Barren Island

by Carol Zoref

  “Dad!” I cried, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. It was no longer just about the smell anymore; it was about the taste. I can taste it even now. “Over here,” he called back.

  I followed the trail of his voice until I reached a shoe. I felt around for an ankle, grabbed his knee. “Oh, Dad,” I whimpered.

  “Marie,” he answered.

  I had found Mr. Dowd.

  He pulled me closer, his face emerging though the grey steam. “Oh my god, girl,” he said. There was blood running from his mouth. I could not see if it came from his lip or from inside.

  “Can you move?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he said, hoisting himself with a moan, reaching for my shoulder to steady himself.

  “I don’t know the way out,” I cried. “Noa...!”

  “Just go where I say,” said Mr. Dowd. I wrapped my arm around his back and we inched forward, Mr. Dowd leading the way. I thought I heard him crying, but the whimpering could have just as easily been coming from me.

  We finally got out of the cutting room and I passed Mr. Dowd off to a man who half carried him the rest of the way. I lifted my skirt to look at my thighs. I did not care who saw. The poison ivy blisters had opened in the heat and were leaking. I dropped my skirt and chased after Mr. Dowd and the other man, who led us outside.

  “Where are the others? Your father?” called Mrs. Paradissis.

  “Noah’s still looking. Where’s Sofia?” Mrs. Paradissis did not know either. Men were still stumbling out and being carried from further inside the factory. All were burned in varying degrees by steam, falling embers, or the flames shooting through the breeches in the walls. Some had singed hair; others had skin that looked like charred tapioca pudding. Everyone was coughing, even the ones who had not been battered. Noah finally emerged with my father. My father was coated in filth but he was smiling an unhappy smile. In the face of all the pain and chaos he was happy to be alive. Noah’s shirt was torn and he had a gash straight across his forehead.

  “I ran when I heard it blowing,” said my father. “I hid under a horse. Damn thing saved my life.

  A moment later he was repeating the story to Mr. Paradissis, who was still lying on the plank, waiting to be carried home. Other men gathered as well. I can only imagine Boyle’s surprise to see people sitting all over the courtyard, including men from parts of the factory that had not been rocked by the blast. Women sat too, babies in their laps.

  “Look,” said Noah, all keyed up. “They’re sitting down on the job.”

  Mr. Dowd lit a cigarette. Mr. Paradissis took one though it was too painful for him to inhale, what with his broken ribs. Everyone was either sitting down or tending the injured.

  “Dad!” Noah cried. “This is how it starts. Like the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire.”

  “Those girls had to jump,” said our father.

  “Doors are open, doors are locked.”

  “Settle down, Noah.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They don’t give a damn.”

  “150 people died,” our father continued. “You can’t compare....”

  “This was an accident waiting to happen,” cried Noah. “If they don’t close down the line to clean the chutes and vents when they should the thing’ll explode. It’s the same thing as locking doors. And what does Boyle care? Something breaks, some guy dies, and they buy another guy to replace him.”

  Our father stood up. “Are you finished?” he asked. “Don’t you think you’ve said enough?”

  “You’ve no right,” said Noah. His face was streaked with grime and tears.

  CHAPTER 13

  Despite the awful predictions there were only three reported deaths that first day: Mr. Douglass, one of the Negro stokers, who had been a medic in the Negro Troupes in The Great War, and two scavengers who had been squatting inside the plant. Mr. Douglass was blasted into so many pieces that there was no body to recover. What was left of his remains were cremated right there in the furnace that he had been stoking. It was never clear if the two scavengers died from smoke inhalation or injuries from the explosion. I never heard what arrangements were made for the corpses. The dozen or so other serious injuries ranged from broken bones to a case of third-degree burns, resulting in a fourth death a couple of days later. I feel especially bad about that one: I cannot remember the man’s name though I can picture him, a handsome fellow with red hair and a broad chest. Why would I forget his name when I remember so much else? I have no answer.

  Nobody died from concussions or infections; the other bruises and fractures were painful but would heal. There was nothing to do for Mr. Paradissis’ ribs except run tape around his chest the way they did in those days. Miss Finn said he was lucky that his lungs were not punctured. We were all lucky, except for the four people who died. We were lucky that the whole plant did not blow and we were not all killed.

