Voices from the Rust Belt

by Anne Trubek

  The late-summer evening was cool, but tired, with the feel that it was finishing off a muggy day. The chill blew off the river as I met up with Chet and Greg at the shopping plaza. We stood around smoking cigarettes, bored and feeling taller than we were. The idea came to Chet to buy a case of beer, but as none of us had ever drunk any, we weren’t sure just how one went about it. Our back was to the drink mart. We talked ourselves into the notion that this purchase should be like any other. We pooled our discretionary income. It came to $8.50, just enough for two six-packs of Rolling Rock and some beef jerky or a case of Iron City Light. We chose the latter. Nobody was hungry.

  Chet, an honor student like the rest of us, was a dreamer, unable to focus on anything. His drunken old man railed at him every morning until Chet agreed to pull the lawn mower from the shed in the alleyway and canvass the neighborhood for work. He found plenty. The first half of the summer went by rather uneventfully, until one day Chet was distracted by some flight of fancy and allowed the mower to roll backward over one foot. With a dull thud and the sound of cracking bone, the mower stalled. A large toe, covered in wet grass clippings, landed on the sidewalk. Without that toe, Chet walked with a slight limp. It didn’t seem to bother him.

  We made our way past signs for the impressive-sounding Grave Creek Mound Archeological Complex. One of us suggested drinking right there. We turned in unison and looked up at the mound, knowing full well that the only place worth drinking on this property was at the heights. Greg and I hoisted our sacramental offerings over the green chain-link fence to Chet, who waited on the other side. We carried the beer up the spiraling stone stairwell to the statue at the mound’s peak. The sun was setting behind the ComEd coal-fired power plant across the river, rendering the horizontally blown white smoke in hues of red and orange. Horizontal exhaust meant clear days ahead, the smokestack serving as a sort of primitive Weather Channel. Two blinking jets on the way to somewhere very different from Moundsville left puffy contrails in the sky. The red sunset bounced off the muddy water below, giving the image of a river on fire.

  We plopped down on a stone wall and just stared at each other silently before Chet popped open the first beer. Greg and I followed suit and all three of us grimaced at the taste. The cold Iron City Light stung with an unfamiliar bitterness, something like a blend of tonic water and gasoline.

  From the peak of the mound we had a clear view over the penitentiary walls. What I had thought was one gargantuan building in my youth was actually a massive four-story wall, as thick as a car is wide. Inside was a complex of buildings, an open-air hell. It was a mysterious place occupied by murderers and child rapists, eerie long before it was closed down and turned into a place for freak tours and Halloween haunts. Criminal silhouettes danced on frosted windowpanes.

  Stories abounded about the pen. Like the guy who was burned alive by gasoline in his cell during a riot, or the warden with a German name and knee-high leather boots who would challenge prisoners to fights after removing his badge.

  Chet turned around and commented on the glow of the sunset. We turned around with him, and then we saw it. A truck jacked up to a ridiculous height bounced down the street, pitching and yawing with each seam in the road surface. Oversize exhaust pipes jutted vertically out of the truck’s bed. The driver slouched in the seat, with his right hand low on the steering wheel near his dick and his left arm leaning on the door. His female passenger sat at his side, snuggled close on the bench seat, à la mode at that time. As the truck rounded a corner, the driver leaned his head out of the window and released a dark stream of chewing-tobacco juice in a manner only made possible by dental peculiarities.

  “High-altitude hillbilly,” Greg blurted out. The spitting driver was no doubt one of the ridge-running locals who found his identity in southern West Virginia, while Chet was the type who looked northward along the industrial riverfront for his. On this mound we straddled the fault line of two cultures.

  “A good case for forced sterilization,” said Greg ruefully. He was back on his forced-sterilization soapbox again, a theme he had beaten to death that summer. Greg had thoroughly absorbed—to its dangerous conclusion—the elitist mind-set of the gifted program’s lead teacher, who flaunted a doctorate in education from the state university that Moundsville had passed up.

