With the exception of quick, late-night drives to deliver cash to his family, Jason had been away from Lincoln City for three months at that point. Upon driving into town he had noticed that the Hooverville seemed larger, like some unnatural weed that flourished despite the dipping temperatures. The cardboard and plywood walls of the lean-tos were double-layered as protection against the cool wind, or adorned with carpeting scavenged from derelict buildings. Clothes that didn’t fit were nailed to the shacks, as were strips of hay and anything else that could serve as insulation. At night Jason had seen the fires on the hill, the glowing trash barrels and stolen heaps of coal. How did they decide which of their meager possessions to burn? The yellow lights glowed on the black hill like the signal fires of some invading tribe.
The summer’s hesitant hope for Roosevelt’s New Deal and National Recovery Administration had soured in the past few weeks as things seemed only to backslide. Governments could change and policies could be enacted and banks could temporarily close and then reopen, but the disease was still festering. When the depression had first hit, everyone talked about it as if it were a hurricane or tornado or flood—another horrible act of God that simply needed to be endured. They were resigned villagers bucketing out the floodwaters or sawing the felled trees, expected to trudge patiently through the aftermath. But now people weren’t so sure. Maybe depressions weren’t God-made but man-made, bound to all the messiness and contradictions and barely concealed flaws that plagued us all. But if the depression was the result of human nature, how could you escape it? Preachers on the radio told listeners to repent, socialists and communists tried to recruit the dispossessed to their revitalized creeds, and people in the vast middle wondered whom to blame— God or themselves or someone else. Blame had become the only thing more precious than money.
Little Patrick was asleep in his mother’s arms. The last time Jason had seen his nephew, he looked like a bald-headed monster. Now he was kind of cute.
Veronica was living in a tiny apartment on the third floor of a dilapidated building in a Dayton neighborhood where Jason wouldn’t have wanted a pet dog to roam, let alone his wife and child. He silently cursed his brother—Jason had handed him a healthy amount of dough, and this was the place Whit rented?
Jason had managed a glance into the small pantry and saw that its shelves were sagging from age and poor craftsmanship but not from the weight they were carrying: two sacks of cornmeal, half a dozen cans of beans and vegetables. At least Whit had bought his new wife some decent clothes; she was wearing a pretty yellow dress, though from the look of it she’d been wearing it for a few days now. Her hair was messily pulled back and unwashed. The pouches beneath her eyes were the color of used tea bags and looked just as heavy.
Whit’s disappearance had not been precipitated by a particularly bad fight, Veronica claimed, but Jason wasn’t sure he believed her. Even in her current state, she wasn’t the type to admit pain or reveal weakness.
“Any idea where he might have gone?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe. Few days before he left, one of your uncle’s old war buddies stopped by and they went out drinking. An Italian. Name was Gustavo something-that-rhymed-with-Confetti. Whit told me the guy lives in Columbus and was goin’ on about him knowing a guy who knew a guy who had jobs.”
It was as good a hunch as Jason was likely to stumble upon. Columbus was no more than four hours’ drive, so he was relieved to hear that his expedition would be a short one. Still, there was something particularly sad about running out on your family and making it through only a few counties. Part of him had wanted to believe Whit was staking out for the bounty and risks of California, or testing himself against the anonymous lottery of greater cities like Chicago or New York. The thought of Whit trying to reinvent himself in goddamn Columbus only made Jason shake his head.
“Did he say he was going there to work a job and send money home?”
She shook her head. “I just woke up one morning thinking he was out looking for work. I thought he’d be back for supper, but he never came back.”
Jason slipped her money for rent—enough for at least three months, he figured, plus food. She protested the charity only halfheartedly before accepting.
“I’m sorry he did that to you, Veronica. I’ll talk some sense into him.”
“He’s having trouble growing up,” she said.
“I guess I haven’t been the best example for him.”
“He’d yell and scream one night and cry the next. Not unlike this one.” As if insulted, the baby uttered a little yelp.
