This Tender Land (42 page)

“You Indians?” the tallest of them asked. He had dark, unkempt hair, big ears, and wore clothes nearly as soiled as ours. I put him at about my age.

“Do we look like Indians?” I called up to him.

“He does,” he said, pointing to Mose. “And you got a canoe.”

“We’re vagabonds,” I said.

“Vagabonds. What country do they come from?”

“Here.”

“Hell, we got Arabs here and Mexicans and Jews, but I ain’t never heard of Vagabonds. You got names?”

“Buck Jones,” I said. “That’s Amdacha. And this is—” Emmy had never taken a different name, and I hesitated, trying to think of something appropriate.

“Emmy,” she said.

“I got a sister named Emma. That’s almost the same,” the tall kid said. “Me, I’m John Kelly. This here is Mook, and that’s Chili.” He looked upriver. “Did you canoe down here?”

“That we did.”

“From where?”

“You’re a curious bunch,” I said. “You live around here?”

“We all live on the Flats.”

“Do you know Gertie Hellmann?”

“Everybody knows Gertie. Why?”

“We’re looking for her.”

“Won’t have any trouble finding her.” He eyed our canoe with great interest. “Never been in one of those. Tippy?”

“Not if you know what you’re doing.”

“Could we take a ride?”

“Maybe another time.”

“Gonna be here awhile?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Buck Jones,” John Kelly said. “Like the movie star.” Then he grinned. “My ass. See you around, Buck Jones.”

He turned, headed away, and the other two followed.

Albert showed up a few minutes later. “Back in the canoe,” he said.

“We’re not stopping?”

“Just going downriver a ways.”

We canoed another half mile, to the end of the island, where the narrow channel opened once again onto the broad current of the river. All along the bank, shacks had been constructed, and several of what I would later learn were called shantyboats lay moored there as well. We came at last to a large brick building with
MORGAN’S BOATWORKS
painted in white on the side. A couple of long wooden docks jutted into the river, where a number of vessels were tied up. A few had masts, a couple were sleek-looking speedboats, and one was a stern-wheel towboat. A man stood knee deep in the brown river water, bent toward one of the larger sailboats, eyeing a hole above the waterline, which had been hastily patched with plywood. Albert guided us to within a few feet of the man, who turned when he heard the splash of our paddles.

“I’m looking for Wooster Morgan,” Albert said.

“Found him.” He was nearly bald, but a black handlebar mustache curled flamboyantly along his upper lip. He wore a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled above biceps like bowling balls.

“I just came from Gertie Hellmann’s place. She said we could leave our canoe with you.”

“She did, did she? Well, we don’t want to make a liar out of Gertie. Lift ’er up and we’ll find a place to store ’er.”

Wooster Morgan waded from the water and watched as we unloaded our things and my brother and Mose lifted the canoe onto their shoulders. “This way,” he said, and he waved us to follow.

Inside, the boatworks was one great room with all kinds of lathes and grinders and a whole world of tools I’d never seen before and whose purpose I couldn’t begin to guess. There was also a good deal of welding equipment, and from the rafters hung thick chains with hooks big enough to lift a whale. A small craft sat up on blocks, its hull fit with runners—an iceboat, I would later learn. The place smelled of grease and acetylene and beneath that, the sweet scent of new sawdust. As Albert’s eyes took in all that machinery, I could see that he thought he’d just stepped into heaven.

Wooster Morgan set up a couple of sawhorses and, once the canoe had been laid across them, asked our names. We gave him the ones we were using those days.

“Did Gertie tell you the rules of my boat hotel?” Morgan asked.

“No, sir,” Albert replied.

“You got one week. Normally I’d charge you a buck, but seeing as how you’re friends of Gertie’s . . .” He looked us over and smoothed his mustache. “A handshake from each of you fellers, and a kiss on the cheek from the little angel will do for now.”