  Mr. Boyle came to the house the next day to discuss how Mr. Paradissis could work until he was strong enough for the cutting room. Sofia and I were sitting on the stoop shelling peas, Joey was at the factory, and Yorgos and Noah were playing catch with an acorn squash from the garden. Mr. Paradissis made a fuss about coming outside to speak with Mr. Boyle. Every step, every hiccup, every burp sent a jolt of pain through his torso.

  “You gave us one hell of a scare,” said Mr. Boyle in a pretend-chummy voice. He offered Mr. Paradissis a cigarette, which Mr. Paradissis waved away. Boyle, a big man with fat, drooping ear lobes, always had sweat running down his face, even when it was cold. His shirt was drenched through and he kept wiping his face with a handkerchief.

  “No smoking,” wheezed Mr. Paradissis. He was unable to get out more than a few words without choking. “Sit up or get pneumonia.” Wheeze. “Teacher says.” Wheeze. “Lungs fill.” Wheeze.

  Mr. Boyle lit one for himself. “Her sister took care of my wife. Lady doctor in Brooklyn. Brought Mrs. Boyle through some kinda woman’s thing, she never said what exactly.”

  “Eight weeks to heal.” Wheeze. “Six if lucky.” Breath. “Feeling lucky.”

  “Take a few days,” said Mr. Boyle, “We’ll get you back doing something. Pushing a broom, something like that.”

  “You crazy? My ribs is busted.” We could all see the pain in Mr. Paradissis’ face.

  “You get paid to work, Paradissis. You get this house,” said Mr. Boyle. “It’s not free. That’s the deal. I got no choice.”

  “I give you every month for the house. Everyone knows you make us.”

  “Forget about that. You know what I’m saying here.”

  I remembered how the Stavros family had been evicted when Mr. Stavros, the loader, was killed by that half-butchered horse.

  “For what? Getting my chest blown open? What about the bonus you get when you don’t shut down to clean the vents like you supposed to?” asked Mr. Paradissis. His wrapped his arms around his chest as if he could keep his ribs in place.

  “You gotta see it from where I stand, Niko.”

  “Where’s that?” asked Mr. Paradissis. “You live here?”

  “Take it easy, Ba,” said Yorgos, interrupting him.

  “What the hell, Yorgos,” said Mr. Paradissis. “You mind your own business.”

  “I’m gonna go in for you,” said Yorgos. “I can cut good as you.”

  It was a bold-faced lie and everyone knew it. Yorgos had never butchered a horse in his life. It was a safe bet that he never even carved a roast chicken.

  “Start Monday and we’ll be squared,” offered Mr. Boyle. Who knows why Mr. Boyle would let Yorgos jump the seniority line like that, never mind go in at all? I like to think it is because Mr. Paradissis said something about Boyle shaking down the men for housing money when they were supposed to be getting the houses as part of their pay; I like to think it is because Boyle worried that his little scheme would be exposed to the bosses, though they were probably getting a piece of it too. It just might be that Boyle felt something for Mr. Paradissis and how badly he got hurt. Or it might be that it w
as easier to take Yorgos instead of training a new cutter from the ranks and evicting the Paradissises. Do I know why people do what they do? We want to know, we think we know, but we know nothing.

  “Tomorrow,” said Yorgos. “I’ll start Thursday.”

  “I won’t have broken ribs forever. You got school.”

  “We’ll talk later,” Yorgos told his father. It was best to quit while they were ahead, the way people say. Boyle could call off the deal if he wanted to.

  I do not know when Yorgos started at the factory, only that he arranged for a meeting in the city on that Sunday afternoon, which meant him and Noah jumping a ride on the last barge back to Brooklyn on Saturday night. Yorgos made it plain that he was tired of waiting for Mr. Morrow’s local to come through. The barge captain, Parson Otis, set up a meeting with the other union and Noah arranged for the boys to stay the night with our cousin Ruthie, who had moved to the Lower East Side when she married her young man Sidney. This gave the boys all Saturday night and Sunday morning before they had to be at some private social club on Mulberry Street, where the heads of the local unofficially gathered.

