I satisfied myself that I wasn’t being followed, so I focused on driving to meet Joe Ferguson, the first person on the list for Gabby’s lawsuit. Cars and tractor-trailers clogged the road, and I entered Marcus Hook, a small town at the southernmost border of Delaware County, birthplace of the Philadelphia Accent. We had grown up in nearby Norwood and still had its bona fide flat o’s and dropped g’s, to my parents’ consternation.
I passed a Wawa and a Fireworks Supercenter, then turned onto a street lined with modest two-story brick homes, their low-profile roofs dotted with satellite dishes. The front yards were small, and American flags flapped in the sunshine with Flyers banners. None of the houses had driveways, so along the curb were a lineup of older cars. I could have made a fortune flipping them, but today I was on a mission.
I parked in front of the Ferguson house, got my messenger bag, and knocked on the door. Its wood trim alligatored in grimy patches and its brickwork needed repointing. White shades covered the windows. The door was opened by a middle-aged Black woman in maroon scrubs with a pin-on tag that read delco homecare above her name, Pam.
“Can I help you?” she asked from over the chain lock.
“My name is TJ Devlin, and I’m here to see Joe Ferguson about a lawsuit over Holmesburg. My sister, Gabby, called about our contacting you?”
“I remember, but this isn’t the best time—”
“Let him in!” a man yelled behind her, presumably Ferguson.
“Come in.” Pam smiled, unlocked the chain, and I entered the small living room, surprised to see that Joe Ferguson was a very sick man. He lay in a pleather recliner with a crocheted afghan covering his short, thin body. Cigarette smoke wreathed his grizzled head, and his dark skin had a grayish pallor. His eyes and cheeks were sunken, but his aspect was sharp as he fixed a frown on me.
“What are you lookin’ at, son?”
I felt like I was intruding. “Are you sure this is an okay time? I can come back—”
“There’s no other time!”
“Okay, Mr. Ferguson.”
“Call me Joe!”
Pam shot him a look, picking up a handbag and keys from a side table. “I have to go to the store, and I’ll leave you two alone. See you later.”
“Siddown.” Joe motioned to the plaid chair beside him, which faced an old television on a wooden cart. A tray table held a box of Kleenex, brown medicine bottles, and a crowded ashtray.
“Thank you.” I took a seat, setting the messenger bag on the floor. “My name is TJ—”
“I’m dyin’, not deaf.” Joe sucked on his cigarette, drawing his cheeks. “You didn’t know, did you?”
My mouth went dry. “No.”
Joe snorted. “Don’t worry. You’re dyin’, too.”
“I know.”
“At least I know when. You don’t.”
I laughed. “That’s true.”
“I’m goin’ before you.”
“You’d better,” I shot back on impulse, and Joe burst into laughter, emitting cigarette smoke. “I’m joking, I didn’t mean to—”
“It was funny!” Joe crushed out his cigarette, eyeing me with new regard. “I like you, son! My daughter and son-in-law come by, they got long faces. They act like I’m dead already.”
I felt a pang for him. “They love you, that’s why.”
“They’re comin’ tonight. They need to loosen up. This cancer, it’s all over now.”
“You were in the skin-patch test?”
“Yeah, and the poison ivy and the ringworm, too. My back got so many scars, it look like a map. I didn’t think there was nothin’ wrong with it. They were doctors.” Joe shook his head. “Now there’s nothin’ anybody can do. They gave me chemo, it didn’t work. They only expected me to last two months. I made it to three yesterday.”
“Thank God.”
“I got to see the Eagles in the Super Bowl again.”
“Sorry they lost.”
“Okay, but they were there.” Joe grinned back, and I felt amazed that I was talking with a man facing his own demise with bravery, even humor. He was about my father’s age, and I wondered how I’d feel if my dad were dying. The thought tore me in two, my love and anger a one-two punch.
“Now, for the lawsuit, do you have any new medical records?”
“Yeah.” Joe waved at the counter. “I got ’em ready, like she asked.”
“Good.” I reached in my bag and got the Complaint. “I can take you through this and make sure we have the facts right.”
“Don’t bother. Read it to me or ask me. I’m not in school no more.”
I flipped to his section of the Complaint. “What do you remember about the skin-patch tests? What did they do?”
“We went into the room and they cut up our backs and put the medicine on. Then we went under a lamp. It was like an assembly line. I got three bucks a shot.” Joe shrugged. “I didn’t think much about it till Chuck and the lady called, what’s her name?”
“Gabby Devlin, my sister.”
