The Winter Family

by Clifford Jackman

Winter gazed off through the window toward the little town of Morris. It had never seemed so far away to Louis as it did now.

  “My daddy’s dead?” Winter asked.

  “Yes,” Louis replied.

  “It was the river that got him, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why’s the river flowing the other way now?”

  “They reversed the flow of the Chicago River back into the Illinois,” Louis said. “To keep the lake clean for Chicago’s drinking water.”

  Winter’s lips twitched a bit.

  “So Chicago killed my daddy in the end, did it?”

  “I suppose so,” Louis said. “It killed a lot of people. But the governor won’t do nothing about it.”

  Winter didn’t say anything more.

  Louis cleared his throat. He tried to meet Winter’s gaze, then looked down again.

  “Augustus,” Louis said, “I won’t tell anyone you came here. I promise.”

  Winter’s face was without expression.

  “I promise you. Please. I wouldn’t ever tell. Augustus, I swear. We were always good to you. My wife loves you. She don’t know about what happened in Mississippi. I kept her away from the papers.”

  “That why she thought my father was a good man? That he loved me? Did you keep the papers away from her about him too?”

  Louis shrank into the sofa.

  “Your wife is a goddamn idiot,” Winter said.

  Louis stared desperately at Winter’s face, as if he was trying to catch on to something human, to draw sympathy out with his eyes. To make Winter feel something. But Winter only looked at him as he would the sluggish, polluted Illinois River flowing by. And then Louis did what many men did when they had to spend much time with Augustus Winter. He started to cry.

  “Augustus, please.”

  “The world’s a hard fucking place,” Winter said. His hand moved just a little on the stock of the shotgun. “A little hard to get by with just please.”

  “Augustus,” Louis said. He wiped his eyes and then spoke almost without thinking. “My lord, Augustus, when you say things like that, you sound just like him.”

  That got a reaction. Winter stood up so quickly he knocked over the chair. He pointed the shotgun at Louis, and his eyes looked as if some infernal gate had come loose inside them, as if they had become windows to Hell.

  Louis was too shocked to be afraid. He had never seen a face so distorted with surprise and hatred and he simply assumed that he was about to die.

  And then Winter let the shotgun drop to the floor and walked down the hallway and the front door banged open.

  Louis reached for the gun, remembered Lukas drawing the pistols, and then let it lie.

  “Where did he go?” Dorothy cried out from behind him.

  “Stay in the kitchen,” Louis said.

  Winter had walked about twenty paces from the house and was standing by the road and looking out over the river. Then his shoulders crumpled forward and he pressed his hands to his eyes and his whole body began to shake.

  Louis walked up to him very carefully, conscious that he could not afford a mistake. He circled around Winter a little to the left, keeping a healthy distance, then he said, “Hey now, I didn’t mean it like that. You ain’t like him. I just meant you reminded me of him when you said how hard the world was. That sounded a lot like your father, Augustus, was all I meant.”

  And Winter turned and looked at Louis and Louis was startled by what he saw. Because there was no grief or sadness in Winter’s eyes. He was weeping; his face was slick with tears that were turning the dust on his face to mud. And his mouth was open and hitching with his unsteady breaths. But he was looking at Louis with a peculiarly calm expression, unconcerned and unembarrassed. It was as if by weeping Winter was purging a part of himself, as if he knew he was crying for the last time.

  And the worst part was that Louis thought he knew why. Because the world had been awfully hard to young Augustus Winter, a hard and cruel place, and Louis thought that Winter had decided that he needed to give up certain kinds of feelings in order to survive. And Louis, who could remember Augustus as a boy, felt deeply that this was not so.

  Winter raised his hands and wiped his eyes, two or three times, and breathed through his mouth in great gulps of air.

  “Augustus,” Louis said, “you ain’t like him. I don’t care what you’ve done. I know you from when you were a little boy. All right?”

  “You don’t know anything,” Winter said. “You don’t know what I’ve seen.”