  “Actually, if you want to sterilize people, you could start here,” insisted Greg, pointing epiphanically toward the penitentiary, which by now was lit up brighter than a Steelers game on Monday Night Football. A guard was visible in a Gothic-style turret, looking around with binoculars during what must have been a shift change. He turned in our direction. I thought about my grandfather, who died decades before my birth, climbing that same guard tower and perusing the grounds with his binoculars. The houses on the hills surrounding the town stared darkly like pillboxes.

  “You can’t just sterilize people,” said Chet. “They are still people.”

  Chet and Greg’s friendship had been strained since the Betrayal, when Greg chose to play on the laughingstock football team rather than play trumpet in the state-champion marching band. It was an unexpected move, given Greg’s complete lack of sports experience and his three years in the junior high band. He wasn’t athletic, he was just big. He would play defense.

  The acrimony between the band and the football team was the most talked about conflict in the town, after the inevitable union-management conflicts. The band made the team seem like an appendage of a music show. It was safe to say that most spectators turned out to watch the band, and not the football games already given up for lost. The coach and band director were no longer on speaking terms. The band entered the field at the same time as the team, which more than once led to a smashed tuba or broken bass drum. It seemed vaguely revolutionary at the time to see the football team as the side act surrounding the halftime music show. Later in life, when I had a greater appreciation for sports and a suspicion of military-influenced music, I came to see this was an omen that there was something wrong in our universe. Greg took a loud slurp from his beer and sat silently.

  “What about Fred?” I asked. Fred was the elderly wash boy at the local Ford dealership. He had done some hard time for chopping up his wife and her lover with an ax. He had caught them in the act while returning home early one day. Fred, one of the few black men in town, became a sensation after his release, treated as a hero and given a $50 a day sinecure at the dealership. He mostly sat leaning against the doorjamb and picked his teeth with a Bic pen.

  “Yeah, we can’t sterilize Fred,” said Chet. Greg had to concede the point. “Besides,” added Chet, pointing to the penitentiary, “most of the people in there are in for life. They can’t replicate their DNA anyway. You can’t knock up a butt.” Chet was proud of his use of the word “replicate.”

  Greg sat silently, unable to find a response. He took another slow slurp at his Iron City before smashing the can and throwing it down the side of the mound.

  “Well, I’m just saying that it makes sense in theory,” said Greg. “I’ll admit that there are problems in practice … like Fred. That has to be sorted out.”

  Greg had been reading Herodotus. He had found a dusty copy of the Greek historian’s writings in a local library. Greg told us the story of a leader who had been toppled by an enemy force. The leader was forced to watch a procession of his family being marched off to death, but he only cried when he saw one of his servants in the procession. We sat for a while and debated why that could be, concluding that stories are more powerful when they lack clear explanations.

  I stood thinking about the earthen protuberance on which we sat, thinking about all that had transpired since this dirt was piled upon bones upon dirt. Rome went on a conquering binge. Christ was crucified. The Jews were driven from Jerusalem. The Sassanid Empire rose in Iran, and Constantinople became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Vandals sacked Rome, and China was reunified under the Sui Dynasty. Muhammad died, Arabs seized Constantinople, Charlemagne was crow
ned Holy Roman Emperor. The Tale of Genji was written, the Crusades were crusaded, and Saladin reconquered Jerusalem. Genghis Khan croaked. The Hundred Years’ War began and ended in about a hundred years. The Bible was translated into God’s language of English, and America was “discovered.” Jews were ejected from Spain, Copernicus wrote, and Bruno burned. The Ming Dynasty was formed, and the Gregorian calendar was adopted. Cromwell croaked, America revolted, the French revolted, Karl Marx, the Bolsheviks, 20 million dead in World War II, gas chambers, the atom split, Jews return to Palestine, Beatlemania and the Ayatollah.

  And now the civilization on this little speck of earth was falling apart. But the mound would remain. And so would the penitentiary, a testament to Moundsville’s true work: locking people up and desecrating the dead. Everything around us was changing except the stars in the sky. Under that postcard-picture sunset stood the fragile, naked life of our drunken bodies.

