A Hero Grows in Brooklyn Read online

  “You ain’t too bad yourself,” Jerry replies with a frown.

  “I’m new to this neighborhood. What do you and your friends like to do around here?”

  “Handball, bowling on Saturday nights, stuff like that.”

  * * * *

  As Steve arrives at his last period class, mechanical drawing, he’s surprised to see Mysterious Jane. In his last school, there were no girls in his mechanical drawing class, and she’s the only one in this one.

  Steve decides to take a seat next to her. As he sits down, he hears a kid to his right whisper to another, “Hey, the new kid’s picked the seat in front of Godzilla. This should be interesting!” Several kids start to laugh.

  Steve glances back at who is sitting behind him and sees this monster of a student. Left back twice, and a grade ahead of Steve, Godzilla is well past his sixteenth birthday and huge for someone that age. Steve gives him a smile and then turns to Jane. “Hey, how’d you get in a class like this?” he asks her.

  “Well, my class advisor didn’t want me to take it. He wanted me to take cooking instead. But I insisted. You see, I’m rather strange. I have two souls. That’s kinda rare. One is from a powerful spiritual leader—though nowhere as powerful as yours. The other is from a great engineer. I even figured out that John Roebling, the guy who designed and supervised the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, had my soul once. The way I figured it out was that whenever I go by the Brooklyn Bridge, with its magnificent cathedral arches and great sweeping cables, I have this incredibly proud feeling. Not just the proud feeling that many people feel because the bridge is an enduring inspiration to all who strive to achieve something that others are saying is impossible. It’s more than that… something deeply personal. So, anyway, part of me wants to develop the spiritual side of me and to have a family and to develop spirituality within my children. The other part of me wants to create great engineering achievements. That part of me is the reason I’m taking this class.”

  “Jane, if you’re through,” says Mr. Carmello, the classroom teacher, “maybe we can get this class underway.” Mr. Carmello is a big man with large shoulders and a slightly bent back. There are some deep horizontal creases in his forehead. A small moustache, dark and well trimmed, decorates his thin lips. After giving the class an assignment—they have to draw an engine block using a pencil, ruler, T-square, and protractor—Mr. Carmello pulls on the lapels of his well-worn gray sports jacket and asks, “Does everyone understand what they have to do?”

  Nobody appears to have any questions.

  “Good,” says Mr. Carmello. “Then get your pencils out men and get to…” Suddenly pausing, Mr. Carmello looks over to Mysterious Jane. “I guess, instead of saying, ‘get your pencils out men,’ I should say, ‘get your pencils out students.’”

  “That’s sweet of you, Mr. Carmello,” says Jane.

  “Okay class, now let’s get to work,” says Mr. Carmello, clapping his hands like a baseball coach.

  As Steve works on his project he bites on his lower lip. Aaaa, that angle looks pretty shoddy. I better erase it. Okay, slow up and get it right. Aaaa, it still looks like crap. Again he erases it. This time, ever so carefully, he tries again. Hey, that’s better. He looks over at Mysterious Jane’s drawing and sees his looks almost as good. She notices him looking on, and smiles.

  About halfway into the class, someone in the hallway knocks on the door.

  “I’m going to have to step out for a minute,” says Mr. Carmello. “I expect everyone to act like adults.”

  As soon as he leaves, Godzilla, the huge kid sitting behind Steve, reaches out and grabs Steve’s pencil. Upon the initial grab, the pencil digs into Steve’s paper. As Godzilla yanks the pencil toward his own project, Steve’s paper tears in half. Steve spins around and quickly sizes up Godzilla. If he goes right at him, he would be a feather colliding into a mountain. Steve screams in frustration, “Why did you grab my pencil?”

  “Because da point broke on mine,” says Godzilla with a nasty smirk.

  “There’s a pencil sharpener right over there!”

  “Your pencil was closer,” Godzilla says, laughing.

  Steve leaps up preparing to go at Godzilla. Godzilla leaps up, ready to counter-attack.

