LITMIR.BIZ

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No. Should he?

       The eyes. Look at the eyes.

       Reporter moves closer to the window, looks at Nixon, then back at Sutton. Back at Nixon. Now that you mention it, he says.

       I wouldn’t trust either of us as far as I could throw us, Sutton says. Did you know that Nixon, when he worked on Wall Street, lived in the same apartment building as Governor Rockefeller?

       I’m not really a Rockefeller fan.

       Join the club.

       Personally, I liked Romney. Then, after he dropped out, I rooted for Reagan. I was hoping he’d win the nomination.

       Reagan? God help us.

       What’s wrong with Ronald Reagan?

       An actor running the world? Get a grip.

      When the river is too cold for swimming, the boys take their fishing poles to Red Hook. They buy tomato sandwiches wrapped in oil paper, two cents apiece, and sit on the rocks along The Narrows, dangling their lines in the slimy water. Even with no jobs, they can at least contribute something to their families if they catch a striper or two.

      One day, the fish not biting, Eddie paces the rocks. Whole fuckin thin is rigged, he says.

      What thing, Ed?

      The whole thin.

      Behind him a tug plows through the silver-green water, a barge glides toward Manhattan. A three-masted schooner heads for Staten Island. The sky is a chaotic web of wires and smokestacks, steeples and office towers. Eddie gives it all the evil eye. Then the middle finger.

      Eddie’s always been angry, but lately his anger has been deeper, edgier. Willie blames himself. Willie took Eddie to the library, persuaded him to get a library card. Now Eddie has books to support his darkest suspicions. Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Peter Kropotkin, Karl Marx, they all tell Eddie that he’s not paranoid, the world really is against him.

      Some fuckin system, he says. Every ten or fifteen years it crashes. Aint no system, that’s the problem. It’s every man for his-fuckin-self. The Crash of ’93? My old man saw people standin in the middle of the street bawlin like babies. Wiped out. Ruined. But did those bankers get pinched? Nah—they got richer. Oh the government promised it wouldn’t happen again. Well it happened again didn’t it fellas? In ’07. And ’ll. And when them banks fell apart, when the market did a swan dive, didn’t them bankers walk away scot-free again?

      Willie and Happy nod.

      I’m not saying the man who shot McKinley was right in his head, I only say I understand what drove him to it.

      Get yourself pinched talking like that, Ed.

      Eddie wings a rock at the water. Blunth—a sound like a fat man gulping. We’re on the losin team, boys. We’re Irish blunth and broke blunth and that makes us double fucked. Just how the rich want it. You can’t be on the top if there aint no one on the blunth bottom.

      How come you’re the only one talking about this stuff? Happy says.

      I aint the only one, Happy. Read a goddamn book, willya?

      Happy frowns. If he reads he won’t be happy.

      Of all the evil rich, Eddie thinks the evilest by far are the Rockefellers. He scans the horizon as if there might be a Rockefeller out there for him to peg with a rock. He’s obsessed with Ludlow. Last year J. D. Rockefeller Jr. sent a team of sluggers to put down the mine strike there, and the sluggers massacred seventy-five unarmed men, women, children. If anyone else did that, Eddie often says, he’d get the chair.

      Tell you what I’d like to do, Eddie grumbles, winging a rock at a seagull. I’d like to go uptown right now and find Old Man Rockefeller’s mansion.

      What would you do, Ed?

      Heh heh. Remember that Judas sheep?

       Photographer circles Grand Army Plaza, swings right on Thirteenth Street. He pulls over, double-parks. It’s gone, Sutton says, touching the window. Fuck—I knew stuff would be gone. But everything?

       What’s gone, Willie?

       The apartment house where we moved in 1915. At least the apartment house next door is still standing. That one right there, that gives you an idea what ours looked like.

       He points to a five-story brownstone, streaked with soot and bird shit.

       That’s where I saw my parents grow old before their time, worrying about money. That’s where I watched the lines on their faces get deeper, watched their hair turn white. That’s where I learned that life is all about money. And love. And lack thereof.

       That’s it, Mr. Sutton?

       Anyone who tells you different is a fuckin liar. Money. Love. There’s not a problem that isn’t caused by one or the other. And there’s not a problem that can’t be solved by one or the other.

       That seems kind of reductive, Mr. Sutton.

       Money and Love kid. Nothing else matters. Because those are the only two things that make us forget about death. For a few minutes anyhow.

       Trees line the curb. They nod and bow as if they remember Sutton. As if beseeching him to get out of the car. My best friends were Eddie Wilson and Happy Johnston, Sutton says softly.

       Photographer yanks a loose fringe off his buckskin jacket. You mentioned that.

       What was Happy like? Reporter asks.

       Broads loved him.

       Hence the name, Photographer says, starting up the car, pulling away. Where to next?

       Remsen Street, Reporter says.

       Happy had the blackest hair you ever saw, Sutton says. Like he was dipped in coal. He had one of those chin asses like yours kid. A smile like yours too. Big white teeth. Like a movie star. Before there were movie stars.

       And Eddie?

       Strange case. Blond, real All-American looking, but he never felt like an American. He felt like America didn’t want him. Fuck, he was right, America didn’t. America didn’t want any of us, and you haven’t felt unwanted until America doesn’t want you. I loved Eddie, but he was one rough sombitch. You did not want to get on his wrong side. I thought he’d be a prizefighter. After they banned him from the slaughterhouse, he hung out in gyms. Then the gyms banned him. He wouldn’t stop fighting after the bell. And if you crossed him in the streets, Jesus, if you did not show proper respect, God help you. He’d give you an Irish haircut quick as look at you.

       Irish what?

       A swat to the back of the head with a lead pipe wrapped in newspaper.

      Their luck changes in the fall of 1916. Eddie lands a construction job at one of the new office towers going up, and Happy’s uncle arranges jobs for Happy and Willie as gophers at a bank. Title Guaranty.

      The bank job will require new clothes. Willie and Happy find a haberdasher on Court Street willing to extend them credit. They each buy two suits—two sack coats, two pairs of trousers, two matching vests, two silk cravats, cuff buttons, spats. Walking to work his first day Willie stops before a store window. He doesn’t recognize himself. He’s delighted not to recognize himself. He hopes he never recognizes himself again.

      Better yet, his coworkers don’t recognize him. They seem not to know that he’s Irish. They treat him with courtesy and kindness.

      Weeks fly by. Months.

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