Baker Towers (28 page)

Lucy giggled. “Her dress is going to fall down.”

“That’s the only way she’s going to win.”

It helped to have someone to watch with. Marcia was as unlikely to be Fire Queen as Lucy was. Both treated the whole thing as ridiculous, but Lucy wondered if Marcia secretly felt the same way she did. She would have done anything to be Fire Queen. Anything in the world.

The girls said good-bye on the sidewalk. Davis’s car idled at the curb; he was taking Marcia to see
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.
“Have a good time,” said Lucy, with something like longing, knowing that no boy would ever ask her to the drive-in.

A moment later, crossing the street, she heard a voice behind her—“Hey, Miss America! Wait up.” She turned to see Angelo Bernardi coming out of the hall.

“I thought that was you.” He fell into step beside her, a little out of breath. “We had the contest tonight. Where were you? I was saving my vote for you.”

Lucy flushed with pleasure. “Me? Oh, I don’t think so.”

“What, you don’t think you’re pretty enough? Trust me. That girl we gave it to, she couldn’t hold a candle next to you.”

Lucy smiled. It was enough that he’d said so. It didn’t need to be true.

“Who won?” she asked.

“Connie something. Pretty little blonde. Said she knows you from school.”

Two calamities competed for her attention: Connie Kukla winning Fire Queen. Angelo and Connie talking behind her back.

“You
talked
about me?”

“She said she went to St. Joe’s. I said I knew you.”

Lucy’s stomach lurched. She thought of Connie Kukla leading the parade in her pink dress, waving to the crowd with her saccharine smile.
No,
she thought.
It isn’t possible.

“But she’s only a junior,” she said. “They always pick a senior.”

Angelo shrugged. “She’s cute. The guys liked her. She looks like Sandra Dee.”

Lucy couldn’t speak. Hate bubbled up inside her, the grilled cheese she’d eaten at Keener’s turning sour and liquid in her stomach. Connie Kukla with her skinny legs, her perfect flip, her saddle shoes as tiny as a doll’s. She was as different from Lucy as any girl could possibly be. If Angelo thought she was cute, then he must find Lucy hideously ugly. She must be an absolute monster.

“Whatsa matter?” said Angelo. “You don’t look so good.”

It was the last thing she needed to hear.

“I have to go,” she said.

S
HE RAN THROUGH THE TOWN
, past the pool hall and the five-and-ten. On Baker Street, she heard hammering noises: men were building the concessions booths. In the lot behind the Quaker, carnival trucks were parked. A crew was assembling the Ferris wheel. Normally Lucy would have stopped to watch. Now anything to do with the festival—Connie’s festival—was repulsive to her.

She crossed the railroad tracks. The sun had set along the river; the windows of the dress factory glowed orange pink. Drums in the distance, the high school marching band practicing for the parade. Connie would be everywhere this week—inescapable, infectious, like a sneeze during flu season, spraying deadly germs. Her picture in the paper; then the street dance, the parade on Saturday night. By then Lucy would be dead from envy. It seemed impossible that she could survive that long.

She ran over the footbridge. Water bubbled deep beneath it, a hollow sound. A few cars were parked at the ball field. An occasional
thwack
in the distance, the brittle crack of bat and ball. The late summer evening hummed with bugs.

Lucy slowed. Her side ached; she had not run in a long time. She bent at the waist, gulping air. At the ball field a small crowd had gathered. Boys stood behind home plate drinking from cans. The other team was spread across the outfield, socks and sneakers glowing in the twilight. The white letters on their T-shirts spelled
REILLY TRUCKING
.

Dusk was falling; in half an hour the sky would be dark. Lucy shooed a mosquito away from her ear. She thought of her silent house: Dorothy holed up in her room. Joyce at the movies with Ed. The empty chair where her mother used to sit.

She climbed the bleachers and sat on the top row. She had never played at this park; girls’ games like dodgeball were not allowed. The ball field was reserved for the municipal leagues: Little League, Ponies, all boys.

“What are you doing here?”

She looked up. Steven Fleck stood on the bottom bleacher, a can of Iron City in his hand.

“Nothing. Just sitting.” For a moment she remembered what she was wearing: Bermuda shorts, a sleeveless blouse stained gray under the arms. She fumbled with a stray bra strap.

