The Christmas Kid

The Challenge

SHANK WAS SITTING ON the windowsill, staring down at Algren Street, when Maria came in. She was big now; the baby would come soon. A month at most. Maybe sooner. He walked from the small living room into the smaller kitchen to greet her. Her face was troubled as she placed the grocery bag on the kitchen table and removed her coat.

“He’s down there,” she said. “At the corner.”

“So what?”

“This time he said something to me.”

Shank tensed, took her hand.

“He did?”

She pulled away from him, opened the refrigerator door, put milk and oranges on the metal shelf. “He said, ‘Hello, honey. I’m Rojo. Gonna get your ol’ man.’ Just like that. With those eyes of his.”

“He’s crazy,” Shank said.

“I know,” Maria said. “That’s why we gotta move, baby. Now. Tonight. Tomorrow. We gotta move, before the baby. We gotta get out of here, all the way out of the neighborhood.”

“I can’t do that,” Shank said. “You know I can’t.”

Her voice rose. “Why not? Why not just get outta here?”

“’Cause I’m the president of the Dragons!” he said. “No punk Marielito makes me move!”

“Yeah, but you’re twenty-one years old! You’re married! You gotta baby coming! You can’t go on like this, baby. Bein’ what you was when you was sixteen! You got…responsibility!”

The word entered Shank like a blade. It was one of those grown-up words, like “opportunity” or “retirement,” that could chill his heart. He had no way to argue with her; she was right. But she didn’t understand a lot of things. She didn’t understand what it meant to be a Dragon, how much of his life was tied up with the Dragons, how hard it would be for him to just go away. He was president; he had been a junior before that, and a Tiny Tim, in the days when he used a knife as an equalizer against men older and tougher and meaner than he was. That’s how he got the name Shank. Back then. Four Dragons had died in street rumbles since he became president at seventeen; more than twenty had ended up in hospitals. Shot or knifed, battered with tire irons or chains or bats. Three had died of overdoses, early on, which was why Shank had led the war against heroin, kicking out users, crippling dealers. Guy wanted to smoke a bone here and there, okay. A little blow now and then, okay. But no smack. Smack kills. Smack was death. All those wars had brought them together, closer than a family. And Maria would never understand any of that.

“My girlfrien’ Carmen, remember her?” Maria said. “She told me about this place, four rooms, steam heat, in Sout’ Brooklyn. Two eighty a month. And it gotta yard, Shank. We could go see it tonight. We could have all this stuff packed by morning. My brother Ralphie, he could get a U-Haul and—”

“Stop,” he said. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

She shook her head and walked past him into the living room. She turned on the TV set and then sat back in the worn green armchair and watched a game show. Shank leaned on the refrigerator, thinking about this new kid, Rojo, this wild Cuban with crazy eyes and tattooed fingers and spiky red hair. Three weeks after Rojo had moved into the neighborhood with his mother, he’d stabbed a kid in the school yard on Farrell Avenue. A week later, he opened a wino’s belly on Lonigan Street. A smack dealer on Shulman Place was found with his neck sliced, and everybody said Rojo musta did it. He came over to Pepe’s one evening and said that he wanted to join the Dragons, and Pepe said, Yeah, maybe that could be worked out. And then Rojo said: “I want to be the president.” And Pepe laughed, and then found a blade at his neck, and Rojo saying: “Don’t laugh at me, man. I want the whole club.”

Shank told Maria about that, trying to laugh when he told her. But she didn’t laugh. She started this business about moving, about getting away. But where could he go? He worked in this neighborhood, at Jaime’s Flat Fix. He came from this neighborhood and knew everybody, and they knew him. He couldn’t go to some strange new place where he wasn’t known. That would be like being fourteen again. This was his place, his turf, and the Dragons were his family.

“I’m going out,” he said, stepping out of the kitchen.

“Don’t,” she said, starting to rise. “Don’t go near him. Please don’t.”

“I’ll be back,” he said, and going down the stairs, he thought: I should have a piece. I should stop at Benny’s and borrow his piece. That Walther P38. Put it in a newspaper. Go down and find this Rojo and just blow him away. But what if the cops land on me? What if I end up in the can? What happens to Maria? What happens to the baby? No: I gotta talk to the dude. I gotta work it out.

Shank came out onto Algren Street. Mrs. Velasquez nodded hello, and Old Man Farley smiled. Shank saw Little Willy John sitting on the stoop across the street, and walked over to him.

“Take a walk,” Shank said.

“What’s up?” Little Willie John said.

“Rojo.”

They picked up Face and Sammy Davis and Willowbrook, and told Zeppelin to take his car around the block and wait across the street from Chuckie’s Bar. Somebody went to get Benny, and with Shank in the lead, they walked toward Farrell Avenue.

Rojo was standing alone in front of Chuckie’s Bar. The afternoon sun made his hair look even more red. He was wearing shades and a sleeveless lavender T-shirt. His hands were in the back pockets of his jeans. He didn’t move when he saw Shank coming around the corner, with the others behind him. He just smiled.

“Wait here,” Shank said to the others. “I’ll talk to the dude.”

He walked slowly over to Rojo, standing six feet away from him, out of range of the blade. He knew the blade must be in one of Rojo’s back pockets. One of his hands was on it. Rojo smiled.

“I hear you been talkin’ about me,” Shank said.

“Yeah? How you hear that?”

“From my wife.”

“Yeah? Which one is your wife?”

“You know, man. Don’t play dumb.”

“The pretty one, she having a baby? That one?”

He smiled again. Shank fought down the urge to close with him and break his face apart.

“Yeah, that’s the one. She says you’re gonna get me, man. Other people say you still want to run the Dragons. So I figure I better talk to you. I better hear it from you myself.”

Rojo looked left and right, moving forward almost imperceptibly, the smile on his face.

“Yeah, you heard right. I want it. I want what you got. You can give it to me. Or I can take it.”

“It don’t work that way, man. The Dragons, you get elected president.” He turned and saw the others at the corner, all watching him. “You can join — then, who knows? The guys in the crew like you, and I decide to pack it in, maybe you end up president. But you don’t get the gig with a blade.”

“I become president,” Rojo said, “I get your wife, too? She’s pretty, man. I dig her. I—”

Shank slammed into him, crashing him against the window, reaching desperately for his hands. He locked a hand on Rojo’s left wrist. The knife was in the other hand. And then Rojo was whirling, squirming, a high-pitched animal whine coming from inside him, and Shank heard shouts and a scream, all the while smashing at Rojo, tumbling, using every move he’d ever learned. And then he heard the shots. Pap-pap, two of them, pap-pap-pap, three more. And Rojo stopped moving. Shank rolled off him and started to get up, and couldn’t, and then saw the blood, all over his hands and his stomach. And his wife’s forlorn face. And Little Willie John, crying, and whispering:

“It’s okay, it’s okay, brother, it’s okay. You gonna live, man, you gonna live. It’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Shank said, a high ringing in his ears, the world turning white, faces bleaching out, and heard Maria saying: “Goddamn you, baby, goddamn all of you.”