Free Coney by Amram Ducovny

“Now, I gotta tell you somethin’. There’s a nigger in this woodpile.
    â€œA nigger?”
    â€œNo, a white man. His name is Victor Menter …”
    â€œI have met him,” Aba interrupted. “First here in your house, then yesterday in a most unpleasant situation. I believe he is a virulent anti-Semite.”
    â€œYou bet your sweet Jew ass he is. Before I retired, Menter worked for me.”
    â€œWhy did you employ an anti-Semite?”
    â€œChrist, can you think of a sweeter way to screw a Jew haterthan to make him take orders from a Jew? If I’d told him to get circumcised, he whips it out and starts slicin’. Sorry I didn’t.”
    â€œWhat has he to do with all this?”
    â€œI’m retired now and he’s got a lotta power. He’s well-connected by his
goomba
Italian mother’s family to very powerful people. By street talk he could find out what I’m tryin’ to do for you. If that happens, you and the people you live with, are up shit creek.”
    â€œThe Catzkers! But why?”
    â€œThe Catzkers harbored you, a criminal. That’s a crime. If Menter ratted on you, they go to prison, could be deported too. Their kid is in good shape because he was born here. He’d go to a orphan home.”
    Aba dug his fingernails into his scalp. The demons who mocked his attempts to expose them in poetry now laughed out loud, taking credit.
    â€œWell, then, let’s forget it.”
    â€œToo late.”
    â€œMy God! Why? Does he know about me already?”
    â€œI don’t know. He likes to torture. He may be watchin’ you like a cat with a mouse. Hey, now you got me doin’ animals. But gettin’ that report took some doin’. Maybe he knows already. If he don’t by now, he probably won’t find about it when I make your record disappear from the Polish police files.”
    The demons smirked, discounting everything but doom.
    â€œI suppose … you will do your best … I mean to hide the report.”
    â€œI always do my best. Hey, I’d like it if you wrote a poem for me, even maybe about me.”
    â€œI don’t write poetry in English.”
    â€œDo it in Jewish.”
    â€œDo you understand Yiddish?”
    â€œNah, but it don’t make no difference. I got a feelin’ I wouldn’t understand what you wrote in any language.”

CHAPTER
8
    B Y NOON , H ARRY COULD NO LONGER WAIT TO GRIP HIS NEW BIKE . He cut the rest of his classes and sprinted to the bike store. Woody greeted him warmly and handed him the racer, saying, “Ride over to the house of the freaks, pick up the slips and bring ’em back.”
    Doubled over, clutching the sleek, curved handlebars, Harry pedaled slowly along the boardwalk, admiring his reflection in glass storefronts. A midday sun had called to prayer the ancient sun worshippers who, in a state of sweating grace, were not the audience he desired. When school let out, there would be slit-eyed jealousy.
    At Stillwell Avenue he left the boardwalk and stopped at Nathan’s for a hot dog, French fries and an orange drink. He remained perched on his bike, a sultan on a throne, mashing the food and liquid into one magnificent taste. He flipped a quarter onto the counter.
    â€œNice bike,” said the counterman, stretching out his arm to hand Harry a nickel change.
    Harry grudged a haughty nod, playing William Powell in
My Man Godfrey
.
    He slalomed through the traffic under the elevated train tracks, then turned right, moving past the arches and turrets of Luna Amusement Park. Beyond was the spot where, according to Schnozz, once stood a 150-foot-high hotel in the exact shape of an elephant. At night its eyes had glowed yellow.
    He turned onto West Eighth, a street of two-family wooden shacks, more peeled than painted. In the distance, soaring on thewings of Schnozz’s word pictures, the four hundred-foot white tower of Dreamland Amusement Park