“You know you’re welcome to stay at Ma’s. We don’t want you to be alone.”
“I don’t want to be a burden on her. She has enough on her hands with June’s kids.”
“You’re not a burden, you’re family.”
“What’s the difference?”
The baby cried again, and this time his eyes opened. The cries were short but constant; Jason had never heard anything more grating. He could imagine how it must have sounded to Whit.
“I should feed him,” Veronica said.
“I’ll talk some sense into Whit,” he repeated as he stood, grateful for the excuse to make his exit. He told himself he was doing the right thing as he walked out of her apartment, down the creaking steps, past the bum in the first-floor hallway, and out the front door with the broken lock.
Despite Marriner’s advice about lying low, after Jason’s uncomfortable talk with Ma he’d felt the only way he could salvage her opinion of him was by doing as she had asked. So here he was, poking into this Columbus bar and that, checking in at a veterans’ office for the mysterious friend of his dead uncle, walking up and down breadlines in the hope of spotting Whit. At the eighth bar Jason checked, the barkeep said a guy who sounded like Whit had been by a few days ago, drinking with a Gustavo Colletti, who lived around the corner. When the barkeep mentioned that Whit had skipped out without paying his tab, Jason paid the amount, plus a fat tip. The barkeep’s eyes froze on Jason’s thick billfold.
Colletti’s neighborhood was a modest block, tree-lined but lacking shade, as the maples were spindly things that had been planted recently, probably in ’29, before every municipal budget had zeroed out. Long shadows sprawled on the sidewalks beneath the late-afternoon sun. Though it was barely five o’clock, Jason saw a dispiriting number of men smoking on porches or watching him from behind windows.
“Gustavo Colletti?” Jason asked when a man in an undershirt and patched trousers answered the door. He was Jason’s height, and though his arms and chest were thick, they seemed to sag a bit from fat that had once been muscle.
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m looking for Whit Fireson.”
“He ain’t here anymore.” The man had curly dark hair that had lost an inch or two of real estate to his forehead.
“You two had a spat?”
Colletti folded his arms. They were not insignificant arms. “I said, who’s asking?”
“I’m family of his. He left his wife and kid high and dry, and I want to talk some sense into him.”
“All I tried to do was help out the nephew of an old buddy who’s down on his luck. He overstayed his welcome, and I told him as much.”
“He doesn’t have a job in town?”
Colletti laughed as if he had long ago stopped seeing real humor in the world.
“Where’s he staying now?”
“Got me.”
“He alone? Or does he have a frail in town?”
“Last couple times I saw him he was chatting up a girl named Alice Simmons, but he can’t be staying with her, since she lives in a girls’ dorm.”
“Buddy, if you have any idea where I might find him, I’d appreciate it. As would his two-month-old son.”
Colletti unfolded his arms and let his heavy hands fall into his pockets. “Know where I’d look? Greater Columbus Presbyterian—the school, not the church. He and Alice were talking about going out for the dance marath
on.”
“You mean, to watch it?”
“I mean to win it. Two-hundred-dollar pot.”
Colletti invited Jason into his tiny kitchen to check his copy of the Dispatch. Jason found the story in the front section, no less, under the headline WALKATHON DOWN TO 12 LUCKY COUPLES. They were officially called walkathons for propriety’s sake, when in fact dancing was what the contestants did until they collapsed. Jason skimmed the story, which noted that the contest was in its twelfth day now, and though there was no mention of a Whit Fireson, he saw one couple identified as Alice Simmons and Will Franklin—the name Whit had used when signing for his Dayton apartment.
“I know who you are, by the way,” Colletti said. He had lit a cigarette while Jason read the story, and he spoke with it dangling from his lips.
“That so?”
“Your brother can be quite a talker after a few drinks.”
“And quite a liar. Don’t believe everything a guy says.”
“Oh, I don’t. But I believe enough.” He removed the cigarette from his mouth and tipped it into a dark-red ashtray. “Last April, bank threw me and my wife out of a house we’d bought five years ago. Had never been late on a payment before, and they didn’t care that I had that army bonus due me eventually.”