“We won tonight,” he said. “We beat Nicastro’s Tavern. I had three hits.”

“Congratulations.”

“There was a guy in the stands. I think he was a recruiter for Baker.”

“Really?” said Lucy. “How could you tell?”

He shrugged mysteriously. “Well, he could have been. There are three seniors on the team.” His older brother had been recruited right out of high school, he explained. He played third base and worked at the Number Eight tipple.

He sat down beside her. “Were you over at the fire hall?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Connie won.”

“Good for her. It’s a big deal, right?”

“Sure,” Lucy said miserably. She swatted at a mosquito. A giant welt was rising on her thigh, between her kneesock and the hem of her shorts.

“I figured. She’s been talking about it for months. Between you and me, I’m glad it’s finally over.” A soft hiss as he opened his beer. “What about you? You didn’t enter?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t interested.”

The words just sat there. She sounded like a bad actress on television.

“That’s not why,” she said. “I knew I wouldn’t win.”

“Why not? You’re pretty.”

He said it so easily, the thing he would say a thousand times in her memory. Each time Lucy would ask herself the same question:
Was he stupid, that Steven Fleck? Or was he just so sweet?

“Not like Connie,” she said, smiling a little.

“Well, no. You’re a different type.”

She waited for him to elaborate.

“Some girls aren’t pretty at all, and that’s too bad,” he mused. “But the rest are. Connie, and Clare Ann, and you, and so on. So in a way, from a boy’s perspective, one girl is just as good as another.”

He chewed thoughtfully at a thumbnail.

“That’s where it gets complicated. That’s where other things start to matter.”

“Like how nice a girl is?”

“Sure,” said Steven Fleck. “And—other things.”

Lucy nodded. These were questions she had long pondered, questions she would have asked years ago if she actually knew any boys. She understood that something remarkable was happening: Steven Fleck talking to her like this, the two of them sitting on the bleachers, night falling softly around them. An hour ago, eating sandwiches at Keener’s with Marcia Dickey, she never would have imagined it possible.

He had moved closer to her; their thighs were touching. When she looked up she saw the other boys were gone.

“It’s late,” she said. “I should go home.”

Steven Fleck stood and offered his hand. “I’ll walk with you.”

They didn’t walk far. Under the bleachers, grassy and damp, a place that hadn’t seen the sun. Trash around them: pop bottles, newspaper. A phone number was carved into the wood of the bleachers. The last two numbers were the same as hers.

“You’re tall,” he said when he kissed her. She didn’t ask if that was good or bad. She felt the raised letters on his back:
REILLY TRUCKING
. His mouth was wet and beery, somehow familiar. He tasted the way Angelo smelled.

Her hair was loose; she had lost her barrette. She held her breath when he unbuttoned her shirt. His mouth pulled gently at her breasts. Did he do this with Connie Kukla? She looked down at his bent head, his shiny hair, and thought,
Mine.

He put her hand on him, taught her the motion. It was like petting an
exotic animal: she was scared, then delighted, then a little bored. After a while his eyes closed. She wished he would kiss her some more.

Hand in hand they walked through the town. Her other hand was sticky, as though she’d been eating candy. He walked her to the bottom of Polish Hill, then stopped. He lived across town, he explained, and it was almost midnight. She walked the rest of the way alone.

T
hat week the
Herald
was full of news. The lead story on page one:
TOWN HOSTS FIREMEN’S FESTIVAL
. In smaller type, below the fold:
New Fire Queen Is Crowned.
On the social page:
Hauser, Miss Novak Announce Engagement.
A winter ceremony was planned.

It would be a small wedding, Joyce explained at the breakfast table. After five years, Ed was suddenly in a hurry. Fine by her: weddings were a waste of money, and she didn’t like a fuss. Still, she couldn’t imagine what had gotten into him.

She eyed the front page. There was a large photo of the Fire Queen and her court. The girl wore a satin sash and a rhinestone tiara. Joyce sighed.

“Fire Queen! That poor child. It’s disgraceful, making those young girls parade themselves in front of the whole town. And those cavemen gawking and cheering. They’re grown men, for heaven’s sake. It ought to be illegal.”

Dorothy rose and poured more coffee. She saw no point in defending
the cavemen. It was a Friday morning. In a few hours Angelo would arrive.

