by Clark Howard
Richie followed him into the station office where the man had a city map tacked to the wall.
“Look here, this is where we’re at right now,” he pointed to where Clinton met the south branch of the Chicago River. “But lookit here,” his finger traced Clinton Street about two miles across town to a point near Illinois Street, where it intersected the north branch of the river. “Clinton’s near the river over there too, kid. Maybe that’s the neighborhood you should be looking in.”
“Jeez,” Richie said. He shook his head in amazement. “I never knew the river was crooked like that.”
“Lots of things in this ol’ world are crooked and we don’t know it, kid,” the attendant said philosophically, sticking the toothpick back in his mouth.
The attendant went out to service a car that had just pulled in. The driver was a man in a dark suit. From the driver’s seat, he seemed to study Richie curiously. Tensing, Richie said to the attendant, “Thanks a lot, mister,” and trotted out of the station. He headed toward Canal Street, where there was a crosstown streetcar line.
Less than an hour later, Richie was on Clinton Street again, near the Chicago River on the north side of the city. There, a few doors down from Clinton and Hubbard streets, he found an old garage with swing-out double doors and a sign above them that read: MACK’S AUTO REPAIRS.
Mack studied Richie’s face for a moment, then smiled and scratched his head. “Yeah, I guess you’re his kid, all right. How is your dad?”
“I don’t know how he is,” Richie said. “I don’t even know where he is. I thought you might know.”
Mack shook his head. “I ain’t seen him in six or seven years. I thought he left Chicago, went back down south.”
“He did,” Richie said. “My mother and me rode back with him on the train. Then he disappeared. I think he might have come back up here.”
“If he did,” Mack said, “he didn’t look me up.” Mack was short, stocky, with receding kinky hair and an easy manner. His right foot was encased in a triple-soled shoe that laced up well over the ankle. When Mack walked, it was with a half lurch that caused his right shoulder to move up and down with each step. Whenever he talked, he habitually scratched his head at the edge of the receding hairline, leaving slight grease marks from his fingernails.
“Do you know anybody who might know where my dad is?” Richie asked.
“Let’s see now,” Mack said, sitting on an upturned wooden box and reaching down to rub his deformed ankle. He was dressed in old gray coveralls with a Commonwealth Edison patch on one of the top pockets. “You know,” he said, shaking his head, “I can’t think of nobody who might be able to help you. I don’t think your dad had any real friends in Chicago—except me, that is. Him and me hit it off pretty good.” Mack’s brow wrinkled as his eyebrows went up. “I think he took to me ’cause he needed somebody to talk to, him just being out of prison and all. It had tore him up pretty bad, going back home to that little town in Tennessee and finding out that his wife wasn’t there waiting for him. I guess your ma had taken you and come up here. Your dad told me about how he took off looking for you—”
“Would you tell me what he told you?” Richie asked eagerly.
Richie felt a new excitement inside. This was as close to his father as he had been in a long time. Maybe, he thought with a spark of hope, this would be it. Maybe what this man told him would be the link that would bring his father and him back together at last. Then his dad and he could go get his mother out of Lexington, and everything would be swell again.
Just the thought of it made Richie need to blink back tears. He did it quickly so that Mack would not see them.
5
The young man who stood before the deputy warden’s desk was tall and lean, with darkish blond hair and intense light blue eyes. The collar of a denim work shirt was buttoned tightly around his neck, as prison regulations required. The trousers of his prison-made gray discharge suit made the back of his sweating legs itch. New hightop shoes, also prison-made, the inside leather unfinished, were stiff and heavy on his feet. In one hand he held a gray wool cap that matched his suit. A uniformed guard holding a fifteen-inch nightstick stood to his left and behind him.
“James Richmond Howard,” the deputy warden read from an open file on his desk, “alias Tennessee Slim Howard. Prisoner number 45660. Age twenty-nine. Convicted at Memphis, Tennessee, of violation of the Volstead Act. Received at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on January 29, 1933. Sentenced to five years. Probationary good time: one year, five months, nine days. Time served: three years, six months, twenty-one days. Discharge date: August 19, 1936.”
