BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

— Twenty-two —

[The madness of the 1960s is in full swing. It all seems to have come to a head at Anna and Anthony’s wedding. Revolution, racism, organized crime, violence, alcoholism, repressed homosexuality, police brutality — man, it was just a typical wedding on the Northwest Side of Chicago. And remember, nothing ever happens in Galewood. Hah! Here’s the latest installment of the serial e-novel, “Black Comedy.”]

The old Mondi house on Natchez already has been paid for. So has the honeymoon in Jamaica. Otherwise, Al Dudek would take both these prizes away from Anna and Anthony. It kills him to think he would do so. For twenty years he would have forgiven his only daughter for everything up to and including murder. But this? This might be worse than murder.

Not only have the newlyweds insulted every single one of Al’s friends and business associates, Anna’s essentially turned her back on a carefully constructed world, a world in which she’s been able to eat well, buy every new style the kids are wearing nowadays, and go to good schools and get a college education. Al thinks: Anna, God love her, has never missed a meal. She’s never known from need. Not like me and Tree.

And Al would have cut off his left arm if it meant he could shelter his daughter from need.

Sure, Al is enraged by Anthony’s and Anna’s and Robby Waters’ performance at the wedding. Maybe the worst thing about it all is how Tree kept looking at him as if to say I told you so.

Sometimes…, sometimes…, Al just wants to give Tree a crack on the side of the head. Not that he’d ever do it, of course, but sometimes….

So, yeah, Al is hot. But as Saturday turns into Sunday, after Tree has gone to bed with her usual post-nuptial whiskey sour headache and Joey, that testa di stronzo*, has passed out in his room, and Al finds himself in his recliner, alone, the TV on with the sound off, he weeps.

It’s a good thing Al doesn’t know what Anna had Anthony had done after the limousine dropped them off at the TWA terminal at O’Hare. He would have cracked the both of ‘em on the side of the head — and maybe more.

They’d cashed in their tickets for Jamaica and got seats the next flight to Toronto where they boarded a plane for Havana, Cuba. Anthony had convinced Anna that they should take this great opportunity to visit the only true revolutionary society on this Earth. Not only that, there were the beaches.

So the newlyweds visit some elementary schools, an adult literacy education program, a free clinic, and even a revolutionary museum where they gaze upon a pair of Santo Trafficante’s tortoise-shell glasses, Meyer Lansky’s fedora, an outlawed slot machine, and even a poisoned cigar — a gift to Fidel Castro from his friends in the CIA.

And they go to the beach.

■

On the flight home, by way of Toronto once again, Anthony casts a wary eye at the stewardess who looks for all the world like one of those Up With People pains in the ass and when he is sure she isn’t eavesdropping, he whispers to Anna, “El Comandante, man, he’s amazing. We need someone like that in America. We need someone to smash the system!”

Anna nods and asked him to rub Jergens lotion on her sunburned shoulders. She can take Fidel Castro or leave him. But she knows better than to argue with her new husband about him. She’d noted the skinny, desperate kids in the Havana streets begging for food and stealing tourists’ luggage. She’d seen the slums behind Castro’s Potemkin villages. She has read about women slogging away in cigar factories while men run the government and business. When she mentioned these things to Anthony he responded simply, “That’s stupid. You sound just like a woman.”

She had a momentary flash that perhaps she was stupid. After all, Anthony was a Northwestern man — well, an expelled Northwestern man — but still, maybe he knew more than she did about this kind of thing. Anna didn’t feel particularly stupid but if that was the assessment of a high school salutatorian and bearded journalist and philosopher, who was she to argue? So she didn’t. It was easier just to lay back and get a nice tan.

◆

Anna and Anthony settle in to their new house. She stays home and reads and hangs curtains. He goes out every day to cover (and foment) the coming revolution.

Exactly one week after the couple have returned from their honeymoon in Cuba, Anthony goes to an antiwar rally downtown. The organizers — Rennie Davis and the MOBE, with no little help from Anthony himself — had hoped for a big press turnout. They’d forgotten that it’s a Saturday and none of the city’s newspaper editors or TV producers feel like paying time and a half for reporters and photographers to cover what will be, in their opinion, just another protest march.

It’s early the morning after the march. Anna has just bailed Anthony out of jail. She listens as he describes the events of the previous day. She finds herself wondering if perhaps he’s exaggerating a bit. After all, she’d watched John Drury on the Channel 9 news and he hadn’t even mentioned any protest march. Then again, Anthony is sporting a lip so fat she can hang her jacket on it. Here’s the story as Anthony relates it to Anna in the cab ride home:

“What? Are you freakin’ kidding me, man? You must have fallen asleep. This had to be on the news. Fuck, man, it was a massacre!

“We started off at the Federal Building, right? The pigs told us we had to stay on one side of the sidewalk. Can you dig it? One half of the sidewalk for five thousand people, baby. It was a set-up.

“Here it is, Saturday afternoon, there’s no traffic on State Street, I mean none. It’s downtown — nobody’s downtown on Saturday! But here’s the cops — right? — stopping us at every corner for the red light. Come on, now! Try stopping ten thousand people just like that. So the lights change and people start pushing forward but the cops stand in front of us, holding us back. Who knows why. People start shoving and the cops start whacking people with their billy clubs. Every corner, man, whack, whack, whack! It was sickening.

State Street, That Great Street

■

“They let us go on to the next corner and same thing happened all over again. I think the cops were diggin’ whacking people, you know? And get this — the cops weren’t wearing their badges or nameplates. This one cop, he was whackin’ the crap out of this little old lady so I go, ‘Stop it, man. What’s your name? What’s your badge number?’ What do you think he did? Boom, right across my face with his billy club. I pulled back just in time or he’d have broken my nose or put out a few teeth. As it was, he gave me this.”

Anthony touches his fat lip and winces. Anna winces with him.

Anthony continues: “So, like, the cops hold back a group of us at one corner but here comes the group from the previous corner and now you’ve got hundreds of people in this tight space. Naturally, they’re going to spread out over the sidewalk. But here’s the cops, whackin’ people on the back of their legs and their asses. They go, ‘Get the fuck back in line, hippie scum!’

“Some of us go, ‘Shut up, man! There’s no need to call us names!’ The cops whacked all of us who said that, too.

“Finally we got to the Civic Center, you know, where they have the Picasso? We had a permit, man. We were going to have speakers and some music and all. We weren’t looking for a fight. But as soon as all the marchers got to the plaza — I mean it, just as soon as everybody got there, twenty thousand people — the pigs told us to disperse. What the fuck, man!

■

“We went, ‘Fuck off, man!’ That’s when the pigs went wild. They started swinging their billy clubs like crazy. They were hitting everything that moved. Man, you can’t believe the sound of a billy club coming down on a person’s skull. I thought I was going to barf.

“We started running, all twenty five thousand of us, and the cops chased us all over the Loop. I mean we were dispersing, right? What’d they want us to do? They chased us just to whack us for the fuck of it, man!

“Man, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was out in front of Kroch’s & Brentano’s over there under the el on Wabash? You know it, you’ve been there. I tried to duck inside but this big fat cop — I swear to God he looked just like that cop from down the block. He goes, ‘Stay out of there, faggot motherfucker!’ and he started coming at me.”

At this point, Anthony is very nearly bouncing up and down in the back seat of the cab. Anna thinks: Is that a smile on his face? Anna realizes: Anthony’s really digging this.

He goes on: “Kroch’s has this revolving door. I saw the manager bending over trying to trip the locks on it. I knew I couldn’t get in there in time. I figured I’d run but here was this fat cop and he had two or three other pigs right behind him. I knew I couldn’t get away. So I said, ‘Here goes.’ I just jumped at them. Man, they hit every inch of my body with their billy clubs! They were kicking and punching. They were totally into it.

“I grabbed at that fat cop’s shirt and I tore off his breast pocket, you know? What do you think he had in it? His badge and his nameplate. They came clinking out on the sidewalk. I was on my hands and knees anyway so I grabbed for them. I could only get his nameplate. I jammed it down into the crotch of my pants. I was hoping they wouldn’t kick me in the balls because then I’d have this pig’s name on my sack for the rest of my life!”

