On the Waterfront (26 page)

Billy had filled the self-serving watering can and was dexterously tipping it right side up.

“She’s a
he
,” the boy said furiously. “His name is Swifty.”

“He’s my lead bird,” Terry explained. “He’s always on that top perch.”

“He looks so proud of himself,” Katie said.

“He’s the boss,” Terry said. “If another bum tries to come along ’n take that perch he really lets ’im have it.”

Katie sighed. “Even pigeons …”

“Well, there’s one thing about ’em though,” Terry said, more in earnest than usual, “they’re faithful. They get married just like people.”

“Better,” Billy said out of the corner of his mouth.

“They’re very faithful,” Terry went on, ignoring Billy’s interruption. “Once they’re mated they stay together all through their lives until one of ’em dies.”

Katie lowered her head. “That’s nice,” she said.

He put out his hand to touch her and then, still afraid or in awe of her, he drew it back again. Terry noticed Billy grinning malevolently at them from inside the coop. “Okay, okay, now get outa there and fix the roof. Make yourself useless,” Terry ordered.

Billy made an obscene sibilant sound under his breath, but did what he was told. Katie continued to keep her head down.

“You like beer?” Terry asked irrelevantly.

Katie looked at him. “I don’t know.”

He wanted to touch her, touch her gently. He had never felt tender toward anybody in his life and he was fumbling for words or gestures. “I bet you never had a glass of beer,” he said. “That’s what I bet—you never had a glass of beer.”

“Once, my father …” she began to say.

“How about you come ’n have one with me?”

“In a saloon?”

“Well, yeah. I mean I know a little dump—a place that’s very nice, with a side entrance for ladies and all like that.”

“I really shouldn’t,” Katie said.

“Come on, it won’t hurt,” Terry begged. “Come on … Okay?”

He took her by the hand and drew her along. She told herself a better acquaintanceship with Terry might be a way of cutting into the dark horror of waterfront murder. But it was actually something about the hurt in Terry Malloy, the defensive toughness like the scar tissue over the wounded eyes, that drew her on.

Terry guided Katie to the ladies’ bar of the Bellevue, which was the second-best hotel in town and prided itself on being off limits for local whores. An elderly Irish biddy, Mrs. Higgins, well known in the neighborhood for chronic, noisy insobriety, was being ejected by the bartender as Terry and Katie approached.

“Take your hands off me, I’m only after havin’ one more …” Mrs. Higgins was protesting.

“You and your
one-mores
,” the bartender said, pushing her out. “Go home.”

Katie hung back, and Terry took her arm.

“Come on—don’t be ascared. See what I was tellin’ ya? They run a nice quiet place. I mean the drunks get the heave-ho.”

Inside, the Bellevue bar had a nineteenth-century flavor, with its time-worn mahogany bar and elaborate chandeliers. A merchant sailor nearing the end of a long drunk was singing
Rose of Tralee
to a middle-aged woman who had come in for lunch and had lost track of time. To Terry’s chagrin a plump over-made-up young girl was at a corner of the bar with Terry’s chum Jackie. Terry tried to look away, for it was Melva, but she caught his eye and called over, “Hiya, Terry?”

Terry barely nodded.

“A friend of yours?” Katie said.

Terry winced. “Just a—passin’ acquaintance,” he reached for the phrase he had heard somewhere. “What’re you drinkin’?”

Katie hesitated and in the pause the sailor at the bar gave up
Tralee
to tell the bartender. “Hit me with another Gluckenheimer.”

“I’ll try a—Gluckenheimer,” Katie said.

“Two Gluckenheimers,” Terry called. “And draw two for chasers.”

Katie looked bewildered. “Come on, give a smile. You’re beginnin’ to live a little,” Terry tried to reassure her.

“I am?”

“Hey, Terry,” the bartender called over from the bar. “See the fight last night? That new kid Ryff. Both hands. A little bit on your style.”

“Ha, ha,” Terry said. “I hope he gets better dice than me.” To Katie he shrugged the bartender’s compliment off. “Comedian.”

“Were you really a prizefighter?” Katie asked.

“Aah, I used to be. I was goin’ pretty good for a while. But—I didn’t stay in shape. I had to take a few dives.”

“A dive? You mean into the water?”

Terry laughed. “Yeah. Into the water.” He laughed again.

