Spindle City

by Jotham Burrello

  Helen smacked his arm. “Did you know Nellie’s father died of brown lung, just like old man Otis?” Helen had a knack for taking girls down a peg. Her information was usually correct, cobbled together from eavesdropping on operatives gossiping when she delivered dinner pails. Rumor had it Nellie wasn’t too well liked by the other girls in her boardinghouse. Helen continued, “You want to know a secret?”

  Will smiled. “Do I have a choice?”

  “I heard that dumb Nellie wants to change her name now that her pop can’t stop her. Something that doesn’t sound Portuguese. What do you think of Nellie Zero?”

  “Quit it.”

  “Or Nellie Zilch?”

  “I figured you’d give her a break.”

  “Cuz my dad died?”

  “A job shouldn’t kill you.”

  “That’s our lot, Will Bartlett.” She skipped a stone and Will handed her another. “She’s a social-climbing numbskull.”

  Every girl that showed interest in Little Doc or Tommy or any of the gang was out for something. Granted, Helen’s intelligence on Nellie didn’t put the girl in the best light, but brown lung? And besides, she sure was pretty. Prettier than Florence La Badie on account of her tan skin. Nothing like the pale ghosts that haunted the Highlands mansions. So what if she wanted out of the mill before her lungs and hearing went? Couldn’t blame her for that.

  Helen peered down the beach at Little Doc and Nellie. He spun her around in the sand. “She’s falling for him because of the car. But Tommy makes just as much at the paper. More, counting the dances.”

  “And the gambling.”

  “He could bury Little Doc in money.”

  “Perhaps Tommy has another girl.”

  Will thought this might trip Helen up, but she knew the skinny on his love life too. “Not unless she’s a card dealer.”

  Will knocked her shoulder. “Leave her be.”

  “Look at that. They can’t be a couple. She’s an Amazon.” There was another reason for the nickname Little Doc. He was short, and at nineteen, already losing his hair. He had grown a beard to make up for the deficiency topside. “They shouldn’t be doing that. You just watch. Her ankle will twist like a screw through butter.” Helen smacked sand from her hands as if that was the last word on the matter, and then added, in further defense of her brother’s taste, “She’s too daft for Tommy.”

  “Who says she’s Tommy’s to be had? She’s Little Doc’s girl.”

  Helen placed her fists on her hips. “I stopped being that foolish the day my father croaked.” Will froze, wishing he could utter such airtight declarations. “Everything is up for grabs,” she added, scratching her French twist.

  “I like your hair.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s okay.”

  “And that dress is the best here.”

  Helen lifted the hem high and watched the soft fabric float back over her knees. “Rita sure made a fuss. Don’t make a big deal about it inside.” She punched his arm. “My reputation.”

  “As a foulmouthed, thieving—”

  “I’m planning a big job.”

  “Really?”

  “Bank job. Big. Gonna need a good nickname for the papers.” She stood on her toes and pretended to moon for the cameras.

  “The Fall River bandit,” Will said.

  “Good one. But that’s a guy’s name.” Helen kicked the sand. “The world needs more girl outlaws.”

  “Sounds good, Calamity Jane, but the banks are closed now. You can steal something tomorrow.” He extended a hand. “Come here.” All those dance lessons in Will’s mother’s parlor had been leading to this night. They were alone, without parents, and yet, like adults, clean and fine smelling—and smartly dressed at their first big shindig. He said, “Guys were peppering me about you.”

  “About being in my gang?” Helen teased. She stepped back on the sand, and sized him up like a stubborn bank vault. Will tipped his boater back, catching the sunset on his cheeks. Helen straightened up shaking her head. “Boys are so stupid.”

  Will fell back against a rock formation and slid down to the sand. Helen tiptoed forward, holding her long skirt as if crossing a puddle. She slumped down beside him. Three sloops cruised across Mount Hope Bay. Sounds of the orchestra warming their instruments drowned out the voices of couples passing above them on the boardwalk. Will hoped Helen hadn’t seen Sunny Brayton roll up with a carload of Highlands kids. But of course she had. That’s why she’d run so far down the beach. Sunny was Fall River royalty. Not much in the looks department—Helen beat her hands down with a little scrubbing—but Sunny was the queen. And what Sunny lacked in looks, she made up for in meanness.

  He glanced at the faded scribble of scars on Helen’s neck. “I know you saw her.”