Now Anna realizes she’s right — Anthony is grinning broadly. He digs the shit out of this.

Anthony reaches down the front of his jeans. He pulls out the two-inch wide nameplate and shows it to Anna. It reads Sanfillipo.

Anna gasps. “It was him!”

“Yes it was,” Anthony says. “The same pig who was twisting Robby’s balls off at the wedding.”

“I hate the cops,” Anna says.

Anthony corrects her: “The pigs.”

The two are silent for a few minutes. Because she’d had to bail Anthony out at police headquarters at 11th and State, the cab had taken the Eisenhower Expressway out to the West Side. The driver exits at Austin Boulevard and heads north. There is a Sinclair station at Harrison Street. A hand lettered sign is taped up on the inside of the station’s front window. It reads, Support Your Local Police.

Anna and Anthony see the sign at the same time. They both shake their heads. Finally, Anthony speaks: “We gotta blow this country up, man!”

To be continued

◆

* A Helpful Glossary

• Testa di stronzo — Pronounced TEH-stah d’STROONZ, Shithead

◆

 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

▲

BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

— Twenty-One —

[A toast — and an indictment. Anna and Anthony’s wedding reception mirrors the madness on the streets of America’s cities.]

◆

Anthony’s best man is named Robby Waters. He looks uncomfortable in his rented black tuxedo. He’s continually pulling at his collar as if he’s a dog straining against his leash. Before the wedding Anna had begged him not to reveal the fact that he is a division leader in the Students for a Democratic Society. She needn’t have worried — few in this banquet hall have the foggiest idea what the SDS is.

In fact, while Tony the Fist Pontone was ordering a Manhattan at the bar before dinner, he overheard Robby Waters speaking with another of the hippie guests. “We know which way the wind’s blowin, man,” Robby said. “That’s why we’re the Weathermen.” Tony the Fist thought it was nice that this strange young man wearing sandals with his tuxedo presumably was studying weather forecasting in college. Maybe, Tony the Fist thought, these hippies aren’t so hopeless after all.

Robby Waters walks up to the dais and coughs into the microphone. He wears wire-framed glasses that make him look like the intellectual heir to Einstein or James Joyce, except few people here would know this James Joyce — What was he, some kinda movie actor or somethin’? Einstein? Yeah, he was that guy with the frizzy hair, the head-shrinker guy, right?

And Robby Waters does indeed wear frizzy hair, like that head-shrinker guy. He begins his toast.

◆

◆

“I feel as though I’ve known Anthony all my life,” he says. “We met a couple of years ago at the first meeting of…, of….” He glances at Anna whose eyes implore him not to say it. He hesitates a moment more and finally finishes his thought. “… of a group of friends who, um, uh, like to talk about things going on in this world.

“From the minute I met him, I could tell that Anthony was a real mahatma, man.”

Rocco Bianco leans close to Mickey Finnin and asks, “What’d he say?”

“I t’ink he said he was a Momma’s boy…, or man, I dunno,” Mickey Finnin says.

Robby Waters continues. “Anthony Pontone cares about the world. He cares about his brothers in this world.”

Anna’s Uncle Louie whispers to her Uncle Frankie, “I didn’t know he had any brudders. Where d’ey sittin’?” Uncle Frankie shrugs.

“Anthony wants to make this world a better place, a place where the youth of America can grow up in peace and harmony, in health and happiness. We’re not there yet, man! It’s a sick, sick world!”

At this very moment, Charlie Solari and his wife, who are sitting toward the rear of the hall, near the restrooms, can hear Joey loudly retching in the men’s room.

“Assassination!” Robby Waters says. “War! Racism! Poverty! America is sick!”

Tony the Fist wonders why they’re teaching this kind of stuff in weather forecasting class these days

Now Robby Waters is on a roll. He doesn’t notice that Anna has closed her eyes tightly and is biting her lower lip. He can’t be stopped even if Anna would get on her knees and plead with him. He runs down a laundry list of all the evil, tyrannical, murderous, thieving, thuggish, racist, avaricious pigs who run this imperialist nation. Lyndon Johnson. Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk. J. Edgar Hoover. General Westmoreland. George Wallace and Lester Maddox. William F. Buckley. When, at last, he gets around to indicting Vince Lombardi and George Halas, Charlie Solari can take it no more.

Charlie Solari thinks: I’ll be a sunovabitch. I went into McCormick Place. I coulda been in there when the roof collapsed. I climbed those stairs at the Hilliard Homes more times’n I can count. I put out who knows how many grease fires in those shitholes the Chinamen call kitchens. I help the ambulance crews carry out the bodies of all a’them Skid Row winos. I been honest all my life except for that one time — that’s all, one time.  For chrissakes, that strongbox was just sitting there staring me in the face and it was like my axe had a mind of its own, and bang — it’s open. And ain’t God generous! Twenty five goddamn thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds, and don’t I deserve it for all the filthy Chinamen and bums and shines I had to save from their own stupidity? Hey, ain’t this America, where everybody, even Abraham Lincoln, can lift himself up by his bootstraps and become a rich man? And now this no good pinko, this hippie fag, this hopped-up little prick, he’s tellin’ me what the fuck is wrong with this great country? I’ll be goddamned if I let a little cocksucker like that tell me what’s wrong with my America.

So Charlie Solari quickly drains his bourbon, neat, and stands proudly and with the conviction of the only real man in this goddamned place with balls enough to tell off this little wet behind the ears punk lecturing us like we’re all idiots or little kids. Charlie Solari takes a deep breath and yells, “Siddown, ya goddamned little pissant!”

Robby Waters freezes at the sound of Charlie’s voice. As he stands motionless at the dais of the head table, he feels a rush of adrenaline. He feels as though his sandaled feet are no longer touching the Earth, or at least the faux parquet flooring. He leaps over the head table and dashes madly between the round tables filled with paralyzed wedding guests who watch as he takes a lunge at Charlie Solari. Charlie is as tough as nails and normally would pound a pissant like this frizzy-haired little homo but the warm butterscotch bourbon has altered Charlie’s reactions just enough so that when he takes a roundhouse swing at Robby Waters, he misses grandly and the kid is thus able to wrap his arms around the fireman’s waist and tumble with him to the faux parquet flooring, a tackle that would make both Vince Lombardi and George Halas proud.

As the two wrestle, a dozen men rush in to paw at them in an effort to separate them. Anthony takes the microphone and implores, “Peace, man! Peace! Let’s not fight! Please!”

Anna now pushes her plates and silverware aside and lays her head on her arms as if she wants to take a nap. Al is pacing and muttering, “This has gotta stop! Jesus Christ, this has gotta stop!” Tree sits calmly at table number one and sips her whiskey sour, smirking. Eddie Halloran runs toward the brawl, eager to get in his licks but the sock of his shoeless foot slips on the highly polished dance floor and he slides a good ten feet before the back of his head hits the tile. He promptly begins snoring, his arms spread wide like Jesus’ on the cross. Tony the Fist’s driver reaches inside his suit jacket and fingers his holstered .38. Tony the Fist catches his eye and shakes his head. The driver withdraws his hand and resumes waiting, patiently. Joey opens the men’s room door, eyes the scrum and feels another wave of nausea wash over him. He retreats behind the men’s room door.

Rocco Bianco has run over to the pile of grapplers and stops short. Robby Waters is on all fours, his left arm around Charlie Solari in an unplanned half-Nelson. Robby’s hind end is pointed toward Rocco. Rocco appraises the tableau for the briefest of moments and concludes that Robby Waters really has a cute little ass. He exhales broadly, purging himself for the moment of this deepest secret, and steps up smartly to boot Robby Waters in that ass. Hell, he thinks, George Halas oughtta sign me up to kick field goals.

