Motherless Brooklyn

off, move it up to the front of the truck, get it in. Straight shot, you got it?” He pointed to the warehouse. We all nodded, and I peeped. It went unnoticed.

Minna opened the big panel doors of the warehouse and showed us where to set the crates. We started quickly, then wilted in the heat. Tony and Danny massed the crates at the lip of the truck while Gilbert and I made the first dozen runs, then the older boys conceded their advantage and began to help us drag them across the blazing yard. Minna never touched a crate; he spent the whole time in the office of the warehouse, a cluttered room full of desks, file cabinets, tacked-up notes and pornographic calendars and a stacked tower of orange traffic cones, visible to us through an interior window, smoking cigarettes and jawing on the telephone, apparently not listening for replies-every time I glanced through the window his mouth was moving. The door was closed, and he was inaudible behind the glass. At some point another man appeared, from where I wasn’t sure, and stood in the yard wiping his forehead as though he were the one laboring. Minna came out, the two stepped inside the office, the other man disappeared. We moved the last of the crates inside. Minna rolled down the gate of the truck and locked the warehouse, pointed us back to his van, but paused before shutting us into the back.

“Hot day, huh?” he said, looking at us directly for what might have been the first time.

Bathed in sweat, we nodded, afraid to speak.

“You monkeys thirsty? Because personally I’m dying out here.”

Minna drove us to Smith Street, a few blocks from St. Vincent’s, and pulled over in front of a bodega, then bought us beer, pop-top cans of Miller, and sat with us in the back of the van, drinking. It was my first beer.

“Names,” said Minna, pointing at Tony, our obvious leader. We said our first names, starting with Tony. Minna didn’t offer his own, only drained his beer and nodded. I began tapping the truck panel beside me.

Physical exertion over, astonishment at our deliverance from St. Vincent’s receding, my symptoms found their opening again.

“You probably ought to know, Lionel’s a freak,” said Tony, his voice vibrant with self-regard.

“Yeah, well, you’reall freaks, if you don’t mind me pointing it out,” said Minna. “No parents-or am I mixed up?”

Silence.

“Finish your beer,” said Minna, tossing his can past us, into the back of the van.

And that was the end of our first job for Frank Minna.

But Minna rounded us up again the next week, brought us to that same desolate yard, and this time he was friendlier. The task was identical, almost to the number of boxes (242 to 260), and we performed it in the same trepidatious silence. I felt a violent hatred burning off Tony in my and Gilbert’s direction, as though he thought we were in the process of screwing up his Italian rescue. Danny was of course exempt and oblivious. Still, we’d begun to function as a team-demanding physical work contained its own truths, and we explored them despite ourselves.

Over beers Minna said, “You like this work?”

One of us said sure.

“You know what you’re doing?” Minna grinned at us, waiting. The question was confusing. “You know what kind of work this is?”

“What, moving boxes?” said Tony.

“Right, moving. Moving work. That’s what you call it when you work for me. Here, look.” He stood to get into his pocket, pulled out a roll of twenties and a small stack of white cards. He stared at the roll for a minute, then peeled off four twenties and handed one to each of us. It was my first twenty dollars. Then he offered us each a card. It read: L &L MOVERS. NO JOB TOO SMALL. SOME JOBS TOO LARGE. GERARD & FRANK MINNA. And a phone number.

“You’re Gerard or Frank?” said Tony.

“Minna, Frank.” Like Bond, James. He ran his hand through his hair. “So you’re a moving company, get it? Doing moving work.” This seemed a very important point: that we call it moving. I couldn’t imagine what else to call it.

“Who’s Gerard?” said Tony. Gilbert and I, even Danny, watched Minna carefully. Tony was questioning him on behalf of us all.

“My brother.”

“Older or younger?”

“Older.”

Tony thought for a minute. “Who’s L and L?”

“Just the name, L and L. Two L’s. Name of the company.”

“Yeah, but what’s it mean?”

“What do you need it to mean, Fruitloop-Living Loud? Loving Ladies? Laughing at you ers?”

“What, it doesn’t mean anything?” said Tony.

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“Least Lonely,” I suggested.

“There you go,” said Minna, waving his can of beer at me. “L and L Movers, Least Lonely.”

Tony, Danny and Gilbert all stared at me, uncertain how I’d gained this freshet of approval.

“Liking Lionel,” I heard myself say.

“Minna, that’s an Italian name?” said Tony. This was on his own behalf, obviously. It was time to get to the point. The rest of us could all go fuck ourselves.

“What are you, the census?” said Minna. “Cub reporter? What’s your full name, Jimmy Olsen?”

“Lois Lane,” I said. Like anyone, I’d read Superman comics.

“Tony Vermonte,” said Tony, ignoring me.

“Vermont-ee,” repeated Minna. “That’s what, like a New England thing, right? You a Red Sox fan?”

“Yankees,” said Tony, confused and defensive. The Yankees were champions now, the Red Sox their hapless, eternal victims, vanquished most recently by Bucky Dent’s famous home run. We’d all watched it on television.

“Luckylent,” I said, remembering. “Duckybent.”

Minna erupted with laughter. “Yeah, Ducky fucking Bent! That’s good. Don’t look now, it’s Ducky Bent.”

“Lexluthor,” I said, reaching out to touch Minna’s shoulder. He only stared at my hand, didn’t move away. “Lunchylooper, Laughyluck, Loopylip-”

“All right, Loopy,” said Minna. “Enough already.”

“Lockystuff-” I was desperate for a way to stop. My hand went on tapping Minna’s shoulder.

“Let it go,” said Minna, and now he returned my shoulder taps, once, hard. “Don’t tug the boat.”

To tugboat was to try Minna’s patience. Any time you pushed your luck, said too much, overstayed a welcome, or overestimated the usefulness of a given method or approach, you were guilty of having tugged the boat. Tugboating was most of all a dysfunction of wits and storytellers, and a universal one: Anybody who thought himself funny would likely tug a boat here or there. Knowing when a joke or verbal gambit was right at its limit, quitting before the boat had been tugged, that was art (and it was a given that you wanted to push it as near as possible-mising an opportunity to score a laugh was deeply lame, an act undeserving of a special name).

Years before the word Tourette’s was familiar to any of us, Minna had me diagnosed: Terminal Tugboater.

Distributing eighty dollars and those four business cards was all Minna had to do to instate the four of us forever-or anyway, for as long as he liked-as the junior staff of L &L Movers. Twenty dollars and a beer remained our usual pay. Minna would gather us sporadically, on a day’s notice or no notice at all-and the latter possibility became incentive, once we’d begun high school, for us to return to St. Vincent’s directly after classes and lounge expectantly in the schoolyard or recreation room, pretending not to listen for the distinctive grumble of his