THERE WERE NO streetlights on the Flats, but our way was lit by moon glow. We crossed an arched, stone bridge over the Mississippi. Below us, the river was rippled with silver, but in the distance, it tunneled black into the vast dark of night. We made our way along empty streets that ran between the imposing buildings of downtown Saint Paul. I’d visited Saint Louis many years before, which I remembered was also full of looming architecture, but I’d been a resident of Lincoln School for a long time, outside a one-horse town you could practically spit across, and I found the endless, empty corridors of the city unnerving.
There was a lot to be absorbed that night, and we were quiet as we walked. But finally I asked a question that had been nibbling at me the whole time we’d sat with the Cohen sisters.
“Where’s your dad, John Kelly?”
“He’s a junk dealer. Off all the time collecting stuff. I see him once a month or so, when he comes back to sell. He’s in South Dakota right now.”
“Who takes care of things while he’s gone?”
“We all pull together, but Pop says I’m the man of the house. What about you? Where are your folks?”
“Dead. Long time ago.”
“Sorry.”
“Why do you call yourself John Kelly?”
“Safer. Easier.”
“What do you mean?”
“The cops, most of ’em, are Irish. They find out you’re Jewish, they’re liable to give you grief. Hell, maybe even kill you. Just look at Gertie.”
“Yeah. Cops did that.”
“Why?”
“Like I said, they find out you’re Jewish, their billy clubs come right out. Way I understand it, Gertie tried to help some poor schlub the cops were trying to beat to death, and they did the same to her.”
We went up an alley and came to a loading dock, nearly empty now, that ran along the back of a building. A bull of a man stood alone there, chewing on the stub of a cigar.
“Where the hell you been, kid?” he snapped.
“Hard night,” John Kelly said, trying to sound tough.
The man threw a bundle of newspapers tied with twine at John Kelly’s feet. “You get those papers out fast, see. I don’t want no complaints.”
“Ever had any complaints from my customers?”
“Don’t crack wise with me, kid. I’ll bounce your ass all over town.”
“All right, all right,” John Kelly said.
He lifted the paper bundle by the twine and we wove through downtown, then up a long, steep hill, and finally entered an area near the cathedral, where great houses rose, the biggest I’d ever seen. Streetlamps burned brightly on every corner, and under one of them, John Kelly paused, pulled out a jackknife, and cut the twine. He tried to gather the papers under one arm, but it was hopeless.
“I got a canvas bag at home makes carrying these a lot easier. So rattled tonight I forgot it.”
“Give me half,” I said.
We did his route together, tramping up one street and down the next, the houses all white columns, gingerbread trim, fancy shutters, and ornate wrought-iron fences, everything screaming wealth, and I thought about the world as I knew it then. There seemed to me two kinds of people—those with and those without. Those with were like the Brickmans, who’d got everything they had by stealing from those without. Were all the people sleeping in the great houses on Cathedral Hill like the Brickmans? If so, I decided I’d rather be one of those without.
We’d delivered the last paper, and there was a faint suggestion of light in the eastern sky, when a gruff voice hailed us. We stopped under a streetlamp and a big cop strolled out of the shadows of an overarching elm.
“What’re you two hooligans up to?”
“Delivering papers,” John Kelly replied.
“That so? Where are they?”
“All done. We’re going home.”
“If you’re a paperboy, where’s your bag?”
“Forgot it. A lot of excitement tonight. A couple of hours ago, my ma birthed a new baby brother for me.”
“Yeah? What’s his name?”
“Don’t know yet. I had to leave before Ma decided.”
“What’s your name, kid?”
“John Kelly.”
“You?” the cop said, sticking the sharp chisel of his chin in my direction.
“Buck Jones.”
“Like the movie star, huh?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “My ma, she’s kind of sweet on him.”
“He’s not like that,” the cop said. “None of them are, kid. Where’s home?” he asked John Kelly.
“Connemara Patch.”
“All right, then. Get along with you now. Don’t be dawdling.”
“Connemara Patch?” I asked after we’d distanced ourselves from the cop.
“It’s where a lot of Micks live.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “If I told him my name was Shlomo Goldstein from the West Side Flats, we’d both be wearing bruises now.”
We parted ways on Fairfield Avenue, which was already beginning to bristle with activity, mostly carts and horses and tired-looking men shuffling to an early shift somewhere, the lucky ones with jobs.
“What are you doing this afternoon, Buck?” John Kelly asked.
“Not nothing. You’re going to do something with me,” he said with a devilish look in his eyes. “I’ll come find you.”
He walked off, whistling, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his faded dungarees. The big brother. The man of the house. My new best friend.
WHEN I GOT to Gertie’s, the smell of food drew me to the kitchen. I found Flo at the big stove frying bacon and eggs in a cast-iron skillet. She looked up, brushed a long, errant strand of blond hair from her face, and said, “Gertie gave me a fine account of last night. That was quite something.”
I didn’t want to tell her how hard it had been listening hour after hour to John Kelly’s mother screaming as she struggled to deliver the baby.
“You helped Shlomo with his paper route?”
“All done.”
“Then you must be hungry.”
“I’m okay.” The truth was, I could have eaten an elephant, but I didn’t want to take Flo’s breakfast.
“Nonsense. I’ll just pop a little more bacon on and crack another egg. Would you like toast? Do you drink coffee?”
We ate together, just the two of us, at the table. It felt intimate and special.
“Where’s Gertie?” I asked.
“She took some blintzes to the Goldsteins.”
“Blintzes?”
“It’s kind of a Jewish pancake, stuffed and rolled.”
Some of the men my father delivered hooch to were Jewish, but I didn’t know much about what that meant.
“Is everybody on the Flats Jewish?”
“Not quite everybody.”
“So you and Gertie are Jewish?”
“Not me. Confirmed Catholic. You ask Gertie if she’s Jewish, she would probably say no.”
“She stopped being Jewish?”
“I don’t think you just stop being anything. She doesn’t go to synagogue anymore.”
“Synagogue?”
“It’s like church for Jewish people.”
“Do you still go to church?”
“Sometimes.”
“You haven’t given up your religion?”
“You’re certainly full of questions. Are you religious yourself, Buck? Is that where all these questions are coming from?”
“Religious?”
I let the word sit on my thinking for a bit. For me at that moment, religion was the hypocrisy of the Brickmans’ Sunday services. They’d painted a picture of God as a shepherd watching over his flock. But as Albert had bitterly reminded me again and again, their God was a shepherd who ate his sheep. Even the loving God that Sister Eve believed in so profoundly had deserted me time and again. I didn’t believe in one god, I decided. I believed in many, all at war with one another, and lately it was the Tornado God who seemed to have the edge.
“No,” I finally said. “I’m not religious.”
Gertie walked in then, returning from delivering the blintzes. “I just saw Shlomo,” she said. “He seemed pretty beat. You look like you could use a good sleep, too. When you’re finished eating, get some shut-eye. Don’t worry about helping with the breakfast crowd. We’ll do just fine without you.”
“You could use some sleep, too,” Flo said.
Gertie waved off the suggestion. “Later.”
I carried my plate and fork to the sink, rinsed them, and when I turned back, watched with surprise as Flo took Gertie into her arms, held her tenderly for a moment, then kissed her long and lovingly.