  “The witch?” Helen splayed her legs and poured sand between her hands. “She bragged about going to dances for a year, though she’s been too young till this summer. Tommy should have tossed her out by the ear.”

  “Could he do that?”

  “Not if he wants a job in Fall River.” She scooped another handful of sand. “If she so much as steps on my foot, I’m going to let her have it.”

  “Forget about her.” Will knocked her elbow.

  Helen dropped her head on his shoulder. She tapped her toes on the sand. Will recognized the waltz and mimicked her steps. She sped up and he kept pace, grasping her hand for balance. The music quit and Helen stopped. “We make quite a pair,” Helen said, and turned toward Will. “So, what’s it gonna be, Will Bartlett?”

  “Hey!” A tall boy dragging a barefoot girl by the wrist came running up the beach. “Doors open in ten minutes,” he shouted. He broke into a wide grin and saluted Will and Helen. The music started up again, and Helen hoisted herself up, dusting off the sand. “You got the tickets?”

  “I got ’em.” Will rolled over on all fours and slowly stood. Now or never, he thought. “Listen you—”

  A cry echoed down the beach. Will and Helen spun as Little Doc caught Nellie in his arms. Other boys jumped down to the sand to help carry her up to the patio and lay her across one of the picnic tables. Helen sprinted toward the action. Little Doc sent one boy to fetch some ice; he unstrapped Nellie’s shoe and cradled her ankle in his palm. More couples rubbernecked a view. Nellie said something in Portuguese, and one of the girls pulled her dress below her calves. Helen and Will wedged to the front. He winked at Nellie. Little Doc handed his suit jacket to Will and got down on one knee. Little Doc’s status as a veterinarian’s son had blessed him with medicinal powers. Will noted such status allowed a man to clutch a woman’s calf.

  He said, “How’s it looking?”

  “Hard telling just yet,” Little Doc said. He turned her leg. “Can you wiggle your toes?” Nellie did. “It ain’t broken.”

  Everyone leaned closer as he led Nellie through a battery of tests. A poke to her heel produced a grimace; she could spin the ankle with pain.

  “Strained ligament,” Little Doc concluded, and the crowd nodded their agreement with the diagnosis.

  “That serious?” Nellie asked.

  “For a racehorse. But no dancing tonight.” A boy returned with a cotton sack holding a crush of ice from the snow cone man. Little Doc set a rock under her heel and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to tie the ice to her ankle. “That will keep the swelling down. Better take you home.”

  Nellie crossed her arms and began to cry.

  “Just have Tommy get her a chair,” Helen said. “You can watch, right?”

  Nellie sniffled.

  “Okay,” Little Doc said. He dipped down and whispered something into her ear.

  Nellie wiped away her tears and smiled.

  “Doors open!” a tall boy shouted. And the couples turned toward the pavilion. Tommy stood at the door waving for folks to get in line. A sign over his head read, Sold
Out.

  Will and Little Doc stood on either side of Nellie and guided her to the door.

  Tommy saw them coming and cleared a path to the front of the line. “Let ’em through. Clear the way,” he shouted, waving his arms. He tipped his head to Little Doc. “She okay?”

  Little Doc caught Nellie’s eye. “We’re just gonna dance the slow songs.”

  Nellie’s face bloomed.

  “Good man,” Tommy said. “I roped two chairs on the side.” He pointed to the spot. “Next.” Tommy ripped the tickets he’d slipped Will an hour ago and waved them through. Helen stopped in the entry, squeezing Will’s hand. White string lights roped across the rafters; three spinning glass globes hung over the dance floor. A trumpeter blew spit from his horn. A boy chased his date across the dance floor; the line for the ladies’ toilet was already three deep. The couple next in line shoved Will, and Tommy said, “You’re in, kid,” as if he didn’t know his name.

  “Come on.” Helen ran into the crowd.

  The octagonal hall had windows facing the water, a raised bandstand at the far end, a corner set up with punch and snacks, three walls of cocktail tables and chairs. The kids from the different neighborhoods pulled clusters of chairs together into circles. Each clique represented a parish. The older boys hovered around the seated girls like lookouts, watching the other camps; between the door and Helen’s posse Will heard three different languages. He stopped once to chat with the boys from his neighborhood. Like his father, he would mix between groups, also keeping a wary eye out for Damian Newton’s crew.

