III : Origins

1856

Charles Healy: New Orleans to Cairo, Illinois

It seems that I have been held and burdened down for so long but now I am lighter moving ever deeper into the stream until I am held up floating easily, in the moss skin scent of fresh water I am in this river that is in the heart of this country and I dive under. I feel in each hip joint a looseness while the water holds me. I swim while the water brushes along my ribs, my chest. I breathe and dive, in rhythmic stroking. When I turn on my back to float the voices of Malachi and Christopher cheer me as when we were boys. “Alligator’s coming,” he shouts but I know there are no dangers here. I come up, up through the golden water, it tastes of earth. I can hear the river, hear the roaring of its passing, hear the gravel scrape against the bottom. I am in this river that is in the heart of this country and I dive under. I swim back against its pushing, swim against the current refreshed in the water I feel free to move, stretch my arms far in front of my face, something new awakes in me a salmon that has lingered in my blood, and I am strengthened to swim upstream. I dive deeper under the surface swimming under water against the current. I move into it and it sweeps me, southward, a few yards. Many trees are buried in the water their branches just breaking the surface, one must steer clear of those or be scraped from underneath. Everywhere there are things buried that I cannot know. Caressing my shoulders as I move, sliding along my ribs as I stroke, slipping and sliding along my side and along my legs as I move. I walked until the water came to my waist and I swam forward. I peeled off my damp clothing with pleasure, and waded in slowly at first finding the water cool but not cold to the touch feeling with my feet the mysterious bottom of this river, to find my footing on this ground that is always unknown to me, I found that it was sandy and sunken under my weight. Malichi and myself disembarked and following the suggestion of the young first mate walked a slanted sandy path through a bramble of willow and cattail to a gravel point that juts forward into the water convenient. Since landing at the wharf we have been searching out among the shore a place where we could go bathing in relative modesty in consideration of the local women, though I do not see any houses here. Though they may be near just the same, I never know it seems how things are arranged here. So I am told. It has been hellish hot as we go, even on the river the temperature they say is over 100. The water, though murky to appearance has a fresh odor that brings over us a longing to dive in, but swimming near the churning wheel of a steamship is the most dangerous and accidents of a grisly kind are common among children and boys who venture into the river along this way. So we move slowly on the deck of the boat that also seems to move slowly. The heat here is a presence unto God, a stupefying heat, as wet as hot, and in it we move like lost memories.

The boat is never quiet slapping and churning the water behind us. It seems as if the boat continues to move forward but we seem to get nowhere though the river comes and comes and comes long unending, now the light and the day that plays over it has become beautiful to me. A hundred small streams slip their water into this one and the sound of their running is a cooling sound. At two the heat is too intense to stand out in, and we take shade under the canvas.

I watch the river. Still at a month feel I cannot see this country cannot see what it is, or what it is saying. At any rate there is no help for it, for where we are going, there is no backing down now. Sneaking into the interior. Floating. Floating is a strange way to enter a country. A river that flows like a vein I think in an invisible body or a thief down a dark alley, I still have no firm idea, but we go and I am in this going. Perhaps that is all there will be, just this river and the light upon it, the clouds overhead. I think I’m trying to find what this country is. I do not know what it is I am trying to find in observing the light and the scenery as I do, but feel obliged to remark on it.

Daylight changes over the river as we go up.

When rain is in the air the trees turn their green leaves to a silver side, that is how you know a change is coming, a breathing in the great canopy of branches as a coolness. Then the dripping from the silver leaves. Oh there are great trees here, larger than any I ever saw. At noon on a clear day the glare from the river is molten bronze, and brash and the voices of the deck men too, full of profanity at noon, but later there will be sun on hillsides behind the shady shore trees, and the dark green of the tree’s lattice work reflected in the surface like a mirror and there will be twilight where the light slips from the land yet finds a loose edge of water here like the Celtic hammered cup the Church had for a chalice, and there to cast in gold and reflect upon. Once I saw in a streamlet entering the river two otters on a log practicing diving. Later in the morning fish flip a spangle at the eye, and the light catches an edge of the water white and eddying. In early morning when I crawl from the shelter of our canvas there is often a pale blue light on the surface that the river finds from the sky, though the eye cannot yet see it, it is between them only there are low wisps of clouds and mist rising like laundry drying by the stove. I have found it thoughtful to watch the daylight as it comes and passes over the river. This brown river lies always before us narrowing at the horizon but spreading to each side slow and swollen.

·

The plantations along this stretch put a flag out at a landmark downstream so that the pilot knows they are to stop. There was one this morning we came to with a wooden wharf along the water, black slaves standing by to load barrels of molasses and to carry from the hold of the ship two whole crates of Irish whiskey, which when appeared the Irishman cheered it, as the slaves took it and loaded it onto a wagon driven by a white man. There were two younger boys with the older slaves who ran alongside after we called out shouting.

“Take me on, take me on.” Until the man in the wagon yelled at them hush and then stopped running and hung their heads.

There was a second plantation today, and as we pulled alongside an oak tree at one end startled me with its girth, larger around I think than a crowd of ten men. In the dark shade of its wide branches there are two black men standing without shirts, leaning against a stack of bundles. One is an older man with white hair who raises his hand in greeting but the larger young man beside him says naught but follows the boat with a set jaw and a harsh look that meets my eyes and gives me a strange chill. I wonder what is in the bundles could it be meat of some kind as there are flies hovering about them. The old man gave some instructions I could not hear through the steam whistle of the boat when it stops, then a gangplank is thrown down from the deck to the wharf that clatters and at its noise the boy turns, I was on the edge of the boat watching and I saw this, saw the boy turn his back to the ship and bend to lift the bundles there, and when he turned I saw a shining wet field of red welts, planted in neat lines like corn, raised on the flesh of his back bothered by the flies. My bowels churned at the rawness of it, I turned away as quickly as I could, while a young American man standing on the deck beside me saw what I had seen and said “Aye he was whupped pretty bad, that one, nasty business isn’t it.” I couldn’t speak at the moment for the nausea and surprise, I’ve never been a strong one for gore, and walked to the other side of the boat.

Later this young man who is very fair and full of stories, training he says to be a boat pilot, talked with me a long time. He said slaves are often whipped with a horse whip for all manner of offenses until the blood flows, and while many think it wrong on a Biblical basis, those in favor control the dollarical basis, in which its value cannot be overstated and so persists. His words. Much dislike between the northern and southern people of the country arises over this.

I liked this young man as he was a great teller of stories and merry. We talked as the river darkened to a thick tea color in the slanted afternoon, such as how the English let us starve like dogs but did not break open our backs, that being too violent a measure for the proper English gentleman, who prefers that we hunger to the death and freeze in the winter as the corpses that way are lighter and less odorous. He liked that quip, aye, he said, and it’s often the English here too, they say and Scots that do the whippin’; though the mean violence of those bleeding welts and the general public acceptance of it have ruined my taste for this country. Thoughts of going home come back to haunt my days, of going backwards down this river and backwards across the ocean.

Why do I want to live among men who would lower themselves to mortify the flesh of other men who labor on their behalf, and cannot defend themselves but stay on to serve their children.

Malachi says I am all yellow and weak, and best put my mind to tomorrow but I am longing for home and cannot see the good. Many here have come from home; it is heartfull to hear their voices but two have been upriver and back, they left a sister in New Orleans, work now as railroad men in Missouri. They tell us Irish are hated wherever they go, but the railroad takes them until they drop. NINA they write for the boys here who do not cipher, this is what you see in the cities, this stands for No Irish Need Apply. Best to stay clear of the larger cities, they say there are bogs of Irish in them already and much else. But why I ask him, why is the Irishman despised? Because we drink, and fuck he said, better than any of them. All the fellows laughed at this but not I.

·

Towns here seem to rise and walk along the bank of the river until they kneel down again, appearing as they do all the same to my eye. The trees that grow along the banks of this river are mighty and tall, where there are not levees, that is walls built to keep the river from meandering which block the view of the land from the water. I watch the countryside rise with a red dirt road here and there, with small towns that look built all in a rush of leaning planks newly hewn from the tree and nary a church steeple to be seen. The trees that go to fuel the fire of these boats are greater in number than all the beams from every cottage in our village. I wonder that they use the trees this way but they do not expect a lack as far as I can tell of anything.

Each boat I step aboard takes me further to where I do not know. Though I try now to look ahead at the countryside and it is a distraction of wonders. I seem to be at times only a tool of wonderment. Often I think it a terrible sin that we made in coming here, as I don’t see how we will survive it, and often it is hard for me to sleep, with worry and not knowing. That feeling is torn in me still by an unwillingness to continue this journey for another moment. The heat, and the smoke, the noise almost overwhelms me, though I too am borne along in this hurry and frenzy to go. Malachi and I were paid a half day’s wage to help with loading and that has sustained us for these few days while we have waited by the wharf to find a way north. The docks swarm so with coming and going it is like the ocean’s edge, surging and withdrawing and again it is a wonder to see. There is but a grim determination that serves to drive the men here, under the vise of the heat that is only increased as steamboats fire their boilers in preparation for leaving and spew a cloud of dark smoke over the wharf. There was a small blond boy carrying a bundle of shirts almost larger than himself, then a large Creole rolled a cart across his feet, oh the wrinkled tears on his sweat-stained little face was heartbreaking to see, but the little fellow carried on, as if the weight of his load was the final difficulty of his life. I lost sight of him in the pushing crowd but would have liked to offer a hand or a word of kindness, though such feelings are rare here. The departure of the boats was so busy, so packed round with bodies and goods being pulled or rolled up gangplanks, sweating and shouting from faces of every appearance, Creole and black, boy and man, all groaning under the weight of barrels and bundles until stowed, then the loading planks taken away and the ropes wound back on deck.

