The black cowboy also had the most beautiful pistol any of us had ever seen. It was a silvery Cowboy Colt .44 six-shooter etched with all kinds of designs and finished with a polished horn handle. The holster for this ten-inch pistol was black with silver studs. And even though I am no fan of Westerns, when I saw how fast Billy could draw I downloaded fourteen cowboy films.
Billy drawled when he spoke and respected everyone he met. He’d always take his hat off inside or when in the presence of a woman or girl. And he could fight like a motherfucker.
One time, over by the Hudson, uptown, this big dude was chasing down some man that he claimed owed him money. The big man caught the little one and started beating him. The poor guy fell to the pavement and was bleeding from his mouth and forehead. That’s when the big man started kicking him.
After two or three kicks, Billy Consigas walked up and said, “All right now, he’s had enough.”
When I tell you that the bully was big, I mean it in every way possible: he was tall and fat and had biceps almost the size of his head. But it wasn’t only that he was big; he was fast too. He hit Billy — who was five ten and 160 at most — right in the chest. Billy flew back and hit the wall behind him. We all thought that he was going to get himself killed.
The little man on the ground got up and started running.
Billy pushed off from the wall, took a deep breath, and then he smiled. Smiled!
“Fuck you, you grinnin’ fool,” the big man yelled, and then he ran right at Billy.
Billy kept on smiling. He didn’t move until the guy was almost on him... and then he did this amazing thing. He jumped half a step to the right, so that his attacker slammed into the wall. Then Billy jumped up on top of the guy and clamped his left arm around his neck. We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the end of the fight right there. The big guy was twisting and jumping around but couldn’t throw Billy off, and Billy was steadily hitting him in the face with these wicked right uppercuts. He must have hit him two dozen times before the behemoth slumped down on the sidewalk. The bully tried to get up three times, but his legs were spaghetti and his shoes roller skates.
We never found out what happened to him because we heard sirens and scattered.
After that fight Billy became like a hero among the young men and women up around 145th. He didn’t consider himself a leader, though, because of something he called the Cowboy Code. I never got all the ins and outs of that system, but it had something to do with being self-sufficient and treating all others equally. Leaders, he thought, were there only for the weak.
“Felix,” he said to me one late afternoon when I was showing him around Times Square, “a man has to stand up on his own two feet. The only leaders they should evah have is parents, teachers, and generals during time of war. Other than that we all just people come from our mothers and headed for the grave.”
Billy talked like that. He bought me a hot dog, and I paid for our tickets to the wax museum. We walked in the crowds of Times Square for hours. Billy was especially interested in the Singing Cowboy, who wore only a Stetson hat and underpants as he played the guitar and posed for photographs.
“What do you think about that?” I asked after Billy had stared at the street performer for at least three minutes.
“Like any other child’s cartoon on the television.”
It was somewhere past eleven in the evening when we decided to take the number one train back to Harlem. Billy had paid for our barbecue dinner. He told me that it was OK because the police gave him good money to train their horses.
When we were walking toward the train someone said, “I’ll be damned, a nigger in a cowboy hat. I never seen anything like that before.”
I turned first and saw a group of five young white men and three young women. They were maybe a year or two older than us. The guys sported new-looking blue jeans and fancy shirts like the ones Billy wore. The girls had on modern party dresses, slight and short. I was nervous because it was only the two of us against five of them, not counting the girls.
I say “against” because the leader, a tall and skinny white guy with a long and somehow misshapen face, had used the word nigger, and that word, in that tone of voice and that situation, meant conflict.
Billy turned and smiled. I had come to associate that expression with sudden violence. This mental connection only added to my fear.
“A peckawood with a problem,” Billy said jovially. “That’s more common than rattlesnakes down a prairie hole.”
“You sound like Texas,” the speaker of the group speculated.
“And you sound like horseshit.”
“Where you come from, boy?” the white youth asked.
“From a long line a’ men.”
In any other situation I would have run, but I didn’t want Billy to think less of me. So I squared my shoulders and wondered which one of the five I could get at before his friends got to me.
That was what Billy did: he made people happy and proud, brave and courageous — qualities that rarely served a poor black man or boy well.
“You think you man enough take us?” the leader asked.
“At five to two?” Billy asked. “All we got to do is stand our ground and we prove better than some gang a’ roughnecks.”
The leader smiled. That grin was a close relative of Billy’s violent mirth.
I realized that I was holding my breath.
“My name is Nacogdoches,” the white youth claimed. “Nacogdoches Early.”
“Billy.”
“You a cowboy, Billy?”
“I’ve been in a rodeo or two.”
This made me think of Billy taking down that giant on the Hudson. He wasn’t afraid because he’d brought down steers with that same hold.
“You got a gun?” Nacogdoches inquired.
Billy shrugged.
“You a gunslinger?” Nacogdoches said to Billy.
“Faster ’n you.”
The warped-faced white youth’s eyebrows raised, and his smile broadened.
“Is one of these fine ladies your girl?” Billy asked.
A strawberry blonde moved her shoulders in such a way as to indicate that she was the one.
“No bullets,” Billy said, as if they had already agreed on the gunfight. “Just a video camera in case it’s a close call. If you win, I’ll spit-polish your green boots right on that corner. I’ll just wear my long johns and hat at high noon on a Saturday. If you lose, that pretty girl will agree to have dinner with me at the place and time of my choosin’.”
The girl tried to frown, but instead a smile grazed her lips. She wasn’t really that pretty, I thought, but had the kind of face that you’d want to nod to at a party or if you sat near each other on a subway train.
Nacogdoches was biting his lower lip.
“OK,” he said at last. “When and where?”
“There’s a youth center up on Sixty-Third,” I said. “Lazarus House. We do it there in three days at ten at night.”
In spite of the offer, my plan was simply to get away.
The principals agreed, and I gave Nacogdoches the address.
“What kinda crazy luck you have to have that you run into another cowboy with a six-shooter somewhere in the middle of a million people?” I asked Billy on the number one train.
“It’s the bright lights,” the black cowboy opined.
“What?”
“You know a cowboy loves the stars more than anything. He’s drawn to the lights like a moth to fire. Times Square is bright like the heavens come down to the ground. And you know two cowboys will see each other. No, no, Felix. It would be a wonder if we didn’t meet up sooner or later.”
“We don’t have to do this thing, Bill,” I said. “We just don’t show up, and it’ll all blow over.”