Young and Violent by Vin Packer

then you’d call the rumble off?”
    “Dad, you’re real crazy the way you come on. Dad, you don’t get the picture. It’s too late now, dad. We put the seeds down for a rumble and they’re going to grow. We don’t chicken, dad. There’s not a Jungle punk in the lot of us. We got plans. You should know our plans. We got ways and means of breaking up that whole pack of Kings; maybe even sort of absorbing them, dad.”
    Dan sighs and leans back in his chair; he picks a pencil off his desk and plays with it as he talks. “So what you’re here to say is that there’s no way to stop this rumble?”
    “You’re in Correctsville now, dad.”
    “That’s your whole point, Pontiac?”
    “That’s my whole point, dad.”
    “Just to say you’re going to rumble, come hell or high water.”
    “Just to tell you, dad, that it’s too late. Maybe you pass the information on to those ass-high boss men of yours and it won’t come off like this again.”
    “And what are you going to gain from it, Pontiac? A shiv in your side? A rock in your head? A vacation up the river?” Dan tosses the pencil down disgustedly. “What are you going to gain from it, you and the other Jungles?”
    Pontiac stands up. He tosses the cards into the air in a straight row; catches them with his hand, and snaps them into his palm smartly. He grins at Dan Roan. “I’m going to be promoted, dad. From pupil to teacher. That’s groovy, dad, you dig me? I’m going to teach a bunch of joe colleges a course in juvenile delinquency; its causes and cures, dad. Isn’t that a gas?”
    “Then Babe Limon really hasn’t very much to do with it?”
    “She is the means by which I reach my end, dad.”
    “And just suppose, Pontiac, that Gonzalves no longer goes with Babe?”
    “Come off it, dad. You know the rules of the game. Technically she is his chick. Everybody knows that, dad. After I make my play for his broad, a rumble is inevitable. You like that big word?”
    “It’s swell, Pontiac.”
    “I thought you’d flip over a big word like that. Look, dad, the votes are in, see. It’s in the cards. If the Kings chicken, it’ll be the chicken of all chickens.”
    Pontiac lingers momentarily, flipping the cards from one hand to another, leaning in the doorway.
    “Good-by, Pontiac,” Dan Roan says emphatically.
    Pontiac starts to go. He pauses halfway out, turns, and smirks at Roan. “You know, dad, you’re a
sick
man! I could tell the way you just said good-by. Yes sir, dad. You’re a very sick man.”
    Pontiac quits the scene then; sweet and cool as when he arrived.
    • • •
    Coming down 106th Street at eight o’clock that Monday evening are Tea and Eyes. Before they notice the car which is parked up in front of the Youth Board, they talk. Because it is a sticky night, neither wears the black leather jacket of the Kings, but instead, white T-shirts, stamped with crowns; garrison belts with two small gold crowns affixed to them; levis that hang just below their bellies and turn in tight, hugging their ankles; soiled sneaks and sweat socks. This is the informal street attire the Kings favor. Eyes, taller than Tea, looks down at him as they walk; and the two pass lazy tenants of the dilapidated apartment buildings lounging on their doorsteps, fanning themselves, reading, staring, chatting, and kids playing stick ball in the streets; girls in groups, their faces made up freshly, their eyes interested in Eyes and Tea, their laughter high-pitched, their Spanish, fast and soft, like a buzzing sound. And there’s a cop or two pacing with his night stick swinging, and storekeepers in white aprons standing out front to escape the flies inside.
    Eyes is saying, “… so I smelled around in Jungle turf solo, Tea, because you didn’t show at Dirty Mac’s, and Gober said we should case them.”
    “I was trying to score. I still got a lead where I might yet. I think the heat’s on Ace. If so, I feel a foul-up coming on. Man, like, I can’t goof on