Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed Read online

“The radio?”

  “Yes.”

  The wooden shell hid dust-covered tubes that lit and warmed slowly, an ancient carriage of corroded metal cubes and spools and looping wires.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Evenin’.”

  I turned to see Stanley Matusik standing in the parlor entranceway.

  “Evening, Mr. Matusik,” I said, standing briefly as I spoke, then sitting back down.

  He came in and sat beside his wife. “Been thinkin’ about a lot of things since you showed up here, young man.”

  I smiled at being considered a young man.

  “Things I haven’t thought of in years and years.”

  “Not all bad, I hope.”

  “Bad. Good. Them words don’t seem to fit. Just things that happened. The way they happened. Things you can’t change. Things you lived through. You know what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “Mm.” He sighed, put his hands on his knees.

  My eyes strayed to the aging, patterned wallpaper, the child’s portrait in the elongated oval frame above the two of them. I wondered if it was Emma.

  “Some years I can’t keep straight in my head. Just a blur. Others, they just seem to stand out clean and polished. You got years like that?”

  “Yes, I do.” I thought of 1969, the year I got married, and of 1972, the year it ended. I knew ’84 was going to be one of those years, too.

  “Thirty-four, thirty-five. They’re pretty clear to me. We’d just bought this place. A big step.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “My father was a coal miner. Died young. Didn’t have nothin’. Teresa’s folks were more genteel.”

  She clucked her tongue. He smiled.

  “They owned the Blossom Restaurant here in Ashland,” he continued. “That’s where I met Teresa. Workin’ there. Lamb and oxtail stew, with a coffee, fifteen cents. Remember?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Her parents loaned us the down payment for this place, but shouldn’t have, ’cause they had to close their own restaurant down not too much later. Teresa ended up workin’ at Woolworth’s. I tried a few things myself. We all did.” He filtered memories behind his eyes, retrieving them. “Had to.” Turning to Teresa, he said, “I told him some about Jack and that business in Toledo, this afternoon. Young people got no idea.”

  Teresa looked at her husband. “Mr. Nolan and I were talking about folks listening to the radio back then.”

  He almost smiled. “I remember the first radio I seen. Jimmy Robinson had it. He didn’t have any electricity. We hooked up a coupla car batteries. Got ‘Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.’ Was a serial.” He nodded. “Remember it well.” A pause. “Radio was big. No question. ‘Death Valley Days’ on Fridays, ‘Chase and Sanborn’ show on Sundays.”

  “‘Chase and Sanborn’?” Coffee was all that came to my mind.

  “Music. Comedy. Don Ameche, Edgar Bergen, Dorothy Lamour, Armbruster’s Orchestra. Like that. Sunday evenings.”

  “Jack’s Sunday was different,” said Teresa Matusik. “He went to church most weeks. He was Catholic. Then he’d listen to something else.” She slowly separated her own memories.

  Stanley looked at her.

  “Father Coughlin.”

  Stanley looked stricken. “I’d forgotten,” he said.

  “You know who he was?” she asked me.

  I shook my head.

  “Broadcast every Sunday from the Shrine of the Little Flower at Royal Oak, Michigan. Started the National Union for Social Justice. Five million listeners signed up within two months. Real angry speeches, especially against Roosevelt. People were ready to listen to what he had to say.”

  “Haven’t thought of him in years,” said Stanley.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Mr. Nolani”

  A fragment of Jack’s letter from Detroit—the one my father had unearthed in the trunk—floated upward in my mind. I’ve been working around Royal Oak—Gee, the “Shrine” is beautiful, Marg.

  I smiled. “That’d be nice.”

  I sipped the tea. It was hot and strong.

  “Ever hear of Pearl Bergoff?” asked Stanley.

  I set the cup in its saucer with a solid click. “I’m beginning to think I haven’t heard of very much, listening to you two.”

