Shadow of Ashland (Ashland, 1) (13 page)

With a twisted fork and knife in my hands, I stared at the rough metal plate.

Jack was eating. He caught me studying the food in front of me, sat back and watched. Then he said, "Never eat in one of these places before?"

I shook my head. "No."

He continued chewing, thinking. "You got no money, you'll get used to it."

There was little conversation anywhere about us. The sounds of metal against metal pervaded in its stead.

Everyone had the same meal: white beans boiled in water, two slices of dry bread, and a cup of tea.

I sampled the beans. They were almost completely tasteless. "Is it always the same food?"

Jack nodded as he ate. "Mostly." He swallowed. "Sometimes you get porridge in the morning. Not too often, though."

"Three times a day?"

"Twice. At ten and five."

The tea was bitter.

He smiled. "Once, though, local guy shot a bear. Donated it. Everybody had diarrhea for forty-eight hours." He shrugged. "Poor bloody bear," he said.

Two gaunt, sallow men sat at the same bench as us, shoveling the food into their mouths. Their clothes smelled like the notorious Saint Clair West area in Toronto—the area dominated by the Canada Packers meat processing plant. When they left, I met Jack's eyes. "They work in an abattoir or something?''

He shook his head, sipped his tea. "Least they were clean," he said. "I got some store-bought soap back at the hotel. Makes things nice. But I've done what they've done. Mixed pork fat, wood ashes, and salt. It makes a kind of soap. It works. But," he said, "it takes a lot of sun-baking to get the smell out of your clothes." He shrugged. "Sometimes you got no choice."

Around noon, we walked in the hot sun through the railway yards by the river. On the far side of the tracks, we stood high up over the Ohio—in the place where I had been by myself, in whatever other life that had been—looking down on the stony strand. Smoke drifted up through the leaves of a sycamore tree from three different campfires. A dozen or so men idled about.

"Ridin' the rods," he said. "Is that how you got here?"

I thought of the car that no longer existed. "No," I said. "Hitched."

He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. "You're lucky. Hard to get rides." The smoke drifted from his mouth and nose into the sunshine. "But maybe you're good at it. Some are better at it than others. Same as this." He nodded in the direction of the men below. "They say it takes about a thousand miles before you get real good at it. Get to know where the trains slow, get to know the whistles, the lights, the bells. Get to know a local from an express. Get your timing down, so's you can grab a moving ladder or jump at the right time when you want off."

We stood, squinting, watching them.

"Do the local police bother them?"

He looked at me, mildly surprised, then smiled. "Keep 'em moving, that's their motto. If they arrest them as vagrants, it costs a dollar a day to keep 'em." He stared down at them. "Even the police don't want 'em."

I watched the trail of the campfires' smoke, adrift in the afternoon haze. "What are they cooking?"

Jack shrugged. "Gophers, squirrels, possums. Whatever they can catch."

I was quiet.

"Maybe weeds or dandelions in a soup."

I didn't know what to say.

"Could be worse."

I looked at him.

"Could be a bear."

He grinned boyishly. But in his eyes I saw something I tried to put my finger on, something that eluded description.

I think it was sadness.

Later that afternoon we sat on the porch swing on the front veranda of the Scott Hotel.

"You're doing okay, though, aren't you, Jack? Got a job. Place to live. Why eat in the soup kitchens?"

He grimaced, bared his teeth, which were a startling white, while he reflected. Then he said: "I got nothing. Job barely keeps me alive. Eating there most of the time is a way of stayin' even." He paused. "I treat myself, sometimes. A meal. A hot dog from a restaurant. A movie. Cigarettes. But not much. Not too much." His eyes were crinkled at the corners from the glare, from thinking. From the truth.

I saw the Paramount marquee for
King Kong
again, and recalled the letter of September 30 that my father had read over the phone. "What's today's date?" I asked.

"It's the eighth."

"Of October."

He nodded.

I gestured toward the theater. "You seen that one yet?"
 

"Saw it the other night."
 

I fell quiet.

"Sad," he said. "The ape gets a raw deal."

"Margaret read me some of your letters."

He looked at me with a combination of bemusement and surprise.

"She thinks you're doing okay. Mentioned a car, clothes, job as a photographer with a Detroit firm."
 

He bowed his head, smiling meekly.
 

I watched him. "It's not true, is it?"

He looked me in the eye. "No," he said. The word was very soft.

I nodded, understanding.
 

We were both quiet for a long time.

"Some people still live real good," he said. "Bankers. Lawyers. The ones that feed on the rest. Inherited money. You know."

I put my hands in my pockets, leaned my head back and stared into the endless blue sky.

"But it's like a giant iceberg. Just the tip is showin'. Most of it's just gliding along, out of sight, massive." He paused. "Dangerous."

He said the last word carefully, nodding to himself, then lit a cigarette.

The screen door swung open and a young man of about thirty strode out. "Jack," he said. "How you doin'?" He put his hands on his hips.

Jack greeted him with a smile, a nod. "Good," he said.
 

The newcomer was about five-nine, strongly built, the arms showing from his T-shirt well muscled and tanned. His hair was sandy blond, slicked back straight. He glanced at me, his eyes narrowing.

Jack picked up the cue. "Leo." He touched my arm. "Like you to meet someone."

I stood up, staring inquisitively at the man.

"This is the man who owns the hotel—"

I saw who he was in that moment, the same moment that I heard his name.

"—Stanley Matusik."

I saw the lined toughness that was to come, the tufts of white hair that would be left, and as he extended his hand toward me, the future calluses on his eighty-year-old skin just beginning.