  LAYLA MEILLIER

  Love and Survival

  A FLINT ROMANCE

  I COULD NOT APPRECIATE WHAT Flint had taught me until I let myself fall in love. For years I dodged it; I could not even commit to a favorite color or TV show, let alone a person. When you’re not in love you can never be hurt in such a vulnerable way. As a young woman, I don’t blame this city for my lack of puppy love; I blame this city for my fear of feeling vulnerable.

  My first love was a bike. A sleek hunk of purple pipe with sparkly wheels and handlebars. I collaged my bike in goofy stickers I had begged my mom to buy me at Rite-Aid one day. I was not permitted to leave my neighborhood, but I did not mind because my world seemed vast.

  At the time, we lived on Mountain Avenue in the College Cultural neighborhood, a place in the city considered more suburban without a too-safe uniformity. Homes range in size and era of origin, and the people tend to the unique and artsy. They look out for one another. In other words, it’s a go-to spot for young couples moving to Flint with extra money. The house we had was a brick duplex that looked like a German cottage. My stepdad owned a glass company in the north end that has long since been closed down. In its day, the company did well. There is never a scarcity of broken glass in Flint.

  Although I was told time and time again to put my bike in our door-less garage behind the house each night before bed, one night, like ya do, I forgot. I left the nose of my bike barely peeking out from behind the house. To my naive surprise, someone took it in the night.

  The news of this evoked a sadness I was not familiar with at the age of ten. At ten, one cries easily, pouts easily, sobs easily, but I could not make a sound. I felt as though my eyes had turned to stone and I wished I could not see out of them. My parents told me about the theft in an awkward family meeting, standing in our cramped kitchen. They filled me in on the normalcy of this sort of situation in my hometown: “There is nothing we can do. The police are too busy with other things. This happens all the time.”

  I went to my bedroom in a haze. A week went by and I didn’t even go outside to play; instead, I took to throwing weird shit down our dumbwaiters and retrieving it in the basement laundry hamper.

  Then, one day, my bike was back!

  “They found it,” was all I was told by my numbly shocked mother.

  Years later, I was hanging out with my now ex-stepdad, catching up around the holidays, and he was feeling a little toasty. “I lied to you that time when we were living on Mountain,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I lied about your bike.”

  “What do you mean? What happened to my bike?”

  “The police never found it.”

  “Yes, they did; it was my bike…”

  “Yeah, but I found it. Not the police.” I stared at him in shock as he unfolded the tale of how he happened to be driving in his big company truck through the east side one day, looking for a house that needed an estimate pre-installation of new glass, and he noticed a yard that was “covered in colorful kid shit.” He figured he’d check it out. Lo and behold, my bike was among the mismatched wreckage. He planned to confront the people living there, a reasonable goal for a man of his size, covered in intimidating tattoos.

  “I found your bike, laying on its side on the ground.”

  “Those bastards,” I said. I never let my bike lay on the ground; I always used my kickstand.

  “Yeah, right, the bastards! So I stole the bike back.”

  “What? In the middle of the day?”

  “Yup. I went and knocked on the door but no one came. So I just took it. I slid it in my glass rack and took off.”

  I needed some time to process this before I asked, “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “Well, because I never wanted you to think stealing back was the answer and I guess I didn’t want you to feel like the police can never help you.”

  Fair enough. Either way, since that day, I’ve been paranoid about my stuff. I don’t feel so bad about losing things as having them exposed. I would rather my belongings be reasonably lost and safe than displayed. When I was a preteen and spent time walking around the city alone, I wore baggy clothing. I stuffed my hair up in a neutral cap but never put my hood up—with it up I can never see my peripherals—unless I felt terribly angsty that day, like I didn’t care if someone snuck up behind me. Don’t leave your stuff out; don’t be a female; don’t wear pastels; don’t fall in love. It was all too painfully vulnerable. Until one day, years into my aged-cheese adolescence, it hit me, while I was lying in bed with my lover.

