Cockeye Hymie leaned across his desk. “Hey, Max. Listen, will yuh[1], Max?” he pleaded.
Big Maxie looked at our teacher, old Safety-Pin Mons, sitting sternly at her desk 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 scornful.
“Why don’t you just read your book and shut up?”
He picked up his Western and muttered, “Pain in the ass[2].”
Cockeye gave Maxie a hurt look. He slouched in his seat, feeling abused. Maxie eyed him good humoredly over the top of his book.
He whispered, “All right, all right, Cockeye, what’s on your mind?” Cockeye hesitated.
“I dunno. I was just thinking,” he said.
“Thinking? About what?” Max was getting impatient.
“How about we skip school[3] and go out West and join up with Jesse James and his gang?”
Big Maxie gave Cockeye a look of deep disgust. He stretched his long muscular arms, 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[4]? Go ahead, you talk to him. Jesus, what a schmuck[5].”
I leaned over to Cockeye, with my usual sneer of superiority, and said: “Why don’t you use your noodle[6]? Them guys are dead, long ago.”
“Dead?” Cockeye repeated, depressed.
“Yeh, dead, you cluck,” I sneered.
He said, “You know everything. You got some noodle on your shoulders. Hey, Noodles?” I ate up his flattery. “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[7] 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 hair away from his bushy eyebrows. He asked: “What did the stupid cluck say this time?”
Fat little Dominick, closest to Cockeye, gave 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.”
He made a clicking noise with his tongue.
Cockeye smirked in embarrassment. “Aw, fellas, cut it out, I was only kidding.”
“Pssst. The old battle axe[8],” Patsy whispered.
An enormous disheveled figure came down the aisle. Her big hips were covered with a multitude of black skirts fastened with safety pins. She stood looming over us. “You – good-for-nothing[9] young tramps – what are you up to[10]?”
Miss Mons was bursting with rage[11]. She snatched the Western thriller out of Cockeye’s hands. “You… you… hoodlums! You… you… gangsters! You… you… East Side bums[12], 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[13] savagely.
Maxie smiled sweetly up at her. “Kish mir in tauchess[14], dear Teacher,” he said in distinct Yiddish[15].
I could see by her shocked expression she understood what part of the anatomy Max wanted her to kiss.
For a second the class sat in shocked silence. Then a chorus of suppressed giggling started. For a moment she glared angrily around the room. Then she retreated to her desk, her backside bouncing in angry rhythm.
Dominick slapped his left hand on the middle of his stiflyf extended right arm: an obscene Italian gesture.
Maxie made a vulgar noise through the side of his mouth. The whole class broke into a laughter. Miss Mons stood in front of her desk watching the noisy scene. She was shaking in uncontrolled fury. After a moment she became quiet and cleared her throat. The class became still.
“You five hoodlums will get your just deserts[16],” 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 scalawags[17] 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 rufaif ns exactly like you.” She pointed her finger dramatically at us. “I’m sure that you five, in due time[18], will also complete your careers in the same manner as those two – in the electric chair!”
Our teacher took a heavy brass watch out of the folds of her black skirt. “Thank goodness, only fifteen more minutes before the bell,” she said.
She sat looking at us with a half smile on her face, pleased, enjoying the end she had predicted 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 listened to the familiar noise of New York’s lower East Side through the open window: the outside commotion was like a dissonant operetta. The police trafifc whistle was the orchestra conductor’s starting signal. The blare of truck and passenger car horns were the wind instruments
