1929 (17 page)

After fifteen minutes or so, Aryl crawled out
from underneath the covers. “This isn’t working,” he complained. He
pushed the couch up to the foot of the mattress and dragged the two
dining chairs to the sides of the mattress. “Do we have an extra
blanket?” he asked. She nodded, too cold to speak, and went to the
small closet to pull out a bedspread.

He tucked the bedspread under the cushions of
the couch and then draped it over the backs of the chairs. He
arranged the edge on the mantel, piling books on top to hold it
there. He lifted a corner, crawled under his tent creation and
Claire followed. Within minutes, they began to warm as the tent
directed the heat into their cove.

“This was a good idea, Aryl.” Claire snuggled
close to him and resented the layers of clothing between them.

“It’s like camping,” he said and smiled,
kissing her forehead.

November 7th 1929

Victor stood outside the gate of the shipping
dock early in the morning, watching the stream of men that filed
in. He surveyed each one, and when he found one that he thought
would do, he stopped him and introduced himself. The scruffy worker
looked Victor up and down warily. After a quick moment of casual
conversation, Victor got to the point. He stepped closer to the
man, whose small eyes were as black as his own.

“Do you know a worker here named Jonathan
Garrett?” Victor asked. The worker nodded. “He’s one of them rich
boys. His friend, the one with the red hair, he’s an okay guy. But
Garrett’s got a chip on his shoulder. Not real liked ‘round here.”
He bobbed his head in synch with his accent, a combination of
old-Italian and new-New Yorker. Victor smiled and held out a
twenty-dollar bill. The man’s eyes bulged.

“What’s your name?” Victor asked.

“Tony.”

“You want to make some money, Tony?” Victor
said and smiled cunningly. The man nodded, eyes still wary.

“Mess with him,” Victor said and handed him
the money. The man looked from the bill to Victor and returned the
devious smile, nodding his agreement. Victor simply turned and
walked away, leaving the details to Tony's imagination. Tony
watched him walk away then tucked the twenty in his pocket, looking
all around him to make sure no one was watching. He was happy to
start earning every cent. He raced to clock in and find out where
Jonathan would be working for the day.

Close to lunchtime, one of the yard leads
called Jonathan over. While he was distracted, Tony walked by,
pulled out his pocketknife, and knifed the bottom layer of a couple
of flour sacks. Jonathan had laid his gloves on the bumper of the
truck, and Tony stole them. He had more in mind, but made off in
haste when he saw Jonathan turning back toward the pallet. He
strolled past with a grin. Jonathan reached behind him for his
gloves, but felt only metal. He turned and cursed under his breath
when he saw that they were gone. He lifted a sack of flour by
opposite corners and swung it around. Just as it cleared the
pallet, the bag burst and flour spilled onto the ground, piling on
his shoes and covering his shirt and face in a white dusting.
Before he could even begin cursing, one of the yard supervisors
appeared near him, yelling and cursing at the top of his lungs.

“What in the hell did you do, Garrett?” The
heavyset, lead supervisor waddled over, a lit cigar hanging out of
his mouth.

“I don’t know. It just busted,” Jonathan said
with indifference, brushing flour off his coat and face.

“Don’t let it happen again,” he barked at
Jonathan. Jonathan grabbed a second bag while glowering at the
supervisor, and it happened again, creating a massive pile of flour
on the ground at his feet. The supervisor turned when he heard the
bag rip and began yelling and cursing again. He ended his tirade
with, “Those two bags are coming out of your pay, Garrett!”
Jonathan threw the torn bag on the ground and took off his coat to
shake it out while glaring at the supervisor’s back. He laid it on
the pallet and started smacking flour from his pants and bent to
clean his shoes with a piece of torn bag. When he stood, his coat
was gone. He looked in all directions, but there was no one around.
It seemed to have disappeared into thin air. He couldn’t see Tony,
who was hiding on the other side of the truck, slinking his way to
the front bumper and then running off.

