He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners by Jimmy Breslin

Author:Jimmy Breslin [Breslin, Jimmy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4540-8
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

6

WHEN THE BUS TO Clinton pulled out of Columbus Circle that night, Cosgrove, Great Big, and Baby Rock stood on the sidewalk and waved, and Disco Girl and Roberta waved back and the bus was gone. Baby Rock ran down the up escalator into the subway at Columbus Circle and came racing back up the down escalator and reported that there were too many policemen on the platform. The three then walked over to Seventh Avenue and went downstairs and there were no police and they took the train back out to East New York. Baby Rock, who said he was tired, stepped into his storefront and fell on his couch. Cosgrove and Great Big walked to the church. On one block the sidewalk was entirely covered with garbage and the two stepped out into the street. Suddenly, a Lincoln town car rushed at them and stopped with a scream.

The young hood from the Chief’s restaurant, gold chains, chewing gum, called from the car to Cosgrove, “If you want to walk with niggers, do it on the sidewalk.”

Cosgrove stepped out of the way. Great Big did not move quickly enough for the Chief’s man, who stepped on the gas and aimed the Lincoln town car directly at Great Big. This caused Great Big to jump away. But as the car passed him, Great Big brought both hands high into the air, locked them, and then brought them down with a tremendous crash onto the roof of the Lincoln town car. Great Big’s hands punctured the roof and caused the Chief’s man to swerve almost out of control. Halfway down the block, the car stopped and the Chief’s man shouted something that Cosgrove couldn’t hear.

“That was the hand of God,” Cosgrove shouted back.

The car pulled away and Cosgrove walked back to the church with Great Big. It is good that not too many people challenge him, Cosgrove thought. He remembered how Great Big had reacted when it counted in Africa.

At dawn, the French priest who was being replaced by Cosgrove drove him in the Land Rover to the mission. They traveled on a dirt road, a path really. Sunlight blazing off the tin roofs of huts caused him to blink. Soon there were no tin roofs, only round mud huts with thatched, conical roofs. People were naked or did not wear enough clothes to matter. Cosgrove looked at the people, but they did not look at him. The heat and expanse and people everywhere on parched ground gave him the feeling that the African centuries would leave him covered by dry grass.

His mission was a cinder-block church raised from the ground on rocks in a place where the bush country sat in the heat on the edge of loneliness. He found that the sun never set. Much of the time it was somewhere at the top of the sky, the heat wrapped around it like gauze, scalding the eyes of all who dared to stare. The sun appeared to allow the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.