Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud Read online

  “At the top of your lungs!” he said angrily. “You’re ruining the show for everyone.”

  “I’m not leaving!” I yelled, and Lemon yelled, “Me neither!” “Get outta here!” he said, and pushed us out the door. As he did so he kicked me in the ass.

  Lemon, who loved to see my father fight, said, “Let’s go tell your dad.” I was so upset, on the verge of tears, I didn’t want to. But Lemon dragged me along and told Willie. The story came out like a hyphenated word: “The-theater-owner-kicked-Joe-in-the-ass-for-us-helping-a-lost-kid!” By then the tears were rolling down my cheeks.

  My father grabbed our hands and said, “Come on. Show me the guy.” He was always very careful to go after the right guy. The manager was in the ticket booth when we got back to the theater. “There he is!” cried Lemon. “There he is!”

  “You!” my father said, pushing his face against the bars of the booth. “Come out of there. I want to talk to you.” The manager saw the anger on my father’s face and decided the last place he wanted to be was out of that booth. He latched the screen door behind him, then started to close the metal door. But my father stepped behind the booth, punched his hand through the screen, grabbed the guy by the front of his shirt, and dragged him through the split screen. “You kick my son in the ass, huh?” Willie hit him in the face. “For helping a little lost kid, huh?” He hit him again, holding him up with his other hand. “You are a no-good sonofabitch!” He hit him and let him go this time, and the manager sailed backward, his head banging off the sidewalk.

  Just then, two policemen ran over from the Eightieth Precinct, which was a few doors up the block across the street. “That’s assault, Pepitone,” one said. “You’re under arrest.”

  “What arrest—for smacking a grown man who kicked a kid?”

  Each cop grabbed an arm and started marching him across the street. My father turned his head over his shoulder. “Joe, go get Jimmy.”

  I ran over to our building and up the two flights of stairs to Jimmy the Bug’s apartment. I told him what had happened and he shook his head, buttoning on his shirt. I followed him into the station house where my father was being booked. Jimmy reached his hand behind him and touched my chest for me to wait there. He walked right up to the desk and leaned in to the officer on duty, who leaned his head close to the numbers baron. Jimmy the Bug whispered something to the policeman, who nodded, signaled one of the arresting officers to come over, whispered something to him, and then said, “All right, Pepitone, get your ass out of here.” Case closed. That was how important Jimmy the Bug was in my neighborhood, a big man and a good man.

  Jimmy the Bug was also a very tough man, too. I saw him, not once but several times, tell a cop on the street who was giving him trouble about his business: “You come at me with that kinda shit? Take off that badge and I’ll kick your ass right now! Right here in the fucking street! I’ll destroy you!” And every time, the cop walked away from Jimmy.

  He was tough, but my father was the champion. I used to wait for him to come home every evening when I was young. He parked his car in the garage at the end of our street at this time, and every day around five I’d run down there and wait for him, see if he’d brought me anything—which he often did—and walk back to our house with him. One day I went down a little late and my father was already coming down the street—with both of his arms in casts. The plaster ran from his hands all the way up his forearms.

  “Dad, Dad! What happened?”

  “Just an accident on the job.”

  The accident, it turned out, had happened on the head of Willie’s foreman. My father was the number one man on his construction crew because he was the hardest worker. And the guy who owned the construction company loved Willie. He was always doing Willie favors: lending him big cars, giving him extra jobs that brought in good money for little labor—like setting out fresh “bombs,” those round black pots full of fuel oil that were lit around construction sites, on weekends at double-time rates. The foreman was very jealous of Willie, and on this day he tried to give him some crap to do, just to harass him. Willie did not find it amusing. The foreman told him he wanted some heavy piece of equipment moved, and Willie said, fine, he’d get some of the guys to take care of it. The foreman said, No, I want you to move it. Willie suggested what he might do to himself with the shovel handle lying nearby. “I’m the foreman here, Pepitone, and you move that thing or I’m docking you!” He was a large man and he grabbed Willie’s arm. “Now get to it!”