Robby Waters and Charlie Solari are successfully separated. Five men hold Charlie back, their restraining hands nearly caressing him as if they are tending to the alpha dog. The five men who hold Robby Waters back are clawing into him. Some of them are pulling his hair nearly out by the roots. The neighbor cop, Sal Sanfillipo, knees him repeatedly in the thigh. “Try sumpin’, tough guy,” Sal whispers. Oh, how he wants this hippie piece of shit to try sumpin’. He wants it so badly he begins to feel the stirrings of an erection.

Anthony is still pleading into the microphone: “This is what happens in a violent society!” he roars. “Hate’s all around us! We have to overthrow the….”

His amplified thunder is almost drowned out by catcalls from the crowd. “Shuddup!”  “Sit the fuck down!” “Stick that revolution shit up yer ass!”

Anthony hollers louder into the microphone: “The forces that caused a white man to murder Martin Luther King, the forces that are responsible for the rioting, for the killing in Vietnam, for all the deaths in our inner cities, they’re right here in the banquet hall!”

Anthony points at the prone Eddie Halloran. “There’s your corrupt justice system!”

He points at Mickey Finnin. “There’s your corrupt ‘representative of the people’!”

He points his very own father. “There’s your criminal boss!”

At this, Tony the Fist smooths out his crisp Ermenegildo Zegna suit jacket, straightens the cuffs of his fresh Sulka shirt, and turns to his good friend Al Dudek. The two gaze at each other from across the hall. At last, they shake their heads in silent, simultaneous communication.

Al seems to be on the verge of tears.

Anna, of course, is not napping but actually deciding at this precise moment what the course of the rest of her life will be. She lifts her head from her arms and joins her brand new husband at the microphone. Her hand covers Anthony’s on the mike. “Mr. Brown,” she whispers. She pulls the mike down toward her mouth.

Anthony grins at her as if she’s given him the greatest gift a groom can receive from his loving, devoted bride, one who, previous to this very second he really didn’t know. And now he believes he does know who Anna Claudia Pontone, nee Dudek, truly is.

“Please,” she says, and, like that, the pandemonium ceases, such is the power of a bride on her wedding day. Some 250 guests remain in their positions as if a good witch has cast a spell on them. They gape at her, in her virginal white, her six hundred dollar Margie’s Bridal Shop dress cleverly puffed to camouflage the four and a half month-old swelling of her belly. She glows with that most fleeting combination of womanly beauty and girlish cuteness. Even Tree, who is half in the bag for the first time in her orderly life, drinks in the visage of her daughter, the same one she wrote off when she learned of the second pregnancy, and becomes misty-eyed. Al brings his hands together at his chest, almost a gesture of prayer, and thanks the God he has ignored for the past quarter of a century that his princess will bestow a redemptive coda upon this nightmare.

Anna scans the crowd. Her eyes hit upon the prone, spread-eagled figure of State’s Attorney Eddie Halloran. She glances at Tony the Fist’s driver, that fearsome block of a man with the cold stare. She sees the bouffanted wives of Galewood with their thick blue eyeshadow, their inch-long store-bought eyelashes, their dangling ear bangles, their painted nails, and their slender cigarettes. She sees her little brother Joey reemerge from the men’s room, pale as a hermit, all horked out. She notices her new husband’s best man still in the clutches of that loathsome cop Sal Sanfillipo who, believe it or not, has grasped the lump beneath Robby Waters’ trousers and has twisted it, producing the most agonizing grimace on the face of his victim. She sees Rocco Bianco, staring at Sal Sanfillipo’s hand clasping Robby Waters’ crotch and even from this distance, she can see the tip of his tongue dart over his lips. She catches the glint of the pinkie ring worn by Mickey Finnin. And finally, she locks eyes with her father.

Al Dudek’s gaze implores her to right this madness. Poor Pa. Poor Al. Helpless to stop the ball he started rolling a couple of decades ago when he accepted the aid of his brothers-in-law whose membership in the 42 Gang virtually insured the success of his new business. Poor Al. Poor Pa. Really a good guy but, man, so weak, so willing to sell his soul. Damn you, Pa!

Anna, the angel, Daddy’s little girl almost all grown up, takes a breath and with her hand still over Anthony’s as they both hold the microphone, finally speaks.

Or, more accurately, hollers. “Fuck this shit!”

With that, she and Anthony, hand in hand, run together out of the Nuovo Mondo banquet hall, adrenaline-drunk, a dead-on reprise of the couple running out of the church in Anna’s favorite movie ever, The Graduate. But rather than board a bus in the northern California sun, Anna and Anthony burst out into the chilly early April Chicago air, the sky still tinged with smoke from the smoldering West Side fires, police and fire still sirens wailing in the distance, and clamber into their honeymoon limousine.

Anthony pulls the door closed with a bang. The driver asks, “Where to?”

Anthony and Anna look at each other for an answer. Neither has one. They giggle.

“Just go,” they say in unison.

To be continued

◆

 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

▲

BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

— Twenty —

[Anna Dudek and Anthony Pontone’s wedding takes place on Saturday, April 6th, 1968. The city has just experienced two nights of rioting following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. More mayhem is yet to come. Read on.]

◆

The reception dinner will consist of Italian wedding soup followed by spinach salad drizzled with juice from fresh lemons. The main course will be the guest’s choice of veal piccata accompanied by mostaccioli marinara and french-cut green beans or sole meunière served with honey-glazed pea pods and carrots and risotto alla Parmigiana. Dessert will be a choice of spumoni, cannoli, or tira misu, although Joey has already indicated he will take all three.

The music is winding down, signalling that guests should begin taking their seats. The band, The New Colony Six, is one of Tony the Fist Pontone’s gifts to the newlyweds, a real score, everybody agrees, considering they’d hit the local charts in 1966 with the huge smash, I Confess, and have appeared on national television dance shows in their trademark colonial costumes. Their brand new single, I Will Always Think About You, is just now beginning to rocket up the Billboard pop chart. For Tony the Fist, booking them for this wedding was nothing — a couple of phone calls and boom.

After all, they have him to thank for getting their 45s on juke boxes throughout the Midwest.

The New Colony Six

■

The maître d’ gives the signal for the waitresses to begin rolling in their carts. The band descends the stage and will eat in the kitchen. Already several guests begin clinking their water glasses with their butter knives, importuning Anna and Anthony to kiss. The only two empty seats are Joey’s — he’s already horking in the men’s room — and Eddie Halloran’s.

Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Halloran wants to order his fourth highball of the young afternoon as the band leaves the stage but the bartender has stopped serving drinks. Eddie is incensed. He stomps out of the hall muttering the word fuck in all its permutations. He walks — or, more accurately, stumbles — around the corner to the parking lot where after a seemingly endless search he finds his Oldsmobile Toronado, which he was standing next to when he stepped onto the lot in the first place. He opens the passenger side door and fishes under the seat until he locates his emergency fifth of Jameson’s.

Eddie Halloran fills his hip flask from the Jameson’s bottle. The flask is empty because he’d drained every last drop from it during the wedding mass at St. Giles. No one had seen him do it, of course, because he’d ducked into a confessional to slake his thirst in sanctified privacy. He had not sought the good Lord’s forgiveness for his intemperance while he was in the confessional because, he reasoned, one needs a strong bracer to make it through another of Fr. Jerome’s interminable sermons. Our Father in Heaven, Eddie Halloran thought as the Irish whiskey stung his throat, is not an unreasonable man.

In Case Of Emergency

■

Eddie shoves the filled flask into his right rear trousers pocket where it makes a conspicuous bulge under the vent of his Marshall Field’s suit jacket. He walks — er, stumbles — into the alley behind Nuovo Mondo. He’ll need plenty of distilled strength to get through this goddamned dago dinner. These greaseballs cook everything in the goddamned world with garlic, for chrissakes. Christ in heaven, I’ll bet they put garlic in their Malt-O-Meal!

Eddie places his hand gingerly against the brick rear wall of the banquet hall, steadying himself for the short walk to the service entrance of the place, set in from the alley, giving him a little privacy. Poor Eddie. He steps into a pile of dogshit just as he reaches the recessed entrance. “Goddamn fuckin’ prick shit,” he says. He looks around for something to wipe the shit off his oxblood wingtips. He eyes a poster stapled to the utility pole. It reads, “Rats. Public Enemy Number 1! Danger: Poison. This alley has been treated by the Department of Streets and Sanitation, Richard J. Daley, Mayor.”

