But there was one hardware merchant who seemed almost as raggedly dressed as the kids themselves. Ron got to know him fairly well, since he had the best collection of tools and machinery parts in the entire market area.
His name was Dewey, and he was an old man with a rough gray beard and a million tiny wrinkled lines around his eyes. His hair was gray too, almost white. But it was still thick and shaggy. His eyes were very light blue, and almost always looked sad. He was big and burly, with a thick heavy body—strong not fat, powerful arms, and hands that were large and tough. Even though he seemed very old, Ron thought he could handle Dino or even Al without much trouble.
Just about every week Ron would go to the market. He’d push and worm his way through the yelling, arguing crowds of kids who clustered around the food counters and walk quickly down the side street where there weren’t as many kids and everything was quieter. They sold clothes here, and tools. Finally, Ron would come to Dewey’s hardware counter.
The old man was almost always perched on a rickety wooden stool, looking as if he were half-asleep. But when he saw Ron, he’d smile and talk for hours.
“Yep,” he said, one afternoon, “I been watchin’ you for just about two months now. Not many kids come around this end of the market. Too many of ’em working out how to kill one another, not enough of ’em caring about how to build things up.”
Ron felt almost embarrassed, standing there in front of the wooden sidewalk counter. Dewey smiled back at him from the other side, leaning back dangerously on his stool.
“I . . . well, I’m really from Outside,” Ron mumbled. “I got stuck here at the end of the summer.”
The old man’s shaggy eyebrows lifted a bit. “Oh? That so? Huh! You’re not the first one to get caught in that net. Dyin’ to get out, I suppose?”
Ron nodded. “Guess so.”
“Wish I could help you,” Dewey said. “I can’t get out my—”
The rumble of a truck’s engine stopped him in the middle of his words. Ron heard it, too. He turned to look down the street.
“Who’s still got gas for trucks?” Ron wondered out loud.
“Muslims,” Dewey said. His voice sounded funny. Not scared or even worried. Just grim.
An open-backed pickup truck nosed around the corner and drove slowly down the street toward them. Ron could see two black kids in the cab and another black standing in back with a rifle in his hands. Another truck followed the first one. And then another.
“Get back here,” Dewey said.
Without even thinking of arguing, Ron went behind the counter.
“Inside.” Dewey jerked a thumb toward the door of the building that his stand was in front of. “Get inside and don’t come out ’til I tell you.”
Ron glanced at the advancing trucks and then looked at the old man. His face was completely serious. Ron went to the doorway and pushed on the metal and glass door. It swung smoothly and Ron stepped into the shadows inside the building. He found himself in a lobby, almost like the lobby of the hotel he had stayed in so many weeks earlier.
He looked back through the door and saw truck after truck rumbling past. Each was empty in back except for one black youth with a gun of some sort. Ron stopped counting after twenty trucks had gone by, but still more came.
Dewey stood behind his counter and watched them without moving. When the last truck had passed, he turned and pushed through the doorway to where Ron was standing.
“You said you’re with the Gramercy gang?” Dewey asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, you won’t be getting back there today. Better stay with me tonight.”
“If there’s going to be trouble . . .”
Dewey shrugged. “The Muslims did this last year, just before the summer season opened up. There was a lot of trouble then.”
“Did what? What’s going on?”
“The Muslims don’t come into the market like you kids do. They come in force, like an invading army. They stay for a day or two, load up all their trucks with what they want, then they go back uptown. Last year they took over the whole market for a couple days, and the white gangs went wild. They fought a big battle down on Thirty-eighth Street—”
“But why?”
Dewey made a sour face. “White and black don’t mix. Don’t ask me why, they just don’t. These white kids just go crazy when they see the Muslims—crazy . . . Funny thing is, the Muslims treat us pretty fair here in the market. They pay fair prices for whatever they take. Of course, they decide what’s fair, and if they think you’re tryin’ to cheat them . . .” Dewey shook his head.
“Then I’m stuck here for as long as they’re around?” Ron asked.
Nodding, Dewey said, “It’s best not to get in their way. There’s bound to be trouble and you never know where it’s going to start. You can stay with me tonight. I live right upstairs here.”
Ron stayed in the cool shadows of the lobby all afternoon, watching the street outside.
The lobby had once been beautiful. But now its marble walls were cracked and stained. Sliding doors that had once opened onto gleaming sleek elevators now hung crookedly, halfway open. The elevator shafts were dark and empty.
Outside on the street things were very quiet. Dewey sat on his stool for a long time, looking up the street, squinting in the slanting afternoon sunlight. Ron couldn’t see what he was watching.
Then a patrol of black warriors came past and stopped at Dewey’s counter. They were dressed no better than any of the white gang kids, but somehow they looked sharper, more together. Like they had an exact job to do, and they knew how to do it well.
Ron had never seen blacks close-up before. Not at home. No blacks lived in any of the housing Tracts he knew of. The only blacks he had ever seen had been soldiers on TV.
These kids looked serious and alert. But they weren’t afraid to laugh. One of them cracked a joke that Ron couldn’t hear, and it broke all of them up. Even Dewey was laughing. After watching them for a while, Ron wondered what all the fuss was about. These were ordinary guys, acting pretty much the way anybody would act. Except that each of them carried a rifle slung over his shoulder, and even Dewey seemed to fear something about them.
The long day finally ended. Ron was sitting on the steps at the end of the lobby when Dewey pushed the front door open and came in, wiping sweat from his face with a red and white kerchief.
“You’d best bunk in with me tonight. The Muslims might give you trouble if they found you in the streets.”
Standing up, Ron asked, “Can I help you bring your stuff inside?”
