by Brian Doyle
But then it really snowed—all through Christmas week and past New Year’s Eve and into January, when it finally slowed and then stopped just before the Feast of the Epiphany. By then there was so much snow on the street that parked cars were completely buried and people put pink rubber balls on the tips of their radio antennas to mark where their cars were. The city plows never came at all, the buses stopped running, I couldn’t dribble my basketball anywhere, and people walking to and from the grocery store and the pub had worn a narrow trail down the middle of the street, maybe five feet above the asphalt. The pink balls marking parked cars were about at knee height, most of them new but a few the loveliest faded pink, the color of shyness.
The radio and television and newspapers roared with indignation over the stalled plows and poor planning and corrupt machinations of oleaginous politicians, and that epic snowstorm, it turned out, was a hinge point for Chicago politics, because the mayor at the time, the Machine’s chosen man, heir to the gruff blunt Richard Joseph Daley of sainted memory and criminal record, was so damaged by his failure to plow the streets and collect garbage during the storm that he was soundly defeated in the spring Democratic primary elections, the first time the Machine had been defeated in a century in Chicago, and the new mayor was, gasp, female, the first time the city had ever had a person with a bra running City Hall, that anyone knew.
But the image I retain from the storm has to do with Edward. The first sunny day after the storm ended I was walking atop the snow to the gyro shop around the corner when I noticed Edward inspecting each of the pink balls on car antennas along the street. He went up and down the street, inspecting each one, until he found the one he wanted. I watched as he removed it deftly with his teeth and buried it a few feet away, digging a couple of feet down into the snow to be sure it would not be found for weeks. I wondered if there was some quiet enmity at work there—if the owner of the car had in some way bruised or insulted Mr Pawlowsky or Edward or Miss Elminides—but when I asked Edward about it, a week later when the snow had receded somewhat, he stared at me blankly as if he hadn’t the slightest idea what I was talking about.
7.
INCREDIBLY, A FEW DAYS after the tremendous snowstorm that lasted for nine days and was the biggest snowstorm in Chicago for fifty years, it snowed again for several days, even harder, and this time the city pretty much shut down altogether. Not only were streets unplowed and garbage uncollected, the Tribune and the Sun-Times undelivered, the benches along the lake unpopulated by old folks in baboushkas, dogs unwalked and crows unable to collect their usual tribute of smashed squirrel parts, buses canceled or so crowded with people in immense parkas that some passengers were never able to disembark at all and had to live in the back of the bus for days at a time making coffee over small brushfires, but this time the older residents in our building were essentially screwed, as they could not make their way to the grocery store or the bank or the doctor. The rest of us worked in rotations to cut a narrow path high in the snow over the street again, but two days passed before I even thought of people like Mr McGinty, who was ninety-nine years old and had fought in the American war against the Filipino people when he was brave and stupid and twenty, as he said. Mr McGinty lived in the first floor near the alley, and in good weather he could shuffle out into the alley where he had a battered table and chairs for chess, but with something like eight feet of snow drifted up against the back door, egress even for someone pliable like young Ovious was out of the question.
But here too I learned a lesson from Edward; it turned out he had quietly been shuttling back and forth to the grocery store with loads of food on his back for the older residents. He was not the biggest dog, but he was relentless, and according to Mr Pawlowsky if Edward was properly balanced he could carry not only bread and milk but two bottles of beer on his back. Oddly enough, tall things like milk or beer bottles were apparently not a problem but broad things like steaks and crabs were, for reasons that eluded me; Mr Pawlowsky thought it had something to do with Edward’s center of gravity. I did see Edward once returning from the store, where he must have had a line of credit payable after the melt; he was completely submerged in the snow, through which he moved like a dogged submarine, and all I could see of him was the tip of his tail, and the upper halves of two bottles of red wine. For a moment I had the feeling I was watching a tiny steamer on the lake with its two funnels, but then Edward came up for air for a moment, and saw me in the window. I waved and he smiled and then he submerged again and the bottles slowly approached, looking for all the world like they were walking hesitantly through the snow themselves.