We walked through the West Side Flats, seven or eight square blocks of houses built so close together even Emmy would have had trouble squeezing between them. In truth, many of the constructions didn’t seem any sturdier than the thrown-together shanties of Hopersville. All of them had outhouses in back, and I saw no indication of running water anywhere. There was not a blade of grass to be seen, and the few trees in evidence were scrawny, struggling things. It seemed to be all squalor, out of which had arisen a community. A vibrant community judging from all the people we saw. Women hanging wash on the line, calling to one another across ragged fences. Scruffy kids playing in the dirt yards. Men with horses and wagons going about their enterprises—ragmen, icemen, tinkers. A few automobiles,
but not many. When we turned up a street called Fairfield, a row of shops lined both sides—butchers, dry goods stores, grocers, a couple of barbershops, a blacksmith, all with customers coming and going, giving one another cordial greetings as they met and passed.

At the Lincoln School, we’d had indoor plumbing, showers, and a roof over our heads that generally didn’t leak. We’d had grass, plenty of it, and trees. We’d been given three meals a day and a bed to sleep on. In truth, we’d known a great many comforts. But in this crowded, chaotic community, I could see in abundance two precious things that had been withheld from us at Lincoln School: happiness and freedom.

“There.” Albert pointed toward a two-story dilapidated corner building with
GERTIE’S
painted on a window.

The door stood open, and we followed my brother inside. The space was cramped and crowded with tables. Chairs had been upturned and sat on the tabletops, their legs toward the ceiling. The air smelled of something savory.

A stepladder stood in one corner of the small café, with a man atop it, seeing to the repair of a hole in the ceiling. When he heard the clomp of our feet on the wooden floor, he turned and stared at us. He wore workman’s gloves, overalls, and boots that looked as if he’d walked to Africa and back in them. He climbed down from the ladder and came to where we stood, and I saw the damage to his face, scarring on the right side so severe it nearly closed up his eye. Although that old wounding seemed to give him no trouble, it was painful to look at. He tugged off his gloves, fisted his hands, and put them on his hips while he took the measure of each of us. Then he spoke, and I realized that, despite appearances, this was no man.

“Hello, there,” she said. “I’m Gertie.”

“FIRST THINGS FIRST.”

Gertie walked us into the kitchen, where a woman stood at a stove, eyeing the contents of two huge, steaming pots, the source of that wonderful aroma I’d smelled on entering the establishment.

“Flo,” Gertie said. “We have some guests.”

The woman turned. Her blond hair was limp from the steam of the pot and her face flushed, but this took nothing away from her beauty. Her eyes were startling blue and her smile immediate and enormous.

“Children?”

“According to Norman here,” Gertie said, “Forrest sent them.”

“Forrest? How is he?” Flo said with surprise and delight. “And where is he?”

“Out of work and in Mankato,” Gertie replied, giving us no time to answer for ourselves.

“Back in Minnesota,” Flo said. Her smile was beginning to seem like a permanent fixture. “Will we see him?”

Although the question was directed to us, it was once again Gertie who gave an answer.

“He’s sticking around home for a while, but if I know Forrest, he’ll be up here eventually to see his brother.”

Flo’s blue gaze, warm as a summer sky, ran across us all. “And you’re our guests until . . . ?”

“They’re on their way to Saint Louis. Just stopping for a breather,” Gertie said. “I’m putting them up in the shed for the night.”

Flo wore a flowered dress that reached to her calves. She hiked the hem up a bit, crouched so that she was eye-level with Emmy,
and said, “You’re just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. What’s your name?”

“Emmy.”

Which made me roll my eyes. When would she ever learn?

Flo glanced up at me.

“Buck,” I said. “Buck Jones.”

“Like the movie star. And you?” This to Albert.

“Norman,” he said.

“And what about you?”

Mose stared down at her, and even if he’d had a tongue, I believe he could not have spoken, he seemed so starstruck.

“His name’s Amdacha,” Albert said. “He’s Sioux.”

“Just like Forrest and Calvin,” Flo said.

“Calvin?” I said.

“That’s Forrest’s brother. He didn’t tell you?”

“No, ma’am. He just sent us up here to Gertie.”

“That’s probably because he wasn’t sure Calvin would be around. This is the busy season on the river. And your parents?” Flo asked.

“We’re orphans, every one of us,” Albert said.

“I’m sorry.” Her smiled flagged a bit. “These are surely difficult times we’re living through.”

My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten for almost two days, and the smell from the pot was impossible to ignore.

“Hungry?” Flo asked.

“I could eat a horse,” I said.

