“We’ll get them operators next time,” Charlie says.
“That’s bullshit.”
I wanna tell them not to give up, that we still got a chance, that we can’t let them operators keep doing us dirt, but I don’t know what to say. It’s true a lot of men has gone back to the mines and I know the union ain’t had no strike relief to hand out in months. If them sunafabitch reporters ain’t coming to tell folks the truth about how Berwind’s been robbing us, maybe Mr. Paul and Charlie’s right.
I turn around outta the ward room and stomp out into the hall, plopping myself down onto the plank bench. I’m snuffling snot back into my nose when Mr. Paul sets down next to me.
“So we’re just supposed to go right back to the way things was?” I ask him. “Just pretend this whole strike didn’t even happen? That folks didn’t die for nothin.”
“I’m sorry things come out this way, Chester,” Mr. Paul says.
He tells me how the union had to go in the hole just to bail everybody outta the Somerset jailhouse.
“With nothing more coming into the kitty,” he says. “Nothing more we can do.”
“Nothin we can do, my ass.” I says. “What about McMullen? Maybe we can’t get nowhere near them Berwinds. But we can make damn sure that bastard gets his due. Get him with the dynamite like folks was saying before.”
“What’s that gonna solve Chet?”
“Solve?” I says. “Who the hell cares what it’s gonna solve? Ask my brother what it’s gonna solve! Ask Charlie in there what it’s gonna solve! Better,” I says, “send a letter back to Allentown, ask yer own sister what it’s gonna solve!”
I know damn well I crossed a fat line here and when Mr. Paul grabs hold of me and picks me up off the bench to whup me, I figure I deserve it. But my ribs send a pain streaking through me and I’m screaming to high heaven before he even gets one of them big fists anywhere near to my face.
Worry spreads quick across his gob and he lowers me back down on the plank bench and yanks up the cloth of my shirt. My ribs is plumped up good and shoe-size splashes of purple runs the whole way up to my armpits.
“Goddamn, Chet,” he says. “Those don’t look so good.”
“I’ll live,” I tell him.
I tuck my shirt back down while Mr. Paul walks the floor next to me. Looking down at the tile, he says he can full well understand me wanting to fix McMullen for all he done, but he can’t have no part of it. He says he ain’t gonna be mixed up with no cold-blooded murder.
“Besides,” Mr. Paul touches at the gash in my neck. “It looks to me like you got all the trouble you can handle without gettin tangled up with that bastard.”
“So that’s your answer to the next bunch of fellas McMullen goes after when they go out on strike?” I says.
I scoot myself up off the bench, button my coat up tight. I tell Mr. Paul I’ll see him around.
Truth be told, my jaws is swelling up, my ribs hurt like hell and them razor strap slices ain’t feeling so damn hot neither. But when I walk down the hall of that infirmary ward, I keep my head high and my back straight.
“Charlie,” I says into the ward room. “Take care a yourself.”
I’m still feeling plenty hot marching back down Main Street to Dago Town, but the further I go the more I’m feeling the wind slipping that cold air up under my coat. By the time I get up past Angelo’s I’m mostly just straight tuckered. I got my throat wrapped up in my coat collar and I’m just putting one foot in front of the other. I didn’t care for giving Mr. Paul the high hat after all he done for me, and he’s right that I gotta get clean away from these Black Handers. But I just can’t see backing down about McMullen neither. Maybe settling his hash ain’t gonna change the whole world, but it’s sure as shit the right thing to do in this here Patchtown.
Twenty-Four
I must keep Frankie and them up half the night tossing the feather tick around and groaning about them rib bruises aching, but it gives me plenty of time to figure on how to get out of this mess. I try to weigh everything out like the tippleman throwing coal on that pit scale, not letting no one thing act like a foot on the tare to throw the whole calculating out of whack.
I know there’s still gotta be a vote and all for ending the strike official like, but with the union stone broke and Charlie laid up, it ain’t gonna be long in coming. Seems my part in this damn bootlegging had better come to an end right quick too. I gotta admit it’s all right having all them folks tipping their hat when I come rolling up and saying, “Chester, this and Chester, that.” But I’ll be dammed before I pretend being some kind of bootlegging slave for Angelo Facianni and his Black Handers is a whole lot better than being a coal digging slave for EJ Berwind.
