Читать книгу The Blood Lie - Shirley Reva Vernick - Страница 6
ОглавлениеSATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1928
Jack Pool had been awake for a while already, but he waited in bed until the hallway clock chimed quarter past eight—the exact beginning of his sixteenth birthday. At least, that’s what his birth certificate said. Earlier, the neighbor’s mutt Agatha had snuck up on the Pool’s chicken coop and gotten the hens squawking. If Jack were more like Harry, he’d have snoozed right through the racket, but he was a light sleeper. So he lay there, lightly humming, moving his fingers to his upcoming audition piece, and waited. When the clock finally rang the magic number, he slid off the bottom bunk, pulled his shirt and trousers onto his lean frame, and headed downstairs.
There was a light rap at the door. He opened it and found Emaline Durham standing on the front steps with her little sister Daisy. Emaline, the girl with the caramel hair and the voice like a flute. The girl he adored.
“Emaline, Daisy, hi,” he said, pushing his black hair off his forehead. “Come on in.”
“Hope we didn’t wake you,” Emaline said, smiling all the way up to her topaz eyes. “Your mother said it was all right for Daisy to come play this morning.”
“Daisy?” came a little girl’s voice from the kitchen.
“Martha!” Daisy took off.
Emaline moistened her lips and rocked gently on the balls of her feet. “Happy birthday, Jack. Wow, sixteen.”
“Thanks. Yeah, can’t wait to get my driver’s license.” For a split second, he imagined the two of them sitting close together in the front seat of the Pools’ Model T.
“That will be great,” Emaline said.
“What?”
“You driving, Jack. That will be great.”
The image of them in the car disappeared. Driving would be fantastic, but driving with Emaline, that would never happen. Being casual friends with her was one thing. Being something more was something else. Impossible.
Emaline inhabited a different world from Jack’s: the world of Christians. Normally, her orbit never would have intersected his. The only reason Jack and Emaline were friends, the only reason their younger sisters were playmates, was the miracle of their mothers’ unlikely alliance.
The mothers had moved to Massena—and into Mittle’s Boarding House—at the same time. They were both newlyweds, knowing no one except their husbands. The newcomers helped each other pass the days, with Eva Pool reading Jenna Durham the stories she was forever, almost obsessively, scribbling down—there was so much to write about! —and Jenna Durham playing her mandolin for Eva. Years later, when Emaline’s father and uncle died in a car accident, it was Jack’s mother who watched baby Daisy while the entire Sacred Heart congregation attended the double funeral.
“Do you get the day off for your birthday?” Emaline asked.
“Doubt it. We’re taking delivery on a shipment today.”
“Maybe I’ll see you at the store then. Lydie and I are going shopping, so we’ll probably stop by.” She bit her lip, leaned toward his ear and whispered, “I was really hoping we could meet up in Paradise Woods so I could wish you happy birthday properly.”
He could feel her breath on his neck. The blood rushed to his face in a hot wave. Over the summer, he and Emaline had twice managed to “bump into” each other on the path that cut through the local woods. The first time, they’d touched fingertips while they talked, flushed with anxiety over being caught. The second time, they’d gone behind a fat oak tree and almost kissed. Almost, because some men came trudging through on their way to work at the aluminum plant. Still, the thought of that kiss—and others he imagined—often kept Jack awake at night.
That was in August. When school started a few weeks later, George Lingstrom set his eye on Emaline. George—the captain of Jack’s baseball team, the popular high school senior, the notorious flirt. Jack wondered if Emaline was interested in George. Why shouldn’t she be? George was well-liked, good-looking. And Christian. That was that.
Jack groaned. “I’ll probably be working late tonight,” he said.
Emaline took a deep breath. “Rain check then?”
“Rain or shine.”
“Good.” She touched Jack on the sleeve, color spreading up along her cheeks, and then quickly turned and disappeared out the door.
“Someone here?” asked a drowsy voice from the top of the stairs.
