I licked my lips before I spoke. “Jack?” The word was a long-awaited, soft thunderclap.
He smiled, puzzled.
“Jack Radey?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
My heart flooded with a sudden ache. I forged ahead. “I’m a friend of Margaret’s. A friend of your sister.”
In the darkness, his eyes brightened. “Way down here? You’re kidding!” He stepped forward, closing the space between us.
I remained frozen, light-headed.
His shirt was plain white, open at the neck—the collar from another era; his pants were flannel—too warm for either the time of year or the place—with double-pleated front. “Do you live here?” he asked.
“No. I’m on vacation. Margaret knew I might get down here. She gave me your address. Asked me to look you up, make sure everything’s all right.”
He shook his head, smiling. His eyes were bright blue, like my mother’s. “Good old Marg. Always keeping tabs on me. Watchin’ out for little brother.” He was both amused and pleased. Then his eyes met mine again. “I’m sorry—I didn’t catch your name.”
“Leo.” He waited for a last name. When I didn’t offer it, I added, “Just tell her Leo dropped by to see how you were, to see if there was any pressing news, next time you write.”
He accepted that.
I walked toward him, closing the space between us. I saw my shadow ahead of me, flickering wildly on the pavement, a transient fragment cast by the lightning with no sound. And as I neared him, as the distance was closed, the air became still, and the shadow disappeared.
It happened like that.
I held my breath, looked around.
We stood, face to face, in the silence, in the dark.
In the past.
EIGHT
Monday, October 8, 1934
Everything changed.
The temperature had dropped slightly, the wind was gone, and the approaching storm had ceased to exist.
The streetlamps were dark, cast iron, with gracefully arched necks, their bulbs suspended downward. And in that soft light, I began to note the classic, hulking black coupes of the 1930s parked intermittently about the street. Then I turned and stared in the opposite direction, my eyes catching the announcement for King Kong, starring Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot, jutting over the sidewalk below the green marquee of the Paramount Theater, resplendent with its new golden lettering and trim.
I glanced in a window beside me—a clothing store—my eyes scanning the display of suits, coats, shoes: Ayer’s All-Wool Tweed Coat, $9.75, Delivered; Lady’s High Fashion Dress, $2.98, Delivered; Black Calfskin or White Leather Pump, Featuring a Smart New Bow, $2.45 Pair, Delivered.
I stood on Winchester Avenue, in Ashland, Kentucky, and let it happen.
“Where you staying?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“You really on vacation?” There was a playfulness to his question. I thought of Jeanne. The story had an obvious timelessness to its incredibility.
“Sort of,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Like everybody else.” He took a package of cigarettes from his pants pocket, shook one loose, placed it between his lips, then held the package toward me.
“No. Thanks.”
He smiled, put them away. He lit his own, inhaling the smoke, enjoying the luxury. Then he seemed to study me. “How’d you know it was me?”
“I’ve seen pictures,” I lied. “Of Margaret and you.”
He smiled again, his pleasure obvious. “Where do you know Marg from? I thought I knew all her friends.”
“You’ve been gone for a while now.”
He nodded. “That’s true.”
“Marg helped my family when we moved into the neighborhood.” I began to amaze myself with my story. “Helped me look after my father. He’s my family,” I added, trying to flesh out the picture. I realized that I must look positively middleaged to Jack.
“How’s Tommy?” he asked, watching me.
“He’s in good shape. Still working.”
“And the kids?”
“Ronny and Anne?” I smiled. “Healthy as horses.”
He relaxed even more. “So you live up around Yonge and Eglinton, do you?”
I nodded.
“Too far north of the city for my tastes. I guess I’m kind of a downtown kid.”
He nodded in the direction of the railway lines, just this side of the river. “You sleeping down there?”
I followed his gaze and took my cue. “Isn’t everybody?”
He seemed to consider. The cigarette smoke floated upward in the still air. “I’m not sure what you’re doin’, Leo, but any friend of Marg’s a friend of mine. It’s as simple as that.” He gestured with his cigarette toward the railway yards. “Lots sleep down there. I know.” He pondered. “Maybe I can help you.”
I waited.
“I know a nice place. I think we can work something out.”
I followed his glance. The Scott Hotel in its prime, even in the dark, was a very nice place.
We slipped into the Scott, up the stairs, and into room 8 on the third floor.
Jack’s things were spread throughout the room. Mine were gone.
He pulled a pillow and blanket from the bed—the same white-painted iron bedstead that I had known—and tossed them on the floor by the window. “Good enough?” he asked.
“It’ll do fine,” I said. The furniture was new.
He nodded, smiled. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
I went over to the window, looked out. The church was still there. Then I sat down on the floor with my back against the wall, staring at him.
He smiled, dropped back onto the bed and ran his hands through his dark, curly hair, as I had seen him do before. “What?” he asked.
“How do you know you can trust me?” I frowned. “How do you know who I am?”
He continued to smile, that magic, disarming smile, his eyes burning with a belief in a future and things that I could not share. “Who are any of us?” He paused. “A hunch,” he said. “I play hunches. Can’t help myself. Marg always said I was a little naive.” Another shrug. “What can you do?”
