Finishing off my cider, I’m wondering if making the switch to afternoon runs is gonna be enough to throw Coulson off the scent. That’s when I spot Little Mikey setting underneath the dartboard across the barroom. He sees me too and comes running over to the bar. He yanks hisself up onto the stool next to me.
“How ya been, Chet?” he says.
I ain’t seen Mikey since right after the 40 Station Riot, and I’m still thinking maybe Mikey’s the one who let it slip about Buzzy giving it to that dago behind McKluskey’s.
“I been up Vintondale,” he tells me.
I don’t say nothing to him and look straight over the bar and into the mirror at the barroom behind us. Mikey skids his stool over closer to me, like I ain’t said nothing cause the barroom is so loud. He’s talking all high-pitched and cheerful, like he’s real glad to see me. I’m thinking ’bout busting my coffee mug right across his nose. I just set there fuming, listening to him drivel on and on.
“I been helpin my Uncle Val with his farm, Chet,” he says. “Them pigs stink to high heaven, but we got the bacon and the sausage near every day.”
He stops talking like he’s just remembering something. “I’m sorry about Buzzy,” he says. “ ’Bout what they done to him.”
I wrap my fingers around my mug all careful like, ready to go. I ask Mikey exactly how long he been slopping hogs up Vintondale. He counts on his fingers and tells me he been up there for eight weeks this time.
“Eight weeks, this time,” I says. “How ’bout last time?”
“Jesus, Chet. I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
I tell him that he better remember. But he says that he don’t have no idea how long. We set at the bar quiet for a minute before I finally turn to look Mikey in his face.
“I need to ask ya somethin, Mikey,” I says.
“Anything, Chet,” he says to me. “You and me is buddies.”
“How come they sent you up Vintondale?”
“I told ya. I went to help my Uncle Val. His kids is grown and he needed some help with all ’em pigs,” he says. “Besides, with this strike on and no money comin in, my pa thought one less mouth to feed would help out round here.”
“Did ya ever tell anybody ’bout what happened to that dago?”
“Hell no!” he says. “Why would I say anythin ’bout that?”
“Calm down,” I says. “Ya sure ya never said nothin?”
I buy Mikey three mugs of hard cider and give him the third degree for a good while. I ask him ’bout how long he was back in 40 before his old man shipped his ass back to mess with them pigs. I grill him good, asking him about who he talked to down Windber and what he said. By the end he’s near three sheets, but I’m pretty sure he was only back in 40 for three or four days and the only time his pap let him loose was when he went down to the 40 Hotel for our checker game.
“Ya didn’t really think I squealed? Did ya, Chet?”
“Nah,” I tell him.
I pull out a tobacco plug, but even inside the barroom, I can’t hardly even smell the tobacco in my nose cause of the sulfur stink come blowing off the rock dump. Setting there, working the tobacco into my cheek, I’m thinking if it wasn’t Mikey slipping up that put the finger on Buzzy, there must be somebody else what give him up to the damn Pinkertons. It’s just a question of finding out who.
Before I can get outta there, Mikey asks me ’bout my new clothes. How come they’re so fancy and so clean? I tell him they ain’t that fancy and they ain’t that clean, he just been spending too much time fooling with them damn pigs.
He laughs and I get my butt up off of the bar stool and say goodnight to Mikey, but before I walk out, I leave a dime setting on the bar for him to get hisself one more mug of that hard cider.
Before I even get the wagon parked out back of Leone’s, Frankie comes clattering down the back steps of the rooms we’re letting. He’s shouting across the alley to me that he’ll feed the horse and brush it too if I give him a penny to get some rock candy.
“You’ll brush that horse, penny or no penny,” I says. “What ya think pays for us to live here?”
“Drivin a horse.”
I says ‘damn right’ driving a horse. Frankie says to me that he wants to drive a horse too someday. I just laugh and tell him we’ll see ’bout that. Once we get to the horse barn, I hand him the brush and tell him to get busy. He works down one side of the horse while I pull the feedbag out of the corner cabinet.