“They’re with us just for tonight,” Gertie said brusquely. “We’ll feed them and they’ll sleep in the shed. They’ll work it off helping us at dinner.”

“All right.” Flo nodded her agreement.

“Come along,” Gertie said. “Let’s get you set up. Then we’ll put a little food in your stomachs and then—” She looked us over with stern eye. “Then a shower.”

OUR SHOWERS WERE
taken in a stone building, public baths on the other side of the river, at the edge of the downtown, a place popular with the lower class who had no indoor plumbing. Judging from the crowd, there were a lot of folks in the same boat.

It was late afternoon when we returned to the Flats. Gertie’s hadn’t opened yet for the evening meal, but a couple of men were sitting at a table. When we stepped inside, they turned and stared at us, as if we were trespassing.

“Gertie’s not serving yet,” one of the men said.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, with lanky brown hair, and the dark shadow of a beard across his lower face. His eyes were sky blue, just like Flo’s, but there wasn’t a hint of welcome in them.

The other man was an Indian, and right away I knew it was Calvin, Forrest’s brother. He was younger than Forrest by at least a decade and wore his hair in a braid that reached just below his shoulders. His aspect was different from his companion’s, especially when his eyes, the color of hickory nuts, settled on Mose, whom he studied intently.

It was Albert who replied for us, and he spoke defiantly: “We’re working for Gertie tonight.”

“She didn’t say anything about you,” the broad-shouldered man shot back.

“That’s because it’s none of your business what I do here,” Gertie said, entering from the kitchen. “What you do on your boat is your affair, Tru. What I do here is mine. And I don’t like that tone, especially with my employees.”

The man she’d called Tru had a glass in front of him. The color of the liquid inside and the slight head of foam told me he was drinking beer. From his tone and the surly look he gave us, I figured it wasn’t his first.

Flo came in behind Gertie and looked us up and down with approval. “Cute as bugs in a rug.” Then she pulled up a chair at the table where Calvin and the surly man sat. “No luck, Tru?”

He took a long swallow from his beer. “Wooster Morgan says it’ll be at least a week but more like two. Claims he’s got to locate the engine parts. The Berenson tow’ll go to Cooper, that bastard. God only knows if I’ll be able to snag anything anytime soon after that.”

“You can’t fix it?”

“Maybe. If Morgan gave me use of his equipment.”

“Which he’s already said will happen when hell freezes over,” Calvin offered with a calm smile.

“Oh, Tru, I told you not to let your temper get the best of you.” She put her hand gently on his arm. “Something will come along.”

“I hope I still have a crew when it does. Mac Cooper’s already put out the word he’ll take every hand willing to work for him.”

“Loyalty counts for a lot,” Flo said.

“With Hoover in the White House, money counts for more,” Tru replied.

“Calvin, it was your brother who sent these kids here,” Flo said, then introduced us one by one.

“How is Forrest?” the Indian asked.

“Fine when we left him,” Albert said.

“And where was that?”

“Mankato.”

“Must’ve run out of cows to punch. Give you any sense what his plans were?”

“No, sir,” Albert said.

Calvin sat back and said, “If we can’t get the
Hellor
fixed, maybe I’ll pop down to Mankato.”

“The
Hellor
?” I said.

“The name of my brother’s towboat,” Flo said.

Brother and sister. I could see it then.

“It’s really the
Hell or High Water,
” Flo said. “We just call her the
Hellor
for short.”

“But not for long if I can’t get that damn engine repaired and back to shoving tows,” her brother said.

“Going to sit there and drink until we open for business, Tru?” Gertie said, hands on hips, her eyes drilling the surly man.

“I’d suck on a dead catfish before I’d eat your swill, Gertie.”

“Suit yourself, but it’s Flo’s lentil soup.”

“I’ll come back,” Tru said and finished his beer. “Let’s go, Cal. See what might be shaking down at the landing.”

After they’d gone, Flo said, “He’s really a good man. He’s just caught between a rock and a hard place.”

“He’s been caught there since I’ve known him,” Gertie said. She studied us, then she said, “You kids cleaned up good. Now get yourselves set. We’re going to have a busy night.”

It was, in its way, my first official employment, and my first evening on the job turned out to be like no job I would ever have after it.