Two days ago we left by steamboat from New Orleans headed for Cairo, Illinois, and onward to the Ohio River.

·

The Healys came from a famine you see, but I think they brought a hunger with them. You look like that side.

Like I started to say earlier my mother’s life was unusual for the time. Before she was married she worked outside of the home, which was not very common. She started out at the Krintz Brewery. Old man Krintz’s sister worked there, she was an older woman, and so Grandpa Tindal allowed my mother to go, thinking she would be supervised. He was terribly strict. I can picture her clearly now, that office where she worked. All kinds of things I can see now, or hear so plainly.

1915

Krintz’s Brewery. Blanchardville

Might have been about three in the afternoon but the winter light fell limp and spent against the broad windows of the Krintz Brewery office. Mahogany desks floated like old boats at harbor in the interior gloom. At the front desk, Mother bent to her work, thinking how the scratching sound of pen on paper was like the tree branches scraping on the eaves. Wind like this you could hear it all day. The figures she was copying into the large green ledger were getting harder and harder to see. She stood and lit the gas lamps, two on each side of the dingy, cluttered office. Now the gas light caught up the rich color of her fine brown hair as she paused to look in the small mirror on the hat rack by the door; smoothing her stray blond streak into the back. Few people knew that one of her eyebrows and lashes was also blond, she checked to see if it was still covered over carefully with mascara, and it was. She felt that even Thomas would find it too unusual if he knew. Most people noticed her violet-blue eyes. The room felt warmer now as she sat back at her desk.

She noticed how early this winter dusk arrived, almost time for the girls to go home to their supper. She went through her accounts, Let’s see yes, I‘ve written up bills for tomorrow’s deliveries to McComb, and Arcadia, and put the grain mill bills on Evelyn’s desk. There comes Harlan’s wagon with the last kegs to fill. I’ll give him a wave through the front window here. We’re always waving at each other, she thought, ever since he’d moved down the street from the house a few years ago. It was nice to have a neighbor like Harlan, if you didn’t want to walk somewhere alone he’d come with you just for the walk. It’s nice he still uses horses, I like the sound of them better than the trucks, and they work better for deliveries. She listened to the doors rolling apart in the back of the building as he pulled in, his booming voice rising, and laughing with the girls on the bottling room floor. Where Harlan was loud and certain Thomas was soft spoken and thoughtful, but merry in his own way. Thomas Healy had been in her mind all day, she had compared Thomas Healy’s watch with Mr. Krintz’s watch, had compared his handwriting to her own. It slanted to the left. It was just a small note she touched in her pocket asking if she might like to see the vaudeville show. The Walter Ambler players were coming to the State Theatre tonight, just a few hours from now, but she wasn’t sure she could. My mother’ll want me to go to church with her for St. Lucy’s day, 7:00 p.m. Mass but I won’t do it. Silly girls with candles on their heads. I’ve gotten paid. Five one dollar bills rolled in my pocket. Must be about time to go. What’s that noise, oh now who would that be knocking from the door to the factory. Harlan never comes through the front, and Bill the night man has a key. Strange thumping sound too. Oh it’s Ismelda’s voice I think and Maria and Wistala. Hello, I’m coming, let me get the key, hold on I’m coming.

She quickly unlocked the back doors and admitted into the office the three Polish girls. Their blond hair was wet against their faces where the wash water had condensed and when they stepped into the warmer office their heads began to steam. I hope they’re not planning on walking out like that, Mother thought wondering at their visit. It looked as if they were ready to go but their winter coats were hanging open. Ismelda Apful whom the local children mocked by calling “I smelled an apple” spoke the most English of the three.

“Please Edna if you help us with the buttons” she said, motioning to her coat. “Now our hands from washing all day are swollen and too sore our coats to button.”

They stood all three of them together as if to prove the truth of it, held out their six hands to her. Their hands were wrinkled and raw, red from the lye soap and hot water they were submerged in all day scrubbing the beer bottles. In places peeling skin cracked into bleeding sores that must have stung painfully and a pink raised rash spread up their tender inner wrists.

Swollen and empty, those women held their hands with their palms facing upward as if they were asking a question, a question about whether they should have come to this country at all, or what a woman was to do. Why, Mother wondered, was it allowed for them to suffer so?

She pulled the worn black wool coat around Ismelda and buttoned it, and Wistalas too, an even older coat with a long row of hooks and eyes that took some time; and then Maria the youngest with two golden braids so frail around her shoulders that when you pulled her coat closed it seemed there was hardly anything inside it.

Mother thought of fat Krintz the brewer’s hands, how plump and smooth they were as they held the pen to sign the checks. Why couldn’t they be given gloves. Workmen had gloves. There were rubber gloves. They were costly, but they did exist. They could have had gloves if Krintz would pay for them. She felt ashamed suddenly that she worked for him at all. It was wrong to work for a man like that.

“You poor things,” she said, “there must be a way to protect your skin, you should tell Krintz you need gloves.”

“No miss we are to ask afraid for other girls will here work and not gloves have.”

“We very happy except for coats problem.”

She wrapped them all up as if they were her little children, she even patted them on the shoulders without thinking and that made Ismelda started giggling, she said “Thank you Mama.” She helped them tie their woolen scarves, careful to wrap their wet hair under the finely crocheted wool.

“Before I came who helped with your buttons?” Mother asked.

They looked at her pulling their coats tight around them and shivering, shaking their heads no. No, they had simply gone cold, walking the mile to the north end where they lived with the other Polish immigrants. They did have knit muffs they put their hands into. Mother put on her own beaver skin coat and they turned off the gas lamps in the wall.

She left with the Polish girls into the gathering dark, snow starting to fall as they walked onto Blanchard Street. They pushed against the wind like a herd of little animals, their shoes leaving dark tracks in the white snow on the sidewalk. Across the street the façade of the new water works was being raised and blocks of stone and brick sat stacked and waiting for the future. To the west the red glow of the Cargill gas well warmed the sky like rouge on a pale woman’s cheek. From the tracks down the block a whistle sounded, bringing with it the last Interurban train of the day lit up from within and carrying, she was sure, the father of her Thomas, who she hoped was moving now too, and walking toward her house to call. They stood and waited for the train to pass.

1915

Blanchardville

Standing inside the empty Interurban railway car for the final ride of the day into Blanchardville, James Healy, the ticket manager, watched the winter streets slice by. He held the overhead leather strap as the rocking motion at the crossings lulled his long tired body into a standing doze. At Western Avenue he took off his cap and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and when he opened them saw the Krintz Brewery sign shining up the block. “God damn it!” he said out loud stomping his foot, because he hated beer. More than anything he hated beer, though he believed in whiskey. Not only beer, but he hated the idea that his own son, flesh and blood, would court a woman like the one that worked at Krintz’s, even if she were clever with numbers. A bluestocking she was and rarely to Mass. Was that her right there in that group of skirts moving away into the darkness? Move away harlot! He thought to himself, then asked God’s forgiveness. The irritation of home is upon me once again.

v

Give a man a bottle of beer and it’s drunk in one sitting, he thought. Now give a man a bottle of good Irish whiskey and he can sell it by the glass to the tune of twelve small glasses per bottle, he had counted, and the cost then is wise. Whiskey by the glass, you could make money selling whiskey by the glass, as he well knew, touching the several flasks that he kept neatly stashed in the deep pockets of his blue uniform. Whiskey was a small service he provided for certain regular customers, along with the newspaper and cigarettes, but beer competed because beer was cheap. James was a man who made the things that bothered him serve. He had married Theresa Neimeir, a Protestant German because he blamed the Protestants for everything and thought having a wife of that persuasion could simplify the troublesome situation of marriage by concentrating all his causes for complaint into one location. He had courted her with a troubled heart, struck with lust toward her thick auburn hair and refined manners, while petrified at the sin he made in doing it. He had gone to work for the railroad despite what it had done to his family, or because of it.

He thought how unfair it was that nothing was set ahead of time, a gamble it all seemed from start to finish, so one might as well. Gambling’s no sin when God does it, so why should I feel any God damn differently. Every man in his family, chasing some rotten bet, because a bet at least left you a whiskey-breath of hope.

·

Well, after that incident with the Polish girls’ hands my mother refused to go to church for a year afterward. She was setting the table for Sunday lunch, tossing the glass plates down a little hard because her father had scolded her again about staying home from mass.

“I’m not setting foot in St. Michael’s until the brewery girls are treated better. Their hands are bleeding is why they sit in the back row, it’s not that they’re shy. A lot of good God does them. They need gloves not God. Aren’t the Krintzes Catholic too?” she railed against her father. “What’s it mean to be Catholic if they don’t have the faintest idea of Christian charity. Fine for them to say the girls will be rewarded in heaven but who is going to button their coats in the meantime? Not to mention that railroad, yesterday, two brake-men killed up in Detroit and the trains kept right on rolling.”

·

Over on the west side of town the Healys, especially Theresa Neimier with the passion of the convert, thought Mother a little dangerous and forced Thomas to delay their engagement until she would agree to go to church. But she wouldn’t be stopped. Even when she was finally asked over for Thomas’ birthday, she went on about it in the parlor over coffee. “Where was the church when your uncles died in the famine?” she asked James. “They care less for your soul than your dollar.”

“Oh it was a Protestant famine, and if nothing else brought my father to this better land; so you wouldn’t have met Thomas would you if not for the famine so God has his ways lassie and he’s ahead of you bluestockings thinking women ought to vote when they can nary reason out the obvious workings of the world.”