  I sat with Noah while he gathered his things. He said that Joey was pretty upset that they were not taking him along. “There’s no room at Ruthie and Sidney’s place. I told him we’ll be jammed up enough as it is.” While he stuffed a change of underwear and his toothbrush into a bag, he explained how he and Yorgos would use their free time to explore Greenwich Village.

  “John Reed and Emma Goldman went there with the bohemians,” he said, fired up by the importance of his mission.

  “Why’d they bring Bohemians?” The Nazis had been stirring up trouble in the Sudentenland from the moment that Hitler grabbed power the year before. Plenty of those ethnic Germans living there were only too glad to join in on the Jew-beating. So what else is new?

  “Not the Bohemians; just bohemians, artists and musicians.”

  It was so hard to understand Noah. Now I understood less, if that was possible. “So you’re going to be a bohemian.” I was not asking a question; I was trying on the label.

  “First you walk in someone’s footprints and then, who knows, maybe you follow in their footsteps.”

  The boys really did spend Saturday exploring Greenwich Village, I would later learn. On the walk from Ruthie’s apartment on Rivington St., they passed by the storefront on Mulberry where Yorgos had arranged for their meeting. The storefront window was mostly painted over with the same forest green paint used for the door, the window boxes, and the fire escapes. In small black letters at waist height were the words Private Social Club stenciled neatly by a very steady hand. The very top of the window, where it was clear, was the only place light could get in.

  “This doesn’t look so good or official or nothing,” said Noah.

  “You said you’re done waiting for Morrow,” said Yorgos.

  “I’m just saying that....”

  “Let’s see what they say,” said Yorgos.

  They kept walking and soon they were drinking beers on the corner of 7th Avenue and 4th Street in a bar that was closed by Prohibition, secretly re-opened as a speakeasy, then re-opened as a bar again when Prohibition was repealed. At least that is the story the bartender told them and that Noah told me. The man guarding the door—I do not know if they were called bouncers then—asked who they were and where they were from before letting them in.

  The boys nursed the one round of beer that they could afford. Another couple—a man and a woman—who were seated at the other end of the bar drinking martinis insisted on buying them another round. The woman was perched on the stool closest to the small dance floor at the back of the room. She had dark, naturally wavy hair that she wore long, and olive-complected skin that made Noah figure she was Spanish. The man, paler by comparison, was tall and thin with longish blonde hair that kept slipping over one eye. The woman’s makeup was immaculately applied. Her musk-red lipstick matched her nail polish. She was wearing double-roped pearls around her neck and a black dress. The man was wearing a suit and tie and had clean hands and trimmed fingernails. They ordered pints for the boys and a bowl of cocktail nuts for them all to share. They ordered another round of martinis for themselves.

  To one side of the dance floor was an upright piano played by a solemn-looking man, his head turned away from the bar as if it hurt to rotate his neck. A second musician switched back and forth between saxophone and bass.

  The man in the suit asked the boys where they were from and when Noah said Barren Shoal the man said, “The horse factories?” He offered them cigarettes from his monogrammed case.

  Yorgos explained how a whole community of factory workers and families lived on Barren Shoal and how there had just been a huge explosion and fire, lots of men hurt, a couple died. He did not mention the scavengers.

  “You mean Barren Island?” said the woman. “I never heard of any Barren Shoal.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not there,” said Noah. Which has been my point all along.

  “Stinks pretty bad?” asked the man.

  “Why is that always the question?” Noah replied.

  The woman stubbed out her cigarette. “Don’t let Gray bother you,” she told Noah.

  “What do you think happens to the horses no one wants anymore?” Gray asked her. “They chop them up, melt them down, and the greasy wheels of commerce keep turning.”

  “Come on,” she said to Noah. “Gray can lecture himself silly while you and I dance. I’m Lois. And you are?”

  “That’s Noah; I’m George,” said Yorgos.

  Noah grinned. “That’s right: Noah and George.”

