A Little Bit of Sunshine in Hell

by Lisa Fox

The first time the kid saved my life, I thought it was dumb luck, and the Guy Upstairs wasn’t ready for me yet.

The second time the kid saved me, I got myself shifty-eyed paranoid. Kid knew where I was gonna be, who I was gonna meet, what I was gonna do. How I felt about it. Maybe the Coogan clan had hired him as a tail. I thought I smelled a rat—but a rat’ll eat you if he’s hungry enough, and that kid was no more rat than I was a sandwich.

The third time that kid saved my life, I was almost dead.

Hell’s Kitchen, New York: where you stayed because no place else would take you, where nobody loved you except your mother because she didn’t have a choice, no matter how ugly your mug or how charred the depths of your heart. Home in Hell, the devil howled with every drunken wife-beating bastard. He hid in the shadows of rodent-infested alleys and hummed in the rumbling bellies of siblings whose parents had to choose which kid would eat and which would go without, disregarding their own pangs. That devil, he wrapped his icy cloak over darkened apartments, devoid of heat or power, electricity cut when the bills became too much.

The devil reminded me of my father, and the shell of my mother he left behind.

“You get paid this week, Jamesey?” Mama’s hand trembled as she reached toward me, her palm scarred crimson with the fabric dyes from her work in the garment district. I swallowed back the rage I felt at the chemical smell that lingered on her skin. Her eyes, once soft and playful, now sunk deep and dark like a waiting casket. She forced a smile, but stiffened lips and heavy shoulders betrayed the stolen joy that defined her existence in this world.

“O’Reilly always pays on time.” I laid a small stack of singles in her hand.

“He’s a good man.” A sigh shivered over her as if cast by the breeze from the passing A-train. “Glad he’s offered you extra hours at the diner. Maybe we’ll make rent.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Mama deserved more than just maybe.

The kid was no older than eight. He wore cuffed dungarees and a gab jacket, like most boys his age. Arms crossed, he leaned against the lamppost on the corner of 57th and 8th, watching me barrel up the stairs of an old brownstone. The streetlight cast a glow over his shock of white-blond hair styled in a miniature pompadour. Mama didn’t know, but I’d taken a side job running ‘errands’ for Michael Gorgon. She wouldn’t like it, seeing as Gorgon’s boys were always fighting the Coogan clan, and most of them ended up in jail at one time or another. But cash was cash. If I wanted to make a better life for us, bussing tables at the Seventh Avenue Diner wasn’t gonna cut it.

Smirking, the boy looked me up and down, sizing me up. I was twice his height and probably twice his age, which made his staring even more ridiculous.

“It’s late. Aren’t you a little young to be here alone?” I asked.

“You ain’t so old yourself,” he said. “Besides, I’m here for your own good.”

Shaking my head, I chuckled, trying to control the quaver that threatened. It was my first assignment with Gorgon—no way this kid was gonna mess things up.

“Beat it, kid.” I glanced down the empty street, wiping damp hands against my dungarees before pulling a small package from my pocket. My heart thudded percussion to the police siren wailing in the distance. “I got a job to do and you got no business here. Scram.”

“Watch out for the flying pan.” He chewed on his pinky and spat a fingernail to the ground. “It’ll hit fast on your left side, just below the eye socket.”

I stopped. “Did you say flying pan?”

“You heard me.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Just then, the door opened. A scraggly haired man appeared through a shadowed hallway. He glanced left, then right, avoiding my eyes with his wild stare.

I passed him the small, wrapped package. He snatched it like an animal protecting his prey.

“Gorgon sent ya, he did,” the man muttered.

I nodded, and as I turned to leave, a screech sharp enough to slice flesh exploded from the hallway behind him. A large beefy hand, attached to a large beefy woman in a faded housecoat, pushed the man down the steps. In her other hand, I caught a glimpse of metal, just as an oversized cast-iron pan flew from her fingertips toward the bullseye of my forehead.

“Goddamn dope pushers!” she bellowed.

I ducked, crouching toward the right, away from the—flying pan? Losing my footing mid-step, I tumbled down the stairs to the pavement, grit, gravel, and a searing pain embedded in my left cheek. The pan clanged to the ground, resting beside my ear. Scrambling up, I rushed past the vacant lamppost where the boy had stood only moments before and ran the full ten blocks home.

Mama pressed a cool compress against my swollen cheek. Pain shot up my head, into the crevices of my brain. Flaps of skin hung from raw, purplish flesh dotted with 57th Street grit.

“Tell me how this happened,” Mama said. “I don’t want to hear no nonsense about how you tripped on the curb.”

How could I explain that some crazy lady tried to attack me for making an illicit delivery to her junkie relative? Or the kid who warned me it was gonna happen?

The kid who warned me it was gonna happen.

“We should get you to a doctor.”

“Don’t worry about me, Mama.”

She stood and rinsed out the washcloth. My cheek soothed with her returning touch.

“That’s my job, to worry about you. Besides, a face like yours is one in a million.”

Wincing, I smiled.