James had gone to work for the railroad despite the fact that its coming had torn through his father Thomas’ farm and ruined him, or because it had, he couldn’t really say. His hapless father, off the boat from the famine scarce twenty years ’fore they took it, and his voice always whispering under the chug of the wheels. “From Ireland came I to this field to plow it, now another machine will carry it away. Where does all this going lead to, son, where’s the end to it?”

Well, where the hell did you think it was going, you poor mouthed dreamer, it’s going forward. Cringed when he thought of him. Was heart trouble had been coming on anyway, James told himself whenever he remembered as he did now and crossed himself, then took a shot of whiskey from the flask in his pocket.

How he had stood before his father’s chair and said “I’m going to work for the railroad,” whereupon the old man had clutched his heart, pitched forward, and died at his feet. No one else was home at the time so no one heard. Died of a heart attack sure as shootin’. Didn’t seem any reason to give the job up once the old man was dead. Though there’s more to that story.

James was convinced that railroads were the wave of the future, and thought that he should ride them. But in the twenty years since that day, two of the three railroad companies that had criss-crossed the old farm went out of business, their tracks pulled up for scrap iron; while his Protestant wife had gone and converted to Catholicism claiming that her mother had been Catholic all along. Well we didn’t know at the time did we. Can’t live according to what hasn’t happened yet he told himself. So that left only the whiskey. Its effect at least was reliable.

·

But my Grandma Tindal defended Mother whenever the Healys questioned her about her morals, and said they didn’t have a leg to stand on in questioning the engagement since that month James’ brother, Patrick, had been found floating face up in the Maumee river, just downstream of Toledo, looking from his pained expression to have been murdered. James had never been close to him, he hadn’t been spoken of in some time. Word was that Patrick had a drayage business that hauled liquor barrels, but no partners were found.

Just the fact that James didn’t pursue the investigation of the case raised suspicions of foul play all around.

“Heartless of James Healy not to follow up for his own brother. I bet he knows something. His own brother, well!” Grandma Tindal said.

Well, it did always seem like there was something low life about that Healy uncle, and I can only say if it appears that something is amiss or that people are doing something illegal, then they most likely are. They probably will keep doing it too, as the men in the Healy family later did prove.

1916

Riverside Park. Blanchardville

My mother was still not going to church when summer came and didn’t care if Thomas’ family was shady or not. She was glad he had contracted tuberculosis as a child so he wouldn’t be drafted yet for the War because the politicians and police were as bad as the church.

Was almost like she wanted to prove their wrongness you know. You’re a little like her, never cared what anyone else thought as long as she thought so. One day, it was a sweltering July day, she and her sister Nora went out to Riverside Park to the bathing pool there. Well they were on their blanket in their bathing costumes when to Nora’s dismay mother took out a cigarette and started smoking. The smoke started wafting across to the neighbors who were turning their heads and muttering, but Mother just kept chatting with Aunt Nora like nothing was amiss, until Nora said she needed desperately to go buy a taffy just then. It was a popular summer, and crowded that day as there was a pair of monkeys that had been brought to the park to live in a cage by the lifeguard cabin, courtesy of the county commissioner. To prevent further mortification the lifeguard in his striped costume was summoned to come and speak with the “Young Lady” who was smoking in front of the children.

“Please Ma’am,” he mimicked smoking a cigarette with his first two fingers, “women are not allowed.” He meant of course they were not allowed to smoke, but she answered as loudly as she could.

“You mean to tell me that monkeys are allowed here but women aren’t?”

Well the young men nearby all laughed, and asked each other who she was, while one man, she thought she recognized Thomas, climbed up the high wooden platform and launched out in an arching swan dive that seemed to capture the challenge of her remark in a rising flight before disappearing with a question mark splash into the golden water.

Under the Blanchard River in Riverside Park Thomas Healy, he wasn’t my father yet was he, or is your father always your father? Anyway he smiled at the thought of this woman, and wondered if he was ready for what the future might bring him. His up-stretched arms pushed the water aside propelling him from the depths toward the daylight air. When his head emerged he was still smiling. He was proud of her but he wasn’t sure yet what to say, and wondered about it as he turned onto his back and lay floating there.

When the sky failed to answer he got out of the river and went over to where she was sitting. “Where did you come from, Thomas Healy ?”

“The water.”

“I see that. I mean when did you get here?”

“About fifteen minutes ago. Just about the time a small crowd gathered in front of what appeared to be a cloud of smoke, I thought maybe there was a cookout?”

“You saw us and didn’t bother coming over.”

“I honestly didn’t know it was you until I was already up the tower. I saw you then and dove in. I was hot. Would you like to take a swim together?” He gave her his arm and they walked across the lawn past the monkeys and into the water.

·

When Mother cut her hair above the shoulder in September Grandma told her: “You’ll never find a husband now as the story is all over town what you did then said in the park. Now add to that looking like a Hottentot, while being Godless, and immodest and just because there is a Revolution in Russia doesn’t mean you have to get into the act.”

I might have called you Godless too I suppose. I know you’re thinking of the time I threw away those Alan Watts books you were reading. Anyway, at that time Mother’s sister Nora lived just around the block so she went over one afternoon, and they got to talking and she cut Nora’s hair in a bob too, and Nora cried so after it was all done. Mother said, “Now stop Nora I can’t put it back on can I ?”

But Nora kept looking down at her brown curls mixed among the pattern of the linoleum of the kitchen floor crying.

“Oh what will Norbert say, what will Norbert say?”

Mother said, “Well it wasn’t Norbert’s hair was it?” Then stood in the back doorway smoking.

There was a knock at the front door.

“Oh no he’s home,” Nora cried in panic and scrambled out of the chair and on to the floor where she began brushing the curls together, as if she might yet redeem her condition.

“No it’s not going to be Norbert, will he knock at his own door.”

“No, I guess not.”

She went to answer it. It was Thomas Healy.

“Your mother said you were over here.”

They were married in October the next year.

1930

The Zane Lunch. Zanesville, Ohio

The men shuffled up the four blocks of Main Street on one side of the street and then came back down along the other side.

“The poor men,” my mother said, looking up to the light as she wiped a table.

“Where are they going?” I asked.

“They don’t have work,” she answered.

“If I didn’t have work I’d read all the time.”

“Seems like you do anyway so count your blessings and get your dirty paws off the clean glass.”

“Are they going to find a piece of work just laying there on the sidewalk?”

“Well you never know,” Mother said, wiping the table in a broad circle, “where you’ll find what.”

I can hear her say that plain as day, “you never know.” I should have said that to you. You never know where you’ll find what, unless you keep looking from where you started. Maybe you could have found what you needed right here .

Well, as I was saying. We never went hungry because we had a restaurant, we were lucky, everyone said so. There were lines at the church where people waited to get bread, a man sold red apples one by one right on the corner.

From the table by the window I watched the men passing; watched their long woolen coats sway, their arms swinging gently. I saw the sides of their faces, saw their ears sticking out as if they were still trying to hear good news, but their eyes were hidden under the brims of hats, pulled down tight to keep them from having to look at people because they couldn’t look up and smile very well, because of the Depression, or say good morning because it wasn’t really, and everything then felt like a hat pulled down over your eyes.

The name of our restaurant the Zane Lunch was written in gold leaf letters across the window, but backwards, so it was right when you looked at it from the street. I had read that Leonardo Da Vinci wrote backwards and read his work in a mirror but it puzzled me. Why if he were so smart and invented airplanes he would be so difficult and mean. I didn’t think you should be mean if you knew better. But Sister Cecilia had visited Italy and saw where he had painted the Last Supper, so people forgave him.

The sky that early morning was deep grey, it had been raining but stopped for a minute with a little blue breaking through, and some white in between the clouds, I could see just a line of it above the red brick building across the street and it looked like a sky Leonardo might paint. I got to thinking about the sky I could see and the sky above what I could see, and it occurred to me that when God looked down on us, down at the window of the Zane Lunch he had the same view as I did except backwards. Through that slit of clouds, he was peeking in just as I was looking out. Did he see everything, the sky and the earth and the town of Zanesville and the rivers and the Y Bridge and the chimneys of Weller’s pottery factory and the hill up Main Street where we were, and the words Zane Lunch? When God looked down was it exactly the same as what I saw only from the other direction? The men passed again.

The men were always walking together, groups of three or four, smoking, and the cigarette smoke mixing with their breath when it was cold, and their talking, I guess talking of what they once had, or were, or didn’t or weren’t. Each time they went by we forgot about them, so that when they came by again it was a surprise, like noticing your own breathing.

Whenever something happened like Uncle Charlie got his car stolen, or Jeanne cut some new paper dolls out of the cardboard of the cereal box, or Tom swallowed a bean and almost choked to death, the men would be walking past the window again. They walked to keep warm in the winter and to keep cool in the summer. Dad said it’s easier to walk than to stand still. So every day they started out as if they were going somewhere, but they didn’t have anywhere to go and I thought maybe a person found a place to go by going on anyway. Just like I would sometimes get caught up in finding the next piece of the flower or boat side, or water reflection in one of the jigsaw picture puzzles Dad always kept on the back table, and it would be late but I would keep looking for the right piece. Seems like you went on like those men, going from one place to the next like you didn’t have any choice in the matter, but of course you did. You had all kinds of choices you never used.

·

Those days we took for granted that men would always be walking by, so that morning Mr. Moscke turned and opened the door and came in sticks out in my mind. Jeanne and I had come downstairs and we were sitting at the counter where we had our breakfast. Well, we had hot coffee with lots of cream and a sweet roll before we went off to school.

