ONE
At LaSalle Street Station in Chicago, the first thing I did when I stepped off the train was count the tracks, nearly a dozen total, all pointing the same direction: back toward home. Loudspeakers blared platform numbers and destination cities, the fuzzy stream of words passing like clouds overhead. A mob jammed the waiting room.
Before I felt licked, my cousin’s cap shot up, waving above the sea of black fedoras and brown trilbies.
“Bernie!”
“Hurry up, kid. Let’s bust out of this circus and find some fresh air.”
Everything around us looked swell, marble walls and brass ticket counters, nothing like the dumpy brick station we got stuck with downstate. Bernie led me toward the exit, and we passed vendors selling magazines, Lucky Strikes, PayDays. One stand displayed the most colorful flowers I’d ever seen, except on postcards. The long waiting-room benches reminded me of the pews at St. Mark’s, and the idea struck me that the station was like a church, people saying their prayers at each arrival and departure. Even though I was flat broke, the train station made me feel hopeful—first I’d felt that way in a long time.
I guess I was still running my mouth about it later, after we dropped off my suitcase where Bernie was staying. He snapped, “Enough about the station already! You sound like a goddamned hick when you squawk about it.”
More gently, he added, “LaSalle Street isn’t even one of the fancy ones, Joe. You gotta see Union Station, or Grand Central over there on Harrison. I’ll take you sometime, if you’re so bananas about locomotive travel all of a sudden.”
We snaked our way on foot down Clark Street in Towertown. The afternoon sun blazed hot. At this hour, there was no shady side of the street. The entire city seemed to be made of brick and concrete, the apartment blocks and office buildings rising higher and higher toward the cluster of skyscrapers called the Loop.
“Golly,” I exclaimed.
“You’ll get used to it,” Bernie said, but I hoped I wouldn’t.
My father never lived to see such sights. He died in 1918, when a team of horses ran off, dragging a hayrack and my father behind them. He missed seeing everything—not just skyscrapers, but modern automobiles and traffic lights, living room radios and air travel and penicillin. He’d missed Cole Porter and Charlie Chaplin and bubble gum. He’d almost missed seeing me. When they put him in the ground, I was only eight months old.
“Shake a leg, champ!” Bernie hollered. “You want to be late for your very first shift?”
It was the end of June, with 1934 predicted to be the hottest year in American history. After too much sun and no rain, crops had shriveled across the state. That was before swarms of chinch bugs flattened what was left. We all wanted to work, but Mother Nature wouldn’t meet us halfway. The previous winter, we’d heated the house with corn rather than coal. This year we wouldn’t even have corn. My mother had sold my father’s gold watch and his cuff links; she’d hocked half the furniture. By the time I boarded the train to Chicago, she couldn’t afford tears in her eyes.
Bernie had set me up with a job in the hotel kitchen where he worked. He was nineteen, three years older than me. He’d only been in Chicago a year, but already he seemed to belong. He boasted, “I go anywhere I want. Don’t even glance at street names anymore.”
The area where he stayed was dingy as hell. Trash filled the gutters; every block had broken windows. Grown men in rags lingered everywhere, hands stuffed deep in their pockets, like they’d been waiting years for luck to change. When a breadline jammed the sidewalk, we crossed traffic to the other side.
At Walton Street, we came to a park, a square block of uncut grass and weeds enclosed by a picket fence. The park was surrounded by two churches, a stately old library, a picture house, and an assortment of mansions. The houses had gone to seed, with torn awnings and peeling iron fence posts. In dirty windows, cardboard signs offered rooms for rent.
“Take my advice,” Bernie muttered, “and steer clear of this park.”
“What for?”
“It’s no good, Joe. Not for us. Filled with radicals. Not to mention the place is crawling with pansies.”
My ears perked up. “Repeat that?”
“I mean, this neighborhood. It may be the best we can afford for now, but it’s a pansy paradise or something. Near that fountain over there, you can’t look at a fellow without getting a smile you don’t need.”
The sign on the picket fence read washington square park. My shirt collar felt wet against my neck, the same as whenever Mary Toomey invited me over for Sunday dinners with her family. At least I would be spared those crooked afternoons for a while.
I fanned my face with my hat and changed the subject. “Listen, Bern, who should I speak with about getting an advance on my first paycheck?”
“Advance? Come on, you’ll get paid same as everyone else when they start. End of the second week. No way you’re getting any advance.” He said it like the word disgusted him.