Jack turned to find Harry, still in his nightshirt, plodding down the stairs. “Let’s ankle it, pipsqueak,” Jack said. “Go get ready for shul.”
“Again?” Harry grumbled.
“Yup.” They’d spent two full days in the synagogue last week for Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and would be back again tomorrow for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but that didn’t get them off the hook for the Sabbath. “And don’t use up all the hot water,” he added as he headed for the kitchen.
Martha and Daisy were sitting on the counter, watching his mother slice challah bread.
“Happy birthday, Jackie,” the little girls chirped.
“Happy and healthy,” added Mrs. Pool, a small, olive-toned woman with a single chestnut braid halfway down her back. She always wore her apron in the house, the one she made with the pocket big enough to accommodate a pad of paper and a few pencils. Just in case of a story, she always said. “Till a hundred and twenty.”
“Are we gonna have a party?” Martha asked. “Daisy and me could make you a cake.”
“No party this year, squirt,” laughed Jack. He had much bigger plans than that. Plans for learning how to drive. Plans for getting a nickel-an-hour pay raise. And best of all, in three days, plans for interviewing at the Bentley School of Music in Syracuse.
Jack grabbed a piece of the sweet yellow bread and took a bottle of milk from the icebox. Eating over the sink, he silently recited the letter he’d memorized the moment it arrived last month:
Dear Mr. Jack Pool:
I am pleased to confirm your interview at the Bentley School of Music at four o’clock on Tuesday, September 25. Please bring your cello and your scholarship application with you. My office is located in Trumbull Hall.
Yours very truly,
Elihu Pierson, Dean of Students
Jack closed his eyes and tried to picture the elite boarding school—the classrooms, the auditorium, the dormitory, the musicians. He could hardly wait to go to the place where everyone loved music. A place where there were things to do. A place that wasn’t this pit town of Massena, New York.
He felt a hand on his back. “Happy birthday, shport,” said his father, his Yiddish accent shaping the last word into a cross between ship and port. Sam Pool was a short man with thick spectacles that hardly improved the poor eyesight he was born with. Blotting his graying mustache with a handkerchief, he added, “And a hundred more.”
“Thanks, Pa…So, do I get the day off?”
Mrs. Pool jumped at this opportunity to make the point she made every Saturday morning. “Jack should always get Shabbos off. It’s bad enough you break the Sabbath yourself, Sam. Do you have to encourage your son to do the same?”
“Friday is payday at the plant,” he said. “Saturday is shopping day. I have no choice in it.” He pointed toward his wife’s apron pocket. “Some things can’t wait, can they, my dear?” Turning toward Jack, he added, “I tell you what, shport. Tomorrow you can have off.”
“We’re closed Sundays, Pa,” Jack said.
Mrs. Pool just rolled her eyes, then checked her hands for tell-tale pencil smudges.
The synagogue, a ten-minute walk from the Pools’ house, was a small red brick building with tinted windows and heavy double doors. Jack, Harry and Mr. Pool climbed the front steps and entered the sanctuary, a simple room with twelve benches—six on the left for men and boys and six on the right for women and girls. On the bima stood a lectern and, against the far wall, a wooden cabinet that housed the two Torah scrolls. The windows spilled chartreuse light into the room.
“Where’s Rabbi Abrams?” asked Harry, impatient for the services to begin and end. He fell into his usual spot, nearest the window in the second row.
“What difference does it make?” Jack asked, nodding to his friend Abe Goldberg. “We’re only five yet.” Ten men were required to hold a worship service, and they were only halfway there.
“Rats,” Harry said. But by the time they put on their prayer shawls and yarmulkes, Rabbi Abrams was entering the sanctuary, flanked by a handful of other men. “Finally,” Harry whispered.
Rabbi Louis Abrams was a compact man with a trim nut-brown beard and a scar on one cheek that turned into an S whenever he smiled, which was often. He nodded to the men and boys as he approached the bima, then took his place behind the lectern and began chanting the Hebrew prayers.
