Don't Die Under the Apple Tree (8 page)
Read Don't Die Under the Apple Tree Online
Authors: Amy Patricia Meade
“I know,” Katie replied matter-of-factly as she snatched the newspaper from its spot on the sofa cushion and passed it to her sister. “Who says I can't do both?”
Rosie looked over the Finch article in confusion. “What should I do with this? And what does it have to do withâ”
“Just look at the article,” Katie insisted. “Especially the part about where Finch lived.”
“âRobert Finch, a lifelong resident of the Red Hook neighborhood in Brooklyn,'” Rosie read aloud. “That's the neighborhood right near the docks. So?”
“So, I was thinking I could go down there and talk to a few people who knew Finch. See what they have to say.”
“And how were you thinking of talking to them? You can't go door-to-door like the Fuller Brush man.”
“Of course not. Don't be silly! I'll just run my errands there instead of here.”
“Oh, Katie, you can't do that.”
“Why not? There must be a grocer and a butcher in the neighborhood. Where better to catch up on neighborhood gossip than at the market?”
“The people in that neighborhood don't know you. Why would they tell you anything about Finch?”
“Why would they not?”
“Because they'll think you're a busybody. Or worse, a reporter.”
“No, they won't. I'll have Charlie with me. Now tell me, who's going to suspect a pretty blonde pushing a baby carriage of such deception?” Katie challenged with a grin.
Rosie took turns eyeing her sister and nephew. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, and smiling, they made an irresistible pair. “Only a blind person.”
“And if I meet one, I'll tell them that I'm a war widow. That should win them over.”
“Don't do that,” Rosie said in earnest. “Don't use your hardships. Not for sympathy.”
“I won't be using anything. I'm proud of Jimmy. I want the whole world to know how brave he was.”
“And you should tell his story, but not for my sake.”
“If not for your sake, then for whose? If Jimmy had his say, he'd want me to do everything in my power to help you.”
“I know, Katie, but traveling to Red Hook every day? That's quite a ways to go for simple errands.”
“It's not that far,” Katie argued. “Nothing is too far when it comes to saving my sister.”
Chapter Eight
While a cloud-obscured sun ascended over the rain-washed city, Rosie boarded the crowded early train back to Brooklyn. Arriving at the shipyard at 6:45 a.m., she entered the holding area to wait out the fifteen minutes until the start of her nine-hour shift. The scene that lay before her was the same as it had been since she began her job ten days before. However, this time, instead of fading into the crowd, Rosie's journey over the threshold and across the hard cement floor caused the collection of coverall-clad Pushey employees to fall silent and then part like the Red Sea.
Rosie stood alone in the center of the room, the male employees gathered in front of her, the females clustered behind. She tried to project a sense of calm confidence, but it wasn't easy. Not only did her new status as shipyard pariah make her feel painfully unwelcome, but it would make the interview part of her investigation next to impossible.
Thankfully, a voice came from the rear of the room. “You're back.” Nelson, dressed in a pair of gray canvas slacks, a blue work shirt, and a red headscarf, entered the space occupied by Rosie. “How did you manage it?”
“A bit of blarney. And a whole lot of luck.”
“Well, no matter how you did it, I'm glad you're here. We all are.”
Rosie surveyed the expressionless group of women. “Hmmm ... they appear to be handling their excitement quite well.”
Nelson waved a dismissive hand. “Don't worry about that. They just don't want to get into trouble with the new foreman. I'm sure you've seen most of them in the two weeks since you started, but if you haven't, I'll introduce you.”
Rosie remembered her investigation. “Yes, I'd like to meet everyone at some point. Hear their Finch stories.”
Nelson nodded in agreement and then pointed over Rosie's left shoulder.
Rosie spun around to find Michael Delaney standing just a few inches away. “What do you think you're doing here?” he demanded.
“The same thing you are. Waiting for my shift to start.”
“Yeah, Del Vecchio told me you came to him looking for your job. But I thought for sure you would have come to your senses by now. Between throwing rivets at Hansen and what you did to Finchâ”
“I didn't kill him, Delaney.”
“That doesn't matter. It's enough that you ran away and left him bleeding. Don't you understand? These fellas don't want you here. They never did.”
“And don't you understand that I need a job? This is about the only one I can get that pays a decent wage.”
“Yeah, but Ma told me about you and Katie moving back to Greenpoint. Without having to make rent, the money Billy sends you will go a lot farther. That means you don't have be ...”
As Rosie's eyes lowered, Michael Delaney realized the impact of his words. “Ah, jeez. He's not sending you money, is he? I'm sorry, I didn't ... I just assumed he was taking care of you. Or at least trying. I know if you were my wife, that's what I would do.”