  Willie slapped his hand away and yelled, “You can dock me—but I’m decking you, you big fat sonofabitch!” And he punched this guy from one side of the job to the other. Guys ran over to pull him off; he tossed them away and kept hitting the guy in the head until both his hands were broken. They took six weeks to heal, and by that time the foreman was out of the hospital. He never bugged Willie again.

  If my father was hard on people who crossed him, he was even harder on me, it often seemed. I have two brothers—Jimmy, who is a year and a half younger than I am, and Billy, who is six years younger than I am. My father would tell me that I was responsible for them, that I had to look out for them all the time. “They come home hurt,” he’d tell me, “you’re gonna get a beating. Understand?”

  So Jimmy would get in a fight and come home with a bloody nose, and my father would be waiting for me. “I told you to look out for your brother!” he’d yell, and without another word, no explanation, nothing, he’d beat the hell out of me with his fists, bloody my nose, leave bruises all over my face. Little Billy would fall off his bike, come home with a scraped-up knee, and my father would just whale the shit out of me. “But it wasn’t my fault! I wasn’t there!” “You shoulda been there!” Rap, bang, crack. One time Billy hit a fire hydrant on his bike, flipped over the handlebars, smacked his head. “I was there, Dad! I was right there, I just couldn’t catch him!” “You shoulda caught him!” Rap, bang, crack.

  He had a flare temper and he was very strict. He said do something, I had better do it—or duck. Whatever time he said I had to be home, eight o’clock, nine o’clock, I better not be a minute late.

  I remember the evening he brought me home a new bicycle. It was a Schwinn with chrome fenders, a chrome headlight, a chrome horn, a chrome basket, a fancy reflector on the back. It was beautiful! I was so excited I almost cried. “Thanks, Dad! Wait’ll Lemon and the guys see this!”

  “All right, Joe. But watch the time. It’s five-fifteen. We eat at six. You be back here to eat at six. No later.”

  I rode off down the block on my new bike, met the guys, and they all went what we then called apeshit. I let them have a couple of rides each, I had a couple. Then I pedaled home. My father was waiting on the front stoop. He was looking at his watch. It was three minutes after six.

  “Get off that goddamn bike, you little bastard!”

  He jumped down the steps, grabbed my shiny new bike, raised it over his head, and smashed it down the steps to the basement. The headlight flew off and all kinds of other pieces. But it wasn’t enough. He leaped down the basement steps, kicked in the spokes, lifted the bike again, and smashed it against the wall, just kept smashing it and smashing it against that concrete wall until there was nothing left in his hands except twisted metal.

  I ran up to my room crying, thinking, Three minutes late, three minutes! I was lying on the bed crying when he came in and beat me. But I didn’t feel that beating. All I could think of was that mutilated bike. I’ll never forget it. The next day he bought me a new bike.

  Usually, right after he’d beaten me, my father would cool down and apologize to me, saying he was sorry, that he didn’t mean to hit me so hard. Almost every time he’d beat me, he’d come back minutes later and apologize. Finally I told him, “Dad, don’t apologize to me—just stop beating me, or at least make sure I deserve it.” But he couldn’t control that temper. It would just explode!

  He had no patience whatsoever, NONE. I liked to be with him, do things with him, I
admired him so much, respected him so much as a man. He’d take me fishing, crabbing, to ball games, and for a long time I enjoyed it. But as the years went on, it got harder and harder.

  He wanted to do things with me, to teach me, but so many times he’d just blow it. I remember when I was fourteen or fifteen he let me drive the car, and I did okay, just steering it around. So he decided to teach me to drive. He had a “fluid drive” Chrysler. You could use the clutch or put it in automatic and it would shift itself. You let up on the gas, waited for the click, then you shifted and you pressed the gas again. I wasn’t too sharp with the clutch, but I was all right in automatic.

  So we went out in the car and I was driving along very nervously, very tense. My father said, “Relax, Joe, relax.” He was making me more nervous, and the next thing I knew I’d gone through a stop sign. Luckily nothing had been coming in either direction, so there had been no real problem. But Willie blew up, smacking me in the shoulder as hard as he could.

  “Get the hell out from behind that wheel!”

