Back Bay (48 page)

The woman was eighty-five years old and confined to a wheelchair. She left her small apartment only to go to church on Sundays. She took her weekly pint from Jackie, paid for it, and gave him a dime tip. He delivered pints to four other shut-ins, then headed again for the Madison Hotel.

At the corner of Dover and Washington, he ran into Officer Carroll.

“Hiya,” said Jackie.

Carroll grabbed him by the sleeves, and Jackie smelled booze. Carroll was one of Sadie’s best customers. The policeman winked. “A word to the wise.”

Jackie winked back and was off again, moving more cautiously now that he knew the vice men were in the neighborhood.

Jackie went up the back stairs at the Madison to Room 315. He knocked on the door. It opened slowly and an old man peered out.

The bristles of hair on head and brow were white. The eyes were blue. The old man’s skin was yellow, like a Chinaman’s, but his broad, flat features made him look to Jackie like a nigger. “Come in, little Jack. Come in and sit down.”

Jack gave the old man the bottle and took his dollar. Then he stepped into the room. For a fleabag like the Madison it wasn’t a bad place, thought Jackie. The old man had a hotplate in the corner to cook on, a Murphy bed, an old stuffed chair that smelled like dirty underwear whenever the weather turned muggy, a table, and a straight-backed chair. The walls had recently been painted gray and were covered with framed engravings of battles, fires, presidential inaugurations, spectacles of all kinds. Corner windows looked east toward downtown, which was dominated by the twenty-five-story Custom House Tower, and north onto the elevated tracks, which ran right past the old man’s room.

Jack Ferguson had been delivering his mother’s bootleg to Phil Cawley for two years, and the old man had told Jack the story of his life, a life of adventure and excitement that filled Jack’s head with daydreams.

Phil Cawley recounted his early years in the California Gold Rush and his trip to Boston on a clipper ship. He told Jack about his stay in the servants’ quarters of a rich Pratt family and ten years in a tough trade school where they never gave him enough to eat and he had to fight kids much older than himself to survive. When he was sixteen and about to become an engraver’s apprentice, he headed out on his own, too impatient to wait for the small trust the Pratts had promised to give him when he learned a trade. He drifted from job to job for nearly ten years before the lure of another gold rush drew him to the Black Hills of South Dakota. He found no gold, but he learned the territory so well that he became a scout with the Seventh Cavalry. On the morning of June
25, 1876, he broke off with Reno’s support column, and two days later, he made the only eyewitness sketch of the Custer battlefield. He sold it to
Collier’s
, and for thirty years he was an engraver for American picture magazines. Then his eyesight failed and his work deteriorated. He returned to Boston and tried to collect his trust money and interest from the Pratts. They laughed at him and gave him a few hundred dollars to be rid of a nuisance. His life had never improved after that.

Phil Cawley was now eighty-three years old. He had never married, although he claimed to have a son living on a Sioux Indian reservation. He had no money, and was nearly blind. Little Jack Ferguson, who listened so attentively to his tales, was his only visitor.

The old man opened the window and took a bottle of lime juice and a few icicles from the sill. He put the ice and lime juice into a glass, then added a shot from the pint bottle. An alky split.

“I’d offer you some lime juice,” he croaked, “but without somethin’ cuttin’ it, it’s mighty bitter stuff.”

“That’s all right, Phil. My ma don’t like me eatin’ other people’s food, anyways. She says that, what with the Depression and all, people got trouble enough takin’ care of theirselves.”

“Damn straight.” The old man grunted and threw another piece of wood into his Franklin stove. “Sit down, Jackie. Take off your coat and visit awhile.”

“My ma don’t like me to stay out with all this money on me, but I guess I can stay for a little while.” Jackie sat down by the table at the north window.,

“Seein’ as how I’m always tellin’ you stories, I want you to tell me one.” He shuffled over to the bookcase, took down an ancient copy of
Kidnapped
, and placed it in front of Jack. “That book’s older ’n you. It’s almost as old as me. I’ve hung onto this one and a few others since I was a kid. If it wasn’t for stories, I guess there woulda been nights I’d like to go crazy, bein’ an orphan and all. I’m as lonely now, but I can’t see to read no more, and I sure would like to hear a little Robert Louis Stevenson again. You get good grades for readin’ in school?”

“I get good grades in just about everything.”

“Well, this here story’s a real corker.” Cawley sat in his easy chair and sipped his alky split.