“Morning Jeanie, Rosie.”

“Morning, Dad.”

We would spin on to the chrome stools with the red cushion I remember, and the coolness of the marble countertop.

“Charlie, the potatoes get delivered?”

“I’ve got them, Tom,” my Mother said, “over here, but my hands are full of pancake batter so you come get them.”

“You girls are gonna need rain coats today.” There were a few figures moving past under black umbrellas.

The banker Mr. Weidemier came in first always, always in a big hurry, we called him Charlie Chaplin ’cause he had a bowler hat and a belly from all the bacon he ate each morning. He swaggered too just like Charlie Chaplin because The Tramp was Jeanne’s and my favorite movie. After Weidemier left we imitated his walk teetering back and forth in tiny little steps, which we were doing right then when the door opened and one of the walking men came in.

It was Mr. Moschke. I remember he put his old felt hat on the umbrella stand on account of it was so wet the water was trickling off and Jeanne and I smiled at each other.

“Morning,” my dad said, “What can I get you?”

“Can I just get a hot water Tim, I got a pill I’m sposed to take.”

“Sure thing,” Dad said, and went over to the big silver urn where they kept the water, pulled back the little black lever. He set the mug full of hot water on the counter.

Jeanne and I watched Mr. Moschke as Dad went back to the kitchen.

Slowly wrapping both his hands around the cup he hung his head down and sat for a few minutes. He reached out and took the ketchup bottle that was sitting on the counter, and poured a whole lot of ketchup into the cup.

I looked at Jeanne because Dad said not to waste the ketchup and so I got off my stool and went back by the stove where Mom and Dad were cooking and I whispered Mr. Moschke’s drinking the ketchup, but my Dad gave me the worst look put his finger to his lips said “Shshsh, you never mind now, get your breakfast.” So I went back out to Jeanne, shrugged my shoulders.

We sat and watched him.

There were saltines on the counter too and he took a pack, just one, like he wasn’t being greedy and crumbled those up and put them in the cup. Didn’t look up to see us, or to see if my Dad was watching which he wouldn’t have because he knew all along what was happening, and was too kind hearted to stop him.

I’ll never forget the way Mr. Moschke sat there so intent on that ketchup soup, looking down at it as if it was alive, how his hand shook when he raised it to his lips, and his cracked-up lips around the rim of the thick white cup. He slurped it slowly. The place was quiet except for the sound of his drinking, which was like a restoration of something you could feel it in the room, how hungry he had been and the sighing sound of his breath. How each drink brought something back, when he put down the cup, then raised it up again and sighed again and in that sigh was the sound of sustaining saying this will suffice for now, until what is next, this is enough to get by. He sat like that with his old tweed coat still on, giving off a strong wet wool smell, slowly drinking in what he could to get by, it was like we felt him get bigger and more solid as he sat there.

I realized then that you weren’t supposed to say anything if you saw somebody stealing ketchup and crackers to eat because being hungry was beyond saying yes or no to. We felt it too, Jeanne and I wouldn’t look at him though we looked at each other, because we didn’t know if that would ever happen to us, that we would have to sip from a little cup of ketchup soup to live on until the next little bit came from somewhere. We didn’t know if that was so common or not. The way children don’t know what in the world is strange, because it’s all so unfamiliar.

·

Now, his sitting there like that comes to mind from time to time when I think of having just enough to kept the body going to get by on. You hardly hear of that anymore, having enough to get by. Will the body have enough to eat? Now there’s a question. There was a reason God made his son human, made flesh, so that he would need to sustain himself just as we do, from the fruits of the earth, which is why bread is the whole point of Mass. I know that’s not exactly what you wanted me to talk about, or my area of expertise, not that that ever stopped anyone in this family from giving an opinion. But you’ll see what I’m trying to get at. And what was lost when they stopped doing the Mass in Latin, I’d like to talk about that too, but later.

Well now I remember that same morning we continued up the hill to cross the Y Bridge to get to St. Nicholas school, which was up on quite a little bluff, and sometimes the bridge would make me afraid, as it seemed high above the river. I would sing hymns as we crossed, “Ave, Ave, Ave Maria.” Jeanne had no fear. She was two years ahead but I had skipped first grade since I could already read, so we were just a year apart. From the bridge you could see a lot of the downtown and the factories beyond and their chimneys spewing coal smoke in a slow rising that reminded me of the lines in Evangeline, because sister had given me a copy last week for helping at the library.

“There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village. … Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the village. Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending, Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment.”

Well the smoke anyway was the same, I thought, and at school you could hear the Angelus ring from the church next door at noon, though we usually went home for lunch, and Dad would have the radio on listening to a horse race, so you couldn’t really hear the bells in our home of peace and contentment. It had dawned on me that the world rarely lived up to the images portrayed in literature, and I wasn’t sure if that was the fault of the writers for not seeing clearly how things are, or of everyone else for not seeing how they were supposed to be.

It was cold and damp and my socks were falling down, I complained to Jeanne.

“Well if you wouldn’t go so slowly it wouldn’t seem like such an ordeal probably. And you might consider pulling your stockings up.”

“But they always fall down and I can’t put my books down or they’ll get wet.”

Jeanne was always so perfect, her coat was belted and her muffler neatly tucked in, her books in a tight little satchel.

“Your stockings fall down because you’re not careful fastening them and no one is forcing you to carry so many books either, you read more than necessary. Give some to me.” Saint Jeanne we called her in later years.

Well I did give her some books and I trudged up the hill on the narrow little sidewalk to St. Nicholas where the sisters were pleased that I could read so well. Especially Sister Jeanne D’Arc, or John Dark as we pronounced it, she was over six feet tall and suffered an eye disease that caused her to wear a patch over one eye, which, with her big black habit made her look a lot like a pirate. But I liked her because she had given me the little green bound copy of Longfellow. Each day I watched her in her black woolen habit, wondering did she have any hair under her veil and was there a hole under her eye patch leading into her brain well you don’t know; or what else she might have in those big pockets which were very deep too. I had seen many things come out: so far a rosary, a round pitch whistle she would blow to get us on key to sing, blue cambric hankies, a fountain pen, and a picture of a pagan baby.

That day she came in and said, “Look, children!” She pulled her hand from her pocket and opened it and there was a chirping yellow downy baby chick, with tiny jet black eyes, I thought it must have hatched inside her pocket. It was a beautiful little thing just the color of sunshine. I was a little confused and thought maybe being religious gave her a special relationship with eggs because she was married to Jesus and didn’t have children of her own, but it turned out she had just put it in her pocket to protect it from the rain as she carried it across the street from the convent where they had a hen. She put it in a box with a light bulb on her desk.

“Now we must take our seats. Good morning, children.”

“Good morning, Sister John Dark.”

“As it is almost the beginning of Lent we will have a Bible story on each Wednesday. Open to Luke chapter 9, the parable of the loaves and fishes.”

I liked the Bible stories though I daren’t tell my father because he would laugh and tell a joke about St. Peter and his keys, as if he had already been to heaven and had a drink with everyone.

You know the story of the loaves, at least I hope you know the story, should know something of your faith. Jesus goes into the desert after hearing of the death of John the Baptist and all the people follow him. Night comes and there’s no food for the crowd except five loaves and two fish, so Jesus says a prayer and the loaves and fish multiply until there’s plenty for all and leftovers too.

And when he had commanded the multitudes to sit down upon the grass, he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven he blessed and brake and gave loaves to his disciples and the disciples to the multitudes. And they did all eat and were filled. And they took up what remained. Twelve full baskets of fragments.

I sat in the classroom thinking of the loaves and fishes, thinking maybe there is something that sustains us if we ask or if we wait. I got to thinking, well if Christ can turn water into wine, and Mr. Moshcke can turn water into tomato soup, then this must be quite a common occurrence.

Or that an animal can live in a nun’s pocket.

Since then I never doubted that you could find a way to eat if you really needed to, or that nuns might lay eggs. Well you know how children think, and it’s just the kind of thing a nun would like, an egg, all white and pure on the outside with a golden glowing little creature inside, like Christ.

That was a memorable day when I learned that life can spring out from plain water or a dark woolen pocket. And the very same day my friend Joe Fergusen said he was moving because his Dad was a potter and the factory was closing down, and he wrote in my little green autograph book a jingle that just seemed to sum up the whole day. I went to the show tomorrow/ And got a front seat in the back/ I fell from the pit to the gallery/ And hurt the front of my back/ Joe Fergusen

1932

Zanesville

I had started walking to the library right after breakfast, before anyone could notice and say I couldn’t go. And even that little sin came back to haunt me. Well I must have been twelve or so. Old enough. It was a Saturday and springtime, warm on my bare knees walking across downtown to Fifth Street to our beautiful stone Carnegie library, had a big stairway out front and floor to ceiling windows. Oh I loved that library, went whenever I could. I know it’s sacrilegious but I thought the library must be like the inside of God’s mind, so cool and deep, and quiet. Had a big Reference Room and that tall wooden rack holding all the colored maps of the whole world. They were on rolls like window blinds, and I would stand there and pull them down, continent by continent.

You loved the library too, I know. I remember you used to ride your old white and pink sting-ray bike to our original library before they tore it down and built that oversized dentist’s office they call a library now. Old man Clooney designed it and five buildings around town all look exactly alike. It’s an eyesore I think but nobody around here would notice.

Most people in Ohio are practical to a fault. Troubling notions like beauty and memory have no place here. But memories are in a place, they have a door we came out of, and a place we went from there.

