witness who had stumbled onto Terry’s role in the Doyle job was a goofed-up sour-belly that nobody would take seriously. He turned to Katie with what he considered his most debonair, light-hearted manner. “I ask you to look at what’s callin’
me
a bum.”

Katie watched the shaggy figure of Mutt fading back into the mist. At the statue in the middle of the park he seemed to be trying to engage General Pulaski in conversation.

“Everybody loved Joey,” Katie said, as if to herself. “From the little kids to the old rummies.”

Terry was standing there wondering, Who boxed me into this? What do I have to be tailing after Joey’s sister for? Last tomato in the world I oughta be seen with. “Yeah,” Terry said.

She turned her head and looked at him a moment before asking, “Did you know him very well?”

Terry tried to keep his tone casual. “Well,” he shrugged, “you know how it is. He got around.”

Katie frowned. She looked back along the path that seemed to have swallowed Mutt. “What did that poor man mean just now when he said …”

“Aah, don’t pay no attention to him.” Terry waved the rummy aside. “He’s fallin’ down drunk all the time. Just a juice-head. Talks to himself. Don’t pay no attention.”

She shivered slightly and pulled her cloth coat closer around her. “It’s cold. I’d better go home.”

She started at a rapid pace, making it clear that she was walking apart from him. But he loped alongside, drawn along with her. She veered away.

A
nice
girl, Terry thought. How long had it been since he had walked with a
nice
girl? Twenty to one a virgin even. Look how cool and quiet she walks. Melva would have been all over him. The park was a regular boudoir for Melva. What did you say to a nice girl? How do you break the ice? How do you get around to touching a nice girl?

“You don’ hafta be scared of me,” he told her. “I’m not gonna bite ya.” He had closed the gap between them to within a foot or so. She kept her eyes straight ahead. “Wha’s the matter?” He kept at her. “They don’ let you walk with fellas where you’ve been?”

She tossed her head slightly. She didn’t want to be a prude. He was coarse, a roughneck, but he hadn’t really done anything wrong.

“You know how the Sisters are,” she said.

She had lovely skin, smooth and fresh, like a—his clumsy mind groped—like a pink rose. He had noticed how her skin glowed in the light of the church basement. Rose hell, she was like a full fresh peach in the market at 4:30 in the morning. Sometimes he’d stop on his way home from the bars, pick up the best-looking fruit he could find and take it back to his room under the roof of the tenement. Breakfast, courtesy of the Bohegan market.

“You training to be a nun or something?” he asked suddenly.

“No,” she said seriously, “it’s just a regular college.”

They were passing the section near the River Street entrance laid out as a children’s playground. Impulsively Terry sat down on one of the swings.

“Care to join me in a swing?” His manner now was half courteous, half teasing.

“No, thank you,” she said gravely. “It’s getting very late.” But she lingered uncertainly.

He let himself swing a few feet back and forth. “A regular college, huh? It’s funny, I thought it was kinda like a nunnery.”

She smiled. “It’s just run by the nuns. The Sisters of St. Anne.”

“Yeah? Where is that? Where you stay?”

“In Tarrytown.”

“Tarrytown?” He wrinkled his nose. “I’ll bet that’s a real corny joint. How far is that?”

“Just up the river about thirty miles. Out in the country.”

He made a face again. “I don’t go for the country. I was in a training camp once. The crickets made me nervous. What a racket!”

She laughed, for the first time. She was prettier than he had thought. His first impression had been of a nice-featured, rather plain girl. “You know you’ve got a real sweet laugh,” he said, “real sweet.”

The line, she thought. The roughneck under wraps. But there was something about him. Or was it simply that she hadn’t been let out very often with unauthorized boys? That’s what the Mother Superior called them at Marygrove. Unauthorized boys. She was a little frightened and excited. It was no better than a pick-up.

He swung back and forth slowly, a little too sure of himself. “You come down here often?”

“Vacations,” she said. “I haven’t been here since Easter. I was away for the summer as a counselor.”

“That’s nice,” he said. “And you spend all your time up there just learnin’ stuff, huh?”

She nodded with a small smile. “There’s a lot of stuff to learn. I want to be a teacher.”

“A teacher!” he said. “Wow. You know personally I admire brains. My brother Charley is a very brainy guy. He had a couple of years of college. He can talk as good as any lawyer. Very brainy.”

“It isn’t just brains,” Katie said. “It’s, well—how you use them.”

Terry looked at her and nodded, impressed. Charley was brainy, all right, but he never talked like this. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “I get your thought.”

