Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Eleven): Benny and the “Bullet” (Conclusion)

Bottom feeder par excellence: German shepherd dog barking

The real trouble, as Sonny saw it, wasn’t so much Benny Junior or his father Benny Senior, the surly super, but their full-grown dog Bullet. Named, appropriately, after the loyal and highly intelligent German shepherd once owned by TV and motion picture cowboy star Roy Rogers, this South Bronx variation on the black-and-tan hound was as mean and vicious a mongrel as Benny and his sort-tempered dad had been – more so, in their canine’s case.

      Bullet had the unfortunate tendency of hiding out in the darkest regions of their basement. Coincidentally or not, both Stratford Avenue complexes shared the same basement and laundry facilities; and each were connected by long, dark passageways that allowed residents as well as outsiders easy access to the two buildings. To gain entry, anyone, including Sonny and his family, could climb down a short set of steps into a narrow tunnel-like structure that opened up onto a claustrophobic courtyard revealing the twin complexes’ backsides. From there, pedestrians could follow one passageway to the left and into 1245 Stratford Avenue, or the other passageway to the right into 1255 Stratford. Rows of empty or half-filled garbage cans lined both pathways, which made walking to the adjacent elevators somewhat treacherous, given that the basement lighting was of poor quality.

        Somewhere along those two dimly-lit shafts – equivalent, in Sonny’s mind, to the monster Grendel’s legendary lair – lurked a growling modern-day facsimile in the German shepherd Bullet. Why the beast was allowed to roam free among the empty garbage cans and around unsuspecting tenants was a mystery few if any of the neighborhood’s residents could provide an easy answer to. There was no doubt the dog’s prowess as the guardian of their realm, a makeshift Cerberus in charge of the South Bronx Underworld, gave tenants peace of mind in that its presence was deemed sufficient enough to ward off strangers and unwanted intruders. Maybe so. But it did next to nothing in easing Sonny and Juanito’s concerns for their safety, or those of their close friends.

       Sonny hated to go down to that basement. For one, he was afraid of the dark (and it could get extremely dark under the poor lighting conditions); for another, that mangy mongrel sensed Sonny’s fear, which made his apprehension about going there that much worse.

       In retaliation, Sonny invented all sorts of excuses for avoiding that dreadful place. Poor Sonny! He couldn’t help it if he was afraid of both dogs and the dark. Unfortunately, Sonny let his imagination run wild with surreal visions of his being attacked by a wild mongrel named Bullet; of his being torn apart, limb from Puerto Rican limb, while that ferocious beast gorged on his skinny innards, chewing his arms and legs as if they were meatless chicken bones. Just the thought and image of that mangy mutt devouring his extremities gave Sonny the shudders, which never helped when Mami insisted loudly that he go down there and take care of the laundry. Pronto!

       Sonny’s fear of dogs stemmed from an early encounter with a ferocious boxer. Walking in his usual leisurely gait from his family’s apartment to the Clason’s Point Branch of the New York Public Library building, just under the elevated Number 6 Pelham Bay line subway station at Soundview Avenue, little Sonny had once been accosted by a leash-less beast prowling the front yard of some lax neighbor’s homestead.

Soundview area of the South Bronx, near Clason Point

       “Oh! Damn it!” Sonny shouted. “Freaking dog! You scared the crap outta me!” was all he could say to the barking but belligerent animal. “Okay, I’m outta here,” Sonny muttered under his breath. “Asshole neighbors, why can’t you keep your mangy mutt bottled up?” The boxer’s massive form, certainly not as large as the super’s German shepherd Bullet, was formidable enough to thwart any potential thieves from operating in the vicinity of the local subway station. Under cover of darkness and with the passing noise of clanging subway cars overhead, any burglars worth their salt would be able to do their dirty work undetected. With the boxer on patrol, however, they were forced to think twice, maybe three times at that, before committing any offences under its watch.       

       That early encounter soured Sonny’s taste for dogs as pets – but not for cute little puppies – to a noticeable degree. For the moment, though, he was happy to give the animals a very wide berth.

       One afternoon, as usual, Mami charged him with dropping off the trash. Sonny had performed this service a hundred times (a rough but no less exaggerated count on his part) and was at the least willing, for the time being, to help his mother out while the vacationing Papi was absent. Not that Papi was any more delighted to be taking out the garbage, which he felt was purely “woman’s work.” No matter, what had to be done had to be done, and Sonny was the one to do it. Sonny took a deep breath and sucked in his gut. It would be over in a minute, he reassured himself. After all, dogs don’t stay in one place for long, now, do they? Nah, not a chance! They move around a lot. Always pacing back and forth, especially German shepherds. It’s in their blood, in their makeup. Sufficiently pumped up, Sonny convinced himself that all would be well. In and out. That’s the ticket. Nothing to be concerned about.

       “WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! ARGH!!!!!”

       Caught completely by surprise, Sonny was startled. No, he was scared out of his wits! Bullet’s massive head and shoulders, those prominent black-and-tan markings on its upper back, that big brown snout, those salivating jaws of death growled menacingly at Sonny from the darkest nether regions of the basement entrance. “Crap, crap!” Sonny shouted to himself. “Freaking bitchy dog was outside all this time!” He began to panic. “What the hell do I do now?”

       Its mouth agape, Bullet gave out a warning snarl, the kind that was typical of the breed but reminded Sonny more of those nasty Doberman Pinscher’s he had heard so much about. Bullet continued to growl noisily at him, the drool dripping from its curved jaws. It was sending out a signal, and the message was: don’t mess with this beast. No dummy, Sonny got the hint. This was the break he had been waiting for. He knew, from bitter experience, that dogs (most of them, anyway) warn you ahead of time regarding their intentions. Take the hint, he reminded himself, and you will be fine. Maybe. Keep the hell out of their way, go about your business, and they will get the idea you pose no threat to their well-being. Uh-huh.

       “Keep your distance,” an agitated Sonny whispered to himself. “Good advice for me, good advice for Mr. Bullet here.” Storybook images of the Big Bad Wolf with Little Red Riding Hood, and of Peter and that Russian Wolf, filled Sonny’s imagination. Still, he stood his ground, petrified, unable to react or to move. At any second, Sonny expected this guardian of its realm would pounce on him with all its vicious might, sinking those monstrous jaws and dagger-like teeth into his scrawny little forearms. Or worse, into the pulsing veins in his neck, the blood gushing forth every which way, his heart throbbing, his vessels popping out from his sweaty bead-filled brow and forehead. Copious drops of blood gushing forth unchecked onto the basement floor. The beast’s hot breath, spewing fire and brimstone and God knows what else it had, onto his lineless facial features…This was it! The end! Goodbye, world!!!

       “Bullet!” A sharp, irritated voice sounded from nearby. “Bullet!” the voice shouted again. “¡Para te! ¿Me eschuchas? ¡Para te con esso! Bullet! Stop that!” the voice repeated, over and over again. Until the chastened German shepherd backed off its attack. “Good dog. Good dog, Bullet,” repeated the voice. Sonny stopped to listen. He couldn’t see very well in the dark, another of his minor faults. But within a few seconds Sonny was able to focus long enough to make out superintendent Benny’s hulking form. His voice, now palpably soft and tender, was communicating with Bullet in Spanish, reassuring the frightened animal that all would be well.

       Where did the super come from? Where was he hiding? Amazingly, Benny Sr. must have materialized out of the shadows, in time to exert control over the miscreant mutt, now docile and at his beck and call. Bullet stopped in his tracks and went over to its master’s side, licking Benny Sr.’s hand and fingers and nuzzling its huge head into the super’s underarm. “Good boy, Bullet,” Benny the super repeated. “Good boy. Good Bullet…” The super continued to pet and reassure the animal for what seemed minutes. Whatever brought the vicious beast to heel and resolve itself not to cross the line of decorum came as a godsend to Sonny, who for a split second thought he might crap in his newly bought Wrangler jeans pants. Sonny stood there for the moment, his mouth slightly agape, and thanking the Lord for his good fortune. He had noticed that, in a flash, old Bullet had transformed itself from the hound from Hell into man’s best friend, as it was meant to be.

Playtime on the old South Bronx backlot baseball

         The threat thwarted, Sonny remembered that he still had the trash to drop off. Never mind that the trash can he chose wasn’t from their building’s complex. What the hell! Sonny dropped the trash bags into whatever receptacle was available and ran, with all the speed an eleven-year-old could summon under the circumstances, right to their building’s elevator. Lady Luck continued to smile at and rain down on young Sonny’s form. For there, waiting for him with hands on her hips, was Mami – holding the elevator door open and beckoning her son to go in.

      “Santiago, ¿qué pasó? ¿Por qué te esta tomando tanto tiempo? What took you so long?” she insisted.

       “Sorry, Mami!” Sonny blurted out. “I didn’t mean to stay out so late!” Sonny was glad to see his mother. Glad? He was ecstatic. He gave Mami the warmest, lovingest hug his sore arms could manage. Sonny would never again take out the garbage. Not in that building, he wouldn’t, nor in any other building. And in no way, shape or form would he ever, EVER, insist on their getting a dog or any animal for a pet. Not if he could help it.

(To be continued)

Copyright © 2024 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Ten): Benny and the “Bullet”

1245 and 1255 Stratford Avenue, the South Bronx

Superintendents in the South Bronx had one tough job. In addition to overseeing the grounds, doing the maintenance and repair work, and striving to keep their cantankerous tenants in line and up to date with their rent, most New York City superintendents also took responsibility for their buildings’ security.

   In fact, many of the superintendents, called “the super” by a majority of the residents, considered themselves to be the first line of any building’s defense. But there were always those who took their tasks as makeshift policemen a trifle too seriously, while others could not have given a day’s worth of crap if their buildings went to pot. 

       If some of the local troublemakers weren’t adding graffiti to their building’s outer walls, they were creating a nuisance by playing loud music at all hours of the day and night, and generally making the other tenants and neighbors resemble pawns in the nonstop turf wars that soon enveloped the South Bronx and other areas of blight in the city that never sleeps.

       Taking out the trash, keeping vandals away and at bay from renters’ homes, changing burned out light bulbs, getting the elevators to run properly and efficiently on any given day, seeing to the upkeep of laundry facilities, and, worst of all, trying to control the ever-growing pest population – rats and roaches, as well as rival gangs, among the worst offenders – these were fulltime jobs for most “supers,” be they good or bad.

       Speaking of which, the superintendent of 1245 and 1255 Stratford Avenues happened to be a dark-skinned, dark-haired native Puerto Rican from Guaynabo named Benjamin Cardona, whom everyone called “Benny” for short. By the foregoing description, anyone who glanced at Benny might have pegged him for a Mexican descendant. The young people, Sonny and Juanito among them, never called him by his real name. He and others like him were invariably referred to as “The Super.” If only they had lived up to their moniker! Things would have been a whole lot better, and life a whole lot easier for residents and their families, had that been the case. That’s not to say that Benjamin Cardona, or Benny, or The Super, wasn’t up to the task.

   As with most such immigrant laborers, Benjamin Emanuel Cardona Lopez was a decent enough fellow, a hardworking individual in his late thirties (or maybe early forties – it was hard to tell by his looks alone), with several kids of his own to care for and a diligent working-class spouse who Sonny rarely got to see, and whose name he never got to know. “Mrs. Super”? That was as far as Sonny got with that.

       If Benjamin Emanuel Cardona Lopez had his faults, it was that he gave people who didn’t know him personally the appearance of always being irritated with something or someone. He couldn’t help the fact that his thick, difficult-to-comb hair was jet-black in color; that he had a five o’clock shadow at 11:00 a.m. in the morning; that his darkly tanned facial features and heavily lined brow, chin, and forehead gave Benjamin the look of a reconstituted caveman come to life. What nature provided him in sour looks and disposition did not, by any means, extend to his height: the super barely clocked in at a heavy-set, five-feet and seven-inches.

       “Dang, he’s one tough looking dude,” Sonny mumbled to himself upon seeing the busy superintendent leave his basement apartment. “He could’ve been a superhero, right Juanito?”

       Juanito nodded. “Yeah. Superhero. This must be his day job!”