That morning the horses came in. Of course I didn’t know it yet, about the horses or anything, even the horses didn’t know, kicking at the wood in their stalls. Just like you don’t know at first that it’s your life that’s shaping up like it is, until one day you see it, and say that was it, that was the time I lived in and there’s what happened. But I was thinking no such thing at the time, I was wandering through looking for something good to read.

Mother didn’t think I should read William Faulkner because he was on the church list of books to avoid, so of course when I saw the Sound and Fury on the shelf I grabbed it. I had read in the Plain Dealer that it was considered modern and I liked the sound of that; so I took it along with some other books and Smokey the Cowhorse for my little brother Jim.

I was worried our librarian old Mrs. Lydek would question me at the checkout, but her grey head stayed bent over the counter, I don’t think I ever did see her face, come to think of it just her gnarled hands rustling over the books like mice, taking out the cards, stamping them with the purple date, slipping them back in the pocket, pushing them toward me. I made sure I carried Smokey the Cowhorse on top as I walked the springtime mile downtown, into our lunch counter where Mom was working, and put the books on the table.

“Where have you been all morning? Oh, you went to the library. Everyone in this family is into the damn books,” Mother scolded, “Reading them or making them.”

“I got one for Pat and Jim,” but she had already turned away. The phone was ringing and she’d gone in back to answer it. Mother had been short tempered lately, snapping at us ever since the Zane Lunch closed because no one could afford to eat there. Now we had a place down the street, which was just a small lunch counter and across the street the Cigar Store. Dad sold cigars there but also in the room above there was a “game.”

A game is all we are supposed to know, not even what the game is, because the men drink up there and run “that damn bookie joint” as Mom calls it. Jeanne and I are not to mention this to anyone even the younger children who might not know enough to lie, but if any men at the lunch counter asks where the Cigar Store is we are to point it out, but only if we’ve seen them before.

When we closed the restaurant we moved house down the street to a little two-story wooden house with a yard. The horses actually brought in more money than the restaurant ever had, and Mother had wanted to move because she was worried about the noise of the corks popping when we lived above the restaurant. Well it was Prohibition you know, so everybody made homebrew, beer in the bathtub. But Dad could never get his bottling just right and the corks would pop out at night, wake us all up. But that wasn’t the worst of it. They would blast off during the day too; customers down in the restaurant would think they were hearing gunshots. One day Miss Peale the schoolteacher was in, having her afternoon tea, when a few corks went off and she spilled scalding hot tea right down her front. “Oh dear me what was that explosion?” she asked, and we all shrugged our shoulders like fools, like we hadn’t heard a thing. Next day the new police deputy, Dave, was eating his corned beef when three went off bang, bang, bang like that, well he was up on his feet, pulled his gun out and headed for the door. Mother said it was only a matter of days before even “dumb deputy Dave” would figure out what the source was, so we moved the whole operation.

·

Anyway, soon after I get back to the lunch counter that morning Mayor Weatherall’s yellow car pulls up to the curb. The mayor gets out wearing his tweed suit, even though it’s hot, and he starts across the street to the Cigar Store. His short wife barely shows above the dash board but she’s in there, I can tell by a feather I see fluttering there it must be sticking up from one of her fancy hats, I think she must be looking up in the rearview mirror to get it on just right before she gets out of the car. She’s Mother’s good friend so she’ll be coming in; she’ll sit and have pie and coffee—now that’s the mayor’s excuse see for the car being here. I can smell her before she’s even in the door, Lily of the Valley like you wouldn’t believe, a cloud of it, and a hat like a stuffed pheasant, always makes me catch my breath.

“Hello Rose is your Mother here?”

“Yes Mrs.Weatherall, she’s just taking a phone call. I could get you coffee.”

“That’s alright honey, I’ll wait.”

Mom came back, but she looked worried. Even Ms. Weatherall noticed.

“Hello Catherine, you look like you don’t feel good.”

“Well things are tough all over. Rose you can go on home now, but take this note up to your dad on the way. Get those books off the counter, and take a turn with the little ones when you get home so Jeanne has a break.”

“I know, I will.”

She had written a letter and put it in an envelope with Dad’s name on it. There was no phone in the Cigar Store and I had taken notes up before.

It was a warm afternoon on the Main Street of Zanesville, and the shift at the pottery factory that changed at 2 p.m. had let out. Men were walking home, their clothes all smeared with clay, looking very tired. I had to walk around the long block and go down the alley behind the store because a twelve-year-old girl shouldn’t be seen going into a cigar store, and we needed to be extra careful now.

You would never think looking at the nice front of that downtown block, all so neatly painted and the sidewalk swept clean, that the back of it would be as dark as it was. I always noticed that, how the world doesn’t even match up right, like the face of a sinner all nice on the outside but around the back all grey, like the back of these buildings. No paint on the windowsills, left over piles of coal and bursting trash cans covered with flies. I clanged up the rusty metal steps that led to the back entrance, knocked at the glossy green door and waited for the peephole to open up above.

“I’m Rose down here,” I said, because I wasn’t quite tall enough to be seen. The bolt slid back and Dad opened the door wide.

“Come in come in Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.” He put his arms around my waist and held me to him, twirling around and around. All the men there were laughing, saying we won we won we won. The air was thick with cigar smoke and his squeezing me so around the ribs took my breath away, my father was usually a quiet man, so I was shocked at this, and dizzy as he set me down finally amidst the smoke and the shouting men.

“Rosie we won big time now. Go tell your mother.” Uncle Charlie was pouring drinks from a bottle to all the men standing around, he was pouring so fast, spilling it in-between. They were all talking at once.

“How in the hell did you know it, Charlie; you gave Beltz that horse five to one.”

“A Florida horse, I told you, likes the heat.”

“Who said anything about the heat?”

“Oh shutup Bill, the mayor’ll hear you.”

“He was so sure it was winning. Said he talked to a man in Toledo all about the race, who knew. Hell yes he talked to a man in Toledo, that was our brother Lawrence he talked to for Godsakes. I called Larry earlier, I said now when this guy comes in tell him to put his.…”

“Oh hell the way Weller came and followed him in with that fifty dollars, like it was nothing. Fifty dollars!”

“We got a hundred-and-fifty apiece, times five almost. Rain of dime notes.”

“Poor sucker.”

“Horse ran like the wind, what a hummer, I love you Treasure Chest. Here’s to you.” And he raised his glass.

“Wasn’t named Treasure Chest, Charlie, it was Tracer’s Best.”

“Not to me it wasn’t, it was a Goddamn treasure chest.”

Fat Mayor Weatherall sat at the table in his suit, smiling too. He was watching Charlie sort dollar bills into a stack and pull a rubber band around them, then slide the stack toward him. Charlie did another stack and the mayor waited for that one to come to him too, then put them both in his chest pocket and sat back looking dignified.

That room had once been the hotel dining room, had green fern-patterned wallpaper and a big table in the middle of the room, which had been put there to be safely away from the two front windows. The table was covered with racetrack tickets, glasses, beer bottles and dollar bills. They slapped the table with their hands until the glasses all shook and they started singing.

“Camptown racetrack’s five miles long doo da, doo da, Camptown racetrack’s five miles long oh de doo da day.” One of Dad’s friends was raising his beer bottle. Everyone was laughing, all excited and then Dad was singing Night and Day, repeating how the voice within him was repeating you are the one.

“The voice within me keeps repeating you are the one. Night and day, day and night.”

I remembered I was supposed to give Dad the letter and I put it on the table in front of him amidst the glasses and race tickets, a white envelope with mother’s handwriting. He picked it up and held it as he continued to toast the other men and then they sang Camptown Races, “Going to run all night, going to run all day.”

I watched him open the letter, saw his brow furrow and his smile disappear so I knew the news wasn’t good.

He laid the letter down and put his face into both his hands like he needed to think. He dropped his hands and pushed himself away from the table.

“Goddamn it. Hey Charlie. Mother’s sick, we need to go down to Blanchardville. Aunt Henrietta called.”

“Is it bad?”

“Says to come right away.”

“Well Lady Luck sure drives a hard bargain.”

The two of them just stood there looking stricken and scared and that scared me too. Felt like it was my fault. They had been so jolly, but I had brought the note that ruined everything. I wanted the men to keep singing. I thought maybe I’d start it up again, start to sing again, but then the shame hit me of singing when Grandma was ill. I felt the shame and the cigar smoke and the spinning around all the sudden and felt all shaky and sick. I ran to the door, slid the bolt back and ran out.

“Now what’s got into her?” I heard my Dad say.

I ran down the stairs and down the alley, though I stopped and walked normally once I hit the street so as not to attract attention. I just wanted to get home, away from the men and the smoke, wanted to talk to my sister Jeanne who would know what to say and hold my baby brother.

What were they talking about anyway? What did it mean when he said Lady Luck drives a hard bargain. Who was she? How was Dad’s horse winning connected to his mother getting sick, I tried to see it. He won the horse race and got money, but Grandma had to get sick. Must be related. Maybe. Like the downtown block, every building with that gray worn side in back and the nice one out front. Did he use up all his hoping and his attention making the horse win, but that left his mother weak and sick. Things must be connected somehow we can’t see. Well the church was right, maybe I should have never picked it up, that Faulkner book. Maybe it’s not Dad’s luck at all, it’s mine. Now that’s silly. Gambling’s a sin church says. Supposed to pray to Mary for the healing of the sick. I think he has mistaken Lady Luck for the Virgin Mary. Maybe they are the same person. Is Lady Luck the Virgin Mary. I’m thirsty, and my stomach hurts, I haven’t had anything since breakfast.