Eddie rips down the poster and mutters, “Fuck you, Dick. I’m the fuckin’ State’s Attorney. I’ll tell you who the fuck public enemy number one is.”

He does as well as he can with the stiff cardboard. Still, there’s shit bits in the awl-punched holes of his wingtip. Eddie shakes his head and makes a decision. He carefully removes the shoe and tosses it into a garbage can. Satisfied, he unscrews the cap of his flask and takes a long, well-earned gulp.

At this moment, another similarly braced soul stumbles into the alley. For Eddie Halloran, the alley is a temporary watering hole. For this newcomer, it is home, a place he has pride in. He’s not terribly pleased with the presence of a man missing a shoe sneaking booze in his alley. Why, it’s undignified.

The Alley Behind Mondo Nuovo

■

“Where the fuck is your shoe?” the man asks Eddie Halloran.

“What the fuck is it to you?”

“Tough guy, huh?”

“Kiss my balls.”

The man stares at Eddie for a moment. “Hey,” he says at last. “I know you. You’re that guy from the papers.”

“That’s right,” Eddie Halloran says. “I’m Martin Luther Fuckin’ Coon.”

“No you ain’t. You’re that Halloran. It’s a pleasure to meetcha.” The man extends his hand toward Eddie. The two shake. The man pulls Eddie uncomfortably close to him.

“I’m Billy O’Connor. Former middleweight champ of the world. I beat Tony Zale in Soldier Field.”

Eddie Halloran isn’t the biggest fight fan in the world but he knows enough to know nobody named Billy O’Connor ever fought Tony Zale in Soldier Field for the championship of the world.

Tony “The Man Of Steel” Zale (r)

■

“Okay, champ,” Eddie says, pushing the man away. “That’s enough now.”

The man is highly insulted. He balls his fists. “That’s the play, huh, tough guy? Tell you what — whyncha do somethin’ about all them niggers? Or they too tough for you?”

Eddie Halloran can take all the insults you can throw at him but one. Never — ever — imply there’s a tougher man than he is. Eddie Halloran has fought a thousand fights over just such a canard — and lost every single one. He winds up and smashes his tin flask against the forehead of the man who claims he was once the middleweight champion of the world. He wasn’t, of course, but matched up against Eddie Halloran he may as well have been. The man, in whose bloodstream is more alcohol than in Eddie Halloran’s and two other men’s, sets upon the State’s Attorney in a fury. His rapid-fire right hand pistons blows against Eddie’s face, drawing blood from his lip, his nose, and above both eyes. Eddie flails about harmlessly with both arms. He feels nothing, thanks to the anesthetic qualities of strong Irish whiskey but he will surely know he’s been in a fight when he sobers up. Well, not exactly a fight.

After what seems many long minutes, the man’s jackhammer right arm becomes tired. Eddie Halloran sinks to the concrete, dangerously near the dogshit he’d stepped in moments before. Somehow, Eddie’s white boutonniere has wedged itself between the fingers of the man’s fist. He pulls the rosebud out and flings it disdainfully at the collapsed public official. “Here’s your flower, ya queer,” he says. “And get yourself a shoe.” He begins to walk away then remembers to add a pièce de résistance: “And do somethin’ about them niggers!”

Eddie Halloran’s Wingtips

■

Some fifteen minutes later, Eddie Halloran feels recuperated enough from his beating to reenter the banquet hall. Al Dudek, Mickey Finnin, Rocco Bianco, and Tony the Fist Pontone all see his battered face and immediately understand that Eddie simply has just done what Eddie always does. Eddie’s wife, though, slaps her hands against both her cheeks and shrieks. It’s as though she’s never seen him wearing his hamburger face when, in truth, she’s seen it dozens of times.

“Eddie,” she hollers, “what happened?”

“I fell,” he says.

With that, Eddie Halloran bestows upon his long suffering wife a look which implies, Not another word. He calmly takes his seat next to her at table number three.

It is now time for the toasts.

To be continued

◆

 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

▲

BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

— Nineteen —

◆

It’s that special moment when the bride and groom seem to be an island unto themselves up on the dais. Anna and Anthony watch as the rest of the crowd swirls in front of them before dinner is served. Anna is Anthony’s tour guide, discreetly pointing out this one and that one, neighbors and associates, the people who make up the Dudeks’ world in Galewood. It’ll be Anthony Pontone’s world once again now.

Galewood Big Shots

■

Anna points out Mickey Finnin and Rocco Bianco and a passel of lesser local politic lights. There, she says, is Mister Adamowski. Ben Adamowski. Lives on the next block over, Nagle Avenue, in a nice bungalow.

Once a rising young star in the Democratic party, Adamowski did the unforgivable and tried to clean up Chicago’s dirty politics. Even tried to expose a bit of the unholy alliance between City Hall and the Outfit. As a reward, he was frozen out of the Democrats’ inner circle and eventually had to bolt the party. Ran as a Republican in 1956 for Cook County State’s Attorney and won.

Adamowski then tried to take on the corrupt Chicago Police Department and the even more corrupt Traffic Court. May as well have tried to spit on the flag and piss on everybody’s apple pie. The Outfit even tried to get tough with him and his boys. Late one night, one of Adamowski’s assistant investigators got a phone call; the voice on the other end said, “I just read your brother’s obituary in tomorrow’s paper.” Still, Adamowski and his boys helped uncover a ring of bad cops up at the Summerdale district station; the cops had been working hand in hand with a band of professional home burglars.

Adamowski figured he’d capitalize on his successes and run against Mayor Daley. Took him on in 1963. Didn’t do too badly for a Republican in Chicago. Daley’s Machine only beat him by a shade under 140,000 votes. Still, he was finished. The big powers downtown hardly knew he was alive anymore. The Galewood big shots kept inviting him to their kids’ weddings because they felt sorry for him. He was, they all agreed, really a nice guy, albeit not too bright.

The Hippie Table

■

Oh, and there’s Charlie Solari and his wife. The fireman. Lives up the block. Anthony looks at him and asks Anna, “That guy? I’ve seen him. He drives a great big Cadillac. He’s a fireman?” Yeah, Anna says. She tells Anthony the dirty little secret about Charlie Solari that everybody in Galewood knows.

Charlie was stationed in the Chinatown firehouse on 22nd Street, a mile from McCormick Place. World’s largest exposition hall. All gleaming white concrete and steel, big as the Empire State Building laid on its side on prime lakeshore property.

One night in January last year Charlie’s asleep at the firehouse when the alarm sounds. It’s McCormick Place. Charlie’s engine company is the first on the scene. Flames are already licking out 40 feet in the air between cracks in the concrete on its north side. Within an hour the place is destroyed. 60,000 visitors in town for the National Housewares Manufacturers Association convention are stuck in their hotel rooms with nothing to do. The Four Seasons are supposed to sing there the next night. Only there is no there there anymore.

For the next few weeks, all Charlie’s neighbors and friends want to talk about is the city’s second biggest fire ever, next to the Great Chicago Fire. Charlie only shakes his head and mumbles, as if it’s far too painful for him to discuss the destruction of one of the city’s icons. In February Charlie buys himself a new car — Caddy Eldorado, tan with a white landau roof. All the neighbors admire his car and tell him, “Not bad, Charlie. Not bad for a fireman.” Then in March Charlie and his wife go to Hawai’i for two weeks. Now Charlie’s neighbors tell each other, “Not bad for a fireman — but I wonder how he does it.” When Charlie comes back, he wife’s got diamond earrings on the size of chandeliers.

In April Charlie has a new roof put on his house. In May, he has central air conditioning installed. By then the neighbors aren’t saying a word. In June, one of the garbagemen starts telling some of the neighbors about a little story he’s been hearing. It’s about the McCormick Place fire. Seems one of the exhibitors had stored $25,000 dollars-worth of small diamonds in a strong box at his booth. Was hoping to give the diamonds away in a series of raffles throughout the convention, maybe generate a little publicity for himself and his company. Went to McCormick Place the afternoon after the fire and inquired about his diamonds. Talked to cops and firemen and the managers of the hall. They all had the same response: “Diamonds? What diamonds?” The guy says, “Yeah, I had them in a strongbox at my booth.” The response: “Strongbox?”

