River of the Brokenhearted (16 page)

He stopped working in the garden. His hands were covered in dirt, his face red from the sun.

“Sadness,” he whispered. “And I ask for no money in telling you so. Sadness for you and your son.”

“Sadness—what sadness?” Rebecca said. “And I might ask, what son?”

Across the river the trees were in full bloom, and the great ship the
Poduddle
was coming into the channel. Then without looking at him, and with the expression on her face of a person looking into the distance for a speck, she said, “You have just made me decide never to have a son. And if there is sadness, it is because we Drukens have always been under the thumb of the rich—without any help. Why would Janie McLeary be so lucky as to have two cars when the Drukens have none? And why would my brothers die in the flu when other children didn’t?”

“Your sadness is asking questions that cannot be answered. You will have a chance to change when you come back with your son. Sister Putsy will ask your son to visit her.”

“Sister Putsy! My, my, my. And you think I am going away. I will never leave this river”

“Perhaps I am mistaken.”

“You are. And it is a shame that Putsy is so frightened by you.”

“It is not me Putsy is frightened of.”

“Who is she frightened of, then?”

“You,” he said softly.

This startled her, but she smiled and said, “Good that she is.”

She turned down along the road, passed some summer-brown hedges, and looked back over her shoulder. He was gone, and it was as if this conversation had never taken place. She threw the small parsnips into a bush.

As for Putsy Druken, to the surprise of everyone, she became a nun of the Sacred Heart in 1935. She never drank again.

FIVE

Elias, however, continued on. In a certain way, a natural way, he felt things were turning out for him as well as he could possibly expect. He would have his dance hall where the Biograph once was. But still and all, it wasn’t enough. The thing he worried over, as old Jimmy McLeary might have said, “like a bitch with a fuggin’ bone,” was Miles. He felt that Miles was the usurper of his own worth—Miles would be the owner of a business that within a certain light, and according to certain parameters of business sense should rightfully belong to him.

It was not only this. It was also the fact that Jimmy McLeary had owed him money from drink. He, Elias, decided this one day, and set about to get it. Janie, however, said Jimmy McLeary’s account with the world was settled, and she need not settle it again. She wrote him a caustic note to this effect.

“Jimmy McLeary did at least some of your patchwork against me. Have the decency, sir, to write off what he owes you because of what you owe him and me.”

This made his blood boil. Never before had things been so clear to him. She was keeping the business from him to protect her son. (Why he thought this unnatural I do not know.) After he had done everything for her. And in this state of mind he vented his anger about Janie on the street, but never aloud, only in whispers—to challenge her under the table, so to speak.

Even if he wanted to remain silent, it was bad morals not to challenge this. And he challenged Miles’s right, at first to be the beneficiary of a business, but after this, his right to exist as a little boy.

My father was alone on the street from the time he was eight. He was left to his own devices because he had no father (as much as Walter tried), and his mother worked. Mrs. Redmond reported to me that she had seen him many nights walking along the street after ten lugging his pigeon coop home from a show he had given, with his cane and magic box. No one remembers him with a friend except Georgina, whom he would take care of most days by himself out in the yard, or take on little excursions with a lunch, to go fishing or flower picking.

“He goes out with the little girl,” Elias would say, “what’s her face—Georgina—and they go out into the field, and you know what he does? He
picks flowers
—black-eyed Susans and daisies and pussytoes, and he brings them home to his mommie. But his mommie ain’t there, no, she’s fuggin’ at the theatre with her arsewipe Roy Dingle. And what do you think of Dingle?—Dingle isn’t a man—she’s never had a man—and now she has Miles.”

And the men would nod, and agree, even though after a certain time they decided it was tiring. Still and all, they respected him too much. Rebecca was also attentive to him, and told him about the flower excursions that Miles took with Georgina on his back like a papoose.

And then there were the plays he was in, and his magic act that he performed in front of Georgina, who was his sole audience.

One afternoon in May of 1932, just after Janie went to the hall, Rebecca came to work. Miles was getting ready to go to his audition as Mr. Bimble in the school play, called
Bimble’s Thimble
. He had been waiting to do this for a month, for the only friend he had was his teacher Miss McGrath, who had known Mr. King and Janie.

But seeing him getting ready to leave, with his top hat and tie, Rebecca, who was feeding Georgina, said, “You are not to go out today. You are to stay in your room and take care of your sister and you are to polish the silverware.” She took the silverware out of the buffet and handed it to him. “Why should I be expected to polish what I never get to use? Now sit down and do it like a good boy.”