  Steve, seeing Godzilla towering over him, becomes so frustrated he feels he’s going to explode. “I know I can’t take you in a fist fight,” Steve hollers, “but if you grab my pencil again I’m gonna hassle you for twenty-four hours. And I don’t care what you do to me—I’m gonna hassle you for twenty-four hours any way I can. I’m not looking for any trouble with you but I’m not gonna just sit here and take your crap!”

  Then Godzilla spits in Steve’s face.

  Steve grabs Godzilla’s assignment and begins to crumple it while attempting to dart down the desk aisle. Godzilla reaches out with his long arm and grabs Steve by the back of his neck with his huge hand.

  Steve yanks his neck free, leaving two deep bloody scratches.

  Several kids begin to yell, “Leave him alone, Godzilla! Mr. Carmello!!”

  Steve runs down the aisle, leaping over one desk and heading toward the classroom door with Godzilla lumbering after him.

  Just as Steve gets to the door, in walks Mr. Carmello who begins to scream, “What is going on in here!?”

  * * * *

  Vice Principal Lantern, with his bright angry red face that matches his red hair, escorts Steve and Godzilla to the principal’s office. “You two are lucky I’m not going to handle this myself!” he hollers. “Since that student was killed, Mr. Imperiale insists on dealing directly with anyone who gets into a fight.”

  “A student was killed?!” Steve exclaims.

  “Quiet!” shouts Mr. Lantern. “Students are trying to learn.”

  “A student was killed?” Steve repeats in a whisper. “What happened?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss it.” Mr. Lantern replies.

  Oh, this is just great! Steve thinks to himself as he’s walking down the long hallway. It wasn’t bad enough to get Ron pissed at me, now I got this Godzilla guy after me, and some kid got killed. Great! Just great! Marone, my neck is killing me!

  When they arrive, the principal is in his inner office busy with someone. His secretary, as she adjusts a bobby pin in her hair bun, tells them to have a seat until he’s through.

  “Excuse me,” says Steve to the secretary. “I have to go to the bathroom to wash my scratches.” Upon showing the secretary his bleeding neck, she grimaces and gives him permission.

  When Steve gets to the bathroom, he takes off his one decent shirt. Spotting dried blood all over the collar, his face contorts. “It’s ruined. It’s ruined.” He turns the sink water on, looks at his neck in the mirror and begins to think about his first day at school—getting stuck with a pin in his butt, being put down at lunch because he’s on welfare, now this… and his friends were all in Bensonhurst… and his father… Well, Steve just can’t help it. He begins to cry.

  CHAPTER 15

  Steve doesn’t cry for long, but it’s one of those cries that pours out of you leaving you feeling like something awful was released.

  When Steve looks up, he gazes into the bathroom mirror for a long minute. Come on, I gotta get going, he says to himself. He shakes his head and begins washing. The warm water burns and the brown paper towels feel like sandpaper as he washes off the blood.

  Slowly, Steve twists and turns to slip his shirt back on, struggling against the wrenching sharpness of his neck scratches. When his shirt is buttoned up, he sets his eyes for strength and determination.

  Walking down the hall on his way back to the principal’s office, Steve spots a custodian’s closet door ajar. He peeks in. In addition to a mop and broom, there are several steel pails and a sink. What I ought to do, Steve says to himself, is fill the pail with ice-cold water and dump it on Godzilla. So far I tore up Godzilla’s project,
got him in trouble with the teacher and the principal. Now I’ll…

  Just then the custodian, coming down the hall, shouts, “Hey you! No students allowed in there! Get out of there!”

  * * * *

  Arriving back at the office, Steve sees that Godzilla is already in with the principal. The secretary tells Steve to have a seat until he’s called.

  “Not this hard bench again,” says Steve to himself as he sits down. “I had to sit here for over an hour this morning.”

  After a few minutes it gets pretty uncomfortable. When fifteen minutes go by it gets even more uncomfortable, especially when the dismissal bell rings.