“I can’t wait that long.”
“Where’s the fire?”
“We’ve got so many bills staring down at us, they’ll cut the power if we don’t make a payment by the end of the month.”
Bernie looked offended. “I’ve been sending cash back home, haven’t I? Not just to my folks, either—”
“And we’ve appreciated every nickel.”
“We’re family, pal, but I haven’t got extra dough sitting around gathering dust. Isn’t that what I got you this hotel gig for?”
“Sure, but the job’s only at night. My days are free. Maybe I could paint houses or something. Lookit, every storefront we pass needs paint. You know anybody who could get me extra work? I could cut grass—”
“You didn’t come here to cut nobody’s grass.”
“No, listen, I’ll do anything. Cut grass. Wash windows. I’ll go door to door, if I have to—”
“Shut your trap for half a second.”
We walked in silence. I knew my cousin would help me if he could.
Sure enough, he snapped his fingers in my face. “Okay, listen,” he said. “I got a little plan.”
Bernie always had a little plan. He walked with a limp, due to childhood polio, and he came up with plans all the time to show the bum leg hadn’t made him sensitive or weak. He could get down a city sidewalk quick as anyone.
“There’s this jerk in the kitchen called Hannigan,” he explained. “He’s been at the hotel longer than any of us, and he acts like a hotshot, even though he don’t know squat about the world outside that kitchen. He needs to come down a peg. Remember That Old Black Magic?”
A parlor trick we played to fool the kids on neighboring farms. “Sure.”
“We get this crumb to believe you got a special ability. Like you can read minds, right? Maybe if he thinks you can see inside his head, he’ll make both of our lives easier. You’ll get a few bucks to send home tomorrow, at least.”
“Sounds great. But I mean, this is your job. Mine, too, until August. I don’t want to mess with steady work.”
“Nah, I’m talking about a simple put-on. We’ll chisel a few bucks out of him. At the end of the month, I’ll come clean. We’ll have a good laugh. The dope’s got too much pride to get bent over being had.”
There was no one I trusted more than Bernie. My cousin had always been too smart to make serious trouble.
We zigzagged along the sidewalks. The second we turned onto Michigan Avenue, everything changed for the better. I struggled to take it all in: brand-new automobiles clogging the wide street, gleaming office buildings and art galleries, bustling restaurants, newsstands lined with papers from New York, Washington, DC, and London, England. I’d never seen prosperity like this, not even before the stock market crashed. “Doesn’t seem fair, somehow,” I said to Bernie. “Not when things are so lousy back home.”
“Someone said life was fair? Say, wait until you see all the picture houses downtown. A fellow can see a different picture every day of the week.”
A fellow with money could. There was nothing I loved more than pictures, but my goal was to save every penny I earned.
On Michigan Avenue, people looked like they had never gotten word about any hard times. I could not fathom where so many folks in glad rags needed to be going so quickly on a Thursday. Every man walked purposefully in a fine suit, and all the ladies wore their summer hats on a slant like Greta Garbo, along with elegant gloves. Back home in Kickapoo, my mother could wear her apron anywhere in town, except church.
It pained me to think of her spending the summer alone. Gray-haired in a gray dress in the gray farmhouse. I added “all the color” to her life, she liked to say. But I’d write and keep sending cash, and we both knew what a difference it would make.
***
The Lago Vista was a handsome pile of bricks with nearly two hundred guest rooms. While the hotel was past its glory days, it still booked weddings and retirement parties, especially in June and July.
Bernie had arranged everything with Mr. Mertz, the banquet manager, who said he could use me in the kitchen, helping with food prep and washing dishes. I could get more hours if I looked presentable and could help serve in the ballrooms. Up to nine dollars a week, he said, if I worked hard.
The basement kitchens were hot. Over the buzz of electric fans, I could hear a baseball game from a radio. More than anything, the kitchen smelled like a holiday. Onions and celery frying in oil, meat cooking and chocolate cakes browning in the oven. I sniffed, my nose working to identify the different aromas, and my stomach growled.
“You’ll eat this summer,” Bernie promised. “Maybe even put on a few pounds. The chow here is outstanding.”
Bernie introduced me to Jackson, the pastry chef and one of the kitchen managers. His dark forearms were dusted impressively with flour.
“Don’t be fooled by the funny hat,” Bernie told me. “Jackson here knows the score. How long you been working here, Jackson?”
