Red Baker (4 page)

“Excuse me, Rourke. I’m getting back in line,” Dog said politely.

Rourke’s head swiveled around like a periscope. “Your place in line is back there, Donahue,” Rourke said, pointing to the unseeable rear.

Dog looked at me and smiled, nodding his head back and forth, holding the coffee and donuts tray in his two flame-red hands.

“Hey, Rourke,” Dog said, smiling politely and putting the cardboard tray down on the corner of the desk, which made Miss Motown’s deep-penciled eyebrows raise almost up to her lacquered hair.

“You know what, I think I saw your ass in the back of the line. Maybe you oughta go back there and screw it back on your neck.”

Rourke waited a second, as if to sort all of that out, and then nodded slowly, as if he’d almost caught up with it.

“You want some trouble, Donahue? Is that it?”

“I’m sorry, Rourke,” Dog said. “I had it all wrong. I thought your ass was back there when it’s right here on your shoulders.”

“Dog,” I said, trying to play peacemaker.

But I was a lifetime late.

Rourke reached forward, grabbed Dog by the lapels, and picked him straight off the ground. Dog looked shocked, like he’d seen a miracle. He goes two twenty in the winter, and nobody I ever recall had budged him. When he went up his hands flew out, upsetting the snack tray, which flew up in the air, the brown, steaming coffee flying all over Miss Motown, who gave out with a bloody scream. Her little opera was short-lived, however, because when she saw Dog kick Rourke squarely in the nuts with his dangling knee, she threw her hand over her mouth in horror. Rourke doubled over like a manikin, and Dog gave him a good chop on the back of the neck, which put him flat out on the wet green tile.

Rourke didn’t move, so I bent down to see how he was breathing. I turned him over and saw a mean red bump rising on his forehead.

“Hey, Al,” I said. “Al, you all right?”

He moaned a little and opened his eyes.

I looked up at Dog, who was still pumped up, his eyes wide open, his teeth clenched tight.

“Hell,” Dog said, shaking his head. “Hell …”

But now Miss Motown had come to her senses. She slid out from behind her desk, coffee dripping down her face, and she started flinging her arms out in an umpire’s “safe” sign.

“No way,” she yelled. “No way! You are out of here, mister. There’s no way this kind of violence is allowable.”

“Hey,” Dog said, really sounding sorry. “I didn’t start it, I just—”

But she shook her head, put one hand on her hip, and pointed the other at the door.

“Out, out, out,” she yelled.

“Okay, okay,” Dog said.

“Hell, I’ll go with you, Doggie.”

But the Dog smiled and shook his head, putting his hands on my shoulders.

“No, Red. You’re almost through. I’ll meet you over in the mall bar.”

“Hey, I don’t need this shit,” I said.

“Nah, you got to go through. It’s all right. You stay around and tell Al I’m sorry. I shouldn’ta kicked him so hard. Just lost my mind.”

I looked down at Rourke, who was groaning and picking himself off the tile. He looked younger and sweeter waking up.

“Hang in there,” Dog said. “You hear something for me, let me know later.”

“Okay,” I said. “Take it easy, Dog.”

I watched as Dog left, some of the men slamming him on the back and pointing down at Rourke, who was not one of your most popular people at the mill.

It was two more hours in the left line before a man with a face like an Indian wood carving gave me restful green-colored cards on which I had to print the names and addresses of two places I’d applied every week. This same helpful jerkoff then came up with his “listings” (as he called them), all the exciting new career moves an out-of-work rougher could hope for. Wonderful jobs like Deliverer of Telephone Books and Car Wash Technician, both of which paid one hundred dollars a month less than unemployment benefits.

Technically he could have turned me down for any benefits for refusing to go out on those jobs, but he looked about as whipped as I felt.

His eyelids hung down over his face like two broken blinds in a Baltimore Street flophouse, and he had breath that smelled like the wake of old cruise tugs down the Chesapeake.

“There is one job that might open up,” he said, running his soft white hands up and down his black rooster tie. “Be a couple of weeks.”

“Where’s ‘at?”

“Harborplace.”

“Harborplace,” I said. “That’s where my wife works. What kind of job?”

He looked down at his desk and ran his hand across his thin white lips.

“That would be in your maintenance field,” he said.

“The maintenance field. You talking janitor work? Trash collecting?”

