by M. E. Kerr
“I thought you cared about Hollywood stars.”
“There weren’t any Hollywood stars on that ship. Walter Winchell would have mentioned it if there were.”
“How do you know, Jessica? You never listen to him.”
“I just know,” I said. “He’s a gossip columnist. My mother listens to him, and she reads him in The Syracuse Post-Standard.”
“Turn it off if you can’t stand it,” Elisa said.
“You turn it off. It was your idea.”
“It’s your radio, Jessica.”
“Leave it on. I don’t care…. I hate geometry.”
What I hated was hearing about Wolfgang all the time.
Because the September weather was like July, we were sitting on my front porch with the living room window open so we could hear the Stromberg-Carlson radio inside.
School had started. I was working on my geometry homework. Elisa was reading Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd C. Douglas, a book she said she had chosen from the bestseller list solely because of the title. She said she couldn’t concentrate on anything. She kept remembering a conversation with Wolfgang, the night of the Schwitter party. She claimed he called her Phyllis as a joke, and I shot back I bet it wasn’t a joke at all. She insisted it was. She said that whole evening had changed her.
“Because of him?” I said.
“You don’t know what he was like with me.”
“I don’t know because you don’t tell me.”
“It’s hard to describe it. It’s a feeling more than anything else.”
“Well, I can describe feelings. Why can’t you?”
“I can’t.”
“What happened to ‘I’ll tell you everything that happens; you’ll think you were there’? You haven’t told me anything about that party except about him.”
“I told you no one there mentioned Dillinger’s death.”
“No one there would.”
“That’s what made your mother cross the street that day. She said she’d heard something on the radio. Remember?”
I didn’t want to remember my mother’s confronting Mrs. Stadler that afternoon at the Sontags’. I sank into a long silence.
Elisa finally said, “Jessica?”
“What?”
“Tell me something honestly, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, wondering if she’d suddenly figured out I sometimes made up stories to tell her.
“If Wolfgang hadn’t gone back to New York City, do you think he’d ask me out? Maybe not for a real date. Not yet. Maybe just for a ride in his car, top down, under the stars.”
I groaned. “What do you mean, maybe not for a real date, not yet? Do you think Wolfgang Schwitter is going to date you?”
“He could,” Elisa said. “You should have seen him sing that song to me the night of the party. Oh, Jessica, now I remember the name of that song. It’s called ‘The Very Thought of You.’”
“The very thought of Walter Winchell is making me nuts!” I said. I stormed into the house and snapped off the radio.
“Why are you angry?” Elisa asked when I went back to the porch.
“Who’s angry?”
“Listen to your tone of voice.”
“I don’t listen to myself. I’m not like some people all caught up in themselves.”
“Are you upset because of John’s death?”
I had to think for a second who John was. Then I realized it was Dillinger.
“That was ages ago!” I said.
“It was the same time my family and I went to the Schwitters’.”
“I don’t care about Dillinger,” I said. “I made a lot of that up.”
“You did?”
“When Seth was collecting posters with me, I pretended to get all excited over Dillinger to please Seth. Then I guess I believed myself.”
“I’m glad you told me that, Süsse. I began believing myself too about Slater Carr.”
She said she had no deep feelings toward Slater Carr. She loved hearing him play. She loved his looks, and also she loved the things I had told her about him. But he was part of her make-believe, as movie stars were, and others she would never meet. She said she’d exaggerated all that to keep up with my interest in gangsters and inmates on The Hill. She added that she really did like knowing things I told her: how a man had killed his wife using only rhubarb leaves; how Bonnie and Clyde had nicked their wrists with a safety pin and then carved into their arms “Blood of my blood; heart of my heart.”
“My mother thinks I’m in love with Slater. Let her think it!” Elisa said.
“I suppose I get the blame for it.”
Elisa laughed. “You get the blame for everything. But no matter what my mother says about you having a morbid interest in violence, I keep right on sticking up for you. I always will!”
I said, “You make it sound like you were sticking up for Hitler.”
“That is Omi who sticks up for Hitler. Omi thinks he is going to save Germany.”
“From what?”
“We have a depression too, you know. Over here you think the only depression in the world is yours.”
From across the street came the bloodcurdling sound cats make moments before an out-and-out attack.
“Your turn,” I said.
“I went last time.”
“They were here last time. They’re over at your house now.”
Yyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooow.
Elisa jumped up from the hammock and ran down the front steps.
“It’s Mugshot doing it,” she shouted over her shoulder.
“Dietrich starts it!” I said, tossing my textbook onto the wicker table before running after Elisa.
As we reached the other side of the street, Mugshot fled past us with his hair on end, his tail swishing.
“Is that any way to treat a neighbor?” I called after him.
Elisa had Dietrich gathered in her arms, kissing her brow.
“She’s purring. She’s all right,” she said.
It was then that Sophie Stadler appeared in the doorway of their house. No hello for me, of course, much less a glance in my direction.
She said, “Elisa! Telephone!”
“Tell Richard I’ll call him later.”
“Elisa, come to the telephone now. It is not Richard.”
Elisa and I gave each other looks and shrugs.