Jack grew restless within minutes. He’d felt restless a lot lately, stuck in this remote little whistle-stop that didn’t even have a movie theater or a music store. Scarcely five miles from Ontario, Canada, Massena was locked between the St. Lawrence River on one side and the Adirondack Mountains on the other, a flat, bland expanse of nothingness. Most Massena men toiled as dairy farmers or laborers at the aluminum works, jobs they held all their lives and then passed on to their sons. People stayed on here—and so did their children—until no one seemed to notice the drudgery anymore.
No one except Jack. Every day he felt this place trying to squeeze the music right out of him. No concert hall, no local quartet, no classical music on the radio. Jack didn’t know what he’d do without Mr. Morse, who taught the skimpy school orchestra, gave lunch-period lessons, and, most importantly, spent untold hours with him after school, talking about fingering, bowing, rhythm, and the inner workings of the music. But Mr. Morse would be retiring at the end of the year. What then? What would he do then if he didn’t get into the Bentley School?
Harry nudged Jack out of his reverie. “I saw Sarah gawking at you yesterday,” he whispered.
“Huh? Sarah who?”
“Sarah Gelman, who else? Don’t tell me you’ve never noticed her looking.”
“Well, I haven’t,” he said, and it was the truth. How could Jack think about other girls when there was Emaline, the girl he’d almost kissed? The only girl he wanted to kiss.
“Don’t you think she’s pretty?”
Jack didn’t hear him.
“Don’t you?” Harry asked again.
“Don’t I what?”
“Think she’s pretty, genius.”
“Yeah, she’s okay.”
“Want me to tell her brother next week?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Jack had nothing to say, so he said nothing.
“You think she’s a bug-eyed Betty, don’t you?” Harry said.
“I told you she’s okay. I’m just not interested.”
“How come?”
Rabbi Abrams saved Jack from Harry’s inquisition by singing Adon Olam, the closing song. Harry had his shawl folded and put away before the hymn was over.
“Come, the store,” Mr. Pool said to Jack. “Harry, your mother needs your help at home.”
Pool’s Dry Goods was one long room divided into departments by handwritten signs: SHOES. LADIES’. MEN’S SUITS & JACKETS. CHILDREN’S. HOME WARES. Roscoe, Mr. Pool’s head clerk, was standing by the window, dressing the mannequins in work pants and boots. Other clerks were milling about the departments, chatting with browsers, folding clothes, and ringing up purchases.
“Who you rooting for today?” Jack asked Roscoe.
Roscoe took a straight pin from between his lips. “Yankees, ’course. You?”
“Any team with Lou Gehrig and the Babe is my team. It’s the one good thing about having to work today—I can listen to the game on the radio here.”
“You ain’t got a radio at home?”
“Not on Saturdays. Got the delivery?”
“Shoulda been here half an hour ago. I’m just killing time. Why don’t you…let’s see…” He clicked his tongue, something he fell into when he was thinking. “How about you straighten up the men’s pants?”
Jack frowned. “Got anything a little more interesting?”
“More interesting?” Roscoe blew a raspberry. “What you got in mind—cleaning the bathroom?”
Jack turned in resignation to the denims, figuring he’d use the mental downtime to walk through his piece for the Bentley audition, but he stopped short when he heard a sweet and airy laugh nearby. He peeked around the pants rack to find Emaline and her older cousin Lydie sorting through the ladies’ hat display.
In the sunlight, Emaline’s eyes shone gold, and her ash-blonde hair reflected hints of red. Jack wondered what her hair smelled like today and decided on nutmeg or aniseed—something fresh and lively and a little exotic. She looked so beautiful to him that even her little flaws—the crowding of her teeth, the asymmetry of her eyebrows—made him feel crazy.
And her hands—what else had they touched today: her pillow, her skirt, her lips? Had they ever held another fellow’s hand or felt anything close to the desire she inspired in him? From his hidden lookout behind the denim rack, he allowed himself to picture those exquisite fingers where he knew they’d never go. As that vision pulsed through his brain, he suddenly wished he weren’t in public.