“Well, some of that. It’s a part of the special task force the mayor has instituted. The Baltimore Full Employment Brigade. Kind of like the old CCC camps. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I got the picture. Let me try and paint it for you. My wife is working as a waitress in Weaver’s Crab House, and she looks out the window and sees me, her husband, bagging trash, crab claws, and french fries people have thrown out. Picking up candy wrappers and ice cream sticks. You think I’m going to be able to hack that?”

Red Baker, Garbage Guy.

“Well, Mr. Baker, it’s only temporary, and it pays two hundred a week.”

“That’s terrific,” I said. “Is that it? That’s all you got?”

“Mr. Baker, I wish there was something else. These are hard times. I’m sure your wife would understand.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Call me when it comes up.”

This got a great big smile out of him. I half expected him to come out from behind the desk and give me a merit badge.

I turned around as he wrote a number on his card, and I looked at the two or three hundred other guys waiting in line for this exact same shit. Suddenly I wanted to pull a Henry and just rhino the hall. Sweat poured down my forehead like I’d just been walking in a hot summer rain. My ears felt as though they were flaming.

Nigger work for Red. Thirty-nine years old, working as a trash man.

A scream started inside of me, and I walked out of there, past the lines of huddled-up, dead-eyed guys. I walked out fast, hardly even speaking to men I knew.

Across the street I found the new mall bar. It was called the Angry Oyster and had a picture of a little demon oyster popping out of a shell with a rough-and-ready look on his face. The new Baltimore.

Inside the place was built like a schooner, with portholes and fake teakwood and waitresses pushing fifty done up in pirate miniskirts, black patches over their eyes, and rags wrapped round their heads. I looked at their varicose-veined legs and thought of Wanda and of myself, old sailors rotting away down on Pier One.

I knew that was horseshit, I was giving into cheap country music corn, but I felt like I’d been bludgeoned, hit with a belaying pin, and I staggered through the hanging plants until I found Dog in the corner, his head down on his arms and empty shot glasses surrounding him like fake jewels.

Some spittle dribbled from his mouth, and he snored loudly.

A waitress with a bleached-blond beehive came over and smiled at me. There was red lipstick on her teeth.

“You know this guy, hon? He’s been at it for a whole afternoon.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know him. Just bring me a double Wild Turkey. Okay?”

“Sure hon, but I hope there’s not going to be two of you like that. We got our policies, ya know?”

I nodded, saying nothing, knowing if I did I might suddenly leap out of my seat and start tearing down the plants. I just watched her fat ass move away, and I sat there staring at knocked-out Dog, who snored loudly, ignorant of the cold news.

• • •

It wasn’t long before the word came down. This wasn’t your commonplace layoff; it might be six months before Larmel opened again. If they did at all.

I heard it from Billy Bramdowski one afternoon when I was food shopping while Wanda worked down at Weaver’s Crab House. Felt weird prowling down the aisles of the Giant Supermarket like a housewife, doing my comparison shopping and thinking how damned embarrassed I was going to be when I pulled out our coupons for cereal, and sugar, and soap.

I was halfway down the breakfast foods aisle, pushing my big gleaming shopping cart, when Billy Bramdowski turned into the aisle and faced me.

At first I thought he was going to back up and get out of there, he looked that spooked. But then we both laughed and met there among the Count Chocula boxes.

“You hear what they got in mind, Red?” he said, rubbing the back of his hand over his cheek.

“No, what’s that?”

“They’re going to take the money they would be paying us, and they’re going to sink it all into getting computers and stuff.”

“Trying to compete with the Nips, huh?”

“Yeah,” Billy said, sighing and looking down at his feet. “It’s a hard one, Red, because when we do get back there, it’s liable to be an all-new setup. Got to go to computer school to know how to use it. Seems like every which way a man turns, there’s another wall.”

“Well hell, Billy,” I said, patting him on his square shoulders. “You can learn to run a computer as fast as the next guy. I can see you out there pushing those old buttons and yelling about warp factor one. A regular Captain Kirk.”

This was a piss-poor attempt at humor, and Billy didn’t even smile. I have a feeling he didn’t even know who Captain Kirk was. Instead he just stared down at his shopping cart, which was filled with peanut butter and jelly, and crackers and cookies, and big bottles of Coke. Kid food.

“How’s Jennie doing?” I asked.

“Fine.” He smiled. “She’s going to deliver in the summer. Number four.

“Kids are a blessing, Red. Just hope we can pay for this one.”

“Hey, you’ll find a way. Hang in there.”

“Seen your friend Vinnie lately?” Billy asked.