Well I felt the hand of fate in that springtime afternoon, and it made me feel nauseous. I felt some force that snags at what is too wild, or exuberant in us, some pressing down force that keeps us rooted. It doesn’t exactly make sense but since that day I have never found life to be any different than that, one horse coming in first and the other lying down sick. He won all that money, but then my Grandma died a few days later.

·

Just like I got you back the day after my mother died. I’m telling you this because some of your sisters hold anger toward me that I didn’t try to do more to change our situation than I did, but I was never so sure that trying to change what was would make it any better. Could have left your father, but what if I couldn’t find work or feed all of you, then what would happen. You might have ended up wards of the state. Would that have been better? I tried to bear what the situation was, because I was afraid it could get worse. A bird in the hand you know. Well maybe growing up around all that gambling turned me against taking chances.

·

A few weeks after the horses, I heard the front door open early one morning and voices downstairs. I was still in bed but I snuck down to see who it was and there’s that woman Martha in the kitchen with Uncle Charlie. They’re bending over the table toward each other laughing, and drinking coffee. I think well she visits very early in the morning that must be an Italian thing because I know she’s Italian. That explains why her hair is so jet black, and her fingernails painted red. Her dress is so tight because Italy is an old country and people’s clothes are still small there because they are not as big as America. Probably because they use olive oil in their cooking, which Dad won’t allow in his restaurant, says isn’t near as good as lard which makes you bigger and tastes good, but they’re just Italians so they don’t know any better. Uncle Charlie saw me standing in the doorway.

“Well good morning Rosie, aren’t you going to come in and say hello?”

I wanted to, but her black terrier dog Fritz started barking at me, and woke up Mother who came downstairs a few minutes later.

When Mother came into the kitchen Martha stopped laughing and stood up.

“Well now I have to go.”

Mother didn’t say anything to stop her so Uncle Charlie followed her outside and I started to follow.

Mother said “Oh no you don’t. You stay right here. You don’t need to follow that woman anywhere. She must be twice his age and I’m sure there was a husband along the way somewhere. One of these days he’s gonna show up and Charlie will be in real trouble you mark my words.”

“I think she’s pretty,” I said.

“Pretty something, but I don’t know what. Get yourself dressed.”

I heard Martha say to Charlie, “Ciao Bella,” she always said that Ciao Bella, and we heard her car pull away.

·

Well a few minutes later we hear the doorbell ring and mother says, Oh Charlie must have locked himself out, you go let him in but when I opened the door it isn’t Charlie it’s two other men in dark suits and one says. Is your mother home?

Mother comes, says “Can I help you?”

The man pulls a star out of his pocket and shows it to her. He says “Is this the residence of Charles Healy?”

I see mother pause, like all the sudden she couldn’t remember.

So I think well what’s wrong with her and I pipe in, “Yes sir Uncle Charlie lives here.”

Mother gave me a terrible look.

And the man says, “Oh does he sweetheart? Is he home?”

She pauses again standing there frozen because she doesn’t know if he should or shouldn’t be home.

Just then I hear the back door open and Uncle Charlie walks in from the kitchen with the newspaper, and hands it to my mom.

“Hello there.”

“Hello, we’re looking for Charles Healy.”

“That’s me,” he says.

“Can we ask you a few questions?”

“Yes sir.”

Well Jeanne came downstairs, then Dad carrying baby Jim, and they asked if he was the Healy with the Lunch Counter and all. Said they were the Bureau of Liquor and Firearms. Oh Dad went so pale at that, started to drop the baby and Mother had to step over to catch him. One of the policeman asked Charlie.

“Were you in the vicinity of Chillicothe in the last day or so?”

“Why no sir, I’ve been here at home.”

“You were here last night?”

“Yes sir.”

“Mrs. Healy can you tell us if he was here.”

“Yes sir he was here all night.”

“Charles is your car missing, by any chance? ”

“Why no sir my car’s right out behind the garage here, I’ll show you.”

So we all walk out, Charlie leading us, across the back lawn and to the back alley where he usually parked, then he stops stock still like he’s in shock.

“Well I’ll be…car was right here, just last night.”

“Well that’s what we thought. We have some good news and some bad news. Good news is we’ve found your car. Bad news is it’s wrecked in the middle of a field in Kentucky with a load of liquor in the trunk. Looks like the drivers were badly intoxicated, as one was found passed out in the front seat, he swears that you lent him the car.”

“Oh officer I never lend my car.”

“Have you ever met these two men?”

They showed Charlie handbills with pictures.

“Why no officer, I never have. Never heard of them or seen them before in my life.”

“That’s what we thought. They’ve been stealing cars across the state. Held up a store at gunpoint down in Dayton.”

The police asked Mom if she had ever seen these guys and she said No and everyone agreed with Uncle Charlie.

“Well these two swore up and down that Charles Healy had leant them the car, and we thought sure he did, sure he ‘lent it to you.’ Uh huh. These types of men, they’ll say anything. We know they got your name right off the registration papers, which were right on the front seat. Those men are wanted for armed robbery.”

Well they kept talking for a while, Dad and Charlie and the policemen, about these two horrible criminals and how they were on a car stealing crime spree across the state. They had Charlie sign some paper, filing charges against them. When the police left everyone looked pale. Mother climbed the stairs and slammed the door to her room. Dad went up. I could hear them arguing.

“Have enough trouble without him bringing a federal marshal to my home, and it will be all over the papers now, is that what you need?”

“Now come on and give the guy a break, he couldn’t see this coming,” Dad answers. “I talked to him about getting mixed up in the games and he understands. Wasn’t any way he could have seen that coming, why would they steal his car like that, could have happened to any one of us and…anything he could do about it.”

“Ha, nothing he could do except mind what he was doing to start with. If you think Weatherall is going to help you when the Feds are sniffing around well you have another think coming.”

“I don’t know maybe they’ll think they already checked everything out here good and they won’t suspect anything.”

“You’re taking terrible chances here Tim …”

“We don’t have a lot of choice if you want to eat…”

·

I go downstairs and Uncle Charlie’s in the kitchen with Jeanne, and he could tell by the way I was looking at him that there was trouble. So he put on his white apron, sat Jeanne and me in the kitchen to make us pancakes and told us all about it. How he lent his car to those two men, but then they stole it instead and didn’t give it back. As he told it.

“Everyone had thought Fat Lester knew the two guys because he had brought them up to the game. Fat Lester you know used to wait tables for us, your Dad always said he was honest as daylight. So nobody gave it any notice when the three of them came upstairs and joined the game. Said their names were Phil and Bill; and I said well who fills and who bills but they didn’t laugh. Looked like they had been wearing the same suit for a long time, but a dirty man can be honest can’t he. They bet a lot of money playing 21. I was playing them and won $50 off the two of them, but they wanted to keep playing. Said to give them some credit and they would pay me back once they made a delivery.

“So I just went on playing with them and I kept winning until finally they said. ‘We can give you the money tonight but our car’s broken down.” And Charlie did the voices of the bad men, showing his teeth and growling like the cat does when a dog comes in the yard.

“So, I said you need a ride?” then he flipped a pancake.

“That’s right, that’s what we need,” they said.

“No problem, I told ‘em.” He picked up the metal pitcher and poured some batter onto the sizzling griddle.

“You girls hungry today? Well we no more than get in the Packard and get on the road than I know there’s trouble. You take that one while its hot, Jeanney, here’s the syrup.”

“Why Uncle Charlie, why is there trouble?”

“Well trouble starts with the beverage delivery as it often does. They needed to pick up some important bottles from a barn near Marion and deliver those to a man in Chillicothe to get the money they owed me. I said they could drop me off at a friend’s so I wouldn’t be in the way.”

“Was it Martha?” Jeanne asked. She lived near Chillicothe.

“Well it looked a lot like her,” he said winking, “problem was, they never came back.”

“You had to stay all night at Martha’s?” Jeanne asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Charlie answered.

“Martha brought you home this morning,” said Jeanne, “just before the police came.”

“Wasn’t that a lucky break? You want another pancake? The griddle’s good and hot.”

“No, but make some for Bess and Pat, they’ll be waking up.”

There was a big article in the newspaper next day. “Thieves Allegedly Steal Car from Charles Healy, Brother of Proprietor of Zane Lunch Counter.”

Dad was mad at Charlie and Mom was mad at Dad for allowing him to act that way.

I loved my Uncle Charlie so much. He was about twenty when he came to live with us; he was the youngest son, and didn’t have anywhere to go after Grandma Healy died, so my dad took him in. He was so jolly always; laughing telling jokes. Remember I had a portrait of him hanging in the living room on Pine Street for many years. My dad’s little brother. Died of cirrhosis of the liver before he was forty.

·

We didn’t always follow all the rules, there’s no doubt about that. I grew up thinking laws didn’t apply to my family the same as others. Was like God was a close relative and said it was all right for us to gamble and bootleg, long as we went to church. Law’s one thing, sin’s another. So when you started skipping school, running around and reading crazy books, it worried me, but not for the reasons you might think. Worried me because I knew then that you have to start making all kinds of your own rules, and that’s not easy. Start picking and choosing what you’ll go along with as the situation dictates and that’s a slippery slope. So hard to find the right way. Maybe you should have given up on Robert Frost and taken the road more traveled. Just kidding, but you did make it difficult at times.

Not that difficulty is any stranger at my door. Things are tough all over. I remember my mother, whenever one of us was being greedy, would tell us the story of her father’s hen to remind us that any thing you tried hard to keep, you’d probably lose.

