The Big Both Ways (5 page)

And the old man spread a canvas tarp over the opened lid so that it draped down like a lean-to.

The coffin was lined with a lurid red fabric that was surprisingly soft. The strangeness was in climbing in. But once in he felt tired and at ease … at least as long as the lid stayed open. The sounds of the hobo encampment crept under the tarp. The voices of parents calling their children in blended with the thudding of feet padding on the mud. Chickens clucked and occasionally a dog would bark. Somewhere men were playing cards and cursing their luck, and somewhere a teapot was shrieking its contents into the air.

Slip was tired. The world was strange to him now as he settled into the coffin for the night. He wondered if meeting Ellie Hobbes had somehow slipped his life off the tracks and into this waking hallucination that his life had become.

In the morning he was damp with the rainwater sluiced into his coffin around one corner of the tarp. He unfolded himself from the box, stretched, tucked in his shirt, and went to get a shave. Walking up the hill to the barbershop on Cherry Street, he felt that was as good as any place to start.

“Good Lord, Almighty!” Andy stopped sweeping and stared.

“Hey, Andy,” Slip said.

“You look like hell,” Andy said, and he set the broom in the corner then gestured to the only barber’s chair in the place.

“Well, I got robbed of my stake money and spent the night in a coffin.” Slip flopped down in the chair and pushed himself back with a groan. “So, I figure, I’ve looked better.”

“Not since I’ve known you, you ain’t looked better.” Andy set down his broom and smiled.

Slip and Andy had been running buddies. They had blown into the Seattle train yards together. They had both quit the dam job at the same time and had ridden all night shivering on the outside of a tanker car through the Cascades where the snow spit down on them like nails. They had been wet and shivering by the time they stumbled up to the little jungle camp along the river by White Center. Andy decided to ask his uncle for a job, and Slip thumbed it north to the Skagit. Slip and Andy had been a couple of the lucky ones. They had found work. Although Slip wasn’t feeling particularly lucky anymore.

“Where’s your uncle?” Slip asked.

“Up and died. Can you believe it? I’m working for Aunt Ruth now. She says I’m a part owner, but I don’t see how I’m owning anything. It’s more like I’m working for her.”

Andy gently soaped up Slip’s face. “Lord love a duck, how’d you get so beat up?”

“I ain’t been beat up. I’ve just been logging.” Slip kept his eyes closed as he spoke.

“Same difference,” Andy said. He scraped up Slip’s throat.

“You ever hear of a gal named Ellie Hobbes?” Slip asked, his lips making bubbles in the lather.

“Hobbes … I don’t know her, but I’ve seen her. She’s a Red, pal.”

“The hell you say.”

“I’m telling you the truth, son. You ain’t mixed up with her are you? That’s a good way to get your skull cracked.”

“She’s not a skull cracker is she?”

“Naw. Not her, she’s a honey trap. But those who come around her end up with their skulls cracked.”

“Who does the cracking?” Slip asked.

“Floodwater. They get paid to clean the Reds out of town. They don’t give a goddamn if you’re a Red or not. They see you hanging around a meeting hall or catch you with some pamphlets, they’ll split your head open for sure.”

“They got a tall one with a fancy hat?” Slip asked, thinking of the antsy man at the rundown house with the crying babies.

“Hell, son, they’re all big. Ben Avery’s the one you got to watch out for. He’s killed his share of hoboes he thought was Reds. Killed ’em and let them die in the weeds.”

“You’re making this up now.” Slip closed his eyes and breathed in the mint-scented soap. He relaxed under the touch of the razor, easing into what could only be a preposterous barber’s lie.

“The hell I am,” Andy said, as he wiped the soap on the towel draped over his shoulder. “You get mixed up with Avery?”

“I don’t know. Got mixed up with Ellie Hobbes, though. That’s for certain.”

“Ah, criminy,” Andy said. “I’d just blow town right now. You can’t handle Ben Avery’s kind of trouble.”