* * *
It was when this vast and epic snowstorm finally melted away that what Mr Pawlowsky came to call the Awkwardnesses began. There were three Awkwardnesses that winter and spring, and they were not all resolved until August, as if the roaring heat and searing light of a full high Midwest summer by the tremendous lake was necessary to turn them finally to ash and memory.
The first was the Affliction—every single being in the building got terribly sick, essentially one by one, and while official diagnoses ranged from influenza to pneumonia to bronchitis to sinusitis to rhinitis (or “whinitis,” as Mr McGinty said of Ovious, who was the sort of patient who moaned loudly all day and night), everyone had roughly the same symptoms, and took the same long weeks to return shakily to a semblance of health, and lost the same amount of weight because he or she lost all appetite and subsisted on water and music and Bulls games on the radio, and looked as wan and emaciated when he or she walked to the lake for the first time since he or she had been felled, and breathed in the sharp stinging restorative air that sometimes held a zest of spruce in it if the wind was from the northeast, where the great deep dark brooding forests of Michigan’s fabled upper peninsula had held their ground since the glaciers retreated ten thousand years ago.
The Second Awkwardness also began in January, with a visit from two members of the Gaylords gang. This was the same organization that had sent a scout to the building before, inquiring as to our desire to purchase fire insurance; in that instance the lone Gaylord had lost the top half of his left pinky finger, and had not returned. But on the last very cold day of January there he was again on the porch, nine-and-a-half-fingered, this time accompanied by another burly Gaylord, and Edward pointed out an idling car with two more scowling Gaylords in it parked up the street.
There were many street gangs in Chicago in those years, of course; every city of size has its human vermin, loudly asserting neighborhood pride and defense of helpless women and children and old folks against the depredations of other gangs, even as they rape and steal and murder and terrify and drug and assault and batter the innocent; every culture hatches its rapacious young warriors, and either bends them to the larger plunder and the greater maw of international war, or leaves them to knife each other in dim alleys until such time as they are dead or imprisoned or beaten in their turn by the forces of the law; and on the north side of the city alone in those years there were the Popes and the Imperials, the Royals and the Jousters, the Latin Kings and the Latin Eagles, the Playboys and the Ventures, the Deuces and the Cobras, and many more. All jostled for territory, all were entrepreneurial in nature, all raised money in sundry and various ways. The Gaylords, while trafficking in the usual squirm of drugs and guns and sex, had developed a thriving side business in insurance, as they called it, or protection-racketeering, as the police called it; and here they were again on the front steps of the building, on an afternoon grimacing with snow, as Mr Pawlowsky said later.
But here again I learned a lesson about Edward, who had not forgotten his previous conflict with the Gaylords, and who had planned carefully for their return. Even before the Gaylords knocked on the door, the street began to fill with dogs. They came from both ends of the street, and emerged from the alleys north and south, and they were utterly silent; not one barked or growled or snarled, though they all looked grim. A dozen or so surrounded the idling Gay
lord car, pressing so close that the doors could not be opened; the rest—and there were at least sixty or seventy of them, of every shape and species, from bulldogs to the tremendous wolfhound who lived with the rabbi at the temple—pressed close to the front steps of the building.
I had been watching all this from my window, from which I could see the front steps, and I turned to say something in amazement to Edward, but he had vanished; and just then the front door opened and Mr Pawlowsky stepped out and said something quietly to the two Gaylords, who looked around and then walked carefully down the steps and back to their car, the sea of dogs parting silently to let them pass. The car moved slowly into the street and started west toward Broadway but then stopped because again the dogs had massed around it, again without the slightest sound; it was this silence that was most frightening, somehow, and for all the oddity of the scene itself it is that eerie dangerous silence I remember to this day. After a moment the dogs fell back and let the car leave. A minute later every dog was gone and the street was as empty as before.
