***The Corner Boy

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He hardly recognized the old place, the old hometown neighborhood place, the Atlantic section of North Adamsville (why they called it Atlantic other than its proximity to the bay that would lead to the great Atlantic is anybody guess. The only thing he knew was that Grandma Riley of blessed memory always called it “one-horse” Atlantic and she was right, very right) the place where he grew up and came of age, for good or evil. The place where he, Frankie Murphy, had done his time as a stand-up corner boy back in the 1960s, a stand-up corner boy in front of the very Harry’s Variety Store site that he was standing directly in front at that moment. Except that it was no longer Harry’s but Kim’s Variety Store reflecting to his amazement the switch from  heavily Irish Catholic with a few Italians thrown in to every variety of Asian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and he did not know what else. He did not expect after such a long time to see things exactly as they were and as he had dreamed but this contrast was startling.       

Frankie had not been around the old neighborhood for about forty years mainly due to a little habit of his called armed robbery that he had picked up the knack for with those same corner boys who he hung around with when Kim’s was Harry’s. And so Frankie in due course had done his time, several times including the last stretch at Cedar Junction for two dimes (really eighteen years with a deuce taken off for good behavior) and he had done it hard that last time since he knew when he got out that there would be no more place for him in his chosen profession. And so he, after a few days spent at a flop rooming house and a couple of hard nights of drinking his favorite whiskey, decided to head back to the old homestead and see where it had all gone off the wheels and maybe too flash back to the glory days, the days when he stood tall as a corner boy.  

Of course even if any of the old gang were still around, or maybe just old time neighbors they would not have recognized Frankie, now a little plump from sitting around prisons unlike the old days when he was tall, thin and agile enough to work his magic when the guys needed some ready dough and he stealthily got into many a back window and made a quick heist for pocket change. Moreover he had that telltale prison pallor that no sunshine can bring back, that pallor etched into the skin through a few thousand days and nights. And that telltale prison release garb, that too tight suit, those silly out of fashion childhood- like brown shoes, and that equally silly tie that was popular back in the day. So, no, nobody would recognize Frankie and that was just as well as he headed across the street to sit in the bleachers of the ball field that he remembered from childhood  (although the old wooden planks that would give you splinters had been replaced  by aluminum) and reflect back to the old corner boy days.          

Harry’s even before he was a corner boy, maybe back to his very earliest remembrances was always a corner boy hang-out. Some say the tradition had gone back to the 1920s when Harry’s father, working out of that same locale, supplied the neighborhood, including thirsty cops, and maybe especially thirsty cops, with booze, real booze from Canada during Prohibition. Harry, Harry the son, continued that illegal tradition when his time came but supplying the neighborhood, including win hungry cops, and maybe especially win hungry cop, with a place to place their bets. Yah, Harry was the local bookie and so connected that cops in their shiny cruisers would park right in front of the store, ignore the corner boys, and go in to place their bets. And if anybody looked at the place, the inside anyway, one would know right off that whatever else was going on this did not have the look of a prosperous convenience store. Harry didn’t put up much of a front and didn’t need to, a few newspapers, mainly the Daily Racing Form , a couple of cans on the shelves, a couple of quarts of milk in the refrigerator, a chest stocked with all kinds of soda,  max daddy pin ball machine in almost constant use, and his “book” on the corner for all the world to see. That’s what Frankie remembered anyway and he had been inside enough times to play that pin ball machine (Madame LaRue, a busty siren, calling you to play and, what, win her). What was more important was that Harry had no problem letting corner boys hang on the outside, and that was how Frankie came of age by hanging around Harry’s just like his older brothers, just like his uncles and maybe just like his grand- uncles.                 

Then Frankie, noticing that most of the old houses in the neighborhood still were standing (although many had been renovated, including his own growing up home, a triple-decker that had been converted into condos), started putting names to the houses, corner boy names, and what happened to them, as far as he knew. And any  memory dance had to begin with “Red” Riley, the acknowledged king hell king of the corner boy night for many years (from his older brothers’ time and his own before he moved on to a Boston gang that specialized in armed robberies). Frankie had seen many tough men in his time, in and out of prison, but Red was among the toughest. He would never forget when he was fourteen or so, well before he caught the corner boy bug, or could even hang there except as a mascot of sorts when his older brothers were around, what Red did to one guy from another corner who for whatever reason passed Harry’s corner. This guy was big, tough, and looked like he could handle himself. Red just chain-whipped the hell out of him right on the street, right out on the street with people watching, walked away, and left the guy in a pool of blood  for the ambulance to pick him up. Jesus. When the cops came later to question Red he stonewalled them, stonewalled them good, saying the guy must have been hit by a car, and everybody, every witness anyway, agreed with Red. Since the other guy wasn’t going to press charges, not if he wanted to live anyway, the cops never even took him to the station. Of course Red, from what Frankie had heard after he moved on, had run into some tough luck later on when he got too old to be a corner boy and he too had to move on. Seems he ran into some hot number, some blonde, some Lola, who twisted him around a little, or maybe a lot, it is hard to tell on dame stuff and he needed plenty of dough to keep her happy. So he went on something like a rampart down South where Frankie had heard she was from sticking up places as they moved around. One night Red hit a 7-11 store and there were cops nearby. A shootout ensued and Red went down in a hail of bullets, although not before to uniforms uttered their last as well. Frankie hoped she was worth it. Old Red Riley, RIP though.                      

