Loon Lake (24 page)

“Whatsamatter, the lady’s husband come home early? Well, you tell me: was it worth it? I’ll tell you: no. I know about ginch. It is seldom worth it. It is seldom worth what you have to go through to get it. I been married twice myself. I was happy in love for maybe five minutes each of those women.”

It was speech intending to divert, patronizing speech, his eyes and hands busy all the while.

“Put that stuff back,” I said. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

He smiled and shook his head. He came toward me. “Where’s the widow?” he said.

“What?”

“His bereaved.”

“I don’t know.”

He came over to me. “Hey, kid, look at you. Look at how they worked you over. How much can you take? What’s the matter with you?”

I immediately recognized the professionalism of the threat.

“Listen,” he said, “don’t be a wiseass. I’m here with the money, her death benefit.” He waved an envelope in front of my eyes. I could feel the breeze on my hot face.

“She’s at my place. I’ll get her.”

“I would be grateful,” he said.

The women were up, they were in the kitchen, Clara was drinking coffee, she was wearing the clothes she had slept in, she looked gaunt, grim.

Sandy James’ eyes were large and glistening with the unassuageable hurt of someone betrayed. The corners of her mouth were turned down. She was trying to feed her baby and the baby was enraged, it was twisting and turning, and making dry smacking sounds. It pulled on her breast and waved its tiny arms.

I explained, but even as I did he appeared in the doorway behind me. Sandy stood and thrust the baby at me and pulled her dress closed and buttoned the buttons while I held the crying baby, wriggling and twisting against my cast.

Now we all stood there frozen in that way of those overtaken by ceremony. Even the baby quieted down.

“I’m sorry for your trouble, Mrs. James,” the man said. He held a legal-looking paper in one hand, an uncapped fountain pen in the other. “Your husband, Mr. James, was a brave man. The company knows it has a responsibility to his family. It ain’t something we have to do, you understand, but in these cases we like to. If you will sign this receipt and waiver, both copies, I have a death-benefit sum of two hundred and fifty dollars cash on the barrelhead.”

Sandy James looked at Clara. Clara sat with her head lowered, the fall of her hair hiding her face.

Sandy James looked at me. I knew what the waiver meant. Two hundred and fifty dollars seemed to be the going rate. Sandy James age fifteen was in no position to sue anybody. I nodded and she signed the waiver.

The fellow tucked one copy in his pocket and put the other on the table. He glanced at Clara. He took out his wallet and counted the money and put it in Sandy’s hand. He came over to me and stuck his finger in the baby’s cheek. “Hey, beauty,” he said. He looked at me and laughed. “Beauty and the beast,” he said.

When he was gone Clara found a cigarette and lit it.

“Two one-hundred-dollar beels,” Sandy James said. “And a fifty-dollar beel.”

I sat on the kitchen table and read the waiver. The party of the first part was Mrs. Lyle James and all her heirs and assignees.

The party of the second part was Bennett Autobody Corporation and its agents, C.I.S., Inc.

I said to Sandy, “You know what C.I.S. stands for?”

She shook her head.

Clara cleared her throat. “It means Crapo Industrial Services,” she said. She took the baby from me. She hugged her and began to pace the room, hugging the baby and saying soft things to her.

“Mah milk’s dried up,” Sandy said. “She’ll have to get on that Carnation?”

“Red worked for Crapo Industrial Services,” I said to Sandy. “Did you know that?”

“Nossir.”

“Neither did I. Why should it surprise me?” I said. “Clara? Does it surprise you?”

Clara didn’t answer.

“No? Then why should it surprise me?” I said. “After all, a corporation like Bennett Autobody needs its industrial services. Spying is an industrial service, isn’t it? I suppose strikebreaking is an industrial service. Paying off cops, bringing in scabs. Let’s see, have I left anything out?”

“Why don’t you take it easy,” Clara said.

“I’m trying to,” I said. “I’m just one poor hobo boy. What else can I do?” I went out to the privy. The sky was clear but a wind was blowing dry snow in gusts along the ground. I was still pissing blood. When I spit, I spit blood. Someone who had business connections with F. W. Bennett was big-time. Tommy Crapo was big-time. Surely he did not even know the name Lyle Red James. It was a coincidence that the fucking hillbilly who lived next door to me was an operative of Crapo Industrial Services. That was all it was. It was not a plot against me. It was not the whole world ganging up on one poor hobo boy.

