handed back the cloth. “I don’t need that.”
“The loot now.”
The man handed it over slowly, smiling now that the transaction was finished. “Do you ever come to the Mott Street club?”
“Are you kidding?” Billy grabbed for the money and the man released it.
“You should. You’re Chinese, and you brought these steaks to me because I’m Chinese too and you knew you could trust me. That shows you’re thinking right…”
“Knock it off, will you, grandpa.” He hit himself in the chest with his thumb. “I’m Taiwan and my father was a general. So one thing I know — have nothing to do with you downtown Commie Chinks.”
“You stupid punk—” He raised his stick but Billy was already gone.
Things were going to change now, yes they were! He did not notice the heat as he dodged automatically through the milling crowds, seeing the future ahead and holding tight to the money in his pocket. Twenty D’s — more than he had ever owned at one time in his life. The most he had ever had before was three-eighty that he had lifted from the apartment across the hall the time they had left their window open. It was hard to get your hands on cash money, and cash money was the only thing that counted. They never saw any at home. The Welfare ration cards took care of everything, everything that kept you alive and just alive enough to hate it. You needed cash to get on and cash was what he had now. He had been thinking about this for a long time.
He turned into the Chelsea branch of Western Union on Ninth Avenue. The pasty-faced girl behind the high counter looked up and her glance slid away from him and out the wide front window to the surging, sunlit traffic beyond. She dabbed at the sweat droplets on her lip with a crumpled handkerchief, then wiped the creases under her chin. The operators, bent over their work, didn’t look up. It was quiet here with just the distant hum of the city through the open door, the sudden lurching motion as a teletype clattered loudly. On a bench against the rear wall six boys sat looking at him suspiciously, their searching eyes ready to fill with hatred. As he went toward the dispatcher he could hear their feet shifting on the floor and the squeak of the bench. He had to force himself not to turn and look as he waited, imitating patience, for the man to notice him.
“What do you want, kid?” the dispatcher said, finally looking up, speaking through tight, pursed lips reluctant to give anything away, even words. A man in his fifties, tired and hot, angry at a world that had promised him more.
“Could you use a messenger boy, mister?”
“Beat it. We got too many kids already.”
“I could use the work, mister, I’d work any time you say. I got the board money.” He took out one of the ten-dollar bills and smoothed it on the counter. The man’s eyes glared at it quickly, then jerked away again. “We got too many kids.”
The bench creaked and footsteps came up behind Billy and a boy spoke, his voice thick with restrained anger.
“Is this Chink bothering you, Mr. Burgger?” Billy thrust the money back into his pocket and held tightly to it.
“Sit down, Roles,” the man said. “You know my rule about trouble or fighting.”
He glared at the two boys and Billy could guess what the rule was and knew that he wouldn’t be working here unless he did something quickly.
“Thank you for letting me talk to you, Mr. Burgger,” he said, innocently, as he felt back with his heel and jammed his weight down on the boy’s toes as he turned. “I won’t bother you any more—”
The boy shouted and pain burst in Billy’s ear as the fist lashed out and caught him. He staggered and looked shocked but made no attempt to defend himself.
“All right, Roles,” Mr. Burgger said distastefully. “You’re through here, get lost.”
“But — Mr. Burgger…” he howled unhappily. “You don’t know this Chink…”
“Get out!” Mr. Burgger half rose and pointed angrily at the gaping boy. “Out!”
Billy moved to one side, unnoticed and forgotten for the moment, and knew enough not to smile. It finally penetrated to the boy that there was nothing he could do and he left — after hurling a look of burning malice at Billy — while Mr. Burgger scratched on one of the message boards.
“All right, kid, it looks like you maybe got a job. What’s your name?”
“Billy Chung.”
“We pay fifty cents every telegram you deliver.” He stood and walked to the counter holding the board. “You take a telegram out you leave a ten-buck board deposit. When you bring the board back you get ten-fifty. That clear?”
He laid the board down on the counter between them and his eyes glanced down to it. Billy looked and read the chalked words:
“That’s fine with me, Mr. Burgger.”
“All right.” The heel of his hand removed the message. “Get on the bench and shut up. Any fighting, any trouble, any noise, and you get what Roles got”
“Yes, Mr. Burgger.”
When he sat down the other boys stared at him suspiciously but said nothing. After a few minutes a dark little boy, even smaller than he, leaned over and mumbled, “How much kickback he ask?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t be a chunkhead. You kick back or you don’t work here.”
“Fifteen.”
“I told you he would do it,” another boy whispered fiercely. “I told you he wouldn’t keep it at ten…” He shut up abruptly when the dispatcher glared in their direction.
After this the day rolled by with hot evenness and Billy was glad to sit and do nothing. Some of the boys took telegrams out, but he was never called. The soylent steaks were sitting like lead in his stomach and twice he had to go back to the dark and miserable toilet in the rear of the building. The shadows were longer in the street outside but the air still held the same breathless heat that it had for the past ten days. Soon after six o’clock three more boys trickled in and found places on the crowded bench. Mr. Burgger looked at the group with his angry expression, it seemed to be the only one he had.
“Some of you kids get lost.”
Billy had had enough for the first day so he left. His knees were stiff from sitting and the steaks had descended far enough so he began to think about dinner. Hell, he grimaced sourly, he knew what they would have for dinner. The same as every other night and every other year. On the waterfront there was a little breeze from the river and he walked slowly along Twelfth Avenue and felt it cool upon his arms. Behind the sheds here, with no one in sight for the moment, he pried open one of the wire clips that held on the tire sole of his sandal and slipped the two bills into the crack. They were his and his only. He tightened the clip and climbed the steps that led to the
The river was invisible. Secured together by frayed ropes and encrusted chains the rows of ancient Victory and Liberty ships made up an alien and rusty landscape of odd-shaped superstructures, laundry-hung rigging, supports, pipes, aerials and chimneys. Beyond them was the single pier of the never-completed Wagner Bridge. This view did not seem strange to Billy because he had been born here after his family and the other Formosa refugees had settled into these temporary quarters, hastily constructed on the ships that had been rotting, unwanted, at their mooring up the river at Stony Point ever since the Second World War. There had been no other place to house the flood of newcomers and the ships had seemed a brilliant inspiration at the time; they would certainly do until something better was found. But it had been hard to find other quarters and more ships had been gradually added until the rusty, weed-hung fleet was such a part of the city that everyone felt it had been there forever.
Bridges and gangways connected the ships and occasionally there would be a glimpse of foul, garbage- filled water between them. Billy worked his way over to the
“About time you got in,” his sister Anna said. “Everyone’s through eating and you’re lucky I saved you anything.” She took his plate from a high shelf and put it on the table. She was only thirty-seven yet her hair was almost gray, her back bent into a permanent stoop, her hope of leaving the family and Shiptown was long since gone. She was the only one of the Chung children who had been born in Formosa, though she had been so young