“I tell you, Andy, I just got the wrong ride.”

“I can believe that.”

“I’d love to blow town but she’s got all my money for the farm. She’s got everything I’ve ever saved.”

Andy nodded, wiping the razor with a towel. “You didn’t give it to her, did you? ’Cause I’m just saying that was one stupid …”

“No, she took it.”

“Strong-armed you, did she?” Andy was smiling as he lifted the tip of Slip’s nose and moved the razor to his lip.

“I got an address and a time for a meeting. I’ve got some paper
she wants. I got a gun. You want to come with me to the meeting and get the money? We can grab it and be up over the mountains before sunup.”

“I ain’t going to no Red meeting. I don’t care about the oppressed masses. I’m hoping to be a proud member of the ruling class if my aunt ever signs this shop over to me.”

“So you’re not throwing in with me?” Slip asked, not really surprised but disappointed nonetheless.

“Look at me, partner. I’m a business owner. I got soft hands now and a taste for the good life. I am not going to milk some pig on the east side.” He chuckled and gestured around his shop—the one broken barber’s chair, the sink, a coal stove, a few soft chairs for waiting customers, and a small cracked mirror—as if it were a newly discovered paradise.

Slip tried halfheartedly to change his friend’s mind, but didn’t have the energy to see it through. He promised he would see him again before he left town, and Andy shook his hand. Slip tried to pay for the shave but Andy waved him off, and Slippery stepped out into the new Seattle morning. There was a breeze coming from the north with streaky clouds in a gray sky and across the Sound he could see whitecaps dotting the water.

He walked the waterfront for most of the day, trying to decide what to do. He had to go and get his money. But he knew that he was stepping into a hornet’s nest if he did. There was no good luck coming from this. He held the revolver in his pocket and thought of throwing it off a wharf but he didn’t. It might come in useful if someone tried to crack his skull, though he had never fired a pistol and wasn’t sure he could, even in anger.

Around sunset he bought a glass of beer and helped himself to two free sandwiches on the back sideboard of a crowded bar. They were gray roast beef and mustard on stiff white bread. He started back for a third but the Irish bartender with a mustache like John L. Sullivan’s gave him the thumb and told him to beat it.

Slip walked around looking for the meetinghouse for at least
an hour. He ended up at the same sagging house he had visited the day before. But now there were six guys hanging out on the corner. The evening was cooling down with a damp breeze blowing through. The men were shuffling from one foot to the other while sharing a bag of tobacco. A couple of them had newspapers stuffed inside their suit coats for insulation. The house looked like it had once been a storefront. The big front window had been filled in with smaller window frames but none of the windows matched up. The whole place sagged a little like a rotten jack-o’-lantern.

“I’m here for the meeting,” Slip said, nodding to them. One of the men offered him a smoke but he declined. The men said nothing. They didn’t exchange names but kept stamping their feet, trying to avoid each other’s stare.

Finally a nervous young man came walking up the sidewalk. He was tiny with a wiry build. He walked quickly, lifting his knees as if the pavement were red hot.

“Sorry to be late,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I’ll let us in. I’ll put some coffee on, then maybe I’ll find some sinkers to go with it.” He lunged up the front steps, unlocked the door, and went inside.

There were maybe ten chairs set up in the living room all facing the same direction. There was a piano and a birdcage, and sitting on the couch next to the window was Ellie. The red blotches on her face had darkened into purple bruises.

Slip walked directly over to her.

“Hello,” she said, “it’s good to see you.” And she smiled in a way that momentarily made him forget that he was angry with her.

Slip was about to start talking to her when the young man came in with a plate of doughnuts and the men all pushed toward them. The tiny man stepped back as the bums rushed in around him, and he disappeared behind their shoulders.

“Got more of these,” he said in his same raspy tenor. “I’ll bring them out when the coffee is ready.” The men shoved the doughnuts into their mouths. Some of them had faces sunken in by
hunger. None of them had shaved that morning and none of them looked at any of the flyers laid on the chairs.