One day Charlie asks the garbageman to step into his gangway for second. Charlie grabs the garbageman by the scruff of the neck and says, “Hey, no more stories. Y’got me?”

Anna And Her Bridesmaids

■

And there, that’s Angie Zacharias. Sweet girl. Married her grammar school sweetheart, Randy Nielsen. They didn’t go to St. Giles. Went to the public school, Lovett. Still, they were nice kids. She works at Cook County Hospital. A nurse in the emergency room. Was on duty one night two years ago when the ambulance brings in a drifter who’d apparently downed a bottle of sleeping pills at some flop house on Madison Street. She sets him up on the examining table. Grabs his hands. Sees tattooed lettering on his knuckles: Born To Raise Hell. The resident on duty walks into the ER bay and sees Angie staring at the guy’s knuckles. “What’ve we got here?” he asks. She shows him the tattoos.

The resident had just read in the papers that the lone surviving nurse in the most notorious mass murder in the city’s history has told the cops that the killer had Born To Raise Hell tattooed on his knuckles. The resident places his fingers on the drifter’s carotid arteries and squeezes. The drifter’s eyes begin to roll to the back of his head. The resident says, “You did it, didn’t you?” The drifter says, “Yeah, I did it.” Within minutes, the Cook County ER is lousy with cops and reporters as Richard Speck is taken into custody.

And there’s Greg LaCasa. Runs LaCasa’s Realty over on Harlem Avenue. Lives just around the corner from the Dudeks. Always keeps his nose clean, Always keeps to himself and his family. A real hard worker. Then, out of the clear blue, he gets a call from the mayor’s office. It’s the mayor’s own secretary. She tells him he’s being invited to a special meeting of real estate men to be held the next day at City Hall. Don’t tell anybody about it, she says, just be there, on time. Greg LaCasa thinks it’s a gag and tells the woman so. He hangs up. Ten minutes later, Mickey Finnin calls him. Mickey yells into the phone, “Whaddya think yer doin’ hangin’ up on the mayor’s secretary?”

So Greg LaCasa shaves extra closely the next morning. Combs his hair for about five minutes. Wears his best Montgomery Ward suit and his tie clip from the Realtors Associaton. Takes the elevator up the to fifth floor at City Hall. Is ushered into a mahogany office. And there’s the mayor, sitting at the head of the conference table like Henry VIII in a dark suit. Bunch of businessmen on either side of the table. Greg LaCasa recognizes a few of the faces. They’re big names in the city’s real estate world. Big names!

And at the other end of the table, several Negroes. He doesn’t know who they are except for one. And that man is one of the most recognizable human beings in the world. Martin Luther King Jr. For the next couple of hours, Greg LaCasa sits and listens as the big real estate shots and the Negroes argue back and forth. Now and again voices are raised so high that the Mayor has to stand and rap his gavel on the table. The Negroes say, “There must be open housing!” The real estate big shots say, “There can’t be open housing!” Greg LaCasa never says a word. When it’s all over, Mayor Daley shakes Greg LaCasa’s hand, hands him a glass paperweight with the seal of the City of Chicago etched on it, and says, “Thank you for your wonderful contribution.”

Greg LaCasa takes the Lake Street el out to Oak Park, calls his wife on the public phone at the Harlem station and asks her to pick him up.

Guests

■

Anna points out David Pergler, a young news reporter for WBBM-TV. Everybody calls him Galewood’s TV star. She points out Sal SanFillipo, the cop who once broke his hand on his wife’s jaw. “I hate him,” she hisses. She points out Muggsy Collera. He’s a Cook County Sheriff’s deputy. Joey has told Anna that Muggsy’s always bragging about knowing where the pot fields are in the unincorporated areas of the county. Muggsy says to Joey, “Whenever youse wanna go pick some pot, you just lemme know.” That’s what Joey says, Anna says to Anthony as she rolls her eyes.

And that chubby guy there, Anna says, that’s Lenny LaFemina. Works for the city — who doesn’t? — but he isn’t a garbageman or a fireman or a cop. He’s a lawyer. He’s with what they call the corporation counsel’s office, whatever that means.

Anthony smiles at Anna. “We’ve got quite a lineup out here in Galewood,” he says.

“Ah,” she says. “Nothing ever happens in Galewood.”

◆

To be continued

◆

Next, a new riot. See you on Thursday!

All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

▲

Black Comedy

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

— Seventeen —

◆

[Sometimes home is a prison. The rehearsal dinner is tonight. The wedding is tomorrow. Somebody forgot to tell a cracker drifter pointing a rifle through the window of a flophouse across the street from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis that this would be Anna Dudek’s wedding weekend. Here’s the latest episode of the serial e-novel, “Black Comedy.” Read on.]

◆

Anna thinks: I hate this place.

If she had all the freedom in the world, she’d get out now — this second. She’d move to Old Town or Evanston or even Hyde Park in a heartbeat. She’d move to where the young people are, the thinkers and readers and philosophers, people who don’t care one iota about Buicks and Cadillacs. She’d move into a kicky little studio, say, filled with books and candles and posters and incense burners. She’d wear miniskirts and granny glasses. She’d hang out with interesting people: musicians and people who want to Change The World, gentle, peaceful people, caring people, people who go to fondue restaurants and subterranean jazz clubs like The Bulls on Lincoln Avenue or folk hangouts like the Earl of Old Town. She’d want to see new faces, different faces, fascinating faces — not the same old faces of Galewood: all those grim, suspicious, dull, bigoted, fat, bitter faces. She’s had her fill of greasers and Doopers, of precinct captains and bee-hived, bouffanted housewives, of syndicate wise guys and hypocrite priests and punks wearing gold Italian horns around their necks. She’d want to see people from somewhere — anywhere — other than this stupid, stinking hellhole. People from the East Coast and the West Coast. People from Canada and even England. Puerto Ricans. Negroes.

Pete Seeger, Harry Chapin & Steve Goodman At The Earl Of Old Town

■

But Anna is five months pregnant. She doesn’t have all the freedom in the world. In fact, she has none of the freedom in the world.

◆

It’s late Friday night. The rehearsal dinner broke up about eleven. Pa had his two scotch and sodas, naturally. Ma even had half a whiskey sour. Tree Dudek’s presence at the rehearsal dinner in no way implies that she endorses this whole marriage sham with that goddamned Anthony Pontone. She has merely decided to go along with the charade for appearance’s sake. Joey spent most of his night sneaking gulps from Chianti bottles at the various tables populated by Anthony’s ushers and Anna’s bridesmaids and their girlfriends and boyfriends, uncles Frankie and Louie and their wives, and Fr. Jerome. By ten o’clock, Joey was slurring his words and dropping water glasses and flatwear. At ten-fifteen, ashen and sweaty, looking like a guy who’d just swallowed an earthworm, he suddenly rose out of his seat and sprinted toward the men’s room, his hand over his mouth. He didn’t make it.

The resultant reek of pink vomit caused the party to break up early. Not that anybody was in a mood to revel into the early hours anyway, considering what was happening on the West Side. Mayor Daley already had declared a citywide sundown curfew for those under 21, a group including all the ushers and bridesmaids and their girlfriends and boyfriends. Al passed out get-out-of-jail-free cards signed by none other than Mickey Finnin to each of them. He warned them not not be smart-asses to any cops who stopped them or they’d have to answer to him personally.

Valid Only When Signed By Someone With Clout

■

Plus, Al had some business to attend to back home so he was in a hurry to leave.

When they get back to Natchez Avenue, Tree collapses in bed complaining of a monumental headache brought on by drinking too much (The ride home featured Tree moaning and holding her hand to her forehead, Joey snoring in the corner of the back seat, stinking of Chianti and vomit, and Anna raising her eyes toward heaven and muttering mantra-like, I hate this place, I hate this place.)