Ordinarily, Rosie would have leaped at the chance to rib Delaney about his bachelor status. However, there was such a wistful sincerity to his words that she didn't have the heart to tease. Luckily, Del Vecchio started announcing the day's work assignments, thus eliminating the need for further comment.
“Miller ... Jones ... Murphy ... machine shop. Drummond ... Gaikowski ... Phillips ... Snyder ... graving plate. Nelson ... Scarlatti ... hull welding. Kopecky, heater ... Keefe, passer ...”
The voice of Rudy Hansen rang out from the crowd. “What the hell is that woman doing here, Del Vecchio?”
“We need bodies, Hansen. Jackson's gone, four of our guys have been called up for service, and McCarthy is down with the grippe.”
“We may need bodies, but we don't need hers. Finch fired that crazy broad right before he got his head smashed in.”
“Yeah, and I unfired her,” Del Vecchio stated boldly. “I warned Keefe about gettin' into trouble. If she pulls any funny business again, she's outta here.”
“That's all it takes to work here now, huh? A promise to behave yourself?”
“No, you have to be a hard worker, too. I was on the same crew as you and Keefe. She kept up with the rest of us.”
“I don't care if she worked circles around us. She's a murderer. But if that don't matter to you, I have a cousin up in Dannemora. All we have to do is break him and a few of his buddies out and our manpower problems will be solved.” Hansen slid his eyes toward Rosie. “Notice I said âmanpower,' not âwomanpower.' Gonna beat my head in for that?”
Rosie glared back. She desperately wanted to retaliate, but she knew it was in her best interest to hold her tongue.
“Settle down, now. We don't know for sure that Keefe's guilty,” Del Vecchio reasoned.
“What? You mean to say you don't think sheâ”
“That's not for us to decide, Hansen. The cops are on the job and they'll get to the bottom of things. Till then we gotta act as though she's innocent.”
“I don't âgotta' do anything.”
“Hey, call me crazy, but doesn't this country believe that a man or, in this case, woman, is âinnocent until proven guilty'? Why are we even fightin' this war if people like you are so quick to throw away those beliefs?”
Rosie couldn't believe her ears. Tony Del Vecchio, self-proclaimed political mastermind, had used her words, verbatim, in an argument against Hansen. What's more, those words were effective. As some employees whistled in approval and others mumbled and nodded in agreement, Hansen stared down at the concrete floor and scratched the back of his neck in awkward silence.
“Still don't like it,” the tall blond Swede finally replied.
“You don't have to like it,” Del Vecchio acknowledged. “But we don't need to hear about how much you don't like it neither. Now, where was I? Oh yeah. Kopecky, heater ... Keefe, passer ... Dewitt, bucker ... Kilbride, riveter. Gang one, Pier Number One.”
At age fifty-four, Wilson Dewitt was one of the most senior employees at Pushey Shipyard. Having started at the yard as a cleanup boy in the days prior to pneumatic rivet guns and worldwide warfare, Dewitt discovered his vocation when he was called on to fill in for a bucker whose foot had been crushed by a riveter's hammer.
In the thirty years since, Dewitt had come to be known for his dependability, strong work ethic, and easygoing nature, characteristics that would have earned any other shipyard worker promotions, raises, and the respect of supervisors and colleagues. Of course, in order to earn such things, those “other” shipyard workers would have had to be both male and white, and while Wilson Dewitt fit the former criterion, his dark brown skin stood in stark contrast to the latter.
Like Jackson and the other Negroes who worked in the shipyards, Dewitt's primary role was, and always had been, to assist the white employees, first as a maintenance worker then as a bucker. Despite his intelligence and aptitude for the shipbuilding trade, his employers would never train him to rivet or weld, and even if he had somehow managed to acquire those skills elsewhere, they wouldn't have done him much good since, as a Negro man, he was not permitted to take the exam required for promotion.
Moreover, despite his years of devotion and hard work, Dewitt could never earn as much as the other buckers in the yard, since whites and Negroes were paid according to two separate wage scales. Meaning that at the end of a hard week, a female welder with two weeks' experience often took home a larger paycheck than he did.
Rosie was acutely aware of the yard's established pecking order. At the top of the social ladder stood white male workers, but even within this group there existed a certain hierarchy. Men of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and German descent, although comprising the minority of the workforce, formed the shipyard elite. The Irish and Italians occupied the second slot. Sharing a common faith, the two groups had formed an uneasy partnership with each other and, through sheer number, had climbed to a position of relative power within the dockside community. Beneath them, with each group occupying a different rung on the ladder, came the Slavs, Jews, Portuguese, Greeks, Hispanics, and other ethnic groups.