“No, and I been losing lots of sleep over it.”

Billy laughed and fooled with the zipper on his old N-l jacket.

“That was some day. Thinks he’s a badass. Well, gotta get home, Red. I’m head baby-sitter nowadays.”

“Me too, Billy.”

He tried another smile out and left me standing there staring at the oatmeal boxes. And feeling downright whiny and sorry for myself. Not to mention pissed off. Taking our pay and plunging it into fucking computers which would probably do our jobs for us when we tried to come back.

I wanted to take the shopping cart and run it into the big display of foreign crackers that was at the end of the aisle.

But I cooled it. I told myself that I was going to keep it together.

Take it one day at a time. Think about things carefully. Hunt down every job lead.

Act like a family man, Red Baker, keep your eye on the bright days ahead. One day at a time….

W
hich is how I tried to handle it. Don’t panic, keep it together, use the time off to see Ace. I remember a day not long afterward when Ace and his buddies were playing tackle football at Patterson Park in the snow. He was up early in the morning, and I had helped him with his helmet and shoulder pads and his old Johnny Unitas (number 19) jersey.

“Now don’t break anything,” I said. “Remember, you got to play basketball.”

“Sure, Dad. I just hate to miss Saturday football. It’s a tradition.”

He poured half a bottle of milk on his fourth bowl of cereal, and I ran my hand through his hair.

“You’re telling me? Listen, Doggie and I were in the first Saturday game. We played for five hours in the rain, but we won that sucker.”

“No kidding, Dad? You played sports?” He laughed.

I shook my head. Sometimes he put me on like I did Dog. But I didn’t mind it much. Hell, the truth is I loved it.

But he must have misunderstood my silence, because he started apologizing.

“Hey, Dad, I was only kidding. You know I like to hear about your old games.”

Ace grabbed the pads from the kitchen floor, and I helped him lace them up.

“Is that the one that you threw to Dog for the winning touchdown?”

“Damn straight,” I said. “I threw him a little swing pass, and he was headed downfield and three tackles were coming up on him. He just gave them a little bit of his leg, and he was gone. Doggie was some runner.”

“All he does is drink now.”

“Hell too,” I said, “he’s still in pretty good shape. He’s just got a lot of worries, that’s all. You shouldn’t underestimate the Dog.”

“Sure,” Ace said. But I could tell he wasn’t sure about Dog. It pissed me off a little bit because I know what a sweet and gentle guy the Dog is. I remember him pitching in around my house to help my old man when his heart was bad, without ever having to be asked.

“You play hard today,” I said.

“You ought to come out, Dad … I’ll bet we could beat you men if we tried.”

“No way,” I said.

“What’s the matter, scared?” Ace said.

He laughed, and I gave him two left jabs to the shoulder. Then he hugged me and headed down the backyard steps to the alley and his friend Spence’s house.

I sat down at the table, and in spite of everything I had to smile. Just seeing him dress up in that uniform, going up to play the same neighborhood game that I played so many years ago, gave me such pleasure. I could feel like we were part of something bigger than ourselves, our own small histories and traditions. Maybe it’s corny, but seeing Ace in his uniform made me feel like I loved the whole damned city.

I guess I sat there at the table for quite a while, thinking about my kid (Wanda being out shopping with Carol), when I finally made my mind up to go watch him play. I pulled on my boots and walked out into the backyard. But I hadn’t even made it down to our gate yet when something hit me in the arm. An ice ball.

I turned fast and saw Doggie hiding behind a telephone pole. He was laughing, sticking his head out like he was a kid.

“Red Baker’s a whimp,” he shouted.

I smiled and reached down into the snow as fast as I could, but he had another one aimed directly at me, and it burst with a hell of an impact on my shoulder, some of the cold ice spraying down my neck.

“You son of a bitch,” I said, packing a hard one.

Dog came out from behind the pole, fired another one high over my head, and ran down the alley.

“All right, Doggie,” I said. “You’ve had it now.”

I started laughing like a kid and running after him. He was always faster than me, but he slipped on the ice, and I was gaining on him. I let go a snowball that got him on the back, just as he turned around the corner. I dug my boots in the alley snow and felt about a thousand pounds of fear and pain float out of me. I was fifteen again, chasing Doggie down the crazy street.

“I’m going to get your ass, Donahue,” I shouted, feeling foolish but not caring who the hell heard.

But when I turned the corner he had stopped, not ten feet away, and looked at me with a strange smile on his face. His hands were stretched out, the picture of innocence.