“Who could that be?” I said.
“I have no idea,” Elisa answered.
“Hurry, Elisa!” her mother said. “It is not a local call!”
I went back across the street, remembering Elisa telling me the family was bringing her grandmother from Potsdam to live with them. But before that an aunt was visiting in October; she was the twin sister of Mrs. Stadler.
I wondered if she would be the same cold fish.
27
Dear Slater,
In case I should not be around much longer, I want you to know I have left my sheet music and records to you. I have left money with my sister, Susan Purrington, for the postage.
Now I would send this on to you right now except for the fact I am still teaching and guess what! The Georgia Peaches are still playing, and we have two trombones!
We may never match The Jenkins Orphanage Band, but we can be proud of our boys, and I think of you every time they play “Till Times Get Better.”
I remember how you loved Jabbo Smith, who, like you, has an unusual first name, which is Cladys. I have asked folks around here if anyone knows what became of him, but no one knows.
This is not the way I ever thought either of us would wind up, you behind bars and me watching my ticker carefully.
God bless you, Slater. I enjoyed the card you sent and was surprised the prison looks so big compared to ours outside Atlanta.
XXX Nellie Purrington
28
THE HALLOWEEN PARADE would begin on Genesee Street at three P.M. For the first time in its history my dad had convinced the mayor to include the prison band. The Blues w
ould wear their usual blue uniforms, but they would also be allowed to wear skeleton masks.
While The Blues practiced up on The Hill, my father was home for lunch. He was all excited about installing a new pressing machine in the prison laundry.
“The guards think this time I’m going too far,” he told my mother and me. Seth was eating at school with J. J. Joy. Elisa was across the street lunching with her aunt, visiting from Potsdam.
“Arthur, I think you’re going too far too,” said my mother. “Why do their sort need their pants pressed?”
“Honey, there’s not enough work for everyone. You know that. This will put quite a few inmates to work.” Then Daddy said to me, “Don’t forget the parade starts promptly at three. Slater will have a marching solo to kick things off.”
My father’d stopped calling him Mr. Carr. Now he was Slater, the name Elisa and I called him. Our doing it was one thing, but Warden Arthur Myrer’s doing it was a first. Sometimes he would pick Slater up himself wherever Slater was working instead of sending the prison van to get him. They would sit on some green, manicured lawn in the late afternoon smoking and talking. Seth had seen them and laughed to Mom that the prisoner was our father’s pet.
While we ate macaroni and cheese with bacon crumbled up into it, I began another of my quizzes. I was just curious about Daddy and the prisoner. I’d never seen my father show such favoritism before.
“What do you talk about with Slater Carr?” I asked.
“What we say isn’t very important. Small talk, that’s all.”
“But what do you say?”
“Oh, he’s a tease sometimes. He says things like ‘Copper Tom just winked at me, boss.’”
Copper Tom stood on top of the prison, a man-size copper guard dressed in the uniform of a continental soldier. No one inside the prison could see his face. Although his expression was stern, town legend had it that if Tom winked at you, you were doomed.
Very few prisoners ever saw Copper Tom’s face unless they worked outside the prison, but they all knew the legend of Tom’s wink. Arthur Myrer and Slater Carr could see him from most places where they rested.
“He calls you boss? Not Warden?” I said.
Daddy shrugged and continued, “I asked him, ‘Do you consider yourself doomed now, Slater?’”
“What did he say?”
“Well, he said he used to feel doomed, but he didn’t feel that way at all anymore.”
“Why doesn’t he now?” I asked.
“I think there’s a point when a Hill man becomes resigned, even satisfied. They forget about getting back outside, particularly lifers like Slater. They make the best of what they have. I try to help them do it. That’s why I’ll get their pants pressed”—a pointed look at my mother. “It’s little enough to do for someone. The man has no family. He has no friends.”
“Oh, and so you’re his family,” my mother said.
“Not his family, but his friend, yes. I’m not a friend of many of them, but I am of this boy. He’s changed things for me and for The Blues, and for others too, in my opinion.”
“For this whole town every night at nine thirty,” I said. “And Elisa used to be afraid of the prison and the prisoners, but she’s not anymore.”
“I think he got your mind off Dillinger, too,” my mother said to me. “I notice Dillinger isn’t up on your wall. Just the Bugle Boy, with that poem pasted to him.”
“Dillinger’s dead, Mother!” I reminded her. “Elisa put the poem there.”
“You two ought to get yourselves some real boyfriends,” said my mother, “and stop getting crushes on jailbirds.”
That made me think of the change in Elisa. She had suddenly stopped talking about Wolfgang. Whatever that was about (out of sight, out of mind?), I was glad. Now if I could just get my father to stop talking about Slater! What had I started?
“You know, that boy has a beautiful voice too,” he went on. “You should hear him sing. He knows songs I bet you never heard of before, very haunting ones. Love songs. ‘Her Smoke and Smile,’ ‘Her Style,’ and that other one, ‘A Thirsty Woman Drank My Tears.’”
“You’re right. I’ve never heard of such songs,” said my mother.