  I hit the brake, stopped dead. “Why, Dad, we’re okay—”

  He grabbed me and yanked me right across his lap, out of the driver’s seat. “You ain’t driving no more till you get some sense!”

  “Aw, Dad . . . what the hell.” Shit, it tore me up. I just couldn’t understand why he couldn’t relax, why he couldn’t have patience, couldn’t give me a chance to show him. I wanted so badly to do well when I was with him.

  A year or so later, he had the car parked on the block and he gave me the keys because there was a guy coming to charge the battery and Willie himself had to go see his mother. “You wait for the guy to do the charge, let him start it, then put the keys in the house. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  About ten seconds after my father left, the guy came and charged the battery. Then my friend Lemon showed up and we decided to sit in the car and play “driving.” I started it up, and every time a girl would stroll by, I’d race the gas and say, “Hey, how ya doin’? Wanna go for a ride?”

  We didn’t get any calls, but finally Lemon said, “Why don’t we take it around the block, Joe?”

  “Are you shitting me, man? Take Willie’s car around the block? He’d kill our asses.”

  “Hell, he won’t be back for an hour. We’ll just go around the block and be back here in ten minutes. C’mon.”

  I put it in third and let the clutch out very, very easy and we pulled out. I knew I didn’t have to shift, but I forgot I had to put in the clutch when we stopped. We putted up to the corner, stopped, and stalled. I restarted, turned the corner, putted up to the next one, and stalled again. I made the third corner without stalling and I was feeling pretty good. I speeded on up to about ten miles per hour, and cruised right back to our parking space. But it was gone.

  “Lemon—someone’s taken the spot! There’s no place to park!” I looked around frantically, and every space on the street was occupied. “Goddamn! My father’ll come back and find his car in the middle of the street!”

  I thought I knew the owner of the car that was in our spot, and I ran to his apartment and asked him to please move. He said it wasn’t his car. I ran back to Lemon. “What the hell are we gonna do, man? Willie will kill us.”

  “Uh, Joe,” Lemon said, “I better be getting home. It’s getting late.”

  “Lemon—it’s eight fucking o’clock! Going around the block was your idea! You stay with me!”

  I turned on the engine and started backing down the street, looking for a space, when all of a sudden Willie came running over, screaming, “Turn off that goddamn engine!” He grabbed me by the throat through the open window and dragged me out of the car, plopping me on the sidewalk. He leaned down and rapped me twice. From where I was lying I could see Lemon’s fat ass running up the street. He was in a crouch, as if to keep Willie from seeing him. Willie saw him.

  “You ever hang around with my son again, I’ll kick your ass, you sonofabitch. Make him drive my car!”

  “Dad,” I said, “I just pulled out to give a guy a space. I figured you’d want to test the battery.”

  “You lying sonofabitch!” He punched me again.

  “You’re right, Dad. It was Lemon’s idea. He made me—” He punched me again.

  I deserved it that time, and a lot of other times. But there were still others, too many others, when there was no way I should have been beaten. And those times really hurt, when I hadn’t earned the whacks. What hurt even more was when my father didn’t keep his word, when he would tell me we’d do something together, and then change his mind.

  Next to playing ball, crabbing was my favorite thing as a kid. So many times on a Saturday my father would tell me we were going crabbing the next morning. We’d take our nets to the Cross Bay Bridge at daylight and catch baskets of crabs. But the night before, I’d be so excited I couldn’t sleep. I’d go to bed early to get up at five o’clock in the morning and I’d just lie there all night praying, Don’t rain, don’t let it rain!

  Then at five in the morning I’d go into my Dad’s room and shake him. “Come on, Dad. Get up. It’s time to go.”

  And he’d roll over. “No, I decided we’re not going today.”

  He did that to me quite a bit, and I hated it. This would hurt me more than anything. I know now he didn’t mean it, that when he said we would go crabbing he fully planned to do so . . . but that when I’d waken him in those dark mornings, the fatigue from a week’s construction labor would hit him, or perhaps the residues from that extra glass of wine the night before, and he’d cancel. He didn’t intentionally disappoint me. He did the best he could for me in all things. He wanted only good for me, wanted me to do right, wanted to teach me about obligations, responsibilities. It took me years and years to understand, to realize that the beatings were a reflex, his way of teaching me, the only way he knew. The constant beatings followed by apologies were not the best way, not for me. Willie didn’t know that. I think he loved me too much, wanted too much for me, expected too much from me.