  Noah had never danced with a woman other than my mother, who had not danced with anyone since Helen died unless she and my father danced in their room, which I doubt. Noah raised his hand to remove his cap but Lois said, “Keep it on.” That struck him, he would tell me, as particularly strange. He worried that maybe it had something to do with the smell of Barren Shoal. He thought it was stranger than her asking him—telling him—to dance. Stranger than Gray ordering yet another round of beers and cocktails. Noah told me that watching Lois drink martinis was the first time he heard the word “glamorous” inside his head.

  Lois took the lead after Noah stepped on her toes a couple of times. Now Yorgos—pardon me, George—was drinking martinis, too. When Gray and Yorgos approached so that Lois could choose her next partner, all four of them ended up dancing in a circle.

  Lois was Gray’s “skirt,” as they were called then. She was the woman who made it safe for a man like Gray to move about the world. She came to it honestly. It was on Gray’s white elbow that Lois could pass as well. Gray, with his unaccounted for and unlimited supply of cash, had long ago extended his hand to Lois, just as he was now doing to Noah and Yorgos. I cannot say what he saw in Noah and Yorgos other than that they had stumbled into a bar where he was a regular and they were not.

  The next thing Noah remembered was Gray giving him a calling card and Lois writing something on the back with a pencil she borrowed from the bartender. No one had ever given him their card before. Who knew anyone that had cards?

  Noah and Yorgos somehow found their way back to cousin Ruthie’s place on Rivington St., Noah so drunk that he was certain they were in Brooklyn and Yorgos only clear enough to remember that the apartment was over a store that sold nuts and dried fruits. Hanging in the windows, he remembered, were strings of figs just like the ones the Paradissis family wore on the boat over from Greece.

  They finally found the building a half-block in from Essex Street, where the recently or soon to be covered open-air market—Noah’s telling changed back and forth over the years and I never bothered to find out—was already coming to life. Men were unloading live chickens from New Jersey and sides of beef from the meat market on West 14th St. Essex Street itself was already lined with two-wheeled wooden pushcarts loaded with everything from apples to underwear. I do not remember where the merchants parked the carts at ni
ght or what they did with the unsold produce, or where they got their merchandise in the first place. It is hard to know what it is I never knew versus what I have forgotten.

  Sidney, cousin Ruthie’s husband, had given the boys a key so they could let themselves in. In the same pocket, Noah found the calling card with Gray’s telephone number. On the back of the card was a number for Lois, the thing she had written by hand. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked Yorgos.

  “Hell, boy: it’s a trophy.”

  He figured that this was Lois’ number at work until he dialed it a few days later. Lois’ sleepy voice answered, instead of the switchboard operator he was expecting. He was so startled that he hung up without speaking. He had assumed that Lois and Gray were married, though the precise nature of their relationship eluded him. What surprised him even more was later finding out that neither Gray nor Lois had jobs. He did not know a single person who slept late in the morning other than Mr. Goldstein, who saw to the factory’s furnace at night.

  The meeting on Mulberry Street was set for 10:00 a.m., but Noah and Yorgos left the apartment with Sidney after breakfast. Sidney, who was first generation American born to parents from Minsk, had a high school diploma and a steady job in the clerical department of the Metropolitan Insurance Company on Park Ave. and 25th St. At night he took courses at City College where, class by class, he intended to earn a degree in engineering. Noah and Yorgos agreed to walk Sidney uptown. They were lucky to be so young, to be able to walk right through a hangover.

  There was more life on a single block of the Lower East Side than on all of Barren Shoal. Sidney pointed out the old, overgrown Jewish cemetery between the elementary school and a neglected, four-story brick house on 2nd St. “There are little graveyards like this tucked all over Manhattan,” said Sidney. “There’s one on 11th St. with headstones from the 1700s.

  “Some people say the first Jews came with Columbus in 1492,” said Sidney, “which, otherwise, was not a banner year for Spanish Jews. The English also kicked out their Jews around then, but didn’t burn them the way Torquemada did. Shylock didn’t appear out of nowhere, you know. Shakespeare was a Jew-hater like the rest of them, but a step up from the mob. He hated us as people instead of hating us as sub-human. It was the kind of thing that placed Shylock—and Shakespeare, for that matter—on a different moral scale.”