She told how one year her father, my Grandpa Tindal, the glass blower, had been reading books on poultry, and decided to get a special hen, called a Barnevelder, a breed from Belgium like he had had as a boy. This one came one morning in the post, the mailman came up the walk with a carton that was squawking to kingdom come. He took the carton onto the back porch and took out the hen. There was a lovely iridescent green on its lower body with a scarlet ruff and red top feathers. He held it under his arm as he scooped out a handful of corn from the larder, and held it in his palm while the green chicken ate right out of his hand.

“C’est vraiement un bon coquelet,” he murmured in his low bass voice. His chest was huge from blowing glass, but he spoke softly.

“Get that animal out of my kitchen,” Grandma scolded, she didn’t like him speaking French. Well I laugh now when I think how in later years when I took French my teacher said my Midwest pronunciation was so bad that it was better if I didn’t try to speak, and just learned to read.

Occasionally this chicken laid a brownish egg, but he said they were gold and that it was a hen that laid the golden eggs. Every night when he came back from work he took out this hen and stroked it as he sat on the porch.

“Feed it a sunflower seed Adrianna, Tu est bonne poulet, avec les plumes de vert, n’est-ce pas?”

“Yes father its feathers are so silky.”

Grandma would come scolding. “Get that animal away from the house.”

Well, a few weeks later he had to leave for a job in Toledo. In those days the glass factories had times when they went into production on certain items and called for men. It had been raining for a few days already and folks said the river was rising though no one worried too much. But that day Grandpa, who rarely took off his jacket, stripped to his white shirtsleeves out in the woodshed, rummaging around in the drizzle, to build a special cage with wire and boards on top of the hen house. Moved his hen up there, and left my Grandmother with the three children to get on as well as she could. By then he had caught a cold working out in the rain, but he rubbed his chest with Vicks, and off he went. My mother was about fifteen at the time.

It just kept raining and raining and when the water came seeping into the parlor one morning, they grabbed some crackers and the vinegar jug to take upstairs. Vinegar quenches the thirst in the heat you know. So up they go to the second floor.

There they sat listening to the rain and the river rising, and Grandma sewing. Mother sitting in front of her bedroom window looking down on the wide brown lake that had been the garden just yesterday, when all at once it came into view from the right, the whole hen house floating by, rocking like an old wooden boat as it moved into the current and away.

“Oh Mother” she shouted, “the hen house is going. Hurry we have to go after it, oh Father will be so upset.”

But Grandma just kept sewing and muttered under her breath, “Bon Voyage.”

“Oh how could you say such a thing, the hen was so beautiful,” Mother said, and added her own flood of tears to the general lacrimosity.

When the water came down, and when grandfather came back he was sick with pneumonia, well a lot of folks were sick. He recovered but the damage to his lungs, well he could never blow as smoothly as he once had, and Grandma blamed the chicken.

·

As I said before this town is prone to floods on account of it originally being what they called the Great Black Swamp which was created in the last Ice Age. Well one direction the glaciers came up and scooped out Lake Erie, and the other direction you get this swamp.

I never will forget the flood of 1965 it was, that your brother’s dog saved us. We had a gas hot water heater in the basement on Pine. The water came up so high that it put the pilot light out but of course the gas kept flowing.

I woke up to that little black dog barking and barking, right at my pillow, then I smelled it. Well the house was just filled up with gas, it was a wonder we weren’t all asphyxiated. With the lights out too, and if we had lit a match, it would have blown us all to kingdom come.

2007

Southern Michigan, Northern Ohio

Coming back this summer you flew into Detroit didn’t you. Chicago had long delays as thunderstorms grounded all flights coming in or out. How many times have blizzards and storms delayed my children in Chicago from getting to Ohio, but it’s hard to find flights that don’t stop there.

I have always paid attention to when and where you all were traveling, and in what weather, following your progress when I could. You used to poke fun at me glued to the weather channel, but I liked to know where the storms were in relation to my children. Could always call at least and warn you.

Finally that night flights were cleared to fly to Detroit. It was already 10 p.m. Then the planes waited on the runway another hour to get cleared. Once you were in the air the turbulence got bad didn’t it, so no one was certain what would happen, my grandson closed his mouth and looked stoic. The plane dropped and shook and once dropped so far that several women were screaming. It didn’t last long. Still when the plane landed the weather seemed fine. Passengers had gotten their bags and gone up one endless escalator, across a glass walkway and down another, now you and your son were standing outside in the diesel fumes and the neon lit darkness waiting for the shuttle to the rental car place. The air was still. Hot and humid. Suddenly a wind came, a warm wind, and the van driver pulled up and opened the door saying:

“Now that is a wind, coming awful fast.”

Then an alarm went off in the airport or what sounded like an alarm, the driver called the headquarters on his phone, oh it’s just a storm, that’s the storm alert. But where could you go. You stood there with your son and you weren’t certain what to do about the weather, to seek protection or go on as if everything was fine. You decided to keep coming toward home.

You two pulled your luggage up into the glass-sided bus and the driver took off headed for the rental lot several miles away. During the ride the bus swayed with the force of the wind, soon hail began to hit against the sides. Were just a few other passengers all of you mumbling, “awful big hail”, “will it break the windows?”

“Oh here it comes,” said the driver as he spoke again to his boss.

“Drive on through he says.” Then he drove through the hail which was only briefly followed by a rain that eased the worry of some passengers as rain is rare in a tornado, maybe after but not before, and so the rain was welcome. Your son cursing you by then, why the hell would you make a reservation to come through here if you know there are tornados. Why the hell would anyone live in this place with tornados, why would we come here? Talking to you terrible. His anger disguising his fear. How stupid is this? But I don’t know who taught him to talk like that.

I didn’t think you were going to make it into the rental car the way that gale tore at you as you ran into the parking lot. You were soaked through in an instant. You’d left your son inside while you ran out and unlocked the car door, wind ripping at its hinges, and it took all your force to close the door against that roaring onslaught. Dripping from head to toe, and you finally get the boy in the car. You’re shivering and shaken, soaked to the bone. Then you’re arguing with him.

“I’m freezing can you turn the heat on.”

“It’s going to be hot in a minute,” he says. “As soon as it stops raining.”

“I’m shivering can you just work the heater please.”

“It’s going to be hot, you don’t need the heater.” He was arguing with you because he was afraid; but why you would sit and argue with a teenager is beyond me, you should have given him a good slap. That storm raged on awful dark. You had to go slowly.

“Do you even know where we’re going?” he asks.

“Yes, we need to catch I-75 South.”

But there was a detour of course. It’s not easy always to simply go home. Weather can get in the way, roads rerouted. The dark and the not knowing the way. Following words on signs that seem to appear at random. Only the headlights to guide the car through the blinding rain, windshield wipers desperately waving. No vision to either side, just black darkness.

The lightning that filled the sky was startling and huge, curtains of light and branching neon lightning both blinking across the sky in front of the car. Driving through the downpour through the dark highways, so ill lit compared to California, so poorly marked. There are no yellow lines or the raised reflectors of the West because of the snow here, remember. I bet he had never witnessed a thunderstorm of that magnitude. You could make it if you went slowly. Inside the car, you felt the dryness, the safety of the thin domelike shelter, its seats soft on the flesh and the dim blue light inside.

“You have to help me read the signs. Says the detour is taking us to the east of Perrysburg, oh and around the outskirts of Toledo. Looks like the rain is letting up.”

“No it’s not. Maybe that was the calm before the storm.”

“Wow it’s really pouring now.”

“You should pull over, Mom.”

“But where? The road is really flooded here. I could really use a cup of coffee if you see a sign or a restaurant let me know.”

“Just get off at the next exit.”

“But there’s nothing down there.”

“Just take the exit.”

“Says Moline Township Road 460. I’ll go.” So you turned the car swinging right in a neat arc away from the interstate and onto a two-lane country road. There was even less light there, no car lights passing.

Up ahead was a railroad crossing on a slight rise and just then the black and white arms fell down to block the tracks. A train came slowly, heading south, its headlights illuminating the slanting blades of rain. Sitting inside the car you were relieved to have a reason to stop for a few minutes and turn off the engine.

1885

Thomas Healy’s Farm. Wood County, Ohio

This land I have bought has a bird singing in it, Thomas Healy thought to himself and smiled with pleasure when first he walked along the swarming April-green hedgerow he had just purchased in Wood County Ohio. ‘It has a bird singing in it, but I don’t know the name of the bird’ and his pleasure passed like a cloud overhead. His throat tightened for a moment with a homesickness that still came on occasion like a dizzy vertigo. A tall man, he had stopped walking to steady himself, to gather his balance against that feeling of falling forever into an endless space, for he would never be held rooted, never he knew be home again.

It will have to be this, he thought to himself, I will have to find it here, on this land. He stomped his boot to hear the solid answer. Still, he doubted that he had actually gotten anywhere in the larger scheme of things, and the new land made his doubt and loneliness worse, for he knew there was no further place now where he might hope to find it.

This land with the woodlots still thick and lush on two sides, with poplar and maple coming into leaf and the green-yellow furze of the new grass tips on the meadowed ten acres already cleared before him.

Rich earth it was too, he stepped into the open from the hedges and took some in his hand, and marveled at its blackness, how it held together in a thick clod that bore the imprint of his fingers. Not the crumbly peat of home, or rocky with sin and need, worn of its vitality from the hungry it fed, no it was so much richer here, but not home. He felt ashamed at himself for thinking this, then rose up carrying some dirt absently in his hand as his thoughts ran ahead into all that there was to do, his feet following steadily. A breeze carrying the stony smell of water from Lake Erie a few miles north dried the sweat on his face, there were pheasant in a bevy racing zig-zag in front of him when from behind suddenly something wrapping around his legs.