  He was sleeping and I was not. I watched him for a few minutes, closed his jaw when it popped open and stank morning breath burned my eyes. I put my face real close up to his and pretended time had stopped in the moment just before a kiss and we were frozen. And then I got that feeling, like before when I should have been crying but I couldn’t and my eyeballs turned to stone. I realized he wasn’t vulnerable because I did not want to hurt him. I was taking ownership of my vulnerability and forgetting the dependence vulnerability has on external forces. What about trust? If you are trusting, you are vulnerable … but will external forces feel more inclined to hurt you if you trust them? No. Is life about always putting your bike safely in the garage? No.

  I don’t typically wear my heart on my sleeve but when others need it, I leave it peeking out from behind the house and let them take it for a week.

  It’s easy to get let down by this city and get angry and look at everyone on the street like they might have to fight you, but that just creates more problems. I’m still here because the lessons are complicated and I want more than anything just to learn how to be a good human being, to be vulnerable, and to love.

  Day to Day in the Rust Belt

  DAVE NEWMAN

  A Middle-Aged Student’s Guide to Social Work

  JOHN COMES INTO THE MAIN office of the community outreach and says, “I’ve been in fucking jail all fucking week,” then dings the bell sitting on the receptionist’s desk, even though the receptionist is right there, eating a mint and doing a crossword puzzle like she always does on Fridays when she volunteers.

  I’m behind a cubicle wall, on the phone with a woman who needs two months’ rental assistance. She talks, then sometimes stops talking to sigh or groan. The desperation in her voice makes her sound like she’s stuck in an alley and the man with a gun in her face is her landlord. I listen. I acknowledge. I take notes. She calms but I’m as distant as a 911 call.

  She says, “It just happened,” meaning how she went broke.

  I understand broke.

  I understand the speed at which it happens.

  John says, “Fucking jail.”

  He says, “All fucking week.”

  I’m new here. This is February. I started my field placement in October. Six months before this, I’d never heard of a field placement. Jobs people worked for experience and college credits—but not money—were called internships. I was too old for an internship. I was too old to be a student getting a master’s degree in social work. In December
I turned forty. I had a wife and two kids, whom I loved dearly, whom I seldom saw now that I was a middle-aged student with an unpaid internship and a bunch of random facts on notecards I needed to memorize for a bunch of upcoming tests. A year before this I’d taught writing full-time at a university, an always unstable job doled out in yearly contracts, until I was released with a letter that said, basically, “Nice work, no thanks.” Before that I’d taught classes at another university for part-time wages and without benefits. I’d published one novel. Another novel was about to be published. For years, for decades, I’d built my life around writing and teaching. I wrote because I loved to write and I taught because I loved to teach writing and I needed to make a living and I’d assumed I could make a living from teaching, especially because I worked so hard as a writer when so many of my colleagues did not write or publish at all.

  Then, like every other job in America, it was gone.

  John says, “Five days in jail, not fucking good.”

  Phone on my ear, I lean out from behind my cubicle to make sure it’s John, and it is, I knew it from his voice, part cough, part thirst, the night before and the morning after, rain and sun and snow and leaves, a desperate combination of his vices and the seasons he toughs through to make a living. I wave but he doesn’t see me. He stares at something on the wall, some poster someone in the community has put up, offering services, rides to and from the doctor.

  Sue, the receptionist, faces me. She looks scared. John can be intimidating, even when he hasn’t been in jail. I hold up my finger: one second. I slide my chair back to my cubicle.

  The woman on the phone is very sweet, despite her desperation. She needs at least one thousand dollars, two months’ rent, plus she’s behind on her utilities. I have the blue intake form in front of me. It still looks new sometimes, confusing, even though I’ve been using the form for months. When I’m busy, especially when two or three or four people all need help at the same time, the blue intake form looks like a page in the Bible, tiny rules I can never keep straight.