Loon Lake (19 page)

“And I was pretty grown-up now. I wouldn’t stay in school. I’d worked
for a while at the five-and-ten just to have something to do. But he was getting fancy now and he needed someone for the reception desk and to answer the phone who could talk right. So he asked me. So I thought, Why not? I mean when I was a kid I used to get it at school. That’s why I had no friends at St. Clare’s. They came around at Halloween with sheets on and rang the front bell. Clara Cadaver, Clara Cadaver. Well, shit, I only had boyfriends, anyway. I mean as a kid my friends were boys. I played street hockey.

“But anyway, I didn’t mind. I wore a black dress. I wore stockings and high-heeled shoes. I had an allowance for the beauty parlor. And that was my job. I got to meet some real people. It was an entrée, as they say. What’s that sound? The engine doesn’t sound right.”

“No,” I said, “it’s okay. Maybe I need a little oil.”

“It’s getting dark, anyway—where do you suppose we are?”

“Are you hungry?”

“A little.”

I had a terrible feeling, a chilled feeling because of her lineage, her criminal lineage, I thought of it as a caste, some kind of contamination she had been born into through no fault of her own and I thought it was mine now too; if I wanted her, what she was was mine too, what she brought with her we both had now.

But I was also happy that she had told me, that in the dreamlife of the road the hours sitting next to each other and facing in the same direction brought things out we might not have otherwise said. We told each other about our lives, we gave each other our lives while we looked at the road backward into ourselves. Even though afterward we didn’t remember what we said, or were too proud to admit we remembered.

“We lived across the river from each other, you realize that? We could have shouted at each other across the Hudson, two snot-nosed kids. Little did we know we were destined to meet! We saw the same Tom Mix movies. We ran along the sidewalks pointed to the sky at the same airships!”

“What?”

“No, really, playing hockey”—I wanted to make her smile—“don’t you
remember? Maybe our teams played each other. We made the puck from the end of the wooden cream-cheese box, right? We wrapped it in black tape, am I right?”

It seemed very important in this moment to make her smile.

“Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember the ‘I cash clothes’ man? On Twenty-ninth Street? The water wagon, running alongside it for the spray? Don’t you remember how we went to the candy store for ice cream?”

“What are you talking about?”

“No, really, Clara. One hot afternoon we bought Dixie cups and stood on the sidewalk in the sun with our wooden spoons. You remember. Licking the ice cream off Joan Crawford’s face?”

W
hen Clara fell asleep I put on my coat, closed the door quietly and went out to look around. In addition to everything else snow had hit this burg, a heavy wet fall that stuck to your eyelashes and got into your shoes.

The rooming house was highway robbery—twelve dollars a week, paid in advance. Restaurants came to another two, three dollars a day. If I took her to the movies, another forty, fifty cents.

I had even bought her a gold wedding band—for her protection, I said.

I hadn’t told her there was no money to get the valves reground. She thought we were in Jacksontown another day or two at the most. I could manage two day-coach fares to Chicago. But what would we do in Chicago—freeze our ass there?

And so, hunched in his khaki coat from the Great War, the big spender wandered through downtown Jacksontown, Indiana—Heart of the Hoosier Nation, as the sign said. Everything built of red brick, the bank, the library, the city hall, the armory. Stores occupied, the black cars parked at angles against the curbs, he notices the traffic, a heavy traffic rolling
quietly through the snow, the sky gray, heavy flakes like soundproofing tamping down the horns, muffling the engines, even the streetcars grinding along hushed in the flanges, sparks flaring in the dark afternoon, the dark turrets of the armory the dark green cannon on the lawn with the mantle of white snow.

I saw everywhere on every street jalopies of every description, valises and boxes strapped to their fenders, children and grandparents high in the rear seats, scarfs wrapped around their heads. I saw furniture covered with blankets tied with rope on the beds of broken-down trucks. I saw out-of-state license places: Kentucky Tennessee Georgia Arkansas Michigan Missouri.

I boarded the Railroad Street trolley to see what would happen. It banged its way sharply around corners and picked up speed. Soon it was out of the downtown area barreling between two endless rows of semiat-tached bungalows, block after block. Eventually it veered into a dark street, a canyon of the sides of buildings, moving slowly now, many men walking in the street, the bell clanged, an unbroken chain-link fence blurred my eyes, if I opened the window I could touch it.