  “Yeah,” Louis said, “okay. You’ve seen some terrible things. I know you have, Augustus. But you’re still seeing them. And they’re gone now, they’re gone. The only bad things here are the ones you’ve got inside you. And if you just let them go, they’ll be gone too. I swear, Augustus. I promise you.”

  But Winter’s expression had become hard and distant.

  “You see that?” Winter said.

  “What?” Louis asked.

  Winter motioned his head toward the river. Sluggish and brown and running against gravity, against the way nature had intended.

  “It’s not just in me, Louis,” Winter said. “It’s everywhere. Once you know where to look.”

  39

  That same dawn Jan Müller stood in the fashionable drawing room of Justice Francis Bernard. It was packed so full with immigrants of all nationalities that they sat on the tables and the arms of the chairs and knocked their elbows together. Everyone had taken his boots off at the front door and the smell of feet was overpowering. They had come over straight from the saloon after their eye-openers and many were drunk and singing, including a little man wedged next to Jan.

  The judge came in through the large oak double doors that led to the foyer. He was a hefty, cheerful man with a halo of white hair around the back of his head and a hard red face. A faint echo of an Irish accent was in his voice. He stood on a footstool to address the crowd.

  “All right, men,” he said, “we’ve got your certificates right here. You’ve all been taken care of so there’s no worry about payment. You just remember who your friends are at the end of the month. Your saloon keepers’ll let you know how to vote. Don’t be afraid of Republican thugs, we’ll take care of them too. After a favor like this one we expect you to vote three or four times, at the barest minimum.”

  The men cheered.

  “Every man put your hand on a Bible,” the judge said, and the Bibles were produced and circulated and every man stretched out a hand, right or left, to find one to touch.

  The judge administered the oath, although many present could not speak English, and he congratulated them all, for they were now American citizens.

  Jan was handed a certificate of citizenship on the way out. It read: JACK MILLER.

  The air was damp and pungent outside, earthy. It was cold and steam was rising from the sewers. Mickey Burns waited on the street next to a carriage.

  “Come on,” Burns said. “Time’s a-wastin’. It’s election time, and I’ve a large number of funerals to attend.” He threw his cigar into the gutter and entered the carriage. Jan got up on top with the driver, because the seats inside were filled with flowers.

  Between the hours of six and nine in the morning, they attended three funeral services. One was for a man killed by a train, one was for an ancient grandmother, and the last for a young child poisoned by swill milk. All three of the families were precisely as poor as dirt; all of the funerals had been paid for by Mickey Burns, the Great Mourner. At each of them he made the rounds, squeezing everyone’s hands, a tear in his eye, with Jan staggering behind underneath an enormous floral arrangement.

  “God bless you, Mister Burns,” they all said, choked with emotion.

  After the last funeral they were stopped outside by a small ill-favored man with a cast in one eye and thinning, greasy hair.

  “Top of the morning to you, Mister Burns,” he said.

  “Corky,” Burns said affectionately. “Grand to
see you.”

  “I know you’re busy with the election and all,” Corky said, “so I’ll cut to the chase, if you don’t mind. I’ve been the subject of unjust persecution from the police. They’ve called my saloon a common gaming house.”

  Burns laughed, but only after a brief hesitation. “Imagine that,” Burns said, “calling it common!”

  “I was hoping you’d intercede on my behalf,” Corky said, drawing an envelope from his jacket.

  “My dear Corky,” Burns said. “I know you’ll believe me when I say it pains me greatly to let down a man of my district, and that it pains me even more to refuse a contribution to my campaign.”

  “Oh fuck off,” Corky said.

  “But you’d really better take that envelope to King Conor.”

  “He’ll bleed me dry!” Corky said.

  Burns winced. He did look genuinely pained.

  “Mickey, come on now,” Corky said. “I’ve been kicking back to you from the very start.”

  “I’ll have a word with him,” Burns said. “It’s all I can do for you. He’s straight up bought the monopoly.”

  “I know he had to go through one of you to get me shut down.”