With my next haul, I’d get something nice for Mama—a new pair of shoes so she wouldn’t have to shove cardboard inside her holey ones. If I hustled enough, maybe she could stop working in that godawful sweatshop and I’d see the light flicker again in her eyes. Her smile could be soft again, real. Unburdened by pain.

But I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to outrun the shadow that chased me under Gorgon’s watch—knowing that my attempt to improve our lives could, and probably would, result in the ruination of another. I recalled that junkie’s bestial expression, a simple brown parcel his cage.

I thought about the kid.

Gorgon handed me a rusty wrench as he described my next assignment. This time I’d be collecting a debt from some guy named Smith over in Brooklyn.

The weight of Gorgon’s words fell heavy as the tool in my hand.

“You don’t leave without payment. No matter what.” He gestured toward the wrench. “Capiche?”

I gulped. “Capiche.”

Car exhaust puttered in toxic clouds around me as I waited at the bus stop. Impatient cabbies leaned into their horns as they weaved in and out of the afternoon traffic. Everybody had someplace to go, something to do. Probably that Smith guy, too. I wondered what he did each morning after he woke, what dreams he left behind in the indentation of his pillow, what thoughts he carried with him. How things could get so bad, that he needed to float a loan from Gorgon. Was he just another junkie, stuck on drugs or booze or betting the ponies at the OTB? Or was there someone for whom he’d sell his soul to the devil to help?

What would his eyes tell me when I rang his bell? And would I need to ring his bell with this filthy wrench, Gorgon’s calling card for debts unpaid?

“You don’t need to do this, Jamesey.”

I jumped.

It was that kid again, twirling a Yo-Yo on the bench next to me.

“You.” I glowered, leaning toward him.

“Me.” He nodded.

“You remind me of that bug. The one who talks to the puppet in that cartoon picture. Always showing up outta nowhere, always havin’ something to say.”

“Jiminy Cricket,” the boy said. “But no. I’m not your conscience. Think of me as a messenger.”

A messenger. Kinda like me.

He grinned, a wide gap between his two front teeth. I touched my hand to my slowly healing cheek, a residual ache smarting from where Mama stitched me up with a needle and thread. Took a couple shots of whisky to manage that pain.

“Who’s been talking to you, kid? How did you know about that flying pan? And how do you know what I got planned today? Only one other person knows, and he ain’t you.”

“There’s better ways, Jamesey. Meet that guy down in Brooklyn, and it’s curtains for you.”

An image of my mother hobbled through my mind. She was hunched over after working another 14-hour shift, holding her back with one hand and gripping the apartment’s doorframe with the other. The chemical stench swarmed around her, seeping inside, persistent as a parasite; her cough rattling like chains trailing a ghost.

I shook my head. It never occurred to me that I could possibly die taking on one of Gorgon’s assignments—after all, I considered myself a glorified pickup and delivery guy—but in that moment, the acrid reality of mortality roiled in my gut.

What would happen to Mama?

The kid’s expression remained fixed on that Yo-Yo, the bright yellow circle tossed in and out of his palm like it was some goddamn ray of sunshine.

Sunshine in Hell, what a funny idea.

“Who sent ya, kid?”

He caught the Yo-Yo in his hand and turned to me, his silver-grey eyes intense. I’d never seen eyes so clear, yet so deep. Eyes like that on a little kid were downright creepy.

“I wouldn’t get on that bus to Brooklyn, if I were you.”

“Whaddya know about Brooklyn—”

The bus screeched as it pulled to the curb. It came to a stop with an exasperated sigh. The driver opened the door, and I shook my head, turning toward the kid, who’d once again vanished.

Leaving behind his yellow Yo-Yo.

Something about that kid didn’t sit right: his deep yet clear-eyed stare, the dark way he said curtains (“coy-tens”), how he knew about that woman and her big iron pan that was this close to clocking me dead.

I wasn’t superstitious, but I wasn’t a dummy, either.

Lucky for me, Mama still had that small bottle of ipecac in the medicine chest. A twist in the gut gave me a motive for bowing out of the job. Gorgon let me off the hook when I’d vomited the remnants of my bologna sandwich onto the toes of his wingtips. He didn’t think I was chicken shit, just disgustingly sick, so there wouldn’t be any ‘consequences.’ There’d still be other opportunities, more loot to earn. Besides, ole Tubby McGee was chompin’ at the bit with his buck teeth and stupid laugh to get on Gorgon’s good side.

Let ‘em have it.

I handed Tubby the wrench.

“Be careful, man.” I swallowed back thick, bile-tinged saliva.

Tubby crossed his eyes, shoved his finger down his throat, and made a retching sound.

The next day, Gorgon paced the upper step of the stoop outside his apartment building. He’d chain-smoked so many cigarettes at one point he had two of them hanging from his lips at the same time, and he didn’t even notice.

Tubby McGee had never returned from his trip to Brooklyn.