“I think maybe they’re Negro songs, blues, the kind I’d hear back home,” said my father. “The boy grew up in Georgia. He sings them sometimes when we’re heading home with this red, round sun leaving the sky. I get to wondering if I felt that way when I was young and just falling in love with you, Mother. Or is it the kind of sentiment invented by men who were never successful with love?”
My mother said, “Ask our new neighbors across the street. Every time he’s home, you see Heinz Pickle and his wife mooning around on the Sontag porch. But European males are different, if you ask me. Germans, in particular, are different. Sentimental, crying in their beer oom-pah-pah types.”
“I think we felt that way once, sweetheart.”
“Oh, well, what if we did.” It was not a question.
“I wish we were going to the parade, all of us,” he said, “but I tag along on Slater’s away performances too often. I heard him at the Fourth of July celebration, the Kiwanis Club luncheon, and the Four-H Hog Contest. He’s playing two solos on the grandstand this afternoon.”
My mother said, “I won’t miss hearing him, and I won’t miss that parade. It’s for kids anyway, or people with little kids. I’m looking forward to dinner at Krebs.”
“Me too, honey.”
My father had promised to take her to an early dinner at their favorite place by the lake in nearby Skaneateles, New York. It was a sunny day, a fine day to drive over there. Of all the Finger Lakes, Skaneateles was my parents’ favorite. They had spent much of their courtship sailing on that lake in a Comet from the boatyard my grandfather had managed. Those were their halcyon days. He often said so. That’s how I learned the word. When I looked up halcyon, I was surprised to see “synonyms: peaceful, happy, ideal.”
“Why are you surprised?” my dad had asked.
“I can’t picture you two as lovebirds.”
“We’re not birds,” he had answered. “But we are lovers.”
“Stay safe,” Mother called after Daddy when he headed back up to The Hill. That was as close as she came to showing him any affection. He blew a kiss at her and at me as he went out the door.
Mother said, “I don’t know who deserted who: Did Daddy desert Seth or did Seth desert Daddy?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Seth has J. J. the Jerk now, and Daddy has Goldilocks.”
“I think Daddy is happier since that boy came here. And The Blues are going to beat that New Orleans band this year, for sure!”
“We’ll win the Black Baaa,” I said. “At last!”
“Still, the rift between Daddy and Seth is getting deeper, Jess. I thought Seth having the Joy girl would make him softer, but now I think he even values Horace Joy over Daddy.”
“That’s one way Slater isn’t a good thing,” I said. “Seth resents him.”
“Oh, Seth isn’t the resentful type. Seth? Resentful?” she said as though my brother couldn’t possibly have any bad thoughts. He was her perfect son, after all.
“I wish we could find that yellow cashmere sweater your brother lost,” said my mother. “Every time he’s here he mentions it.”
“Oh, who cares about that sweater!” I said.
“Mr. Joy gave it to him, Jess. He had the sleeve mono-gramed for Seth. This tiny white M is on the right sleeve.”
I pushed my chair away from the table. “Who cares about Seth Seth Seth?”
“We had a nice little conversation going for a few minutes,” said my mother, “but now I see it’s over.”
29
THAT AFTERNOON MY mother called up to us, “Jess? Elisa? The parade will be over! You’re going to miss Slater Carr’s solos! You heard Daddy at lunch, Jess—he’s very proud of that boy!”
Only Elisa could answer. “We will be down soon!”
My mother had no way of knowing that upstairs, under Slater Carr’s wanted poster, a drama was under way.
“Maybe this was the wrong time to tell you I am going home, but Vater announced it at lunch to my aunt, Mutti, and me. I go in January. I am still shaken,” Elisa said. I could see her hands trembling.
“There’s no right time for news that you’re going away,” I said. “When will you be back?”
“Soon.”
“A month? Two?”
“A month. Two. Süsse, you don’t know all that has happened before this day.”
“Whose fault is that? I thought we told each other everything.”
“I was too ashamed to tell you.”
“What would make you ashamed, Elisa?”
She sat beside me on my bed, atop the Bates bedspread. She held a hanky to her eyes.
“Remember the night we listened to Winchell and then I got the phone call?”
“Yes?”
“You asked me if it was my aunt, and I said it was. But it wasn’t.”
“Who was it?”
“Wolfgang. He called to tell me they had to rewrite a lot of Anything Goes since there was a shipwreck in it. Because of what happened to the Morro Castle, they had to cut that out. It would offend too many people. Then he said not to worry, though, because he could still go to Germany.”
“You never said he was going to Germany too.”
“That was the first I heard either one of us was going there! When he realized I knew nothing about a trip to Germany, he pretended only he was going to visit his grandfather. He said not to worry, he’d be right back.”
“I don’t understand. Get to what made you ashamed,” I said.
I could see our reflection in my bedroom mirror. What a pair we were! We were dressed as escaped convicts, ankles shackled with leg irons. A month ago I had talked Daddy into getting two old uniforms from the prison basement, the kind with stripes and striped hats to match. At the Halloween parade Elisa and I planned to march in lockstep, the way prisoners were once required to do. Each man walked with arms locked under the man’s arms in front of him.