Coney (25 page)

“Hey, kid, some show, huh? Couldya tell which one of us got the mutt?”

Harry brushed the sleeve of his corduroy jacket across his wet cheeks. The ridges in the material hurt like a cut.

“Her name was Bear.”

Tim replaced the handkerchief. He put on his hat, gripping the peak, pulling it down, then lifting it slightly.

“Was he your dog?”

“Sort of.”

Kevin jabbed his index finger at Harry.

“Whaddya mean, sort of? If he was yours, he shouldda had a collar and a leash. He coulda bit somebody.”

“She wouldn't do that.”

“The fuck he wouldn't.”

Kevin pulled out a pad from his back pocket.

“Now suppose I write you a ticket for lettin' him run loose.”

Yes, Harry thought.
Yes, I want that!

Tim put his hand on Kevin's shoulder. He whispered into his ear. Kevin shrugged and put away the pad. He wrist-snapped his finger at Harry.

“I'll let you off this time. But if you ever get another dog, leash him. Understand?”

Harry did not answer.

“Did you hear what I said!”

Harry nodded.

“That's better.”

The cops turned and walked toward their patrol car. Harry heard, as he knew he was supposed to:
kikes, kids who work for dwarfs.
”

Harry descended to Bear. He flailed off the feasting flies while collecting paint-stiffened rags to wrap her in. The material gave only enough to form a stretcher. He laid it on the seat of his bike and pushed it toward the beach. He wished the cop had given him a ticket so he could have buried it with Bear, as her owner.

Under the boardwalk, Harry knelt and dug. Grains of wet sand tore the flesh under his fingernails.

He pushed the rags to the rim of the hole and tipped in Bear. He looked down on four rigid paws. He covered her up, thinking, Shouldn't I say something? In the movies someone always says something. Jean Hersholt's face appeared. Harry said:

“Good-bye, Mama.”

Drained of energy, Harry sat on a bench on the boardwalk. On the horizon, he saw the
Mauritania
, not much larger than a ship target at the rifle shoot concession, glide as if on ice. He was glad it was not the
Bremen
. Captain Ziegenbaum would have sped up to take advantage of his fatigue.

The
Mauritania
was a ship to be watched, not raced.

It was an old liner, the sister ship of the
Lusitania
, the liner that had been sunk by a German submarine in 1917, killing more than a thousand people. An act so barbaric, according to his history teacher, Mr. Simon, that it had convinced the United States to enter the World War against Germany.

One fall day Harry had seen the
Mauritania
playing hide-and-seek in a fog, and he knew the truth: it was really its sister, turned ghost ship, appearing on the horizon but never arriving anywhere. She was an occupant of limbo. Aboard were the souls of her drowned passengers demanding revenge, as they did on the
Inner Sanctum
radio story about a ghost ship. Also on board were the undead spirits of the crew, slaughtered by Dracula on his voyage to England. Now Bear's soul had migrated there.

He forced his protesting body onto his bike, scanning the beach for WK. At 27th Street he spotted a familiar stooped back. He ran onto the beach, shouting:

“Soldier, Soldier.”

Soldier turned. He held something against his chest.

“Damn, look, Harry.”

Soldier held out to him a pup no more than six inches long—a miniature Bear.

Harry took it. It was as warm as boiled corn. It nuzzled Harry's palm.

“Where'd you find 'em, Soldier?”

Soldier took off his wool hat and scratched his head.

“Damn, it was the craziest thing that ever did happen to me. I was walkin' along the beach to go to some meetin' Woody told me about. All of a sudden this big dog comes runnin' to me from under the boardwalk. She's hurt, limpin', carryin' this here pup in her mouth. She comes up to me, drops the pup and runs back under the boardwalk. I picked up the pup and went after her, but she was gone. Craziest thing.”

“Can I have him, Soldier?”

Soldier tugged at his ear and then put the tips of his fingers on his lips.

“Damn, I'm sorry Harry. But he was sorta left to me. That mother dog picked me out. You know what I mean? I gotta take care of him. Ain't that right, Harry?”

Harry handed the pup back.

“Damn, Harry, don't cry. I really gotta.”

Soldier brought down the corners of his lips. He looked like a gasping fish.

“Damn, I guess you're right, Harry. I ain't fit to take care of it.”

He held out the pup to Harry.

Harry jumped backward.

“No, Soldier. No!”

He lifted his bike over his head and ran.

V
ICTOR
M
ENTER HAD MADE ELABORATE PREPARATIONS
. B
Y OBTAINING
from an official at the Board of Education a large blackboard, chalks of various colors, a rubber-tipped pointer, standard blackboard erasers and individual, backless classroom seats which sprouted on their right sides palette-shaped writing surfaces, his living room had been converted into a classroom. Woody wore a blue-and-silver arm badge inscribed:
Monitor.

In the lobby of the Half-Moon Hotel, Joe Baker paraded, encased in a sandwich-board sign, its front a collage of Coney's freak attractions, the back announcing:
Victor Menter's Annual Freak Party. Elevator to the Penthouse
.