“What are you laughing at?”

He pointed to her. “You. Miss Square from Nowhere.”

She blushed slightly but she wasn’t put off. “What made you interested—in fighting?”

Terry raised his shoulders again in that gesture of casual disgust. “Aah, I don’t know. I had to scrap all my life. I figured I might as well get paid for it. When I was a kid my old man got chopped off”—he saw the question rising in her eyes and added quickly—“never mind how. Then they stuck Charley ’n me in a dump they called a Children’s Home.” The sore memory of it made him screw up his nose. “Boy, that was some home. Well, anyway, I ran away from there and peddled papers, ’n stole a little bit and fought in club smokers and then Charley hooked up with Johnny Friendly and Johnny bought a piece of me …”

“A—
piece
of you?”

“That’s right,” Terry said, without bothering to explain. “He was a piece man. Tied in with Mr. T.”

“Who’s he?” Katie asked.

“Forget I mentioned him,” Terry said quickly. “Well, anyway, I won about twelve straight and then …”

He stopped and took a good look at her. What was he, punchy or something? Telling this Doyle broad all this stuff. He never talked about dives, or Mr. T., or the connection with Johnny F. What was he doing—getting soft in the casaba?

“Yes—and then?” Katie said, leaning forward a little and looking into his eyes.

“Aah, what am I runnin’ off at the mouth for?” Terry said. “What do you really care?”

“Shouldn’t everybody …” Katie hesitated.

“Come again?” Terry said.

“I mean, shouldn’t everybody care …”

Terry shook his head in disbelief. “Boy, what a fruitcake you are!”

“Well, I mean … the Mystical Body … brotherhood … thought …” Katie was groping.

“Gee, thoughts,” Terry said, both mocking and impressed. “Alla time, thoughts. And the funny part is, you really believe that drool.”

“Yes, I do,” she said quietly.

The bartender had set their drinks down on the table. Terry was relieved to have something to do. This kid gave him a funny feeling when she looked at him, almost through him, and said crazy things like that, saying screwball things like she believed them, things that lower your guard and feint you wide open.

“Well, here we are,” he said, picking up the thick jigger with the familiar false bottom, handing it to her and then lifting his own with an air of festivity. “One for the lady and one for the gent. Here’s to the first one, I hope it aint the last—Dink—” He touched glasses with her, lightly ceremonious, and then waited in amusement as she sniffed the rim of the glass suspiciously and allowed the surface of the sharp-smelling liquid to touch her lips.

“Mmmmm,” she murmured non-committally.

“Not that way,” Terry said. “One hunk. Down the hatch. Like this.” In a practiced gesture he poured the shot down his throat.

“Wham!” he said.

Challenged, Katie raised the formidable ounce of whiskey to her mouth and gulped it down. Her eyes opened wide and she coughed as it burned all the way down. “Wham …” she whispered with amazement.

“Not bad, huh?” Terry was grinning at her. He felt better when he had her on his own ground.

“It’s … quite …” was all Katie managed to say.

“How about a repeat?”

“A what?”

“Once around again.”

“No
thanks
.”

“Mind if I do?”

“Of course not,” Katie said. “You do what you want to do.”

“Hit me again, Mac,” Terry called out, feeling a little more confident with the first ball in him. He drank half the glass of beer and leaned closer to her across the table.

“You wanna hear my philosophy of life?” Terry said, still bothered by her “brotherhood” pitch. “Do it to him before he does it to you.”

She looked at him a moment before she said, “I like what our Lord said better.”

“Maybe,” Terry said. “But I’m not lookin’ to get crucified. I’m lookin’ to stay in one piece.”

“I must be crazy to have come here with you,” Katie answered.

He put his hand on her arm to hold her. “Hang on a second. Gimme five minutes. I don’t get a chance to talk with a kid like you every day.”

She shook her head angrily and pushed his hand away. “I never met such a person. Not a spark of feeling—or human kindness in your whole body.”

“I wouldn’t know about them things. Whatta they do for you excep’ get in your way?”

“And when things get in your way”—Katie’s voice was rising—“or people, you just get rid of them. Is that your idea?”

“
Listen
,” Terry said, suddenly taut, suddenly dry-mouthed, “don’t be lookin’ at me when you say them things. It wasn’t my fault what happened to Joey. Fixin’ him wasn’t my idea.”