Last stop the doors hissed open at the main gate. Here a crowd of men stood waiting to get in, a quiet intense crowd not orderly but silent. The snow came down. Even as I watched, the crowd grew pulsing like something underwater.

Behind the locked gates uniformed men stood chatting as if nothing was going on.

I looked up at the block-long sign across the tops of two buildings. BENNETT AUTOBODY NUMBER SIX was what it said.

That evening I took Clara to dinner at the Jacksontown Inn, the best restaurant in town. It had tablecloths, candles, black busboys, and the roast beef au jus went for two dollars and a half.

“I see in the paper where every state is covered with snow from here to the Rockies,” I said.

She eyed me warily. The true color of her hair beginning to come through, her hair was fluffier too, she had given up the beauty parlor
she believed they would ruin her if she had her hair done in the Midwest.

“Anyway,” I said, “I did a little exploring while you were having a nap. We could be in worse places. There are jobs here, people have money in their pockets, they’re shopping in the stores and going to the movies. They have three movie houses downtown.”

She cut her roast beef.

“And you want to hear something funny? The big employer and why everything is humming is your friend and mine Frankie W. Bennett. His Number Six plant.”

She put down her knife and fork, dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and sat there.

“Oh, Clara,” I said. “I’d be happy if I could just look at you across this table for the rest of my life.”

“That would be a lot of roast beef,” she said.

“You didn’t wear your gold ring!”

“I forgot.”

I ate and drank energetically. “Anyway,” I said, “as long as we’re stuck here—so long—as we’re here awhile—I thought I’d tap into old Frank—build up our cash reserve for the run to California.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, they’re hiring at the Number Six plant.”

“So?”

A sip of water from my cut-glass goblet. “I caught on there this afternoon. Nothing to it. I just gave them my shining innocent face. I mean there were these guys standing around with their toolboxes and employment records all wanting the same dumb unskilled jobs I put in for. No contest.”

“Why?”

“Because it was obvious I didn’t have a union background. They don’t want someone who’s a wiseass. They want the ones who don’t know any better.”

“Why did you do it?” she said.

“I thought I explained,” I said. “I thought I explained that.”

She didn’t say anything, we resumed dining. Occasionally she’d look up
and smile sweetly at me, in the silence there at the Jacksontown Inn the unarguable terror of things was driven home to me.

“I don’t see why you should get on your high horse,” I said. “Is it any worse than sleeping in his bed? Is it any worse than stealing his car?”

“I think I’ve got to leave now.” She stood.

“Do you mind if I pay the damn check?”

We walked through the snow back to the room. I grabbed her elbow, she shrugged me off. “Clara, for God’s sake, what is it I’ve done, after all? I got a job! A job! Is it a fucking crime to get a job? There’s no money! We’re here in the real world now, don’t you understand? There’s no money!”

In the room she started to pack. I willed myself to be calm, there were other roomers on the same floor, I didn’t need landlady trouble on top of everything else. “Clara, please don’t be like this. Please listen. All right, this is the worst shithole town in the frozenest fucking country there is. It’s so fucking cold I can’t believe how cold it is. And there’s no reason to stay here. Except that it’s Bennett’s! That’s why, Clara. That is the true reason why. Because I’m gonna work his line without his knowing and walk away from his machine with my wages in my pocket and he’s going to get us to California! That’s why.”

She was still.

“You hear me, Clara? Because it’s living right under his nose. That’s why. Because it’s the riskiest thing! It’s the toughest and most dangerous and the classiest thing. That’s why.”

She sat on the side of the bed. “And what am I supposed to do here all day while you work his line and make your classy wages? Huh, big boy? What am I supposed to do?”

My God, it was laughable, it was heartbreaking but at least she asked the question. Neither of us was twenty! We were children—who were we, what chance did we have? In her question was one half of an instant’s perceiving, dimly appreciated, of only the most obvious possibility of life comprising the history of mankind.

I sat on the side of the bed next to her, whispering in her ear, “You don’t realize what you’ve done to me. Me, the carney kid! You’re making an honest man of him, it’s horrible. I have all these godawful longings to
work to support you, to make a life with you, I want us to live together in one place, I don’t care where, I don’t care if it’s the North Pole, I’ll do any fucking thing to keep you in bonbons and French novels, Clara, and it’s all your fault.”

“Oh Jesus, he’s crazy, this boy is crazy.”