The next morning my jaw is swolled near to double and my throat looking like somebody tried to hang me but I got lucky and the rope broke, but I’m outta the house and ambling up Ninth Street before it’s full light with a plan hatched. Rolling around with my ribs on fire I kept thinking about the night I asked Angelo about what happened to Buzzy and the way he warned me off of running with them Dunlo Sons of Italy cause he turned them in to the cops.
Far as I’m concerned, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and Angelo ain’t the only one who can go giving somebody up to the police. Firsthand, I know them Staters are looking to put the bite on every bit of bootleg what’s coming into Windber. I’m puffing up the steep curves of the Ninth Street hill watching for Coulson’s dark sedan. I’m gonna put him wise to all the liquor mixing that’s been playing out down in that greasy wop’s basement. I’m sure he’s lurking somewhere between Windber and the 160 crossroads, keeping his eyes peeled for bootleggers trying to slip wagonloads of shine cross the borough line.
Past the turnoff for the recreation park, on a steep downslope, his sedan sets half-hid behind some brambles. It ain’t that hard to make out, cause all the leaves been off for months. I’m glad it’s easy to find, cause all that walking has got my ribs feeling like they’re spearing into my lungs. I slip off into the woods so I can creep up on through the underbrush on the passenger’s side of his sedan away from the road. I don’t want nobody getting a peek at the two of us talking together. Fooling with all this liquor night and day’s made me awful cautious of the Pinkertons and the wops to boot.
“Hey, Coulson,” I call to him from a stand of maples. “It’s me, Chester Pistakowski. Ya throwed my family outta 40.”
When Coulson springs out the door of his car, shiny forty-five pointing straight at me with the hammer drawed back and telling me to get my hands in the air, I come to realize that maybe this wasn’t the best way to start off talking to him.
I keep my hands real high and far from my body, so he can see I ain’t got no pistol while I’m yelling for him to put away that gun. I tell him I come up to these woods so to help his Stater ass out.
“What kind a help I need from a bootleg driver?” he says.
He starts to relax when he gets a good look at my swollen jaw. I take a step closer so he can see just how bad I caught it. I ask him if I can open-up my coat collar. I show off my neck, which is edging on toward blackberry. I also pull up my shirt to let him get a peek at them strap cuts and the bruising splayed cross my ribs, just so he sees I’m serious.
“So what’s it to me that Angelo give ya a beatin?” Coulson says. His voice is sharp, but I can see he’s surprised at how bad a whipping I done took. “I figure that comes with the territory for a smart ass like you.”
“Cause this beatin,” I tell him, “is gonna put a big feather in your cap.”
We both climb back into Coulson’s deputy sedan and with that cold morning air chilling me right through, I give Coulson everything I know about how Angelo runs that liquor—the moonshiners out Ashtola what’s got the stills, the wops from Johnstown who slide the real Canadian stuff in from Pittsburgh, the room dug out under his basement where we water down the bathtub liquor and the names of most all the fellas who hand over the cash at the
Sons of Italy and Slovak Halls. For good measure, I add Grubby Koshinsky’s name to the list. When I’m done, even Coulson’s ugly face has twisted itself to smiling.
We set there for a minute together in that car and he looks like a dog that got tossed the steak instead of the bone. But before he gets too used to knowing all this and decides he figured it out hisself, I says to him that he’s gotta trade me one favor for me clueing him this way.
“Coulson, now,” I says. “Only one thing you gotta do. You gotta make damn sure all of your Staters start their raiding down Angelo’s basement first. He gotta be the first one you go rolling after.”
“Whatza difference?”
“Cause every one of them other folks you’re hauling to the pokey, you’re gonna let them know it was Angelo what give ’em up and told ya how to find ’em so he could buy himself a lighter sentence.”
Coulson damn near burns hisself with his cigarette, he’s laughing so hard.
