Jimmy Boyle stood waiting on the playground at 3rd and F when they arrived. Boyle wore threadbare clothes and shoes with holes in the toes and holes in the socks that poked through. His nose ran frequently because he was often sick, and his cheekbones stood out from the set of his face.
The boys were poor, all of them, Boyle poorer than the rest. They knew there was something called a Depression going on, but the word was just a word to them. They had heard their parents talk about it and argue about it late at night, or the few that read the papers had read about it or had it read to them. The Greeks were better off than most, because they had their relatives and their patriotis, and they were willing to work service and food-related jobs for low wages, and sometimes the food from those jobs came home with them and made its way to the kitchen table. But they were all poor. They were poor and they didn’t really know it, and if they had known it, they wouldn’t have cared.
They wouldn’t have cared because they were boys. They had beds to sleep in, and friends, and when they felt hungry there was usually something to eat. They knew nothing of sickness or death but to joke of it. The night seemed very far away.
Recevo kidded Boyle that his shoes were dead man’s shoes, and everyone laughed. They all knew that Boyle’s dad worked as an assistant in the City Morgue. The thing of it was, Boyle’s father had stolen the shoes off the corpse of a boy close to Jimmy’s age, just the night before. Jimmy Boyle smiled uneasily at the comment, then tried to retaliate with an insult directed at Recevo. Recevo lowered his voice to a whisper, asked Jimmy to “come again.” This was a joke they could all appreciate, as Boyle was nearly deaf in one ear. He had caught the fever real bad as a kid.
“Well?” said Angelos, when they were done laughing. “What’re we gonna do now?”
Billy Nicodemus punched his fist into his mitt. “Let’s play a little ball.”
“Babe Wooth,” said Su, who took a swing at the air.
3
The boys played stickball against the brick wall of a schoolhouse for the balance of the morning, then had a quick lunch at Nick Kendros’s place, the Woodward Grill on 15th. They were due to meet some Negro boys from Southwest down at a field on D Street near 5th. They had rumbled with them in June, and promised to meet on the same day in July to rumble again.
On the walk downtown they lost Su, who had to get to his father’s laundromat for work, and then Nicodemus, who mumbled something about helping his brother Steve with a soapbox he was building in the alley. They let Nicodemus go, and soon they were on G Street, in front of Murphy’s 5 & 10.
“I’m gonna go through to F,” said Karras. “I’ll meet you guys there.”
“Get me some Nigger Babies,” yelled Boyle, always hungry, as Karras pushed open the glass doors. Boyle knew Karras had no money for candy but felt it was worth the try.
In the Murphy’s, Karras at once caught the warm, brown smell of roasted nuts, and found the concession run by a smiling Tom Andros, known to the kids around town as the Peanut Man. Andros scooped some peanuts into a small paper bag and placed the bag in Karras’s hand. He knew the Karras boy from church.
“Thanks,” said Karras.
“Ande, boy,” said Andros, with a sweeping motion of his hand.
On the street, the boys shared the nuts and walked east and then south. Around the Negro neighborhoods of New Jersey Avenue, Jimmy Boyle noticed a girl with thin brown arms and a bright and beautiful smile.
Recevo caught the look in Boyle’s eyes, and made sure to rib him about it once they had gotten out of the neighborhood. Boyle just shrugged it off. A ’32 Chevy went by on the street, a two-door model with olive-green finish, and Joe Recevo had to stop and stare. Recevo loved cars, couldn’t wait to grow up and have one of his own. His father had recently bought a ’29 Dodge sedan on time from the Trew Motor Company on 14th, but this Chevy, this was the cat’s meow. Perry Angelos’s father owned a Chevrolet Rumble Seat Coupe, tan with full-coat nickel trim, though Perry did not brag about it to his friends. The fathers of Karras, Nicodemus, and Boyle did not own cars. Cars didn’t interest Karras, as he felt that the way to see the city was to get out into it and walk on its streets.
Soon they found themselves on D Street, at the edge of a rockstrewn field. The boys from Southwest stood in the middle of the field, four of them, an even match, if numbers made things even. Perry Angelos felt his stomach flip at the sight of them, while Recevo and Karras experienced a kind of satisfaction at the recognition of their own fear. Boyle’s palms sweated, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
“That’s them,” said Recevo.
“I heard they were Bloodfield boys,” said Angelos.
“We said we’d meet ’em,” said Boyle. “So let’s go.”
They walked towards them across the field. Joe Recevo took his newsboy’s cap from his head and tossed it to the side.
“I’m gonna take the skinny one,” said Karras to Recevo.
“He ain’t the strongest,” said Recevo, “but he’s the quickest. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“I got the tall one, with the high-buttoned shoes.”
“He likes to wave his right above his head to get your attention. But he’s gonna strike with his left, Joey. Hear?”
“I hear ya,” said Recevo.
They were moving fast now, almost running to the group of boys who stood still and glaring in the middle of the field.
“Perry—” said Karras.
“Don’t worry about me, Pete.”
The tall Negro boy with the high-buttoned shoes yelled, “Southwest!”
Recevo laughed and screamed, “Northwest!” His laughter inspired them, and they followed Recevo’s charge.
They were all mixed together then, grabbing and pushing and punching at each other close in. The first to fall was Perry Angelos. Karras let his guard down to rabbit-punch the wiry boy who had knocked Angelos to the ground with the first blow. He was tackled at chest level by the skinny boy, who rammed the top of his nappy head into Karras’s stomach and pushed him to the ground. Karras felt a rock dig in above his buttocks on contact. Recevo ran over and kicked the skinny boy off, and then Recevo was grabbed by the tall one, and then he was standing toe-to-toe with him, trading blows, both of them yelling loudly with each one. Boyle and his opponent were on the ground, rolling and flailing at each other in a rising cloud of dirt and dust. Karras got to his feet.
“Come on, boy,” said the skinny one, both his hands up, wiggling the fingers of one hand at Karras.
Karras came in, took a punch in the gut from the skinny boy, brought his elbows in and took two more on his arms. He felt a little dizzy, breathed, felt better for it, uppercut at the second the next punch came in. That one caught the skinny boy on the chin, pushing him back. Karras went in, saw the shape of Angelos on the ground, the wiry boy on top of him, pummeling him with weak blows. The distraction made the skinny boy go for Karras’s legs and knock him off his feet. They both went down, rolled twice, with Karras coming out on top. He sat on the skinny boy’s chest, grabbed the front of his ripped shirt with his left hand, made a tight fist of his right, and prepared to bring it down in the boy’s face. He looked in the skinny boy’s eyes, and the skinny boy looked back with blank and unafraid acceptance of what had to happen next. But Karras noticed then that there was little sound around him, and that the other boys — his and theirs — had fallen away and were lying on the ground, some of them holding themselves where they hurt, all of them at rest. Karras released his grip on the skinny boy’s shirt, lowered his fist.
Karras stood up, brushed himself off. The others did the same. Eight boys stood there with winded lungs and cut lips, and the beginnings of bruises which they would hide from their parents later that night. No one had won.