I had strained to see if any of the dogs in the street conducted or commanded the others, or if signals were communicated from Edward to them in some ascertainable way, but I had seen nothing I could understand as a message, and Edward, when I appealed to him for an explanation, declined to clarify the matter. Mr Pawlowsky was only slightly more forthcoming, saying only that ruffians were a regular and unfortunate aspect of life in the city, and that while he understood the urge to cohere in small bands of like-minded companions, he did not see any reason to accept what amounted to an invitation to violence, especially since he had himself been in a violent organization; and though he was now retired from the Navy, he could at need, as he had explained gently to the Gaylords, summon former professional companions to defend the building and the street, and his advice to the Gaylords, and to any other entrepreneurial bands they might be in contact with along these lines, was to consider the area between Broadway and the lake, from Belmont to Addison, as territory protected by the United States Navy, as well as other shadowy but formidable entities whose identities he was not at liberty to divulge, but whose agents took many forms, as perhaps they had noticed today.
* * *
Some mornings I would get up crazy early and take the very first bus downtown along the lake—the Sound Asleep Bus, as its driver called it. This was Donald B. Morris, whose name I learned on the first dark morning I boarded the bus; I had forgotten to get tokens, and had not a cent on my own personal person, but I greeted the driver in an ingratiating way, and began to mumble something about not having a cent, and he smiled and said his name was Donald B. Morris, and I was welcome on the community of the bus, and he would cut me slack twice but not more than twice, was that clear? I said yes sir and he said Don’t call me sir, son, my name is Donald B. Morris, and I believe there is a seat right rear window for you. No one like that seat because the hump of the wheel there and some trick of the engine make it too hot for comfort but you young and can bear the heat. On this bus we are a peaceful people and there is no loud music or any of that. Generally on this bus people sleep until we arrive downtown. Your ride is my treat this morning. Next time the last time I treat. Also do not board the bus and ask passengers for change. That is not done on this bus. When you are seated we will proceed. Estimated time of arrival at Dearborn Street is twenty-two minutes. Pleasure to have you aboard. If you look out the left side the bus you will see the sun coming up over the lake in about twelve minutes. Do not stare directly at the sun. My advice is look at the lake in front of where the sun come up. Such a shimmer is rarely seen. Here we go.
Partly because Donald B. Morris was such an interesting man, and for reasons having to do with work, I began to take the Sound Asleep Bus fairly regularly in February, rising at five in the morning and showering hurriedly and then trying to time my sprint to the lakefront for exactly 5:39 for Donald B. Morris’s punctual arrival at 5:41. After a few rides I was granted a seat directly behind Donald B. Morris, which I took to be a great compliment, although it might also have been the case that I was the only person actually awake on the bus except for Donald B. Morris, and he rather liked having someone to talk to; everyone else got on the bus, went to their usual seat, and fell asleep so thoroughly that Donald B. Morris would have to go and gently wake most of them when we arrived at Dearborn Street.
