God's Pocket - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  "There was a time," he wrote, "when a 24-year-old working man could die once, have the event noticed in his local newspaper and then move on to his reward, without the complications of an additional death." He read it back, out loud, and decided the tone was right. You had to hard-boil dying, unless it was a cat.

  "On Saturday, the Daily Times changed all that. We had help, of course. Someplace in this city is a policeman who cannot tell an accident victim from a five-day-old corpse, someplace there is a SEPTA bus driver who doesn't stop for red lights. Everywhere, in fact, there are SEPTA bus drivers who don 't stop for red lights.

  "But it took the Daily Times to turn what happened to Leon. Hubbard into a multiple death. And to turn his death into a nightmare for all the people from God's Pocket who loved him.

  "For his mother, his friends, his co-workers." Shellburn thought about throwing Mickey Scarpato in there, and then decided against it.

  "The first death, according to police, happened when part of a crane came loose and hit Leon Hubbard in the back of the head. The Daily Times reported that incident on page 16 of last Tuesday's editions in a two-paragraph story.

  "It was reported incorrect, but then, Leon Hubbard wasn't important. If he had been, surely one of the New Journalists would have written at some length about what Leon Hubbard had for breakfast, what he was about the moment it happened." Shellburn stopped again and thought about T. D. Davis.

  "There are people at the Daily Times who aren't going to like this," he wrote. "Some of them are the New Journalists themselves, who dislike facts, and some of them, I suppose, are the people who brought the New Journalists to Philadelphia from places like Florida. It would be hard for me to care less what they like.

  "There isn't a New Journalist in this city worth a hair on Leon Hubbard's head or of any man who works for a living who knows what it is to get up every morning and sweat for his money.

  "Leon Hubbard lived in a row house on 25th Street in God's Pocket-small, Dirty-faced, neat as a pm inside. And Leon Hubbard was like the other working people in God's Pocket. Dirty-faced uneducated, neat as a pin inside."

  Shellburn read it again, weighing T. D. Davis and Jeanie Scarpato in the sentences.

  "The workingmen of God's Pocket are simple men. They work, they follow the Phillies and the Eagles, they marry and have children who inhabit the Pocket, often in the homes of their mothers and fathers. They drink at the Hollywood Bar or the Uptown Bar, small, Dirty-faced little places deep in the city, and they argue there about things they don't understand: Politics, race, religion.

  "But they understand their lives—as much as anyone can—and their deaths. And in the end they die, like everybody else, leaving their families and their houses and their legends. Sometimes they die old, but more often it's a heart attack at 52, or cirrhosis at 47, or cancer. The refineries where they work poison them, and poison their children. And sometimes, like Leon Hubbard, they die at 24, when part of a crane comes loose and caves in the back of their head

  "And there is a dignity in that. A Dirty-faced dignity that the New Journalists will never understand Because they have never been Dirty-faced, they have never had to work for a living. The air they breathed growing up didn't have poison in it, their fathers didn't die from bad livers or hearts at 50 years old Their fathers put them through journalism school.

  "Of course, I have no idea what they teach in journalism school these days, but it's not the lessons of God's Pocket. And so maybe it's not their fault—the New Journalists that a death in that world doesn't matter to them. That a 24-year-old man who supported his mother and his neighborhood is dead.

  "And maybe it isn't their fault that it matters so little that they get the age wrong, or miss the street where the Dirty-faced little house was. Maybe, it isn't their fault that they care so little they can report the same man dying two different times in the same week.

  "But it's someone's fault. Someone gave the New Journalists their VDT machines, someone brought them to Philadehthia, someone gave them the space in this newspaper to write. Someone armed them and turned them loose, and the victims pile up quietly all over

  Philadelphia, and in the forgotten editions of this newspaper.

  "And the victims sit quietly in God's Pocket and a hundred other neighborhoods like it in this city, and they take it. They are afraid and ignorant. They are being used like guinea pigs in an experiment in child journalism, and none of them is doing a thing about it.