“Chester,” he says. “If I knew what an operator you was before, I might not a been smiling so much when I seen you threatening two grown men with a sewin shears. You’re a right shark.”
“I can’t say it was a goal,” I tell him. “But it don’t sound so bad neither.”
I can still hear that Coulson chuckling when I slip back down over the hill into Windber. I got to tell Lottie to start getting our stuff packed up to go.
Back at the rooms above Leone’s, Lottie gets her first daylight eyeful of how I’m looking and she’s looking ready to pitch a fit.
“Chester,” she whispers harsh. “I gotta talk to you.”
I nod and let her grab hold of my sleeve, pulling me outta the kitchen onto the back steps, away from our ma and the twins. Standing out in the wind in her print dress, Lottie’s saying she heard about what happened down at the train station. She starts in telling me that she knows I’m paying the bills and that means I’m running things round here and all, but she just can’t stand to see me catch no more of these beatings. Coming from the Pinkertons or the Black Handers, she’s right afraid the next one’s gonna kill me.
“Just look at yerself, Chester,” she says.
She pulls me over to look at my reflection in the kitchen window. She’s near crying, staring at my puffed jaw and striped neck. She don’t even know my ribs is anything but fine.
Taking my hand, she’s pleading for us to use any money that I got stashed to get us the hell outta Windber and far away from all these Patchtowns too.
“You’re right,” I nod. “It’s time for us Pistakowskis to make tracks.”
Right to Lottie’s stunned face I says there’s no doubt about it, the powers that be are gonna have to be calling this strike off and soon.
“I wanna be clean away from here before they do,” I says. “We been beat and the Berwinds ain’t gonna let us forget it. With our best folks drove out or done in, they’re gonna be making slaves of us worse than ever.”
Lottie’s smiling wide when I tell her she ought to start getting our stuff together, but don’t be advertising it to nobody. I tell her to keep Johnny and the twins inside and let our ma know what’s what when she’s away from the neighbors, especially them dagos.
“Where ya goin?” Lottie asks, her voice falling. She keeps her eyes fixed on the horsebarn behind me, careful not to look no more at my raspberried face or throat.
I tell her that I ain’t got no choice but to settle up some things before we go. Before Lottie steps back inside the door, she nods grim to me, thinking that I’m facing the long walk to tell Angelo that I’m quitting him.
“Be careful, Chester,” she says.
Clattering down the stairs, I’m thinking things can’t go on like this—all the women I know having nothing to say to me but, “Be careful.”
Twenty-Five
Wrapped up in Buzzy’s old pea coat, I’m inching down the rails past the 40 powerhouse, my butt ducked behind the two tonners in the shadow of the high tipple. Since the sun come up, the wind is kicked up again and I can feel that air biting my face when I round the track bend outta the lee of the cars.
I keep my head low and stay near on my belly, sneaking down the tracks past the two guards in the rail car shop and stay low till I’m through the main yard. Once I get past the scales on the far side of the washhouse, out of sight of anybody looking out the window of the tippleman’s shack, I do my best to make a sprint the whole way up to the other side of the works, near to the driftmouth where the tracks disappear into 40 mine.
My ribs vexing me, I peek out from the corner of the sand shanty next to the drift. I don’t see nobody in the yard, just the line of yellow mantrip cars rusting empty on the tracks. After a deep breath, I crawl out on my hands and knees from the sand shanty towards the Little Office.
From low in the weeds, I can see McMullen through the Little Office window. He’s setting with his feet up on the pit boss’s desk smoking a cigar. Even leaning back, his body’s all tense and he looks right ready to do a piece of mischief if a chance happens past. I can’t see anybody else in the office, but all this bootlegging has made me plenty careful when fooling with the law.
I stay crouched in the thistle for a good ten minutes keeping my eye on the Little Office door. Sure enough, a couple laughing Pinkertons come stomping out. They stop dead in front of the sawmill to brag on how big a bonus they’re gonna get from the Berwinds for breaking up our strike. With them bastards standing there, there ain’t gonna be much chance for me to get anywhere near the powder shed to snatch up the dynamite or close enough to McMullen to lay it.
