Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed Page 4

  I listened, his story coming alive for me.

  “Dawn, the next day, the Ohio National Guard was ordered in. Nine hundred men. Eight rifle companies, three machine companies, and a medical unit. Was rainin’. They managed to lift the siege, got the fifteen hundred strikebreakers out. But things were still boilin’. Picketers grabbed a strikebreaker, beat him, stripped him naked. More tear gas. There was actually a bayonet charge. Then, they started shootin’.” He became silent and grim for a moment. “Two were killed. Fifteen wounded. Four more companies were ordered in. Largest peacetime display of military power in the state’s history. The plant shut down for two weeks. When it opened again, the union had won. They got a five-cent increase. Thirty-five cents an hour.”

  We were both quiet.

  “I know all this because Jack told me. Many times. He was there. Inside.” A pause. “He was one of the strikebreakers.”

  I was speechless when he had finished. To have stumbled about blindly for as long as I had, and now this: a sudden flood of information. Jack’s life suddenly taking shape—a shape I could never have guessed.

  A strikebreaker.

  I must have looked dazed, for the old man broke the silence. “I know what you might be thinkin’.” He scratched his head. “Don’t be too hard on him.”

  I still hadn’t spoken.

  “He was a kid. Hell, we were all just kids. Hadn’t thought things through. But we all needed money. Needed it in a way you can’t even imagine.”

  “He never mentioned any of this in his letters to my mother.”

  “Course he didn’t. He was ashamed. He saw what takin’ a man’s job could lead to, saw what he’d done. He’d ended up pitted against other fellows just like himself—guys tryin’ to get by, feed themselves and families. But he was just like them— needed the money. That picture-takin’ stuff—didn’t lead to nothin’. Who could afford to get their picture took?”

  I sat in Jack Radey’s room, listening to Stanley Matusik expand and recast this bubble from the past, increasingly awed at his perceptions. His face grew more animated.

  “You can’t judge. Any of us might of done the same thing.”

  It was true.

  “Fat cat named Miniger owned Auto-Lite. Drug huckster. Coal operator. Used to sail around Lake Erie on a yacht. They said he was worth ninety million dollars.” He shook his head in disgust. “And the union thought they’d won when they got thirty-five cents an hour.”

  I crossed my legs, leaned back on the bed, thinking.

  “And two men died.”

  Like separate drumbeats, his last words echoed from the past.

  “His job as night janitor at the hospital.”

  “Good, honest work,” said the old man. “Stupid, dull, boring work. But honest. Jack didn’t have many illusions left.” He paused. “None of us did.”

  “Tell me about it?”

  “What’s to tell?”

  I wasn’t sure. “How long did he do it?”

  “Don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”

  “Weeks? Month?”

  “Months. I already told you.”

  I waited for more.

  “They paid him for eight solid hours of work, but Jack said he could get all his chores done in two or three hours. Lots of times he came home and slept. Others, he’d just wander around.”

  “Wander where?”

  “Around. Go for walks.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Sure. What else was he gonna do?”

  I didn’t know. I had no idea.

  “Nineteen thirty-three,” he said. “Roosevelt became president. Inherited Hoover’s mess. There were twenty million unemployed.” He considered me anew. “You were born in the forties, right?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “Still look awful familiar to me.” He frowned. “Must be the likeness to Jack.” He shook his head again, continuing. “Anyway, born in the forties, you’ve never seen anything like it.”

  He was right.

  “Ever hear of Barbara Hutton?”

  The name rang some sort of bell. Unable to place it, though, I shook my head.

  “Woolworth heiress. Got forty-five million dollars for reaching the tender age of twenty-one. Newspapers were full of it. Five-and-dime business was booming. Profits were twenty percent, net.” He fell silent, retracting a memory more finely. “Teresa worked as a salesgirl at Woolworth’s.” His eyes hardened as the detail he had been seeking crystallized: “She made eleven dollars a week.”

  “The thirties.” He touched his forehead. “Christ. What a mess.” He looked at me. “You better let me quit this ramblin’. Get my blood pressure up.” He began to rise.

  “Don’t let me stop you, Mr. Matusik. This is exactly why I’m here.”

  He assessed me quietly. I realized that what I had just said belied my earlier contention that my visit was some sort of casual afterthought—a sidebar to a haphazard vacation.

  He was standing now, silent.

  I stood, too.

  “Maybe,” he said, “we can talk some more after dinner.”

  The door closed behind him.

  Until I slowly exhaled, I hadn’t realized that I had been holding my breath.

  I was alone in Jack’s room.

  I had traveled the Lincoln Highway, had come to Ashland.

  On a small table at the side of the bed was a silent, round alarm clock, both hands frozen at twelve. I picked it up, turned it over, cranked the winding mechanism, and listened as it began to tick.

  Exhausted, I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. I drifted briefly into the warm cavern of sleep, dreamless.

  FOUR

  And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled together; they talked together; they shared their lives, their food, and the things they hoped for in the new country.

  —John Steinbeck

  The Grapes of Wrath

  1

  When I woke, I was sweating. I’d fallen asleep on a hot August afternoon, in a room with air as still as its furnishings.