At home, Al hustles about, arranging the patio table and chairs. “Doan bother us out on the porch,” he warns Anna and Joey. “I got some people comin’ over. It’s important.” Then he turns to Joey and says, “You’re a goddamn mess. Go change your shirt and wash your face and go sleep it off. Cabeesh?”

◆

Anna seethes as she sits in her bedroom cradling her pink Princess phone. She wants to dial Janine but the conversation taking place on the other side of the wall, on the back porch where Al has set up the patio table and chairs, is riveting. Al, Galewood’s most successful semi-legitimate businessman, Mickey Finnin, the 36th Ward Democratic committeeman, Eddie Halloran, the Cook County State’s Attorney, Alderman Rocco Bianco, and Tony the Fist Pontone — they’re all here and each is expressing himself hotly over the events on the West Side. Unless Mayor Daley is sitting on his patio with Police Superintendent Conlisk, Governor Shapiro, and LBJ’s Attorney General Ramsey Clark, there isn’t a more powerful meeting of men in the city right now.

Anna’s window is ajar — it would be opened wide on this unseasonably sultry night only she doesn’t want to gag from the smell of smoke from the fires on Madison and Roosevelt. The men on the back porch are puffing away on pricey cigars and long, slim cigarettes, their own smoke a protective cloud around them, warding off the stink of the West Side ghetto going up in flames not terribly far away.

“D’is is gettin’ outta hand,” Tony the Fist says.

“I don’t mean to be disrespectful,” Mickey says to him, “but isn’t there nothin’ you can do? Can’t you get word to your people down there to put a lid on this?”

“We ain’t got no people down there,” Tony the Fist says.

“C’mon, now. I can’t believe that,” Mickey says.

“Believe it. D’is new generation of coloreds, they ain’t the same as our old friends from the policy wheel days. Them guys were nice, respectful businessmen. They worked good with Lawson and Jefferson.” He turns to Al to explain: “D’em was our men in City Hall and Congress.” (It’s important to note he mentions Alderman Marvin Lawson first, since he is, as a member of Chicago’s City Council, far more powerful than the mere U.S. Congressman Henry Jefferson.) Now he turns back to Mickey Finnin and continues: “If this would a’happened five, ten years ago, we’d’a sent word down there and — boom — everything would’a been under control. No more. Uh uh. They got these Black Panthers and all these radicals and Mau Maus and I don’t know what the hell all else. They don’t listen to nobody. They’re pozzo*, I’m tellin’ ya.”

Running A Policy Game At A Polling Place

■

“Jesus Christ,” Mickey says.

“D’at’s right,” Tony the Fist replies. “We’re gonna need Jesus H. Christ himself if we’re gonna put a lid on this.”

“D’at’s right,” Alderman Bianco agrees, for that is what he does best.

Eddie Halloran is silent for the moment. He’s got his usual Friday night load on and he’s nodding off already.

“I just got a question,” Mickey Finnin says. “Why can’t you send some a your guys down there, y’know what I mean? Maybe if some a these tootsoons* got their kneecaps broken they’d think twice about all this lootin’ and throwin’ Molotov cocktails.”

Tony the Fist throws his head back and roars. Mickey looks at Al and Rocco BIanco. They shrug. “I’m glad I can entertain you,” Mickey says, smiling mirthlessly.

“Naw, naw. Doan take it personal,” Tony the Fist says. “Nobody’s breakin’ nobody’s kneecaps nowhere. Lemme tell you somethin’. Daley’s got the entire police force on 24-hour alert. Ten thousand friggin’ blues down there. Shapiro just sent in five thousand National Guard. LBJ’s thinkin’ of sendin’ in the Army. What’s that — fifteen, twenty thousand guys? Buona fortuna*. I doan give a shit whatchyer readin’ in Royko, I ain’t got guys that’ll go into d’at jungle and deal wit’ d’em animali*.”

“It’s that bad?” Al asks.

“It’s d’at bad,” Tony the Fist says.

“D’at’s right,” Rocco Bianco says.

Mickey takes a deep drag off his cigar then points it at each of his colleagues. “We shoulda never gave ‘em those civil rights and all that other shit they were screamin’ about. Things were good just the way they were. I’m a Democrat all my life. I ain’t never gonna vote for them country club Republicans, right? But LBJ was wrong, dead wrong, givin’ ‘em those civil rights. JFK, too, God rest his soul.” Mickey crosses himself and continues. “They give ‘em what they want and what do they do? They burn everything down. Am I right?”

“D’at’s right,” Rocco Bianco says.

“Damn right I’m right,” Mickey says. Al and Tony the Fist nod emphatically.

Now the four men sit in silence and shake their heads at the stupidity of it all.

Eddie Halloran emits an abrupt snort, causing the other four men to jump. “Jesus Christ!” Al says as he and the others laugh nervously. He turns serious: “What about us?” he asks. “We gonna be okay over here?”

Tony the Fist blows out a puff of cigar smoke. “Doan worry about it,” he says. “You could go up and down these streets all afternoon, you’da seen half to t’ree quarters a’your neighbors out on their front porch, armed to the teet’. I mean it, d’ey want these coloreds to come over here. It’s like the wild, wild west out here. We got posses on every block.”

“Wahoo,” Mickey Finnin says. The four share a titter over that one.

“D’at’s right,” Rocco Bianco says.

“Yeah,” Mickey says. “The Mayor ain’t gonna let ‘em get past Pulaski. Hell, he’ll get LBJ to throw the atom bomb at ‘em, they start comin’ this way.”

“I dunno about all these guns,” Al says, initiating another silence. Nobody’s thought about the repercussions of hundreds of hotheads sitting on their front porches ready to fire pistols, rifles, and shotguns at the first flash of black skin.

“C’mon now, Al,” Mickey says. “These are good people. They’re not… whaddya call it…, what was that you said, Tony? Ahnny Mahlly?”

“Animali,” Tony the Fist corrects him. “The beasts of the jungle.”

“That’s what I said. Ahnny Mahlly. You Dagos are poets, y’know that?” Mickey says. “We Irish, we sing the songs and we love the drink. You Dago boys draw them pictures like that Duh Vinsy and you write them words like that Donnie guy.”

“Donnie?” Tony the Fist says.

“Yeah, you know ‘im! He’s one a’yours, fer chrissakes. Donnie.”

Tony the Fist turns to Rocco Bianco, the only college graduate of the foursome. DePaul Law, 1948. “What’s he talkin’ about, Rocco?”

“I think he means Dante.”

“Dante! Gee Zuss Kee-riest, Mickey!”

The four chuckle, then turn silent. They can still hear sirens in the distance. A gust blows up from the south, bringing with it another blast of smoke.

“Animals,” Al says.

“Animali,” Tony the Fist says.

“Ahnny Mahlly,” Mickey says.

“D’at’s right,” Rocco Bianco says.

Eddie Halloran snores.

“I’ll tell you this,” Tony the Fist concludes. “We ain’t gonna let no crazy niggers ruin everything we built up in this city.”

“No sir,” Al says.

“No way. No how,” Mickey says.

“D’at’s right,” Rocco Bianco says.

There’s a final 30-second silence before Tony the Fist speaks again. “Doan laugh,” he says, ‘but we can turn all d’is shit to our advantage.”

“What’s on your mind?” Mickey asks, leaning in toward him.

“This,” Tony the Fist says. “I got contacts downtown in the real estate rackets. You know some a’these people from the papers so I ain’t gonna mention no names. But these are heavy hitters, believe me. They tell me I gotta grab up as much a’this land that’s opening up as fast as I can.”

“Whaddya mean?” Mickey says.

“All these buildings they’re burnin’ down, all these two-, t’ree-, and four-flats? It’s gonna be a desert out there from Roosevelt Road up to Lake Street, right? That land ain’t worth a shit right now. You can get it for pennies on the dollar. You make your investment right now, wait ten, twenty years, all of sudden that land’s worth somethin’.”

“Is that what the big boys are gonna do?” Mickey asks.