“That’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear.”
“Was three times as big as this rathole. And now we got another kid coming. Anyway, I’d just like to shake your hand.”
It was the third or fourth such overture Jason had received, and during the next few months it would be followed by many more. He always told his well-wishers they had the wrong guy, denying his identity while secretly being warmed by them. But he also found these gestures puzzling—the way people thought of him, how they attached their hopes and grievances and fears to his every movement. They placed great meaning on his acts, which they didn’t understand. He felt undeserving of their praise but also somehow above them and their flailing despondency, both unworthy and superior.
“Tell me,” Colletti said as Jason released his hand and tried to make his exit. “It true what they say about you tearing up mortgages when you’re in the banks? You really do that for folks?”
Jason’s shoulder had already forced the door open. He could hear a bus trawl by, kids insulting one another.
“Like I said, don’t believe everything a guy says.” He donned his hat and turned out the doorway in one fluid motion, wondering how Colletti might color the encounter when retelling it to friends.
Jason’s stomach was begging for food, but he felt close to finding Whit and didn’t want to let supper cost him his chance. He drove to the school, a long, two-story gray box beside which was a smaller structure with the tall windows of a gymnasium. In front of the school building, a sign announced COLUMBUS FIRST ANNUAL WALKATHON! $250 PRIZE! NIGHTLY CONTEST EVENTS! LIVE MUSIC! NOW IN TWELFTH DAY! SPONSORED BY VFW. ADMISSION 25¢.
He was surprised the promoter had been able to land a church’s school gym, as most preachers strongly opposed the contests, given the licentious dancing, the depraved crowds, and the announcer’s lewd jokes. The promoter must have offered the church a cut of the take.
Jason parked at the spot closest to the exit behind the building, backing in, always prepared for a hasty escape. He could hear the music when he was halfway to the door. In the small entryway hung banners boasting of football and basketball championships. Below them a dimpled blond girl sitting at a collapsible desk and cash register charged him a quarter. From the gym a waltz faded, followed by the sound of a needle scratching on the phonograph. Next up was another waltz, sleepier.
“Things will really get moving again at six o’clock,” the girl told him. He thanked her and walked through the doors.
Two dozen spectators were scattered on bleachers on one side of the gym. The tall windows provided little light at that hour, yet only half the lamps above the main floor were lit. The markings of a basketball court lay beneath the feet of eleven dancing couples—apparently the twelfth had been disqualified since that morning. Before taking a seat, Jason scanned the faces of the dancers. Calling them dancers was inaccurate. Their slight movements may have been enough to pass muster with the judge, who darted among them with birdlike inquisitiveness, but it certainly wasn’t dancing. Many of the contestants were leaning on their partners, faces wan, arms hanging loose like corpses. Some of their wrists were bound with rope, and knotted kerchiefs connected a few slumbering necks to their more responsive mates. The waking partners gingerly nudged the feet of their dozing companions, keeping in accordance with the rules. The balding floor judge carried a white yardstick, and he flicked it at the calves of a short woman who was nearly crumpling beneath the weight of her partner. She moved faster after the strike, and began shaking her man’s shoulders.
“Allllllrighty, people!” The announcer’s energetic voice was in such contrast to the torpor on the floor. It sounded inhuman, a sinister force. “After this song it will be five o’clock! That means the live band will be setting up, that means the tempo will be picking up, and, most important, that means—”
The thin but lively audience, mostly female, chimed in: “No breaks!”