  “That’s the thing, Corky,” Burns said. “He don’t have to do that at all. The coppers sit around in his joint and he tells ’em where to go. I’m sorry, boyo, I really am, but we got less for the streetcar franchise than what he paid for the gaming franchise.”

  Corky looked angry but resigned.

  “And to think of all the money I’ve kicked you,” he said, “and for what?”

  “We had some good years, though, didn’t we?” Burns said.

  Corky shook his head, disgusted, and turned away.

  They drove to the courthouse next. Burns jogged up the steps, barged through the front doors, and took a seat at the back of a courtroom crowded with dozens of dirty Irish youths, reeking of cheap whiskey and vomit. Many of them were bruised and bloodied. Burns wrote their names down in a little book. The youths waved at him to get his attention but he paid them little mind.

  Between nine in the morning and noon he bailed out each and every young man from his district, scolded them, gave them a railway pass, and told them to visit his office and speak to his secretary about getting a city job. Some of their mothers were present, and they often burst into tears.

  “I’m fecking starving,” Burns said afterward to Jan as they jogged back down the steps. “Run and get me a sandwich, will you?”

  Jan was a hair, the merest hair, from doing so. It was only the pain in his side that caused him to hesitate and gave him time to think. He kept moving down the stairs, his heart thudding in his chest, and he looked at Burns with what he hoped was an ignorant expression.

  Burns was studying him for any sign that he had understood. Eventually he said, “Well, you ain’t the liveliest help I ever had, but where we’re going next you won’t need to do much talking. Hey?”

  Burns mimed throwing a few punches and said, more loudly, “Next stop? Fighting? Hmm?”

  Jan nodded.

  They drove a short distance to a restaurant off one of the main streets. The windows were small and dirty and it was dark inside, but the linen was spotless and neat red candles were on every table. The dining room was deserted save for a table toward the back where an elderly and overweight man was eating a shepherd’s pie. Three tall, powerful men loomed around him.

  “My fellow alderman!” the old man cried. “Fucking Mickey Burns as I live and breathe. A young lion like you making time for Old Man Sullivan? During an election? And to think everyone calls you an ungrateful cunt.”

  “Hello, Terry,” Burns said.

  “I don’t recognize your boy there,” Sullivan said.

  “He’s a kraut.”

  Sullivan laughed, a chortling sound like a whirlpool, as he crammed food into his mouth.

  “Don’t want any of yer regulars hearing how you sell out your party, do ya?”

  “Something like that,” Burns said amiably. He was taking his belt off and wrapping it around his fist, so that the buckle dangled down. One of the big boys stepped toward him but Sullivan raised one finger and he stopped.

  “I would do the same if I was a traitor like you,” Sullivan replied. “Imagine selling out your principles for a Republican.”

  “Principles?” Burns laughed. “Here are me ‘principles’: nobody in the ring sells his vote to more than one bidder. You can call that a principle if you like. I call it simple fucking economics. Now we’ve already sold our votes to widen State Street, and been paid for them, but I hear you’ve been boodling the other way. That’s just shortsighted, Terry. It’s just short-term thinking, is what it is. If people can’t trust the quality of the goods, the price will fall. It’d do you well to have a little more vision.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Sullivan said. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Sold them you did, to a Republican. And you didn’t even get a good price for them.”

  “Well, now, Terry,” Burns said. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, if I were you. As a matter of fact this particular Republican has been very helpful with the election. Alerting us about Noah Ross’s plans and such. But even leaving that to one side, Terry, men like you and me shouldn’t get caught up in partisan bickering. Ain’t our word our bond? Don’t our customers count on us to keep our word? And what’s it to us whether a man’s a Republican or a Democrat? This isn’t the South. It ain’t even New York. This is Chicago, and politics ain’t beanbag. It’s money. I trust I can rely on your vote.”

  “No,” Sullivan said. “Get the fuck out of my joint.”

  “Well, let it never be said that I didn’t try to do this the nice way,” Burns said.