  I checked my watch. 4:40 p.m.

  I pushed myself to a sitting position, groggy and with a slight headache, and stared at the closed window. I got up and opened it. The warmth that greeted me was as stifling as that within, but differed in that it was alive, smelling like a city: fragments of oil, pavement, and steel.

  I leaned forward on the ledge and looked out at Jack’s world.

  At an angle across the street was a church turret. To my right, a bit farther away, was what appeared to be a large bank or trust company. When I peered farther left, I could see a theater marquee that read “Paramount.” And below, for someone from Toronto, traffic appeared to be nonexistent.

  I stood back, assured by the ordinariness of it all.

  The only sound in the room was the ticking of the bedside clock that I had wound earlier. It read one o’clock. I had slept for an hour.

  Picking it up, I adjusted it to read 4:40, uncomfortable at yet another blatant specter of differing timelines. It was something small. But it was something that I could control. And understand.

  Twenty minutes later, I stood on the corner of Winchester and 14th, letting the late afternoon sun beat down on me. The church turret that I had seen from my room belonged to the Calvary Episcopal Church, an elegant Gothic structure. The bank farther right was the First Bank and Trust Company: commercial dignity with financial stability. And the Paramount Theater to my left seemed to round off the triad of the spiritual, the realistic, and the imaginative bridge between the two spheres quite nicely.

  In no hurry, I began to walk.

  F. W. Woolworth Co.

  My ambling had brought me to a point across the street from the store, and recalling Stanley Matusik’s anecdote, I was curious.

  I crossed the street and went inside.

&n
bsp; If the store didn’t date back to the thirties, then it was in its own time warp. Large fans hung from the high ceiling at intermittent points throughout the store, stirring the heat lethargically. The fluorescent lights in rows about them hummed like insects. And as I strode forward, the long slats of the hardwood floor creaked with age.

  Stopping, I pictured Teresa Matusik, young and pretty, toiling behind a counter for $11 a week.

  As in most Woolworth stores that I could remember, there was a restaurant area to one side, consisting of a long counter and swiveling red-and-chrome chairs. There were only two customers there; the waitress was sitting on the end seat reading a magazine.

  After I sat down, she glanced up at me, then returned to her magazine, giving me time to read the wall signs behind the counter that served as menu.

  Liver and Onions

  Vegetable & Potato

  Coffee or Small Soda 2.99

  Grilled Chopped Steak with Fried Onions 3.49

  Freshly Grilled Hamburger Platter 2.79

  Club House Sandwich with French Fries

  Coffee or Small Soda 3.79

  It was intriguing. It must have been thirty years since I’d eaten in a Woolworth’s, and that had been the one that used to be on the northwest corner of Yonge and Eglinton, before the days of the shopping center.

  My mother had taken me there on occasion. French fries and a fountain Coke. Or a chocolate sundae. A treat.

  Assorted Pies .99

  Baked Fresh Daily Muffins . 50

  And yet another sign read “Muffin of the Month & Coffee,” with a movable slot for the variable flavor—this month’s was “Cherry”—all for the bargain price of 79¢.

  The waitress, thirtyish and pleasant, approached. “Can I help you?” Her pencil hovered over a yellow receipt pad.

  I nodded toward the signs. “What do you recommend?”

  She smiled. “To eat? For dinner?”

  I smiled back.

  “Someplace else,” she said. A small laugh.

  A half laugh of my own. “You could be right.”

  She was appraising me. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  I shook my head. “Just visiting.”

  “Well.” She drew the word out, thinking. “If you like liver and onions, that’s what I’d get. Lots of folks don’t like them, though.”

  “I like them.”

  “That’s my recommendation then.” She smiled. “First time in six years I’ve been asked for my opinion. Just goes to show, that if you live long enough—”

  “—anything can happen,” I finished.

  “But seldom does.” She grinned and moved down the counter to the stove.

  “We close at six,” she said, removing my plate, “or I’d recommend, without you even asking, any of our pies.”

  I glanced at the clock atop the Dinette sign behind her. The hands were perfectly vertical, up and down. Then I took note of her name tag.

  “Thanks very much, Jeanne.” I drained the coffee and put four one-dollar bills on the counter. “Next time.”

  “You bet.” She smiled.

  I felt her eyes on me as I left, friendly, curious.

  Just like I was trying to be about Ashland.

  Just inside the entrance to the Boyd County Public Library on Central Avenue, I found a pay phone and placed a collect call to Toronto. My father answered and had the good sense not to debate with the operator.

  “Dad. It’s me, Leo. I’m in Ashland.”

  “Good for you. How is it?”

  “Hot. Interesting. I found the Scott Hotel.”

  “Jesus.” He was quiet.

  “Everything okay?”

  “We got another one.”

  “Another what?”

  “Letter.”

  The heat shimmered through the glass doors.

  “It’s from Jack. From the Scott Hotel.”

  “I can’t believe this.” Things had just begun to seem mundane, the way they should be.

  “Don’t believe it. It’s here, though.”

  I breathed deeply, my heart beginning to speed up. “What’s the date on it? When was it mailed?”

  “Like the others. Fifty years ago.”