  Crossing the floor back to Helen, John Gower Jr., of the Gower Linen Company Gowers, smacked Will’s shoulder. “They make Hollister a general yet?” Gower had large ears like his father, and a memory to match. He hovered over Will.

  Rumors had been swirling about why Hollister had left town. One had the boy killing a carny. Another had him winning a scholarship. Either way, Will missed his brother. The halls of the Highlands house echoed back his own loneliness. He’d spent a week at the Westport boathouse with his father in July, but then it had been a summer in the hot city—his first in years.

  “I asked you a question.” Gower jabbed Will’s shoulder, then elbowed his buddies. “I heard he had a girl with him.” Gower’s face was sunburnt from spending the holiday weekend at the beach. Tomorrow he and his cronies would attend the colony’s end-of-summer dance at the Westport Casino.

  “You heard wrong,” Will said, suddenly flushed. The “accident” was family business.

  “Come on, we all know it was a girl. He had lots of girls.” Gower leaned into Will. “What was her name, little man? Maybe I can have a little fun in the fun house.”

  Will turned and Gower spun him around. “Spill it, or I spill you.”

  Will had overheard his father once say that he didn’t want his boys being raised by nannies and butlers like so many other Highlands children. John Gower Jr., the youngest of five, was such a boy—spoiled to the core.

  “Go to hell,” Will said.

  Gower bumped Will’s chest, knocking him back a step. “Say it again, and I’ll pop you one.” Couples from nearby tables rubbernecked.

  “Go to hell.”

  Gower shoved Will, knocking him to the floor. Will jumped to his feet and raised his fists.

  “Where’s Helen?” Ray Sheehan stepped between the two, slapping his meaty paw on Gower’s forearm and twisting the arm behind his back. Ray stood a head taller than any boy in the hall. Gower’s crew tiptoed backward.

  Will lowered his arms. “Haven’t seen her.”

  “Well, she’s your date, ain’t she? Just like Fanny here.” He stood arm in arm with Dr. Boyle’s daughter, Fanny, a girl stricken with her old man’s sandbag jowls. The two had met at Elizabeth Bartlett’s funeral. Ray eyed Gower, then Will. “This one of your pals?”

  “Oh, yeah. A good buddy,” Will smirked. Gower rolled his eyes, and his feet skipped a little dance as Ray tightened his grip.

  “The kid slipped,” Gower said

  Ray wedged Gower’s arm up his back. The couples seated around the dance floor stood as Gower’s knees buckled. The conductor waved his baton.

  Tommy raced across the floor. “You’ll dance with him later,” he said and punched Ray, who released Gower.

  “Cut it out, Ray,” Tommy whispered. He tipped his hat—“Hey, Fanny.”—and shrugged at Gower as if to say, There’s no controlling this ape.

  “Just doing your job, little brother.”

  “Then do it with talking next time.” Tommy jogged back to the door.

  Ray clamped Will around the neck as if his hand were a wrench, dragging him toward his sister’s group. “The boy stinks more than his old man.”

  “Thanks,” Will whispered.

  The Crescent Orchestra was an up-and-coming ten-piece group Tommy called his find, though the Highlands crowd had heard them at a wedding the previous spring at the Quequechan Club. Will and Helen danced the entire first set. The bandleader called out that the next number was switch-a-partner. Helen whispered to Will that this was her chance to dance with her socially maladjusted cousin Burt, fulfilling a promise to her mother. Will nodded but decided he didn’t want to dance with another girl. He watched everybody pair off. The young Highlands girls, the ones in the stylish dresses, stepped forward, knowing they’d be picked first. Then the rest, English and Irish girls, their fathers overseers or cops or fireman, then the daughters of professionals, both lovely and saber-toothed. All had great expectations. All inflated their chests. Once teamed up, the newly formed partners awkwardly practiced a few steps before the music started.

  From the refreshments table Will watched John Gower Jr. zero in on a young Durfee girl he’d probably known since diapers. But surprisingly, Gower stepped past her. He continued to the door, where Nellie Zorra sat next to Tommy. Little Doc was on his knee removing an ice bag from her ankle. He jumped up when he saw Gower. He shot Tommy a look, and then the three of them peered down at a beaming Nellie. As Little Doc explained her condition, John Gower patted his shoulder.