Jackie Ferguson was honored. He considered Phil Cawley a great man. He cleared his throat and flipped to page one. Then he flipped back to the title page. “ ‘
Kidnapped
, by Robert Louis Stevenson.’ ” As he turned the page, he realized that he hadn’t read the bookplate on the inside cover. He turned back to it. “ ‘Ex Lib-ris.’ What does that mean?”

“It’s Latin for ‘from the books’—it’s like saying ‘my book.’ ”

“Ex Libris, Phil Cawley…. That fury stayed,/Quencht in a Boggy Syrt… Syrt…’ ” Jack gave up. “What does all this mean?”

Phil Cawley laughed softly to himself. “It means that Satan’s all around. He’s ready to steal our soul and our gold, and we’d best keep an eye out.”

“Oh.” Jack studied the quotation. He didn’t understand a word.

“But there’s more than that,” added Cawley. “Right there in them eight or nine lines, there’s a buried treasure story as good as any. My mama told it to me when I was a kid.”

And Philip Cawley told the story to Jackie Ferguson. It had come to Cawley thirdhand. His mother had heard it from his father, who had first overheard it as a child in his father’s study a hundred years before. Still, Cawley had enough of the facts to weave a yarn about a treasure chest sunk in the Back Bay. Contained in the chest, he explained, was a golden teapot shaped like an eagle, and it was worth thousands of dollars. He told Jack that many men had died trying to find the treasure, and he made up a gruesome story to prove his point.

“All that’s right on this bookplate thing?” Jackie was willing to believe whatever Phil Cawley told him.

“No. These lines are only part of the story. They tell about stolen gold in a bog, the golden teapot in the Back Bay. There’s other lines around tell exactly where the thing is.”

“Did you ever look for it?”

“Never had time. I was too busy livin’, too busy drinkin’, drawin’ pictures, chasin’ women. That’s all I did for almost sixty years, till I ran out of steam… and ran out of light. I never guessed my eyes would go. Now, I wish to hell I did look for that thing. Maybe I might’ve found it. Now, I wouldn’t be just another old man sittin’ around waitin’ to die.” He finished his alky split and made another as the elevated train screeched by the window.

Jackie didn’t hear the train. He didn’t hear the old man’s hopelessness. He didn’t hear the prostitute negotiating with a customer in the hallway or the wind driving snow against the windows. He was staring at the bookplate and dreaming about buried treasure. He would stay warm all afternoon just thinking about it.

“Lookit the tits on her.”

“Yeah. I wish’d she’d rub ’em all over my face, then sit on it.”

“Your face?” Jackie hadn’t heard of that before.

“Yeah. She sits on your face and you eat her.”

The woman wore a little starched crown, spike-heeled shoes, garter belt, fishnet stockings, and panties which she was about to remove.

“What do you eat?” asked Jackie.

Billy Rulick shrugged. “I don’t know. Her buns, I guess.”

The bare bulb next to the coalbin cast enormous shadows on the walls in Ferguson’s cellar. Jackie always played down here in winter because the furnace wasn’t insulated and the cellar was the warmest spot in the house. Jackie and his friend Billy Rulick had come down to the cellar to play checkers, or so they told Jackie’s mother. Billy had smuggled a copy of
Gentleman’s Fancy
into the house, and the boys were engrossed in “The Maid’s Afternoon Daydream.”

Jackie turned the page. His hands were sweating and he left fingerprints all over the maid’s left breast. In the next picture, the maid removed her panties, turned around and offered her ample rear end to her young admirers. A seam ran down the back of each stocking.

“Shit.” Jackie swallowed hard.

“You can practically see her cunt.”

The two boys studied the picture in silence, and Billy Rulick’s hand drifted slowly toward his crotch.

“King me,” whispered Sadie Ferguson.

Jack dropped the magazine.

“A fine game of checkers this is,” she said.

Billy grabbed the magazine and tried to shove it into his sweater.

“No you don’t.” Sadie took the magazine and threw it into the furnace. “Always good to have a little extra heat on cold days.”

“That was mine,” said Billy Rulick.

“I don’t allow things like that in my house,” said Sadie firmly. She was not as angry as she wanted the boys to believe.

Billy Rulick scowled at her. He was a handsome child, with black hair, brown eyes, and a perpetually serious expression. He had risked his life for that magazine. He had stolen three oranges from a pushcart in the North End, outrun the Italian grocer and his two sons, and traded the oranges to Teddy Sadowski for the magazine.

“I think it’s time you two boys went outside and got some exercise. Shovel our stoop, then go across the street and do Rulick’s.”

It had been snowing for three days. Jackie had already shoveled the stoop and sidewalk five times, but he was glad for a chance to escape his mother. He grabbed Billy by the sleeve and they headed for the cellar door.