       “Right on,” Sonny replied, giggling to himself. Even in his work clothes, Sonny gathered, the super gave off nothing but bad vibes. “He’s no Clark Kent.”

       “You got that right,” Juanito chimed in. “That guy Kent was mild-mannered, and he worked for a newspaper.”

       “Hah, yeah. But this guy… Man, I don’t think he can even write! What a joke!”           

       To both of the brothers, the dark-complexioned superintendent resembled a surly, no-nonsense, sour-tempered tough who took no crap from anybody and lacked a relatable sense of humor. Sonny pictured the super Benjamin as the incarnation of a Western villain, or maybe a Mexican bandit, the kind who sports a big black hat with thin black mustache, riding into town looking for trouble.

       “You know who he reminds of?” Sonny said to his brother. “He’s like that fake Mexican bad guy played by Humphrey Bogart, you remember the guy… Uh, Morell, I think his name was. In that movie with Errol Flynn…”

       “Yeah, Virginia City,” Juanito quickly answered.

       “That’s it! Virginia City! Hah!”

       Not one of Bogart’s better screen assumptions, Morell was a mix of half-breeds. Half Mexican, half American, part mangy mongrel, all phony baloney. And with a fake Mexican accent and that little black mustache to top it off, not to mention old Bogie’s growling, rabid-dog vocal mannerisms. An uproariously and obviously false movie portrayal, completely over-the-top and patently stereotypical.

       “You think he’s Mexican?” Juanito asked, turning to Sonny.

       “Who, Bogart?”

       “No, the super.”

       “Nah, he’s Puerto Rican. Like us. Papi told me so.”

       “When did he tell you that? I don’t remember.”

       “It was a while ago, when he first came here.”

       “Who, Papi?”

       “No, man, the super! Benjamin, not Papi. You deaf or what? Wake up!” Sonny was getting irritated with his brother. The two of them had a difference of opinion as to where the superintendent Benjamin had come from. Juanito was sure that his looks and stature were more in line with a Mexican wetback than with your average Puerto Rican-type. But Sonny knew better, which is why he had asked Papi, who had some intimacy with the man, for clarification.

Humphrey Bogart as the bandit Morell in ‘Virginia City’ (Warner Bros., 1940)

The super had a son, Benjamin Cardona Junior, the firstborn of his father’s three children, the other two being a cute little girl and a tiny baby brother. Everyone knew the oldest as Benny. His mother always referred to him as “Junior,” which made Benny wince.

   Benny was a real spoiled brat of a child, a tarnished chip off the old Puerto Rican block. A snotty, know-it-all, “I’m better than you are” type of fellow, roughly cousins Lucas and Linus’s age, which would have made him two or three years older than either Sonny or Juanito. And Benny knew he was a snot rag, too. He carried this chip on his right shoulder, for all the world to see. A twenty-four/seven, pain-in-the-rear-end kind of punkish bully who thought nothing of accosting anyone his age or younger and mercilessly pummeling them for the sheer sake of pummeling. He made any kid’s life pure hell on the block, which was why Benjamin Cardona Junior got into more street brawls and fistfights than any other similarly aged juvenile in their South Bronx neighborhood.

       You learned quickly that if you didn’t get in the first blow – and make it count! – Benny would go at you with tooth and nail and anything else that was convenient or at his disposal. The mystery behind Benny’s perpetual sour mood was never resolved. It seemed odd, too, that such a good-looking young teenaged boy, as Benny appeared to be – with the same jet-black hair as his father, but much softer facial features, including a cleft chin and hazel-colored eyes that he obviously got from his highly attractive mother – would behave in such a perversely pugnacious manner. What was he afraid of?

“Bronx Boys,” or street toughs (ca. 1960s) (Photo by Stephen Shames / LensCulture)

       That’s what bullies often are, Sonny learned from his Papi. “It’s the fear, mijo,” Papi would try hard to explain to him. “You see, they always afraid o’ somethin’.”

       “What are they afraid of, Papi? What? They’re bigger and they’re stronger than me, and they’re tougher, too. Who’s gonna challenge them about anything?”

       “Is not like that. That have a big fear, they afraid of losing the battle.”

       “I don’t understand,” Sonny questioned, puzzled by Papi’s terse response.

       “They fear they gonna lose their status as tough guys. If they go soft, for any reason, they think they lose the respect of everybody. So they always gotta be on the edge, you know? Always lookin’ to beat somebody up, to prove they are macho or whatever.”

       “But you’re not like that, Papi. Why are they like that?”

       Papi looked at his son and displayed a knowing half-smile as he answered him. “You young yet. And you smarter than that Benny. Much smarter. You don’ need to be ‘fraid o’ nothin’, you are your own person. You know who you are. You understan’?”

       Sonny listened to Papi’s explanation and, after thinking about what he had said, realized that Benny was at a disadvantage when it came to facing up to or playing with the neighborhood kids. By virtue of his position as the superintendent’s son, in his mind Benny felt responsible for holding up his end as someone who could not be taken for a pushover. Which put him always on the edge. And because that was the case, el joven Benny had no choice but to be constantly on the lookout, to be belligerent and bellicose when he thought it served his purpose.

       What a poor state to be in, Sonny felt with a tiny modicum of understanding. A young man, with enviable “matinee idol” good looks, had been forced to duke it out with the neighborhood toughs, just to prove to his old man that he could take care of himself – when that was uncalled for, except in the super’s kid’s mind. Once Benny Junior gave you that smoldering “evil eye” look, that “I’m gonna kick your freaking ass” stare, your hide was his, or so he thought. Because of his attitude about everything and everyone, Sonny and Juanito, along with the other neighborhood kids, avoided Benny at all costs. He would continue to spell trouble for them as long as his father was the superintendent. And that had to change.

(To be continued)

Copyright © 2024 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Nine): Midtown

Midtown Manhattan — View of the Murray Hill Section

Manhattan. Forty-Second Street. The Big Manzana. The Big Red Apple. Sonny never thought it would be possible to live in Midtown, where every “young and upwardly mobile” New Yorker had dreamed of residing.

       To be precise, the Delacruz family moved to 222 East 36 Street, right in the heart of the Murray Hill section of the city. Ritzy, high-rise apartments, where the filthy rich folks stayed, where the millionaires owned luxury condominiums and coops. It was near to everything that Sonny had loved: Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, Times Square movie theaters, the Broadway theater district. Madison Avenue and the advertising industry. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Central Park, the New York Public Library. Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the United Nations General Assembly Building… The Big Red Apple shone brightly before him.

       Sonny’s mind reeled at his good fortune; at being surrounded by such incredible sites, all those brick and mortar monuments to big-city life. They were what he had always wanted, what he had dreamed about, what he had thought about during his waking hours.

       But Papi wasn’t as impressed by their good fortune as Sonny had been. For the last sixteen years, Papi had worked as a lowly doorman in that same 222 East 36 Street complex, a combination business and residential area. The Delacruz family lived there rent free, in a newly refurbished “apartment” situated in the bowels of that same building.

       Take the elevator to the ground floor (below ground, one should add). Head to the right and past the back of the boiler room; take a sharp left and walk down a dimly lit hallway to their apartment. To its right was a doorway that led directly, and to the right of, a largely empty holding area. This largely empty area was used, primarily, as a repository for old newspapers, magazines and metal trash cans. The janitorial staff would haul in the metal trash cans (clang, clang, clang) from the ten floors of the complex, down the service elevator and through the same winding passageway. The janitors pushed their handcars – with the clanging trash cans, of course – to the back of the holding area. Early in the morning (long before 6:00 AM Eastern Standard Time), the men would haul the trash out of the storage area and onto the sidewalk for the New York City Sanitation crews to pick up and empty out. Once the crews were done with them, the janitors would return the trash cans to their respective floors, a mindlessly drab daily routine that required brute strength and strong arms and backs.

       In the early days, Papi had served as the building’s night porter. This was before it became a union shop. Believe it or not, Papi was the guy charged with sweeping the staircases and mopping up the floors – nightly and on the weekends. Oh, man! The horrors he must have seen. Those monstrous rats at night, as big as small dogs; the swarms of cockroaches, hundreds upon hundreds of them, filing out of the sewers near the street openings. Even bats. Wow! Sonny took this last revelation with thick grains of monosodium glutamate, Papi’s favorite flavor enhancer.

       “Bats? You’ve seen bats, in New York City? No freaking way!”

       Besides the wild animal kingdom, Papi had witnessed muggings and robberies on a fairly regular basis. For what it was worth, Papi had managed to prevent a number of such illicit attempts to deprive helpless citizens of their personal belongings. Because he was quick to react, with lightning fast reflexes and a fearless, confrontational, devil-may-care attitude, the people he assisted were always grateful for his interference.

       “If it hadn’t been for you, I would have lost a hundred dollars,” one desperate lady had told him. She gave Papi twenty bucks for his efforts. Papi thanked her, but wanted to give the money back.

       “Dis your money, lady. Joo can kip it.” When she insisted and thrust the twenty dollar bill into his hands, Papi tried to return it.

       “Keep it, you deserve it.” And she rushed off down the street, leaving a startled Papi holding the bill in his hand.

Why did they move there, to Midtown Manhattan? What were they running away from? Better to ask how this all came about. It wasn’t because Papi had hit the jackpot. Far from it. He bet heavily on the numbers, all right, as any self-respecting macho Latino would do, and he played the New York Lottery too. One time Papi won over three hundred dollars, a sign of impending good fortune. But to say he was financially “well off” was stretching the truth — probably about as far as the truth could be stretched, under the circumstances. He wasn’t a George Jefferson-type character either, that comical, well-to-do black American who struck it rich with a string of successful laundry shops. No “Dee-luxe apartment in the sky” for the Delacruz family. None at all. Papi was a hardworking working stiff. Worked his damn butt off, he did. From sun-up to sundown. And that was no exaggeration.

Doorman at night — Midtown Manhattan, 34th Street in the Murray Hill Section

       He had lucked into his doorman job by walking into the building on a whim. Just like that. Can you imagine? He sure had guts. But there was more to it. Papi had heard, from friends who worked nearby, that a guy had been fired for drinking on the job. Papi drank, too, but never while on duty. He quit liquor altogether once he had his first heart attack. The first of several such attacks. But that was years from now.

       One day, Papi decided to stop over at 222 East 36 Street and, for the heck of it, asked to speak to the superintendent. The doorman on duty went inside a little booth, rang a wall phone, and told the individual in charge to come up to the lobby. Papi waited patiently for the super who, when he finally stepped out of the service elevator, turned out to be a tall wire-thin black gentleman who looked about fifty or so. He greeted Papi warily and escorted him to the service elevator and down to the basement.

       Stepping off the service elevator, the super, whose name was Harry Warren, showed Papi his office. The two of them sat and proceeded to chat for a bit, making small talk. Harry liked Papi from the start, thought he was a “straight-shooter.” Lucky for him, Papi wasn’t the type to pack a gun. But Papi did speak his mind.

       “We need a night porter,” Harry let on, “someone to keep an eye on the place while the rich folks are asleep. That means you got to come in ‘round ten or eleven at night and stay till, oh, maybe five or six the next morning. That sound alright to you?”

       “Is fine,” Papi nodded. “I like.” 

       The two shook hands and that was that. No more talk, no more interviews. Just action, swift and thorough. The starting salary was ninety-five dollars a week, with two weeks’ paid vacation after the first year, working Tuesday to Saturday, with Sundays and Mondays off. Two regular holidays: Christmas and New Year’s. The rest of the time it was work, work, and more work. That would be Papi’s routine for the next sixteen-and-a-half years. After a full year as the night porter, Papi applied for and got the lead doorman’s job. When he heard that the old doorman, Robert, had retired, Papi jumped at the chance of working the day shift. It would free him up from having to leave the apartment in the dead of night, and from coming home at the crack of dawn. He could sleep better, too. Like a normal human being. Yeah, normal. Whatever that meant.

       Mr. Rosenfeld, the landlord, kept a spiffy penthouse apartment in the same building. He spoke to Papi personally about the job. Jacob Rosenfeld was an old Jewish landlord from way back. A born and bred New Yorker, Rosenfeld’s family had emigrated from Russia during the early twentieth-century pogroms. At first, they lived in Brooklyn, near the Crown Heights section. Rosenfeld’s father, a butcher by trade, had an older brother who was into the real estate business. The brother gave Rosenfeld a shot at making something of himself. Mr. Rosenfeld took the offer and wound up a very rich man, richer than Papi’s family ever would be.