The meeting had been called for noon. Menter smiled at the seated freaks, who reminded him of an
ungraded
high school class of incorrigibles, put under the eye of a muscular educator instructed to keep them quiet by any means, including fists.

He regretted the absence of Fifi, who he had decided could not be a practical participant in the arson. He had imagined insisting that she could fit into a tiny seat, stuffed there by Otto as human derrick and aided by Woody with a shoehorn or Soldier coating her ass with petroleum jelly.

Only Otto had balked at sitting in
a baby chair
, a reticence quickly overcome by a flash of meaningful eye contact. Mohu and Lohu, in abutting chairs, were chattering happily in Japanese. Olga had squeezed in by swishing a hilarious sitting shimmy. Albert-Alberta
and Jo-Jo were in a spirited spitball fight with Jamie, who had started it. Everyone was bunched together except for Soldier, who had arrived carrying a tiny pup, which appeared to be dead. He sat on a radiator at the back of the room petting the motionless animal. Menter had not planned to separate Soldier from the rest, but bowed to the logic of chance:
crazy was not a freak.

“OK, monitor,” Menter said.

Woody handed out black-and-white-speckled three by five notebooks and freshly sharpened yellow pencils.

“Very good, monitor,” Menter said, “give yourself a gold star.”

He put a cigarette in his holder, lit it, dragged, blew a perfect smoke ring, through which he jabbed his middle finger, and said:

“Just so's we understand each other, huh?”

His eyes slowly moved from face to face.

“Now I want everyone to take notes, because there's goin' to be homework. And this is a subject nobody fails.”

He tapped a pointer against the blackboard, which was covered by a bedsheet.

“We'll get to this a little later. Now we learn current events. We begin with a history lesson.”

The last sentence was delivered in an appreciably louder voice, while turning slightly toward an ajar door to his right.

“Students, today we're goin' to learn about Jewish lightnin'. Jews are so good at burnin' down buildin's that they got their name on the insurance scam. It's what kikes do best: screw everybody and walk away with all the dough. Now class, can you answer this question: What does a Jew hate more than pork?”

“Jesus Christ,” Otto shouted.

“Very good, Otto. Monitor, put him down for a gold star. But that ain't today's answer. What a Jew hates more than pork is … asbestos.”

Menter laughed. Woody, hee-heeing, scooted among the seats, calling for response and receiving mechanical
ha-has.
Menter slapped his forehead.

“Don't you dummies know what asbestos is? Or are you all kike lovers? A Jew'll burn down anythin'—even his mother's house with her in it—to make a buck. Look at their names: Blazeski, Burnheimer, Flameski.”

He paused again, waiting for laughter.

“Oh God,” he moaned, “they think they're real names.”

He aimed a pointer at the freaks.

“You are goin' to make some Jewish lightnin'. Right Woody?”

“Right!” the dwarf shouted.

“Now, first I want to tell you about this kike torch I knew personal. His name was Izzy Stein. We called him Izzy the painter, on account of he said he was a painter so he could buy lots of kerosene, which is used for mixin' paints. He mixed the kerosene with naphtha so when you lit it, it went boom and spread fast. We'll use that. What was good enough for Izzy the kike is plenty good for this gang. You know, Izzy set the world record. Set maybe five hundred fires before one of his kike buddies squealed on him. Izzy, of course, squealed back. Got off light. I saw him in the street the other day. He's a rabbi. Kikes respect people like Izzy.”

Menter uncovered the blackboard, revealing an architect's drawing of the buildings on the Bowery, also known as the Midway, a small street of food and game concessions and freak shows that ran about one hundred yards between the boardwalk and Surf Avenue from Steeplechase to West 10th Street.

“Ain't that beautiful?” Menter said. “Ain't I a artist?”

Menter tapped the blackboard.

“There are thirty wood buildin's bunched together here. We hit four or five and the fire jumps to all of 'em. There ain't no alarms or watchmen. I've got copies of this drawing I'll give you. Each of these shacks has a side or back entrance. That's how you're goin' to get in and out. In Coney, nobody will think twice about freaks on the Bowery. I want every one of you to know the entrance to every shack. So you can do it in the dark with your eyes shut. So anyone can substitute for anyone else. Next time you'll be assigned
one of the buildin's. We got some time. We started early because you ain't the brightest, so we give ya plenty of time to learn. Next time I'm goin' to ask questions. And I better get the right answers. Get me?”

Menter tried to flip the pointer to Woody, but it slipped from his hand and knocked the cigarette holder from his mouth. Albert-Alberta laughed. Menter rolled toward him, stopping the wheels when they indented his shoes.

“You think that's funny? You homo limey scumbag.”

Albert-Alberta shrugged.

“Woody, whaddaya got on this turd?”

Woody took from his back pocket a pad, flipped the pages and read:

Wanted in Philadelphia for sucking a kid's lollipop in a Market Street toilet. Jumped bail. In San Antonio the cops would like to know what happened to money a widow lady gave him to invest.