The young convict’s eyes flicked to the top page of the deputy warden’s desk calendar. Just to make sure. The deputy warden caught him looking and smiled knowingly.
“Today’s the day, all right, Slim. We don’t make mistakes about things like that.” The deputy warden sat back in his wooden swivel chair, making its springs squeak gratingly. “ ‘Cording to our records, Slim, you been involved in bootlegging one way or another since you were fifteen years old. ‘Side from a little farming when you was younger, that’s about all you’ve ever done. But a funny thing happened while you was doing time, Slim. The Volstead Act got repealed. Prohibition’s over.”
Slim could not suppress a grin. “Yes sir, I heard,” he admitted. The joke was on him and he accepted that.
“Looks like you’re going to have to find a new way of making a living,” the deputy said.
“Already have,” Slim told him. “My daddy’s got a place in the Tennessee bottomland that grows the whitest, fluffiest cotton you ever saw. I’m gonna take my wife and little boy and move back to my daddy’s place.” Slim stuck his chin out an inch. “I’m gonna be a farmer.”
The deputy’s expression became thoughtful. “Slim, your wife hasn’t written to you in nearly a year,” he pointed out, not unkindly. “Suppose she hasn’t waited for you?”
Slim’s eyes seemed to shadow. “I guess I’ll just take my little boy then,” he replied quietly, his throat constricting slightly. It hurt him to think that Chloe might not have waited for him. But he knew Chloe. She might not have. She might not have been able to.
The deputy warden sighed quietly. “Well, I hope things work out for you, Slim. But I think you ought to prepare yourself for the possibility that your wife might have somebody else by now, that your daddy might not let you come back, and that even if he does, you might not be able to make it as a farmer. Not after living the way you did when you were bootlegging. Everybody knows that one of your old partners, George Kelly, stepped up from bootlegging to bank robbery and kidnapping. They call him Machine Gun Kelly now. I hope you don’t end up the same way, Slim.”
The deputy handed prisoner number 45660 an envelope. “This contains a one-way bus ticket to Memphis, Tennessee, your place of conviction, and five dollars in United States currency. Sign this voucher.” After Slim had bent over the desk and signed his name, the deputy warden said, “Good luck, Slim.” Not offering to shake hands, he nodded to the guard. “Walk him out.”
From Memphis, Slim hitchhiked to Lamont, the little town fifty miles away where he had grown up on the cotton farm of his father, Solon Howard. The produce trucker who had given him a lift dropped him off north of town at a little combination grocery-filling station called Luckey’s. In the window was a sign showing a pretty girl in a tight white swimsuit drinking a Coca-Cola. Slim was hot and the thought of a cold Coca-Cola was tempting, but he was so close to where he was going, and so anxious to get there, that he did not want to waste the time to stop.
Slim walked down to Moreridge Street, to a neat little white frame house with a porch running across the front of it and a swing at one end of the porch. A stoutish woman with graying hair and bifocals, an apron over a plain cotton dress, sat on the swing shelling green peas into a pan.
Slim walked across the yard and stopped at the porch steps. “Hey, Miz Clark,” he said quietly, removing his cap.
The woman’s lips parted in surprise. “My lord,” she said. “Is that really you, Richmond?”
“Yes, ma’am, it’s me. They turned me loose on a probationary release.”
“What in the world is that?”
“It just means they let me out early on my good behavior. If I stay out of trouble, I stay out; if not, I get sent back.”
“Well, I declare,” Mrs. Clark said again. “Well, come and sit down, Richmond”—she pointed to a wooden rocking chair—“no need to just stand there.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Slim sat on the rocker without rocking, his feet in the uncomfortable new hightop shoes flat on the porch and close together in front of him, cap held on his lap. “I’ve come for Chloe and the boy, Miz Clark,” he said.
“Chloe’s not here, Richmond. She’s not anywhere in Lamont.”
Slim looked down at his prison-callused fingers holding the cap. He felt his chest tighten. “Where might she be then?”