       Rosenfeld used his money to purchase 222 East 36 Street, then set up a dummy corporation and raked in the rent from his tenants. His idea was that a combination residential and commercial building would suit his purposes nicely: rich old-timers like himself could live the good life in a spacious, multi-room abode, with maid and doorman service at their daily beck and call; if one or more of the tenants aspired to business interests, Jacob Rosenfeld would entice them to turn their spacious, multi-room apartments into commercial establishments. This paid off handsomely for Mr. Rosenfeld, who collected double the rent from every potential business endeavor he could swing on his own.

       “What do say, Delacruz?” Rosenfeld asked Papi. “You interested in the job?”

       “Yes, Mr. Rosenfeld,” Papi replied. “I very interested. I do the day job, no problem.”

       “Good! Sign here, and we have a deal.”

       Papi was quick to sign the work contract. He liked Rosenfeld, thought he was a gentleman of his word. No putting on airs, no puffing out his chest, no beating around the bush; just a regular working stiff, if nicer dressed than your average Jewish landlord. After all, this was Manhattan. Crown Heights was one thing, but the heart of the Big Apple Midtown was something entirely different.

       Jacob Rosenfeld showed Papi the ropes. To say the least, Rosenfeld knew a lot more about the property’s inner workings than either superintendent Harry Warren or the veteran doormen, one of whom was an old fossil named Fred Whitaker. Papi made it his business to get to know the tenants by their names, both the renters and the business owners. In turn, the tenants took to Papi’s easygoing, servile demeanor to heart. And he was unfailingly courteous to them, no matter how harshly he was treated — and some of the residents were extremely harsh. Some of them tried but failed to get under Papi’s skin. Soon, they too fell under his cheery spell, if not exactly in love, with the way Papi maneuvered them into his good graces. Papi always reacted kindly toward them. He was deferential when he needed to be, servile when it was in his best interests, but firm when the situation called for it.

       Little did any of them realize that Papi had been putting on an act. Of course, Papi was satisfied to be working at a permanent, full-time day job, with benefits, paid sick leave, vacation, and time off (all this took place AFTER Papi had engineered a maneuver to put the building’s working stiffs under the auspices of Local 32B of the International Building Service Employees Union). Papi would brag aloud to his family and friends, and to Sonny especially, about how he got to know Mr. Arthur Hackham, the president of the union, when Hackham was but a lowly, streetwise ombudsman. It was Papi, he crowed, who helped Mr. Hackham place the building under a union contract. Mr. Rosenfeld, a wise-old conservative businessman at heart, wasn’t bowled over by the deal, but understood that he needed to conform to the modern way of doing business in order to stay solvent.

       Papi was pleased with the outcome. For him, it meant more time to spend with family, what with twice the vacation time allotted to each employee (now four weeks in all, instead of two). He also received a decent pay raise (to $125 a week, plus tips, and Christmas bonuses), and time-and-a half for overtime — double that on Sundays! The downside consisted of his having to work his old Tuesday to Saturday day shift. Papi still had to work those holidays, but at a higher hourly rate. Not bad for a simple New York City doorman. And those Christmas bonuses meant that Papi could afford to buy new and more elaborate gifts for Mami and the boys. That was what Sonny had in mind. But it remained an unrealized dream. “Could” became the key word.  

Christmas in New York (Midtown Manhattan) circa the 1970s

       Keeping track of all those bonuses was Harry’s favorite task — that is, when he wasn’t imbibing a snootful or two of Jack Daniels, especially around the holidays. Any holiday, to be precise. One time, Papi raked in almost a thousand dollars, a fortune that helped pay for his trips to Puerto Rico. “To visit the relatives,” he would insist. That was his excuse. Papi’s real motive, however, was to pick up where he had left off the year before: by going out to San Juan’s dance halls and charanga his way onto the floor; with who knows what floozy-minded, big-butted bimbo brain, according to Mami.

       But that was Papi. Always looking for a quick getaway (as if the family hadn’t known). It was best not to dwell on this sensitive subject, Sonny had to remind himself. After all, Papi had always paid the bills and the rent. He didn’t owe any money to anybody, well, none that we knew of. No gambling debts either, amazingly enough. No overdue electric bills and no telephone bills. Well, to be accurate, no telephone, period. Not until the family moved to Midtown. But the phone was free; it came with Papi’s newfound position as the assistant superintendent. That was one of the main reasons for the move. Not only to flee the myriad horrors of public housing projects and the stifling, nonproductive atmosphere, but to start a new life in thriving midtown Manhattan. In that, Papi was insistent. Overly so! He was turning over a new leaf, as he liked to phrase it.

       “I’m a man who keeps his word,” Papi boasted proudly, mostly to himself. “I take care of my family, I do.” And so he did. He also did not like to promise anything to anyone. But when Papi got around to making a promise, you could bet your life he would come through with it.

       Except when he didn’t.             

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy — A Novel (Chapter Eight): Crosses to Bear

Bronx River Houses circa the 1970s

Terms and how they are used mean something to most people. But the term “post-traumatic stress disorder,” or PTSD, did not exist when Sonny was a boy. He was barely seventeen when he concluded high school. With final exams over, Sonny enjoyed counting down the days until summer vacation would begin.

       “One more week to go, thank God,” he said to his brother Juanito. College courses were on the horizon, but before that the search for a summer job. These challenges were nothing compared to what his family would go through.

       At this point, the brothers were into watching TV or reading the newspaper, a typical nightly routine. Papi had come home early from work that day and was taking a shower. There was no CNN at the time, no MSNBC and no FOX News, either. There were television broadcasters, some good ones, in fact – mostly male dominated ones and hardnosed, hard news reporters. The same with the cops. Tough, uncompromising, serious, and, in many cases, corrupt. Not all, but many.

       That weeknight, Sonny woke up again with a start. This was becoming a regular routine around their apartment, a pattern that Sonny determined he had no means of controlling.

       “Oh, no! Here we go again.”

       It was after midnight, incredibly hot and humid. Incredibly as well that housing project windows did not support the installation of an air conditioner. Hard to imagine living through one of those blistering New York summer heat waves without one. There was nothing more powerful than a living room fan, turned up to “high,” that might relieve the stifling heat and humidity. Or people’s hair-trigger tempers.

       Papi was yelling out the window again.

       “Hey, what you doing there?”

       Who was he yelling at now, and that ungodly hour?

       The noise above Papi’s head had roused him from his sleep. In true Third Law of Motion-fashion, Papi’s yelling had roused Sonny from his sleep. The next thing Sonny knew, he heard someone running from the rooftop and slamming the door to the fourteenth floor entrance-way where they lived. Furious footsteps followed that led down to the corridor, with another door slamming shut with a thwack. The echo reverberated in their ears.

       “I must have dreamed that,” Sonny said aloud, shaking his head to himself. But all turned quiet after that brief outburst. Again, a typical late-night occurrence. Nothing overly unusual about it. He ignored the noise and went back to sleep.

       Later the next morning, after breakfast, Sonny and Juanito were getting ready to leave for school.

       “Three more days to go,” Sonny told Mami. As Mami opened the door and kissed them goodbye, Sonny looked down at the floor. It wasn’t what you would call a habit, just the normal body motion of your normal, everyday teenager. But today it was different. Sonny noticed a trail of what looked like dried blood, leading from the corridor and onto the stairwell. Walking slowly down the corridor, Sonny peered into the stairwell. Not out of fear. Just your average, normal, everyday curiosity.  He saw that the blood trail went directly up the steps to the roof.

       Sonny and the family lived on the fourteenth floor, the last stop on the housing projects express. The door to the roof was never locked. Heck, it should have been. For safety’s sake, one would think. Why, any idiot could go up there, if they chose to, whether they lived in Sonny’s building or not. It was frightening how little security they had. Nobody cared, really. Not the housing workers, not the local police, not anybody. Even if there were some kind of lock, somebody would find a way to pick it and gain access to the rooftop. A discomforting thought. Sonny swallowed hard to keep his throat from drying up.

       The brothers walked down the hall. They rang the button for the elevator. “Please let this damn thing come up fast,” Sonny thought to himself. As they waited, Juanito went up to the doorway entrance. He stared at the trail of blood but said nothing. Sonny shivered as the elevator finally arrived. They went in and pressed the ground floor button. Neither brother looked at the other, nor did they mention what they had seen. They tried to forget about the blood on the floor. It was easy to forget stuff like that, especially when you were young. As you get older, though, things tend to get stuck in your mind. That’s life in the projects.

       The rest of the day was uneventful. High school was drawing to a close. Neither brother was planning to attend their high school’s prom. Neither one had dates, nor were they dating anyone in particular at the time. They were too busy preparing for what would be their last free summer in a long, long time. The college life beckoned and the constant study and testing were already looming before them. No time for frivolous pursuits like dating. Not yet, anyway.

       Sonny wanted to get away from all the fuss, to relax, to enjoy what spare time had been allotted to him before settling into that stressful, daily college routine.

       And the blood on the floor? What was that all about? Did it have anything to do with the noise Papi heard the other night? All the yelling and shouting? And the footsteps overhead? Sonny tried to forget about all that. Heck, it was easy to do. At that time, anyway.

The day after they came home from school, Sonny and Juanito were in the living room watching television. Back to their usual routine, they thought. Mami was preparing dinner, as usual. Papi was in the bathroom, taking his nightly shower – as usual. It was seven o’clock at night, the sky was still bright. Another warm, warm day, not nearly so humid as in previous days but hot enough to fry your head.

       While sitting on the “couch,” which happened to be your average Danish modern lawn version of a beat-up, foam-layered sofa, Sonny heard a commotion outside their door. The rustling of feet and some loud grumbling.

       In the next instant, it sounded as if someone had brushed up against their door. Brushed up? It was as if they were trying to force the door open. Whoa, that’s not good. Thud! Another thud! The bumping noise continued. Thud, thud, thud! What a racket!

       “What the hell is that?” Sonny shouted to himself. He got up and peered through the peephole. All he saw were two huge figures blocking his view. One of the figure’s frames filled Sonny’s viewing area. “Get the fuck away from the door!” Sonny shouted through the peephole. Not the smartest thing to say when you have no idea what’s causing so much noise. But it was all Sonny could do from panicking. He leaned into the door with his shoulder. “Get away,” he repeated to nobody in particular. “Get away!” But his shouting did not frighten the intruder in the least. Instead, the huge figure started pounding on their door. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Another sound to add to the percussive thuds.

       “Go get dad,” Sonny shouted to his brother, who scurried off to the bathroom. Sonny was scared. He did not scare easily, but this time it was different. He was worried. This had never happened before, where someone tried to break into their apartment at the dinner hour. Certainly not in broad summer daylight.

       In a flash, Papi appeared in his jockey shorts and T-shirt. He was still wet from his interrupted shower. And in a foul mood.  

       “What’s goin’ on?” Papi roared, startled by the pounding.

       “There’s someone trying to get in,” Sonny replied, trying to stay calm.

       Thump, thump, thump.  

       “Open the door.” Thump, thump, thump. “Police,” came the response from outside the hallway.

       “Police? Holy shit!” Sonny whispered aloud. All he did was curse at the guy. He wasn’t going to get arrested for that, now, was he? A million bad thoughts quickly raced through Sonny’s head, none of them adding up to anything that would answer what all the shouting and thumping were about.

       “What you do?” Papi demanded, looking straight at Sonny.

       “Nothing, Papi. Nothing. We were just watching TV.”

       Papi gave Sonny a stern “no confidence” look before turning the door’s lock open. In a matter of seconds, two enormous detectives, both wearing stylish gray outfits, white shirts, and narrow ties (in summer?), walked in.

       “Good evening,” said one of the detectives. Papi stared at the mammoth-sized detective and nodded politely. “May we come in?” Their seeming calm and studied reaction to all the banging and thumping unnerved Sonny. But Papi was nonplussed. Apparently, he had been through something similar in the past. “His past maybe,” thought Sonny to himself. “Not mine!”

