Corky's Brother (14 page)

“But Christ, Eddie,” I began. Susie glared at me and I stopped. Eddie sat down and nobody said anything for a while—then suddenly he started talking. “You know something,” he said. “My business is pretty good. I mean, I'm making a good living and at least I'm not working for somebody else—but you know what I'd
really
like to do?” He leaned forward and rubbed his hands together. He looked at Susie and she smiled. “I'd like to coach kids. No kidding.”

“He's terrific with them, Howie,” Susie said. “Really—”

“I love it—I help out at the center sometimes, and with this team of kids from our block. Guess what they call themselves?—The Zodiacs!” We both laughed. “It's something how these things get passed down—”

We began reminiscing again and soon we were both telling Susie about the day we'd played hooky together and gone to Ebbets Field.

“Have you seen it since it's torn down?” Eddie asked. “They got these big apartment houses—”

“I've been there,” I said.

“I have a girlfriend who lives in right field,” Susie said. I glanced at her, puzzled. “The people all give their section of the development names according to the way the field used to be laid out,” she explained. Then she laughed, but the laugh was forced and we knew it. Eddie and I tried to get up a conversation about the old ballplayers and what they were doing then—Hodges managing the Senators, the Duke still hanging on as a pinch hitter, poor Campy in a wheelchair since his crash, conducting interviews on TV between Yankee doubleheaders—but our hearts weren't in it anymore and there were a lot of long silences. After a while I said I had to get up early the next morning for a job interview. It wasn't even midnight. I thanked them for the dinner and I said I'd be in touch when I got back from school in June. Then, when I was at the door, Eddie put his arm around my shoulder.

“I been thinking,” he said. “How about you playing some three-man ball with an old married man before you go back to school?”

“Sure,” I said.

I met Eddie at the schoolyard on Saturday morning and we played for a couple of hours. He wasn't as graceful as I'd remembered him, but he could still jump—only now he knew how to throw his weight around and use his elbows and body and shoulders. He was murder under the boards and deadly with his jump shot and rough on defense. We played against some pretty tough high school and college and ex-college ballplayers that day and Eddie was the best of us all. Between games we'd rest next to the fence together and Eddie would talk and joke and kid about the potbelly he was putting on. When we played, though, he didn't smile and he didn't talk. He played hard and he played to win.

The Campaign of Hector Rodriguez

W
E
RACE
down the stairs, two at a time, loyal friends behind us, spreading the word. “Vote for Birnbaum and Rodriguez! ¡
Viva
Sam! ¡
Viva
Hector! ¡
Viva
Louise!” Carlos is standing in the doorway of his room on the second floor, looking at the girls with the others from his class.
“
¡
Mira!
¡
Miral”
cries one of his classmates. “Hey,
chica
—Carlos likes you!” They lean on each other as the crowds go by, drool on their lips, but Carlos says nothing. He's real little, a stringy guy, but he is my best friend. We come on the boat together from Puerto Rico.

I push the others aside and give him my hand to shake. “We made it,” I say. “A fusion ticket—Sam, the black girl Louise, and me.” Carlos smiles with his yellow teeth. His eyelids hang down. “Look,” says Sam, slapping Carlos on the arm. “Can we count on you to swing the C.R.M.D. vote our way?”

Carlos shrugs. “It's okay,” I say, and Carlos says he will get the C.R.M.D. vote in line. C.R.M.D. is for Children with Retarded Mental Development, but do not believe it. Carlos is quick at arithmetic, he knows the lifetime batting averages of every Spanish baseball player. Behind his droopy eyelids there is fire. He wins medals in running. He is as smart as half the school. Only he cannot read. So they put him in C.R.M.D. But he does not care. In C.R.M.D. nobody bothers you. There is a television set and shoeshine kits and knock-hockey. He makes much money shining the teachers' shoes. In his class he is the leader, and now that he is in C.R.M.D. nobody makes fun of the others the way they used to.