  “Better stick to horses like your old man,” he said, then to Nellie, “How about I carry you around the dance floor for a number.” He extended his hand. “You came all this way.”

  The bandleader waved his baton in the air, and music erupted, the horn section filling the room with a blast the whole crowd felt in their stomachs. Nellie tried to stand, but stumbled, falling into Gower’s arms. Tommy reached forward. Gower snapped, “I got her, paperboy,” and scooped her up in his arms. Nellie clasped his neck to hang on. Tommy offered a weak smile to Little Doc, who slammed the bag of ice to the floor, spraying water in all directions. He stormed out of the hall. Each couple Nellie and Gower passed burst into laughter, and Nellie buried her red face in his neck. He lowered her in the center of the floor, and the two turned in a jerky circle like windup toys that had been left out in the rain.

  “What did I tell ya.” Helen knocked Will’s shoulder. “Social-climbing numbskull.”

  “Where’s Burt?”

  “Busted his glasses,” Helen said.

  Will regretted Nellie was being used to get back at him and Ray. “It’s my fault.”

  “I think I’m gonna puke,” Helen said. “Where’s Little Doc?”

  “Outside.”

  “I’ll talk him down.” Helen started walking away.

  Gower whispered something in Nellie’s ear and she laughed, the flush in her face as bright as the dance lights. Will had seen Hollister coax girls with such silliness, girls who normally weren’t fooled. That’s the part he couldn’t figure. Why did they fall for such nonsense when they’d have mocked one of their own for acting so foolishly? Surrendering encouraged Highlands boys to believe everyone owed them something.

  Will watched Tommy take a pull from his flask of elderberry wine. It was a blatant violation of the dance
rules, but so was stealing another guy’s girl, even if she wasn’t your girl yet. Tommy wiped his mouth, his left hand turning dice in his jacket pocket. He handed the door counter to a kid he was training and left the hall to gamble with the livery drivers.

  The song ended and the couples applauded wildly. Across the room Will heard faint strains of Nellie’s snorting horselaugh; it was the type that required a hand to cover the mouth. Gower carried her to the punch bowl. He seemed intent on dragging out the indignity awhile longer. Will searched out Ray to stop it, but the giant was nestled in an alcove with Fanny Boyle, sipping punch. Mary Sheehan would be proud.

  Helen burst into the pavilion. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted, “They’ve started!” She waved to Will and ran outside. She was a sucker for a good explosion, Will thought. Beyond the pavilion’s plate glass windows white streaks of light blasted out of Mount Hope Bay. Explosions of blue light filled the sky. Everyone in the pavilion cheered. The horizon flashed white again, and then the sky lit up with hundreds of red tendrils of light. Pink stripes reflected off the black water, lighting up sloops bobbing near the barges. The boys without dates raced onto the boardwalk; the rest of the ballroom quickly followed. Will and Helen joined in the crush down to the water, stopping only to peel off their shoes on the beach stairs.

  Under the canopy of color, men on a wooden barge a hundred yards out weaved and ducked, lighting the rockets in a choreographic dance. A funnel cloud of gray smoke rose over their works and then leveled out to cover half the bay. The barge was a ghost ship in a fog. The crowd cheered as two large streaks with red tails crisscrossed one another in their ascent. A cascading umbrella of silver stars met as oily reflections on the water. A girl near Will shrieked, and then asked her boyfriend if the boats moored offshore would catch fire. The boy smirked and then lit a cigarette. Most of the couples sat down in the dry sand. Tommy and a cluster of boys stood barefoot in the surf, smoking. The music struck up in the pavilion. “Look there!” a boy yelled. Heads turned as the brass and wind sections of the orchestra marched down the beach stairs in single-file, each man barefoot, their cuffs rolled under their knees, blasting out “When the Saints Come Marching In.” The crowd stepped aside as the conductor led the parade to the edge of the water. The drummer had rigged a snare over his shoulder with his belt. More rockets whizzed overhead, sending blue and silver streaks across faces. A few of the older boys and their dates rolled up their pant cuffs and kicked up their heels in the surf. The girls hoisted their dresses. Helen pulled Will into the water. Tommy and Ray and Fanny locked arms and spun in a circle, kicking water onto couples nearby. Will spotted John Gower Jr. dancing with another girl and, on the boardwalk, Little Doc marching toward the car park, Nellie hopping a few feet behind.