The Warriors Read online

  They moved out, a company of about twenty: Papa, Momma, Uncles and Aunts, Sons, Daughters, Cousins, walking their street. The men wore blue, paisley-print, button-down-collar shirts and too-tight black chino pants, high-crowned narrow-brimmed straw hats with their signs: cracked-off Mercedes-Benz hub-cap ornaments—hard to come by—with safety pins soldered in the school shop to the three-ray halo-stars. The appointed mission carried jackets, except for Bimbo, who carried a raincoat in which were strapped two Seagram’s pint bottles to keep the men edged. Pedestrians, the Other, quailed before the march of the Family and gave them the wide pass. Arnold’s children were hard and held their territory against one and all Other, coolie, fuzz, or gang. They weren’t often out in force this early in the day. They swaggered, weaving, prancing, inviting any Other to come on, man. The family band, two cousins, with transistor radios blasting, came along for march music.

  They reached the end of their turf and stopped. No one had lined it, like on school maps, and there were no visible border guards. The only sign of permanent divisiveness was the usual scum of oily motor leakings, dirty paper, white crossing lines, but the frontier was there, good as any little newsreel guardhouse with a striped swinging gate. The eyes of the Colonial Lord were hard and hostile, even though they were allowed free passage today. They couldn’t help feeling that old pre-battle nervousness. Their backs prickled; their shoulders went into that old hard-man, can’t-put-me-down-man hunch; their stomachs fluttered; they perspired, plucking the tight pants away from their crotches. Bricks might come raining down from the roofs, chains could lash out from doorways as they passed, baseball bats would crack their heads, and knives were whickering.

  The delegates put on their jackets; they were the new short ones, buttoning up to the neck and monkey-jacket tight. They fussed, twitching their shoulders, pulling down on the jacket skirts to make them lie better, flicking spots of dust, pulling up on their shirt collars, checking to see if every button was buttoned and every buckle was tight and gleaming while their women fidgeted, helping. Bimbo made sure that the bottles were strapped in well. Their uncomfortable ankle-high, elastic-sided boots were glossed. Their hats sat cocky, high on their heads.

  Papa gave the word: they took off the pins from their hats and put them into their inside pockets; there was no point in being antagonistic. Squatty Bimbo, the bearer, armorer, and treasurer, looked around and saw no blue fuzz and, half-surrounded by the Family, gave Papa A. the gift-wrapped package. It was their present to Ismael. Arnold put the small, irregular, brightly striped item into his pocket where it bulked. All the others—Mother, cousins, the sisters, the camp followers—scattered a short distance up and down the street so as not to look like a detachment, so as not to make any of the Colonial Lords, who might be a little funky, panic. The nearest insisted on touching Arnold and patting Uncle Hector, the war leader, on the back.

  “Go, Father.”

  “Uncle, keep it cool, man.”

  “Don’t let them jap you, Brother. Don’t trust; don’t take no shit from them; don’t let them lip you down, you hear? Show them who we are, but good.”

  They crossed the street. The turf felt different; it was Other country. The sun shone as brightly, it was as hot on this side as on theirs. But the dirt fallout in the air smelled different, choky. The people were the same as those in their own land, but somehow not the same. The shadows cast by the hard beams of the late afternoon sun made them feel as if they had plunged into mysterious forest darkness; eyes peered at them from every strange place. They looked back, across the street, where their men were fanned out, looking cool for action. Some of them were rocking to the pocket-radio music; they watched for the enemy Lords, or for the patrol cars to come screaming down the street on them to call it off. But most of all the Dominators watched their own for the first mark of chicken-funk.

  An emissary from the Colonial Lords came out of a store, walking carefully, openly, to show them that it was all dignified, friendly, as between equals. Some tot cracked off a string of pop-fire and both leaders jumped. Arnold smiled. The First of the Lords grinned back. They gave one another cigarettes and lit them for each other. Arnold pulled out Ismael’s printed invitation, schedule, and through-pass and showed it to the First, who politely said that, man, he took Arnold’s word. It wasn’t always so. A few other Lords came around with their women and stood, watching. Arnold reached into his pocket and took out the bright package and gave it to Uncle Hector, investing him with the leadership, for the state was truce, yet war. Hector, who was ice-faced, slim, and wiry, took the package and nodded at Arnold. He decided to carry the package in the open.