But in my mind I saw the death-benefit man stepping into a phone booth and placing a call.

I went back inside.

“Can you eat anything?” Clara said. She spoke in a hushed voice that irritated me. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Sit down,” I said. I faced her across the kitchen table. “You knew that joker.”

She folded her hands in her lap. She sighed.

“Well, who is he?”

“Just some guy. I used to see him around.”

“A friend of yours?”

“Oh Christ, no. I don’t think I ever spoke five words to him.”

“What’s his name?”

She shrugged.

“What’s his name, Clara?”

“I don’t remember. Buster. Yeah, I think they called him that.”

“Buster. Well, did Buster say anything? Did he recognize you?”

She didn’t answer.

“Clara, for Christ’s sake—do you think he recognized you!”

Clara bowed her head. “He may have.”

“Okay,” I said. I stood up. “Fine. That’s what I wanted to know. See, if we know what we’re dealing with we know what to do. Am I right? We need to know what the situation is in order to know what to do. Now. Is Tommy Crapo in Jacksontown? You tell me.”

“How should I know? I don’t think so.”

“Well, where would he be?”

She shrugged. “He could be anywhere. Chicago. He lives in Chicago.”

“Good, fine. When Buster calls Mr. Tommy Crapo in Chicago to tell him he’s found Miss Clara Lukaćs, what is Mr. Tommy Crapo likely to do?”

“I don’t like this. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

I leaned over the table. “Hey, Clara? You want to talk about us? You want to tell me how you love me? What is Mr. Tommy Crapo likely to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he going to hang up the phone and laugh and call in his manicurist? Or is he going to come get you?”

She wouldn’t answer.

“I mean what happened at Loon Lake? Why did he leave you there? Did you do something to make him mad? Or was it just a business thing?”

She slumped against the back of the chair. Her mouth opened. But she didn’t say anything.

“Well?”

“You fuckin’ bastard,” she said.

“Oh, swell,” I said. “Let’s hear it. Step a little closer folks. Sandy!” I shouted. “Come in here and listen to this. Hear the lady Clara speak!” We heard the front door close.

“You’re terrific, you know?” Clara said, her eyes brimming. “That kid has just lost her husband.”

“Don’t I know it. And what a terrific guy he was. They’re coming at me right and left, all these terrific guys. They run in packs, all your terrific friends and colleagues.”

I ran next door.

Sandy James had put the baby in her carriage and was standing in the middle of the room pushing the carriage to and fro very fast.

“Sandy,” I said, “I’m very sorry for all this and when we have the time we’ll talk about it if you want to. I’ll tell you everything I can. Did Red ever give you instructions who to call or what to do in case something happened to him?”

“Nossir.”

“Does he have family in Tennessee, anyone who should be notified? Anyone who could come help you?”

She shook her head.

“How about your family?”

Her lower lip was protruding. “They cain’t do nothin.”

“Well, did Red carry life insurance?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know what that is?”

She shook her head.

“Well, where does he keep the family papers? I mean like the kid’s birth certificate. He must keep that somewhere.”

That’s when Sandy James began to cry. She tried not to. She kept rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands as if she could press the tears back in.