“She talked to Pam, too. She’s a nurse so she understood. Got the scars on my back. On my shoulders, too.”
“Did they explain what product they were testing?”
“No.”
“And you were in Holmesburg in 1966, for only one year?”
“Yeah, I was there before my trial. They charged me with aggravated assault, but I didn’t do it and I couldn’t make bail. That was the reason I did the test, to make bail. The judge set five grand, so I needed five hundred bucks. I couldn’t get it.”
My God. “So you were only there awaiting trial? You were innocent?”
“Yes.” Joe blinked matter-of-factly. “They picked up the wrong guy. I tried to tell them, but they didn’t believe me.”
I felt speechless, struck dumb by the injustice. I looked down at the Complaint, but the words swam before my eyes.
“Son?”
I tried to focus, skimming the lines. “Then you left Pennsylvania from 1967 to about 2021?”
Joe nodded. “Lived with my son in North Carolina. Moved back last year, after he remarried.”
“Did you read anything about any controversy over the testing? It was in the paper after 1972 or thereabouts?”
“Never saw a thing. I was down there.”
“Didn’t hear it from anybody up here?”
“No. So when are you gonna file this lawsuit?”
“As soon as possible. This week or next.” My chest tightened, wondering how much time he had left.
“You know it ain’t gonna do no good, don’t you? They’ll never pay a dime. They got too much money to have to pay. The only folks who pay are the ones who don’t have money.”
“I hope that’s not true. We’re going for a nice, big settlement.”
“I’ll hold my breath,” Joe shot back wryly.
Marcus Hook wasn’t far from where we’d grown up, and I found myself driving through our old neighborhood, in Norwood. The streets that had once seemed so wide were only a single lane, lined by houses smaller than I remembered. Lawns were patches of grass dotted with hummingbird feeders, concrete statuary, and ceramic statues of the Virgin Mary. I hadn’t been back here since we’d moved away, and on impulse, I turned onto our old street.
I cruised past the tract houses, the family names flooding back to me; the McGlaughlins, the Russos, and the Morskis. Our parish was Saint Gabriel’s, where I went to school and memorized the question-and-answers in the Catechism for my First Holy Communion.
Who made you?
God made me.
I reached our old house and stopped out front, overwhelmed by a sense of coming home. The house was a modest two-story with a brick façade and a white front door, and my father had paid $60,000 for it, which had sounded astronomical to my little-kid sense of numbers. There was a mountain laurel by the door that was the only thing bigger than I remembered. It used to reach midway up the doorjamb but now formed a verdant bower on a trellis over the door. I used to look at its blossoms, shaped like wondrous pink parachutes, and I could picture them now, marveling that God could make something so perfect, far better than me.
I remembered John, big and tall, and I remembered Gabby, too, curly-haired and giggling, drawing hopscotch on the sidewalk. She didn’t matter the way John did, neither of us did. I didn’t remember how I knew, but John was almost as important as my father in my family, a father-in-the-making.
The more I sat in front of the house, the more I remembered about him. I wanted to wear a striped rugby shirt like him and ride a black BMX Stingray like him. He was always doing cool things with his friends. Once on the Fourth of July, we were on the front lawn under the big tree after we had come home from fireworks in the park. John and his friend Tooey were huddled together in the dark, their backs to me.
John, what are you guys doing?
Get lost, TJ! John said over his shoulder.
Can I see?
Catch! John said, turning, and reflexively I put up my hands, then a ball of hot light exploded in my palm.
I found myself coming into the present, looking down at my right hand, then turning it over. One of my three lifelines was puckered in a patch, a burn scar. I hadn’t remembered it until this moment, but now all of it came back, my parents taking me to the emergency room, and me coming home with a bandaged hand.
I closed my eyes, trying to think of what had happened next. I thought hard, but I couldn’t remember anybody asking me what happened. I don’t remember John ever getting yelled at or punished. I don’t even know where Gabby was that night, in retrospect. I only remembered something my mother said, which she said all the time.
Boys will be boys.
It was so strange to think of it now, to try to understand. They had looked the other way. I flashed on fights, bloody noses, swollen eyes, and a broken tooth I didn’t remember until this moment. John used to beat me up and I never fought back, never stood up for myself. I just took it.
I realized I was still taking it. I couldn’t knuckle under to John like a permanent little brother. I had to figure out how Lemaire died and decide what to do about it, even if it meant going to the cops, blowing up John’s million-dollar fee, and halting Runstan’s acquisition.
Grow up, TJ.
My father was right.
I hated that.
I took off, heading for Lemaire’s.