Except Carmen.
Carmen de las tetas grandes
, as she is known on our street. Carmen Quiñones, five foot two, fourteen years old, in the seventh grade, guided missiles on her chest. She comes down the hall now, her friends with her, chattering and chewing, swinging their asses to the music from Carmen's radio. Carmen stops when she sees me, and tosses her head back like she is Sophia Loren.
“
¡
Qu
é
tetas grandes!”
I exclaim. She sneers at me. Benito Lopez, from Carlos' class, his eyes are spinning. “Hey, Benito,” Carmen says. “You like me?”

Benito nods, his mouth open, happy.

Carmen throws her head back and laughs. “Well, I no like you!”

This causes great laughter from the other girls, and as they pass down the hall Carlos spits in their direction.
“
¡
Puta!
¡
Puta!”
he shouts, above the noise.

Carmen shakes her oil-black hair and turns on Carlos. “¡Su
madre es una negra!”

Carlos gives her the sign. She laughs and walks on, around the corner.

“How about her?” Sam asks. “She controls a big bloc of the female Puerto Rican vote—”

“You leave her to me,” I say.
“Adios
, Carlos. I have a class. After school, meet me—we have a campaign to plan.”

I am the leader of my people—Hector Rodriguez, running for vice-president of Junior High School Number 54, Manhattan, on the Green Party. Everything has gone according to our plans. We are unbeatable. Sam Birnbaum of the ninth grade for president—white and Jewish; Hector Rodriguez of the eighth grade for vice-president—Catholic and Puerto Rican; Louise Carr of the seventh grade for secretary—black and Protestant. “I'm counting on you to bring in the Puerto Rican vote,” Sam says to me, his arm around my shoulder as we make our way downstairs. “Do not fear,” I say to him. “You are my good friend, Sam.” I pound him on the back while all around us students give congratulations.
“
¡
Viva
Rodriguez!” they shout.
“
¡
Viva
Birnbaum!”

In the lunchroom I get Carmen in the corner. “I like you, Carmen,” I say. She chews on an egg-salad sandwich and presses the radio to her ear. Lesley Gore is singing. “I mean it,” I say. “I go for you.”

“Yeah?” she says. “Well, I no go for you. You better watch out how you get fresh or I get my boyfriend after you.” She telling the truth about that. Her boyfriend, he is the star pitcher for the Camaradas, a windmill delivery, a true strikeout king. On Saturday in Central Park I see them play. Carmen is there, and when he is not pitching he and Carmen are against a tree, loving each other up with passion. He is mean-looking, with a mustache, at least nineteen years old. All the men on his team have women, and all day in Central Park they love them up and drink beer and play baseball.

“You going to vote for me, Carmen?” I say. I let my hand fall against
la teta grande
. She chews her gum and listens to the radio as if I am doing nothing to her. “I like you, Carmen. I mean it. I go for you.”

“What you give me if I vote for you?” she asks.

“I make a big party in your honor,” I say. “For you and all your friends—a party like you have never been to. Better than the fiestas in San Juan!”

“Oh, yeah? How you do that—?”

“Sam,” I say. “His parents are rich Jews who live on Central Park West. At election time they will be gone, cruising to Puerto Rico with the other rich Jews, and we can use his house, his liquor. I promise you, Carmen—you get your friends to vote for us and I will show you a good time—”

She comes closer, smiling. “For me you make the party? In my honor?”

“Only for you, Carmen. You know that. Only for you.”

She laughs with passion. “Hector!” she says, grabbing me under the mouth. She flashes her teeth and shakes my head from side to side, holding me strong by the chin. “What a man you will be some day! Aiee, what you do to me!” She gives me my hand back. The door to the outside opens and the students charge to it. I walk into the yard and go around to the side with Carmen. With nobody around, I do things she likes.

“Okay,” she says. “You make a party for me and I vote for you.

“What about your boyfriend?” I say.

She bites my neck. “Ha! What you think—while I am in school he waits only for me? I know him—¡
bastardo!
¡
Bastardo barroso!”

I press her against the bricks. “I tell you something, Carmen,” I say. “He is old now and I am young, but some day I am going to be somebody. This is the beginning. Vice-president this year, president next year. I have it planned. In high school and then in college. You stick with me, Carmen, you do okay.”

