Steel Town

by Richard Whitten Barnes

  ~ * ~

  It took six rough months for her to be settled living in a flat with three other girls making their way in life by doing phone and video sex and turning occasional tricks for a handler they saw only occasionally to turn over their receipts.

  By attrition, after two years she assumed the role of house mom to newer girls, and responsible for collecting and paying the “rent.” It was a role she did not savor, as the pressure to satisfy their handler was enormous. The penalty for being short of expectations was harsh. She did that for four years, until one Christmas Eve, just shy of her twenty-third birthday, she found herself on a Greyhound bus, northbound back to Sudbury.

  It was the confusion of the holiday that enabled her to collect her few belongings and leave the flat unnoticed. That was hard enough. What she hadn’t foreseen was how daunting the idea of showing up at her mother’s door would be.

  There, in the Sudbury bus terminal she stood, unable to continue and face life in this city, much less her mother’s disappointment and recriminations. Her options were that, or to keep going. She chose the latter. There was no returning to Toronto, if she valued her well-being.

  The hardest part of her decision was not coming to terms with her mom or seeing her siblings, especially Tim, the only boy among them. He’d been four when she left, going on thirteen by now. Somehow, she’d always had a special feeling for this boy named for her father, but in no way like that burly, garrulous man.

  Tim had been challenged, late to talk, introverted to the extreme, and capable of sudden outbursts at any given time. Despite the difference in their ages, he had gravitated to her. Maybe it was because her mom was always away, working at some menial job to make ends meet. She knew her leaving home would tear a hole in Timmy’s already tortured young life, but she had a life, too. Never mind not graduating from high school. The other girls in town with diplomas were flipping burgers. She had left knowing her younger sister Fay could take over the duties of tending the other kids, including Timmy.

  Her money was just adequate for a ticket to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, a steel plant city on the eastern shore of Lake Superior. It felt like a knot in her chest as she forked over the money for the bus ticket west.

  Three

  Marly arrived in Sault Ste Marie and camped out in a mall on the town’s main street that next day until she soon found waitress work, discovering the best tips were at any of the truck stops along Highway 17 that cut through the town.

  She knew little of this town other that what she’d heard her father tell about when he lived here in the 1950s and 60s. It was a steel town and his family had lived well. The Algoma steel plant was at full capacity. There wasn’t a shop or person that hadn’t benefited by the plant’s presence. Then the economy changed, and the plant began to lay workers off, her dad being one of them. He’d been fortunate to find work in the Nickle mines of Sudbury, where she and her younger siblings had been born.

  She found a job waitressing at one of the largest diners which was on the east side of the city and near a barely affordable room. It was at this all-night venue that she met Eddie, a quiet, nice looking guy in his twenties. He was hunched over his coffee mug, brown hair down half way to his shoulders, partially obscuring the remains of teen-age acne, and a purple bruise just above his left eye.

  It was late, and the counter was nearly empty. Marly had finished cleaning the coffee urn for the next shift and had time to talk.

  “So, what’s your story? No place to go?” She cleared his empty donut plate and filled his coffee.

  He took his, perhaps hundredth, look toward the establishment’s entrance. “Waiting for someone.”

  “You’ve been here an hour. Maybe they’re not coming.”

  He hunched his shoulders. “Didn’t make any special time. Just thought he might show, that’s all.”

  “So, he’s a regular here?” She watched as he became increasingly fidgety.

  “Yeah.”

  “Stocky guy? Slicked-back hair in a bun?”

  “That’s him—yeah! How’d you know?”

  “We don’t get a lotta locals, just people passin’ through. That guy’s here a lot. Sits in that booth over there. He was here and gone before you showed up. What’s your name? I’ll tell him you’re lookin’ for him next time he comes in.”

  He looked deflated; more than just disappointed. “Yeah. Tell him Eddie Hoyne, okay?” Slowly, he rose from the counter, buttoned his light jacket against the cold, and left.

  She watched through the window as he disappeared on foot down Highway 17 toward town.

  ~ * ~

  The very next day Marly arrived for the lunch shift to find the guy who Eddie Hoyne had sought. He was sitting in his usual booth in company with an ape-like tough. They were still there in heated discourse when she’d returned from putting away her coat in the kitchen.

  “More coffee?” Marly held the carafe invitingly.

  The stocky man with the slicked-back hair shook his head. “Nah.” Up close his face was a permanent sneer. It was unnerving.

  She looked inquiringly at the other, who declined by holding a large, grimy hand over his cup.

  “A guy named Eddie’s been lookin’ for you,” she said to the sneer.

  “Eddie,” he repeated.

  “I don’t know…Hoit, Hoyle maybe.”

  “Hoyne! Tell the little fucker he’s way past paying me what he owes. He’s in a load of hurt.”

  “Maybe he was gonna pay you last night.” She noticed the tattooed snake on his neck.

  “He don’t got shit, else he’d show up at my shop.” He was directing his answer to the man opposite. “Fucker knows I can’t have the shit beat out of him in public. That’s why he comes here to whine.”

  The other man guffawed.

