45
“CHARLIE, WHAT’RE YOU doing here?” Mike said when he recognized Charles Kelk of the harbor squad, standing near the gangway to the Slocum.
Kelk squinted at him hard. “And who would you be?” he asked with suspicion, “And how would you be knowing me?”
“Oh. Sorry,” Mike said, taking off the fake glasses and slightly pulling aside the beard Rebecca had given him from the theater’s prop room. “It’s Mike. Mike Braddock. And this is Ginny Caldwell,” he said turning to Ginny, with a smile. She’d thought it silly of him to wear a disguise, and gave him a dubious, amused look, although once he’d explained his reasons, it had seemed prudent enough.
“Mike! What the hell?” Kelk said, then lowered his voice even though they were still far from the ship. “Why the disguise? Oh, and pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure, ma’am,” he added, giving Ginny his hand.
“Just a precaution, Charlie. The mug who shot me is still out there, and he might have reason to be on this boat.”
Kelk gave a frown in the direction of the gleaming vessel. “Who the fuck is it? I’ll give Van Tassel the word to keep an eye out. He’s working this cruise with me.”
“How’s that?”
“Pastor Haas asked the captain if he could hire a couple of men to keep an eye on things,” Kelk told him. “He’s the pastor at St. Mark’s Lutheran, over on Sixth. They do this big outing every year. The parish, which is most of the neighborhood, goes on these things.”
“Sounds like easy duty,” Mike said. “Plenty of sauerkraut and knockwurst, maybe a little beer?”
“Maybe more than a little.”
“Yeah, well, I hope that’s all we’ll have to worry about. You know a mug named McManus, Jack McManus? He’s the guy.”
“I know about him, but I don’t know his face,” Kelk said. “Maybe Al might know.” Mike gave him McManus’s description and he promised to keep an eye out.
“How you doing?” Charlie asked. “Feelin’ better?” Mike gave him an abridged version, which amounted to, “Not bad if you don’t count the holes in my face.” They laughed and commiserated for a few minutes. It had been almost six weeks since the harbor shoot-out and they had some catching up to do. “That Reverend Haas?” Mike asked, pointing to a bearded and bespectacled gentleman of middle years whose mission it seemed to shake the hand of every passenger as they boarded.
“Yeah, that’s him. C’mon, I’ll introduce you. You have a ticket, right?”
“Sure, compliments of the steamship company. Worked out nice with me just getting out of the hospital. Ginny said it’d be good for my recovery, and my doctor agreed.”
Mike readjusted his beard and glasses and set his straw boater low over his eyes before Kelk introduced him to Reverend Haas, who welcomed him and thanked him for supporting the church with the purchase of a ticket. He urged Mike to enjoy the day to the fullest, as there was to be a fine band and plenty of food, beer, and games once they got to the beach at Locust Grove.
Mike and Ginny joined the crowd filing into the General Slocum, making their way up to the promenade deck, dodging children, who, once on board, were cast loose from their mothers’ grip to run with their friends while the adults claimed the best seats. He and Ginny leaned against the rail, watching the ship load, Mike scanning the crowd. Ginny sensed his tension, but felt it best to let him be cautious. He had every right to be. She didn’t really appreciate how much more he worried with her at his side. The idea of something happening to her because of him pebbled his skin with fear and turned his knees to water.
There was a dizzying number of families, groups of adults surrounded by swirling, eddying tides of children. Some were clearly extended families—cousins, aunts, grandparents, and the like. But there were relatively few men. It was a hard thing to get a day off from work and few seemed to have managed it, a fact that had Mike feeling suddenly self-conscious. He could feel the eyes of the adults around him on the promenade deck, wondering at the man with the beard and the beautiful girl on his arm.
* * *
“C’mon, Mommy, we’ll miss the boat!” Josh cried, pulling at Esther’s arm and leaning to his task like he was pulling a lifeline. “C’mon!” Ginny heard him and looked down to find them climbing the gangway. She waved, but Esther didn’t see her. Josh did though, and he tugged Esther’s arm again and pointed. “I’ll be right up, sweetie!” Esther shouted, trying to keep up with Josh. They disappeared into the side of the ship a deck below.
* * *
“Gin, can you wait here a few minutes?” Mike asked when they’d settled on a piece of a bench at the rail. “I want to take a quick look over the boat. Just a precaution,” he added lightly. He pulled his eyes from her as if she were the sun and he a planet in her orbit. They’d have all day after all.
Mike walked the decks one by one from the bow to the stern, doing a full turn of each before climbing the stairs to the next. He checked the saloon in the interior, he looked into the engine room, he walked the hurricane deck, the kitchen, the dining room, and the promenade deck. He saw children, hundreds of them, mothers looking harried but sunny, grandparents, aunts and uncles, a German band tuning up in the stern, and a wiry stoker with a coal-blackened shirt. But he didn’t see the Bottler or Jack McManus.
He’d made his way back to the bow on the promenade deck, coming back down from the topmost hurricane deck when he saw Ginny again, standing against the rail, a woman at her side and two children close by. He picked his way through the crowd, dodging a boy running after a ball and tipping his hat to a distinguished-looking lady with a parasol.
“Ginny,” Mike said behind her. “Ginny?” The way he said it was like nothing she’d ever heard. There was longing in his voice, a desperate tightening of the throat as he stepped off into the space of her name. His relief at finding no one lurking in dark corners flooded through him when he saw her and realized as if for the first time that he’d have her all to himself for the entire day. It seemed almost too perfect to bear.
“Hello, Mike,” she whispered, “Everything okay?”
Esther watched spellbound, her children tugging to go for ice cream.
“Yeah. Looks that way,” he said, staring at her in the morning light.
“What?” she asked, looking at him with a curious frown.
“Nothing,” Mike answered. “I’m just so damn lucky, that’s all.”
“I guess,” she said with a little smile. “Oh, I’m sorry, this is Esther and her children, Emily and Josh. I told you they were coming.”
Mike took Esther’s hand. “And I’m glad you did,” he said.
* * *
The Slocum’s steam whistle blew twice, signaling for the last of the stragglers while Reverend Haas waited, suddenly alone at the top of the gangway.
“Esther, Ginny tells me you work at the factory. How is it? I heard it was the most modern of its type when it was built.”
Esther looked at the children and whispered “It’s a little piece o’ hell if you gotta know. But there’s worse lemme tell ya. I do okay,” she said with a shrug. “Helps put bread on the table.”
“Oh, maybe I should take this beard off,” Mike said. “I don’t think I’ll need it now.” He got it off quickly, to the stares of some, and stuffed it and the glasses into a pocket. Ginny reached out to touch his face. It was better, but the scars hadn’t healed entirely. A small, angry, red pucker was on one side, a larger one on the other. “Do they hurt?”
“Not now,” he answered. “Everything’s perfect.”
He kissed her then under the brim of her snow-white hat, and she was helpless not to kiss him back. She pulled away for a moment, digging in her bag. “I have something to show you,” she said. It was the note he’d scrawled the first night at the hospital, folded into a lacquered snuffbox. “I kept it.”
Mike buried his face in her neck and pulled her close. “I know all your secrets,” he said into the hollow of her neck, the words vibrating into her like ripples on a pond.
“It’s not fair,” she whispered back. “Now you have to tell me yours.”
* * *
Esther’s kids were tugging and whining for ice cream and she finally had to give in. “I’ll meet ya later back by the band,” Esther said over her shoulder as Emily and Josh pulled her away. “Have fun you two.”