Park in the South Bronx Housing Projects circa 1970s

       “There’s been a murder in your building,” the other detective said nonplussed. Papi instructed the detectives to sit in the living room. One detective sat on the stool where their untuned baby grand piano stood, while the other detective huddled near the doorway.    

       Sonny tried to lay low in the kitchen, unsure of where to hide or what to do. He remained in the half-space between the entranceway and the living room, waiting for the bad news to hit His fear was that he was going to be arrested for cursing at the gigantic police officer or for obstructing the investigation of a crime.

      “What the hell are these guys doing here?” Sonny repeated under his breath, to no one in particular. “I didn’t do anything. Juanito didn’t do anything. And, as far as I know, Papi didn’t do anything, either.” He waited in the kitchen while the two detectives settled into their routine. Sonny tried not to worry himself sick, but he couldn’t help it. The guilt feelings took over, just when they were least needed.

       “I’m Detective Phillips, this is Detective Stevens. We have some questions we’d like to ask you folks.” Deadpan. Matter of fact. That’s how detectives spoke. Just like they did on Hawaii Five-O and countless other police shows, the detectives paused for effect as they took out their notepads.

       “Did any of you hear anything unusual last night, any kind of noise or disturbance or other?”

       “Last night?” repeated Papi to himself. “Yeah, I heard a lotta noise, you know, above my head, over the bedroom.”

       “Can you describe the noise?” Detective Stevens inquired.

       “It was like somethin’ large was movin’ up there, you know? On the roof. Like somebody puttin’ somethin’ heavy away an’ makin’ a lot of noise wid it, you know? Like bangin’ or movin’ aroun’.”

       As Papi described what he had heard, Detective Stevens started scribbling feverishly in his notepad, taking Papi’s words down in some kind of inelegant shorthand. Papi stared at the detective’s notepad. He didn’t like the fact that every one of his words was being transcribed for future reference. At the same time, Detective Phillips pulled out a billfold (as large as the police official’s giant hand) and showed Papi a photograph. A Polaroid-type snapshot, so it appeared to Sonny.

       “Do any of you know this girl?”

       Girl? What girl? Sonny was baffled. He hadn’t seen any girl around their floor. Not that he recalled. The detective first showed Papi the photo. Papi glanced at it brusquely and handed it back to the detective. The detective then gave it to Sonny. It was a Polaroid snapshot, alright, of a young black girl, about eighteen or nineteen years of age, possibly younger. Slim build, short hair. Her face was smashed in and her nose and lips were cut and bloodied. Her eyes shut, bloodied and drooping, her mouth agape with dried blood along one side. Who could have done such a thing?

       More questions were asked, more mumbled responses were given. After much hesitation, Sonny decided to speak up. Raising his hand as if he were back in his high school classroom, Sonny cleared his throat with effort. Time to fess up. Although he had nothing to fess up about. Ah, well, what the hell.

       “Um, I remember seeing this girl,” Sonny volunteered at last. “I, uh, I thought he was a boy. He, I mean she, used to sit by our door while talking to the neighbor across the way.”

       “You mean, outside your door?” Detective Phillips repeated.

       “Yes, I mean, yes, sir. Right outside this door.”

       “Can you show us, please?” Detective Stevens piped in. “Where exactly?”

       Brushing past the gigantic detective, Sonny went to the door and opened it. There were several plainclothes policemen in the hallway, still investigating and lurking about the hallway, asking everyone on the floor if they had seen or heard anything.

       “There, that’s where she sat,” pointing to the spot on the floor adjacent to their doorway. Detective Stevens stepped out into the hallway, looked up and down and both ways, scribbled some notes in his writing pad, then stepped back inside their apartment. Papi offered the detectives additional information.

       “Yeah, I heard somebody runnin’ from the roof over to the hallway.” Sonny also confirmed this, adding, “I heard it too, we all heard it, the footsteps, you know, and then the door slamming shut.”

       “The door? Which door?” Detective Stevens asked, showing interest for once. His deadpan delivery finally gave way to intensity.

       “Maybe the… the next door neighbor’s door, I think, you know, the lady who lives in front of us,” Sonny responded, nervously.

       The two detectives looked blankly at one another. Separately and together, they peered at Sonny and his dad, then scribbled additional notes in their pads. What the two detectives said next made Sonny’s blood turn cold.

       “We found a refrigerator on the roof,” Detective Phillips remarked, then cleared his throat. “The girl’s body had been stuffed inside. We believe, that is we speculate, that the girl was killed in the apartment, and later the perpetrator dragged her body up to the roof.” That would explain the trail of blood. What Detective Phillips described next made absolutely no sense to either Papi or to Sonny. “From all appearances, we believe the, um, perpetrator took the refrigerator from this apartment,” pointing to the one across from theirs, “up to the roof and put the body inside it. He thought that by doing this he could hide her body there so nobody would find it.”

       Their conversation stayed at a matter-of-fact level. Their voices never rose above a normal conversational tone. To Sonny’s eyes, the two detectives did not look or sound anything like the Sergeant Joe Friday-type on the TV series Dragnet. “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” Nope, no resemblance. The two detectives had longish hair, but neatly coiffed and trimmed. They were formal and polite – more so than one would expect, considering how rude Sonny had been to them. Of course, Sonny had no idea who the men were or what the hell was going on. Anytime anybody bangs loudly and repeatedly on your door, especially in the Projects – and at the dinner hour – was not a good time. A telltale sign that “something was not right.”

       The detectives divulged some more facts, none of which added up or made any sense. Not to Sonny, anyway. The boy Sonny and Juanito had seen, practically every day, week after week, month after month, turned out to be no boy at all but a girl. A young black girl. This surprised them. Sonny and Juanito would catch this person talking to an older lady across from their door, exactly as Sonny had explained. Never in the brothers’ minds could they have imagined this “boy” turned girl, as she was now being described, would become the victim of a brutal homicide. Hell, they didn’t even know she was a girl to begin with.

       Detective Phillips pulled out another snapshot. It might have been from a mugshot or a blowup from a police lineup of some sort, a full front and profile of a young black man, about Sonny’s age, maybe nineteen or twenty, maybe younger. Short Afro haircut, T-shirt, medium-dark skin, stubbles of hair on his lip and chin. The detective passed the photo around to the family. Papi looked at it and shook his head. Sonny saw it too, but drew a blank. So many young black guys in the neighborhood, some of them involved with gangs or drugs. Crack cocaine had started to become popular, at least that’s what Sonny had heard from his pals. Most were working stiffs, or had moms and dads who worked all day, as Papi and Mami did, leaving their sons and daughters basically to fend for themselves during their absence. 

       After they had finished writing up their notes, both Detectives Phillips and Stevens nodded politely and thanked Papi for his help.

       “We’ll be in touch with you if we have any more questions,” Detective Stevens added. “Let us know if you hear of anything else that might help. Goodnight.”

       Papi closed the door behind them and paused for a minute or two to listen to what the policemen and detectives were saying to each other. He placed his ear against the door, listening to who-knows-what was going on. Sonny took advantage of the moment to chime in his thoughts.   

       “We need to move, Papi” Sonny whispered to him. “We need to move. Now, this minute.”

       Papi stared vacantly at his son. “I’m gonna take my shower,” he fired back. “Is late.” He had had it for the night.

       It took a couple of more weeks for the blood stains to begin to fade from the fourteenth-floor hallway floor. The major reason being there wasn’t much foot traffic in either direction, which complicated matters for Papi, Mami, and the boys. They had to stare at the dried blood stains for weeks on end. A month later, the stains were nearly gone – nearly, yet not completely. Sonny could still make out a thin, dim trail of blood, leading from the next-door neighbor’s door all the way down to the hall, past the elevator, and up the narrow staircase to the roof.

A month later, the Delacruz family was on its way to midtown Manhattan. They were leaving the Bronx River Housing Projects for good, after eight years. Eight harrowing years of struggle, headaches, noise, loud music, hip-hop, other Latinos, drugs, crime, assaults. It was hard for Sonny to believe their good fortune. Still, he felt no need to pinch himself.

       “That’s for sissies and faggots,” Sonny thought to himself. And he was neither. The day they left the Housing Projects for good, Sonny refused to look back over his shoulder. Mami was teary-eyed, of course, letting sentiment and nostalgia get in the way of bitter reality. Papi remained stoic, as was his nature. Juanito had been quiet too, his usual demeanor when they went for long drives.

       But Sonny was nonplussed, numbed and mystified by what happened in the years the family had spent at the Bronx Rover Houses. He knew his brother was in a kind of a state of shock. Or maybe denial, whichever feelings best fit the occasion. As for Sonny,  he didn’t care where they were going. He didn’t care how long it would take for the family to get there. Hell, for all he knew it could have been to the Adirondacks and back — anywhere, anyplace, as long as it wasn’t the Bronx River Housing Projects. Sonny had had his fill of that awful place.

       Just then, his eyes widened. His heart starting racing. His pulse rose and quickened. Beads of sweat started to form on his forehead. Suddenly, Sonny remembered something. Something he had overlooked.

       “Oh, shit!” Sonny muttered aloud. “It’s him!”

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy – A Novel (Part Seven): Temper, Temper

Photo of Fordham Road at Grand Concourse, in the Bronx

“What in Hell was that?”

       Something banged on the ceiling above. The noise woke Sonny up. He thought, “Who’s the nut job banging on our ceiling at this hour?” It was 1:30 in the morning, a good four or more hours before the sun would show its shining face. What the hell was happening?

       Papi was at it again. This time, he was poking a broom up at the dining room ceiling, handle first. As he did this, little holes started to appear where the point of the broom had been. It was if the ceiling had come down with a bad case of acne, leaving pockmarks from one side to the other. Why the hell was he doing that, and at that ungodly hour? Sonny heard Papi yelling at somebody.

       “Stop that noise! Stop that, you bitch!”

       “What are you yelling about?” Sonny shouted from his bedroom.

       “It’s the bitch upstairs! She got her kids playing bowling! Over my head! Mierda!”

       Startled awake by the banging noise and by Papi’s nonsensical explanation, Sonny paused to listen. He heard nothing, not a sound. Not even a bellow. But Papi had sonar for ears. He could hear a fly buzz past the dining room table from twelve feet away.

       In minutes, the ceiling was full of little holes. Sonny counted ten holes at a minimum, possibly more. Enough to house a swarm of swallows, no doubt. Without warning, Papi sprang into action. He grabbed the rotary phone from the wall and started dialing. What the heck?

       “Hello? Hello? Dis da police? Lemme talk to da desk sergeant… Dat’s you? Yeah, so, dis is Mr. Delacruz, on East 183 Street. I da block watcher. Yeah. There’s a crazy freaking bitch upstairs, she got her kids playing bowling over my head. You gotta get somebody over here now, an’ make her stop.”

       “Sorry, pal,” came the bored voice on the other line, “we got our hands full with a couple of murders at the moment. No can do.”

       This abrupt change in tone did not sit well with Papi.

       “Oh, yeah? You better get here quick, officer, ‘cause they’re gonna be couple more murders if you guys don’t come over!”

       “What’s the address?”

       “2320 East 183 Street, near the Grand Concourse.”

       Papi fell silent. Then, as abruptly as he dialed the police station’s number, he slammed the phone on the receiver with all his might. THWAP went the receiver. “Fucking cops! They here when you don’ need ‘em, an’ they not here when you need ‘em.”

       “Papi, what the hell happened?” Sonny asked. “Why’d you hang up?”

       “I didn’ hang up! The cop on the line, he hang up!”

       “Huh? How come?” Sonny added.

       “Who the hell knows? He didn’ want to come over. Said they got too many murders on their hands.”

       “Yeah, I heard you…”

       “Yeah, well, the fucker say they too busy, they’d get there when they can. Our tough luck!”

       “Did he say that? It’s our tough luck?”

       “No, I say that. What are you, a lawyer or something?”

       “You woke up the whole damn building, Papi. You expect people to be quiet? They’re gonna bust your chops for this.”

       “Nobody gonna bust nobody’s chops ‘cept me!”