Miles at first attempted to talk her into letting him go—then he proceeded to the door, but Rebecca picked him up by the collar. “Get upstairs,” she said, “and take the silverware and the polish with you—and I do not want to see you until it is done!”

The boy went upstairs, and Rebecca sat down and lifted Georgina onto her lap. She began talking to the boy from the kitchen.

“Your father was a liar. He was coward, and didn’t want to fight, so he came here. But the Drukens went and fought. How many? Ten or eleven from here alone. Your dad came over on a boat, just when the fighting got interesting—he run away. Did you know that the British hung us in Ireland? Miles, you understand?”

Miles didn’t answer.

“Janie worries about you being bullied. I used to think, poor little Miles. I did at one time think that. But now I think, no damn wonder—with your pigeons, and top hat. Who ever heard of such a thing? Trying out for plays—no real boy tries out fer plays, Miles. I had boys in my family, my little triplet brothers—well, just let me tell you, if they were alive today they’d show you what was what—they’d show the likes of Miles King!”

Georgina listened, for some sound. But Miles didn’t answer.

“So what I’m thinking is this. I’m sick and tired of cleaning up after pigeons—and I just might assassinate them. Fair is fair, Miles—fair is fair.”

Miles didn’t answer.

“Answer me!” she yelled, suddenly in a state of rage (which she had first noticed on Joey Elias’s face when he kicked them from their house). “Answer me—is fair fair or not fair—is not fair being fair or what is fair!!”

Miles didn’t answer, and Rebecca put the little girl down and climbed the stairs.

“Open this door, Miles—open it—open this door—”

But the door was easy to open with a nail and a push and a kick. And Rebecca opened it. There she saw Miles in the tree next to his window, trying to climb down, hanging upside down from a limb, with his top hat still on his head and his pigeon coop under his right arm.

Rebecca did not move, so riveted she was by his self-destruction.

Georgina, coming into the room, yelled when she saw him in such danger, and ran to the window to bring him back in. Just as she reached out for him Miles fell and lay motionless on the ground. The pigeon coop shattered and two of his pigeons were mortally wounded and one obviously very ill.

Rebecca then came alive. She ran down the stairs and outside. Rebecca lifted him carefully and carried him into the house. She put a cold facecloth on his forehead.

She tried to cover it up; she gave herself and Georgina a story. They were in the laundry room and did not hear.

“We did not hear, Georgie girl, did we? You say that and Rebecca will get you a caramel. We did not hear and we thought Miles had gone out. But he was scared because he messed his pants—that’s what he did he messed his pants and wanted to climb down the tree for he was worried I would find out. But I didn’t mind him going to the play did I, Georgina?” Her lips twitched as she spoke and her eyes glanced from side to side.

“It was just too bad that he messed his pants—isn’t that right, Georgie girl—”

But Georgina was angry with her for the very first time, and would not speak. Sometimes frustrated with the lie Rebecca was trying to plant (like the planting of a weed) she would stamp her feet and cover her ears. Rebecca, truly agitated that she had lost Georgina’s affection, kept trying to make it up to her. This time, however, Georgina would not sit on her knee.

The next day Rebecca, Miles, and Georgina buried the pigeons with great solemnity at the bottom of the yard. Rebecca was still frightened and kept trying to appease the children, but Janie found out what had happened from the neighbours. Mr. Rolfe came foreward with the information Janie King needed. There had been trouble all that spring; many times the boy was beaten and kept silent.

“If you don’t get out I will phone the police,” Janie said to Rebecca.

“The Drukens have done nothin’ to you,” Rebecca answered with complete calm.

“And that’s the way it’s going to stay,” Janie said.

And as tough as Rebecca Druken was, she was no match for Janie McLeary King. But she said, “You make a mistake in making me an enemy, ma’am—fer I done nothin’ to you—and Georgina needs me. Who do you think Georgina loves if it ain’t me? You, ma’am, she hardly knows! Understand, ma’am—Georgina loves
me
. She is a Druken more than a King, and Miles is a foolish Winch more than a King. And that’s what you’re so jealous of—all the McLearys are jealous—and that’s why you throw me out! This house was kept by me, ma’am, it was cleaned and cared over by
me!
I took care of it—see how spotless it is—well, one day, I swear to Christ with my last fuggin’ breath, it will belong to me—Rebecca Druken.”

Usoff Assoff had a coal horse and in the winter children would follow him.

On an August day in 1932, Assoff sat high upon the bridge and with a crank opened the middle span to let a lumber ship pass up the channel toward Estabrook’s mill, cutting through the dark Miramichi. And in the summer whenever there was a ship to go through, Miles would be there. He would set the clock to get up at seven-thirty. At times he played his recording when he woke. It was a recording Walter had made for him at the Grand, over a period of three months. In this recording he had gleaned phrases from various moments in a number of movies.

