was there in the sun, laughing, pushed up close together against the wall, that Judd first saw Artie differently. His face was no longer pasty but alive, his eyes shone, and his body had suddenly a lanky grace. And that night in his imagining, when Judd waited for Rocky, the king, to come into his fantasy, it was Artie.
Every afternoon they were together. They swiped another electric and whizzed down Cottage Grove. Then, while they were in an ice-cream parlor, a cop looked in and asked if anybody belonged to that electric. Judd almost piped up, but Artie kicked his foot. A stolen-car alarm must already have gone out. They kept their faces in their sodas until the cop departed.
Electrics were too risky, too slow, Judd said. Anyway for graduation he would have his own car, a red Stutz Bearcat. Artie was almost more eager than Judd for that day.
There it was, sitting in the driveway when he came home from Twain’s silly, juvenile graduation exercises. Red as a fire engine, and with a rumble. Artie must have been waiting around the corner, for he appeared at once, tested the horn, sprang open the rumble. “Just right for picking up gash!” he said. “Ideal for two couples.”
Immediately after dinner, Artie was back at Judd’s house. It was a moonless night. Max haw-hawed, and even Mother Dear joked about the two young men going out to do the town. Judd could imagine their remarks after he had left. “It’s a good thing for him to have some fun; he’s much too serious.” Or: “Let him sow a wild oat or two,” Max would declare grossly, using every cliché in the book. “Artie may not be any older,” Max would say, “but he’s been around. He’ll show Judd a good time.”
So the family stood in the doorway waving them off on their adventure, with admonitions to be home early, now, and don’t do anything wild.
The first thing Artie did was to stop at a drugstore on Stony Island where he said he could get the real stuff. “Your share is three bucks,” he told Judd when he came out with the pint. Judd knew that Max never paid more than three dollars a pint, so this was the entire price he was paying; but he gave Artie the money, telling himself this way he would have something on Artie, even while Artie thought he was being fooled.
Then Artie wanted to take the wheel, but Judd decided to establish firmly from the first that it was his car, and he would be the driver. Artie shrugged.
In the park they had a few swigs, then Judd said how about a fond farewell to the institution? They drove down to Twain, gazing upon the brick castle, dark and solid as a prison. “Why is it the tradition that one is supposed to look back upon one’s Alma Mater with affection?” said Judd. “All I experience is relief at no longer having to have daily contact with those imbeciles.”
Artie climbed out of the car. A pile of bricks was lying there, where a wall was being repaired. He picked up a few, handing one to Judd. There was a corner window, where old Mr. Forman always stood, whirling his watch fob.
“Here’s to Old Foreskin!” Artie saluted. They heaved, and glass rained down. Climbing into the car, they roared off. Judd was actually laughing out loud. “Too bad he wasn’t standing behind the window as usual!” He nearly doubled over the wheel, finding the image so funny.
Artie still had a brick in his hand. Judd drove to Lake Park. It was a crummy street, with few lights. A good street for gash, Artie remarked, though mostly professionals, and he didn’t want to get himself another dose just yet. Of course Judd might as well get the experience, he taunted; Judd was cherry, and never even had a dose. But it wouldn’t be long now . . . There was a pair! Slow down!
And so they coasted and blew the horn, but no dice, and they went through the same routine with other pairs. Then at one moment Artie spied a perfect store window and heaved his brick; the Stutz had wonderful pickup, roaring away from the clattering, collapsing glass.
They circled, stopped a block off, and sauntered over. Two men were struggling to block up the window—it was a shoe-repair shop—and a dozen rubbernecks had already assembled, giving each other versions of what had happened.
The owner kept telling how he ran down from upstairs. “Who do this to me? Why anybody do this to me? I work hard—”
“Maybe it was the Black Hand,” Artie suggested. Turning to Judd, he said, “Looks like a typical Black Hand job to me. This is just a warning.”
“That’s right,” Judd said. “The next time they give him the works.”
Police arrived and scattered the crowd. Back in the car, Artie and Judd laughed themselves silly, Artie mimicking the terrified cobbler: “Black Hand! I don’t know no Black Hand!” And the most wonderful part of it, sensed for the first time there, was that they two together were a kind of secret power, like their own Black Hand—they could stand right there in the midst of the crowd, and nobody could even suspect they were the ones.
For Judd, this was a kind of proof. When you were a kid, parents tried to make you fear an all-watching God, and ever after that you felt a kind of fear that if you did something, people might somehow see it on you. But there was nothing! Nothing showed! You did whatever you damn pleased. And that was Artie’s philosophy.
They drove downtown, came back up Michigan, and passing 22nd Street, Artie said, “Hey, how about going to Mamie’s? Come on, I bet you never even had a piece. Tonight’s the night.”
Judd felt the blood flooding his brain. He wanted to get it over with, and yet something in him was repulsed. “I don’t like to pay for it,” he said. “I’d rather pick something up.”
“Yah, you’ll pick something up all right.” Artie laughed, but they tried a few streets. Garfield Boulevard he said was good for gash hunting. They drove up and down the length of it, a few times spotting pairs of strolling girls, and once coasting slowly while Artie went through a long conversation with two stupid gigglers. The whole time, Judd’s head was pounding with scenes from Fanny Hill, which Artie had lent him to read. Despite his excitement, he wanted to roar away from the two females, with their smeared mouths. Why should a man have to demean himself to make vapid remarks to such brainless creatures, merely for biological release!
He had never allowed himself to develop a crush. The girls in his classes were all older than he. They treated him like a flea. There was a cousin, a year younger, whom he had taken to the prom, a wispy, fairy-waist girl, but she had talked all the time about who was in love with whom, and when he had said it was merely a biological impulse, and had kept on referring to girls as females, Alice had announced that she didn’t think his line was clever at all; it was simply disgusting.
But it was biological. And that was what dragged a man down. From way back, from deep in childhood, Judd had the feeling that the entire female mechanism was nauseating. Somehow he knew about the blood, from far back with that fleshy fat governess, Trudy. Occasionally at night the almost suffocating sense of her came over him. More often it was the girl in the war atrocity. In different ways—dragged out of her bed, or huddling in a barn. And dark female blood. Over her, the stiff-necked officer in uniform. Sometimes it was like the military-school uniform Max wore, buttoned to the chin, when he came home for the holidays. And lately Artie, he and Artie running from the cops, the cops firing after them, and Artie pulling him behind the telegraph post in the alley, laughing. And there in the alley, the girl from the war poster . . . Judd would surrender himself to his excitement, at the same time cursing the terrible need that nature had forced upon an intelligent being, the tormenting, relentless sex need . . .
That first evening in the car they didn’t have any luck. But one night just before Artie and his folks were going up to Charlevoix for the summer, they connected.
The