Ellie was turned in her chair and looking out the window to the street.

“Listen,” Slip said to her, “I want my money back.”

“All right,” she said softly, “but the meeting is about to start.”

“I’m not staying for no meeting,” Slip said, looking around.

Ellie pulled him down into a chair. “Just sit here for a bit. I’m sorry I took your money. I will give it back to you, I promise. I needed you to come here. You’ve got the other paper I gave you?”

He nodded his head, and she patted him on the leg, stood up, and walked up to the front of the room.

The men ate as if someone were going to steal the doughnuts from their mouths.

“We’ll have some coffee in a little bit,” she said softly, flexing her fingers back and forth into a fist. The men looked down at their hands in their laps. One or two looked at Ellie.

She smiled silently until all the men looked up at her beautiful wrecked face. One old man let out a low whistle. No one else made a sound. Her dull blue eyes began to awaken, as if she had just taken a breath of mountain air.

“Gentlemen,” she started nervously, “I’m not here to sell you anything. You don’t have to believe a word I have to say and I’m not going to ask you for any donations. If all you get out of this evening are some doughnuts and coffee, then that’s fine with me.”

Ellie walked back and forth in front of the hungry men. As she walked, she played with her hair nervously. She smoothed the fabric of her clean blue dress down her legs, not looking at any of them.

“Now, you don’t know me,” she said and then stopped, staring each of them in the eyes. “But I figure that I’d like to get to know you,” and she smiled sweetly.

“Fine with me,” a man to the left of Slip called out.

Ellie smiled with as much coy charm as her bottle-blonde hair and bruised face would allow and she didn’t speak for another long moment. The hinges of the folding chairs squeaked and someone cleared his throat.

Then she looked up at them. “You boys want beefsteaks?” Everyone smiled, and one man with broken-down leather shoes rubbed his hands together and licked his cracked lips. “Well, I can’t afford beefsteak for you boys. I can’t afford these doughnuts. I stole ’em in the first place.”

“Somebody call the cops!” someone yelled, and everyone laughed.

“That’s right,” she said, “call the cops. But before they get here, let me ask you something. You boys like this life we got here for ourselves?”

Then she stopped and looked at the men shifting in their chairs, her blue eyes burning so hard inside that purple mask that no one wanted to look up at her. “Now come on. It’s easy. Are you happy with what you have now? Do any of you have a house to go home to? Do your kids have plenty to eat?”

“Yeah, sure,” a guy next to her grumbled, “and an ocean liner to keep it all on.”

“Well, what’s the matter?” she said, pushing up her sleeves and pacing in front of the room. “I was just looking around and there’s lots of people who have plenty of everything. I’ve been peeking in the windows of those big brick buildings up on Queen Anne and Capitol Hill. I’ve been up in the neighborhoods looking out on the lake, and everybody out there’s got tables just heaped with food. What’s wrong with you men? Are you lazy?”

“Lazy …” somebody grumbled.

“ ’Cause that’s what they say. They say you don’t want to work.”

“Course we want to work,” the grumbler said out loud, and he looked up directly at the woman for the first time.

“Then you must be picky about what kind of jobs you’d be willing to take.”

“Phooey,” the grumbler said, and began to stand up.

“But I think there’s probably a better explanation. Because I’ve also been snooping around the docks today, and I’ve seen the foremen getting bribes to put their friends to work. I’ve seen men working all day long for no more money than one decent meal for himself alone.” The grumbler sat back down. “Yes I’ve been snooping. How else do you think I got this,” and she gestured vaguely toward her face, “this nice eye makeup. How’d you think I come by this? I’m a woman. I’m naturally curious.”

A laugh went around the room. “I have seen men getting hurt or killed every day and not one thing done for their family except maybe a smoked ham from the front office … and a card from the boss that his secretary signed.”

She stopped and looked straight at them, “I know you don’t believe this. But I believe in you, men. I believe in you.”