This Tender Land (44 page)

“Connemara Patch?” I asked after we’d distanced ourselves from the cop.

“It’s where a lot of Micks live.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “If I told him my name was Shlomo Goldstein from the West Side Flats, we’d both be wearing bruises now.”

We parted ways on Fairfield Avenue, which was already beginning to bristle with activity, mostly carts and horses and tired-looking men shuffling to an early shift somewhere, the lucky ones with jobs.

“What are you doing this afternoon, Buck?” John Kelly asked.

“Nothing, I guess.”

“Not nothing. You’re going to do something with me,” he said with a devilish look in his eyes. “I’ll come find you.”

He walked off, whistling, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his faded dungarees. The big brother. The man of the house. My new best friend.

WHEN I GOT
to Gertie’s, the smell of food drew me to the kitchen. I found Flo at the big stove frying bacon and eggs in a cast-iron skillet. She looked up, brushed a long, errant strand of blond hair from her face, and said, “Gertie gave me a fine account of last night. That was quite something.”

I didn’t want to tell her how hard it had been listening hour after hour to John Kelly’s mother screaming as she struggled to deliver the baby.

“You helped Shlomo with his paper route?”

“All done.”

“Then you must be hungry.”

“I’m okay.” The truth was, I could have eaten an elephant, but I didn’t want to take Flo’s breakfast.

“Nonsense. I’ll just pop a little more bacon on and crack another egg. Would you like toast? Do you drink coffee?”

We ate together, just the two of us, at the table. It felt intimate and special.

“Where’s Gertie?” I asked.

“She took some blintzes to the Goldsteins.”

“Blintzes?”

“It’s kind of a Jewish pancake, stuffed and rolled.”

Some of the men my father delivered hooch to were Jewish, but I didn’t know much about what that meant.

“Is everybody on the Flats Jewish?”

“Not quite everybody.”

“So you and Gertie are Jewish?”

“Not me. Confirmed Catholic. You ask Gertie if she’s Jewish, she would probably say no.”

“She stopped being Jewish?”

“I don’t think you just stop being anything. She doesn’t go to synagogue anymore.”

“Synagogue?”

“It’s like church for Jewish people.”

“Do you still go to church?”

“Sometimes.”

“You haven’t given up your religion?”

“You’re certainly full of questions. Are you religious yourself, Buck? Is that where all these questions are coming from?”

“Religious?”

I let the word sit on my thinking for a bit. For me at that moment, religion was the hypocrisy of the Brickmans’ Sunday services. They’d painted a picture of God as a shepherd watching over his flock. But as Albert had bitterly reminded me again and again, their God was a shepherd who ate his sheep. Even the loving God that Sister Eve believed in so profoundly had deserted me time and again. I didn’t believe in one god, I decided. I believed in many, all at war with one another, and lately it was the Tornado God who seemed to have the edge.

“No,” I finally said. “I’m not religious.”

Gertie walked in then, returning from delivering the blintzes. “I just saw Shlomo,” she said. “He seemed pretty beat. You look like you could use a good sleep, too. When you’re finished eating, get some shut-eye. Don’t worry about helping with the breakfast crowd. We’ll do just fine without you.”

“You could use some sleep, too,” Flo said.

Gertie waved off the suggestion. “Later.”

I carried my plate and fork to the sink, rinsed them, and when I turned back, watched with surprise as Flo took Gertie into her arms, held her tenderly for a moment, then kissed her long and lovingly.

WE BREATHE LOVE
in and we breathe love out. It’s the essence of our existence, the very air of our souls. As I lay on the bunk in the old shed behind Gertie’s, I thought about the two women and pondered the nature of the affection I’d witnessed. Flo was a beautiful flower, Gertie a tough mother badger, and I tried to make sense of the love they shared. I hadn’t known that women could love women in the way I’d fallen in love with Maybeth Schofield. With every turn of the river since I’d left Lincoln School, the world had become broader, its mysteries more complex, its possibilities infinite.