“Why, whoever said it was?”

Hell, he had been asked a lot of tough precinct questions and punched around by cops, but this was worse, these goddam soft-voiced innocent questions.

“Well,” he began lamely, “I didn’t like the way everybody was puttin’ the needle on me. You and them bums in the church. And this Father Barry. I didn’t like the way he was lookin’ at me.”

“He was looking at everybody in the same way,” she said.

“Oh yeah? I thought he was givin’ me the business. Anyhow, what’s with this Father Barry? What’s his racket?”

“His
racket?
”

“Yeah, yeah, his racket. You’ve been off in daisyland, honey. Around here everybody’s got a racket.”

“But he’s a priest.”

“Are you kiddin’? So what? The black suit don’ make no difference. Everybody looks to get his.”

“You don’t believe anything, do you? You don’t believe anybody?”

He reached over and tried to touch her hand again, but she drew away. “Katie, listen to me. Down here it’s every man for himself. It’s keepin’ alive. It’s standin’ in with the right people so you c’n get a little change jinglin’ in your pocket.”

“And if you don’t?”

“If you
don’t?
” He looked at her wisely, arrogantly, yet with a certain inexpressible sadness. “If you don’t, right down—chop.” He shook his thumb savagely toward the floor.

Katie shuddered. “That’s no better than an alley dog.”

Terry drained his glass of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “All right. I’d rather live like an alley dog than wind up like—”

He caught himself. Who was baiting him into this trap? It was a sucker play and he knew it. Something about this straight-talking, freckle-faced, cool little broad.

“Like Joey?” she was saying. “Are you afraid to mention his name?”

“Naah,” Terry said quickly, but it sounded more like a cry of pain than a denial. “Only why do ya have to keep harpin’ on that? Come on, drink up. You gotta get a little fun outa life. Come on, I’ll stick some music on.”

She shook her head without looking up at him. What she was feeling inside spread over and around him like an ocean roller before it breaks, when you know any second it is going to change from a smooth gathering swell to plunging foam. He was like a swimmer trying to ride it over, up and over easy. But it wasn’t easy. He was over his head. And yet, as in drowning, there was something hypnotic about it, something that numbed his will to strike out for his old line of survival.

“What’s the matter with you?” he sighed. “What’s the matter?”

He had risen to push a nickel into the gaudy-colored juke-box. “What kind of number you want? You like her nibs Georgia Gibbs?”

She lifted her head to look at him and just as he had feared, the wave broke in her, catching her more by surprise than it did him. The words rose out of her and broke over the dam before she knew what she was saying. “Help me. If you can. For God’s sake, help me.”

Terry was caught between the table and the juke-box with the coin cold and damp in his hand. She made it sound so easy. He wished it were! But there was Charley and the steady work and respect for Johnny and their trust in him. What kind of rat would he be if he went back on rock-bottom things like that? Johnny and Charley’s world was built on standing with your own. You just didn’t walk out on a fella like Johnny, a natural leader like Johnny. And here was this
nice girl,
this fugitive from daisyland begging
him
for help,
me!
—
Terry,
whose only interest in a girl like this should have been to catch her against the wall of a dark tenement hallway.

He turned back from the juke-box and swung his hands loosely against his sides.

“I’d like to—Katie—but—I don’t know nuthin’. There’s nuthin’ I c’n do.”

Katie started to rise. She felt listless now, tired. The effect of the drink spun her deeper into bewilderment. “All right … All right … I shouldn’t have asked you.”

She picked her coat up off the chair.

“You haven’t touched your beer,” he said. “Go on, drink it. It’ll do you good.”

“I don’t want it. But why don’t you stay? You stay and drink it.”

“I got my whole life to drink,” Terry said.

She gave him such a look of understanding, sympathy, disapproval, that he could not help blurting out:

“You’re not sore at me?”

“What for?”

Again the innocence, the misplaced trust was sharper to take than the back of a copper’s hand.

“Well, fer—fer not bein’ no help to ya?”

“Why, no,” Katie said softly. “I know you would if you could.”

There had been one fight when Tony Falcone, who could hook very strong to the body, had caught Terry under the heart. Terry copped the decision but he could feel that punch in his body for weeks. He still carried the memory of it. They say a punch like that and you are never the same, never quite the same. Katie’s
would-if-you-could
was a punch like that.