  "None of them cares enough to come down here and shake somebody by the throat, none of them cares enough to say, 'You can't insult me.' Leon Hubbard might have done that, I don't know. But I know we owe him an apology, and all the people who knew him and loved him and worked with him. And I know that we stop listening to Leon Hubbard's story, and all the stories like it in the neighborhoods of this city, eventually the neighborhoods will stop listening to ours."

  Shellburn typed a "-30-" at the bottom of the page, and then put his feet up on the desk to read what he had written. He smiled, thinking of the phone calls Monday morning, thinking of the crybaby New Journalists writing their defenses in columns that they would submit for the Op-Ed page, and that would never be run. He thought of Jeanie Scarpato and stopped smiling. He wondered if she would understand the chance he was taking, going against his own paper for her. She was confused now, he knew that from the telephone call.

  She was confused, and it would have been better to wait a week, but in a week she might have moved so far away from him that it wouldn't matter what he wrote. And in a week, Leon Hubbard would be old news, unless the New Journalists hauled him out and had him killed again.

  He stapled the column together, went downstairs to the city room and put it in the night managing editor's mailbox instead of Billy's. He didn't want anybody softening it up. He checked his own mail then, about twenty letters, half that many messages. One of them from Yahama Bahama. He pictured her for a minute. Pretty hair, perfect teeth, legs, everything. It didn't do a thing. The best he ever liked his wife, Shellburn never stopped looking for other women.

  That was what Jeanie Scarpato had done to him. That and the column lying in the night managing editor's mailbox spoke how much he could feel. He had an impulse to call her then, but he pushed it back.

  "Let her read the column," he said out loud, "let her see what you've done for her."

  * * *

  T. D. Davis was watching television.

  The Jap golfer was lining up a putt of less than one foot on the eighteenth hole of a course someplace in North Carolina. The announcers were whispering. “Keith?"

  "Yes, Don."

  "Keith, I think you could say this is the most important eight inches in this young man from Japan's life." The camera was behind the golfer, and from that angle the sun caught the blade of his putter. From that angle, it looked like the Japanese golfer could have been pissing into the cup. He stood over his ball ten seconds, then fifteen, too long. He stood up and backed off.

  "It's definitely the most important eight inches in his life," Keith said, "and I think he realizes that more than anybody."

  A moment before the phone rang, T. D. sat up in his chair to study the golfer from Japan. T. D. had seen the signs earlier, on a three-footer at the fifteenth. He was trying so hard now to concentrate that he'd gone past it. He'd turned the microscope a little past things and now he couldn't get them focused again. The Japanese golfer walked away from the putt for another look. T. D. smiled. The Japanese people, of course, were famous for trying hard. That's why the handles didn't fall off their car doors, but T. D. could see this one was out of control. He'd lost a stroke at the fifteenth, another one at the sixteenth, and now he needed this little eight-inch putt to hold off Tom Watson, who had played the back nine in thirty-two. Watson, the greatest player in golf, was standing on the edge of the green, watching. The Jap knew he was there. . .

  The lie might have been a little downhill, not enough to make any difference, unless the Japanese let it. He walked
back and stood over the putt again. Ten seconds, fifteen. Too long. He tapped the ball and it rolled past the hole on the left side.

  The phone rang just as the television camera got close to the Japanese golfer's face—half apology, half terror. T. D. wondered if there was a club in his bag for cutting open his stomach. T. D. had been raised underprivileged in a country where they liked to say anybody could grow up to be President, but now he'd made himself a place, and the spirit behind that belief was the single most repulsive thing he could think of. T. D. liked the old order.

  Watson, Nicklaus, Palmer. He picked up the phone, watching the crowd and the golfers head back to the fifteenth hole to begin a sudden-death playoff.

  "T. D. Davis," he said. T. D. always answered his own phone, he kept a listed number in the phone book.

  It was Brookie Sutherland. "T. D., I just got into the office," he said.

  “Fine."

  "Yessir. Anyway, I got in and Shellburn's column was in my mailbox, like when Billy Deebol's on vacation—you know, Shellburn won't use the VDTs himself . . ."

  “I know."