At the lunch whistle, Jonathan ran to the
room where many workers kept their lunches in wooden compartments.
The honor system was used as there were no doors or locks to the
cubby-type, square openings. It was warmer in this room, and he was
starving. He reached into his compartment to find his lunch
missing. He looked around the room and found it smashed in a corner
by the garbage can.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he fumed.
Others filed in for lunch, not saying a word to Jonathan but
talking heartily to Caleb. He noticed Jonathan’s expression as
being one of a man on the edge and pulled him aside.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. Jonathan
recounted the events of the morning. Caleb shook his head,
irritated, and grabbed his lunch, splitting it with Jonathan. “Some
of these guys can be real assholes,” he commented, ripping his
sandwich in half and handing it to Jonathan. He would still be
hungry eating only half but knew what to expect at home, so he
planned to buy dinner from the deli anyway. Caleb had on several
layers and peeled off one of his wool shirts for him. It was small,
but it helped a little.

After lunch, Aryl asked around to try to find
out who was messing with Jonathan, but no one seemed to know
anything. He put the word out anyway that when he found out who it
was, he would settle it with them personally. The rest of the
afternoon went without incident.

∞∞∞

Ava tiptoed out, careful not to alert the
beady-eyed one and knocked softly on Shannon’s door. She heard a
child squeal on the other side of the door. Shannon opened it,
half-holding the baby as it nursed, covered by a cloth sling.

“I’m so glad ye came,” she said. “Please sit
down. I’ll be done with the baby in a moment.”

Ava looked about the room as she sat. It was
the same sized apartment, but much more crowded with the additional
necessities for two children. The sofa set close to the fireplace
with a square table on one side. A full-size bed was crammed in one
corner behind the door. There was an older bureau on the right of
the bed, a small radio on top, and the square dining table tucked
into another corner. Under the table was a large travel trunk,
presumably for storage. Glancing in the only bedroom, she could see
the foot of a small bed and a cradle in the corner. The kitchen was
the same size as hers, but she noticed hanging shelves in the
middle of the kitchen ceiling.

“Those are interesting,” Ava commented,
walking over to take a closer look. Shannon was working at the
sink, the nursing baby still nestled in the sling that was tied in
a large knot in the center of her back.

“Patrick made those for me. We got tired of
the rats gettin' to the food and either stealin’ it or makin’ us
sick to our stomachs.”

“Rats?” Ava asked uneasily.

“Aye. Haven’t ye seen them at your place? We
catch a few a week in the traps, but they’re all throughout the
building, can’t get rid of ‘em. Patrick made these hanging shelves,
so I can put my bread or fresh food on them, and the rats have a
heck of a time reaching it. It works well. Ye just have to mind not
to bump yer head.” Ava studied the simple contraptions consisting
of a square piece of wood with thick twine nailed to the bottom of
each corner. The twine was knotted about two feet above and nailed
directly into the middle of the ceiling. There were three of them
hung exactly at Shannon’s eye level.

“You were getting sick?” Ava asked curiously.
During the brief time she and Jonathan had lived there, they had
had intermittent nausea and diarrhea.

“Aye. Get the runs something awful.”

Ava thought for a moment that she would be
sick making the link between their intestinal ailments to dirty
rats, which had most likely crawled on and nibbled at their food.
She would have Jonathan make her some of these shelves as soon as
possible.

Shannon went to lay the baby in the cradle
and returned to the cramped living room, closing the bedroom door
softly behind her.

“Aislin is already down for her nap. We might
get a few moments peace,” she said, smiling and pulling a plate of
shortbread cookies from one of the hanging shelves. She poured tea
and balanced two cups and the plate back to the couch. “It’s so
nice to have neighbors I can actually talk to. The ones that were
there before you dint speak English. Seemed nice enough but
couldn’t do more than wave or nod. Patrick’s a firm believer in
knowing yer neighbors. Looking out fer them and they fer you. Back
in Ireland, we knew everyone for miles and could call on them for
anything at any time. And they us. It’s not like that here.” She
paused in obvious homesickness. “When I told Patrick about you and
your husband, he was so excited. You look nice and clean and, well,
normal. He wanted me to invite you over for dinner, would you
come?”