“Good morning, Miles. How are you today? How is your little sister? Are you going anywhere special or are you just off to school? Have a good day, Miles, and we will see you tonight.”

At night alone in his room he would play the second part of his recording.

“Good evening, Miles. You are up late tonight. Is your sister asleep? Did you have a good day? Did you make some friends? I am your friend. I will see you tomorrow, Miles.”

Miles King would awake and go to his sister’s room, take her to the bath and put her in the tub, scrub her face and feet, dress her in her crinoline dress, with the white bonnet on her head, and manoeuvre the carriage into the street. Georgina made quite a splash sitting in her pink carriage, her hands in gloves upon the front bar, with the unicorn painted on the carriage roof.

“To the right,” she would direct, “around that pile of poop. Miles,” she would yell, “around that pile of horseshit on the road.”

To the right he would go, and to the left he would turn. Miles knew which way to go to bypass the young Drukens, the young Winches, the young Kennys, who all seemed to be his deadly enemies, for reasons that were never quite explained to him.

He wanted to watch the span open, but often Georgina did not. Still, she was in his care, for she had no one else. He was never asked, he was never told, it was just expected. No one knew he had deadly enemies, for he told no one. He continually monitored where these enemies were, so he passed them in the shade of the trees and cutting across the park. Then he would rest, wash his sister’s face with a pink cloth, or shade her from the sun with a lovely straw sunhat. Then she would motion to her arm, and he would pick a bug off her sleeve, or give her a drink, or do her a soft-shoe. To keep her entertained he would take out his comb and paper and play a tune: “I’m Over the Moon for You.”

Or if the little girl demanded a story he would tell her one while he danced in circles and pretended a top hat rolling down his arm. There was a time when he would produce a pigeon, named Harry Feathers. But Harry Feathers had been the last casualty of the great fall of ‘32, and was buried at the edge of the yard by Rebecca herself. So Miles found a sparrow and put it in his pocket, with its feet in the air. Sometimes Georgina did not want to sit in the carriage and he would lift her onto his shoulder and carry her, while pushing the carriage with one arm, into the back lot of Hawkenbury’s for flowers to put in a jar.

But all this was his way to get to the bridge, where he would watch the span with fascinated eyes. And he would say, “They have made quite a mistake here, Georgie girl—the whole span turns the wrong way. They would have saved six minutes turning it in instead of outward. I have timed it a dozen times. It is not as uniform as they thought, for the span to the west is shorter—you see? They haven’t reckoned the footage correctly. I cannot tell you in the run of a summer how much that would save—in time and in money.”

“Who gives a shit?” the little girl would say, sitting upright in her carriage. “I want to see Mommie.”

He would undo her shoes to straighten her stockings, and then, realizing that the Drukens were on the prowl, he would head straight to the walkway that skirted the cliff, with his child bouncing up and down in the squeaking carriage.

Sometimes he would take her to the baseball game, though he was not allowed to play. He would tell her baseball rules, how the ball could be hit at only a certain angle of the bat. Then, seeing the Drukens watching him, he would put her in the carriage and set out straight across the field and turn into the alleyway in back of the closed-up and cinder-smelling Regent Theatre, where Walter lived. They would go there for candy and gum and stay a half an hour or so.

“Why do you walk so funny?” Georgie would demand.

“God made me that way.” Walter would smile, thrusting a cigar into his mouth.

“Thank God God never made me that way,” she would yell.

And off they would go into Pleasant Street. Then he would take her home for lunch. He would make her a sandwich of cold meat and a salad. Then she wanted a game of checkers, “for everything.” Always she bet either the entire theatre or all their mother’s houses, or the well where it was said the gold was hidden by bandits.

“The theatre’s mine!” she would yell. “The well is too—you are left with none—you are left with none!”

He would put her into bed for her nap, promising to wake her at two. At two he would completely change her—new stockings, and another dress, an afternoon bonnet, a little purse, and brand-new purple gloves.

Today, this summer day in 1932, he was worried. They were going down to the cottage the next afternoon. That meant he would have to go to the circus today. If he did not go this day he would not go. And he promised little Georgina he would take her if she wouldn’t tell Janie that he had bought a mouth organ. She had not forgotten his promise. It was on her lips when she went to lie down, and on her lips when she woke.

“I didn’t tell about yer mouth organ—so take me to the circus.”

The problem was, he had overheard the Drukens saying they were going to the circus. He knew well enough not to go when they were there, for they had beaten him silly before.