Sleepers Page #3

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...to paint the ceiling of his church in Rome.

It don't sound like that big a job, Father.

Well, for Michelangelo it was.

Michelangelo needed the job...

...because it paid more money than he ever had in his life.

And that way, he could pay off the loan sharks that were chasing his father down.

What's his father?

He was like a low-level...con guy.

Conned people out of money, goats, sheep...

Goats?

Chickens, whatever he could, you know.

-Chickens? -Chickens?

You know what happened?

He painted a ceiling no one will ever forget.

Painted it like he was touched by the hand of God.

Did he pay off the loans?

Every single one of them.

How long did it take him, painting the ceiling and all?

It took him about years.

years?!

That's a big ceiling!

I had a Puerto Rican do my whole apartment in two days.

And he had a bum leg.

You know, I don't know what I'm gonna do with you guys.

Hey, just give us a job painting, and leave the rest to us.

You know what it was? The Sistine Chapel!

Sixteenth Chapel?

Who painted the other fifteen?

Outside events meant little. In a society changing radically by the hour...

...we watched the images scatter nightly across the T.V. screens.

Young protesters spoke about how they were going to change our lives...

...and fix the world. But while they shouted their slogans...

...my friends and I went to funeral services...

...for the young men of Hell's Kitchen...

...who came back from Vietnam in body bags.

We viewed with skepticism the faces on television...

...those protected by money and upper-middle-class standing.

A growing army of feminists marched across the country...

...demanding equality. Yet, our mothers still cooked...

...and cared for men who abused them mentally and physically.

For me and my friends, these developments carried no weight.

They might as well have occurred in another country...in another century.

Our attention was elsewhere.

We sat with Father Bobby in a third floor hospital ward, visiting John...

...hoping he'd recover from a punctured lung.

A gift from one of his mother's over-zealous boyfriends.

I hope you like these. You better not tell me you don't.

Father Bobby didn't let that situation rest.

I gave on Sunday. I'm in a rush, okay?

John Reilly.

The little punk!

He got out of line, so I put him back in line. No big deal.

You put him in the hospital.

He's alive, ain't he? Look, if he's smart, he learned himself a lesson.

What are you? About ?

You're a big guy. How much you think John Reilly weighs?

? That's not even a featherweight.

If this were a fight, you'd be way out of your division.

Look, it was a slap, it was nothing.

Well, next time you'll be meeting me.

And I may not be in your division, but I do weigh more than pounds.

And you won't need a doctor when I'm done, you'll need a priest...

...to pray over your body.

See you in church.

Father Bobby would've made a good hit man.

It's a shame we lost him to the other side.

We were down - in the last inning of a sewer-to-sewer stickball game...

...against Hector Maldonado... and three of his friends.

Come on, Davy...take this chump out. He got nothing!

Shut up!

Who's that?

His sister.

What happened to her?

I'm not sure, some kind of cancer got in her legs or something.

Worry about the game, come on.

Come on, Davy, strike the scumbag out.

He can't touch you Davy, he can't touch you.

Hey, while you don't got any legs, you got a lot of tongue!

This is it...home run!

Easy, Mike.

What the f*** you looking at, little dick?!

She's nothing but charm.

Come on, Davy!

You can take him, you can take him, Mikey.

Yeah, I told you he wasn't sh*t, baby!

Hey, swallow your tongue, you little gimp b*tch!

You could've helped her across the street...

...or you could've bought her an ice cream.

You didn't have to throw the game.

Yeah, and now we're the Salvation Army.

You ever wonder why there ain't a Salvation Navy?

Game over, losers. Cough up the cash. A buck each.

He's no better than you.

He was today.

No. You let him be.

All because Irish, here, has a thing for little girls with no legs.

Look, stay away from this, fat man, all right?

You boys are soft like bread. It's going to catch up to you.

And when it does, it's going to hurt...bad.

What happens is our business, not yours, okay?

You gotta stay tough to be tough.

Guy smells it when you're weak; eat you like a salad.

Do you see that street?

That street is the dish of life, and you boys are appetizers.

Somebody gonna come along, eat you up and forget about you by dessert.

Take it easy, fat man. It was just stickball.

Yeah, but going soft is a habit.

You have to keep yourself mean and cut your life around it!

All right, all right, calm down.

It's like hanging out with f***ing Confucius over here.

Be funny, limp dick.

Look, this is just free advice from me to you.

You take it or you throw it away. It don't matter.

Thanks a lot, fat man.

In truth, we were all surprised by Michael's actions.

But in his mind, losing that game meant...

...handing a feeling of victory to a girl in a wheelchair...

...was more than the right thing to do.

Come on, let's go swimming.

The temperature topped out at degrees...

...on the day our lives were forever altered.

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