His daughter Mary looked up at him, her mouth made large and purplish with blackberry juice, her white pinafore speckled with blue.” Help me,” she squealed, “the Indian’s coming!”

“Who is?” Thomas asked as he wrapped the child in his arms and lifted her to his chest, her head burrowing into his shoulder. With fear pounding in his heart he turned round scanning the woods, an Indian there too now, a new danger he didn’t know as he didn’t know the names of birds, though there were rumors. Some said they were all gone, others said they hid and waited, who could tell. “Where Mary, where?” he pleaded, as her face contorted in terror and she pointed wiggling screaming from his arms! “There he is!”

His son James, four he was then, came running. Little James.

“Oh Blessed Jesus Mary you set the fright on me, you shan’t say things like that…”

The children ran on into the field where their mother had just appeared, and their father followed.

1899

Healy Farm. Wood County

James Healy was walking past the open door of the barn where the light fell square on the empty milking stand inside. It struck him how much it looked like some ancient instrument of torture. He hated the very sight of it, with its empty O yoke waiting for a neck to hold still, because he felt it was always his neck that was held there not the flaccid old cow’s. He hated the manure reek of the pasture gate beyond the barn where he would have to go find her now wading through the morning’s rain water mixed with urine and mud and the flies that hovered there attracted to the stink. He hated the way the flies bothered them both as they sat fastened to their task. So it was with great relief that he heard the sweet sound of Lilian, Frances, and Evelyn, the neighbor girls, walking down the road from Lilian’s to Evelyn’s and he fell into step with them as they passed.

“Hello James Healy.”

“Bet you don’t know where the bottomless well is.”

“Is that how you say good afternoon?”

“You want to see it?”

The girls looked at each other and decided they did.

“This way,” James said, and led them off the gravel road and along the woodlot edge to the limestone embankment where a sway in the earth led out to the flatter land of meadow and field. There was indeed, at the foot of the crumbling green mossy rocks, an opening in the earth, about the size of a rabbit hole by which they could hear water running below, though not quite see it.

“Put your ear right here.” He bent over to show them and the girls obliged, not wanting to appear effeminate as they were a whole year older than James to begin with, while the miners lettuce with its tiny dot of white in the green fairy cup and the fresh moss smell of the ground there were pleasant when they bent toward the earth.

“It’s true, you can hear it,” Evelyn declared, and the other girls agreed, and so they stayed there for some time listening to what ran beneath the earth and noting the three wild iris that grew there; the different sizes of each other’s hands, the budding chests, and the light freckles across Lilian’s nose as if they had just then discovered all of this. All these wonders had been buried beneath their chores with the rush to spring planting. For a few minutes the new green earth ceased being the field of their work and opened its gates for their pleasure. Even the dark crows whose jagged calls tore at the pale blue sky seemed beautiful.

Just as suddenly the girls remembered that Evelyn’s father was coming to collect her from Lilian’s farm with the wagon, or else she would have to walk the two miles alone.

As they started back James heard the poor cow Jesse lowing in the field. As they neared, the cow followed him along the pasture fence.

“Someone loves you I guess,” Evelyn teased.

“Someone wants to get their teats squeezed,” James answered, watching Evelyn and the girls turn red and cover their mouths.

“Ohhh James Healy, that is so rude, if I told your mother she would wash your mouth out with soap.”

“Well who said I was talking about you?”

“Goodbye,” Evelyn said.

“We will not see you later,” Lilian added, and the three of them turned toward the road, chattering.

James walked toward the house to get the bucket he had left there this morning. There was a strange buggy sitting out front of the house, which explained why the old man wasn’t out chasing him yet, he wondered who it was. Quietly, he stepped onto the back porch, took the bucket from the sink and went to his work. Two hours late now and if the old man found him it would be the full dirge of the grieves of old Ireland on him and the poor cow as well. But he was sixteen damn it, far too old to be told always what to do.

An hour earlier his Mother Eliza had been rolling her pie dough out on the polished wooden table when she heard the buggy outside. Now Thomas’s hands were moving across the map Herbert Fleischman had brought to roll out on the same table in front of them in defiance of all expectations of their future and his. “You can see it here,” Fleischman was saying, as his index finger traced the blue ink line that marked where the Railroad would put its new track, a line running clean through Thomas Healy’s farm. “Couldn’t they put it here?” Thomas asked, a quarter mile over was all that was needed and this was, after all, just the beginning of his farm but it had supported them most years and if prices rose it could work well. Fleischman said the county had already agreed with the railroad to change the zoning because they stood to make more from the taxes they could levy on the railroad than they could put on farm land, on account of the federal protections for the farm land, and with the tax rate it was now at you could nary afford it, Thomas, so better to agree now.

Thomas saw the straight blue line run across the crisp white paper toward the nexus with Maumee, a corner where three railroad lines came together. He saw the line and saw it cross his creek and felt that the line crossed him like the Ash Wednesday X of the priest, to remember now that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Thomas crossed his arms in front of him where he sat and let his head fall to the table. It wasn’t manly in front of Mr. Fleischman, but the weight of his misgivings since leaving Ireland twenty years ago were right and the great store of melancholy he had been cultivating had finally fallen on him like a stone.

Eliza because she was a woman didn’t see this as the end of the world, they would have to continue to feed the children and raise them up anyway somehow, put clothes over their naked bodies in the morning. She poured coffee from the pot into the two cups her own and Thomas’s and Fleischman’s too, though she hesitated to fill his cup; then set them on the table. There would be a price for the land, and there would be a time, after this year’s crop, Fleischman said and left saying he had to go. After this years crop that’s when they would have to go, there would be other men coming from the railroad, the county too, then there would be rails of steel pulled here on the shoulders of tired horses. Thomas knew then that they had been coming toward him all along, toward his farm and all he had planned. They had started out a long time ago when this strange country was named and wrought from those it rightly belonged to; for a land like a child belongs to those who love it only because it is, and nurture it as it is, who aren’t dead set on all it might be or do. But the men with the rails had been coming, moving forward away from where they started, that was all, northward along the river or westward from the coast or Inland from the lake across the mountains, it didn’t matter. He knew they moved and had always been moving scattering men and strong women with them who nonetheless stood on desolate doorsteps wondering why here. Why have we come to this place, this desolate plain, at a run; what is it we are hurrying to get to all this running moving, we have tried to stop but now they say run, and run again, and no one ever coming home in America no one ever coming home.

“Don’t be crying, Thomas, when your son comes in,” Eliza said, but didn’t touch his shoulder as she thought to, for fear the warmth of him would move her to pity or panic, either one.

She spread the apples out like a hand of cards inside the piecrust, then put it in the oven.

2007

Wood County

You were still sitting in the car waiting for that storm to end and the train to pass. Thinking of the days you would walk to the end of Pine Street to watch the trains just so you could wave at the conductor on the caboose.

The two eyes of the red signal lights alternated their garish blinking red, red, red, red, and the slow freight went north angling back toward Lake Erie. Norfolk & Western it said. The conductors were almost always there, almost always waved back. But you didn’t say this to your son. He doesn’t care about what you did as a child in your little town in Ohio. Born in San Francisco like he was.

The train slowed to a crawl, almost stopping.

“Let’s turn around again this is crazy,” he said.

“We need to cross this to loop back up to the freeway.”

“No we can follow the road up where we turned at the exit.”

You tried that road but saw it wasn’t going back to the freeway at all but toward the railroad again and so you pulled up into an old gravel driveway to turn around. In the headlights where the rain had let up, in the dark green night grass in front of the car you saw three stone steps leading to nowhere. You’ve seen the like before, out in the countryside; you’ll come across a part of a foundation, or a cellar step. But those steps right in the headlights so unexpected that you wondered where the house had gone, wondered how those stones always lasted so long after, as if the coming and going were the last things in a house to get cleared away. Maybe those steps were waiting for you to see into the darkness beyond them.

·

I’m fairly certain that was the place your great-grandfather homesteaded. Maybe we are always in the same place, and the world moves around us. Copernicus might have been wrong. Maybe you’re drawn to home without even knowing it. It may seem like just a convenient plot twist that you would be turned around in a storm and not knowing it, arrive at the threshold of your great-grandfathers’ homestead, but as I always said “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

When you finally pull into Blanchardville a few hours later your son looks at the cars parked in the motel parking lots out by the mall.

“Why are there even cars at these motels. Why would anyone come here, to the middle of nowhere?”

“Plenty happens in the middle of nowhere,” you answer.

·

This is a big country and there is distance in it. I think one thing that made a distance between us was just the distance. Oh I’m teasing you but you get my drift.

There were so many places you lived that were just too different for us to talk about, there was no common place to begin. Although it’s not like you knocked yourself out trying to fill me in. Don’t take offense now but you’re not the best storyteller in the world, not for just a good description of how a place and its people are. Or maybe you move too fast to ever see it. I always looked forward to you visiting and telling me about India or some exotic locale but you never were forthcoming. To think you lived so many years in places that I never even laid eyes on. Like that college you went to in upstate New York. I’m sorry we never did come to your graduation there at that Barnes College. I never knew quite where it was; always meant to look it up. Degree in poetry was it? I don’t know that you find poetry by study. Poetry you left home with was fine if you had let it be. You were ahead of styles by your very nature. Going to San Francisco didn’t add anything to that. Slowed it down if anything. But you know I wanted you to go to college, wanted all of my children to.