But I felt this weird tickle-behind-the-spine unprecedented truth of what I was saying. Before I said it I hadn’t known I felt it: we could change, we could make our lives however we wanted! And the steps Clara had taken to molldom and to the high forest of Loon Lake were dainty steps, steps avoiding the muck of her reality and mine. And this was where we truly belonged, not on the road but stationary, in one place, working it all out in the hard life.

“You got anything better to do?” I said.

She sighed. “That’s the crying shame of it.”

Data comprising life F. W. Bennett undergoing review.
Shown in two instances twenty-five years apart of labor
relations lacking compassion or flexible policy understanding
workers’ needs. His dramatization suggests life devoted almost
entirely to selfish accumulation of wealth and ritual use thereof
according to established patterns of utmost class. It is
alleged he patronizes unsavory elements of society for his
business gain. It is alleged that he is sexually exploitative.
It is suggested he is at least unmoved by the violent death
of another human attributable to his calculated negligence.

Countervailing data re his apparent generosity to
worthless poet scrounge and likely drunkard Warren Penfield.
A hint too of his pride in Lucinda Bailey Bennett’s aviation
achievements. A heart too for spunky
derelict kids.
Your register respectfully advises the need for additional
countervailing data. History suggests of the class of which Mr.
F. W. Bennett is a member no unalloyed spirit of evil the dimes
which John D. Rockefeller senior gave away compulsively to
people in the street became the multimillions of his sons’
philanthropies. Andrew Carnegie’s beneficence well attested,
as well as William Randolph Hearst’s Milk Fund for Babies.
And examination of the general practice of families of
immeasurable wealth in US suggests their generosity cannot
be explained entirely as self-serving public relations but
may be seen as manifesting anthropologically identified
principle of potlatch observed operating in primitive social
systems throughout the world from northern forest aboriginals
to unclad natives of tropical paradises. The principle
regardless of currency of benefaction breadfruit pigs palm
fronds or dollars is that wealth is accumulated so that
it can be given away thus bringing honor to the giver.
I refer to an American landscape from every region of which
rise hospitals universities libraries museums planetaria
parks think-tanks and other institutions for the public weal
all of which are the benefactions of the utmost class.
I cite achievements F. W. Bennett in his lifetime the original
endowments of the Western miners’ Black Lung Research Facility,
Denver, Colorado. The Gymnasium of Miss Morris’ School,
Briarcliff Manor NY, the Mexican Silver Workers’ Church of the
Holy St. Clare, Popxacetl Mexico, The Bennett Library on the
grounds of Jordan College, Rhinebeck NY, the Bennett
Engineering Institute, Albany NY, plus numerous ongoing
benefactions of worthy charities and researches plus innumerable
acts of charity to individuals never publicized.

I attribute to F. W. Bennett in his death a last will and
testament of such public generosity as to receive acknowledgment
on the front page of the New York
Times
data available
upon request.

——

Generally speaking a view of the available economic systems
that have been tested historically must acknowledge the immense
power of capitalism to generate living standards food housing
education the amenities to a degree unprecedented in human
civilization. The benefits of such a system while occasionally
random and unpredictable with periods of undeniable stress
1and misery depression starvation and degradation are
inevitably distributed to a greater and greater percentage
of the population. The periods of economic stability also
ensure a greater degree of popular political freedom
and among the industrial Western democracies today despite
occasional suppression of free speech quashing of dissent
corruption of public officials and despite the tendency of
legislation to serve the interests of the ruling business
oligarchy the poisoning of the air water the chemical adulteration
of food the obscene development of hideous weaponry the
increased costs of simple survival the waste of human resources
the ruin of cities the servitude of backward foreign populations
the standards of life under capitalism by any criterion are
far greater than under state socialism in whatever forms
it is found British Swedish Cuban Soviet or Chinese. Thus
the good that fierce advocacy of personal wealth accomplishes
in the historical run of things outweighs the bad. And while
we may not admire always the personal motives of our business
leaders we can appreciate the inevitable percolation of the
good life as it comes down through our native American soil.
You cannot observe the bounteous beauty of our country nor take
pleasure in its most ordinary institutions in peace and safety
without acknowledging the extraordinary achievement of
American civilization. There are no Japanese bandits lying
in wait on the Tokaidoways after all. Drive down the
turnpike past the pretty painted pipes of the oil refineries
and no one will hurt you.