Then there was Red’s lieutenant, his main corner boy pal whom he trusted to keep things in order when he was not around, when he was maybe getting a little something from one of his million honeys down at old Adamsville Beach. “Clips” McGee was his name, a good guy, a good guy to have handy when you needed brains to figure out a heist, or something. He got the name Clips from when he was a kid just starting out, maybe twelve, and he would clip stuff, you know, steal stuff from stores. Stuff like rings, records, small time stuff compared to later  when he master-minded a really big deal, a huge heist , artwork, jewels the works when Red needed  plenty of dough for some honey of his, or maybe it was for his sister, who needed to beat the rap on some solicitation charge and needed dough to doing the beating. He used to do a clip or too even later sometimes just to keep in practice. He said if he ever got caught which he didn’ he would just say “hey, it just stuck to me” and let it go at that. He never got caught though. Not for that kid’s stuff. What did Clips in was dope, when dope became the thing to do, to make money on, to get kicks from too if you could control it. That stuff never interested Frankie, he thought it was too risky, had to be handled too many times to make it worthwhile. But Clips had big dreams, dreams of forming his own operation not knowing that the thing had been fixed since, well, maybe eternity and so he found himself face down in some dusty Mexican town, Sonora maybe, with two slugs in his head, un-mourned. Clips RIP too.           

Then there were the soldiers, although the corner, except for who was, or wasn’t, king was not organized along any particular lines. Those guys, including in his time Frankie, were what gave Red his status, his visible status as well as the guys he needed when he needed some heavy work done. “Crazy” Donahue was a drinker, from way back, had been in jail a number of times, nothing big but plenty of pick-ups on the streets. Red liked him, tolerated him, though because when he wasn’t drunk, which was on a job, he could crack open any door, safe, anything locked like clockwork. It was beautiful to watch. Poor Crazy though when over the edge one time though, wound up in Bridgewater for a while and then one day he went over to the Mystic River Bridge and crashed his car off it. Another guy, “Be-Bop” McNamara, Frankie’s closest friend at the time since he dated Be-Bop’s sister, Chrissie, until Frankie dropped out of high school and she gave him the air, was a great driver, could maneuver (and work on) any car around. So when they needed a car Be-Bop would work his magic. The last Frankie had heard was that Be-Bop was up in Shawshank, up in Maine, doing a nickel for some stolen car thing. Be-Bop made everybody laugh one time when he said, maybe knowing like the rest of them that the edges of the law were dicey places to live, that if he did time he would just grab the warden’s car and take off. That warden up in Shawshank better keep both eyes on his car at all times.                          

Then there were his older brothers, Peter and Kevin, who kind of overlapped his time as a corner boy (and also eased his way in as well). No question the three brothers (and two sisters) had had a tough upbringing , not so much that they were beaten, as they were beaten down, beaten down by the utter poverty of their existence in a crowded triple- decker, three to one room (and he got the short end), no room to breathe, the rent always a precarious thing when their father was out of work (not from not trying though), a car was usually an iffy thing, and some nights, some nights early on before they got “wise” to the world  they went to bed hungry. Yes, they were hungry boy, hungry to get out from under, and not wind up like their father grabbing somebody else’s dregs. So when Peter (the oldest) approached Red it was like catnip. He brought Kevin along, and Frankie in his turn followed a couple of years after. The world owed them a living and they were going to get theirs. Well, they got theirs alright, Peter eventually “graduated” from the corner and went on like many others to try the drug trade. He too did not understand that the deal was fixed and so he fell, not dead, not right away, dead, although he had the ghost of death on him. He ODed on heroin, horse, H, after about twenty bouts in front of the police line-up. The cops would ask him if he was high and how he got that way. He answered that he was “walking with the king” and if they had a better offer they had better present it quick. They never did and so he fell off the rim of the world. Kevin, none too stable any way, always a little behind the eight ball wound up in Bridgewater too, wound up there and institutionalized most of his life, and he just kind of wilted away, wilted away slowly.             

Oh sure there were woman around, woman who wanted to get their kicks from danger boys, who liked the idea that guys were ready to rumble over them, guys ready too to make sure they had some dough to keep them around. Mainly it was around Red that they came, the ones really seeking danger and Red would give the others his cast-offs. Once in a while Red would put the girls to work, pimp them off, when dough was tight but that was the exception because to a man there was that Irish Catholic Madonna thing hovering over them.  What Red would do, and did plenty is use his girls (and the other corner boys including Frankie followed suit) was for the old rape dodge. Set some poor dope up with a lovely (and some of them were, one that he had the hots for, an Italian girl, Lena, was as much as he could handle then when he was just starting out) and then when they were in the clinches she would holler rape and that would bring one of the corner boys to her rescue. Then the dope had to stand a shake-down. There were variations on that one but that was the drift.   

What of Frankie track record? Well he did time and plenty of it, since he usually got the short end of the stick when the deal went down, was the fall guy when things went bust. And being a stand-up guy he took the time, got taken care of and that was that. He had some good times, had been married three times (one time while he was in jail), had some serious dough from a few scores  and did better than the others that he knew of since he wasn’t going to be found face down in some ditch. But what else was he to do. He was too hungry, not food hungry but you know hungry, to do otherwise.

And as he sat on that bleacher seat still thinking about the old days he thought well that was the way the cards were dealt and if he had to do it over he might have been smarter about a couple of things but that was the way the cards were dealt.