Harry Grey - The Hoods

Cockeye Hymie leaned excitedly across his desk. His blue eyes were completely out of focus. His manner was insistent and earnest. His tone was obsequious.

Hey, Max, aw, hey, Max. Listen, will yuh, Max? he pleaded.

Big Maxie darted a glance at our teacher, old Safety-Pin Mons, sitting sternly at her desk far up front, at the head of our seventh grade class. He put his paper-bound Western on his lap and looked disgustedly at Cockeye. His eyes were sharp and direct; his manner, calm and authoritative. His tone was disdainful.

Why don't you just read your book and shut up?

He picked up his Western and muttered, Pain in the ass.

At that rebuke, Cockeye gave Maxie a hurt and reproachful look. He slouched back in his seat, sulking, feeling abused. Maxie eyed him good humoredly over the top of his book.

Resigned, he whispered, All right, all right, Cockeye, what's on your mind?

Cockeye hesitated. His excitement had cooled somewhat from Maxie's chiding. You could tell because his eyes were back to normal focus.

I dunno. I was just thinking, he said.

Thinking? About what? Max was getting impatient.

How about we skip school and go out West and join up with Jesse James and his gang?

Big Maxie gave Cockeye a look of deep disgust. Slowly he untangled his long legs from under the small desk. He stretched his long muscular arms leisurely, far above his head. He yawned, and nudged me with his knee. In wise-guy fashion he spoke through the corner of his mouth: Hey, Noodles, did you hear the dumb cluck? I ask you? How can one guy be so dumb? Go ahead, you talk to him. Jesus, what a shmuck.

He's a shmuck with ear laps, I agreed. I leaned over to Cockeye, with my habitual sneer of superiority, and said: Why don't you use your noodle? Them guys are dead, long ago.

Dead? Cockeye repeated, crestfallen.

Yeh, dead, you cluck, I sneered.

He smirked, You know everything. You got some noodle on your shoulders. Hey, Noodles? He gave me a sycophantic laugh. I ate up his flattery. He put it on thicker. You're smart, that's why they call you Noodles, hey, Noodles? He laughed again in the same fawning manner.

I shrugged in false modesty, and turned to Max, What else can you expect from a putsy like Cockeye?

Expect what, about Cockeye, Noodles? tough-looking Patsy asked. He sat on the other side of Max.

Miss Mons shot a warning angry glance in our direction. We ignored her.

Patsy brushed his black abundant hair away from his bushy eyebrows with a defiant push. He affected a snarl by curling the corner of his upper lip, making his most commonplace utterance a challenge. In a deliberate, pugnacious staccato, he asked: What did the stupid cluck say this time?

Pudgy little Dominick, closest to Cockeye, volunteered the information. In his high-pitched voice he said, He wants to go out West and join the Jesse James Mob. He wants to ride a horsey.

Dominick bounced up and down, holding an imaginary rein with one hand. With the other he beat his fat flank.

Giddeyepp, giddeyepp, Cockeye! he taunted.

He made a clicking noise with his tongue. The four of us joined the act, clicking and bouncing up and down together.

Cockeye smirked in embarrassment. Aw, fellas, cut it out, I was only kidding.

Pssst. The old battle axe, Patsy whispered.

Like a dark cloud traveling swiftly across a bright sky, an enormous billowy disheveled figure came down the aisle. Her gargantuan hips were covered with a multitude of black skirts fastened with safety pins. She stood looming over us.

Youyougood-for-nothing young trampswhat are you up to?

Miss Mons was bursting with rage. With a quick sweep of her hand she snatched the Western thriller out of Cockeye's hands. Her cheeks blew with gale-like fury.

You... you... hoodlums! You... you... gangsters! You... you... East Side bums, reading such trash! Give me that filthy literature immediately.

She stuck her hand under Maxie's nose. Slowly, impudently, Maxie folded the Western and put it in his back pocket.

Give me that book instantly! She stamped her foot savagely.

Maxie smiled sweetly up at her. Kish mir in tauchess, dear Teacher, he said in distinct Yiddish.

I could see by her shocked expression she understood what part of the anatomy Max wanted her to kiss.

For a split second the class sat in shocked silence. The only sound in the room was the laboring asthmatic noise from the crimson jowls of our teacher. Then a chorus of suppressed giggling broke loose. She whirled around, spluttering and wheezing. For a moment she glared angrily around the room in a furious silence. Then she retreated to her desk, her prodigious backside bouncing in angry rhythm.

Dominick slapped his left hand on the middle of his stiffly extended right arm: an obscene Italian gesture.

Gola Tay, Old Safety-Pins, he shouted after her.

Patsy whacked Dominick on the back and chuckled, Yours is too small; you need a broomstick for that one.

Maxie made a jeering vulgar noise through the side of his mouth. The whole class broke into a hilarious roar. Miss Mons stood in front of her desk surveying the rowdy scene. She was shaking in uncontrolled fury. After a moment she regained her composure. Her passion subsided into a quiet, icy bitterness. She cleared her throat. The class became still.

You five hoodlums who started this abominable disturbance will get your just deserts, she said. All through the past term I have had to put up with your filthy, vulgar East Side conduct. Never in my entire teaching career have I come across such vicious young gangsters. No, I am mistaken. A triumphant smile played on her lips. Years back I had some miserable scalawags of like character. Her self-satisfied smile broadened. And I read in last night's paper all about the illustrious end of two of them. They were ruffians exactly like you. She pointed her finger dramatically at us. I prophesy that you five, in due time, will also complete your careers in the same manner as those two in the electric chair!

She sat down smiling at us, nodding her head in happy anticipation.

Patsy growled, She means Lefty Louie and Dago Frank.

Maxie spit through his teeth. A couple of dumb clucks, them guys! He turned to me. That Lefty Louie, was he really your uncle, Noodles?

I shook my head regretfully. I would have been proud to admit kinship.

No, he was just a friend of my uncle Abraham's, you know, the one his friends threw off the boat when they were diamond smuggling.

Maxie nodded.

Our teacher took a heavy brass watch out of the folds of her black skirt. Thank goodness, only fifteen more minutes before the dismissal bell, she said.

She sat looking at us with a half smile on her face, pleased, relishing the end she had prophesied for us.

Maxie took his Western out of his back pocket. With an insolent look at the teacher he slouched down behind his desk. The rest of the class went back to work.

I imitated Big Maxie's careless slouch and lolled deep down behind my desk to listen to the familiar clamor of New York 's lower East Side through the open window. I indulged in my favorite make-believe: the outside pandemonium was like a discordant operetta. The piercing police traffic whistle was the orchestra conductor's starting signal. The cloppetty-clop, cloppetty-clop of dray horses pulling squeaky, rumbling wagons over cobblestones was the steady rhythmic beat of the drum. The blare of truck and passenger car horns were the wind instruments playing up and down the scale. The thin whimpering of hungry or ailing infants was the sad music of the violins, and the distant low rumble of the elevated trains was the palpitating beat of the bass viol. The medley of voices calling and shouting in a profusion of dialects was the background chorus, and the stentorian singsong of the peddler calling his wares, the male lead. Finally, dominating this musical uproar, was the ear-splitting screech of a fat woman. I fitted her in as the soprano voice, the primadonna. She was leaning out of an upper window.