  “He was the king of the strikebreakers. In thirty-four, it wasn’t just Toledo. Was truckers in Minneapolis, tire manufacturers in Akron, longshoremen in San Francisco, millhands throughout the South. Auto industry was shakin’ in its boots. Was everywhere. Bergoff ran a multimillion-dollar business recruitin’ and providin’ scabs for businesses. Worked out of New York. Hired guys to scan out-of-town newspapers for signs of strikes brewin’, then he’d dispatch one of his sales staff to peddle his services. He’d ship ’em a small army, outfit ’em with machine guns, billy clubs, tear gas, whatever.” He paused. “Jack got caught in his web, up there in Toledo.”

  Another piece slipped into place. “I see.”

  “Pinkerton Detective Agency was another favorite of the fat cats. Chrysler liked them lots. Places like GM and Chrysler—they paid their top men two hundred thousand dollars each, paid their workers less than a thousand dollars. Would pay millions to Pinkerton and others, though, to keep it that way. Was unbelievable.” He looked at me. “You have,” he said, his voice tightening, “no idea how desperate we were gettin’.”

  No, I realized, I didn’t. But I was beginning to see. There was a rough outline taking shape, with my uncle dangling down on a long thread into the dark heart of it all.

  “This here’s poor country, Mr. Nolan,” said Stanley Matusik. “Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia. Ohio might be a little better’n most—bit more industry. Nobody gives us nothin’. Back then, it was like the song said: the rich got richer and the poor got children. Simple as that. Somethin’ had to be done.”

  I waited.

  “Was the Wagner Act. You heard of it?”

  “Yes, I have.” It was something I had heard of, finally.

  “It was because of what happened everywhere in the country in thirty-four that it got hammered out and signed in thirty-five. It was a start. Management finally had to bargain with unions in good faith. Couple of years later, there was a minimum-wage law—after more strikes—like the one Teresa got involved in at Woolworth’s.” He reached, held her hand, squeezed it. “You a union man, Mr. Nolan?”

  I nodded. “Newspaper Guild.”

  “Then you know.”

  I thought of my father, who had worked right up into the 1950s with no pension, no benefits, working evenings, Sundays. “I think so,” I said.

  Another abrasive edge from the past surfaced, scraping soundlessly against what I had been hearing. “Did Jack have a car?” I asked.

  “Car? You must be kiddin’. None of us had cars.” Stanley took a long sip of his tea. “Chevy half-ton pickup would’ve cost six hundred fifty dollars. Could’ve used one, too. A Pontiac coupé would run about six hundred dollars. Packards were over two thousand dollars.” He thought back. “Knew a fella bought a used twenty-seven Lincoln in thirty-four. Paid a hundred twenty-five dollars for it. Nah,” he said. “Jack didn’t have no car.”

  I rubbed my forehead.

  That night, alone in Jack’s room, I took the letters from my suitcase and reread the parts I had remembered.

  Toledo: lost my car . . . had a wreck and was laid up for a while…

  Ashland: Have my own car now… a Dodge Roadster…

  I stared out the window onto the warm streets of Ashland, picturing my uncle, an iron bar gripped tightly in his fist, trying to stand on the right side of the line.

  FIVE

  Look ahead into the past, and hack into the future, until the silence.

  —Margaret Laurence

  The Diviners

  1

  When I woke the next morning, I lay in bed for a while staring at the ceiling. My gaze tracked the layers of paint above me to where they met the wall, sli
d down the vertical surface, over cracks and filled-in nail holes, then fell sideways to the bathroom door, across it like a shadow, resting finally on the window through which I had peered the night before.

  I folded my hands behind my head, stretched in the clean sheets.

  The whining drone of a heat bug rose high in the sky, stinging the warm air.

  The bathtub was an old four-legged model that had been fitted with a shower attachment in more recent times. Part of it consisted of a chrome hoop over the tub, suspended from the wall and ceiling, from which the shower curtain was hung. I opened the tiny window in the bathroom, started the water, and stepped inside the plastic wraparound, letting the warm spray center between my shoulders. The water ran in a stream from my chin as I looked upward, watching the steam rise and roll toward the window.