“Ooh, Em, I like the one you got there,” said Lydie, a tall girl with round eyeglasses and a mouthful of Tutti-Frutti chewing gum.
Emaline tried on the wide-brimmed gold hat and studied her reflection in the wall mirror. “I don’t think so,” she said. “You try it.”
“Not me,” Lydie said, holding her hands up to her dark hair, which was cropped blunt and angular in the popular short style. “But here, try on this black one with the flower.”
“Okay, help me with my hair, will you?” Lydie held Emaline’s long curls high on her head while Emaline pulled on the bonnet.
Jack imagined that Emaline would pile her hair just like that when he took her to the school’s fall festival dance next month. He pictured himself arriving at her front step wearing his best suit, the one he’d gotten for the Bentley School audition. Her mother answers the door. Emaline’s not right there. She’s keeping me waiting while she slips into her heels. Then there she is at the top of the stairs, and it’s like she floats down to my side. I have a corsage for her, white roses, and I pin it on the shoulder of her dress.
It was one of Jack’s favorite fantasies.
“Hey, Jackie,” called a voice from behind. It was Roscoe.
Emaline glanced up. “Hi, Jack,” she beamed. “Lydie, you remember Jack, don’t you? It’s his birthday today.”
Lydie pushed her chewing gum against her cheek. “Happy birthday, Jack.”
Jack had to force his eyes off of Emaline. “Hey, Lydie, it’s been a while.”
“From the looks of you, I’d say it’s been at least three inches. How’d you get taller than me?”
“Listen, Jackie,” Roscoe said, “the truck won’t be here before one.” Tongue-click. “You might as well go home till then.”
“Hmm?” asked Jack. “Oh, right, I’ll come back after lunch.” Turning back to Lydie, he said, “I eat like a horse, that’s how.”
“Boys are so lucky that way,” Emaline said. “They eat whatever they want, and it never goes out, just up.” She smiled at his lanky frame, an unhurried, unselfconscious smile.
If only Jack had left for home right then, he’d have had that parting smile to keep him company. Instead, he helped Roscoe get a stubborn mannequin to stand up properly, and the extra five minutes was all it took for him to run into the last thing he wanted to see: George Lingstrom talking to Emaline, eyeing her, laughing, standing too close, right there on the Main Street sidewalk.
Emaline was wearing the hat she’d just bought at Pool’s Dry Goods—the black one with the silky red rose pinned to the side—and George was touching the flower in away that brought the two of them nose to nose. Jack felt sick. Is she flirting back at him? he agonized. But no, he didn’t really want to know, so he crossed the street and fled home, his fingers itching for the cello strings. Come January, with any luck, he and his instrument would move the 160 miles to Syracuse, and he wouldn’t have to see George getting what he could never have.
When Jack got to the house, Martha and Daisy were clomping around the kitchen in Mrs. Pool’s buttoned pumps and costume beads. Daisy had her face hidden behind a scarf, exposing only her golden eyes. They looked so much like Emaline’s, he winced. Martha wore evening gloves up to her armpits and tripped on her too-long necklace.
“Careful now, girls,” Mrs. Pool said without looking up from her writing. “Harry,” she called out through the screen door, “how’s the horseradish doing?”
“Almost done digging,” he yelled from the backyard.
“What are you making?” Jack asked. He picked up a handful of the walnuts she’d just chopped before he realized he didn’t have an appetite.
“Making ready for tomorrow’s shlug kapporus,” she said but kept on writing.
The shlug kapporus service took place every Yom Kippur eve in Rabbi Abrams’ backyard. The rabbi took a live hen— usually one of the Pools’—and held it over the congregants’ heads while praying for the forgiveness of their sins. Then a few of the women cooked the bird in the rabbi’s kitchen, preparing the meat to share with a needy family in town and using the bones to make soup for breaking the Yom Kippur fast.