       This line of dialogue went nowhere. Sonny shut the door to his room and went back to sleep. Or he tried to, anyway. The next day, Papi went to the super’s apartment and complained like hell about the upstairs neighbor’s night maneuvers with her little “bastard kids.” Complaining did little good. The super, a sullen Puerto Rican gent, had heard it all before.

       “As long as they pay the rent, we can’t do nothin’,” Mr. Super said. This business went on for a few more nights, until Papi got fed up enough to rollover with an extra pillow over his head. Night maneuvers can drive people to do strange things.

       Coincidentally, about a month later, one of those makeshift landlord-tenant meetings was being held in the lobby, near the building’s entrance. The landlord, a tall, gray-haired, perfectly coiffed Jewish fellow in his early sixties (wearing a hearing aid and wire-framed reading glasses) listened to the neighbors’ beefs – and there were plenty of them.

       The organizer, Mrs. Steinman, a kindly well-spoken woman of about middle age, talked politely and softly for the tenants. She was part of a tenants’ committee (Sonny had no idea that one even existed) that had come together recently for the sole purpose of raising awareness and resolving troublesome issues that needed to be addressed. So far, things were going well. Everyone was nice and polite.

       But then, it was Papi’s turn. His presence gave Sonny butterflies in the pit of his stomach. Sonny was intimately aware of Papi’s hair-trigger temper, especially in these types of neighborhood surroundings. All Sonny could think of was a tired old phrase Mami was fond of repeating: “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” Oh, well, what the hell!  

       “Dang, what’s Papi got up his sleeve now?” Sonny wailed to himself. Nothing good, that’s what.

       Papi finally spoke up.

       “My son,” Papi said, clearing his throat. “He got somethin’ to say.” “Vamanos, Santiago.” A chill went down Sonny’s back. Papi did it again: he had pulled the old “switcheroo,” a move that blindsided his son before the entire assemblage. Papi told Sonny beforehand he needed his presence for “moral support,” that he was going to air his grievances along with giving them “a piece of my mind.” Whatever.

     That was typical of the old man: say one thing, do another.

(To be continued…)

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

‘I Will Face My Fear’ — The Mind-Killing Little Deaths of ‘Dune’ (Part Nine): There’s Treachery Afoot

Alia Atreides (played by Laura Burton, a non-professional at the time)

The Fulcrum, At Last

Alia, Paul’s underage sister, sits and stares at a tiny little mouse (this rodent is the literal “Muad’Dib” from whom Paul derived his Fremen name). After a few seconds, Alia looks out into the vast distance. We cut to Chani and Reverend Mother Jessica. Chani tends to her baby boy. There is a difference of opinion, it seems, between her and Jessica over how to raise Paul’s infant child – i.e., more time with the sietch or more time with mother-in-law Jessica. Hmm, to learn the Weirding Way perhaps?

Jessica speaks of her son Paul’s many attributes; his “availability,” as it were, to align himself with one of the other great houses. Chani knows what she means and deigns to do her part, when the time arrives.

We switch to House Corrino, where the duplicitous Minister Fenring shows Baron Harkonnen and smug nephew Feyd around, hinting that “talks” will soon be underway. During their walk, Feyd spots Princess Irulan on the balcony. Noticing the young Adonis, Irulan turns away. Feyd smiles but does not get the message (which is, “Keep the hell away from me, you brainless oaf”).

In the next instant, the Baron floats behind the Spacing Guild envoy, who has obviously conveyed Muad’Dib’s message to the emperor. With his royal highness is the minister and Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, who stare down at Baron Harkonnen’s floating form as he tries to “explain away” the reasons why the spice has not flowed.

Babbling on about “this Muad’Dib character,” old B.H. (more like B.S.) insists that the agitator is obviously some sort of religious fanatic out to gum up the works. “Have you stared into the eyes of a religious fanatic?” the angry emperor queries him. “Suicide and martyrdom are often the same thing.” Reverend Mother Mohiam and the Spacing Guild agent call for immediate action. To combat the rebels, the emperor plans to move his forces into position, which, he hopes, will lure this fanatic out of hiding. What do they say about the best laid plans of mice and men? We will find out soon enough.

Princess Irulan, with Minister Fenring (center) and the evil Baron Harkonnen (right)

The scene changes to Reverend Mother Jessica’s arrival at Paul’s sietch. She brings her grandson with her. Jessica worries that Paul will challenge Stilgar’s leadership over his own sietch. She also confesses to him that she has purposely used the Fremen’s legends to ensure their survival. Not surprised in the least by this rather late-in-the-game admission, Paul counters with his belief that he has answered destiny’s call. So, in a way, events have been shaped far in advance. At the same time, everything is going as planned, whether they were foreseen or not – a curious and, to be clear, ultimately dangerous path they both have been treading.

Turning matters on their head, Jessica admits to Paul that her initial purpose in life was to produce a daughter who could be wed to the Harkonnen heir. At the same time, this marriage would end the centuries old feud between their two houses. In addition, this daughter was destined to become the long awaited Kwisatz Haderach. After centuries of selective inbreeding, planning and executing, the so-called “best laid plans” of the Bene Gesserit have failed. Who is Paul, then? Where did he come from? How did he get into the picture? Is he really Jessica’s son? Is he a god? A messiah? A myth? The one who will lead them down that primrose path?

But the path can also be changed, can it not? Things need not be as they were once foretold. With that in mind, Jessica charges Paul with finding a way to keep Stilgar as their ally (the old “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” gambit), thus solidifying their hold on a trusted Fremen leader and, in a bold leap of faith, on the Fremen themselves.

After Paul has departed, Jessica suddenly finds herself in Gurney Halleck’s iron grip. He plans to kill her on the spot. His reasoning is to exact revenge for her betrayal of the assassinated Duke Leto. By a sheer stroke of luck, Paul interrupts the attack on his mother at the moment Gurney is about to cut Jessica’s throat. Remember, the Weirding Way is the way of speech, of turning one person against the other by the mere sound of one’s voice through the power of suggestion. This is why Gurney charges her with keeping her trap shut.

Thinking fast (which he must do in order to avoid a catastrophe), Paul maintains that it was Doctor Yueh who was the traitor, not his mother. Jessica confirms this. With that, Gurney is aghast and disgusted at his behavior. Imagine: a split second more and innocent blood would have been spilled. And Gurney would have met his end at Paul’s hand. Monstrous!

Besides, an even worse scenario has just taken shape: For all his powers of perception, Paul missed out on anticipating Gurney’s sneak attack on his mother. Why didn’t Paul see it coming? Perhaps his mind was clouded with other thoughts, namely those of revenge. The end result is that a broken Gurney Halleck falls to his knees in bitter remorse. In the director’s commentary, Harrison made note that P.H. Moriarty (Gurney) had recently lost a close friend, which lent his performance a bittersweet ring of truth.

Alone with Chani, Paul ruminates on his having missed Gurney’s attack. He asks that Chani take their only son to the Southern Sietch, far away from the danger they are facing, i.e., assassination attempts. Facing his worst fears, Paul goes out by himself to ride the giant sandworm. He travels swiftly to the Great Temple. While there, he communes with the planet Arrakis’ past, present and future.

Chani sits observing her husband Paul — or Muad’Dib as the Fremen know him

The winds hint that Paul has taken the Waters of Life, reserved strictly for the Bene Gesserit. Visions – dark, stormy visions at that – cloud his mind (hopefully, not his judgment). Pressing his temples with both hands and massaging his head, Paul finally sees the future that is about to unfold.

Otheym, one his followers, comes upon him. At the last, Otheym shouts out Paul’s sacred name: “Muad’Dib!” Paul topples over in a faint.

In a change of scene, Chani, now dressed as a high priestess, reappears. All the Fremen are gathered in prayer and chant. Both Jessica and Chani enter Paul’s bedchamber. They find him in a trance with eyes open. He has been this way for a week. Has his time come at last? Will he snap out of this coma, a coma that he himself has induced? And for what purpose? Even Reverend Mother Jessica is at a loss as to how to revive him. To cover her tracks, Jessica has let it be known that Paul is in a “sacred swoon.” Chani kisses Paul on the lips and immediately realizes that he has taken the Waters of Life.

After a long while, Paul finally revives. He thanks Chani for squeezing more water down his parched throat. For all her Weirding Way powers, Jessica had presumed that he was dead – another unexpected failure. Clasping both her hands into his, Paul shares his fateful vision with his mother. He sees the here and the now – “the future and the past” – all at once, all the same. Indeed, Paul is the long-awaited Kwisatz Haderach, the one who is many places at once. “I am the whirlwind,” he whispers calmly.

This last phrase may remind attentive viewers of General Allenby’s curt remark about the “gone native” Lawrence of Arabia: “He’s riding the whirlwind.” There are many similarities, no doubt, as both Sir David Lean’s film epic and Frank Herbert’s literary tome emerged, more or less, side by side or, at best, roughly simultaneously with one another, though apparently unrelated.

Jessica appears frightened by this situation. She voices her concerns about going where Paul has gone. She calls him by the sacred name, but Paul insists he is more than that. “I am the fulcrum, the giver and the taker.” He is the master of fate, the tool of fate. In a telling reversal, Jessica is now the one surrounded by lifeless bodies. The cries of the innocent, the dead and the dying, the children of Arrakis, appear to engulf and torment her. Placing her hands over her eyes, Jessica is unable to look death in the eye.

At that moment, Chani calls to her, saying the Reverend Mother has come out of her revelry. “I am fine,” Jessica states, while looking askance at her prostrate son. “Now you understand,” Paul intones. He lies back on his cot.

Saskia Reeves as the Reverend Mother Jessica

Director’s Commentary and More

Lady Jessica is now a Reverend Mother, a mother to her son, and a mother-in-law to his consort, the Fremen freedom fighter Chani. As well she is competitive with her daughter-in-law by default. Jessica has been placed in the position of supporting young Paul as the sole heir to House Atreides. Her hope, then, is that he will be reinstated with the title of Duke, to take his father’s rightful place.

For Chani, she too has a position of her own to maintain, her being the late Dr. Liet Kynes’ daughter. And, therefore, a person of high rank in the Fremen pecking order. Both parts, that of Jessica and Chani, have been perfectly cast as was mentioned earlier.

There is an art nouveau ambience attributed to Planet Kaitan (and, coincidentally enough, to Prague, Czech Republic as well, where the series was filmed), a wonderfully ornamented style for the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV’s gaudy palace.

Lady Jessica sees what Arrakis, and the spice, have done to her son. Hence, he is no longer a pouty teenaged boy but a full-grown adult who accepts the role that has been given to him, that is, the mantle of leadership. Director Harrison dismisses the clash of acting styles. For instance, Saskia Reeves, the more classically trained actor who prepares her lines in advance, knows where her character is going what and she will do. Advance preparation is her way of divulging character.

In comparison, Alec Newman is the more intuitive of the two. He’s the one who goes with his gut. He lives in the moment and depends more on spontaneity – very much in the Method mode of acting but modern in approach. Their clash of styles lent spark to their scenes, and made for excellent contrast in true mother-and-son fashion. It will remind viewers of the Gertrude and Hamlet dynamic from Shakespeare, both with competing interests and varying viewpoints.

“Herbert was writing about the relationship of the individual in a mass culture,” Harrison notes, “which is where our world is evolving. Individual cultures do not want to be absorbed… It’s about those who rage against the modern age, where one’s identity was closely linked to a tribe or an intellectual idea. We are creating a mass global culture. It’s unstoppable at this point.”

Director and writer John Harrison

Certainly, social media (with respect to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and their like) have been at the forefront of this cultural change which, in the time that Dune was staged, filmed and released (the year 2000), has perfectly captured the angst of that era and ours.

The trajectory, then, is from the following story sequence: First, there is exposition, followed by an inciting incident. Next, a rising action that reaches a midpoint. After the midpoint, we have a falling action, followed in turn by a crisis that will lead to a resolution.

In other words, the classic five-act-play approach that William Shakespeare made popular in his day. Or today’s two or three act structure, if your mind cannot grasp the five-act pattern. The rising action should but does not always segue into the falling action. It’s something to keep in mind when considering a work of such enormously epic and complex proportions as Herbert’s Dune world.