Jackson shot Bernie a glance that said he wasn’t in the mood to recite his résumé. “Four years, just about.”
“You hear that, Joe? Four long years. Listen to Jackson, and you’ll be aces.”
Handing me a peeler and a soiled apron, Jackson pointed me toward the largest steel pot I’d ever seen, filled with a mountain of potatoes. “Once you finish those up, I’ll introduce you to some carrots.”
The men on the line worked in their undershirts, so I did the same. I hung my white waiter’s shirt on a hook. I sat on a metal milk crate, grabbed a spud, and got started. I could peel spuds in my sleep.
Every now and then, I snuck a look back at Jackson. The fellow was handsome, with a stylish mustache. He looked Bernie’s age, or not much older. He handled the two industrial mixers at once like they were toys.
Bern stood at the stove, stirring thick brown gravy in a big pot. Waitresses came through in pairs, barking orders for clean settings and linens for the ballroom setup. These women carried the heavy glass racks themselves and laughed at the same jokes as the men. I’d never heard ladies cuss before. Rules of behavior were different in the big city, that was clear.
A greasy-faced man came into the kitchen carrying two enormous cans of mayonnaise, the size of tom-toms. This was Mertz, the banquet manager. Dressed in a suit and fine shoes, Mertz didn’t look like he’d peeled spuds in a long while. His necktie was so loose, I wondered why he even bothered. He set the mayonnaise cans on the counter. Seeing me, he scratched at his red, speckled nose. “Who the hell are you?”
I jumped to my feet. “Joe Garbe, sir. My cousin Bernie set it up with you. I’m much obliged for the opportunity.” My fingers were slick with potato juice, so we couldn’t shake mitts.
“Go make yourself useful in the alley. Liquor delivery just pulled up.”
I nodded quickly, eager to demonstrate my willingness. Plus, I was curious: Prohibition had ended in December, and it was still a kick to see booze trading hands in broad daylight.
In the alley, the muggy air smelled rotten. An orange-and-brown truck was parked to the side, rear gate lifted. Inside the cargo area, between the stacks of wooden liquor crates, stood two men, one older, one younger. Both looked plenty rugged, with broad shoulders and leg muscles that strained against their ratty trousers. The older man held a bottle of Old Forester whiskey and an invoice. Without a word, he hopped off the truck and went inside.
Like me, the younger fellow was only wearing his undershirt. When he turned around, I saw he was my age, give or take, with large brown eyes and a prominent nose. His thick dark hair, without any oil in it, put me in mind of a top-quality scrub brush. When he jumped off the truck, I saw he was taller than me by several inches. Strong arms, too.
“Golly,” I heard myself mutter.
The fellow held my gaze longer than was typical—almost the way Mary Toomey did back home. Something told me he wasn’t saying his prayers. His face seemed to soften.
“Never seen you before, have I?” His voice was warm and low, and I felt all the blood in my body rush to my—
“You shy or something?”
—face. Around most people, I was shy, but in the presence of a beefy looker like him, I clammed up entirely.
. . .
“You work here long?” he prodded.
“Just started today.” To avoid staring, I looked at the crates stacked inside the truck, and then at the brick pavement between our feet, and then, when enough time had passed, back at him.
“Eddie,” he answered, as if I’d asked.
“Joe.”
“Nice to meet you, Joe. Mind giving me a hand? I got nearly thirty crates to move, and Pop never lifts a finger.”
“My supervisor sent me out to help.”
He smiled like I’d said something clever. “He did, did he? How about that?” His tone was teasing now. It wasn’t a fair fight, because I’d been raised to speak sincerely to strangers. “I’d say your supervisor did me a favor, Joe. I’ll thank him sometime.”
I didn’t wait for instructions. Just reached for the nearest crate and got moving.
The delivery was mostly spirits, along with club soda and seltzer. While Eddie stacked crates onto a metal dolly, I carried them one by one. They were heavy as hell, but I acted like the weight didn’t give me any trouble. We worked separately, without speaking, going back and forth from the truck to the kitchen. Each time we passed, his eyes sought mine, and the corners of his lips lifted in a brief, discreet, unmistakable grin.
I let myself look, every single time, until my cousin’s voice broke the spell.
two
“Hold up, Joe,” Bern said. “I want to introduce you to someone.”
I set down the last liquor crate with the others. We’d built a mountain in the center of the kitchen.