  One of the Colonial Lords, Willie, a little psycho, always pushing for a little fun, started to say “Mother”—a word to fight over. “Muh . . . Muh . . . Muh . . .” and grinned as Lunkface’s fists balled automatically.

  “Now man, ain’t you got a little present for me?” he said, mock-whining. The girls shrieked and pointed. Lunkface’s hair prickled and his fists kept clenching and loosening and tightening. A lieutenant poked Willie hard.

  “He don’t mean nothing by it. He only talking,” but trying to show that friendliness did not mean weakness.

  Willie, still not content, said, “No, I don’t mean nothing by it. I’m only talking. You know what that guidance counselor say. She say Willie disturbed and we got to understand.” He was banged again. Lunkface, short-tempered and stupid, kept stiffening, the action agitating from his fists to his arms and shoulders. Hector tapped him with the brightly bound iron and Lunkface relaxed a little. Some of the Lord women, who always tended to troublemake, pointed them, sounded them, cackling like witches, their faces transformed by old-hag hate.

  “Man, are you going to let them walk by like that?”

  “Are you going to let them put you down like that?”

  “Look at that; he queering you with a look.”

  Obviously, they hadn’t been told anything. One of the Lords backhanded a girl across the face. “Cool it, woman.” And that satisfied them.

  The First, looking bored, said, “Them women; they always troubling.”

  The Junior nodded agreement; they couldn’t be much men not to be able to control the women, but he didn’t say so. The Dominators put down the Lords because they were poor fair-fighters; they had psychos and junkies in their rout, and their women were no better than camp followers. They all hung there for one second. Arnold’s family watched from across the street. The First nodded at them, but what did that mean? Go? Stay? Bop? Arnold decided that it must be Go, and that they would walk in peace for the first time in two years, since Arnold had formed his Family and hammered out his turf.

  Uncle Hector began to march. His brothers and the Father followed. They walked it cool, showing they were friendly, but as men do, cool always and fight-ready. It was six hard blocks to the station, in daylight exposed, not in force and not on a raid. They saw a lot of men who might have been Colonial Lords, but none opposed their march. Their discipline kept them cool and neat. A few blocks to their left was the boardwalk and, beyond that, the beach. People were still coming down to the beach, but most were leaving, loaded with beach equipment. Couples drifted toward amusements, looking around, laughing. An old fart with a wicker basket and a fishing pole shuffled by and Hector thought what a great weapon that would make. They heard the faint calliope, the rumble of the rides, the placid wave and crowd-murmur from the beach. It seemed strange to Hinton that on a day as hot and full of danger as today, people should be sunning themselves, drinking cool, canned drinks, eating hot dogs, buttered corn, French fries, and knishes, fretting about no more than how they were going to make it home on a subway jammed with bathers; they didn’t know what the world was really like. He was tired already. He hadn’t been home for two days. He wished it was After, and he was in the cool shadows beneath the boardwalk, sleeping maybe, or with a girl in his arms. He wanted to see the giant fireworks display later. No more. Cool and in the cool dark; no more t
han that.

  They reached the station. Arnold and Hector talked about splitting up the group, for camouflage, sending them uptown on two different trains, but they didn’t dare. The Family didn’t know their way around. Who could control Lunkface? It needed two to manage him, and those two had to be Leaders. But it was important that a leader be with each group, and Lunkface was too strong to leave behind. They went up the subway steps in good order: no one fooled; no one jumped up to touch the roof of the staircase, no one pulled pieces of advertising paper loose, no one penciled the signs and no one wrote their names. Anyway, that was Hinton’s job. He was the Family artist. Bimbo, the bearer, bought fourteen tokens, seven for going out and seven for coming back. On the station, Bimbo bought them gum to keep cool and chewing while waiting for the train. He also passed out bread crumbs from the dough pile, seven dollars apiece in case they got separated and had to find their way back alone.