“The saga of Dune is far from over…”

(To be continued…) 

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Six): The Names People Play

Saint John of the Cross

Sonny’s surname was De Le Cruz. That is to say, his “official” last name, as it appeared in the local Puerto Rican Civil Registry. About twenty or more years ago (the exact time remained a mystery to all but the deceased), Papi was told that someone in the family had the bright idea of combining the three syllables of their family’s surname into one name, resulting in a completely “new” surname, that of Delacruz. To Sonny, it sounded reasonable, the proper thing to do. Too many names to remember, you know? And too many spaces to worry about.

       Good thing, too. A name with so many spaces can take up a lot of room on job applications and forms for school, Sonny argued; and all that paperwork one had to fill out for taxes and such. Of course, Sonny was too young at the time to have known anything about this, but that’s how it was. And that’s how it was going to be.

       What did all this mean for Sonny personally? And what was the difference between De La Cruz and Delacruz? They were still the same family, still the same people, the same bodies, the same minds and faces. Materially for them, nothing had changed. The same old arguments abounded, no matter who was doing the arguing. And to tell you the truth, it made no difference at all what the spelling of their surnames were. Not to Sonny, at any rate. The same name, the same person, only less space. The result: Time saved.

       The one thing he could not vouch for was his first name: Santiago. God, how he hated that name! And how he wished it were something else, something simpler, something easier maybe on American ears. Everywhere he studied or worked, and nearly everyone he talked to, all wanted to know how to spell it, or what it’s origin was.

       “S-A-N-T-I-A-G-O. San-tee-a-go. Santiago. You got that?”

       He always added that last part. Sonny wanted to let people know it annoyed the hell out of him to have to accommodate these ignorant fools who had never heard of his or his family’s name.

       “Christ Jesus! Talk about too many syllables!”

       It was always a mouthful, of that Sonny was certain – no matter how many times he spelled it out for folks. “Why couldn’t my parents have named me something else? What’s wrong with Sonny? Sonny Cruz? That sounds way better, right? Much better! Yeah! Strong, short, no spelling involved, no need for stupid explanations. A real American-sounding name. Straight up, to the point. No fancy twists, no freaking turns. ‘Hi, there. Sonny Cruz. Nice to meet you.’”

       What possessed his parents to have burdened him with such a miserable moniker as Santiago? When he was younger, Sonny had finally gotten up the nerve to inquire about it. He didn’t dare go to Papi. No way, José! Papi would only complicate matters. He decided instead to go straight to Mami. She would know. Yeah, Mami! The most logical person in the whole world to ask. Papi, as head of the household, would need to get her permission to name one of their kids. Actually, in point of fact, it was the women elders in their family, by local tradition, who were the ones responsible for approving a family member’s name. From as far back as Sonny could remember, that was how it was. And that’s how it would be.

       On this day, Sonny finally got up the courage to ask her.

       “Mami, why did you name me Santiago?” Surprised yet pleased by her son’s question, Mami gave her oldest born a mile-wide grin.

       “Ah, well, if you must know, Santiago is a very old and respected name,” Mami responded to him in Spanish. “It comes from Saint James, chico. Saint James or Santiago de Compostela. That goes with our family’s last name, De La Cruz.”

        Sonny was nothing if not confused. He wasn’t prepared for such an elaborate response as this. “How do you mean,” he asked blankly, “our family’s last name?”

       “It’s that Santiago is a very traditional way of saying Saint James, the brother of Saint John the Apostle, the one in the Bible. The disciple of Jesucristo, Nuestro Señor.” Mami crossed herself as she spoke these words. Sonny scratched his head in wonder. Or was it confusion? Knowing Sonny, probably both.

The Apostle Saint James the Greater – or Santiago of Compostela

       “What’s wrong with you calling me James?” he countered. “Or Juan, like my brother Juanito? You call him Juanito, why not me? I like Juan. Can you call me Juan?”

       At that, Mami grew sullen. She listened to his childish prattle, calmly at first. She had to remind herself that he was still so young, so “wet behind the ears,” whatever that meant. Of course, taking his brother Juan’s name made perfect sense to him, but would not win any arguments with the family’s elders – in particular, las abuelas. Mami knew her eldest son well, a bright and playful boy but nowhere near his younger brother’s intelligence. Sonny was of a curious but fairly argumentative nature, too much like her own personality.  After giving what Sonny had asked some thought, Mami continued.

       “Your brother’s name fits in with the rest of our family’s name, ‘De La Cruz,’ which means ‘Of the Cross.’ Think about that, hijo. Juanito De La Cruz is ‘Little John of the Cross.’ ”

       “Little John of the Cross? Is John the one who was… cru-ci-fied? You know, the one on the cross, the one we have Christmas for? I thought that was Baby Jesus. Wasn’t that Baby Jesus?”

       “You’re confusing things, Santiago. I wasn’t talking about Baby Jesus. This is Saint John of the Cross. He was a Catholic priest, a… a Doctor of the Church. Many, many years ago, long before you were born, before I was born, before any of us were born. John lived in España, the mother country of our ancestors. John was a very wise and learned man, a scholar and a very spiritual being…”

       “Spiritual? Oh, you mean, like the Holy Spirit, like the soul?”

       “Si, mijo. San Juan De La Cruz. Like San Juan, the capital city of Puerto Rico, the old capital, the symbol of who we are.”

       “San Juan, that’s the same as Saint John, right? Of the Bible?”

       “No, mijo. Saint John of the Bible, that’s another Saint John. This Saint John was a priest. The one from the Bible was Jesus’ disciple. Two different people, okay? But the same name.”

       “Oh, but what about Santiago? Why that name?”

       Exasperated, Mami went on to explain it all again. But the more she explained, the more confused Santiago became. Mami finally threw up her hands and gave up, especially after she insisted that Santiago was a combination of two names, Saint and James. And that Iago, the second half of “Santiago,” was an ancient way of spelling James. She claimed that Iago, James and Santiago were all the same, which Sonny likened to the Holy Trinity: “I get it! Three persons in one!” Make sense? Mami grew more and more irritated at his obstinacy.

       “No, no, not exactly, mijo. Just one person, but three names. It’s not the same, it’s different.”

       “Oh, okay.” Sonny still wasn’t convinced. He felt there was more to this name business than what Mami was telling him. And why did she get so angry and flustered every time he asked her a question? Nevertheless, Sonny kissed Mami on her cheek and went off to bed.

       But little Sonny couldn’t sleep. His thoughts lingered over their earlier conversation, what Mami had expressed to him about Iago, James, Juan, John, and Jesus. It was all so damned confusing. Obviously, clarity was not one of his mother’s strong points.

       “Too many ‘J’s,” Sonny whispered to himself. Saint James, then Iago, shortened to Santiago. John became Juan, then Juan of the Cross became De La Cruz, which got shortened to Delacruz. That part overwhelmed him. Still, he reflected for more than an hour. “I got to look this up one day,” Sonny thought to myself. “Maybe, when I get older, I can figure it all out. It’s much too simple an answer, what Mami said. It doesn’t make any sense…” Exhausted, Santiago finally closed his eyes and fell asleep.

       For many years, Sonny took what Mami had told him about his and Juanito’s names as gospel. All boys do. They believe what their mothers tell them about where their origins were. Sonny went on to explain, to anybody who was willing to listen (but mostly to himself), the source of his name. Many more years would pass before Sonny began to do his own research into the matter.

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Five): ‘Las Chicas’ and Soundview

Puerto Rican boy meets girl in the South Bronx (Photo credit: Stephen Shames)

“Dang, bro, what’s wrong wid you? Do you or do you not like Puerto Rican girls?”

       Sonny was miffed at his friend Pablo’s question. “Ain’t nothin’s wrong wid me, man. They’re hot, alright? Too damn hot. Sizzling, burning flesh! I can barely lay my hands on them.” Sonny was not ready to talk about Puerto Rican girls. Not yet, he wasn’t. He was more interested in baseball. With bats, balls and strikes on his mind, he tried to change the subject. “What’s wid dem Yankees, anyway?”

       There was this boy, Angel (“Cool name, huh?” Sonny whispered to himself), who must have been all of eleven or twelve. When you stop to think about it, he wasn’t that much older than Sonny. Still, the guy looked about eighteen, maybe more. Angel sported a tiny little mustache – a barely noticeable whisp of stubble above his upper lip – and some stringy chin hairs, too. Angel was slender and broad-shouldered. With black curly locks, and dimples on his tanned cheeks. A broad smile, brown eyes, slim waist. Shoot, the guy was a walking, talking Greek god or statue, or something. The girls thought he was “dreamy,” and he had good manners. Girls loved that last part. Manners, that’s what counts, that’s what made all the difference. They like to be treated like ladies – even if they weren’t.

       “Like the freaking queen of England, bro,” Angel would add, as if girls were the most important thing in a young person’s life. Which they were, of course. Only, Sonny didn’t know it.

       The guys who got the girls knew all about treating them well. And they did, you know. Like Latin royalty. That is, until the rubber met the road. That’s an old cliché, of course, but in this case it served the intended purpose.

       Angel went out with Miriam, a cute chick from Sonny’s class. Sonny couldn’t remember her last name, not that it mattered much. Angel, for his part, was just another classmate. Sonny hadn’t seen him since school ended in mid-June. When classes started up again in September, after Labor Day, Sonny met up with Angel. Damn! He must have matured overnight. One week, he was just another scrawny kid in their class. The next week, he was Mr. Love God. And Miriam, “What a freaking hot dish!” She couldn’t have been more than twelve, or maybe less. Short, flat-chested, no curves at all, legs straight as arrows, two pencils in saddle shoes. She, too, had little hairs resting on her upper lip. Even when Miriam smiled, she looked serious.

       Sonny was baffled. “I didn’t know girls could grow mustaches?” They grew more than that.

       Just as with Angel, overnight Miriam sprouted like a late-blooming weed – but in her case, the sprout manifested into a pair of humongous breasts that would knock anybody’s head off their shoulders. From hell to heaven. Wow! She looked and acted as if she were twenty-one. Angel told Sonny, in secret, that she was really eleven. That her parents had lied about her age so she could be in a higher grade. Oh, man! Eleven years old! Imagine! Shit…

       “Eleven, going on thirty!” Angel whispered to Sonny.

       “Lucky bastard,” sighed Sonny.

       Here he was, Santiago “Sonny” Delacruz, all of twelve going on thirteen. Still playing stickball with the little runty kids from the neighborhood. Still keeping watch over his little brother Juanito. While this guy, this “Angel” fellow, more sinner than saint and not much older than Sonny was; Angel, a fellow classmate in the fifth grade, a Puerto Rican, South Bronx-raised teen from the “ ‘hood,” got the opportunity of a lifetime: to go steady with a hottie tamale that was younger than either of them.  

       “Man, oh, man, must’ve been something in the air,” Sonny surmised. “Or maybe in the tap water.” Whatever it was, Sonny wanted some of what Angel was having. And soon, too.

Street kids from the South Bronx hood, circa the 1960s

They say Soundview is a part of the South Bronx. Sonny heard it referred to as the South-Central Bronx. People described it the way they described it. But no matter how they felt about the subject, the Bronx was still the Bronx. East, West, North, or South. From any direction, from any angle, and from any vantage point, it was all the same shit hole to him. A dump on a bump of a lump off a rump.

       Soundview, the section of the Bronx that Sonny and his family resided in, was always Soundview. Papi told them it was named after the area’s closeness to the Long Island Sound inlet. “You can see Long Island Sound from the top of the Soundview subway station.”

       Sonny took this odd notion as gospel. Straining his little neck in the direction that Papi told him and his brother to look, all Sonny could see were faint misty clouds. A strip of land, fuzzy and formless, in the distance, gleamed dully in the morning sun. Sonny had no idea what the hell he was gazing at. Nobody bothered to tell him what an inlet was. And he never bothered to ask, either.  

       As a youth, Sonny remembered playing in filthy, empty lots around Stratford and Morrison Avenues. After the family moved to nearby Bronx River Avenue and the Bronx River Housing Projects, greedy real estate developers began to see plenty of dollar signs in their future. They decided, in a moment of inspiration, if that’s what you want to call it, to build a mass of high-rise apartment complexes where once there were empty spaces, the majority of them along a wide-open, marshy plain between Orchard Beach and City Island, in the northeast corner of the Bronx.