“Oh, that would be nice. I’m sure Jonathan
would like that,” she said and smiled, as she looked around,
wondering just how they would all fit to have dinner together.
“Just let me know when.”

“How about Saturday?”

“Sure. We’ll be here, but only if you make
that delicious bread again.” Shannon looked pleased.

“Better yet, how about I teach ye how to make
it?”

“That would be wonderful. Maybe I could bring
my friends, so they could learn, too?”

“Aye, the more, the merrier.” Shannon poured
more tea. “Where does your husband work?” she asked.

“At the shipping yard. He, Caleb and Aryl all
work there together.”

“It’s good that you and yer friends could
stick together,” Shannon said.

“I’m glad,” Ava said sincerely. “Only now
there seems to be so little to do beyond the same monotonous
chores, and the whole day just stares me down. There’s nothing to
really look forward to, and every morning it seems like I'm only
going through the motions to get to bedtime, so I can go to sleep
and not worry for a bit. It’s all very depressing. Claire, Ahna and
I have spent a lot of time together the last two weeks. I guess
we’ve been feeling a bit smothered by each other.”

“Aye. T’was that way with some neighbors we
had in our old building. I made a couple of friends right off, and
we had a wonderful time together. The first week or so it was
wonderful, but if ye spend day after day together, ye run out of
things to talk about eventually. Boredom makes you begin to notice
the uglier side of folks. You begin to pick them apart and get very
annoyed with them.” Ava nodded in complete agreement.

“Exactly!” she exclaimed. “I love my friends,
but Ahna’s whining is starting to bother me, along with the fact
that she doesn’t do anything all day.”

“How can someone just not do anything all
day?” Shannon asked, amazed.

“I don’t know. But Jon told me that Caleb
told him that he buys dinner every night and has taken to doing the
laundry, too.” Shannon stared at her.

“How’d she get her husband to do that?” she
asked in awe.

“It’s not a matter of getting him to do it.
He has to do it if he wants clean clothes. If he doesn’t have time,
he pays a neighbor to do it. Arianna claims she doesn’t know how to
wash on a washboard. Well, I didn’t either, but I figured it out.
It’s really not that hard.” Ava suddenly realized that she was
gossiping, something she detested.

“And yer other gal, Claire, was it? How is
she?”

“Oh, Claire is struggling so much. Her
husband doesn’t know it, but she cries almost every day. She hides
it when he comes home, and he does a great job of helping her see
things the way he does. It’s enough to keep her from falling apart,
I think.”

“He sounds like a good man,” Shannon said
admiringly. Ava nodded, secretly envious that Aryl was strong
enough to keep him and Claire going when Jon seemed barely able to
get up in the morning and not just because of the new, comfortable
mattress. He was getting worse, angrier and more distant. She’d had
enough of gossip and touching on subjects that made her eyes
sting.

“Where does Patrick work?” Ava asked, helping
herself to another shortbread cookie.

“At the dry docks. He rivets on new ships and
repairs the old ones. Aye, he does a variety of things. When we
came to America, he took so many jobs. He learned to rivet, some
carpentry, metalworking, plumbing and painting. He never stayed at
any one job longer than to learn the skill, and then he moved
on.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ava said sympathetically.
She had heard of job jumpers and the hardships their families had
to endure.

“Oh, no, dear, that was the point. He learned
as many trades as fast as he could to increase his chances of
gettin’ a long-term job. And he did. And if this job falls through,
he can try to get one as a painter or carpenter or plumber. Puts
the odds more in his favor of stayin’ employed, ye see.” Ava
nodded.

“That’s a really good idea,” she said,
impressed.

“I was gonna get on at the cannery or at Mr.
Finklestein's sewin’ factory, but then I found out I was to have
Roan, so it had to wait. I guess we better pay more attention to
the calendar, so I can get to work.” They both laughed and Ava
glanced over at the calendar by the bedside. Most all the days were
marked with a line in black, save seven or eight days.

∞∞∞

Jonathan came through the door, a few minutes
earlier than usual, shaking violently with cold. The sun had set,
the temperature had dropped markedly, and the two wool shirts did
not provide enough protection from the bitter-cold wind.