“Pauline’s here,” he says.
“Where?” I ask.
“Upstairs talkin to ma and Lottie.”
I go rushing outta the barn leaving Frankie to finish up with that horse brushing. Even clomping up the back steps two at a time I can hear women’s voices trickling from inside. At the top step I smell fresh coffee perking and stop for a second to brush my hair back outta my eyes. I take a breath before I open the door.
Lottie and ma are setting at the kitchen table with Pauline between them. They’re drinking coffee and finishing off slabs of yellow cake.
“Hey, Chet,” Lottie says to me. “We got a visitor.”
“Pauline,” I says, ignoring Lottie. “It’s real good to see ya.”
“Take off yer shoes, Chester,” my ma says when I step in from outside.
I don’t wanna seem too contrary to my ma, so I rip off my shoes and drop ’em down onto the little rug next to the door
“Hi, Chet,” Pauline says.
Pauline’s got her blond hair stripped back into a pony’s tail and her blue blouse matches her eyes and she’s smiling wide at me, like I’m the reason she come the whole way here.
I fetch myself a cup of coffee from the stove and set down between Pauline and Lottie at the kitchen table. I watch Pauline’s hands while she fiddles with the spoon in her coffee cup. My ma’s bragging on the crumb cake she made today, telling Pauline she oughtta have another piece. Her and Lottie have a little back and forth about what kind of stuff is best to make pie crust when ya can’t get no eggs. Pauline sets there distracted almost like she’s waiting for a break in their talking. When my ma tries to remember something about wheat flour, Pauline looks at me and says that they ain’t seen me round the tent camp for a while.
“My pa’s been wonderin where ya been keepin yourself,” she says. “He ain’t seen ya on the picket lines.”
I smile at Pauline.
“How is yer pa?” I ask.
Pauline says he’s doing all right, getting one day a week up the Millionaire’s Camp, which is a lumber camp on the other side of Ashtola.
“That lumbering is hard work, though,” she says. “Worse than mining for sure. Short pay, pine trees crashing down all over the place like to crush a fella and the straw boss always giving you the evil eye to boot.”
“I been workin some myself,” I tell her.
“I can see that.”
While Pauline looks round the kitchen at the wood table and coffee and tea on the counter and down the hall at the rug, Lottie says something else ’bout pie making but Pauline don’t pay no attention. She says that I must be doing pretty good to have us living all fancy like this.
“What ya tryin to say, Pauline?” I ask her.
“Just that yer doin real good, Chet” she says.
At first I thought she was trying to pass some kind of judgment on me for working for Angelo, saying how we was living high on the hog and all, but there ain’t nothing mean in her voice.
“So ya think it’s okay what I’m doin?” I ask her.
“Ain’t none a my business what yer doin.”
I look round to make sure that Esther ain’t nowhere in hearing before I start talking again. I sit up straight in my chair and talk to Pauline, but it’s Lottie I’m looking at when I ask point blank whether or not she cares about me running liquor for them bootleggers.
“Heck, no,” Pauline says.
“Way I hear tell, ya don’t wanna have nothin to do with no bootleggers. Ain’t that right, Lottie?”
&
nbsp; Lottie’s staring over at our ma like it’s her job to get her outta this. But ma don’t say a word, just goes over to the stove to get herself some more coffee.
“What I said to Lottie wasn’t nothin ’bout no bootleggin at all.”
When my ma comes back to the table, she spoons a heap of sugar into her coffee cup and clanks the spoon around mixing it up. She says to Lottie that she oughtta go see what Johnny’s doing in the other room. Then my ma tells me and Pauline that she’s gotta go and work on some of her afghan crocheting.
I’m fuming a bit at Lottie for causing a confusion, but Pauline being over at our place is a lot more important to me. Now that we’re setting in the kitchen all by ourselfs though, I don’t exactly know what to say.
“Ya got yer family doin pretty good, Chet,” she says again.
“Thanks.”