“Richmond, I don’t hold nothing against you for what’s happened,” Mrs. Clark said, “but Chloe’s my girl and I promised not to tell you where she went. I can’t break my promise.”
“Where’s my little boy?” Slim asked, looking up, fixing his eyes on her.
“He’s with Chloe.”
“I’ve got a right to know where my son is at,” Slim said evenly. His intense light blue eyes, locked on the woman’s face, did not blink. Mrs. Clark started to cry.
“Richmond, I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. Chloe’s mine; I have to keep my promise to her. I’m not aiming to hurt you; there’s just nothing else I can do.”
Slim released her from his accusing gaze; he looked off at the road for a moment, watching two barefoot black boys making puffs of dust with each step. Then he looked back at his widowed mother-in-law. “Miz Clark, I’m not looking to do no harm to Chloe. What I’d like is for us to make a fresh start. I’m not gonna be bootlegging no more; I’ll be going straight from now on. I’d like to make a decent life for Chloe and the boy.”
“Richmond, I'm sorry,” said Mrs. Clark, “I truly to God am. But there’s just no way in the world I can help you without turning on my own child. I just can’t do that.”
Slim nodded his head in resignation. “I reckon I understand how you feel,” he said.
“I haven’t ever been one to preach, Richmond,” the stoutish woman said, “but you know as well as I do that you’ve got a lot to live down before you can get folks to accept you as decent. You’ve been on the wrong side of the law since you wasn’t nothing but a boy. All that bootlegging of yours never done anything but hurt the folks who cared for you. Hurt lots of other people too. Why, I heard about a farmer out on the Covington Highway that got drunk on your bootleg liquor at a high school dance and got in a car wreck and killed hisself. Folks remember things like that, Richmond. Things like that take a lot of forgiving.”
“Might not have been my bootleg liquor,” Slim reasoned.
“Might have too,” Mrs. Clark countered, without animosity.
Slim sighed quietly. “Well, maybe it’s gonna be a longer road back than I figured.” Standing, Slim put on his cap and extended a hand. “Thank you for talking to me, Miz Clark. Take care of yourself, hear?”
Wednesday might was prayer-meeting night at the First Baptist Church of Lamont, and Slim knew that Mrs. Clark had always made a practice of walking uptown with one of her lady friends to attend. Hoping she had not changed that habit since he had been in prison, he slipped into a field next to her house and crouched hidden in the brush where he could watch her front door. As he waited, he remembered that it was the same field he and Chloe used to walk through before they were married. They liked to stroll in the afternoon sun and talk about the new songs—Libby Holman singing “Body and Soul,” and Ruth Etting singing “Ten Cents a Dance.” They would walk along, Chloe smoking one of her Avalon cigarettes when they were far enough away from the house so that Mrs. Clark could not see her, and laugh about the Marx Brothers movies they had seen, Animal Crackers and Monkey Business. Chloe had teased Slim, saying he looked like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in the new suits he had bought at Goldsmith’s in Memphis. Four million people were out of work in America but Slim had new suits, a new DeSoto coupe, and money in his pocket. He also had a growing reputation, but at that time neither one of them paid much attention to it. Life was all sunshine then.
At half past seven, Mrs. Clark, wearing a bonnet, came out of her house and walked across the road to get her friend Mrs. Samuels. Several minutes later, the two women started uptown. Relieved that his mother-in-law had not changed her Wednesday night routine, Slim waited a little while until it was dark, then left the field and slipped stealthily across the backyard of Mrs. Clark’s house and onto her rear porch. The back door was unlocked, as was the front door and all the windows; people in Lamont did not insult their neighbors by locking their homes.