  A new day, I thought. The old and the new, everywhere about me.

  I sat down on the red-and-chrome swivel chair and looked down the counter.

  Jeanne glanced up from her magazine and met my eyes. A small half smile was slow in coming. Flipping the magazine over to save her place, she sauntered toward me, pencil poised over her receipt book. “Can’t believe you’re back.”

  “Must be a creature of habit.”

  “Once is a habits

  “A habit I started when I was a kid. You can blame my mother. People blame them for most things, now that I think of it.” I caught myself, as a picture of her came back to me— an image of her about my age, her dark hair braided and wrapped around her head—actually in the Woolworth’s at Yonge and Eglinton, with me in tow.

  “In the five-and-dime with Mom.”

  I nodded. The memory could not be shared.

  She shrugged. “So what’ll it be?”

  I’d been studying the signs. “Says you got an all-you-can-eat breakfast for three forty-nine, until one p.m.”

  She smiled. “Can be quite a bargain, you know how to do it.”

  “How should I do it?”

  “Don’t touch the pancakes.”

  I waited for more.

  “Nor the sausages.”

  “What does that leave?”

  “Bacon, eggs, toast, juice, coffee. Nothing much we can do to them. You’d be safe.”

  “How many do I get?”

  “Like it says. How many you want?”

  “Why don’t you load up a plate for me? You decide.”

  “You look like you could use some fillin’ up.” She stood back, appraised me. “I’ll go easy on the cholesterol, though.”

  “You’ve got a good eye.”

  “An’ I got two of them,” she said, watching me with one of them as she scrawled on her receipt pad.

  “You ever heard of Barbara Hutton?” I asked.

  She refilled my coffee cup.

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  I nodded, lifted the cup to my lips.

  “Should I have?”

  I shook my head, swallowed.

  “Sounds like a movie star.”

  “Does, doesn’t it?”

  “Well?”

  I looked at her.

  She waited.

  “It’s not important.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What’d you mention it for then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What is it, a big secret?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Well?” She waited.

  “She used to own Woolworth’s.”

  She looked surprised. “This one?”

  “All of them. In the thirties.”

  “The thirties,” she said, emphasizing the last word.

  I smiled. “That was before your time, right?”

  She put a hand on her hip. “Just barely.” Then, with a bit of coyness: “Was it before yours?”

  “It used to be. But,” I said, “I’m not so sure anymore.”

  “I’m Leo, by the way.”

  She cleared away my dishes, leaving the coffee cup. “Where you from, Leo?”

  “Toronto. Canada.”

  “Jeez. So you come all the way from Canada to eat at Woolworth’s in Ashland. You escape from a mental institution or something?-”

  I chuckled. “I’m on vacation.”

  “So this is the big trip, is it?” A fake whistle. “I don’t know about you, Leo. You got your day pass on you?”

  She was funny. I checked her finger. No ring. When I looked back at her face, she was smiling at me. Her face had lines, but they were good lines, travel lines to places others hadn’t visited.

  My own face, I knew, was etched with a singular, preordained route.

  “More coffee?” she asked.

  I nodded, smiled.

  A fellow’s got to do something with his spare time.

  I walked the streets.

  Around noon, my legs told me it was time to stop. I was exploring a sturdy little industrial community, invaded by franchises and brand names.

  In a drug store, I bought a paperback novel—the new Robert Daley cop thriller, The Dangerous Edge. I’d read Year of the Dragon and Prince of the City. It was exactly what I wanted. The all-you-can-eat breakfast was still with me, so I contented myself with a can of Coke and found a shaded bench, in the spacious park back of the library, on which to sit and read for a while.

  The park was flat and grassy, with the exception of three protruberant mounds, about ten feet in height, a hundred feet or so off to my left. I focused on their geometric incongruity, wondering if they had any meaning, in a world of incongruities.