By the time they had finished shoveling Rulick’s stoop, Ferguson’s was again covered in snow.

“The more you shovel, the more it snows,” said Jackie.

“Just like life, my boys.” Peter Rulick stood in the doorway. His enormous arms were folded across his chest and his shoulders almost touched the doorframe on either side of him. He had jet-black hair, a bushy moustache, and eyes that betrayed his mood at a glance. He wore a workshirt over his red union suit, and suspenders held up his heavy, woolen pants.

At the moment, his eyes were smiling. “Two fine young workers deserve a good meal.” He spoke with an East European accent.

“My ma don’t like me eatin’ at other people’s houses,” said Jackie, “what with the Depression and all.”

Peter Rulick knelt down next to Jackie. He seemed oblivious to the snow and cold. “In my country, when a man invites you into his home, it is an insult to ask if he can feed you. Billy’s mama has made beet soup, very fine beet soup. Too many potatoes, maybe, not so much beef as we would like, and milk instead of cream, but real beets.” Peter Rulick smiled. “And good friends to celebrate the birth of the great Washington.”

“I’ll ask my ma.” Jackie leaped off the stoop and ran across the street. He envied Billy Rulick. He hadn’t seen his own father in seven years.

That night, Jackie filled his belly with beet soup and black
bread. He was not the only dinner guest. Rulick’s four-room flat was always crowded. Billy had three younger brothers, and Peter Rulick had many hungry friends.

Jack sat between Billy and an Irishman with red hair, grease-stained hands, and the smell of rubber soaked into every pore. During most of dinner, Peter Rulick and Irish Red McDonough talked about the rubber factory where they both had worked until Peter Rulick was laid off.

“They tell me they lay me off because my work is not good and they have no more for me to do. But others still work, men who work slower, men who came later to the plant. They fire me because I want to help start the union. Because I say that workers have rights.” He pounded his fist on the table.

Anna Rulick frowned. She was a frail woman wearing a threadbare dress and two sweaters. “Too much noise, Peter. Your boys know you. Irish Red know you. But little Jack, he no guess why you punch the table.”

“Because, little Jack, it is not right that many good people should starve while others live off their labor. It is not right that Mrs. Sadowski upstairs should knock on our door and ask for one potato to feed her husband and three babies. One potato.”

“Now, even that is too much to give,” said Anna.

Peter nodded. “Now that I have no work, even that is too much. Soon, we will have no potatoes at all.”

“Well, Peter,” said Irish Red, “you knew right along they’d find a way to nail you when you agreed to be shop steward for a union that don’t even exist. They asked me, but I said no. I got a wife and kids to support.”

“But you’re with me now. You’ll be with me tonight.”

Irish Red shook his head. “And I’ll be regrettin’ it in the morning.”

“Where are you going tonight?” Anna Rulick had heard nothing of this.

“We are going to a great ball tonight, Anna. Me, Irish Red, and all the men who have been laid off in the last month at Pratt Rubber. We will make our voices heard.”

The color drained from Anna Rulick’s face. “There will be trouble.”

“There will be no trouble.”

“It will be bad.”

Peter put his hand on her arm. “We are peaceful men, Anna. We simply want a union.”

“Men who fight for unions in this country are called Reds, Communists,” said Anna. “You leave Lithuania because you hate Communists.”

“I hate Communists,” he said softly. “I hate hunger more.”

Artemus Pratt III always inspected his Back Bay house from bottom to top before the guests arrived for the Pratt Winter Ball.

He started in the kitchen, where the butler, the cooks, and eight servants were preparing the buffet supper that would be served at midnight. The Pratt Ball was one of the few on the social calendar that climaxed with a meal, and the Pratts always lavished great attention on the menu.

Great pans of Veal Orloff—sliced veal layered with mushroom duxelles and soubise of onions and rice, then heated in a light cheese sauce—covered every counter. Two hundred heads of lettuce, enough to make braised lettuce in herds for two hundred guests, awaited a vat of boiling water. Ice and bottles of white Bordeaux filled a barrel near the door, and a servant hurried in and out of the wine cellar with bottles of Burgundy for those who preferred red with their veal. At a counter, a maid cut lemons, hundreds of them, to accompany the caviar and, later, oysters on the half shell. Another maid sliced hard-boiled eggs and onions. A third sliced hearts of palm with which to garnish the goose-liver pâté. The chef and an assistant whisked away at the cheese sauce for the Veal Orloff. The butler John Holt swooped past Pratt with an armload of champagne bottles which he placed on the dumbwaiter and sent upstairs.