  All the other students are heading home and I’m stuck here. Pete! Damn! I was supposed to go straight home after school!

  The clock creeps slower than ketchup from a new bottle. Steve goes over to the secretary and explains why he has to go.

  “The principal will be with you soon. If you had to go home, you should not have got yourself in trouble. Now you sit down and behave yourself!”

  With head pounding and feeling trapped, he cries out, “This is torture!”

  “You hush now!” the secretary hollers with glaring eyes.

  Sitting down and holding his head in his hands, Steve says to himself, I’m waiting five more minutes, that’s it!

  Five minutes pass. Damn! All right. I’m waiting one more minute, damn it! He goes over to the door separating the principal’s waiting area with the school’s classroom hallways. He puts his forehead on the doorframe. One more minute, damn it! The clock creeps. His clenched fists squeeze. His knuckles turn white.

  Finally, Godzilla comes out of the principal’s office. As he passes Steve he whispers, “I’m gonna fix you good for this.”

  “I ain’t looking for any trouble with you,” says Steve looking firmly into Godzilla’s eyes. “You leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone. But every time you fix me you’re gonna have to pay the price. Twenty-four hours. I’m gonna hassle you twenty-four hours. And I don’t care what you do to me. I’m not gonna just sit there and take your shit!”

  “You watch your language young man!” the secretary hollers.

  Godzilla, just about to respond to Steve, spots the principal coming out of his office. Quickly he puts on a smile and lumbers away.

  * * * *

  “Step in here, young man,” the principal says in a deep voice as he points to the entrance of his office.

  Steve slides his hands through his hair and complies.

  “My name is Mr. Imperiale,” says the principal as he puts out his right hand. A heavy five o’clock shadow is already sprouting from his jowls, chin and upper lip even though it’s only a little past three.

  “Mine’s Steve Marino,” Steve replies as he shakes hands with this symbol of authority.

  “What happened in Mr. Carmello’s class?” Mr. Imperiale asks, examining Steve’s neck, his face contorting.

  “I was working on my mechanical drawing assignment when the teacher had to go out in the hall. Then this Godzilla character, he grabs my pencil, and he just doesn’t grab it, but he digs it into my drawing, ruining it.”

  “First of all,” says Mr. Imperiale, “the boy you had a fight with, his name is Warren, not Godzilla. He hates it when the other students call him Godzilla. Is that what you called him when he started in with you?”

  “No!” answers Steve. “I just heard the other kids call him that when I was trying to get away from him.”

  “Well, I don’t want to hear you referring to him anymore in any other way than Warren. Do you agree to that?”

  “Sure, Mr. Imperiale. I ain’t looking for any trouble with anyone.”

  “Go ahead, Steve finish telling me your side of the story.”

  “Well, when he ruined my assignment and I asked him why he did it, he says it was because his pencil point broke. The way he said it and all, well, he had this smirk and I knew he was giving me a pile of…”

  “Watch it young man!”

  “Sorry. Anyways, I told this here Warren guy that if he hassles me again, I’m gonna hassle him for twenty-four hours any way I can, and then we’ll start over like nothing happened, even if I get the worse of the deal. Each time he hassles me, I’ll hassle back for twenty-four hours. I guess he didn’t like what I said because he spit in my face. So I grabbed his assignment and tore it up, and as I was trying to get away, he grabbed my neck.”

  Mr. Imperiale scratches his chin. After a few moments, he says, “Where’d you get this idea about hassling someone for twenty-four hours and then letting the argument drop even if you get the worse of the deal?”

  “It started with this motto I’d hear in the streets every now and then. It goes, ‘It doesn’t matter if you win or lose a fight as long as the guy who started it ends up knowing he was in one.’ I got the rest kinda from this cartoon I saw and from trying to deal with my brother Pete. In this cartoon there were these two families—the Hatfields and the McCoys. They lived in Appalachia and they were fighting for years, for generations even. Nobody even remembered what started the feud. But they kept fighting anyway—mothers, fathers, and children, generation after generation would be blown away. At some point you gotta stop. I figure twenty-four hours seems like a fair amount. Every time you try a truce, maybe the other guy goes for it. It’s worth a try. I mean even if you get the worst of the deal while you’re feuding, it’s worth a try because, well, first of all, by then the guy who started it knows you gave him some trouble—and also because I personally got better things to do than feud, capeesh?”