  In the Bronx, eight boys wearing sweaters despite the heat, and sneering looks on their murderous Irish faces, mounted the crosstown bus. They dropped their fares into the coinbox, moved to the empty back, and sat down quietly. The bus driver could feel the back of his neck ice; he recognized those longsideburned temples and crew-cut tops. Punky hoods. Trouble. They would sit there for a while, quietly until one would see something amusing—God knew what could amuse these animals—and he would nudge the next boy. They would start to stare, point, whisper, and laugh and finally to shout. Then the trouble would begin. They might pull, and keep pulling, the stop-buzzer. When the bus stopped, they would stamp and keep stamping on the plate that opened the rear door. They would curse to one another, slam windows up and down. Someone would complain, some prune-faced old lady, and he would have to make a stand, would have to stop the bus and go back and tell them to shut up and hope, if they didn’t listen to him, at least they wouldn’t jump him. Sometimes, surprisingly, they listened. Other times they cursed him in ways he hadn’t thought of. Not that he had been jumped yet, but he knew drivers who had been. He tried to keep his eyes on the road and on the hoods. He drove anxiously with his body, avoiding cars and pedestrians, while he worried about the coming trouble in the back.

  Boys hadn’t been like that when he was young. Tough, sure, but clean-tough. Nobody killed then. The world was cracking up. If the cops would only use their clubs. The punks just sat quietly. One kept folding and unfolding his arms, sticking his hands into his armpits as though he were cold. Another fiddled with the buttons of his gang sweater while his leg shook up and down uncontrollably. Another looked stupidly at the hot sunset. One even politely made room for a man to pass. And for once they didn’t sprawl insolently in their seats. For a half hour the driver waited for the inevitable punk explosion, but nothing happened. Finally, as he was getting to the end of the line, one of the boys rang the bell. Now, he thought, but they just got off. They stood quietly, talking as he drove off. Maybe he made a mistake, maybe they were just a school group.

  The snotty kid whose father owned the fat Cadillac sat, soft and stupid, between the two hard corporals in the back seat. When they drafted the tank they brought along the owner’s son, a no-belonging slave, because they didn’t want to get in trouble—not tonight. They half coerced him, convinced him, promised he would be high up in their councils if he volunteered. The kid looked worried, trying to toughen his face to be as bop-brave as the rest of them. You could see him working hard to feel like them, the two flanking him, the two squatting on the floor, and the three in the front seat. But he really knew that they only let him come along because he had gotten his father’s long black tanky Cad for them, and because he let them drive it. But he worried; he was a hot driver himself, but nowhere near as wild and terrifying as the boy driving now. The General, staring out at the sun balanced along the rim of the Jersey shore, wondered if they shouldn’t ditch the stupid slave before they got to Ismael’s rendezvous. The General thought how fine they must look in the tank, took out Ismael’s invitation, looked at his watch, and consulted the schedule. They were on time.

  For the fifth time the General told the driver to cool it, to drive soft and square because if they were picked up, man, they were going to be put in, because of you know what, man. The driver said that, man, he knew, but his hands stroked the smooth black skin of the steering wheel and his toe eased the pressure on the gas pedal and he said he couldn’t help it because, man, if you just twitch, man, the hair-triggered gas pedal made you know it, and you knew it because everything was like standing still as they went: Did the General understand that?

  The General inspected the driver to see if he was gassed, teaed, or liquored. Anxious, one of the men in the back, asked could he drive now? The General wanted to know if the driver wanted some hard-hand head-buster in blue to break a few against his beak? Did he want that? Because as soon as they were cop-stopped, it was a matter of the club touching on their kidneys and asses and the backs of their legs, as they would be straddle-footed and bent over in the far lean against a wall, or against the car. What then? There was no chick around to run off with Ismael’s pretty present between her legs. He knew, he knew, the driver whined, and slowed down some more. Why couldn’t he have a little fun and drive too, Anxious in the back pleaded. The General didn’t answer.

  But a few joy-kids, some clean school-snots with all-American crewcuts came up the highway behind them, moving fast and passed, looking out of their doctored junk-heap with the roar hidden beneath the battered and flame-stenciled red hood, looking at the sedate lines of the Caddy. They recognized that here were rivals, and they hooted and laughed at the smooth black mass of gleamy Detroit Iron, pointed them, sounded them and put the men down. Here it was not a matter of chasing them and catching them on foot, and fighting it out. These hot-rodders knew the way tanks went, and theirs whooshed and coughed and growled and the fake old heap came to life and was dwindling up the West Side Highway ahead of them, threatening to vanish in the distance beyond the George Washington Bridge.