  High up in the elms, the heat bugs whined.

  Later that day, just inside the public library, I dialed the phone again.

  In Toronto, my father answered.

  I waited to hear it.

  “Mail brought another one.”

  I was beyond surprise. I had almost expected it. “Read it to me.”

  He cleared his throat. “It’s dated August twenty-first, nineteen thirty-four.”

  “Mom’s birthday.”

  “That’s right.”

  Dear Margaret:

  This will reach you after your birthday, so I apologize for that. But as you can see, I didn’t really forget it, I just didn’t get organized. Knowing me, I’m sure you can appreciate that. So Happy 25th! Where does the time got

  Things are going swell for me down here. I’m making pretty good money, and making some good friends, too. Maybe I’ll be able to treat everyone back home soon to something nice. I’d like to have enough to send the kids something from the States for Xmas.

  I’ve been to the movies a lot here. The Paramount’s almost right beside me. The folks around here tell me it was built in 1930 using a design that Paramount Pictures used for their model theater at the Chicago World’s Fair two years ago. Gee, Marg it’s beautiful. You’d love it. Last week I went and saw James Cagney in “Public Enemy,” and this week I saw “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang” with Paul Muni. A really funny thing happened at the movies this week. You know how they get someone to come up on stage before the movie starts and draw ticket stubs for prizes? Well, would you believe it—they drew my ticket as one of them, and I won a free hairdo at a local beauty salon. Everybody laughed when I went up to collect the prize. I must admit, it was pretty funny and I laughed, too. I didn’t know what to do with the prize, so I gave it to the lady who owns the Scott Hotel.

  The Paul Muni film was very moving, Marg. See it up there, if you and Tommy get the chance. I still don’t have Father’s address. Is he well?

  Write me when you get a chance, okay?

  “Gotta” go and take some pictures. You know how it is.

  Say “hello” to everyone for me.

  Love,

  Jack

  2

  Mid-afternoon, I stood facing the cliffs on the opposite shore, watching barges filled with iron ore and petroleum wend their way up the Ohio to Cincinnati. I was struck by the width of the river, the distance to the Ohio side. Like everything else, the closer you got to it
, the greater it seemed.

  About four o’clock, I returned to the hotel and went up to my room. Tired, I lay back on the bed and let events and information sift together in my head, wondering what to do next. I heard the front door open and close as somebody left the building. Going to the window, I looked down and saw Stanley Matusik heading off, slowly, down the street.

  Even after he had reached the corner and disappeared from sight, I stayed there, leaning on the ledge.

  I knocked gently on the Matusiks’ door.

  Teresa Matusik opened it. “Mr. Nolan,” she said.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Matusik.”

  “Stanley went out for a walk. Emma’s doing some shopping.”

  “Could I talk to you?”

  She looked startled.

  “Just for a few minutes,” I said.

  Some hesitation. Then she shrugged. “I guess so.” She considered asking me in, then changed her mind. Shutting the door behind her, she led me into the parlor.

  I sat on the wine-colored sofa opposite her.

  She waited for me to begin.

  I had considered every evasive tactic, every manipulative rhetoric, but had abandoned them all. “Mrs. Matusik, if you’ll forgive my directness, I’d like to ask you something.”

  She folded her hands in her lap.

  “It sounds kind of silly.”

  She listened intently. “Ask away.”

  “Did Jack Radey ever give you a voucher or a coupon for a free hairdo in a beauty salon? Back in nineteen thirty-four?-”

  Her dark eyes became watery and her lips parted.

  “It would have been August of that year.”

  The silence filled every crevice of the room. I could hear my heart beating.

  “Yes,” she said, quietly.

  My heart pounded with the rush of blood.

  Her face softened, a memory crystallized. “How did you know?”

  The letters were real, then. They were true. Teresa Matusik sat across from me, as perplexed as I was. “He wrote a letter to my mother. He told her.”

  “Your mother. His sister.”