  “I’m just the messenger,” she monotoned, and retreated behind the counter.

  Marly watched the two as she worked the increasing lunch trade. There was no doubt that the snake-tattooed man was giving the other some sort of marching orders. She had seen enough of his kind in Toronto. It made her shiver.

  ~ * ~

  A month passed before Marly spoke again with Eddie Hoyne although she’d seen him in the diner. She’d thought to mention her encounter with the man he’d been seeking, but then what was there to tell that he didn’t already know?

  It was a Monday morning, and Marly needed to do something about a better place to live. She’d found a clean rooming house on her arrival in the “Soo,” but it was expensive. She’d heard about an Ontario Provincial program to assist those in need for housing and was at the city’s Social Service office on Brock Street filling out an application when she felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Eddie.

  “Oh. Hi.” She thought he seemed more relaxed than before. He was taller and more filled out than he’d appeared in the diner, almost handsome. “I’m just…” She pointed to the document that read:

  APPLICATION FOR SUBSIDIZED HOUSING

  He nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

  “Looking for an apartment?”

  “No. Looking to rent some space I got. It’s part of that same program. The Provence pays me part of the rent.”

  “You got a place?”

  “Yeah. Wanna see?”

  She looked at him with fresh eyes, wary of the strings attached to any generosity. But there was something about his vulnerability that attracted her. “I guess.”

  ~ * ~

  A city bus took them to the west side of town near the steel plant. A one-block walk took them to a small house clad in faux brick tarpaper siding.

  “You own this?” she remarked.

  “Kind of,” he said, climbing the shallow stoop and extracting a key from his jeans. “My old man owned it. I came back to the Soo to live with him when I was fourteen. It was mortgaged to the max…still is. He’s gone, but I have to pay the mortgage, or lose it.”

  “You could sell it.” They entered a small living room in dire need of picking up.

>   “Don’t think it’s worth what I owe, at least that’s what the bank says. Sorry about the mess.”

  She looked around. “So then, what do you expect? I’m going to shack up with you? Something like that?”

  He looked hurt. “No—no, I gotta make the payments on this place or pay even more to rent somewhere else.”

  “The guy at the diner says you owe him money.”

  He didn’t answer the question. “You want to look at the room or not?”

  It was on the second floor, the largest of two bedrooms, with a hall bath just outside the door. It obviously wasn’t being used. Bedding was folded on the bare mattress of the double bed. Two large windows looked out onto the side yard and onto the street below. It was a cheery enough space.

  “Nice,” she admitted. “Why don’t you have this?”

  “It was my dad’s room. I made myself a place in the cellar. Never moved out. It’s fine.”

  “What happened to your father?”

  “Heart attack…two years ago last summer.

  “Your ma?”

  “Lives with her sister in Laird Township, east of here. I did, too, until I was old enough to get out and come live with the old man.”

  She walked into the hall, peeked in the bathroom. “What’s in the other rooms?”

  “Nothing, really. Some junk and furniture I don’t use. You want it, or not?”

  “How much?”

  He told her. It was significantly less than the rooming house.

  “Deal then,” she said.

  “Move in when you want.”

  “I don’t have more than a couple of bags. I’ll come tomorrow afternoon.”

  Four

  Eddie descended into the kitchen to fetch a Coke from the fridge. There was something about that smart-ass girl that gave him a feeling of inferiority. She was kind of sexy: skinny, small tits, but still sexy. He wondered about her a little with the pierced lower lip and the tear-drop tattoo on the inside of her wrist. And she hadn’t even moved in yet, acting like she fucking owned the place.

  He took the drink and what was left of a bag of Cheetos down to his place in the basement. After being on the second floor for the first time in weeks…maybe months, and in the relative order of the unused bedroom, his subterranean hideaway looked a wreck. His father’s overstuffed lounge chair that he’d dragged down from the front room was getting worse for wear, as most of the other crappy excuses for furniture now seemed.

  It was more than that. Last summer the sewers had backed up, flooding the basement with an inch of water. The rug he’d put down never completely dried out; the basement smelled of mold. He sensed the familiar surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. Still, it was here that he felt secure.

  Over the laundry sink that stood by the oil furnace, a battered cabinet hung, from which, with a slight tremor in his hand, he extracted a small plastic container. He shook out one of the three pills left, popped it in his mouth and washed it down with the Coke. Into the big chair he sank, and within minutes, he felt better.

  Renting the room was a last resort, but he’d been falling behind on the mortgage and other bills. The oil company had called to say his March delivery would not be made unless his bill was cleared up.

  There was no choice. He’d have to put up with someone else living in the house, invading his need to be alone.

  ~ * ~

  Marly had recently earned the desirable breakfast and lunch shift. She’d gathered her few belongings into two duffels that morning and left the room she’d rented, despite having paid up through the end of the week.

  It was almost three in the afternoon by the time she’d cleaned up for the night shift and made it to the house, not knowing if the guy was at home or not. The bell answered after several tries.

  “Sorry,” Eddie Hoyne said, averting his eyes and not offering an explanation. “Yeah. Come on in.”

