The Old Bunch by Meyer Levin

Author:Meyer Levin [Levin, Meyer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62567-087-8
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2014-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sol was riding a lousy race right from the start, and he knew it.

Used to be he rode a race and all he thought about was janes or what to eat or sometimes he had the trick of riding off the long drags by making each lap the name of a girl he had laid, always starting with Estelle.—Jeez, there was a good kid, he had never really finished with her. But now all he had on his mind was headaches with unions and insurance and trouble. He would think of that little spotter Mendel, his old man’s pal, and Mendel would be riding alongside of him with the sarcastic look on his face like, no matter what you do, in the end I will win. If the bosses had a right to make an association, then the workmen in the shop had a right to make a union. That was square. If he let the drivers have a union, then it was square to let the inside workers have their union. I always played fair and square.

He was riding a lousy race and Bert was sore and he could see Bert wished he would break a leg so they would break up the team. In the slow hours of early morning some of the boys rode around reading a newspaper and looking over Tommy Cramer’s shoulder he saw the headlines BIG TIM MURPHY SLAIN, WAS TRYING TO MUSCLE IN ON CLEANERS’ UNION.

“Say, that mobster had a swell-looking wife,” Tommy said as Sol drew closer to see the story. “Look.” There was a picture of her, a cute number all right, but for once Sol was more interested in the news. He could see little Mendel’s face, with a kind of quiet victory. We can take care of ourselves too.

Chick came back from the drug store and slipped Sol the little bottle. The Wop would be sore to see him hopping up so early as the third day. But they were trailing the race and Sol was so pooped out he was ready to take a good spill and let himself be carried away on a stretcher.

Sol drank two mouthfuls of the caffeine mixture and lay back. When he was scratching bottom like this he could feel his strength returning as though his muscles were violin strings and someone was tightening the squeaky keys. Around his heart, especially, he got this tightening tonic feeling of strength. He ate a swell steak, nearly raw. Bert found the bottle in the bunk and gave him one of those looks with a stuck-out underlip.

The announcer sang out the premium for the next sprint. A hundred bucks from Alderman Monahan, that old racing sport. “Okay, here goes for lousy Epstein,” Sol muttered to himself, and climbed onto his bike.

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