  "Well, I was going to keyboard the column, and then I happened to notice what it was about, and I thought you'd want to know."

  T. D. Davis said, "Dead mummers . . ."

  "Wel1, no," Brookie Sutherland said. "It's about somebody getting killed in South Philadelphia, and then it libels the paper. You want me to read part of it?"

  The television station had gone to commercial while Tommy Watson and the Japanese were headed back to the fifteenth. “The paper can't libel the paper," T. D. said.

  Brookie Sutherland began to read. "Someone gave the New Journalists their VDT machines, someone brought them to Philadelphia, someone gave them the space in this newspaper to write. Someone armed them and turned them loose, and the victims pile up quietly all over Philadelphia, and in the forgotten editions of this newspaper.”

  He read the part about the readers being guinea pigs and not having enough balls to come down to the paper and choke somebody, too. When he'd finished, the line was quiet. T. D. Davis had the feeling that Sutherland missing text.

  Back on television, the Japanese and Tom Watson had arrived at the fifteenth tee. The hole was a dogleg left, and the approach to the green was over a peanut-shaped pond the color of paper money. Watson played first, since the Japanese had bogeyed the last hole. He used a three wood and drove the ball 250 yards straight out into the bend of the fairway.

  "I guess you better," T. D. said.

  While Brookie Sutherland read the column, the Japanese hooked his drive into the trees on the left, punched out with a seven iron, and then dropped his ball into the middle of the peanut-shaped pond, trying to make up for the stroke he lost in the trees. Watson had stood with his caddie in the middle of the fairway and watched it happen. The thing T. D. liked about caddies was that they knew they were caddies, and even if they thought they were as good as Tom Watson, there was always that sixty-pound bag to haul around to remind them what they were.

  On the phone, Brookie Sutherland was at the part about the guinea pigs again. On the television, the camera was back in close on the Japanese golfer's face. He looked like—oh, like he might have just lost the feeling in his legs. "Keith," one, of the announcers said, "I think his face tells the whole story."

  T. D. Davis studied the look. Shock and loss, the misunderstanding the Japanese golfer had had about where he lit into things. Davis studied him until it almost could have been Richard Shellburn.

  Brookie Sutherland was finished. "What do you want me to do?" he said.

  T. D. didn't let his feeling into his voice. "What you're supposed to do," he said. "Keyboard it for Monday's paper." And then, before Brookie Sutherland could thank him for his time or . offer to mow the lawn or suck his dick, T. D. Davis hung up.

  * * *

  Monday morning T. D. came into the office at exactly eight-thirty. He said good morning to Brookie Sutherland and Gertruda and then went into his office and read the column for himself.

  The papers hit the street forty-five minutes later, and by eleven o'clock the city was screaming like the delivery trucks were out running over pet dogs. People didn't like Richard, Shellburn calling them dirty-faced and ignorant. There were about twenty calls from the Pocket, maybe thirty others from places like it. T. D. could hear the tone of their voices shade when they realized who they'd got on the phone.

  He told them all the same thing, that he didn't tell Richard Shellburn what to write. A woman said, "Doesn't anybody look it over before you go ahead and put it in?" and he'd said, “Just for spelling. Richard Shellburn is the most-loved columnist in this town, and we like to think it was his own judgment got him there."

  A man from God's Pocket said, “Well, if he wasn't over here gettin' in Leon's mother's pants all the time, he might of noticed everybody here ain't dirty."

  T. D. had Gertruda keep track of the calls, and when it hit thirty he had her try to call Shellburn. Gertruda said she'd let the phone ring five minutes. "Then call Billy Deebol," he said.

  "Have Billy run over there and wake him up."

  * * *

  Billy knocked on the door just as the noon news started.

  Shellburn had been out of bed long enough to collect his newspaper and find a cold beer in the refrigerator. He'd moved the typewriter off the table for room to read the paper and had just settled down to it when he heard the taps on the door. "Richard? It's Billy .... "

  Shellburn got up and slid the bolts in the door, and Billy was standing there in his suit and a new haircut, apologizing for knocking on his door. "You want to come in?" he said.