  The driver couldn’t stand the challenge. It was a question of not being put down. The driver touched the pedal, trying to look cool, sedate, bored. He told himself, “Ah yes. Home, James, man,” and giggled. The tank hummed a little, and shot forward. The driver felt it, that subtle and exciting touch of power transmitted to his fingers, tingling them. They all wanted their tank to beat the souped-up heap, and they couldn’t help yelling, even the General. It would be nice to go by and just blast them, to show them who they were dealing with. Wouldn’t that surprise them? Anxious was hunched forward in the back, holding an imaginary steering wheel, which he kept wrenching around imaginary curves violently, lipping car-roar noises.

  And at first the heap got no further away. And then they gained on it while the sides of the highway, embankment, and river, ran past faster. The men squatting on the floor had to raise their heads to see what was happening. And even with eight in the tank, it moved without effort, with tremendous power, so that the driver felt he had the strength of the world here, and felt it like it was in him, and he almost had more of this power, more, even, than the General. The noises from the car imitator in the back became deafening and his eyes were on his own private road. But the General remembered himself and he told the driver to cool it, cool it, cool it! The Driver kept arguing . . . but man . . . saying that allright, allright, he was slowing up, and it wouldn’t do to slow up so suddenly because look what it did to the car, or to anyone behind them. And for one languorous second more his foot was heavy down on the pedal, giving it one last goose before he let go, unable to free himself from the throbbing feel of it.

  The General twisted his body, reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out Ismael’s checker-papered gift package. He brought it down hard against the hip of the driver, telling him, man, the next time it would fall he knew where. Did the driver want to dispute rank with him? Because he, the General, was ready—right now—to pull over to some private corner and show who had the power here. And the driver slowed down, promis
ing himself a little fun later on. Just in time, because around the curve was the heap parked by the side of the road. The all-Americans were out getting ticketed by a blue fist in a helmet, wild breeches, and too-much boots. The heads of the men on the floor shot back under the rim of the window and the driver of imaginary cars braked his lips. They wondered what would happen if they were intercepted. So much depended on their not getting caught.

  The cop, turning the corner, almost ran into them. There were about ten of them. They materialized out of the dusk, looking incongruous, brutal under the leafy, spreading trees. They walked beside the tended lawns, coming at him like the night itself. What were Negroes doing in this neighborhood? Were they an integration group? He’d bounce his stick off their skulls. They all had that same hostile face and he couldn’t tell them apart except by size. Were they a Muslim group? His left hand began to tighten on his club. Were they a gang? He read that they never left their neighborhoods; he had never believed it. This was a fighting gang. He tried to make it look as if he were innocently swinging his stick.

  It was not so much fear that disturbed him, but the barbaric anarchy of it. He had never seen such groups in this almost suburban neighborhood. Law and order had failed; they never came up here. Could he arrest them for unlawful assembly? Why were they here? Did the trees beyond them and across the street conceal others? What were they going to do? Were they going to beat up the neighborhood teen-agers? Or would they break down the house doors and rape the women? Set off explosives, shattering the Fourth?

  They all wore many little brass buckles on their raincoats and point-up shoes. Their hair was straightened, pompadoured high, held in place by wide, shiny black headbands. What was concealed under those short black raincoats: bicycle chains, zip-guns, shivs, brick sacks, baseball bats? He gripped his stick a little harder.

  The narrowness of the sidewalks forced them to parade past him in twos like a frightening parody of a military formation. He almost panicked into shifting his club to his right hand. But no one strutted. No one taunted. They kept on stepping, marched around him and were past, going quietly, not even looking at him. He tried to look into their eyes and see if they were hopped-up. They were past and it was all he could do to keep from turning around and looking behind him, but if he made a wrong move, angered them by turning, he knew their treacherous weapons must flash. They would be on him, beating and kicking. He was sure they were watching him carefully. He could hear their feet, receding, clicking precisely on tapped heels and toes. As long as he heard them he was safe. But had some of them stepped off onto the grass? Those shiny shoes were indecent on the clipped lawns. He grabbed his stick with his right hand. The thong caught on his left wrist. This was the moment to let loose. He yanked hard, sure that some missile was already flying at the small of the back, or the head. The thong slipped loose and he shifted his stick to a better swinging grip. He couldn’t stand it any more and turned his head.