Free The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo

special, fearless light. Gino quivered with excitement, but he felt no fear. He knew he was safe. The Bull would kick Joey out of the yard and break the wagon. But Gino had read a story about mother birds, and from it he made a plan as he looked down at the Bull: he would save Joey and the wagon.
    Deliberately, he leaned his dark angular almost-man’s face over the car and hollered down, “Ha, ha. Charlie Chaplin can’t catch flies.” Then he ducked away and started down the ladder on the freight car’s other side. But took just a few steps and waited.
    The Bull said ferociously to Joey, “You stay here.” Then ducked under the car to intercept Gino. He was just in time to see Gino scramble back up the ladder. The Bull crawled back to guard Joey.
    Gino jumped up and down on top of the box car, chanting, “Charlie Chaplin can’t catch candy.”
    The Bull made his face mean, his voice menacing. “Kid,” he said, “I’m warning you. Get down off that car, or when I get you I kick the shit outa you.”
    That seemed to sober Gino and he stared down gravely. He thumbed his nose at the Bull and ran slowly, awkwardly, along the top of the freight car, jumped, teetered to the next car. On the ground the Bull kept pace easily, glancing back with a threatening face so that Joey would not try to escape with his wagon. The string of cars was only ten or eleven long.
    Gino jumped a few cars, then pretended to climb down the other side. The Bull ducked underneath. He could not keep track of Joey if he did this, but he didn’t care. He had made up his mind the kid on top of the cars was going to get his ass broke.
    Beckoning with his small hopping form, Gino ran along the car tops deeper into the yard, and then waited for the Bull to catch up, staring down at him. Then, raising his head, he could see Joey running and pulling the wagon toward freedom across the Avenue.
    “Kid, you better come down,” the Bull said. “You make me chase you and you’ll get this.” He waved his club. He thought of drawing his gun as a bluff, but Italian laborers on one of the yard gangs might see him and he would be a marked man. He ducked back underneath the railroad car just in time to see Joey and the wagon cross safely over the Avenue. He became so angry that he shouted up to Gino, “You little black guinea bastard, you don’t come down and I’ll break your hump.”
    Gratified, he saw the threat working; the kid was walking back along the car tops to stand directly over him. But then that dark, grave child’s face leaned out above him. He heard the little boy shout in sudden angry contempt that assumed equality of strength, “Fuck you, Charlie Chaplin.” A great dazzling white rock of ice went whizzing past the Bull’s head and the boy teetered clumsily along the car tops deeper into the maze of the yard.
    The Bull, really angry now, but confident, ran hard to keep pace alongside, his head tilted upward comically. The kid was trapping himself. He was angry not at the curse, but at being called Charlie Chaplin. He was vain, and his bowed legs made him sensitive.
    Suddenly Gino disappeared. The Bull ducked quickly under the freight car to catch him coming down the ladder on the opposite side. He tripped on the rails and lost a precious second. When he got to the other side, he saw no sign of his prey. He backed up to enlarge his field of vision.
    He saw Gino almost literally flying along the top of the box cars, soaring from one to the other with no teetering awkwardness, up toward Tenth Avenue, and then disappearing over the side of the car away from the Bull. The Bull sprinted but was only in time to see the boy cross Tenth Avenue to the safe shade of the tenement wall, where, without a backward glance, Gino stopped to rest and get a lemon ice. There was no sign of the other kid.
    The Bull had to laugh, he couldn’t help it. The balls on the kid, a little shit like that. But just the same, his day would come; he’d be Charlie