Donald B. Morris, it turned out, was a gifted and amazing monologist, and the pattern of our conversations was set early on: I would ask a brief question and he would sail off on an erudite and endless commentary on religion, politics, history, the Chicago transit system, music, natural history, plumbing, and most of all football, especially his beloved Chicago Bears. It was a near thing, I discovered, between religion and the Bears for which thing he loved most in life, and I learned to switch him back and forth between them with a question if he got too monomaniacal about one or the other. His speeches about the Bears were often hilarious, and featured every sort of scandal and crime and peccadillo and misdemeanor—it turns out that bus drivers, like policemen, know everything about everyone, especially their vices—but his religious talks were even more interesting because they would occasionally soar up and away in the most amazing fashion. Some combination of the early hour, and the sleeping passengers, and the slow rising of the sun from the lake, and Donald B. Morris’s indisputable imaginative gifts, sometimes led him to say things that bubbled up from somewhere deep inside him, and caught him as unawares as me; for example one morning he told me he had been in the war, and had been saved from death by a horse where no one had ever seen a horse before, and that this horse was, he was absolutely sure, sent to him by the woman some people call the mother of God, although he himself was of the opinion that She was herself in some way also God, because to put gender on God is just silly, gender is a human being thing, and God is no human being, total respect to the Jesus people. Now young Jesus, who was an Arabic boy, we forget, may well have been sent by God, and he may well have been some part of God also, or infused by God, or was God wearing human being skin for a while, but to say, well, Jesus the only form of God, all the other possible forms of God no way could they be God, well, that is just silly, and arrogant too. How the hell we know what shape God taken over the millions of years since universe was sneezed into being? Hey? Who knows the shapes and songs of God? Not one of us, and that is for sure. Better to pay attention and see if you can see some of the fingerprints where God was or is. Like for me that island with the horse. But here we are at Dearborn Street. Watch your step. God bless. Go Bears.
8.
THERE WERE SO VERY MANY THINGS that were riveting and amazing about Chicago to me that year—remarkable people, the deep sad joyous thrum of the blues, my first serious excursions into dark wondrous jazz clubs, the vast muscle of the lake, the mountainous snowfall, the cheerful rough rude immediacy of the bustle and thunder of the city at full cry, the latticework of the elevated train tracks, the deep happy mania of Bears fans, the thrill of being paid for work rather than paying for ostensible education, and so much else; but I suppose what absorbed me most, in those first few months, was the sheer geometry of the city, its squares and rectangles, its vaulting perpendicularity, its congested arithmetic; I took to roofs and fire escapes more and more that winter, climbing up not only on my apartment building roof but on the roof of my office building (nine storeys) and the occasional hotel, given the chance while sentenced to meetings for this and that. I summited the Blackstone, on Michigan Avenue (twenty-one storeys), and the Palmer House, on Monroe Street (twenty-five storeys), and the Burnham, on Washington Street (fourteen storeys); I very nearly climbed atop the Chicago Stadium, the huge old boxy castle where the Bulls played, but chickened out due to ice on the roof; and I got as high as I could in the Hancock building, which was a thousand feet high, by slipping out onto the roof through a service door and briefly contemplating the meticulous jumble of the city far below.
All my life I will remember those few minut
es a thousand feet in the air over Chicago; I could see where the city ended to the west, and turned to fields of snow and stubble; I could see north and south where the city vaguely morphed into Indiana and Wisconsin; and best of all I could see how the tremendous lake, stretching far out of sight to the east, held the city in its immense cold gray hands. I had expected to be amazed by the incredible welter and shapely chaos of the city below me, the countless jostling structures shouldering and crowding against each other, veined by streets and alleys, stitched by train lines, dotted with floating gulls and crows like scattered grains of salt and pepper, but I had not expected to be so stunned by the lake. It had never occurred to me that something could be far bigger and stronger than the city, but this was inarguably so, and I walked home that night along the lake, marveling at it, and a little frightened too.
* * *
Miss Elminides remained a shadowy and elusive figure to me deep into the winter; no matter what time I arose and ran for the bus, or slept in and sleepily shuffled downstairs for empanadas and the papers and the mail, I never saw her going to work or in the hallways; and no matter what time I came home from work, or dashed in and out on the weekends with my basketball or on my late-night adventures in pursuit of music, I never saw her coming in or out, although often I could see her bay windows lit from within. The only time I saw her, it seemed, was when she wanted to speak to me, and this always happened in the lobby by the mailboxes; I would be reaching for my thin scrabble of mail, when she would suddenly appear at my shoulder, murmuring gently about a jazz club I really should investigate, or a gyro shop on the west side of the city where the spanikopita had healed two children of serious diseases, or the train schedule to White Sox games, which were only two months away, hard as it was to believe in baseball in the marrow of a Chicago winter.