Jason spotted the pin-striped announcer, standing at a desk at the far end, beneath one of the retracted basketball hoops. Beside him two headphoned men sat among consoles of electronics, wires spilling in every direction. Local radio, of course, set to broadcast the night’s events. Jason had never attended one of these, but he’d once talked up a traveling promoter for such events. The man had been soused and bragged about his lucrative calling, how he would skip from town to town, putting on the events only at locations that had never hosted them before, so the crowds would be enthusiastic and the local hosts wouldn’t realize that he was likely to disappear without paying their take. He talked about how he rigged the contest with his small legion of professional dancers, whom he referred to as “horses”: ex–vaudeville players who needed the work and had the endurance to outlast even the most desperate of participants. He described the ridiculous nightly games and wind sprints, the insults they lobbed at the contestants, the ice baths they dunked them into if they fell too deeply asleep on their cots during the hourly fifteen-minute breaks backstage. The promoter had been with a circus in his youth, he’d explained, until he decided that torturing animals wasn’t enough of a challenge.
Finally, Jason spotted his brother. Whit was one of the sleepers, and at first Jason hadn’t recognized him, since his face was pressed into the padded shoulder of a green dress. Whit’s dance partner was a tall redhead. She was wobbling in a clockwise slumber, and now Jason could see only the back of Whit’s head, the pale right ear sticking out like a crumpled white flag. Pinned to both of their backs were yellow pieces of paper displaying the number 37.
Jason clambered over the bleachers and sat in the back row. He considered the flask of bourbon in his pocket but decided to hold off. Then he weighed the scene that would be created by wandering onto the floor and pulling Whit aside. The way that drunken promoter had described it, these operations were tightly controlled, and there were probably some security toughs scattered about. Jason didn’t want to attract attention, so, for now, he sat and watched.
More people were filing through the entrance. Jason had forgotten it was Friday night, which likely meant that an array of especially outlandish events were in store. As if on cue, the emcee announced that wrist attachments, leg irons, and other contraptions must be removed for the next twelve hours.
Jason glanced at the program. Apparently there had been one hundred couples at the beginning. He felt a glimmer of something that wasn’t quite pride that Whit was among the final eleven. A pop vendor started climbing his way, but Jason shook the kid off. Other teenagers were hawking hot dogs and chips as if this were a ball game. Baseball had always bored Jason—all those fat men standing around in pajamas, moving once every three minutes—but this was even worse.
“It’s been more than eleven
days, ladies and gentlemen!” the emcee hollered. “Two hundred and seventy-one hours these crazy folks have been keeping in motion for you! Two hundred seventy-one hours of right foot, left foot! I’ve been checking up on them during the backstage breaks, folks, and I’ve seen blisters big as half-dollars! I’ve seen bunions that could split a metal-tipped boot! I’ve seen blood, sweat, and tears! And that’s just one couple I’m talking about!”
Now the band launched into a shag, choosing to start the proceedings with the most frenetic number possible. The couples whirled into insane variations on the Charleston. They clutched each other violently and their moves were jerky. They were wrestling, with each other and with gravity and whatever unnamed forces had conspired to put them there. They didn’t seem fully cognizant of where they were or why; they were dancing merely because it was all they could remember to do, like men on assembly lines.
Next was a black bottom and then a couple of fox-trots at a faster tempo than normal. The pianist might as well have been firing a pistol at the dancers’ feet.
“Barbara and Glen met in the first grade at this very school,” the emcee announced. “So wouldn’t it be sweet for them to win on their home floor? Danny and Donna will be celebrating their second anniversary tomorrow—but will they still be dancing? Otis and Lindsey have five pretty daughters at home and need that prize money for food and school clothes! Lou-Lou’s hubby, Francis, has three medals for fighting in France, but our trophy is the only prize he cares about now!”
Jason couldn’t fathom the combination of willpower, self-delusion, and masochism necessary to compete in such an event, and after sixty minutes of sitting there he’d reached his own limit. He made his way down the bleachers, winding through the thickening ranks of jovial spectators. Skirting the periphery of the floor, he approached a man whose blue shirtsleeves advertised triceps that couldn’t possibly have been earned by standing around dance floors.
“Say, buddy,” Jason said. The man had to lean close to hear Jason above the racket from the band, which was only twenty yards away. “How many horses you guys got out there?”
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers: A Novel Page 13