Read Sugar House (9780991192519) Online
Authors: Jean Scheffler
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Sugar House (9780991192519) (43 page)
"Thank you for helping me, Father," he said.
"I promise to make you proud, too."
"I know you'll keep your promise Joe—just as
I have. Your Ojciec came to me the day he left for the army and
asked if I'd watch over you if something happened to him. I believe
I've fulfilled that promise tonight, as I know you will fulfill
yours to form a new life for yourself and be good in your faith to
God. Take care, Joe," he said, as the train began to pull away from
the station. "I'll be praying for you."
Joe waved, boarded the train, and found a
seat. He looked out the window and felt the first sense of peace
he'd had in years. His shoulders relaxed, and he took what felt
like his first deep breath in months. He smiled softly to himself
and whispered, "Thank you, Ojciec. I love you too."
Joe sat looking out over the blue water of Cranberry
Lake and cast his line thirty feet from the boat. Cappie's boat was
old, but he was too sentimental to buy another. Though his hair was
white, his blue eyes still held their fantastic hue as he looked at
the cottages that dotted the lakeshore, perched on small rises.
Their appearance was similar to the homes that fronted Keweenaw Bay
in the Upper Peninsula, where he'd spent five years at the Sacred
Heart parish before returning to Detroit. Father Gatowski had been
right to have faith in him. Joe found God again.
Joe worked hard fixing up the old church and
rectory. He replaced the worn floor of the church board by board,
fixed leaky pipes, rewired the electricity, and did any other job
that needed to be done. He taught himself these new skills by trial
and error as he approached each new task. Father Luke had been
welcoming and asked no questions of Joe. It wasn't till a couple of
years later that Joe approached Father Luke in the confessional and
bared his soul. He waited till he felt he'd proven his worth for
what God had provided to him and saved him from.
He didn't socialize with the people of the
parish, for fear one would recognize him from his days there as a
boy, but he needn't have worried. Most if not all of the people who
would have remembered Joe had left by then, and if any remained
they had their own troubles to contend with and didn't ponder the
quiet, handsome man who had shown up suddenly one autumn
morning.
During the drive to the train station, Joe
had told Father Gatowski where he'd hidden his nest egg and had
asked him to give it to his mother as he boarded the train. He'd
wanted to give some to the church but worried his family would not
have enough to survive on. Instead he deeded the fishing property
to St. Josaphat, and Father Gatowski housed several homeless
families there during the Depression. After Prohibition ended
Father Gatowski had written to him letting him know that it was
safe to return to the city. The Purples had self-destructed after
Ray, Harry, and Milberg were convicted of committing the
Collingwood Manor Massacre and were sentenced to life in federal
prison. The woman who had put the milk bottle on the porch of the
apartment turned out in the end to be his redeemer. She'd told
police that before she heard the volley of bullets on the second
floor she'd seen a blond man going down the stairwell, thereby
clearing him of the murders. The city was awash in so much crime
and poverty that the police had much more pressing circumstances on
their hands; they closed the case of the getaway driver.
Uncle Alexy, rehired at the end of the
Depression, secured Joe a position at the Ford plant when he
returned to Detroit from Sacred Heart, and he moved back in with
his mother. Frank and Stephan also worked at Ford, but Frank had
married and moved out of the house. Joe and Stephan financed a new
home in the suburbs of Detroit and moved their mother out of the
city. They traveled together to work and back until Stephan also
met a lovely Polish girl and settled down. Joe dated sporadically
but focused his spare time on his work with the newly formed U.A.W.
and volunteering at St. Josaphat. Father Gatowski passed on shortly
after Joe returned to Detroit, and Joe was able to attend the
massive funeral held in his honor.
In 1937, Joe protested Ford's fight against
the union with hundreds of others on an overpass near the River
Rouge Plant. He was severely beaten by one of Ford's henchman, and
a photographer who caught it on film published it in the
Detroit
News
. Thinking he'd lost his job for protesting against his
employer so publicly, he went to work the next day only to get his
pink slip. The public was so outraged at the photographs in the
papers that Ford had to issue an apology (of sorts), and Joe was
able to keep his position.
When the Second World War began on that
infamous December 7, 1941, Joe went with thousands of others to the
recruiting office to enlist. He was turned away due to the loss of
his lung and was bitterly disappointed he could not follow in his
father's footsteps by fighting for his country. He later learned
his childhood friend Sam had perished fighting for his country.
When Ford announced they were to cease building cars to help in the
war effort and would build an airplane factory in Ypsilanti, just
west of Detroit, Joe was one of the first line workers to request a
transfer.
He was given the position of foreman at the
Willow Run plant and was assigned to supervise the hundreds of
women that were hired to build the airplanes. True Rosie the
Riveters, they were a loud, spunky, hard-working group of women,
and he had his hands full most days. Joe started dating a little
brunette that worked on his line and tried to keep it under
management's radar, as fraternizing with the line workers was
forbidden. The white-collar bosses never noticed; but a tall,
blonde beauty who worked down the line from Joe did.
Suddenly the little brunette began to refuse
any offers of a date with Joe, and he found himself in the arms of
the lovely blonde Polish girl. It wasn't till years later that he
found out the woman who was to become his wife had let the brunette
know under no uncertain terms that Joe was to be hers.
Blanche loved to fish. Joe would take her out
on Saturdays in Cappie's boat, and they would troll the Detroit
River and Lake Erie for hours, fishing and talking. They married in
St. Josaphat's before the war ended and moved into a house down the
street from Joe's mother. They had two boys and a little girl and
sent them to Catholic school as Joe had been sent. His friends from
work would laugh when they visited for backyard barbeques when they
saw the picture of Clara Bow that hung in his small hallway, saying
they didn't believe Joe had ever met the "It" girl. Ty Cobb's
signature remained hidden on the back of the photograph. One day he
planned to give it to his youngest son, who loved baseball as much
as he did. He'd lived a good life and he hoped he had atoned for
his sins in the eyes of God.
The sound of children laughing and splashing
in the shallow water nearby shook Joe out of his memories, and he
pulled in the empty hook. He looked over at the small cottage he
had bought after he'd retired and saw his nine granddaughters
playing and swimming together near the dock. One screamed shrilly
and jumped off the wooden dock out as far as she could leap. "Did
you see that, Grandpa?" she called, as he neared the dock, her
blonde hair shining in the sun. "I almost touched heaven!"
"Yes, I think you did," he replied.
[1]
Published in 1902, music by George Evans;
lyrics by Ren Shields.
[2]
Lyrics by Maceo Pinkard, 1919. Public
domain.