He squeezed my hand warmly. "Pleased to meet you."

"My pleasure," I managed to say, unable to take my eyes from him.

His hand, like his body, was strong. For in him, there was still hope, a world of infinite possibility.

There was still the future.

"Leo's from Toronto," said Jack.

Stanley's eyebrows rose. "Really?"

"Friend of my sister."

"You come down through Toledo?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, thinking. "I did."

He let go my hand. "Big trouble there earlier this year. You see any of it?"

"I heard about it. You keep your ears open, you hear about lots."

Stanley smiled. Then he turned to Jack. "Jack was there."

Jack didn't meet his gaze.

"Big eye-opener for him."

"I'll bet. Big eye-opener for everybody."

"Get him to tell you about it sometime."

I looked at Jack, who was still in his own thoughts. "I will," I said. "Sometime."

Jack looked at me, from far off.

"You workin', Leo?" Stanley Matusik asked.

"No," I said. "I'm not." I went with the simplest answer.

"Figures," he said.

We listened.

"Wasn't for Teresa's parents, we wouldn't have nothin' either. They set us up with this place. Cost them their restaurant last year." He paused. " 'Cause they're good people, they don't complain too much about it. Took care of their own. They say that's the best anyone can do in this life."

I let my eyes stray along the front wall of the building, recalling another conversation with Stanley, about how his in-laws had loaned them the down payment.

"Teresa works at Woolworth's."

He had told me this, of course, but with its retelling came the flash and memory of my own life, of Jeanne, of her touch.

"Makes eleven dollars a week. Rockefeller paid six million in tax alone. Somethin's definitely screwed up, wouldn't you say?"

It didn't need an answer.

"Willys plant in Toledo dropped from twenty-eight thousand workers to four thousand. Hung on for a while that way. Then went bust. Unemployment in Cincinnati's over twenty percent. And another twenty percent is employed only part- time. More'n a thousand homes a day in this country are bein' taken over by mortgage holders." He looked at me and half smiled. "I guess you could say that it all obsesses me." He nodded. "Yes, indeed," he said, "you could surely say that."

Jack spoke. "Tell him about your dad."

I glanced at him, saw my uncle's blue eyes sparkling with intensity.

It was a prompt that Stanley heeded. "Died in thirty-two. Tuberculosis. Was a coal miner, Harlan County. In thirty-one, he was asked to dig for thirty-three cents a ton, so like everybody else, he joined the union. Mine blacklisted all the men, and their own company doctor wouldn't treat the families. My little sister, age seven, died of pneumonia that year. My dad died the next. They drove the miners to starvation. Was as simple as that. My mom was a midwife. She saw forty-three babies die in her arms that winter. Hunger. Sickness. You name it. She told me one time that some of them died with their little stomachs literally bust open." His face had hardened. "So, yeah, I think it's fair to say that it all obsesses me." He inhaled and exhaled slowly, regaining composure. "Fair indeed."

I looked at Jack's face, saw the hypnotic effect the tale had on him, thought of his experience as strikebreaker in Toledo, felt him straddling that imaginary line, fists clenched, and saw him leaning now, with quiet passion, toward Stanley Matusik.

Stanley's eyes focused on the two men coming up the street. Then he looked at me. "Got some things to tend to." He shook my hand again. "Nice meetin' you, Leo." He looked at Jack. "If Jack thinks you're a good man, maybe we can talk some more. Some of us got plans, haven't we, Jack?"

"You bet."

Stanley looked at the sky. "Gonna rain next few days. Can feel it." His face wrinkled. "Not good. Not good at all."

I didn't understand why the rain was so bad. But I didn't ask.

I'd understand soon enough.

He put his hands on his hips. "Comin' across the Appalachians, from the east."

I heard the echo of Jeanne's voice.

He looked back at Jack. "All our troubles seem to come from the east." Then he smiled and looked at me. "Leo," he said. "Ashland's the last damn place somebody from Canada ought to be comin' to to better himself."

"You could be right" I said, having thought the same thing myself.

He looked at Jack again, twitched his head, smiling wryly. "But you never know, do you, buddy?''

"Never," said Jack. And he smiled that startling, white smile.

"Afternoon, Stan. Jack." The two men in overalls and work boots nodded abruptly to us, then proceeded inside the Scott Hotel. Jack and Stanley's eyes flicked momentarily to one another, then dropped.

A moment later, I found them studying me.

Through the screen door, I could hear the fading footsteps of the two men as they descended stairs into the basement.

Stanley broke the silence. "Gotta go." He reached out his hand again. "Nice meetin' you, Leo."

I shook it.

"Talk to you later, Jack." He looked at me. "Maybe you, too."

"Hope so," I said.

He turned and went inside, following the men downstairs.

I followed Jack into the Woolworth's on Winchester where Jeanne worked, the place new and shiny.

Jeanne wasn't there.

My eyes scanned glass jars of Baby Ruth bars, cookies, and stick candy as we strode through the aisles. A BB air rifle was
79¢.
A leather basketball, a dollar. And I stopped for a second to touch a baseball glove, with the ball, sold as a package for $1.25, thinking of Jeanne and Adam.

I saw silk ties for
55¢,
shirts for
47¢,
a pullover sweater for $1.95. Toothpaste was a quarter, a linen tablecloth a dollar. And cigarettes were 15¢.

We sat at the dinette counter, on the red-and-chrome swivel chairs, and I stared unabashedly at the sight of an achingly pretty young Teresa Matusik, who materialized suddenly amid the collage of signs and prices and soda treats arrayed behind her.