I looked around the room. With Buster’s tidying, the parlor was not too badly messed now. I began to go through it myself, opening the desk drawers, tossing things around. What was in my mind? I thought if Red James had not told his wife of an insurance policy, he would be likely to have one. I was looking with absolute conviction in the clarity of my thought for an insurance policy but why it seemed to me the first order of business I couldn’t have said. I supposed it would lead to something. Different pieces of Lyle Red James had been lifted—his espionage self by the union avengers, his union self by the industrial-service hoods, surely there must be something left for me, something of value to me, something he owed me. Maybe there was a strongbox and maybe along with a birth certificate and an insurance policy there would be cash. How owed me something. He owed me a broken arm and a battered face and a considerable portion of my pride. How owed me my abused girl, he owed me the care and protection of his own wife and child. He owed me a lot. I ran into the bedroom and began to go through the closet. Every move I made was painful, but the more I searched—for what? where was it?—the more frenzied I became. My body had thought it out: I needed to get us all off Railroad Street. I needed to save Clara. I needed to get Sandy James and her baby home to Tennessee. I needed the money for all of this. I think
I must have whimpered or moaned as I searched. I was in a cold sweat. At one point from the corner of my eyes I saw the two women standing in the door watching me. I took the sling off my arm so that I could move around more easily. Without the sling I felt the true weight of my cast. I thought of the weight as everything that had to be done before I could get out of Jacksontown. I wanted to shake this cement cast from my bones as I wanted to shake free of this weight of local life and disaster. None of it was mine, I thought, none of it was justly mine. I had stopped over. That was all. I wanted to be going again. I wanted to be back at my best, out of everyone’s reach, in flight. But I had all this weight and I felt there was no time for condolence or ceremony or grief or shock or tears, there was hardly time for what I had to do in order to lift it from me so that we could get free.

E
ventually it dawned on him, the fucking radio of course, he pushed it away from the wall.

It was a small radio in a big cabinet. Under the tubes and behind the black paper speaker was a cigar box. In the box a .32-caliber pistol. He had never handled a gun before. It was heavy, felt loaded smelled oiled and sufficient. He put it back closed the box.

Wedged in the space between the tube chassis and the cabinet one of those cardboard accordion files with a string tie. This he lifted out. He pushed the radio back against the wall.

“Sandy!”

He sat on the floor. She knelt next to him. He watched her hands, she withdrew a marriage license a white paper scroll, she unrolled it holding it with both hands to her face as if she were near-sighted. She withdrew newspaper cutout coupons, a pack of them, the kind people saved for premiums, she withdrew the baby’s birth certificate, she withdrew a wedding photo of Mr. and Mrs. Lyle James all dressed up smiling on the steps of a clapboard church. He had to let her cry over that one in her
silent way palming the tears as they flowed. She withdrew a leather drawstring purse, he thought the deliberation of her movements would drive him out of his mind, she untied the string widened the mouth of the purse and shook out several shiny bright medals with ribbons.

“Was Red in the war?”

“Nossir.”

“Stupid of me to ask.”

She withdrew a printed policy of the Tennessee Mutual Life Insurance Policy. Its face value was a thousand dollars. That would have to do.

“Aren’t there people who cash these things right away? Wills, IOUs, stuff like that?”

“Factors,” Clara said.

“Yeah, factors. I bet I could get sixty, seventy cents on the dollar. This is as good as cash.”

“It’s not yours,” Clara said.

“I didn’t say it was. Would you mind coming into the other room a minute?”

Clara followed him into the Jameses’ bedroom. He closed the door. “I don’t know,” he said, “maybe you want to see your old sweetheart again. Have a few laughs.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what I think. But if we don’t move our ass out of here we’re finished.”

“Maybe so, but that’s our problem, not hers.”

“If we are all tending to our own problems,” he said, “we can walk out this minute. We’ll let the fifteen-year-old widow shift for herself. Is that what you want?”

“You’re hurting my arm!”

“Why do I have to explain these things!”

“Let go of me. It was your idea, big boy. I didn’t tell you to move to this shithole.”

He went back to the parlor.

“Sandy, I’m prepared to take you back to Tennessee. I mean we’re all finished in Jacksontown, I assume you understand that. You will spend Christmas with your family at your ancestral home. I am proposing we
join forces, you and Clara and me, pool what we have and help each other. And I give you my word I will make good on every penny of the whole thousand.”

The kid was silent. He waited. He realized this meant yes. “Okay,” he said, “it’s settled. We have a lot to do. He has to be buried. What are we going to do about that?” He looked at Clara. “Hey, Sandy, I bet you didn’t know we had an expert among us.”

The briefest bewilderment on Clara’s face, what had she done wrong, did he blame his broken arm on her, his stitches? His mind was functioning now, he had calmed down, he was the old Joe of Paterson working things out. But one nick of this gem of a mind flashed the spectral light of treachery.