I was quiet, listening to my heart beat, listening to the silence of the years breaking open.
“And you’re a friend of Marg’s. It’s enough.” He seemed content, pulled off a shoe and leaned back on his elbow, gazing at me. “You must know that she makes everyone a better person just because she believes in them.” His eyes twinkled. “You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said.
It was true.
“In the morning,” he said.
I listened.
“We’ll talk.”
He turned off the light. In the darkness, I could see the tip of his cigarette flare when he inhaled, smell its smoke as it wended its way out the window by my side.
When it was dashed out, I must have slept.
Or dreamed that I slept.
I woke with the sunlight streaming in above me. I was still on the floor, Jack was still in the bed.
He pushed up on to an elbow when he heard me stir and smiled.
I touched the wall beside me. It was solid. It was real.
I looked for my car at the back of the Scott when we were outside. It was gone.
“Where we going?” I asked. He went ahead of me across Winchester Avenue.
“Get something to eat.”
“Where?” We reached the other side and stopped.
“Soup kitchen.” He looked at me. “Unless you got some money.”
I reached into my pants pocket and took out my wallet. I opened it and looked in.
It was empty.
We sat at a plank table in a warehouse near the east end of town. Dozens of men, at similar tables, surrounded us. The room was lit by bare light bulbs, hanging from wiring strung over thick, wooden rafters.
With a twisted fork and knife in my hands, I stared at the rough metal plate.
Jack w
as eating. He caught me studying the food in front of me, sat back and watched. Then he said, “Never eat in one of these places before?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He continued chewing, thinking. “You got no money, you’ll get used to it.”
There was little conversation anywhere about us. The sounds of metal against metal pervaded in its stead.
Everyone had the same meal: white beans boiled in water, two slices of dry bread, and a cup of tea.
I sampled the beans. They were almost completely tasteless. “Is it always the same food?”
Jack nodded as he ate. “Mostly.” He swallowed. “Sometimes you get porridge in the morning. Not too often, though.”
“Three times a day?”
“Twice. At ten and five.”
The tea was bitter.
He smiled. “Once, though, local guy shot a bear. Donated it. Everybody had diarrhea for forty-eight hours.” He shrugged. “Poor bloody bear,” he said.
Two gaunt, sallow men sat at the same bench as us, shoveling the food into their mouths. Their clothes smelled like the notorious Saint Clair West area in Toronto—the area dominated by the Canada Packers meat processing plant. When they left, I met Jack’s eyes. “They work in an abattoir or something?”
He shook his head, sipped his tea. “Least they were clean,” he said. “I got some store-bought soap back at the hotel. Makes things nice. But I’ve done what they’ve done. Mixed pork fat, wood ashes, and salt. It makes a kind of soap. It works. But,” he said, “it takes a lot of sun-baking to get the smell out of your clothes.” He shrugged. “Sometimes you got no choice.”
Around noon, we walked in the hot sun through the railway yards by the river. On the far side of the tracks, we stood high up over the Ohio—in the place where I had been by myself, in whatever other life that had been—looking down on the stony strand. Smoke drifted up through the leaves of a sycamore tree from three different campfires. A dozen or so men idled about.
“Ridin’ the rods,” he said. “Is that how you got here?”
I thought of the car that no longer existed. “No,” I said. “Hitched.”
He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. “You’re lucky. Hard to get rides.” The smoke drifted from his mouth and nose into the sunshine. “But maybe you’re good at it. Some are better at it than others. Same as this.” He nodded in the direction of the men below. “They say it takes about a thousand miles before you get real good at it. Get to know where the trains slow, get to know the whistles, the lights, the bells. Get to know a local from an express. Get your timing down, so’s you can grab a moving ladder or jump at the right time when you want off.”
We stood, squinting, watching them.
“Do the local police bother them?”
He looked at me, mildly surprised, then smiled. “Keep ’em moving, that’s their motto. If they arrest them as vagrants, it costs a dollar a day to keep ’em.” He stared down at them. “Even the police don’t want ’em.”
I watched the trail of the campfires’ smoke, adrift in the afternoon haze. “What are they cooking?”
Jack shrugged. “Gophers, squirrels, possums. Whatever they can catch.”
I was quiet.
“Maybe weeds or dandelions in a soup.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Could be worse.”
I looked at him.
“Could be a bear.”
He grinned boyishly. But in his eyes I saw something I tried to put my finger on, something that eluded description.
I think it was sadness.
Later that afternoon we sat on the porch swing on the front veranda of the Scott Hotel.
“You’re doing okay, though, aren’t you, Jack? Got a job. Place to live. Why eat in the soup kitchens?”
He grimaced, bared his teeth, which were a startling white, while he reflected. Then he said: “I got nothing. Job barely keeps me alive. Eating there most of the time is a way of stayin’ even.” He paused. “I treat myself, sometimes. A meal. A hot dog from a restaurant. A movie. Cigarettes. But not much. Not too much.” His eyes were crinkled at the corners from the glare, from thinking. From the truth.