  Looking at my reflection in the glass, I began to feel dizzy.

  “It’s dated August third, nineteen thirty-four.”

  “Read it to me.”

  “I don’t read so good.”

  “You read fine.” I pressed my lips together tightly. The heat was beginning to make me sweat. My mind was buzzing.

  He cleared his throat.

  I pictured Jack in the room as I listened.

  Dear Margaret:

  I’m stilt here in Ashland and have a nice room with its own bathroom and lots of privacy. I’m stilt with the picture business and doing real well. This is a good place to live, and I hope I can stay awhile.

  Mac has gone back to Detroit. He couldn’t stand being away from his family any longer. It was real hard on him, so I don’t blame him a bit.

  There’s a radio downstairs where I’m staying and in the evening the people here all listen to it for a while. Everybody listens to Amos ‘n’ Andy, and we heard all about that family up in Ontario, the one that had the quintuplets (I think that’s how you spell it). Everybody here figures I must know the family personally cause we alt live in Ontario. You know how it is.

  The other big news on the radio was the killing of John Dillinger, with the Lady in Red outside the Biograph Theatre, by the G-Men last month. Apparently he was watching “Manhattan Melodrama,” a cops and robbers story starring Clark Gable and Myrna Loy. Because it was in Chicago, I thought about you and Tommy. Remember how you told us that when you were in a speakeasy in Chicago, people bragged about how John Dillinger used to come there?

  Has Tommy got his vacation yet? Are you going down to Port Dover? I’ll bet the kids can hardly wait.

  There’s a movie house real close, and I even took out a library card. A fellow’s got to do something with his spare time.

  Gee, Marg—it sure is hot here, but I don’t mind. It sure beats the cold.

  Say hello to all the gang for me. I’m getting sleepy, so I’m “gonna” go now.

  Lots of Love

  Jack

  Through the receiver, I listened to the crackle of the miles and the years between all of us.

  2

  I stepped through the doors and stood on the hot pavement, staring at the public library.

  I even took out a library card.

  Hands in my pocket, I walked back toward Jack’s room.

  The parlor was empty when I got back. Before going upstairs, I scanned it with new eyes. It had struck me as justifiably quaint when I had sat here earlier, but it wasn’t until now, until after listening to Jack’s latest letter, that I noticed the radio.

  I crossed the room and knelt down on one knee in front of it. It was a true Depression item: a piece of wooden furniture, about three feet by two feet, with a cloth mesh over the speaker at the bottom, an arrow pointer on a semicircle band that indicated the station, and three round, protruding knobs on its face. The brand name on it was King. There was a brass letter opener and a glass ashtray on top of it.

  I ran my fingers along its side.

  “Nobody listens to it much anymore.”

  I turned to see Teresa Matusik standing in the hall entranceway.

  “Jack wrote to my mother about how everyone here would gather around and listen to the radio in the evenings.”

  She looked surprised. “He did?”

  “Wrote about listening to ‘Amos ’n’ Andy.’ About the Dionne Quints. About the news of Dillinger being gunned down in Chicago.” I paused. “He wrote a good letter.”

  “I didn’t realize.” She came in and sat down on the settee. I stood by the radio.

  “He liked it here a lot.”

  Her face clouded with the past. “I liked Jack,” she said. “Everybody did.”

  I sat down.

>   “Hard to explain it to folks nowadays. Got TV now. But back then, that there radio,” she pointed at it, “went on like clockwork every week night at seven. Everyone, including President Roosevelt, listened to ‘Amos ’n’ Andy,’ from seven to seven-fifteen. None of us found out till years later that it was two white fellas doin’ black voices. All you could do was hear ’em.”

  I let her talk, hoping for more pieces to slip together.

  “I used to serve tea. We’d have six, eight, ten people down here every evening. Radio was on from seven till nine. Burns and Allen. A1 Jolson. Rose Marie. The Green Hornet. Kate Smith. Right up to the war, Mr. Nolan. Most folks who stayed here were folks just working for a few weeks or months here or there in town. This is a steel, oil, and coal town. Dirty work, but it was work. Lot of the men stayin’ here were glad to work a hundred hours a week for fifteen dollars. Some of them came from farms where they’d been eatin’ wild greens, violet tops, wild onions, forget-me-nots, wild lettuce, and weeds. There were kids to feed. We tried to treat ’em nice here, make their stay pleasant. It’s nice to hear, even now, that Jack liked bein’ here. After all,” she said, “he was just like all the rest of them. Just tryin’ to get by.”

  “What is it you really want, Mr. Nolan?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Really.”

  I shrugged, wondering how to explain.

  “Jack Radey hasn’t been here for fifty years. When he was here, he was just one of dozens passin’ through.”

  “But he stayed awhile here.”

  “Lots did that.”

  I didn’t know how to tell her about the letters. “This is the last address that I have for him.”

  “But he’s gone. Long ago. It’s a big world. He could’ve gone anywhere. You’re wasting your time.”

  I studied her face, lined with valleys, scoured by drought, healed with soft rains, then watched her fold her hands in her lap as her daughter had done. I glanced at the radio once more. “Does it still work?”