“No weapons, Red,” he smiled.

“What the hell’s going on?”

Then I knew, but it was too late. Out from behind one trash can came Jimmy Silanski, and from another one Eddie Brandt, and another one Paul Wizniewski, and Chuck Mason and they all had snowballs in their hands.

“Ambush,” they yelled, and I turned and began running like hell while snowballs went whizzing by my head, landing on my back, and splattering on my coat. I tried to turn to make a stand down by Wilenski’s house, but there was a storm of snowballs hitting me in the chest, arms, face. I finally looked around at them all, drunk and laughing so hard they could hardly stand, and I tried like hell to fire back at them, but they were collapsing now, everybody pointing at me and holding their stomachs.

“Did that work or did that work?” Dog said, tears streaming down his face.

I looked around at them all. Every one of them an out-of-work father, come round to get me to go up and see the kids play.

“You sons of bitches,” I said, laughing and punching Dog’s arm. “I woulda never thought you were capable of anything so low.”

Dog laughed and put his arm around my shoulder.

“The Dog is a sly one,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “He has many unseen tricks.”

He smiled and hugged me, and I felt such a warmth with him and all the other guys there that it brought tears to my eyes.

“Hell,” I said, “let’s get us a drink of whiskey at my place and then go see the kids.”

• • •

“Shhh,” Dog said, as he led us through the trees toward the park. “I think it’s halftime … Yeah, be quiet. Goddamn it, Red, don’t drop the bottle.”

I giggled madly and picked up the Jack Daniel’s and handed it to Jimmy, who was so loaded he was hanging off a pine bough.

“The Patterson Park devils will swoop down and attack!” he said, tripping and falling into me.

I began to laugh wildly, and all the other men began choking back their giggles.

Dog stopped and looked at us with a great seriousness.

“All right, men. Everybody have their snowballs?”

“Check.”

“Okay … When I give the signal, I want you to pound across that field. When I raise my hands we attack. Are you ready?”

“I got to take a piss, general,” Eddie Brandt said.

We all began to laugh again, but Dog shook his big head.

“Save it. All right, let’s go.”

Dog led us toward the Chinese Pagoda in the park. The kids were just on the other side of it, sitting around.

“Hey,” Eddie Brandt’s kid yelled. “It’s our dads.”

“Yeah,” Bobby Mason said. “Let’s challenge ‘em!”

“Okay, men,” Dog said. “Charrrrrrrrge!”

“They’ve got snowballs!” Jimmy Silanski, Jr., said.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh,” we yelled, slipping, drunk, throwing and falling down on one another, and getting up again. The football team was so astonished that for a second they didn’t respond at all, and our snowballs hit them in a great, dense volley.

But they weren’t long to catch on, and soon I was in the middle of the wildest snowball battle I’d had since I was a kid. I saw Ace making them as fast as he could and laughing wildly at me. He was firing his low, hard ice balls, which hurt like hell when they hit my back. I saw two boys team up on Dog, and I picked up a huge lump of snow and broke it over their heads. They fell to the ground, and one of them grabbed my legs, and then Eddie Brandt and Ace and two other boys piled on top of me. Dog tried to pull them off, but they tackled him too, and then some of the other men joined in and we were all rolling, head over heels along the fifty yard line, and there was shrieking and snow in my mouth, and somebody yelling “Don’t break the whiskey, hell, don’t break the whiskey,” and I hit my head on the frozen ground, and felt the hand around my neck, and threw people off only to have two or three more jump back on, and I knew then that I would be sore the next day, but I didn’t care at all, because this was the way I wanted it to stay, all tangled up with my friends and my kid, and all of us young and free and crazy on Saturday afternoon.

But suddenly in the middle of this wild-assed good time I heard a siren in the not-so-far distance, and when I managed to throw Ace off a little, I looked up and saw a black detective car screaming toward us. It stopped only a few feet away, and everybody got kind of quiet, and some of the men hid their bottles like they were fifteen again and might get taken in for drinking without cards.

The door to the cop car opened and out stepped Choo Choo Gerard. He was dressed in a tweed overcoat and had on a pair of expensive leather boots.

Behind him, still in the car, was Blazek, the guy they called “The Animal,” Ed Blazek. I could see his mean round eyes focusing in on me. There was no love lost between us from long ago, when he hated me for taking away Wanda.

“Well, now ain’t this something,” Choo Choo said. “I get a call there’s a gang fight in Patterson Park … and look what we have here.”