“Not ‘gonna,’” Jackey says. “D’ey been doin’ it for a few years now. I know one guy that owns half the land around the Stadium.”

The Chicago Stadium

■

“There’s nothin’ there,” Mickey says.

“D’at’s right,” Tony the Fist says. “D’at’s why you buy now.”

Tony the Fist’s three listeners sit back in their patio chairs and stare into the smokey dark sky, contemplating.

Tony the Fist interrupts their reveries. “Am I right? Am I right? Now, let’s get crackin’ on d’is. We get together and grab some a d’is land ourselves. I’ll work with the big boys downtown to set it up. Whaddya say?”

Al, Mickey, and Rocco Bianco all nod. Eddie Halloran has nodded off for the night.

“Good,” Tony the Fist says. “Who’d’a thought it? D’is Luther King gettin’ killed might be the best thing that ever happened.”

Rocco Bianco puts his signature punctuation on the proceedings: “D’at’s right,” he says.

In her room, Anna places her Princess phone back in its cradle. She thinks, I hate this place.

◆

* A Helpful Glossary

• Pozzo: Pronounced POT-so, Italian for “crazy.”

• Tutsoon: Pronounced toot-SOON, a racial epithet of murky origin, chiefly used by Italians in Chicago.

• Buona Fortuna: Italian for “good luck,” usually used to imply impossibility.

• Animali: Pronounced AH-nee-MAH-lee, Italian for “animals” or “beasts.”

To be continued

◆

Preparations for the big wedding go on as the city burns. Join us Monday for Episode 17 of “Black Comedy” on The Electron Pencil.

This is a work of fiction. All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations herein are the property of the author.

▲

Black Comedy

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

— Sixteen —

◆

[Galewood is under a phallic canopy of smoke from the fires on the West Side. Jimmy the Jungle Man’s precious Mustang sits, wrecked, at the end of Joey’s block. Tree wonders if the whole world’s going crazy. This is the latest installment of the serial e-novel, “Black Comedy.” Read on.]

The rehearsal dinner is tonight so Joey’s not in any rush to get home. He’ll have to shower again and put on a suit and tie — So stupid, he thinks as he walks the three miles from Holy Cross High School to Natchez Avenue.

Joey alternates between main streets and side streets as he shuffles toward home. It’s hot for early April, about 82 degrees, with bright sunshine. The air seems hazy, though. Joey thinks he smells smoke.

The priests and brothers at Holy Cross had sent the boys home early today. Brother John Patrick made the announcement over the PA at about 1:30pm. Joey’d been drifting in and out of sleep during geometry class. Fr. Francis kept talking about the Pythagorean Theorem. None of his prattling would mean anything to Joey even if he were wide awake. Then the half-electronic, half-mechanical clonk sound of the PA starting up made Joey jerk awake.

“Your attention please,” came the voice of Br. John. “Due to events in the city and elsewhere around the nation, classes will be suspended until further notice. Buses will load in the gym parking lot beginning at 1:45 sharp. We are making the telephones in the main office available for those boys who wish to call their parents, their mothers and fathers, to pick them up. Under no circumstances is any student to loiter around the school or anywhere else in the neighborhood. You are directed to go straight home. This is for your safety. Again, classes are suspended until further notice.”

Joey’s confused. This is great news, yet the other boys don’t seem all that overjoyed by it. A few have worried looks on their faces. People are weird, Joey concludes as he slips out the janitor’s door behind the auditorium. He doesn’t feel like being crammed into a bus with a bunch of freshmen. It’s too nice a day. Hey, he thinks, spring is here.

So why not walk?

Funny thing, about 20 minutes into his trek he realizes he hasn’t seen a single other pedestrian. Nor any little kids out playing on the sidewalk. Heck, a day like today, you’d figure there be at least one or two kids selling lemonade out of a pitcher somewhere along the way, pretending it’s summer already even though the trees haven’t begun to bud.

But the route from Holy Cross to the intersection of Oak Park Avenue and Diversey has thus far been ghostly. Only when Joey hits Galewood does he begin to see people.

Seemingly every two or three houses, a single man or a small group of men sit on a front stoop in lawn chairs or on the concrete steps, some of them balancing baseball bats on their knees, others cradling rifles or shot guns in their laps, a few wearing shoulder holsters over their dago tees. They sit and wait. Many of them look tight lipped, grim. Others have darting eyes. Still more are drinking Hamm’s out of cans, laughing and making a party of it. But they all wait — for the coloreds, they are certain, will soon be coming.

And they all watch Joey as he passes them.

Finally, Joey nods hi to to Emo Fillichio, who runs a string of hot dog stands (and, naturally, is a long-standing customer of Big Al’s Meats), and whose house he passes at the corner of Wabansia and Normandy avenues. Emo, normally very friendly toward Joey, now looks at him through slitted eyes. “Whaddya doin’ out around here?” Emo says.

Joey is taken aback. “I dunno,” he says. “I comin’ home from school.”

“Whatsa matter wit’ you? Get home right now, stunod*. Y’wanna get hurt?”

“Okay,” Joey says, quickly, and he hurries his pace, although he doesn’t know why.

Joey turns the corner from Wabansia onto Natchez Avenue. He sees at the other end of the block the gorgeous metal-flake blue Shelby Cobra Mustang with twin white racing stripes sitting in the middle of the street, angled oddly as if the Jungle Man had tried to park it diagonally and simply quit mid-effort.

The Mustang is the Jungle Man’s most prized possession, more dear to him than his parents and all the friends and relatives he’s ever known. But there it sits, steam emanating from under its crumpled hood, fluids of different colors and consistencies flowing out from underneath. The Mustang is bleeding to death.

Jimmy The Jungle Man’s Mustang, When It Was Still Alive

■

Now Joey notices a huge old Dodge that has come to rest some fifty feet away from the Mustang, its passenger wheels up on the curb. It, too, is a goner, although its demise will be little mourned. It is pockmarked with rust and dents, missing all its hubcaps, its upholstery frayed and torn, its tires bald. As Joey nears the two cars, he surmises that the Mustang and Dodge have collided as one of the two vehicles — it’s impossible to tell which — came out of the alley next to the Dudek house. One of them was moving awfully fast.

Ma — Tree — is always saying that Jimmy Finnin is gonna kill somebody, the way he speeds down Natchez Avenue. “One of these days,” she warns time and again whenever she hears his wheels spin, “he’s gonna hit somebody coming out of the alley. Just watch!” She shakes her head and stirs her tomato sauce more vigorously. “It just better not be your father,” she adds a moment later. “Them Finnins are no good,” she sometimes observes when Al isn’t around.

The street is deserted. Under normal circumstances, the whole block would be out milling around the two cars. Kids would be running around, housewives would gather, tsk-tsking and occasionally yelling at the kids to stay out of the goddamned street or I’ll break your head, and a couple of old geezers would be trying to top each other with tales of wrecks they’d seen. But, again, these are not normal circumstances.

This is the day that a plume of smoke shaped like a big black penis hangs over Galewood. So the kids and their mothers and the old geezers remain inside where it’s safe for the time being, kneeling on plastic slip-covered sofas, peering out through sheer white curtains to see what’ll happen next.

The West Side Burns

■

Joey nears the Mustang. It appears empty. He bends over to look into the passenger compartment, the radio still blaring an oldie from ‘65, “Rescue Me,” by Fontella Bass. No, wait. The Mustang isn’t empty. Jesus, that’s the Jungle Man’s curly hair!

What’s he doin’, lyin’ face down on the passenger seat?

Joey hears gurgling, then he sees blood dripping on the carpet. He reaches into the car and grabs the Jungle Man by the back of his collar. The Jungle Man reflexively retches, bloody spume and several teeth pouring out of his mouth. He gasps as if he’s been drowning.

“You okay?” Joey asks, shaking the Jungle Man.

No answer.

“Ay, Jimmy! Jimmy, you okay? Answer me!”

No answer.

Rescue Me

■

Joey shakes the Jungle Man, gently at first but then more violently until, finally, Jimmy Finnin hacks up enough blood and hollers, “Stop it, goddamnit!” He spits out a few more teeth.

