Everybody belongs to the middle class, everybody... Everybody belongs to the middle class, everybody down to the bums who drowse and retch on the subway that goes to Maverick Square in East Boston at two ASomewhere they must have protested against going into the mortar but it is all lost now
There is a deadening regularity and a sullen vicious temper that rides underneath the surface, the glabrous surface of the Boston Herald and Post and Traveler and Daily Record and Boston-American, it erupts in the drunks who splatter the subways more completely than the drunks of any other city, it skitters around Scollay Square, where lust is always sordid and Sodom copulates in garbageIt even moves in the traffic, which is snarled and sullen and
louis vuitton kabelky frenetic, and it rides the brow when the kids are beaten up in the alleyways, and the synagogues and cemeteries are fouled with language and symbol, "The fuggin kikes" and the cross or swastika"I am distressed to hear of it," says Governor Curley, Saltonstall, Tobin
The kids have gang fights with stones and sticks and knuckle-bands; in the winter the snowballs are packed with rocksIt is of course harmless, a mere tapping of the healthycompetitiveinstinct
Hey, Gallagheh, Lefty Finkelstein's gang is gonna fight us
Sonsofbitches, let's get them(Fear is something alien to the gang, stored far down in his stomach I been layin' for him
Get Packy and Al and Fingers, we're gonna clean up the
china mulberry Yids
What time we staat?
What the fug you caaeh? Ya yella?
Who's yellaI'm gonna get me my bat
(On the way he passes a synagogue"Ya yella?" He spits on it Hey, Whitey, I'm givin' it one for good luck
Hey, Gallagheh, the kids yell
Watch out for your old man when he's got a bag on
In the house his mother winces at sounds and walks on tiptoeHis old man sits at the round table in the living-dining room, and grabs the yellow lace cover and crushes it in his big mittsThen he spreads it out on the table again
Goddam, sure a man hasHey, PEG!
What is it, Will?
His father massages his nose and chinCut out the goddam mousing around, walk like a woman goddammit
Yes, Will?
That's all
mulberry roxanne goddammit, get away
When your old man's as big a sonofabitch as Will Gallagher, you leave him alone when he's got a bag onBut you watch him so one of his mitts don't catch you on the side of the mouth
He sits stolid by the round table, and beats his fist down once or twiceHe looks at the walls(The brown pictures which once were green of shepherd girls in a wooded valleyThey came off a calendar
The triptych on the whatnot shudders as he bangs the tableWill, don't drink so much
SHUT UP! Shut your stupid mouthHe lumbers to his feet and staggers to the wallThe glass over the shepherd girl splatters as he throws it to the floorHe sprawls on the shabby gray-brown sofa, looks at the gray shiny nap of
louis vuitton mahina the carpet where it has worn throughWork your ass off, FOR WHAT?
His wife tries to slip the bottle off the tableLEAVE IT THERE! Will, maybe you can get something elseHave you whining I need a little this, a little thatJust let me break me back wrestling that truck aroundI'm stuck, I'm in a hole
He stands up, lurches toward her, and strikes herShe slips to the floor and lies there without moving, uttering a dull passionless whimpering(A slim woman, drab now
CUT OUT THE GODDAM NOISE! He looks at her dumbly, mops his nose again and rumbles toward the doorGet out of the way, RoyAt the door he stumbles, sighs, and then goes pitching down the street into the night
Gallagher looks at his
chanel quilted bags mot