Hannigan, our mark, turned out to be the hotel’s butcher, a giant with curly red hair and thick forearms. His freckled hands were huge and cruel-looking. The second I laid eyes on him, I wanted to forget the whole thing.
“Hann, meet my cousin Joe,” Bern told him. “Kid’s with us for the month.”
Hannigan barely looked up from the bloodstained cutting board. “Pleased to meet ya,” he said gruffly. Chop! He didn’t look up again.
“Listen to this, Hann. My cousin’s got this fascinating mental ability.”
“Yeah, how’s that?” Chop! Chop, chop, chop!
“Fact is, he’s a mind reader.”
“Sure he is,” Hannigan said, raising his cleaver high into the air. “And I’m the maharaja of Kashmir.”
General laughter sputtered from the fellows on the line.
“I’m being straight with you,” Bern said. “If the kid concentrates hard enough, he can see right into a person’s brain.”
A man called O’Malley, washing lettuce at the sink, spoke up: “He don’t wanna see what my brain is thinking right now!” O’Malley raised his head and hooted at the ceiling, even before the others joined in laughing.
“You both can go climb a tree, in my opinion,” Hannigan suggested.
“Let’s drop it,” I muttered.
Bernie nodded. “Okay, I get it. It’s not something you see every day. In your shoes, I wouldn’t believe me either. How about a demonstration?”
By now the men had stopped working. Someone lowered the volume on the ballgame. Eddie, the liquor kid, propped up his dolly to watch.
Faced with an audience, I lost my nerve. “Lookit, Bern, I’m moving these crates, and I’m still buried in spuds over there.”
“Come on, Joey, it’ll only take a minute. I want the crew to see how special you are.”
“It’s malarkey anyhow,” Hannigan sneered. “He can’t do it.”
“Can so!” Bernie said. “He’s had this ability his whole damn life. In fact, I’ll wager you some real jack saying the kid can do it.”
Hannigan’s fists pressed the meat counter. “How much?”
“One dollar,” Bern said.
“Now you’re really cuckoo.”
“Think so?” Bern shrugged. “Prove it then. Prove I’m making it up. For one dollar. Because that’s what it’ll cost to have him prove his ability to you. Fifty cents for me, fifty for the kid.”
“And if he can’t do it?”
Bernie reached into his pocket. He pulled out a dollar and placed it on top of the liquor crates. “Here, I’ll make the payment for my cousin and me. It’s easy money for you, if you honestly think the kid can’t do it.”
Hannigan pulled a bill out of his wallet and laid it on the crate next to Bernie’s. “You’re on.”
“Anyone else think I’m blowing smoke?” Bernie opened his wallet, too. “Looks like I’ve got another three bucks to pay out, if anyone’s interested. Easy money, if you think I’m wrong.”
That’s all it took. Jackson, the pastry chef, put down a dollar, followed by a skinny line cook called Arroyo. Their bills joined the two Hannigan and Bernie had already laid on the crate. With a sheepish grin, Eddie contributed one more. “How can I refuse?” he asked.
My throat only tightened, as I stood watching.
Bernie held up three more bills and added them to the pile. There were now eight one-dollar bills on the crate. Nearly my weekly pay. Eight dollars was more than the cost of my train ticket. This thought buoyed my confidence a little. Sure, I’d only get a piece of it, but even two bills would be worth the nerves. Every buck I earned that summer would make a difference.
Hannigan crossed the room to me. He bent forward, his face so close to mine I could smell the stink of lunch between his teeth. He pointed to his temple. “Okay, pally, what number am I thinking of?”
“Nah, Hann,” Bern said, “you can’t bully the kid like that. You’ll only change the number if he guesses it right. It’s got to be fair and square.” He scratched his head, as if he was thinking it over, and then looked at me. “Say, Joe, go take a breather in the alley, while we set it up in here.”
Eddie pushed aside the dolly so I could pass by on my way outside.
My heart was racing like a jackrabbit’s, but only in part due to Bernie and the piece-of-cake trick. Eddie’s keen attention had rattled me good. Had my own staring been so obvious? I wouldn’t have known what to do with a fellow even if I got my hands on one.
Twenty seconds later, Bernie called my name, and I went back inside.
My cousin grinned as I stood next to him. “So then, Joe, I asked Mr. Hannigan here to identify one object in this kitchen. Any item he fancied. And we instructed him, without speaking, to point to the object, so we would all know what it is. None of us have said the name of the item out loud. Gentlemen, is that correct?”
The men nodded. A few of the ladies h. . .
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