  Billy shook his head. "I only got a minute," he said. "T. D. is trying to get ahold of you."

  "I disconnected the phone," Shellburn said.

  "I can tell T. D. you weren't here if you want me to. They're pissing through the phones at the office. I think they had thirty calls the first hour.”

  Shellburn said, "Anybody come down there to strangle T. D. yet?"

  Billy shook his head. "I don't think they're pissed at him. At least not from what he said. From what he said, it's you." Shellburn stopped smiling. "That's what he told me .... "

  Shellburn closed his eyes and tried to see if that could be true. "What for? I'm the one on their side."

  "I thought you'd took the day off," Billy said, "when there wasn't a column in my mailbox." Shellburn could see he was holding back.

  "We've been friends a long time," Shellburn said.

  Billy nodded. "All right. I can see how maybe they might of taken it wrong today. I mean, they might of missed the point."

  Shellburn went back over to the table and picked up the paper and began to read the column out loud. Billy stopped him when he called them Dirty-faced. "That right there," he said. "And the part about not understanding their religion .... "

  He dropped the paper on the table. "Nobody understands their religion,". he said, "that was the point." Then he remembered Billy had six kids, and saw that he should have explained it. You couldn't do that later, after it was in the paper. "How many calls?"

  Billy shrugged. "Thirty or forty," he said.

  “And nobody's pissed at him?"

  "Just for lettin' you write it."

  Shellburn noticed that Billy was standing in the doorway. "C'mon in," he said. “It's all right."

  It was the first time Billy had ever been inside. He sat down in the chair and looked at the table, not wanting to seem nosy.

  "You want a beer?"

  "All right."

  Shellburn got two beers out of the refrigerator, gave one to Billy and then sat down on the mattress, holding one in each hand. "You know what I was talking about, don't you?"

  "Yes," he said.

  Shellburn said, "It was about people. Good people and bad people."

  "Maybe you shouldn't of called them Dirty-faced," Billy said. "That might of been where the misunderstanding was."

  "It's a compliment," Shellb
urn said. "They work for a living, they get dirty."

  "That's dirty hands," Billy said. "Dirty-faced is you don't take a bath." Shellburn thought that over. Billy sipped at his beer and looked at the table.

  "You been over there yet?" Shellburn said. "The Pocket?"

  Billy shook his head. "I've been going over Judge Kalquist's trial records," he said. "I thought maybe I could get that finished this week."

  "The patterns," Shellburn said, "that's what we're looking for, the patterns."

  "The patterns aren't clean-cut," Billy said. "Not to nail his ass with .... "

  Shellburn didn't seem to be listening. "It's never clean, is it?" he said.

  "The little stories are clean," Billy said. "Dead-dog stories, the bums at Christmas . . ."

  "No matter what you do," Shellburn said, "you never get to the bottom. No matter how deep you go. How long we been working on Kalquist, three weeks'?"

  Billy nodded, not pointing out that he was the one who'd been doing the work. "Three or four," he said.

  "And after all that time, going through trial transcripts and sentences, we don't have anything but patterns."

  Billy Deebol was getting more uncomfortable by the minute. "I'm not sure we got a clean pattern, Richard," he said.

  "Dead dogs," Shellburn said. "The reason dead dogs are clean is because they can't tell you you're wrong. Same way with the bums." Billy noticed Shellburn was a minute or two behind the conversation, but sometimes he got like that. "If you could talk to a dead dog, you think he'd tell you he was devoted and cute and that's it? If you got down to it, what it was like to be a dog, it might turn out that he deserved to get run over." He shook his head. "There's nothing clean, Billy. Nobody ever told the whole truth yet."

  Billy sipped his beer. "You want me to tell T. D. you weren't home?" he said.

  K Shellburn nodded. "Yeah, I'll get to him later this afternoon. And keep after Kalquist, will you, Billy? All we need is the pattern."

  Billy finished his beer and stood up. The room smelled stale and old, and in a way he hated to leave Shellburn there alone. In another way, it was what Shellburn wanted. "I'll tell him you weren't home," he said.