  She wrestled her two bags through the door while he walked to a side table and found a key. He held it out to her.

  Marly dropped a bag and took the key. “Why don’t you grab that bag, and help me up the stairs?”

  Eddie stared at the duffel for a moment, shrugged and led the way. She watched him reluctantly drag the bag up the steps, wondering what else was going on with this guy. He seemed out of it.

  “Just dump it there,” she said, when they reached her room.

  “Uh…ya got the first month’s—”

  “There’s still over a week left of this month,” she said. She pulled a wallet from her coat and held out a bill. “This’ll do. I’ll pay next month’s up front like we agreed.” She watched his eyes drop and shoulders sag in disappointment.

  “It’s just that I got—Yeah, okay,” he said, and left.

  Goddam misfit! she thought. She began putting things away in the old dresser and the walnut-veneered wardrobe. Not my problem if he’s broke.

  It didn’t take her long to make up the bed and take possession of the bathroom, throwing her articles in the empty medicine cabinet and finding clean towels in the hall closet. It was time to take a closer look at her new digs.

  ~ * ~

  Eddie heard her up there in the kitchen, knocking around like she owned the place. He felt like an intruder in his own house. She had been up there for over an hour. Doing what? Go up there and find out! Why was it so hard to climb those steps and find out what was going on?

  His mouth felt dry, and that familiar gut-wrench started up. Trembling fingers found the pills. He washed the remaining two down with water from the tap. He was starting to take the fucking things more often and knew he’d have to face Nick Savos sooner than later.

  ~ * ~

  The kitchen was a disaster. Not just cluttered, but filthy. Even in Toronto, she’d had the apartment picked up and half-way sanitary. After an hour, she’d only made a start on the kitchen. She was scraping away something that looked like burned-on cheese from the stovetop burners when the door leading to the basement opened. There he was, staring at her, and at the changes in the room.

  “Hi” she offered. “You got any tools? Like a putty knife or something?”

  He peered back at her, as if he hadn’t processed the question. Then he seemed to follow what she’d said. “Oh…nah…I dunno, maybe.”

  His actions reminded her of some of the girls in the Toronto apartment, whacked out on heroin so they could get through the mind-numbing session of gyrating in front of the mini-cam in various degrees of undress, depending on the fee.

  “You on something?” For Marly, the question was routine. Her young life had groomed her to take such behavior in stride. She was no stranger to the effects of drugs.

  The question had considerably more effect on Eddie “Fuck no! What are you doing, anyway?”

  “Trying to shovel my way through this shithole you use as a kitchen, and bullshit…I can spot a user.”

  “Only oxy,” he admitted.

  “You want me to make dinner?”

  “Huh?”

  “Gimme some money and I’ll get us something from that store by the bus stop.”

  He hesitated, messing with his hair. “I don’t have much. Five okay?”

  “That’ll get us a pizza. So, what is it? Yes or no?”

  Wordlessly, Eddie pulled three toonies from his pants. He set them on the stove.

  She snatched them up, retrieved her coat from the hook by the door and was down the stoop and into the street. It was the beginning of a relationship, although neither of them realized it at the time.

  Five

  The double-wide garage door slid down with a soft whirr, enclosing the Lexus sedan with its occupant. Dale Urban remained seated for a spell. He wanted to savor this evening before being confronted by the sitter and her report on his annoying eight-year-old son.

  His presentation to the Sault Kiwanis Club meeting had been enthusiastically received. Three hours earlier he’d stepped up to the podium at the Water Tower Inn to announce his latest venture:
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br />   The city’s largest and oldest shopping mall located just south of the town center had lost its magnet store, and as a result was falling into neglect. It was a huge loss of tax income for the town, as other shops in the mall fled for richer pastures. Urban’s proposal centered around making the space into a civic activity and entertainment magnet with updated facilities, including a performing arts center. A new mall would be built that would not rely on a single “big box” store like the one that had closed.

  The pasteboard mockup and the artist’s rendering were spectacular. The inclusion of a modern park and movie complex was icing on the cake. Assurances that known retailers had opted in on the project were taken at face value and applauded. Following the talk, two of the members inquired about investing.

  He was still on a high as he entered through the large kitchen of the impressive house he’d acquired on the river east of town.

  “Sorry to be late, Mrs. Pearl.” He apologized to the squat sixtyish woman, already donning her coat. “The meeting—”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Urban,” she assured. “Joey was occupied. He’s quiet at times like that. He spent the night with his baseball cards and the—”

  “The what?”

  “Well, he’s been in his room reading for ever so long. I have him ready for bed, but he’s been in there humming softly looking at, I think, just one page.”

  Urban handed her two twenty-dollar bills and bade her good-night. “Tomorrow, then?”

  She nodded her assent and left. Since January, the woman had been delivering and returning the boy to and from a school for children with special needs. Urban sensed her patience in dealing with Joey was wearing thin. God knew his was.

  He found the boy, as reported, curled up in a corner, embracing a book on pre-natal care his mother had bought that got included in the move from BC. He was repeating a single word again and again, humming atonally between words.