  He dangled the belt buckle as if he would swing it, just enough to catch the eyes of the bodyguards, who moved toward him. And then he produced a knife with his other hand from under his jacket and planted it in the gut of the first man to reach him.

  Jan struck out, a hard, quick, straightforward punch, and smashed one of the others right on the tip of his chin, catching him by surprise and knocking him backward. Then he and Burns heaved the lone remaining bodyguard through the table onto the floor. Jan held him down while Burns stomped on his face with the heel of his shiny patent leather shoe.

  Sullivan staggered away from the wreckage of his lunch, his face as white as the tablecloth.

  “Where the fuck d’you think you’re going?” Burns snarled.

  “You’ve lost your mind,” Sullivan said.

  “No, Terry,” Burns said. His voice was very soft now. “You were the one who lost your fucking mind. When you crossed me.”

  Burns nodded at Jan, who closed the distance to Sullivan in two long strides and pressed him up against the wall.

  “You ran this city for years, and what did you ever do with it?” Burns said. “You made a tenth of the money we do now, doing things properly with the ring, instead of every man for himself. And you let the fucking Republicans have the big job for twenty years. In a city full of Irishmen, Polacks, and krauts. Why? No fucking vision. That’s why.”

  Burns cracked the belt like a whip. It struck the wall above Sullivan’s head, sending a shower of plaster chips across his face and making him cry out.

  “So listen to me now, and remember it’s not just me, it’s Honest Jim and King Conor and the whole crew speaking. You’ll vote straight or you’ll go in the river. If not before the election then after. You mind me, Terry. You mind me now.”

  Burns looked into Sullivan’s eyes, and Sullivan looked back. Then Burns nodded again at Jan, and he shoved the fat alderman to the floor.

  The bodyguard who had been stabbed was still moaning as they walked into the daylight. Burns’s hands were bloody and his clothes and hair were disheveled. His diamond pin was sticking out at a crooked angle. He got into the carriage and Jan followed.

  “You’re a stout lad,” Burns said. “You’re a good man to have in a pinch, and if that’s no
t the finest compliment of them all, I don’t know what is.”

  They returned to his office, where Burns met with the men and women of his district for the rest of the day. He gave out money and gifts, but more than that, he put things in their place. If a boy could sing he asked him to join the glee club. If he was an athlete, he was invited to join the baseball club. Disputes were resolved, promises were made. The unemployed were given jobs, the bored amusement, and the hungry food. All this largesse was dispensed with charm and grace.

  The late afternoon saw them attend two more funerals, both for children. As the sun set they took one last carriage ride to a cluster of wooden shanties pressed up against the river to the east of the lumberyard. Burns walked up and down the muddy paths in his fine suit, catching the men on their way from work and handing out railway passes, bottles of fine store-bought whiskey, turkey, geese, and scuttles of coal. Jan, weak from his wound, lagged behind. He crouched on his heels in the dust of the slum, watched the crowd of dancing children following Burns, and felt the familiar sensation rise within him. The feeling that he was doing something very, very wrong in the service of some higher ideal that was slipping further away all the time, all the time.

  He left Burns then, ostensibly to return to Reiman’s saloon, but instead he headed back to the Michigan Avenue Hotel. Archie opened the door for him and ushered him into a small office behind the hotel desk. Noah waited inside along with a lawyer and a stenographer.

  “Well?” Noah said. “What happened?”

  Jan dutifully related the day’s events: the ceremony at the judge’s house, the funerals, the meeting with Corky, the courthouse, and the fighting.

  “Widening State Street?” Noah cried out, looking over at the lawyer.

  “Yes,” Jan said. “That is what he said.”

  “Well,” Noah said. “I do believe that will allow us to identify the spy who advised the Democrats of your arrival.”

  “Amazing,” the lawyer rumbled, as he carefully took notes.

  “Go on then,” Noah said.

  But that was all, except for the assorted acts of philanthropy, which interested Noah and the lawyer not at all.