Slim went into the living room first. Feeling in the drawers of two end-tables by the sofa, he found nothing of interest. In the dining room, he did the same with the drawers of the china closet, again with no results. In the front bedroom, he started with the dresser drawers; he opened and felt in three of them before he found what he was looking for: a bundle of letters held together by a rubber band. Kneeling below the windowsill, Slim struck a stick match and held its light close enough to the top envelope to read its return address: Chloe Howard, 3318 W. Walnut St., Chicago, Illinois. Slim felt a knot in his chest; it had been a long time since he had seen Chloe’s handwriting. She had a simple but beautiful style that looked like samples in an instruction book. For a time after she stopped writing, Slim had regularly reread her old letters, but after a few months it had become too hard on his peace of mind and he had stopped. Reading old letters in prison was like masturbating: it only reminded you of what you didn’t have.
Slim quickly memorized the return address. As he was about to put the letters away, he noticed the postmark and frowned. April 28, 1936. It was four months old, all right. Quickly he flipped through the stack; all the other postmarks were earlier.
Returning the letters to the drawer, Slim slipped out of the house as he had come in. Walking uptown in the dark, he worried about what it all meant. Chloe had not written her mother in nearly four months. What had happened to her? And why hadn’t Mrs. Clark told him she hadn’t heard from her daughter in that long? Had Chloe found another man, and did Mrs. Clark know about it? The deputy warden’s words came back to him: “Suppose she hasn’t waited for you?”
Slim remembered his reply: ‘I guess I’ll just take my little boy then.”
He decided to leave for Chicago as quickly as he could.
6
Sitting in Mack’s garage, hearing for the first time the story of his father’s release from prison and return to Lamont, Richie found his own emotions at odds about his mother. Why hadn’t she waited for his father?
“Your dad,” Mack said, “got on a bus the very next morning to come up here.” He picked up a rag and wiped some grease off his hands. “Well, quitting time. You want to come upstairs and eat some supper with me?”
“I can’t,” Richie said. “I’ve got to get to the bowling alley; I set pins at night. Can I come back and talk to you again? I’d like to hear how you and my dad met.”
“Sure, kid. Come back anytime.” Mack winked confidentially. “I’ll tell you all about how your dad and me used to work for Al Capone.”
Richie stared at Mack in surprise. He knew who Al Capone was; every kid in Chicago knew who Al Capone was. But this was the first Richie had ever heard that his father had worked for the notorious gangster.
A new keenness fired up inside Richie. Once again he had the feeling that he was getting closer to his father. But as he left Mack’s and rode the streetcar back to the West Side, the excitement of that feeling was dampened by the new resentment he was now feeling toward his mother. Why hadn’t she been there when his dad came home from prison? If only she’d waited, the t
hree of them would have been together and none of the bad things in their lives would have happened.
Goddamn her, he thought sullenly.
Richie walked into the big Woolworth’s at Madison and Karlov, several blocks from the bowling alley. Unbuttoning his coat, he let it hang open in front. As he approached the jewelry counter, the saleslady’s eyes flicked over his shabby appearance and became suspicious. Richie smiled at her.
“ ‘Scuse me, ma’am. I’m saving money from my paper route to buy my mom a watch for Mother’s Day. Could you please tell me how much they cost?”
The saleslady’s eyes immediately became sympathetic.
“There are all prices,” she said. “How much do you think you’ll have saved by Mother’s Day?”
“I guess about eight dollars.”
“We have some very nice Elgin ladies’ watches for seven ninety-five. All those on the bottom row there—” she pointed to a glass showcase behind the counter. On the counter itself, which stood between Richie and the saleslady, were recessed bins containing costume jewelry and other less expensive merchandise.
“How much is one of those?” Richie asked, leaning over the counter and pointing to a row of watches on the top shelf. The saleslady turned to look where he was pointing. Richie’s right hand, in his coat pocket, came out through a split in the seam and, concealed by his coat hanging open, closed around half a dozen expandable watchbands in one of the bins. In an instant they were pulled up inside his pocket.
“Those are Benrus watches,” the saleslady said. “They’re twelve-fifty.”
“I’ll probably have to get the seven ninety-five one,” Richie said, looking very serious. Glancing up and down the aisle, he checked to see if any other clerks had seen him. No one was paying any attention to the jewelry counter. “Thanks a lot, ma’am.” Richie smiled at the saleslady again. “I’ll come back when I have enough saved.”