His effort to look like a thinker made her smile. “Now I
have
to be going,” she said. “Pop’ll be doing handstands. I’ll be all right from here.”

She started walking toward the River Street entrance. There was a high iron railing on each side of the path leading to the street. Beyond them the banana boat was still being unloaded. The sound of the groaning winches carried to them. Fog horns moaned on the river.

Terry had jumped up from the swing to follow her. He knew Charley would chew him out, but he could not stop following her.

“You know, I’ve seen you lots of times before,” he said. “Remember parochial school here on Palooskie Street? Seven, eight years ago. Your hair come down in …”

“Braids?”

Terry nodded. “Looked like a hunk o’ rope. You had wires on your teeth an’ …”

“I thought I’d never get them off.”

“… an’ glasses, pimples …” He suddenly interrupted himself with laughter. “Man, ya was really a mess.”

Katie kept on walking. “I can get home all right now.”

“Don’t get sore, don’t get sore now.” Terry trotted after her. “I was just kiddin’ ya a little bit. All I’m tryin’ to tell ya is—well, ya grew up very nice.”

“Thank you.”

She tried to walk ahead of him but he stayed abreast of her. She was so quiet and
nice.
The word
nice
kept beating in his head.

“You don’t remember me, do ya?”

“Not at first,” she said, “but tonight I began to …”

He pointed proudly to his dented nose. “By the nose?” He strutted a little. “Some people just got faces that stick in your mind.”

“I remember you were in trouble all the time,” Katie said.

Terry was pleased. “Now ya got me. Boy, the way those Sisters used t’ whack me. Crack! It’s a wonder I wasn’t punchy by the time I was twelve.” He laughed. “They thought they was gonna beat an education into me, but I foxed ’em!”

Katie looked at him as if she understood not only the young street hoodlum, but the whole foul-mouthed street-corner set she had watched grow up from ragged little boys dodging the cars and the blows of bigger boys. “Maybe they just didn’t know how to handle you.”

Terry was enjoying the turn of conversation. He was feinting her with his question to make her lead, “How would you’ve done it?”

“With a little more patience and kindness,” Katie said. “You know what makes people mean and difficult? When other people don’t care enough about them.”

While she was talking Terry had raised an imaginary violin to his chin and started to hum a nasal, mocking version of “Hearts and Flowers.”

“All right, laugh,” she said firmly.

“Patience and kindness,” he said. “Now I heard everything.”

“And what’s so wrong with patience and kindness?” she asked angrily.

“Aah—what—are ya kiddin’ me?” Terry said.

“Why should I?” Katie asked. She looked at him so directly that Terry turned his eyes away, disturbed.

“Come on,” he said, “I’d better get you home.”

They were walking along the high iron railing at the eastern boundary of the park. They could hear the river washing along the bank beyond them in the darkness. Terry felt good to be walking beside her. Right now he didn’t give a damn what Charley thought.

“Ya see, I’m not gonna let ya walk home alone,” he explained. “There’s too many guys around here with only one thing on their mind.”

They were both silent then, and Katie followed him with quiet grace. He stopped abruptly. “Am I going to see ya again?”

Katie looked at him with a guileless, blue-eyed expression unlike anything he had known. “What for?” she asked simply.

Terry paused, shaken by her frankness, by her—the word eluded him—purity. He lifted his shoulders in a characteristic shrug. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But are ya?”

In the same gentle, matter-of-fact tone as before, Katie said, “I really don’t know.”

This was a new one, cool and refined, and yet on the level and warm. He walked ahead of her and turned to see if she was following. “C’mon,” he beckoned.

She hesitated, with a tiny, mysterious smile that baffled him. “C’mon.” He waved to her, less tough, more pleading this time. When she walked slowly toward him, it seemed to him as if she were floating in his direction.

They walked along silently, full of their own thoughts, listening to the river sounds. At the end of the next block, Katie said, “Thank you. It’s only around the corner now. I’ll say good night.”

“It’s been—nice talkin’ to ya.” Polite conversation was like an awkward, sticky wad in Terry’s mouth. She smiled at him again, faintly, and an imperceptible shudder went through him. It didn’t seem possible that the barest suggestion of a smile could communicate so much, patience and kindness and the far echo of physical love. Or was he only guessing and wishing as she hurried on? With a wry, pained look on his face he watched her melt away from him. Then he punched his right fist into the palm of his left hand so hard that it stung. “God damn,” he said to himself out loud. “God damn.”