Co-op City in the Northeast corner of the Bronx – circa 1960s

       In the early 1960s, this same wide-open, marshy plain became the site of a short-lived amusement park area dubbed Freedomland U.S.A. – the East Bronx equivalent of a poor person’s Disneyland. It operated for a spell in the Baychester region. But the park went broke after only a few years of unprofitable operation. Not wanting to let good land go to waste, the real estate developers hit upon another bright idea: to build big, mammoth apartment structures. Housing hundreds upon hundreds of families, the gigantic Co-Op City housing development soon replaced the cheap rides and historical attractions of the now-defunct Freedomland. A city within a city within a city. You call that freedom?

       As a young working stiff in his late twenties, Sonny found his way back to the old neighborhood. Certainly not out of nostalgia or reminiscence. Not a chance. The truth was, he’d been dating a Puerto Rican girl whose family lived in one of those fancy new high-rise dwellings. The family’s apartment was nice, really nice. Richly furnished, too, with wall-to-wall carpeting and state-of-the-art bathroom facilities. It was nothing like what Sonny had been used to when they first arrived in the U.S., or from what he recalled of his own family’s residence: the tight, boxed-in look and feel of cubicle-sized rooms. The kind that reminded you of those claustrophobic jail cells in Jimmy Cagney or Humphrey Bogart crime pictures. Still, they were a hell of a lot more livable than those horrible “prison units” his family occupied at the old Bronx River Houses.

       Sonny’s anger rose up within him. He stopped thinking about apartment houses. “Too ‘complex,’ ” he joked to himself. “I got bigger shit to worry about.”

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

The View from the Chair — ‘Marty’ and the Triumph of Fat, Ugly Little Men

Clara (Nancy Marchand) and Marty (Rod Steiger)

Mama’s Boy

Marty Pilletti is a butcher, a common enough profession in a common enough working-class world. His sisters and younger brother have all gotten married, but Marty’s the lone holdout. Imagine, a guy like him, with no prospects on the horizon.

“You should get married,” his customers tell him, a common enough expression from people who no doubt mean well – one they constantly repeat to themselves, but more often than not directed at good-hearted Marty. Why, he should be ashamed of himself.

“When are you going to get married?” they regularly inquire. It’s a question Marty is loath to respond. In all honesty and in view of his profession, it cuts him to the bone. Not a day goes by when he isn’t confronted with this dilemma.

Marty has a friend, Angie. About the same age, maybe younger. They commiserate together at the local drug store, or wherever they happen to meet up. He’s another one of Marty’s pals on the make. Two lonely guys from the Bronx, “losers” if you want to be cruel about it.

Angie (Joe Mantell) exchanges thoughts with Marty (Rod Steiger)

Marty is at a crossroads. He’s thirty-six, a butcher, and a fat ugly, little man that girls don’t want. He’s gotten that description into his head, and there’s nothing he can do about removing it. They have no interest in him, at least that’s what Marty believes.

His and Angie’s “old ladies” (their mothers, to be precise) ask the same question to them, over and over again: “When are you getting married? When are you getting married” It’s enough to drive a guy to drink. Thankfully, Marty’s not the type to booze it up. At least not yet, we hope.

The loneliness, the insecurity, the self-doubts, the lack of confidence, the looming despair, but most of all the fear of rejection – these are what Marty gets in return. Sure, he’s a caring guy. And more than able to hold his own. He’s also used to working hard, but is that enough? Because of this, he’s had to develop a coping mechanism, mainly excuses for not making himself available to go to the movies or the local dance hall.

The Waverly Ballroom on the Grand Concourse, that’s the place to be – it’s packed to the rafters on Saturday nights. “Loaded with tomatoes,” so states Marty’s mother, Mrs. Pilletti. Again, it’s always the same, his having to face that inevitable query, this time posed directly by Mama herself: “What you going to do tonight?”

Mama doesn’t want him hanging around the house. She’s a widow, this is true, but all her children are married – all except “poor” Marty, the oldest of the lot. Time for him to be out on his own, or so she believes. Mama has second thoughts about that too. She’s getting old, you see.

Mrs. Pilletti (Esther Minciotti)

In as matter-of-fact a manner as possible, Marty insists to his mother that she has a bachelor on her hands. “I ain’t ever going to get married,” he openly declares, as he plops another helping of food on the dinner plate. Whatever girls like he doesn’t have, so guys like him must face the facts. It’s the bachelor life for him. And that’s that.

“I’ve taken enough girls out to enough dance halls,” he contends, probably for the hundredth time. “I don’t want to get hurt no more. I called up a girl this afternoon and she gave me the brush off. Some ‘broad’ I didn’t even want to call up. I’m past the point of getting hurt.”       

He confesses his feelings to Mama, hoping against hope she will finally come around to his point of view. Why doesn’t he go to the dance hall? “The place makes me feel like a bug just standing around. I had enough pain, no thank you.”

Not taking the hint or, more correctly, not wanting her son to suffer as most loving mothers would react, Mama calls out to him. But Marty is quicker on the draw: “Please, I’m gonna stay home and I’m gonna watch Sid Caesar.” Mama does not get it. Instead, she fires back with a hurtful line she knows will get a rise out of her boy. “You gonna die without a son!”  

That does it. Marty repeats the line back to her. “I will die without a son!” But Mama will have none of it. Imagine! An American-born Italian descendant from the Bronx, and a hard-working butcher at that, unmarried, with no prospects for a decent family life on the horizon. That is anathema to Mama’s ears. She has to do something about it – now!

Mama tells him to wear the blue suit, but this only gets Marty more riled up. Rising abruptly from dinner table, he let’s it all out at once: “The blue suit, the gray suit, I’m a fat, ugly little man!” he shouts, while pounding the dinner table. If it’s drama Mama wants, drama she’ll get. And, brother, does her oldest son give it back to her. “I’m miserable enough as it is,” he cries out. “Whaddaya want from me? I’ll get heartache, that’s what I get. A great, big night of heartache.”

These are words and arguments he’s no doubt expressed countless times before, but never so heartfelt, never so achingly poignant as he’s doing so now. Spilling his guts out to Mama probably wasn’t in the cards either, as his poker pals might describe it. But he does so anyway. Shoot, what the heck? What’s a man got to lose?

Pulling back the pain and realizing he may have gone too far, Marty grasps the fact that he’s hurt his mother – and himself, to be honest. Surely, that was never his plan, never his intention. Gently and calmly, he bends down and kisses her on the hand. He’s at the point of breaking down but manages to control himself just enough to sit back down at the table and finish his meal.

“Oh boy,” Marty mumbles to no one in particular, then repeats the line his mother used on him at the start of their conversation: “Loaded with tomatoes… that’s rich, Mama.”

Heartache Tonight, Heartache Tonight      

Directed by Delbert Mann, written by Paddy Chayefsky, and produced by Fred Coe, along with assistant producer Gordon Duff, the teleplay Marty premiered live on May 24, 1953, on the Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse show.

Writer and producer Sidney Aaron “Paddy” Chayefsky

The program, a made-for-television production, starred Rod Steiger as Marty, and Nancy Marchand as Clara, the girl at the dance hall. Two years later, the independent team of Harold Hecht and actor Burt Lancaster produced the Academy Award-winning film version of the teleplay, which starred Ernest Borgnine (an Oscar winner for Best Actor) as Marty, and Betsy Blair (then-wife to Gene Kelly) as Clara.

The movie version was partially filmed in the Bronx, near and around the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road areas, as well as Arthur Avenue and the Belmont neighborhood (across the street from Fordham University where this writer once attended and graduated from). This was a section of the Bronx known locally as “Little Italy” and made famous for its restaurants, and the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

In the original teleplay, a stocky Rod Steiger, as Marty, captures everyone’s hearts with his homespun portrayal. Steiger wears his feelings on his sleeve, so to speak. He can barely hold back the tears in the key scene, described above, with his mother (played by Esther Minciotti, who also appeared in the movie version). Joe Mantell played Angie, Lee Philips was Marty’s married cousin Tommy, and Betsy Palmer his wife Virginia (originally, Anne Bancroft, whose real name was Anne Italiano, proved too “ethnic looking,” so for contrast the producers went with Ms. Palmer).

As Chayefsky wrote the part (partly autobiographical), the butcher Marty is a broken man inside. And this is how Steiger plays him: as outwardly friendly, yet all-but-crying internally. It’s what can be called an “interior” performance, one that barely manages to bubble up to the surface; where Steiger tries mightily to hold back the floodgates as an alternative to releasing those pent up feelings of despair and sorrow with regard to the character’s failed romantic relationships.

In rehearsal, both director Mann and producer Coe tried in vain to prevent Steiger from letting it all hang out, but to no avail. According to Mann, each time he performed that scene Steiger cried his eyes out, as he was taught to do by way of his Method-actor training. Even at the dress rehearsal, Steiger welled up inside so much that the dam would literally break open, and tears would pour out in full force.

Mann and Coe could not let that happen. Their take on the matter was that actors make the audience weep, not the other way around. After all, this was live television. How could they go on with the show when their principal lead had given so much of himself so soon to the little screen? In their minds, the climax would come too soon.

When the time arrived for the dinner table talk with Minciotti, Steiger came almost to the point of weeping. But instead of breaking down (as he had done on prior occasions), he got hold of himself, so that his delivery was chopped up into tiny fragments, the most memorable of which was the now-immortal line, “I’m an ugly man, I’m a fat ugly, little man.” It’s absolutely devastating, as it was meant to be.

Marty willfully tries to cover up the pain. He’s embarrassed or ashamed – and a little of both. In the tiny, round television screens that were prevalent in the early 1950s, Steiger’s natural bulk appears to resize itself down to near gnome-like proportions, resulting in the large-framed Italian butcher’s reduction to a whimpering pile of human flesh. He’s comparable to a misbehaving child, left cringing alone in the corner for some minor infraction or other.

This timely bit of self-control no doubt saved the scene from over-playing its hand, which had the intended effect: audiences around the country cried their hearts out for the fat ugly, little man.

In Ernest Borgnine’s movie take, the scene is the same, the lines are the same, but the intimacy that the small screen allowed viewers to experience (specifically, via Steiger’s reductive approach) were, in the movie theater, broader and larger than life, in the sense that Borgnine was playing to a wider, more varied audience.

Clara (Betsy Blair) with Marty (Ernest Borgnine)

It’s as if he and director Mann had aimed their sites at the topmost gallery; as if the audience were seated in New York’s Yankee Stadium, specifically in the last row of the upper bleachers. Consequently, Borgnine comes off as, well, larger than life too, as were his emotional reactions. In this scenario, one has little doubt that Marty Pilletti is indeed a big, fat mama’s boy.

Ernest Borgnine as Marty smacking the Bus Stop sign

Borgnine, because of his natural size and heft, is more physical as well. And he uses his physicality to good effect – this actor is unafraid to let his gut hang out in full view of the audience. But then, we lose a little something in the interim, in the transfer from one medium (those round-screen television sets previously mentioned) to the larger and wider movie venue.

Still, that improvised action at the bus stop, where Marty instinctively punches the sign with his fist after a successful night out with the girl Clara, left audiences laughing and crying, both at the same time. That’s what good acting is about! A spontaneous, in-the-moment inspiration.

This Operatic Life

Both Borgnine and Steiger keep getting the brushoff. At the ballroom, a guy walks up to Marty and tries to unload a “dog” on him. This guy has found a “hot chick,” so he wants to dump his date on the next available chump. He even offers to pay Marty five bucks if he will take the so-called “dog” off his hands. Chivalrous to the end, Marty refuses. “You can’t just walk out on a girl like that.” Marty is indignant – and rightly so, after having been on the receiving end of rejections for as long as he can remember.

In the teleplay, the girl is tall and big boned, with a prominent proboscis. Disgusted and insulted at being treated like a bargaining chip, the poor girl heads for the nearest side exit to cry her eyes out – undoubtedly, a routine matter for her. Does this all sound familiar? It sure does! With Marty, however, the girl, Clara, gets up the courage to confess to him that this happens every time she comes to the dance hall. He knows exactly how she feels.