  “I capeesh,” says Mr. Imperiale.

  “Another way I got the idea was from my brother, Pete. Even though I’m a lot bigger than Pete, I learned it pays to get along with him because he can do little things to me that’s more of a hassle than a punch in the nose. Like, he’ll start screaming when I’m watching my favorite TV program and if I beat him up and twist his arm till he swears he’ll stop, two minutes later he’s making a racket with his train set. Before I know it, I’ve missed my whole show. Anyway, I’ve learned that being a lot bigger than a guy doesn’t mean you don’t have to get along with him.”

  “Hmm, very interesting,” says Mr. Imperiale. He gets up and walks around his office, stopping to straighten out some papers on his fine oak desk, then to look at a picture on the wall of himself as a young Fordham University halfback, and then to look out his window. Standing in a courtyard is a sturdy maple tree with its mostly bare limbs blowing in the late November breeze. Very recently it had been ablaze, but now it looks so dreary.

  Returning to his seat beside Steve, Mr. Imperiale sits down, scratches his chin, and says, “Steve, your plan has some merit to it. But it also has an element of serious risk. There are some people who would seriously hurt you—even kill you—rather than settle peacefully. The sacrifice you make in waging a conflict might not be worth a fair settlement. Choose your fights carefully, Steve. Choose by weighing the good things and bad things about one plan and then contrast these with that of other plans. For example, your plan, in some ways, is kind of a ‘get back’ plan. That is, if a guy does something bad to you, you try to get back at him by doing something bad to him. Your plan does have two rather original elements. You let the other guy know you’ll leave him alone if he leaves you alone. You then let the other guy know you will only hassle him for twenty-four hours and then you’ll return to peace. Let’s look at the pros and cons of this.”

  Then Mr. Imperiale pulls his seat around so it is side by side with Steve’s. He takes out a pen and begins writing.

  PLAN 1 (Steve’s ‘get back’ strategy)

  Pro

  1. Steve can bring about a desired change even with kids much bigger than him.

  2. There is a chance of peace every twenty-four hours.

  3. Some kids will be discouraged from hassling Steve because they wouldn’t want to pay his price.


  4. Some kids will respect Steve because he stood up to somebody much bigger than him.

  Con

  1. It takes time and energy to do bad things to someone for twenty-four hours.

  2. Steve got spit on.

  3. Steve got his neck scratched.

  4. Warren can do other bad things to Steve in the future.

  5. Some people, when threatened, would seriously hurt Steve, maybe even kill him.

  After making this list, the principal says, “Let’s consider another plan. I think Warren started in with you because he knew you’re new here. Without friends to back you up, he thought he could get on your case without any problems. What do you think might have happened if you would have waited until you made friends here at Cunningham before taking any action to deal with Warren?”

  Mr. Imperiale and Steve make a list that looks like this.

  PLAN 2 (Put off action to deal with Warren until Steve makes friends.)

  Pro

  1. Steve’s neck probably wouldn’t have been scratched.

  2. Steve might not have gotten spit on.

  3. Steve would be home now instead of staying after school.

  4. In time, Steve could get enough friends to discourage Warren from hassling him.

  Con

  1. Steve would have still lost his pencil.

  2. Steve’s project would have still been ruined.

  3. Warren could do other bad things to Steve.

  4. Steve wouldn’t get as much respect from kids as a ‘get back’ strategy. (Though some kids might have lost respect for Steve because they might have thought he was pretty stupid to start a fight with Warren.)

  “I’m not going to ask you to decide now which plan is the better,” says Mr. Imperiale. “Just think about it over the next few days, okay?”