Gertie had roused my brother and Mose and Emmy to help with breakfast, but I’d been allowed to stay abed. The smell of the shed reminded me of the old tack room where Jack, the pig scarer, had imprisoned us. It was twice as large as the tack room and held two bunks, where Elmer and Jugs slept when they weren’t locked up in the county hoosegow. Mose and Albert had shared one of the bunks. Emmy had taken the other, but she’d given it up to me. I could hear the sounds from the Flats, the call of a ragman—“R-a-a-gs! R-a-a-gs! Newspapers! Bones!”—the creak of wagon wheels, the whinny of horses, the occasional grumble of a gasoline engine and rattle of an undercarriage as an automobile negotiated the ruts of a street still unpaved. The voices coming from Fairfield Avenue often spoke in Yiddish, but because the West Side Flats was the first place most immigrants landed in Saint Paul, there were also occasional shouts in Spanish and Arabic and other tongues foreign to my ears, and I felt as if I’d come a million miles from Fremont County.

I slept, but fitfully because I could sense the buzz of activity all
around me, and it seemed that I was the only bee not active in the hive. I finally rose, relieved myself in the outhouse back of Gertie’s, then headed off to see what was up with everyone else.

I found Emmy and Flo in the kitchen preparing lunch fixings.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Emmy said brightly.

“Where’s Norman?”

“Gone long ago, Buck,” Flo replied. “Seems your brother has a talent my brother is greatly in need of.”

“Irritating people?” I said.

“Is that any way to talk about your brother?”

“Your brother never irritates you?”

“All the time. But we forgive them, don’t we?” Flo nodded toward a knife and pile of carrots and said, “Wash your hands, and then help me with some chopping.”

While I worked I asked, “So what is it that your brother wanted with Norman?”

It was Emmy who chirped in, “He’s going to fix Tru’s boat.”

“He’s going to try,” Flo cautioned. She took a bowl of cornmeal batter and held it while Emmy began spooning the batter into the waiting pans.

“Albert can fix anything,” I said. “What about Mose?”

“Mose and Calvin went along to help.”

“And Gertie?”

“Shopping for dinner. We’ll be serving beef stew tonight.”

When I’d finished chopping the vegetables, Flo relieved me of my duties but said, “We start serving lunch in an hour and a half. Back by then, Buck.”

I asked if she might have a sheet of paper and an envelope so that I could write a letter. She gave me both, along with a No. 2 pencil, which she’d sharpened for me. I walked to the arched bridge over the Mississippi River, sat down, and thought about Maybeth Schofield.

Not a day had passed since we’d left Hopersville that Maybeth
hadn’t been on my mind. I’d often spent the long hours on the river reliving our kisses, holding tight to that final image of her waving to me sadly from the back of the pickup truck as her family headed toward Chicago, and imagining what kind of life I might have had if I’d gone with them. I knew in my heart I could never have abandoned my own family, but the tantalizing possibilities of that different choice still tormented me.

Dear Maybeth,
I wrote.
I’m in St. Paul for a couple of weeks, staying with Gertie Hellmann and her friend Flo on Fairfield Avenue. I hope that your travels are going well. I look at our stars every night, the two that point north, and I think of you.

I tried to decide if I should say something about the kisses we’d shared but decided to let Maybeth, when she wrote, broach that subject first. If she said something in her letters, which I hoped would await me in Saint Louis, then I’d let loose on my end and pour out to her all the stirrings of my heart. But in the meantime, I thought it best to keep things simple. So, I finished with
I’ll write more later. Please give my best to your parents and Mother Beal.
I thought a long time about how to sign it and finally settled on
Yours always, Odie.

Yours always.
Safe code, I thought, for
I love you.

I folded the letter, put it in the envelope, and addressed it:
Maybeth Schofield, 147 Stout Street, Cicero, Illinois.
I decided not to include a return address, since I didn’t expect to be in Saint Paul when Maybeth wrote back. I didn’t know where the post office was, and it was almost time to be back at Gertie’s to help with serving lunch, so I slipped the letter inside my shirt to keep it safe from my brother’s prying eyes and questions and returned to the Flats.

Mose had returned as well, but not Albert or Tru or Calvin.

Working on the boat engine,
Mose signed. He didn’t have time to explain anything more before Gertie threw open the door and put us to work.

In two hours, the bean soup and corn bread she’d prepared for the lunch crowd were gone, except for the bit that Flo held back to
feed us and herself and Gertie. We sat around a table near the front window, eating together, kind of like family.