We set there for another minute looking round the kitchen at the cookstove and the canned peaches and pears and the aluminum cabinets fastened to the wall. I know it’s gonna come out clumsy, but I figure I better ask Pauline what I wanna ask her before she starts to yawn and tells me that it’s time for her to head home.
“Pauline,” I choke. “Would ya wanna go out to eat with me some Saturday night?”
“I’d like that, Chet,” she says. “That’d be real good.”
Pauline’s smiling and I’m smiling too when I tell her that I’ll come get her down the Tent City in the horse wagon. I says we’ll go into Windber and get some restaurant food and then maybe, if she wants to, we’ll go see the pictures at the Arcadia.
I ask Pauline if I can give her a ride back down 40, but she says that her pa’s coming in from Ashtola and she’s supposed to meet him down the train station to walk the tracks back to 40. I tell her that I’ll see her on Saturday night. She says, “Goodnight, Chet.” Standing in our doorway, she gives my hand a quick squeeze before she turns round to go. Once Pauline’s walked off, I run my fingertips over where she squeezed my hand and it’s almost like it’s still warm.
After a quick run out to the barn to make sure Frankie done all right by Angelo’s horse, I zip back up to the kitchen and set down at the table to have a piece of that crumb cake. While I’m setting there, Lottie comes out from the other room saying she’s put Johnny to bed for the night. I tell her to sit down and she pulls out the chair that’s across from me and drops her butt down on the corner.
“Chester,” Lottie says. “Before ya say anythin, I want ya to know that I was just thinkin of you. I didn’t wanna see you headed down the same road as Buzzy. I figured if you had to stop runnin with them damn bootleggers to get Pauline, it might be just enough.”
I finish off the piece of cake I been chewing at while Lottie’s talked. I says to her that it’s fine that she’s thinking ’bout me and all. It’s good that she don’t want to see me in no bad trouble. But she better not go pulling no kind of foolishness like that again, not if she wants to keep on staying on anyplace that I’m paying a rent. I don’t let my voice go above talking, but I tell her if it weren’t for me being mixed up with this damn bootlegging, Esther and Frankie sure wouldn’t be in no school and Johnny wouldn’t be getting no hot dinner every night. We’d still be setting round with empty bellies trying to figure whether we’re gonna starve to death or freeze solid before we get around to it.
It’s a funny minute setting at the table after I say that. I’m getting ready to go on about how maybe she’s my big sister and all, but I’m the one who’s taking big risks running liquor across the county day and night. So at least I shouldn’t be getting told no bullshit by my own family.
But when I look back up from my cake, I see that Lottie’s crying a little. This is strange as hell cause I thought she’d be pinch-lipped and neck veins bulging, ready to push back herself from the table and start shouting, saying that she’s near a grown woman and it’s me that damn well oughtta be listening to her. But she just looks down into her cup and says she sorry.
“It’s okay, Lottie,” I tell her. “I ain’t mad or nothing.”
Lottie shakes her head and gets up from the table. After she brushes the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, she gathers up all the plates and the coffee cups and starts heating up a bucket of water to clean the dishes.
Nineteen
Friday, me and Sal tote the weekend liquor boxes up the stairs at Angelo’s. The stairway’s narrow and it’s hard work trying not to clip each other with corners of them crates in the close going up and down, but still Sal’s laughing, saying to me how much easier all this is going, working with me instead of Buzzy.
“No ’fence,” he says. “But Angelo was always too nervous ’bout yer brother being wild to let him know what goes on here at the house. I had to do all the blend up my ownself and then drive every damn drop of this stuff up to the barber shop and have Buzzy load it up from there.”
We pile that booze up in the back of the wagon in the cinder alley behind Angelo’s and then draw the canvas over the top of the boxes. Sal dashes on a little bit of straw for good measure. He gotta ride the load the whole way down to Tire Hill to some rich fella who owns the slaughterhouse down there. Before I head back down into Angelo’s cellar to finish watering down the rest of that bathtub liquor, I figure I might try to use Sal’s good mood to see if he might know anything about what happened with Buzzy.
I remind him about the night the Pinkertons come for Buzzy, the way he came running down to Main Street to let him know they was looking.
