The Scar Boys

Cars

Half an hour later we were leaving the quiet residential streets of northeast Yonkers behind, crossing the border into the Bronx. Mr. Mac had called an acquaintance who owned a garage on Jerome Avenue. 

"Gary the Grease Monkey" promised to give us an inspection sticker without actually inspecting the van. Fifty dollars was the price. Mr. Mac pressed three twenties into Richie's hand and sent us on our way.

The heart of the Bronx was a twenty-minute car ride from Yonkers, but it may as well have been on another continent. Like most people from the suburbs, my experience with the Bronx was limited to class trips to the zoo or botanical gardens. 

We saw the Bronx the way Madison Avenue advertising executive saw the Midwest; you flew over without ever touching down.

The drive to Jerome Avenue was otherworldly. We were floating down Marlow's river, making our way deeper and deeper into an alien landscape, searching for an ever-elusive Mr. Kurtz. (That may be overdramatic, but we'd just read Heart of Darkness in English class, and hey, I want this thing to sound smart, don't I? It is a college essay after all.) So yeah, I was afraid of the Bronx. Maybe it's why I'm a Mets fan.

Where I lived---in safe, secure suburia--retail stores didn't have steel shutters after dark, graffiti was the exception not the rule, and let's call it like it is, my  corner of Westchester County was pretty white. I don't mean "pretty" white as in "nice-looking" white. I mean "pretty" white as in "where are all the people of color?" white.

The Bronx was new to me, and like I had learned from Dr. Kenny, we fear what we don't know. Of course, as harsh as life in the Bronx was supposed to be, the suburbs, I had learned firsthand, were no less cruel. I doubted that kids in the city were tied to trees during lightning storms. Chain-link fences maybe, but not trees.

Gary's garage was a dirty place, and I could see why he went by the name "Grease Monkey." An Irish man with a very light brogue (his last name was Gilligan), Gary was bathed in filth. From point on his scalp where his hairline met his wrinkled forehead, to the tips of his stubby fingers, Gary was covered in a gelatinous layer of motor oil, brake fluid, steering fluid, grease, and exhaust, all of which congealed into a kind of paste. 

When I asked Richie about it, he told me his dad came home from work looking like that everyday, and only after a long shower with scalding water and Lava soap did he approach something you might consider clean.

We pulled the van into the garage and waited, watching as Gary dressed down one of his crew. The mechanic, a twenty-something black man who projected hostility, stood in silence as Gary called him every name in the book.

We had no idea what the guy had done, but unless he'd run over Gary's dog, it couldn't have been bad enough to warrant the verbal beating he was taking. When Gary was finished, he came over to us and said, "Gotta keep these boys in line, if you know what I mean," and winked.

We didn't know what he meant, but we could guess. He'd said it loud enough for everyone in the garage to hear. No one reacted or looked at us, but you could see the muscles on their neck and arms pull tight. I remembered something about Simon Legree from eleventh grade English class, and something else about Malcolm X from social studies.

We paid our fifty dollars, got our sticker, and got out of there as quick as we could, making our way back to the safety of the suburbs. By the time we got home, we were buzzing.

From our sheltered point of view, our little adventure certified us cool. The big, bad Scar Boys had braved and beaten the Bronx, and we had flouted the law in getting an illegal inspection sticker. We were invincible.  

Uh huh.

Truth is, if we'd had a shred of sense, we'd have known we were getting in way over our heads. But you can't but shreds of sense, and even if you could, we were pretty much out of money.