The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [25]
The Bull, really angry now, but confident, ran hard to keep pace alongside, his head tilted upward comically. The kid was trapping himself. He was angry not at the curse, but at being called Charlie Chaplin. He was vain, and his bowed legs made him sensitive.
Suddenly Gino disappeared. The Bull ducked quickly under the freight car to catch him coming down the ladder on the opposite side. He tripped on the rails and lost a precious second. When he got to the other side, he saw no sign of his prey. He backed up to enlarge his field of vision.
He saw Gino almost literally flying along the top of the box cars, soaring from one to the other with no teetering awkwardness, up toward Tenth Avenue, and then disappearing over the side of the car away from the Bull. The Bull sprinted but was only in time to see the boy cross Tenth Avenue to the safe shade of the tenement wall, where, without a backward glance, Gino stopped to rest and get a lemon ice. There was no sign of the other kid.
The Bull had to laugh, he couldn’t help it. The balls on the kid, a little shit like that. But just the same, his day would come; he’d be Charlie Chaplin, O.K.; he’d make ’em scream, but not laughing.
GINO DID NOT bother to look back once he had crossed the Avenue. He wanted to find Joey Bianco and the ice money. He heard his mother yelling from the fourth-floor window, “Gino, bestia, where is the ice? Come, eat.”
Gino looked up, and above his mother he saw the blue sky. “I’ll be up in two minutes,” he shouted. He ran around the corner to 30th Street. Sure enough he saw Joey sitting on a stoop, his wagon tied to the iron railing of the basement.
Joey was brooding, almost in tears, but when he saw Gino he jumped in the air. He said excitedly, “I was gonna tell your mother—gee, I didn’t know what to do.”
Thirtieth Street was dusty and full of sun. Gino got into the wagon and steered, with Joey pushing him. On Ninth Ave-nue they bought hero salami sandwiches and Pepsis. Then they went on to 31st Street, where it was shady, and sat with their backs against the wall of Runkel’s chocolate factory.
They ate their sandwiches with the contentment and good appetite of men who have had a completely satisfying day: hard work, adventure, and their bread sweet with their own sweat. Joey was admiring and kept saying, “Boy, you sure saved me, Gino. You sure outfoxed that Bull.” Gino was modest, because he knew he had learned the trick from a book about birds, but he didn’t tell Joey.
The summer sun vanished. There were quick dark clouds. The dusty, heated air and the smell of hot stone pavements and melting tar were swept away by a rushing sheet of rain released by great claps of thunder; faintly, there was an elusive ghost and smell of something green. Joey and Gino crept under the loading platform. The rain pelted down, some of it coming through cracks in the platform floor, and they turned their faces up to the cool drops.
In the shaded, cellar-like darkness there was just enough light to play cards. Joey took the greasy pack out of his trousers pocket. Gino hated to play because Joey won a lot. They played Seven-and-a-half and Gino lost the fifty cents ice money. It was still raining.
Joey, stuttering a little, said, “Gino, here, here’s your fifty cents back for saving me from the Bull.”
Gino was offended. Heroes never took pay.
“Come on,” Joey said more firmly. “You saved my wagon, too. You gotta let me give the fifty cents back.”
Gino really didn’t want the money. It would spoil the adventure if Joey paid him to do a job. But Joey was nearly in tears, and Gino saw that for some reason he had to take the money. “O.K.,” Gino said. Joey handed it over.
Still it rained. They waited quietly while Joey restlessly riffled the cards. The rain kept coming down. Gino spun the half dollar on the pavement.
Joey kept watching