“You are smart Hector,” she says. “You in the class with all the Jews.”

“Some day I will have a mansion on Riverside Drive and an estate in Puerto Rico—servants, yachts, a swimming pool, my own airplane. You think I going to be a dumb spic all my life, you crazy.” I visit
la teta grande
for the last time. “This is only the beginning, Carmen.”

After school, in Sam's house, we begin our work. The smart kids from the Special Progress classes, they are making posters and tags, telephoning their friends. I tell them what to put on the signs:
VOTE
FOR
THE
GREEN
PARTY—THE
PARTY
OF
ALL
THE
STUDENTS
! In English and in Spanish: ¡
EL
PARTIDO
DE
TODOS
LOS
ESTUDIANTES
! The good artists draw pictures of us—black, Spanish, white; on the floor in the bedroom, I put Louise in charge of the tags—
VOTE
FOR
SAM!
…
I
LIKE
HECTOR!
…
GO
FOR
GREEN
…
cutting them out of paper, punching holes, stringing them for distribution.

“Louise is O.K.,” Sam says. Then he asks if I want to take a drink from his father's supply. Sam is all right. He is my good friend. Some day he will be a famous man—he is a scholar and an athlete. In the lavatories of our school, he is the man to come to for a cigarette. We toast to our victory. “C'mere,” he says. “I got something to show you.”

In his father's room, from a dresser, boxes of prophylactics. “Votes,” he says, striking a match on his heel and lighting a cigar. I take one. Two girls come in, white and clean, and he issues instructions to them. A new idea for a poster:
THIS
STUDENT
VOTES
FOR
SAM,
HECTOR,
AND
LOUISE
! We will tape mirrors to the posters. Sam starts to take money from his wallet to buy the mirrors, but Carlos stops him. He says he will get mirrors for nothing.

During the next week, we move our campaign into high gear. Every day more and more voters swing to the Green Party. Sam is cheered by the students when he enters the schoolyard, I am hoisted on shoulders and carried about, Louise is queen of the seventh grade. Everyone wears our tags. We start a blackboard campaign, workers assigned to every room in the school. I give speeches in the lunchroom—we promise them everything: dances, boat rides, tournaments, picnics. And all the while Carlos is blazing the path to victory with his own campaign. Every day he has new gifts for the students. One day it is lipsticks for the girls, the next day combs for the boys: ballpoint pens, boxes of gold stars, candles, thumbtacks, cans of hair spray, golf balls—his resources are endless, his sheepish smile dazzling. Where does one get a friend like Carlos?

In their desperation the other party spreads a rumor—Sam and I, they say, we are too close, like little birds. In the bathrooms it is written:
Sam Loves Hector
. We call a council and I decide quickly. “There is only one thing to do,” I say. “You've got a head on your shoulders, Hector,” Sam says, and the next day we walk through the schoolyard holding hands. Boys and girls roar with laughter. At the gates at three o'clock, Sam's friends from the S.P. classes stop one of every five students and ask them who they expect to vote for. The polls show us leading by a three-to-one margin, and we publish the results. “Nobody likes to back a loser,” I say. “It shames them.”

When I return to West 8oth Street at night, I am a hero. The Latin-American music I love fills the air. The naked babies run under my feet, the girls grab for my muscles, I am asked to play stickball by the younger boys. My grandmother, proud, sits in the window behind the fire escape and compares me to Roosevelt, Kennedy, Marin. The old men in their undershirts, playing cards and shooting craps, they ask when I am running for mayor. Carmen traps me in the hallway.

“You so famous now, you forget about Carmen?” she asks.

“I never forget you, Carmen,” I say, moving in. She shoves me back.

“I get all my friends to vote for you and now, in the halls, you hardly see me.” She spits at my feet. “Always with the blond-haired girls!”

“You are the only girl for me—¡
querida
Carmen!” I breathe on her neck and hold her to me from behind. “This is only politics, Carmen. A dirty business. When the election is over and I am vice-president, we will have good times. Do you forgive me?”