Brooklyn Noir by Tim McLoughlin Page B
Authors: Tim McLoughlin
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Crime, Short Stories, American Fiction, New York, New York (State), Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Detective and Mystery Stories; American, Brooklyn (New York; N.Y.), American fiction - New York (State) - New York, Noir fiction; American
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leave without first reckoning with me, as a housecat might tuck her body within the lining of a suitcase her owner was packing for a journey, not-so-subtly notifying her master,
You’re not going anywhere unless you take me, too.
As if the cat, no matter how well-loved, had any say at all in the matter.
Every day he left without taking me, until I was twelve and
God damn it to Hell
he died and stopped
no
taking me.
Before he pulled that stunt, he kept on pledging and daring me to go. I’d dare him back with a fiercely incautious,
You’d better believe it!
As if I, no matter how well-loved, had any say at all in the matter.
Every one of New York City’s children grew up in the shadows of bridges. A smaller subset grew up or died in the penumbrae of bridge deaths. Child endangerment was a Class A misdemeanor, as naughty as a misdemeanor could be before it graduated up a grade to felony. So it was one crime, child endangerment, if I hung around bridge bases when school was out so Dad could half-look after me—babysitters and summer camp didn’t exist in our economic cosmology, the unfeasibility of camp accounting for my never learning how to swim—and it was another crime, child neglect—which was often a felony, not to mention a big fat bore—if he left me alone at home.
An outlaw either way.
Even when school was in session, most of the guys in all the gangs brought their sons to work, where they received their real education. Bridge-building was existence itself, what their fathers before them had done, what their sons after them would probably do. Ironworkers formed multi-generational lines of risk-takers, cold-nerved men bonded together like the high steel it was a life’s assignment to connect. Those burly, balletic men—who took chances only circus acrobats, suicidal souls, Wallendas, or bridgemen would take, who pronounced me
cuter than a button
, who bear-hugged me
till the guacamole would come outa them ears
, who gave me quarters just because I was Lefty Tedesky’s girl—were criminals? Plain as day, it couldn’t have been a crime when Chicky Testaverde, who spun cable, brought his fourteen-year-old, Danny, to a job, and it couldn’t have been a crime when a tall ladder caught Danny’s curious eye, and the boy asked, “Can I climb that?”
Chicky replied, in a resigned, benumbed,
oh-no-here’s-where-it-all-begins
voice, “Awright, but don’t fall.” Could Chicky authoritatively have refused, without Danny laughing in his face as father and son stood right there on a bridge-construction site, where Chicky was now working iron, where both might have been remembering that Chicky’s father, Danny’s grandfather, had worked the Williamsburg Bridge, lifting steel beams with derricks pulled by horses?
Danny climbed that ladder higher and higher, until he stood alone on a slippery top beam—a beam much higher than Chicky had bargained for or would have allowed if Danny had asked—and looked around, taking in the world’s magnitude, and marveled at how extraordinarily far he could see from that height, and instantly decided that ironwork was what he’d someday do. Down at the base, Chicky went all-out ape. “Get down, Danny, you crazy fuck, damn you! You’ll kill yourself up there. And if you die, Danny boy? You know what’ll happen if you die?” Danny smiled down at everyone, smiled what the men called a
shit-eating grin.
I couldn’t see how eating shit was anything to grin about, but I figured adults knew things I was too young to understand. “If you die,” Chicky screamed at the sky, “I. Will. Fucking. Kill. You.”
Wearing an
aw-shucks-I’m-caught-but-I’m-cute
mug, Danny climbed down. Everyone, high and low—physically, up on the bridge and down at the base, and professionally, at every station within high steel’s complex system of ranking its men—applauded and cheered. One after another, ironworkers thumped his back hard; sometimes truly to hurt him, because
You’re not going anywhere unless you take me, too.
As if the cat, no matter how well-loved, had any say at all in the matter.
Every day he left without taking me, until I was twelve and
God damn it to Hell
he died and stopped
no
taking me.
Before he pulled that stunt, he kept on pledging and daring me to go. I’d dare him back with a fiercely incautious,
You’d better believe it!
As if I, no matter how well-loved, had any say at all in the matter.
Every one of New York City’s children grew up in the shadows of bridges. A smaller subset grew up or died in the penumbrae of bridge deaths. Child endangerment was a Class A misdemeanor, as naughty as a misdemeanor could be before it graduated up a grade to felony. So it was one crime, child endangerment, if I hung around bridge bases when school was out so Dad could half-look after me—babysitters and summer camp didn’t exist in our economic cosmology, the unfeasibility of camp accounting for my never learning how to swim—and it was another crime, child neglect—which was often a felony, not to mention a big fat bore—if he left me alone at home.
An outlaw either way.
Even when school was in session, most of the guys in all the gangs brought their sons to work, where they received their real education. Bridge-building was existence itself, what their fathers before them had done, what their sons after them would probably do. Ironworkers formed multi-generational lines of risk-takers, cold-nerved men bonded together like the high steel it was a life’s assignment to connect. Those burly, balletic men—who took chances only circus acrobats, suicidal souls, Wallendas, or bridgemen would take, who pronounced me
cuter than a button
, who bear-hugged me
till the guacamole would come outa them ears
, who gave me quarters just because I was Lefty Tedesky’s girl—were criminals? Plain as day, it couldn’t have been a crime when Chicky Testaverde, who spun cable, brought his fourteen-year-old, Danny, to a job, and it couldn’t have been a crime when a tall ladder caught Danny’s curious eye, and the boy asked, “Can I climb that?”
Chicky replied, in a resigned, benumbed,
oh-no-here’s-where-it-all-begins
voice, “Awright, but don’t fall.” Could Chicky authoritatively have refused, without Danny laughing in his face as father and son stood right there on a bridge-construction site, where Chicky was now working iron, where both might have been remembering that Chicky’s father, Danny’s grandfather, had worked the Williamsburg Bridge, lifting steel beams with derricks pulled by horses?
Danny climbed that ladder higher and higher, until he stood alone on a slippery top beam—a beam much higher than Chicky had bargained for or would have allowed if Danny had asked—and looked around, taking in the world’s magnitude, and marveled at how extraordinarily far he could see from that height, and instantly decided that ironwork was what he’d someday do. Down at the base, Chicky went all-out ape. “Get down, Danny, you crazy fuck, damn you! You’ll kill yourself up there. And if you die, Danny boy? You know what’ll happen if you die?” Danny smiled down at everyone, smiled what the men called a
shit-eating grin.
I couldn’t see how eating shit was anything to grin about, but I figured adults knew things I was too young to understand. “If you die,” Chicky screamed at the sky, “I. Will. Fucking. Kill. You.”
Wearing an
aw-shucks-I’m-caught-but-I’m-cute
mug, Danny climbed down. Everyone, high and low—physically, up on the bridge and down at the base, and professionally, at every station within high steel’s complex system of ranking its men—applauded and cheered. One after another, ironworkers thumped his back hard; sometimes truly to hurt him, because
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