Joey tries to open the driver’s door but it’s jammed closed. He reaches inside again, this time with both hands and yanks the Jungle Man by the shoulders out of the car. The Jungle Man’s legs finally clear the car door and they flop down hard on the concrete. “Aw, shit” the Jungle Man moans.

Now Joey smells burning gas and sees wisps of smokes coming out from under the car. He gathers the Jungle Man in his arms and carries him into the house. Joey lugs the Jungle Man into his room and lays him on his bed. Ma scuttles in, already carrying freshly wrung towels and an ice bag. She kneels on the floor next to the bed, applies the ice bag to the Jungle Man’s forehead, and begins wiping the blood from his face. Joey steps back to look at the figure on his bed.

The Jungle Man’s face is becoming a purple and black mask. The front of his white T-shirt is a Rorschach blot of drying blood. His nose already is twice its normal size and his breathing is still a juicy gurgle. He props himself up on one arm and leans over the edge of the bed to spit bloody saliva on the floor.

Tree stares at the carmine loogy on the carpet for a brief moment. Joey’s certain she’s going to bust the Jungle Man’s chops for spitting on the floor in her house. To Joey’s surprise, she says nothing. But she does steal glances at the loogy now and again.

The Jungle Man turns his face to look at Joey. He wants to say something. He opens his mouth. “Bloof,” he says and then cringes in pain.

Now the three hear fire truck sirens. The Jungle Man takes a deep breath and whispers, “My car….”

Joey goes into the living room to check on the Mustang. It’s engulfed in flames. Joey grimaces. He returns to his bedroom. The Jungle Man whispers again, “My car….”

“It’s okay,” Joey says.

The Jungle Man, relieved, falls back on the bed.

Ma grabs Joey by the arm and brusquely leads him out of the room. “Go out and tell the firemen we need an ambulance — quick!”

Joey obediently approaches the driver of Engine Company No. 23 as he watches his colleagues begin to spray down the Mustang with hand-held extinguishers before the hoses can be hooked up to the hydrant in front of Old Man Joe Martini’s house.

“Sir?” Joey says. “Sir?” The driver flicks a cigarette away, toward the burning vehicle. He looks at Joey as if the last place in this world he wants to be is here now — which is odd because if he weren’t here now he’d probably be on Madison Street dodging bricks and bullets.

“Whuh?” the driver says.

“We need a amb’lance,” Joey says. “A kid’s got a bloody mouth in my bedroom….”

“That so?” the driver says.

“Yeah. Hurry. Please.”

“Get in line, kid. There ain’t no ambulances available. They’re all out in the land of teeth and eyes.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. There ain’t no ambulances.”

Joey runs back inside to deliver the news to his mother. “I’ll be goddamned!” she says. Joey’s surprised again. He wouldn’t have thought she’d be so concerned about Jimmy Finnin, the Jungle Man, of whom she holds such a low opinion.

She hands Joey a couple of towels. “Here,” she says. “Keep pressing the ice on his forehead. I’ll call the fire department myself.” Joey sits on the edge of the bed and mashes the icebag into the Jungle Man’s face until Jimmy pushes it away. He splutters through his newly-toothless and bloodied mouth, “Whaddya tryin’a do, suffocate me?”

“Sorry,” Joey says. Jimmy’s eyes roll back in his head. “Wait, don’t die,” Joey says, his eyes watering.

Jimmy whispers, “Not dyin’….”

Now Joey hears his mother dialing the phone. A few seconds later, he hears this: “I need an ambulance at 1619 North Natchez Avenue. That’s one, six, one, nine Natchez. N, A, T…. What? What do you mean?” There’s a pause. “We got a kid here who had a bad accident! He swallowed his tongue. He smashed his face into the steering wheel. We need an ambulance!”

Another pause. “The West Side? So what about the West Side? What about us? We need some help, too!”

A third pause. “What’s your name? Gimme that again. Smolinski? Listen, Mr. Smolinski, this kid is the son of Mickey Finnin. You know Mickey Finnin? Yeah. That’s right. He’s hurt bad, Mr. Smolinski.”

Mickey Finnin is the magic pair of words. Ma says “Okay, hurry,” and hangs up. She rejoins Joey in the bedroom.

“What happened, Ma?” Joey whispers.

She whispers back: ”He hit a colored man coming out of the alley.”

“What?”

Ma nods. Joey ponders a moment. “What happened to him?”

“The colored man?”

“Yeah.”

“He ran.”

“What was he doin’ around here?”

“I have no idea. Probably nuts.”

“The Mustang’s finished.”

Tree slaps him on the arm. She leans in and whispers in Joey’s ear. “Shush! He’ll have a nervous breakdown if he hears you.”

They sit in silence watching Jimmy Finnin for 35 minutes until they hear another siren. “Must be the ambulance. I thought they’d never get here,” Tree says. “Go out front and make sure they know where to come.”

“Nah, nah,” Joeys says. He has an expert ear for sirens. “That’s no amb’lance. That’s a copper.”

Tree doesn’t know, or care, from sirens. “Joey,” she hisses, “go out there!”

Joey stands on the front porch and when the police paddy wagon turns on to Natchez Avenue, he waves his arms. As the coppers pull their surplus army litter out of  out of the rear door of their meat wagon, Joey says to them, “I knew you guys weren’t no amb’lance.”

“D’at’s right. We ain’t no amb’lance,” one of the coppers says, flicking his smoke in the direction of the now smoldering Mustang. He’s mocking Joey’s pronunciation but Joey doesn’t catch it. The copper continues: “They can’t spare no amb’lances today.”

They Couldn’t Spare No Amb’lances

■

Joey only smiles, proud of his expert ear. “Y’know who we got here?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the other copper says. “We were down by Madison and Pulaski. The dispatcher musta said ‘Mickey Finnin’s kid’ forty two times.”

Joey leads the pair into the house just as Al pulls up in his Buick. Joey shows the way to his bedroom and tells Tree, “See, Ma? It wasn’t no amb’lance. It’s a paddy wagon. And Pa’s home.”

“Oh, thank God,” Tree says. She runs out of the bedroom to greet her husband. As Al comes in the back door, Tree says his name and Joey thinks he might see his parents embrace for the first time in his life.

Instead, Tree keeps her distance, as always. “What’s goin’ on?” she asks her husband. “Is the whole world going crazy?”

“Now don’t get excited,” he says. “We gotta think calm now.”

The coppers gently lift Jimmy Finnin onto the litter and carry him through the dining room. “Joey,” Al says. “Go wit’ ‘em to the hospital.”

Tree nearly shouts, “Al, are you out of your mind? The hospital is too close to the riots!”

One of the coppers says, “Naw, we’re not going to St. Anne’s. We’re going to Resurrection. It’s a lot farther away but it’s safer.”

Al says, “See?” He turns to Joey. “Now you ride with them to Resurrection. Stay there until Mickey and me come and get you.”

Outside, Joey climbs into the rear of the paddy wagon. Al and Tree watch as it pulls away, headed northwest, in the opposite direction of the inferno. Tree says to Al again: “What’s goin’ on?”

Al shrugs. “Well, if we don’t watch out, them black bastards are gonna take over.”

In the paddy wagon, the ride is bumpy. Every time the vehicle hits a pothole, Jimmy winces.

“It won’t be long now,” Joey says.

The Jungle Man stares into Joey’s eyes; he caught a glimpse of the burned-out hulk of his once-gorgeous Mustang out the corner of his eye as the coppers were loading him. “Thanks, Joey,” he says. Joey tries hard to remember if the Jungle Man has ever addressed him by his first name. The Jungle Man continues. “I owe you, buddy. I owe you big time.”

◆

* A Helpful Glossary

• Stunod: Pronounced, STOO-nodd, Sicilian dialect for the Italian, stonato, literally, “out of tune,” but commonly meaning “stupid.”

To be continued

◆

Preparations for the big wedding go on as the city burns. Join us Monday for Episode 17 of “Black Comedy” on The Electron Pencil.

This is a work of fiction. All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations herein are the property of the author.

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