I saw the Paramount marquee for King Kong again, and recalled the letter of September 30 that my father had read over the phone. “What’s today’s date?” I asked.
“It’s the eighth.”
“Of October.”
He nodded.
I gestured toward the theater. “You seen that one yet?”
“Saw it the other night.”
I fell quiet.
“Sad,” he said. “The ape gets a raw deal.”
“Margaret read me some of your letters.”
He looked at me with a combination of bemusement and surprise.
“She thinks you’re doing okay. Mentioned a car, clothes, job as a photographer with a Detroit firm.”
He bowed his head, smiling meekly.
I watched him. “It’s not true, is it?”
He looked me in the eye. “No,” he said. The word was very soft.
I nodded, understanding.
We were both quiet for a long time.
“Some people still live real good,” he said. “Bankers. Lawyers. The ones that feed on the rest. Inherited money. You know.”
I put my hands in my pockets, leaned my head back and stared into the endless blue sky.
“But it’s like a giant iceberg. Just the tip is showin’. Most of it’s just gliding along, out of sight, massive.” He paused. “Dangerous.”
He said the last word carefully, nodding to himself, then lit a cigarette.
The screen door swung open and a young man of about thirty strode out. “Jack,” he said. “How you doin’?” He put his hands on his hips.
Jack greeted him with a smile, a nod. “Good,” he said.
The newcomer was about five-nine, strongly built, the arms showing from his T-shirt well muscled and tanned. His hair was sandy blond, slicked back straight. He glanced at me, his eyes narrowing.
Jack picked up the cue. “Leo.” He touched my arm. “Like you to meet someone.”
I stood up, staring inquisitively at the man.
“This is the man who owns the hotel—”
I saw who he was in that moment, the same moment that I heard his name.
“—Stanley Matusik.”
I saw the lined toughness that was to come, the tufts of white hair that would be left, and as he extended his hand toward me, the future calluses on his eighty-year-old skin just beginning.
He squeezed my hand warmly. “Pleased to meet you.”
“My pleasure,” I managed to say, unable to take my eyes from him.
His hand, like his body, was strong. For in him, there was still hope, a world of infinite possibility.
There was still the future.
“Leo’s from Toronto,” said Jack.
Stanley’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“Friend of my sister.”
“You come down through Toledo?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, thinking. “I did.”
He let go my hand. “Big trouble there earlier this year. You see any of it?”
“I heard about it. You keep your ears open, you hear about lots.”
Stanley smiled. Then he turned to Jack. “Jack was there.”
Jack didn’t meet his gaze.
“Big eye-opener for him.”
“I’ll bet. Big eye-opener for everybody.”
“Get him to tell you about it sometime.”
I looked at Jack, who was still in his own thoughts. “I will,” I said. “Sometime.”
Jack looked at me, from far off.
“You workin’, Leo?” Stanley Matusik asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.” I went with the simplest answer.
“Figures,” he said.
We listened.
“Wasn’t for Teresa’s parents, we wouldn’t have nothin’ either. They set us up with this place. C
ost them their restaurant last year.” He paused. “’Cause they’re good people, they don’t complain too much about it. Took care of their own. They say that’s the best anyone can do in this life.”
I let my eyes stray along the front wall of the building, recalling another conversation with Stanley, about how his in-laws had loaned them the down payment.
“Teresa works at Woolworth’s.”
He had told me this, of course, but with its retelling came the flash and memory of my own life, of Jeanne, of her touch.
“Makes eleven dollars a week. Rockefeller paid six million in tax alone. Somethin’s definitely screwed up, wouldn’t you say?”
It didn’t need an answer.
“Willy’s plant in Toledo dropped from twenty-eight thousand workers to four thousand. Hung on for a while that way. Then went bust. Unemployment in Cincinnati’s over twenty percent. And another twenty percent is employed only part-time. More’n a thousand homes a day in this country are bein’ taken over by mortgage holders.” He looked at me and half smiled. “I guess you could say that it all obsesses me.” He nodded. “Yes, indeed,” he said, “you could surely say that.”
Jack spoke. “Tell him about your dad.”
I glanced at him, saw my uncle’s blue eyes sparkling with intensity.
It was a prompt that Stanley heeded. “Died in thirty-two. Tuberculosis. Was a coal miner, Harlan County. In thirty-one, he was asked to dig for thirty-three cents a ton, so like everybody else, he joined the union. Mine blacklisted all the men, and their own company doctor wouldn’t treat the families. My little sister, age seven, died of pneumonia that year. My dad died the next. They drove the miners to starvation. Was as simple as that. My mom was a midwife. She saw forty-three babies die in her arms that winter. Hunger. Sickness. You name it. She told me one time that some of them died with their little stomachs literally bust open.” His face had hardened. “So, yeah, I think it’s fair to say that it all obsesses me.” He inhaled and exhaled slowly, regaining composure. “Fair indeed.”
I looked at Jack’s face, saw the hypnotic effect the tale had on him, thought of his experience as strikebreaker in Toledo, felt him straddling that imaginary line, fists clenched, and saw him leaning now, with quiet passion, toward Stanley Matusik.
Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed Page 9