“How’s it going with the
Hellor
?” Gertie asked Mose. “Did Wooster Morgan agree to help?”

He signed,
Said he’d be damned if he’d help out Truman Waters. But Albert talked to him. He likes Albert. Agreed to let him use the equipment and tools. I think he believed Albert was pissing in the wind, but Albert’s making good progress.

I translated and Gertie shook her head. “Truman is one stubborn son of a bitch. But I’ll give him this. He cares about the
Hellor
and his crew.”

Flo said, “He made a solemn promise to Pap that he’d take care of that boat.”

“Pap?” I said.

“Our dad. When he died, he passed the
Hell or High Water
down to Tru. We’ve been river people for generations. Taking care of the
Hellor,
that’s kind of a sacred duty for Tru.”

Gertie gave a derisive snort, and in response, Flo said gently, “In every sinner, Gertie, is the possibility of a saint.”

When the kitchen had been cleaned, Mose headed back to the boatworks. Gertie, who looked well and truly beat, finally agreed to Flo’s insistence that she lie down for a while. Flo asked Emmy if she’d like to help her bake the biscuits that were going to accompany the beef stew she’d be serving that evening. I was thinking of catching a little shut-eye, like Gertie, when John Kelly stepped in and said, “You wanna do something fun?”

I’D NEVER HOPPED
a freight before, but John Kelly was a pro.

“They all slow down, see, while they rumble through the Flats.”

We waited near the arched bridge where an iron trestle crossed the Mississippi. We’d just missed a train, but John Kelly said another was bound to come along any minute.

“How’re your mother and baby brother doing?” I asked.

“Aces,” he said. “Ma’s strong like an ox, and it’s easy to see that Mordy takes after me. He’s got lungs on him like a ragman.”

“Mordy?”

“Mordecai David. But Mordy fits him good,” the proud big brother said. “God’s truth, though, I don’t know if any of us’d make it without Gertie. She’s made sure there’s food pouring in so Granny can take care of Ma and Ma can take care of Mordy.” He pointed down the tracks. “Here she comes.”

The engine rumbled passed us, hauling a long line of boxcars. Occasionally we saw shabby men looking out at us through open doors. An empty car came abreast of us, rocking a little as the weight of it pressed down upon the rails. John Kelly yelled, “This one!” and launched himself up and through the open door. I stood there eyeing all those big, groaning iron wheels, thinking that if I slipped, I could end up looking like a loaf of sliced bread with strawberry jam.

“Come on!” John Kelly hollered.

I had to run to catch up, and when I leapt, John Kelly caught me and pulled me safely in beside him. “Where are we going?” I asked, breathless.

“Just to the yards across the river. But if we caught the right train, hell, we could go to Chicago or Saint Louis or Denver or you name it. Trains go everywhere from here.”

As the train slowed on the other side of the river, we disembarked among a network of rails and idle cars. John Kelly had no trouble, but I stumbled and fell, and the letter that I’d written to Maybeth Schofield and had stuffed inside my shirt slipped out. I brushed myself off and picked up the letter.

“What’s that?” John Kelly asked.

“What’s it look like?”

“Maybeth,” he said, reading over my shoulder. “Some girl you’re sweet on?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Want to mail it?”

“Sure. But I need a stamp.”

“Easy as pie,” he said.

He led me downtown to an enormous gray stone building with turrets everywhere and a big clock tower, the most impressive structure I thought I’d ever seen. It was the federal courthouse and also served, John Kelly explained to me, as the main post office for the Upper Midwest. It was imposing and, because it was a courthouse, was sure to be filled with all kinds of representatives of the law. John Kelly marched right in as if he owned the place, and although I was full of trepidation, I followed.

The interior was all marble and mahogany, and within it was a constant flow of bodies. I wove among the stream of people coming and going, their faces intent, sometimes tearstained, always preoccupied. The law was a force formidable and heartless, yet here I was under its very nose. I tried to make myself small and unnoticeable.

John Kelly led me to the postal area, where several lines had formed at the windows. We stepped into one, awaiting our turn. Two uniformed cops strolled past. Although I knew logically there was no way they were looking for me specifically, I bent my head anyhow to hide my face.