Grief Street

judged them '^sufficiently painful—that is, too soft to leave welts on hared thighs and buttocks, which Brother Earl always carefully inspected—then the loser was made to return the favor.
    The day Fat Buns and I were hanging on the ladder was no contest. I won. Nonetheless, forty swats were exchanged.
    Here I had come all this way up to Rikers to punch out a guy named Darcy for upsetting my wife with a telephone call—telling her about rats, and something about King Kong Kowalski. But now, all I could see was this kid that all the rest of us little shits called Fat Buns, and that day...
    Those awful minutes the two of us were nose to nose, hands looped over a bar, a ribby boy and a chubby boy hanging like meat on hooks for the amusement of a sadist in a cassock; Harry sweating, and me as well, and the tendons in our young arms bursting just about; and the whole gym class dancing around, some boys looking away because they had known themselves this torture, the other ones jeering at Fat Buns; Brother Earl hopping around and clapping his hands and grinning like a future mayor, his crucifix swinging in an arc, visions of Harry Darcy’s pink fanny no doubt dancing in his head; then Fat Buns looking down, and crying, his thick fingers slipping one by one, his plump body dropping to the gym floor; and finally me crying, and giving Fat Buns twenty swats that grievously disappointed Brother Earl; and me taking my twenty in return, getting far more than I gave. I cannot remember what classroom infraction Harry and I committed that called for these swats, in the way that I have no memory of bad weather on a summer’s day of my youth....
    Harry Darcy wore his hair the exact same way as when he was a kid. Butch cuts at the Three Aces Barber Shop on Ninth Avenue ran forty cents on weekdays back then, a half-dollar on Saturday. Today it runs eight dollars, and only Tony on the third chair knows how to do it right. Darcy’s hair was still mostly blond, but if a person looked close he would see some gray. He moved the same as always, rolling from side to side on wide feet. His face was redder than I remembered. I knew what that was from. Only a couple of years ago, people could have said the same of me.

    “You shouldn’t have told my wife about the wreathings. She’s pregnant. You made her cry.” That was the first thing I said to Harry Darcy. He might have been able to read what else was on my mind: If it was the two of us hanging on that ladder bar right now, and you were the one to drop first—this time I’d give it to you good enough to save my own ass, that’s for sure, Fat Buns. But the next thing I actually said was, “How are you, Harry?”
    Harry was flustered.
    “Okay. I guess. Got a little trouble on my hands right now, but generally okay. Jeez, Neil, it’s been a hell of a long time.”
    “What kind of trouble?”
    “Aw, they got me going to charm school. You know.”
    “How about Darcy and I have a private talk?” I asked Musella. He grunted and wandered off, leaving Darcy and me alone. “What’s the charge on you, Harry?”
    “I crack heads too much. Not here. Nobody pays attention when you clobber big guys in the bing. They got it coming anyways—and more besides. Me, I’m always going after the herbs in the dormitories.”
    “Whose Herb?”
    “Herb’s not a guy. It’s a type of a guy. The schmucks doing life six months at a time. You know? Petty types, guys who can’t hack the chaos on the outside. So they do what it takes to get back inside, only nothing violent, since they don’t have the intelligence to be mad as hell. To these herbs, I’m telling you—Rikers Island is home sweet home. It makes me crazy.” Darcy paused in his rant. He lit up a Pall Mall and offered me one. I passed.
    Then Darcy started talking at me as if it was only last Tuesday we were both wearing short pants and neckties at Holy Cross, as if we had been best of pals back in those days. But I only knew him casually then, that was all. Maybe Darcy was hyper from the cigarettes and coffee. Maybe in the bing he was starved for sane conversation. Or maybe it was another one of those unaccountable times when people just start talking at me.
    I remembered a time... some foggy night of drinking with Slattery... when I bragged about how people talked at me, with no rhyme nor reason. “You have one of those listening kinds of Irish faces,” Slattery said. I said, “No— it’s yet another thing that makes me the