Strangely, or at least it was strange to Rosie, these ethnic groups chose to stand alone rather than unify for the betterment of the whole. Never was there talk of a coalition. Each group was possessive of its spot within the hierarchy and determined to protect itself from those below.
After the men came the women, who were grouped into one of two categories: white or Negro. White women, lumped together regardless of their ethnic or religious background, held a position lower than white males, yet slightly higher than Negro males. Negro women, however, possessed the lowliest status in the yard, below even that of Negro males.
As Del Vecchio finished the remainder of the morning's announcements, Rosie contemplated her new assignment. Dewitt, although seemingly courteous, was just one of four Negro men working at Pushey, and the only one to have made the transition from maintenance to riveting gang. Kolecky was a Czechoslovakian Jew who socialized with neither group and spoke to no one. Although some had attributed his silence to an inability to speak and understand English, Kolecky's ability to take instruction from superiors belied that theory. Kilbride was a hard-drinking Irish Nationalist from County Wicklow who came to America shortly after the split of his homeland, in 1921, into northern and southern components. One of the fastest riveters in the yard, the boisterous Kilbride's “80 Proof” lunch incited him to intersperse his afternoon riveting with rebel songs (“A Nation Once Again” was a popular favorite), limericks, and anti-establishment rhetoric. He was also notorious, at the end of the day, for leaving his tools on the platform rather than signing them back into the toolshedâa habit that had driven Finch to distraction.
As the morning announcements wrapped up and employees began to filter into the yard, Rosie reflected upon her work assignment and immediately recognized why she had been placed with such a ragtag team. Although Del Vecchio might have agreed to put her back on the payroll and even paid public lip service to her return, she was at the very bottom of the Pushey pecking order. And for the riveting gang saddled with the presence of a potential murderer, Rosie's assignment served to re-establish their low social standing.
“You sure you know what you're doing?” Delaney asked.
“No,” she confessed. “But there's not much I can do about that now.”
“You can turn around and leave, that's what you can do. But I know you won't. Do me a favor, though. If anyone gives you a hard time, come and get me.”
Rosie nodded.
“Promise?” Delaney pressed.
“Yes,” Rosie snapped.
Shaking his head and muttering to himself, Michael Delaney disappeared through the holding area doors.
“Brother or boyfriend?” Nelson ventured.
“Neither.”
“Hmph. Well, I'll catch you during break. Till then, good luck.”
“Thanks.”
I need all the luck I can get
, she thought as she exited the red brick building and made her way to Pier Number One. Approximately forty feet from her destination, she spotted Kolecky, short, somber, and bespectacled, setting up his forge. Rosie flashed a weak smile in the man's direction. As expected, Kolecky returned the smile with a blank stare.
I need all the luck I can get
, she thought as she exited the red brick building and made her way to Pier Number One. Approximately forty feet from her destination, she spotted Kolecky, short, somber, and bespectacled, setting up his forge. Rosie flashed a weak smile in the man's direction. As expected, Kolecky returned the smile with a blank stare.
Rosie chided herself. These people thought she was a murderer. If she went around smiling at them, they'd truly believe her to be deranged. With a grave expression on her face, she scaled the scaffold where Dewitt and Kilbride stood waiting.
“Mornin',” Dewitt quietly greeted.
Kilbride, however, flashed a wild grin. “Clinton Kilbride at your service. This here is Wilson and that down there is Kolecky. I don't abide by last names, only Christian onesâthe world is dehumanizing enoughâbut I haven't caught Kolecky's yet. Mostly because he hasn't pitched it. Now what should we be calling you?”
“Rose. Rose Keefe.”
“Rose. Just Rose?”
“Well, most people call me Rosie.”
“Rosie? That's not very poetic for a fellow countrywoman.” Kilbride's reddish blond brow furrowed. “You sure it isn't Rosemary or Rosamund orâ”
“Rosaleen,” she replied, although she was unsure as to why. “Rose is short for Rosaleen.”
“Ah, that's better. That's what I'll be calling ya, then. Rosaleen.”
Rosie felt her mouth pucker. The only person who called her Rosaleen was her mother.
“Ah, don't like being called that, do ya now? Sorry, luv, but I won't change me mind. Rosaleen you are and Rosaleen you'll stay. So welcome, Rosaleen, to the riveting gang of Drunkard, Darkie, and Mute. If you need me to point out who's who, then ya aren't as bright as you look. And now that we're done with the introductions, let's get to work and see if you can keep up.”
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