But remembering the way the snake didn’t think nothing of shooting Buzzy down in the street, I ain’t leaving outta this Patchtown without giving it my best to fix that wiry bastard. I fling myself across the passenger tracks quick as I can, diving into an island of high weeds between the Little Office and the powder shed to get them red sticks.
All this scurrying round ain’t done my ribs one bit of good, so when I come down hard on a hefty chunk of bony, a loud grunt gets outta me and I gotta catch my breath for a minute.
On my knees, while that pain takes its course, I hear Mr. Paul’s voice coming from outta the weeds ten feet off to my side.
“Chet,” he says. “Keep yerself down.”
Crouched so low my chest is scraping the top of the scrub grass, I scuttle towards him. Brushing them dry weed stalks between us to the side, I can see something in Mr. Paul’s face is different. He could almost be somebody else, somebody I don’t know. His mouth ain’t got a whisper of smile at all and his eyes is flat black. It’s like all the goodness been chased outta him.
“Whatcha doin here?” I says.
“Charlie.” Mr. Paul shakes his head at me.
“When?”
“This mornin. That crack they splintered cross his head, it done him in.”
“Don’t think yer stoppin me,” I tell him.
“I ain’t here to hinder,” Mr. Paul says to me.
Unfolding his big hand, Mr. Paul shows me a little pile of blasting caps and some hot wire. That’s when I spy the fireboss satchel strapped cross his shoulder. With him in the lead, we crawl to the edge of where the weeds turn to coal dust up in front of the yellow brick Little Office.
Both of them guards is still loafing out in front. They’re setting plunked down on the flat car smoking cigarettes. They ain’t exactly vigilant, but it ain’t like we can just walk right past them neither.
“What are we gonna do?” I ask him.
“Yer goin for a walk,” he says.
“Ya ain’t cuttin me outta this!”
“I wish I could, Chester,” he says.
Mr. Paul opens the satchel and while he’s fixing the hotwire to the dynamite pack he tells me to snatch up some bony chunks to heave at them guards.
“I want ya to skirt the long way round the powder house.” Mr. Paul points back behind the drift. “And come up toward the Little Office from the other side along Paint Creek. No closer than one foot
in the water when ya let them rocks fly,” he says.
I remember the look on Buzzy’s face the night I missed that dago way back when all this started. I don’t want Mr. Paul booting me outta this plan, but I gotta be honest with him.
“I don’t wanna let ya down,” I says, “but I don’t think there’s a Chinaman’s chance I can even hit them guards from that far off. Let alone do ’em any harm.”
“Ya don’t have to hit ’em, Chet,” he smiles. “Yer just gettin ’em to chase ya.”
I nod.
“Remember, only stay there till they start after ya. Then you haul yer ass across Paint Creek and over the hill fast as ya can.”
“So I’m like the rabbit,” I says. “They chase me while you plant that dynamite.”
“I hate to say it. But that’s about right.”
“That’s okay,” I says. “I can live with that.”
“Just run fast,” Mr. Paul smiles stern, “or ya might not get to live with it for long.”
One foot in the icy Paint Creek shallows, I’m panting like a summertime dog and my heart is racing powerdrill loud in my ears. I fix the first bony chunk in my throwing hand and sign a shaky cross before I start waving my arms and yelling at them Pinkertons.
“Hey!” I says, “Hey, ya Cossack bastards! Come get me, ya shitheels!”
Both of them Pinkertons haul their asses up off that railcar to peek down at me on the stream bank. They seem plenty griefed at me calling ’em out, but they’re looking more lazy than mad. I let loose one of them bony pieces, but it lands way short and it don’t look like they’re going nowhere.
“C’mon, ya chickenshits.” I start dancing up the hill through the railyard towards them. If they don’t do no chasing, this here plan’s dead as President McKinley. “Ain’t younz got no balls to come take me on?”
Now they’re just laughing cause they see I’m only a boy and maybe just looking to make a little mischief and they don’t think I can do ’em any harm.
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