  I know I loved him too much. As a little kid I always wanted to be with him. I remember sitting next to him at the dinner table and looking up at him like a puppy. He’d look down at me, and that small warm smile would tingle me, my whole body. He was so alive, such a vibrant man, always kidding, putting people on. Every Sunday, when twenty to twenty-five members of the family would assemble for dinner at my grandfather’s, Willie would lead the conviviality, the laughter, keep everyone loose, happy. They all looked up to him, had so much respect for him, and I bathed in the glow around him. I wonder if ever a father has been such a god to his son? I know now, though, why being alternately praised and put down by a god was so painfully confusing, disorienting. Bless you, Willie; damn you. I miss you.

  II

  “You give? You give up?”

  When you are born and raised in the slums, you don’t know any different until you get away from them, live other places for a while. I remember my early years away from Brooklyn, looking back on living conditions there from the vantage point of a nice, plush residence, and saying to myself, How the hell did I ever live there as a kid, grow up in such a place? How did I ever manage to get through it? How did I ever get out of there? I think back on three friends who as kids wanted to be priests, who instead got into the racket business and, ultimately, into prison. It could have happened to any of us and, I realize in retrospect, we all had to work out our escapes in our own ways.

  But it wasn’t all that bad, either, growing up in Park Slope. I didn’t know anybody there who went hungry, anybody who was truly short of clothes, anybody who didn’t have the money to get into a movie or go to Coney Island when the rest of the guys had decided to. Yes, the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, viewed in perspective, was more good vibes than bad, more fun than fury.

  The biggest problem for me growing up in this neighborhood was that you had to act like a tough guy to get by. I had a very hard time getting that act together. I was anythin
g but tough. I was always very tall for my age and stickball-bat skinny. I had short, wire-curly hair that gripped my head like a stocking mask and emphasized my beaklike nose and turn-signal ears. I looked a great deal like a baby robin.

  And I was always scared as a kid. I was always being challenged physically, because that’s the way it was for everyone until you proved yourself. I didn’t like to fight. I didn’t like to fight simply because I was always getting my ass beat. I mean, consistently, without ever any change in the outcome. I was quick on my feet and I’d dance around very skillfully for a while, but I always ended up on the ground with someone pounding me. Then I’d go home with bumps and bruises, and my father would enlarge them because I hadn’t done better.

  “Dad, you shoulda seen the other guy!”

  “Shit!” Rap, bang, crack.

  I think this is why I became such a fast runner. “You wanna fight, Pepitone—you skinny sonofabitch!” “No!” Zoom, sprint away. If Lemon, who was shorter and wider and two years older, was around, and the challenger wasn’t too big, he’d look out for me. He was tough, and he also preferred taking a rap from a tougher guy to getting one from my father. But when Lemon wasn’t around, it was strictly, feet, do your thing.

  I remember when I was about twelve or thirteen, there was this kid Johnny O’Hara, a little Irish kid, who would beat the shit out of me regularly. I was twice his size, but every time he saw me he’d kick my ass. Whenever I spotted Johnny O’Hara, I’d duck behind a car, slip into an alley, get out of sight till he passed. There were times I crouched for forty-five minutes waiting for him to leave the area. One day he got me in a headlock and had about seven or eight of his friends kick me in the ass. One after the other. I couldn’t sit down comfortably for three days.

  It wasn’t until I was fifteen years old that I finally stood up to anyone. My friend Jimmy Cunningham—Mokey—coerced me into it. At this time there was a kid called Knucks who was beating the shit out of me every other day. This guy was really beating on me—huge bruises, bloody noses, swollen lips, black eyes. It seemed like I was always holding ice on my face to take the swelling down so that my father wouldn’t see the losses all over my face. Finally Mokey said to me, “Pep, I’m sick of this shit.”