Understanding soul that he is, Marty decides to open up and make a confession of his own: “Big-hearted, you get to be a professor of pain.” What a masterful line! Two lonely people, out on the dance floor: he’s thirty-six, she’s twenty-nine, an old maid to most mother’s eyes. They dance and they talk, spilling their guts out to one another, commiserating in mutual bliss. Two “dogs,” together at last. Marty chats about his ugly father who was so kind to his mother and to each other. Still, they dance and talk some more, for what seems an eternity.

Lest the idea be lost on readers, writer Chayefsky, who in his own life experienced as much pain and rejection from girls due to his short, stocky build and unconventional nature, has captured on screen and at home the essence of Puccini’s La Bohème, with all its heartache and anguish. From their initial “meet-cute,” Marty embodies the poet Rodolfo, an old-fashioned romantic at heart, while Clara is the good-natured Mimì. No, she does not die of tuberculosis as her counterpart does, but then… who knows what life has in store for these lovebirds?  

As Clara, Marchand (in the teleplay) uses her imposing height to denote awkwardness, her big-boned features made prominent in comparison to Steiger’s softer-edged contours. She’s all arms and elbows and angularity, externalizing her manner and gawky bearing to accentuate the awkwardness, whereas Steiger internalizes his thoughts and actions.  

Clara (Nancy Marchand) seated at the kitchen table with Marty (Rod Steiger)

In their conversation, Steiger holds back the pain but feels no less deeply; Marchand represents the embodiment of his prior rejections, thereby giving “Marty” a sense of his own painful dismissal by others. Thus, two lonely hearts come together as one in spite of being cast aside as unworthy by the standards of the time. How they are able to come together, slowly but cautiously, is accomplished through conversation and getting to understand one another’s feelings. Wrong moves are made, but quickly forgiven. After all, they are so much alike. In fact, they seem to attract one another, their self-awareness binding them closer.

Both artists went on to further their careers, Steiger in films and Marchand in theater and television. Taking nothing away from either Borgnine or Blair, who was “prettier” conventionally with respect to her looks, I have always been moved by Steiger’s interpretation – credit, by the way, to Delbert Mann for insisting the actor hold back those tears. “You make the audience cry for you,” Mann has conveyed in numerous interviews and in print. By doing so, the performances truly hit home.

Curiously, Steiger and Borgnine enacted their share of movie heavies. They both played Italian mobsters: Rod as mobster Al Capone in Al Capone (1959), and Ernest as an opera-loving Italian policeman in Pay or Die (1960). Both joined the Navy in World War II, both studied acting upon their return from overseas duty, both excelled at villainous and/or sinister types, usually of an ethnic bent. And both won Oscars for Best Actor (Borgnine for Marty and Steiger for In the Heat of the Night).

Steiger was the younger of the two, born 1925 in Westhampton, New York. Borgnine was born in 1917, by way of Hamden, Connecticut. Nancy Marchand was born in 1928, in Buffalo, New York, and became a notable stage actor, while Betsy Blair (born 1923), made a handful of films in Hollywood, and later in Italy.

Both Steiger and Borgnine were (if you’ll pardon the expression) “fat ugly, little men.” Yet their triumph is our triumph. One could coin the phrase “they knew the type well” without the slightest exaggeration. That’s rich, all right!

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Four): P.R. Men and Shorts People

The Island of Puerto Rico, “La Isla del Encanto” (“The Island of Enchantment”)

Puerto Rico, in English, means “rich port.”

       “Some joke, huh?” cracked Sonny under his breath. “If the port was so freaking rich, why did thousands upon thousands of Puerto Riqueños leave such a marvelous place? Must’ve been good for the pirates, you know? The guys who plundered the Spanish Main, like in those swashbuckler movies, ‘Treasure Island,’ ‘Captain Kidd,’ ‘The Sea Hawk,’ ‘Blackbeard the Fucking Pirate,’ and all that crap!”

       Sonny’s family never found any buried treasure in the South Bronx, and certainly not in Puerto Rico. Oh, and about that popular nickname, “La Isla del Encanto,” Sonny always had the same adverse reaction: “Tell me, if it was so damn enchanted, why not stay there and try to make something of it?” That’s a question Papi could never answer. No one could.

       Sonny knew that. He knew it for as long as he could remember. But it never stopped him from asking. For years, Sonny continued to pose that question to his father, hoping one day that Papi would provide him with a different response. And, no, he was not insane. Just insistent.

      “Papi, how come we came to America? What’s wrong with our staying in P.R.?” But all Sonny would get in reply were shoulder shrugs and Papi’s hand waving in his face. After a while, Sonny stopped asking.

       Sonny knew about Cuba and Haiti, too, but he also made reference to (and damned sure to include) the nearby Dominican Republic and other Latin American “republics” in his endless diatribes.

       Rogues’ gallery of Latin American Dictators

“Those countries all had dictators,” Sonny reasoned, “military strongmen, the kind that used to rob people blind, steal their money and their property, while living high on the hog with their ill-gotten gains.” They drove out the aristocrats, “Los Ricos Bandidos,” as Sonny phrased it, the ones who screwed the masses but royally. “Then,” he would go on, “along came the Batistas, the Trujillos, the Duvaliers, the Castros, the Pinochets.” They resumed their thieving ways, stealing the rich people’s money and giving it to the poor and needy: namely, to themselves.

       “Reverse Robin Hoods, Papi,” Sonny called them. “Can’t you see? Trujillo, Papa Doc, all those freaking bastards, they gave away a fortune to their own children,” even if it wasn’t theirs to give.

       “So, maybe they weren’t so bad?” That was the general argument some people made with themselves, including Sonny’s Papi. They used it to justify all the thievery, all the willfully blind, misplaced faith in their leaders’ methodology.

       “That’s not a good answer,” Sonny would counter.

       “Nice to know they could be so magnanimous,” came the expected reply, an illogical justification for blatant malfeasance. Nothing could move these folks; and nothing could change their minds either. They were convinced their “glorious leaders” had done the people some good. They were the true believers, sorry to say, as blind as bats to what the bastards had done. And they remained blind to the bitter end.

       “What about the Puerto Ricans?” Sonny continued, pressing his argument about as far as it could go. “What’s their friggin’ excuse?” He was trying to figure that one out for himself.

       After decades of futile attempts, and as far as he had any right to knowledge of, things hadn’t gotten any better for the poor of Puerto Rico either, which is why they had come to New York. “Oh, pardon me! The South Bronx.” As Jay Black and the Americans used to say, “Only in America, land of opportunity. Yeah, ah, ah…”

       Many years later, when folks pressed him about that so-called “enchanted island” of his, Sonny, now a senior citizen and semi-retired, never bothered to respond. He shrugged his soft, sagging shoulders and waved his wrinkled hand in the air, dismissing their queries as if he were swatting a million mosquitoes.

       They stopped asking. Like father, like son.  

—————-

Boxer Shorts of every color, size and stripe

“Papi, why do men from Puerto Rico always walk around in their boxer shorts?” No response. Sonny was under the impression that only tired old farts (like his dad) wore those baggy excuses for underwear. You know, los viejitos and los abuelitos, or maybe some great, great abuelitos. As usual, Sonny was mistaken.

       He asked Papi again why he wore them.

       Papi sighed as he responded. “I feel comf-table in them.”

       Comfortable? With his wanger and cojones dangling about like an elephant’s ears and trunk? Not that Papi’s bicho looked anything like Jumbo’s – the farthest thing from it! But just the thought of his father’s pipi bouncing back and forth, from left to right, with his nuts jiggling along in time to his feet, like portable maracas, made Sonny want to puke.

       Maybe that was the idea. Let it all hang out, huh? Some kind of macho thing, is that it? Hell, it was always a macho thing with these men. And, yes, especially men of the Puerto Rican persuasion.  

       “Uh, Papi, why do you wear that? What’s wrong with the nice, tight jockey underwear Mami got you last Christmas? They’re the latest thing! And a heck of a lot easier on the eyes. They feel like part of your skin, a part of your soul, you know? – shoot, the best part.”

       Papi took a long time to answer. When he finally did say something, Papi explained to Sonny that he would rather wear boxer shorts than jockeys, mostly because, “When I was small, wearing the boxers showed I grew up. I was a real man” – even if he hadn’t yet reached puberty. Did that make sense? Not to Sonny.

       Puerto Rican men could be extremely macho, and at all the wrong times. There were guys in their neighborhood who liked to play their Latin salsa in two ways: louder and loudest. This “bugged the crap out of Papi,” as Sonny remembered it. So much so that Papi would bang on the walls of their living room, or on the ceiling above their heads, to call the noisy neighbors’ attention to the racket.

       “It’s a macho thing,” Sonny sighed. Always, a macho thing.

One night, during the summer heat wave, instead of banging on the ceiling, Papi decided to pay a visit to his upstairs neighbor to complain about the noise. He called on a guy named Jamón, which means “ham” in Spanish. That was the sound Sonny thought he heard mentioned.

       It turned out the man’s name was Ramón Jimenez. Ramón came from Guaynabo. If there’s anything you need to know about the people from Guaynabo, it’s that they can’t stand the folks who come from Bayamón, geographically speaking their next-door neighbors. That’s where Papi came from, Bayamón. There was a sort of rivalry there, or bad blood of some kind, like the Savage Skulls with the Savage Nomads. Two rival gangs, both vicious and hard-headed, the living, fire-breathing embodiment of their monikers.

       About five or ten minutes passed before Papi returned to the apartment. From the looks of it, Papi’s encounter did go as well as he had planned. To lighten the atmosphere around his father’s wild mood swings, Sonny would often make fun of Papi’s pals, or he would make up silly nicknames for the neighbors. Like that noisy fellow, Mr. Ramón. On a whim, Sonny tagged him with “Jamón de Bayamón.” The “Jamón” part stuck.

       The proverbial “Spanish Ham,” or Jamon from Bayamon

Papi didn’t think it was funny. Not funny at all. Still, Sonny pressed him for the details as to why.

       “What’s wrong with it, Papi?” Sonny asked, mostly to annoy him. And to see how far he could go with his joke.

       “Don’t call him that!” Papi shouted. “You kids should know better! He’s a sick guy, sick in the head, is what!” Besides, Papi hated the nickname, “Jamón de Bayamón.” He thought it was rude and disrespectful.

       “It’s a joke, Papi,” Sonny insisted. “Just a little joke.”

       “I got no more intimacy with that guy. You don’t neither! And you right about that,” Papi hollered back, in his thick Puerto Rican accent. “It’s a very leetle joke.” The “Joke” part came out sounding odd, as if he had said “choke” by mistake.

“Joke, Papi! Joke!” Sonny hollered back at him, emphasizing the “J” for all it was worth. “I’ll try better next time, okay?”

       “No! ‘Cause there ain’t gonna be no ‘next’ time,” Papi bellowed. “Next time, I break you face! That sound like a little joke to you?” Papi jumped out of the couch and stormed off to the bedroom.

       Sonny turned serious. “Hmm, that’s a pretty snappy comeback,” he admitted to himself. But Papi meant every word of it. After considering the alternatives, Sonny did not want to antagonize his father any further than he did, or get the “old man” any more riled up than he already was. Lesson for the day: Never mention your father’s underwear, not for any reason. That’s one of those “off” topics. Out of sight, out of mind.

       “No! ‘Cause there ain’t gonna be no ‘next’ time,” Papi bellowed. “Next time, I break you face! That sound like a little joke to you?” Papi jumped out of the couch and stormed off to the bedroom.

       “Wonder why Papi was so mad,” Sonny mused. “That big fat guy, Ramón. Man, that guy’s heavy. That’s why they call him ‘Jamón.’ Like a big, fat piece of days-old ham. That’s what he is, he can’t help it. What’s the big deal?” Sonny shook his head.

       As he made his way to his own room, Sonny heard his father’s voice. Papi was talking to himself, repeating the same word, over and over and over again. “Desgraciado… desgraciado…”   

       What was so disgraceful?

       “More macho stuff,” Sonny sighed to himself. Yeah, always a macho thing.

Copyright © 2022 by Josmar F. Lopes