“How’d them Pinkertons know to look for Buzzy in the first place?” I ask.
Sal ain’t got one of them faces that can keep a secret, so I know he’s telling me the truth when he says that he just come down to round up Buzzy cause Angelo told him to get off his ass and do it.
“Any more than that,” he says, “ya gotta ask Angelo.”
Washing off the old gin and vodka bottles is the first thing I like to do, so that way I ain’t gotta fool with no rag when I’m done funneling that bootleg liquor. There’s any spilled liquor, I just tell them hicks that a bottle must of broke rolling down from Canada.
“It’s a long trip,” I tell ’em.
I’m just finishing up the first case when Angelo comes bouncing down the cellar stairs. He’s smoking the butt end of a dark brown cigar and blowing out little smoke rings into the air like he’s in some kind a good mood.
“Pollock boy,” he says to me. “I don’t know what you do for fun. But you stay the hell away from them Sons a Itlee out Dunlo for a while.”
“I don’t never go there ’cept to take ’em liquor,” I says.
“Don’t take ’em nothin. They’re gettin a visit from the cops.”
“Shouldn’t we ride out and let ’em know?”
“Let ’em know, hell!” Angelo laughs. “I’m the one who told the cops where to find ’em.”
I guess them Dunlo fellas got behind in paying for their liquor or done something else to get Angelo on the warpath. He just says that the police gotta have somebody to haul off for pushing booze every couple months.
“They don’t ’rest nobody,” he says, “people says they ain’t doin nothin ’bout all this liquor.”
Angelo throws his hands up at them guilty cases stacked round his cellar and fetches hisself a glass of elderberry wine outta the jug on the table next to the door. He turns round and looks at me. I nod and he pours me a glass of wine too. I must look a little scared, cause he says that I don’t have to worry. I know too much ’bout what goes on round here for him to ever think about handing me over to the police.
“I could stand to know a little more,” I says to him. “When you sent Sal down into Windber to look for Buzzy the night he got shot down by McMullen. How’d them Pinkertons even know to look for Buzzy?” I ask. “One of them Eye-tailyan scabs give him up to the Cossacks?”
“Whatsa difference?” Angelo grunts.
He picks up the funnel and sets it down into the neck of one of the empty gin bottles. Then he flips up a ga
llon jug of bathtub by the little pig tail handle and starts pouring.
“I need to know, Angelo,” I says.
“Whatcha worried I give yer brother to the cops for bein a pain in the ass?” he laughs. “Use yer head, Chet. If I’d a fixed it for yer brother to get hauled in, I sure as hell wouldn’t a sent Sal down to warn him ’bout it. Nah, was a priest give him up. Heard Buzzy killed that scab in some confession,” Angelo says.
“Priest?”
“The hunkie bastard what got moved outta here last month.”
“At St. Cyril’s?” I says. “Father Smelko?”
“That’s the guy,” Angelo says. “On the take from Berwind from way back. Old days.”
When Angelo says this it’s like something comes loose in my head, not like a wire, like a flood. Like a dam broke somewhere on the inside of my head, like water’s rushing down, blasting away the meaning of everything like dynamite. My head’s flopping from side to side. I feel like I might fall right into the mixing table. My chin’s on my chest and my stomach twists like it’s been flushed full of lye. I must look at the edge of being like a mad dog. I feel my ass drop down onto a spare crate. So much I don’t want this to be true. So much.
Angelo looks over from pouring. He asks if I’m all right. Balancing my hand on the crate, I stand up kinda shaky. I tell him that I’m okay.
“I ain’t had no supper yet,” I tell him. “That wine went straight to my head.”
“You better not be into this liquor,” he says.
“What happened to him?” I ask.
“Who?”
“The priest.”
Angelo snorts.
“Bunch a miners went to see the bishop down Johnstown. Told him if that priest kept preaching they should give up the strike and get their asses back to work, they was gonna light up the church for Christmas—with five gallons of kerosene. Bishop sent him out to Ohio or someplace.”
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