I waited with the gang, watching the sidewalk, the street, for any sign of him. The other guys tapped their feet, chewed their fingernails, and avoided Gorgon’s eyes, his glare burning as red as the tip of his Kool Menthol.

Nobody wanted to be on the other end of Gorgon’s rage.

Bounding down the steps, I stopped just short of the street, my toes teetering over the edge of the curb. I looked left and right and left again, as if I were about to cross, but really, I was biding my time. If Tubby didn’t come back, Gorgon might have thought we were in on something together. After all, Tubby went to collect a debt that sure as hell wasn’t gonna be chump change.

From my pocket, I retrieved the kid’s yellow Yo-Yo. If this went bad for me, it would be his fault, wherever the hell he was. Looping the string around my finger, I released the ball from my hand. Up. Down. Up. Down. So transfixed with the motion, I barely noticed the red Studebaker barreling down the street until I heard the tires screaming like some wild banshee as it came to a stop, inches from my feet.

The severed head of Tubby McGee hit me square in the gut as it flew from the window and landed between my feet.

“Holy fuck!” Gorgon yelled as the car peeled away and gunshots blasted from behind me.

Heaving, I glanced down at Tubby’s vacant stare, judging me. The curtain of his half smile, half sneer parted to reveal those two front buck teeth—broken and bloodied—just like my soul.

If I still had a soul.

Shortly after Tubby’s death, their landlord found Tubby’s mother, dead and naked on the toilet, empty pill bottles scattered across the blue tile. She’d lost her mind after identifying her son’s body—what was left of it, anyway.

I broke ties with Gorgon and his crew. Most times you paid for ditching with a pinky finger or a toe, but Gorgon didn’t even blink when I told him I got another job down at Miller’s bakery. Pay wasn’t great, but the day-olds were mine for the taking and no one lost their head over a Linzer tart.

“Good luck, Jamesey,” he’d said, turning away as he tossed his cigarette into the street.

Three years later, I saw the kid one last time.

Mama had been pushing for me to enroll in trade school—a better life for us, Jamesey, she’d said. Although I wasn’t much for learning, I knew she was right.

Late for my admissions interview, I ducked through a couple alleyways to try to get there faster. Mama would kill me if I missed it.

That was when I heard a tortured sound—raw, almost un-human—from the other side of a dumpster. Against a wall, a young woman—couldn’t have been older than twenty—and against her this greasy goon with a hand on her mouth and a knife to her throat. Her eyes widened at my approach with a glassy sheen of terror and relief.

“Let her go.” My hands balled into fists. I had no weapon to help this woman except for myself, my own muscle and bone and adrenaline and hopefully enough smarts to outwit this creep.

A sneer slithered across his face as he regarded me. His teeth were blackened, a man rotten to his core, as Mama would say.

“Who’s gonna make me?”

He pushed the woman to the side. She landed on her knees as I raised my fists and he took a swipe with his knife, just missing my forearm. I landed a punch to his eye; he snarled and swung at me again. Blood spurted from my shoulder as the blade sliced through my shirt. I held my footing, connecting again with his jaw and then his gut. The woman screamed.

“Enough, man!” he sputtered, doubling over.

“Get outta here!” I shoved him aside; he stumbled down the alleyway as I reached for the woman’s hand. She trembled at my touch.

Then I felt it, a lightning bolt from behind. Dead center of my back, heat searing into me like a steaming iron. I dropped to my knees. My wobbling thighs gave way, and I landed on my back. The goon’s laughter crackled like hellfire through the alleyway, as if he were the devil himself, and the woman’s face hovered, her lips a perfect ‘O.’ I couldn’t tell if she were whistling or screaming or blowing air into my face… like the breeze that swept over the alley. I felt the sun on my face, splintering through the buildings’ shade. Hot, like Coney Island summers spent with Mama, just after my father left. I tasted that sweet grit of pink cotton candy, tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I felt my gut rising and falling with each run of the Cyclone, my body soaring with each jolt of airtime, beaming at Mama’s shrieks as her hair whipped across her face.

In that moment, I remembered what joy felt like.

Then it all stopped.

“How ya feeling, Jamesey?”

That kid, again. He hadn’t aged a bit in the years since I’d last seen him. Same blond pompadour, same silver-grey eyes.

“You didn’t warn me,” I said. “Why?”

He shrugged. “You found a better way.”

I strained to push my eyelids open past the anvils holding them down. The world was heavy. It hurt to breathe, to move.

Life returned in a blur. I blinked to the realization I was in a hospital. Mama sat to my left, and a woman—the woman, sat to my right.

“The kid,” I mumbled.

“Jamesey!” Mama squeezed my hand. I turned from her to the woman, who offered an embarrassed smile.

“The kid,” I repeated.

“Thank God he showed up when he did,” the woman said. Her voice was soft, melodic, like the hum of a Christmas choir. “If he hadn’t flagged down that cop…”

Life. It was kind of like the rise and dip of a yellow Yo-Yo. And that kid, a little bit of sunshine in the darkness of hell. Of Hell’s Kitchen.

I’d never forget him—whoever he was.