In highschool he made the debating team. When he was thirteen Pop had a long illness and had to give up work for a year. They lost the house that was almost paid for and went to live in a flat on Myrtle Avenue. Benny got work in a drugstore evenings. Sam and Izzy left home, Sam to work in a furrier’s in Newark; Izzy had gotten to loafing in poolparlors so Pop threw him out. He’d always been a good athlete and palled around with an Irishman named Pug Riley who was going to get him into the ring. Momma cried and Pop forbade any of the kids to mention his name; still they all knew that Gladys, the oldest one, who was working as a stenographer over in Manhattan, sent Izzy a five dollar bill now and then. Benny looked much older than he was and hardly ever thought of anything except making money so the old people could have a house of their own again. When he grew up he’d be a lawyer and a business man and make a pile quick so that Gladys could quit work and get married and the old people could buy a big house and live in the country. Momma used to tell him about how when she was a young maiden in the old country they used to go out in the woods after strawberries and mushrooms and stop by a farmhouse and drink milk all warm and foamy from the cow. Benny was going to get rich and take them all out in the country for a trip to a summer resort.
When Pop was well enough to work again he rented half a two-family house in Flatbush where at least they’d be away from the noise of the elevated. The same year Benny graduated from highschool and won a prize for an essay on The American Government. He’d gotten very tall and thin and had terrible headaches. The old people said he’d outgrown himself and took him to see Dr. Cohen who lived on the same block but had his office downtown near Borough Hall. The doctor said he’d have to give up night work and studying too hard, what he needed was something that would keep him outdoors and develop his body. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” he said, scratching the grizzled beard under his chin. Benny said he had to make some money this summer because he wanted to go to New York University in the fall. Dr. Cohen said he ought to eat plenty of milkdishes and fresh eggs and go somewhere where he could be out in the sun and take it easy all summer. He charged two dollars. Walking home the old man kept striking his forehead with the flat of his hand and saying he was a failure, thirty years he had worked in America and now he was a sick old man all used up and couldn’t provide for his children. Momma cried. Gladys told them not to be silly, Benny was a clever boy and a bright student and what was the use of all his booklearning if he couldn’t think up some way of getting a job in the country. Benny went to bed without saying anything.
A few days later Izzy came home. He rang the doorbell as soon as the old man had gone to work one morning. “You almost met Pop,” said Benny who opened the door. “Nutten doin’. I waited round the corner till I seen him go…. How’s everybody?” Izzy had on a light grey suit and a green necktie and wore a fedora hat to match the suit. He said he had to get to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to fight a Filipino featherweight on Saturday. “Take me with you,” said Benny. “You ain’t tough enough, kid… too much the momma’s boy.” In the end Benny went with him. They rode on the L to Brooklyn Bridge and then walked across New York to the ferry. They bought tickets to Elizabeth. When the train stopped in a freightyard they sneaked forward into the blind baggage. At West Philadelphia they dropped off and got chased by the yard detective. A brewery wagon picked them up and carried them along the road as far as West Chester. They had to walk the rest of the way. A Mennonite farmer let them spend the night in the barn, but in the morning he wouldn’t let them have any breakfast until they’d chopped wood for two hours. By the time they got to Lancaster Benny was all in. He went to sleep in the lockerroom at the Athletic Club and didn’t wake up until the fight was over. Izzy had knocked out the Filipino featherweight in the third round and won a purse of twentyfive dollars. He sent Benny over to a lodginghouse with the shine who took care of the lockerroom and went out with the boys to paint the town red. Next morning he turned up with his face green and got his eyes bloodshot; he’d spent all his money, but he’d gotten Benny a job helping a feller who did a little smalltime fightpromoting and ran a canteen in a construction camp up near Mauch Chunk.
It was a road job. Ben stayed there for two months earning ten dollars a week and his keep. He learned to drive a team and to keep books. The boss of the canteen, Hiram Volle, gypped the construction workers in their accounts, but Benny didn’t think much about it because they were most of ’em wops, until he got to be friends with a young fellow named Nick Gigli who worked with the gang at the gravelpit. Nick used to hang around the canteen before closingtime in the evening; then they’d go out and smoke a cigarette together and talk. Sundays they’d walk out in the country with the Sunday paper and fool around all afternoon lying in the sun and talking about the articles in the magazine section. Nick was from north Italy and all the men in the gang were Sicilians, so he was lonely. His father and elder brothers were anarchists and he was too; he told Benny about Bakunin and Malatesta and said Benny ought to be ashamed of himself for wanting to get to be a rich businessman; sure he ought to study and learn, maybe he ought to get to be a lawyer, but he ought to work for the revolution and the working class, to be a business man was to be a shark and a robber like that son of a bitch Volle. He taught Benny to roll cigarettes and told him about all the girls that were in love with him; that girl in the boxoffice of the movie in Mauch Chunk; he could have her anytime he wanted, but a revolutionist ought to be careful about the girls he went with, women took a classconscious working man’s mind off his aims, they were the main seduction of capitalist society. Ben asked him if he thought he ought to throw up his job with Volle, because Volle was such a crook, but Nick said any other capitalist would be the same, all they could do was wait for the Day. Nick was eighteen with bitter brown eyes and a skin almost as dark as a mulatto’s. Ben thought he was great on account of all he’d done; he’d shined shoes, been a sailor, a miner, a dishwasher and had worked in textile mills, shoefactories and a cement factory and had had all kinds of women and been in jail for three weeks in the Paterson strike. Round the camp if any of the wops saw Ben going anywhere alone he’d yell at him, “Hey, kid, where’s Nick?”
On Friday evening there was an argument in front of the window where the construction boss was paying the men off. That night, when Ben was getting into his bunk in the back of the tarpaper shack the canteen was in, Nick came around and whispered in his ear that the bosses had been gypping the men on time and that they were going on strike tomorrow. Ben said if they went out he’d go out too. Nick called him a brave comrade in Italian and hauled off and kissed him on both cheeks. Next morning only a few of the pick and shovel men turned out when the whistle blew. Ben hung around the door of the cookshack not knowing what to do with himself. Volle noticed him and told him to hitch up the team to go down to the station after a box of tobacco. Ben looked at his feet and said he couldn’t because he was on strike. Volle burst out laughing and told him to quit his kidding, funniest thing he’d ever heard of a kike walking out with a lot of wops. Ben felt himself go cold and stiff all over: “I’m not a kike any more’n you are…. I’m an American born… and I’m goin’ to stick with my class, you dirty crook.” Volle turned white and stepped up and shook a big fist under Ben’s nose and said he was fired and that if he wasn’t a little f — g shrimp of a foureyed kike he’d knock his goddam block off, anyway his brother sure would give him a whaling when he heard about it.