“I suppose the girls don’t know any better, but what are their parents thinking?” Joyce folded the paper and tossed it into the trash. “Someone should put a stop to it.”

For once Lucy might have agreed with her, but she wasn’t listening. She stared out the window, lost in thought. Beneath her elbow was the sports page. Reilly Trucking had won its final game, the top-ranked team in the Pony League. Lucy wondered if Connie Kukla had cheered from the bleachers. She wondered if Steven Fleck had scored.

I
n November, elections were held. Joyce and Ed’s efforts paid off: a record number of voters came to the polls. Nationally, it was a close race; in Saxon County, a landslide. Levers were pulled at the VFW, at Bakerton High School, at the Grange hall in Fallentree. Down Susquehanna Avenue and halfway around the block, voters waited in line to elect the first Catholic president.

A week later, Gene Stusick was voted president of the local. He’d spent election day at the Legion with his son Leonard, handing out hundreds of mimeographs.

At the Baker offices on Indian Hill, the company lawyers prepared for a fight.

J
UST AFTER
C
HRISTMAS
, in the middle of a snowstorm, Joyce and Ed Hauser were married. The altar at St. Casimir’s was laden with
poinsettias. Georgie drove in alone from Philadelphia to give the bride away. Sandy had promised to come, but begged off with a late phone call, claiming his flight was grounded. He was living in Los Angeles, a fact the family had learned secondhand, from Dick Devlin’s brother. His Cleveland number, when they tried it, had been disconnected. They hadn’t heard from him in months.

A reception was held in the church hall. Most of Polish Hill attended, plus the bride’s Italian cousins, the groom’s few relatives and his colleagues from the high school. Without Sandy to insist upon it, nobody danced in a trough. His absence from the reception was remarked upon.

“North Hollywood, California,” Joyce said when anyone asked.

“My goodness,” said Evelyn Stusick.

Ted Poblocki grinned broadly. “That figures, don’t it?”

Joyce never lied, but it was her wedding day; she permitted herself this one dance with the truth. Her whole life she had been convinced of Sandy’s specialness, the unique promise that he, growing older, had failed to demonstrate in any tangible way. She’d worried for years what would become of him, watched with dismay as he wandered from job to job: salesman, bartender, taxicab driver. She only wanted the neighbors to think well of him, and now they did.

California.

She never claimed he was a movie actor. Nobody could say she’d lied on purpose. She had simply told them where he lived.

J
ust before Christmastime, Gene Stusick presented a new contract to Baker. Free eyeglasses for miners and their families. New washhouses at the Three and the Nine. A modest cost-of-living raise for all.

Baker Brothers communicated its displeasure. As Gene had predicted, the company had tapped its reserve lands north of the Twelve. New hires, new equipment: Baker had overextended itself. The new agreement was the best they could do.

The old contract ran out on December 31. Late that afternoon Gene called an emergency meeting of the local. The men sat at long tables at the American Legion. The room was already decorated for the evening’s festivities. A plastic banner hung across one wall:
RING IN
1963
WITH IRON CITY BEER
. Gene stood before it, hair still wet from his after-work shower. His glasses were mended with electrical tape. On the table beside him was an old-fashioned dinner bucket.

“The same old contract,” said Gene.

A murmur of assent, nods of agreement.

“Baker’s got money for everything else,” he pointed out, raising his voice over the din. Just recently the company had bought a new longwall machine and shipped it over from England, at the outrageous price of a hundred thousand dollars. It was as if management thought they could mine the coal themselves.

He opened the dinner bucket. “Let’s show them how well that longwall works with no one down there to run it.”

He withdrew a thermos bottle, unscrewed its cap, and poured its contents onto the floor.

I
T WORKED
, he told Ev later that night. She’d discouraged him from dumping the bucket—he wasn’t going to make any friends over at the Legion, dirtying their floor on New Year’s Eve. Gene had decided otherwise. Dumping the bucket was as old as the union itself, the way a miner of his father’s generation would have started a walkout. The act wasn’t just symbolic: a man underground without a supply of drinking water was taking his life in his hands. Dumping Coca-Cola on the floor of the Legion was pure showmanship, Gene knew; but the gesture had served its purpose.