“Sorry, Choo,” I said. He spent too much money, and the word was he wasn’t the straightest cop on the force, but me and Dog and Choo Choo went all the way back to high school. He’d stood up for local guys in court.

“Well, all I want to know is who is winning this match? You aren’t letting these old dudes kick your asses, are you?”

The kids smiled and shook their heads.

“No way,” they said. “No way.”

“Hey, Officer Gerard, you want to help the men? It’s the only way they’re going to win.”

Choo Choo smiled and looked back at Blazek, who sat stock-still with his big arms crossed in front of him.

“No way, I know better than to deal with you guys.”

“All right,” Ace said, laughing and reaching for the snow.

“Hell,” I said. “You kids win. We’re wiped out.”

The kids gave up a great roar with that one, and Dog picked up the football.

“Go out for one, Ace,” he said. “I believe this old arm is as good as it ever was.”

Ace smiled and went long, and Dog cocked his arm and threw him a perfect spiral thirty-five yards downfield.

A couple of kids gave out with “whoasssss,” and then somebody yelled, “Men against kids … yeah,” and the men, holding their beer guts and taking one more good sip of Jack Daniel’s, started calling for the ball and running out for passes.

I looked over at Choo Choo, who was laughing like hell. He had a good, kind laugh, which made it easier for him to run his numbers.

“Hey, great to see you, Red. Don’t worry about this. A couple of old people over the other side of the park thought they were witnessing some urban blight.”

I laughed and shook my head.

“How are you doing, Red?” Choo Choo said.

“Hanging in there.”

“Yeah? Well, look, maybe we ought to talk, huh? Like to see more of you.”

“Sure, Choo,” I said.

“Gimme a call sometime, Red. Great kid you got there. Got a real future.”

Blazek stuck his head outside of the car. “Hey, Choo Choo, let’s leave these turkeys and go get some lunch, what you say?”

“Sure,” Choo Choo said, winking at me. “Think you can beat those kids?”

“You know it,” I said.

“Okay, Red, score one for me, and let’s get together soon.”

“Right, Choo,” I said.

Then I ran back out on the field, and Dog threw me one of his perfect long passes. Ace ran toward it, leaped, but I managed to tip it away from him and made a hell of a two-fingered catch.

“All right, Mr. Baker!” Jimmy Silanski, Jr., yelled. “All right.”

“Let’s choose it up,” somebody yelled.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

• • •

The rest of the day is like a great, boozy blur now. The men against the boys, like every Saturday I could recall long ago. And it was an even game too, Ace leading his team with his passing and Dog making a fantastic tipped-ball interception and faking out four of their defenders to weave and slide his way toward the winning touchdown. When the dark had settled on the field, we were all freezing cold and numb, but there wasn’t one complaint from anyone, man or boy. This was the way it had always been in Highlandtown, and in spite of all that we had to face, on that day our neighborhood was connected, one generation to another, and it felt good and filled me with joy.

• • •

Now when I hear the cars slowing down on the dark street, I remember that day at the park with a kind of supernatural brightness, a picture with a fiery glow around it, and it lets me forget for a second just what might come down and how the world became as strange to me as it is to a beggar.

I remember how it was, feeling connected to all of them, knowing I wasn’t alone in the world but part of Dog and Carol and their kids Lisa and Kathy, as well as Wanda and Ace. And when I sit here by the white lace curtains, staring out at the strange, alien moon, I recall a lot of days filled with the blood and muscle of friendship. Mostly times when we were younger, first married, and the kids were small, and Dog and Carol would come over the house on weekends, and we’d pull out a case of Boh, and fry up some oysters, and maybe play our oldies records underneath the red, yellow, and blue party lights Wanda and me would string up in the backyard. We’d sit out there in those green metal lawn chairs Ruth gave us, and under the bright moon we’d see the fires of the steel mill burning red and blue, the colors soaring above the flat rooftops from the south. Soon we’d be dancing, holding each other close while the kids played in the sandbox, or we’d do four-part harmonies on “Get a Job” or “In the Still of the Night,” and afterward everything would be peacefully quiet, except the sounds of the crickets in the tomato garden down at the far end of our brand-new chain-link fence. And after the song we would all smile and feel the invisible rope which bound us together in something that must be like love. And then the lightning bugs would come out and dance through the black night air, their yellow, gentle lights making these beautiful patterns all around us, and I knew I was there, in the place I was meant to be, home.