I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [34]
The gang was surprised, and Farel turned on me. “Fuck off, Ahearn—keep out of this, or you’ll be sorry.”
I shot back my own cliché. “Oh yeah, what the fuck are you going to do about it?” Comic-book dialogue.
Out came his switchblade. The pudgy victim scuttled backward against the building.
Without even thinking, I did a grand battement—a big kick—knocking his hand and sending the knife flying. The force of my kick spun me around on the ball of my foot 360 degrees. I arrived with both feet under me in plié, leaped in the air, and jumped so high my feet kicked down on top of his shoulders, smashing him to the ground. Farel lay stunned, when the virus of the bully infected me.
I ran over, picked up the knife, and came back. He was rolled in a fetal position. I pinned his shoulders, knelt down on his legs, and stabbed him in the buttocks, tearing through his jeans, piercing the skin, and drawing blood. “How do you like it, Farel, how do you like it?” I never looked at him; I was staring at the unbelieving faces of his gang, relishing my power and his humiliation.
Then it seemed like a bucket of water drenched me, a wash of shame. Curtains of emotion flooded from brain through belly to feet. I jumped up, flung the knife over the wall into the bushes, and fled, bewildered and frightened, appalled that violence and cruelty had boiled up with such speed and ease. What started as a cursory greeting had turned in seconds to a stabbing.
Late that night, the doorbell rang. The Boss answered, and soon she was at the door of my room. “Jacques, what have you done? The police are here. They want to speak to you.” Two uniforms, big and Irish, were waiting in the hall near the door.
“Boss, I can handle it,” I stammered. “I’ll talk to them.”
“Not on your life! I’m staying here to see what you’ve done.”
One burly cop said, “You’re Jock, right? Now, we know you had a fight with Farel, and it’s an okay thing, you’ll not be in trouble. We just want the knife.”
When she heard “the knife,” Boss gasped and stopped breathing. She did her Sarah Bernhardt act—clutched her heart and sagged against the wall. It worked, on me as well as the cops. I was more afraid of her than of them. “What do you mean? What knife?” she demanded.
“Sure now, Farel himself is at the station house at this very moment. And his gang now, they’ve told us your son took the knife. We’ll be needing it. It’s evidence.”
The other cop spoke up. “That Farel, he’s a bad one, been using that knife threatening and intimidating old people around the neighborhood. He makes them hand over their money.”
I confessed, “I don’t have it. I threw it away, into the bushes down at the park, around 160th Street.”
“We’ll be looking, and if it’s there, we’ll find it.”
They turned and left. They could leave. I had to stay and face the Boss.
Within a week of the Farel fight, Boss announced, “Your brother wants you to come out to Chicago and spend the summer with him. It’s a good chance to get you off the street, and it’ll be good for you to be with your brother.”
My brother Paul had joined the cast of the musical Inside U.S.A., and was playing an extended run at the Shubert Theatre in Chicago.
“He will send you a ticket for the train. You’ll stay with him and come back in September.”
I thought my brother had asked for me. Only today, as I write this, do I realize that my mother was terrified about her delinquent son. She had called and set it up with Paul to get me off the street.
How excited I was! This was the real thing, on my own, boarding a super train at Penn Station, New York, and riding to South Street Station, Chicago. It was June of 1949. I was fourteen, five foot seven, weighed 130 pounds, and had just completed my first year of Bishop Dubois High School.
The ticket came, and my adventure started a little after eight a.m. I stuffed my bag with a few clothes, took the twenty dollars Boss gave me to eat with on the train, and headed down to Penn Station. After