This year the chicken meal would go to Frenchie LaRoux. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t Jewish; what mattered was that he needed it. People said he was so poor he didn’t have electricity or a stick of furniture. When he won a used car at the Sacred Heart raffle over the summer, they claimed he just cut a hole through the wall of his shack and drove the car right inside so he could read by the headlights, sleep in the back seat, and warm his food on the engine. Regardless of where the truth ended and the tall tale began, Mrs. Pool clearly wanted the meal to be delicious.
“Jack,” she said, pocketing her notepad, “I’m up to my ears in matzo balls. Take the girls out for a while, will you?”
Jack groaned. He wanted to be alone with his cello, to practice for his audition, to drown his thirst for Emaline in a sea of music. But it was useless to argue. Besides, watching Martha and Daisy for a while sure beat working in the kitchen. “How about a walk?” he asked the little girls.
“Downtown!” they shrieked at the same time.
“Just have Daisy home by noon,” said Mrs. Pool. And so it was settled.
The girls held Jack’s hands for a little while, but as soon as they rounded the corner onto Main Street, Martha and Daisy raced ahead to the confectionery shop. Crammed with penny suckers, licorice whips, saltwater taffy and all sorts of chocolates, the tiny store was a magnet for children. The girls pressed their noses against the window until it fogged up.
Jack stepped next door to the barbershop, where Walter Robinson displayed photos of the high school sports teams. Not that Jack was in any of the pictures—he wasn’t, even though he’d been on the baseball team for two years now. He missed the photo shoots because they were taken at games. Games were played on Saturdays, and Mrs. Pool wouldn’t hear of sports on the Sabbath (working on Shabbos was bad enough, she said, but at least that was out of necessity). Coach Romeo grumbled about it but let Jack work out with the team five afternoons a week—“because you can bat, dammit, and my outfield needs the practice”—even though he missed every game. He couldn’t tell whether his teammates admired him or resented him.
Actually, he found out last spring how at least one of the guys felt about him. The team was in the common shower after practice when Moose Doyle called out in his larger-than-life voice, “Hey, Pool, were you born that way, or were you in a freak accident?” He wasn’t pointing at Jack’s crotch, but he might as well have been. Jack was the only circumcised boy on the team. Maybe he was the only circumcised boy Moose had ever seen.
Some of the other boys snickered. Some of them laughed out loud. Only when George Lingstrom told Moose to shut up did they all stop making noise. But they didn’t stop staring. From that day on, Jack showered at home.
“C’mon,” Jack said to the girls. “Let’s keep moving.”
They passed the apothecary, the jeweler’s, J.J. Newbury’s, the A&P and finally Pool’s Dry Goods. “Can we go in, please, pretty please?” asked Martha. “I want to see Pa.”
“He’s busy,” Jack said. “Let’s cross the street instead.”
He took the girls’ hands and walked them across the road until they were standing in front of Gus’ Sit Down Diner. The Sit Down was a shiny linoleum-and-Formica place that became the center of the universe early every morning and again at lunchtime. Sarah Gelman worked there part-time. Maybe she’s the one I should be pinning white roses on, he thought. Sarah was likable and nice-looking, and, of course, she was Jewish, a fact that placed her within reach. But who was he fooling? Sarah wasn’t Emaline and never could be.
“Who’s that?” asked Daisy, pointing to a man emptying rubbish into a can in the diner parking lot.
“That’s the owner,” Jack said. “Gus.” A squat, nearly bald man, Gus Poulos was chewing a cigar and trickling ashes every time he moved. “I eat supper here sometimes when I’m working late, and he brings me my food.”
“His head’s shiny,” Daisy said, and Martha giggled. “Is he nice?”
“He’s okay, I guess,” Jack said. “He knows Mama goes to the Sunflower Café instead of to his place. And that’s because the Sunflower makes pies and doughnuts for us—without lard. Gus would never do that. But he hates losing the business.”
The noon bells from the Sacred Heart Church began to ring. “Okay. Time to get you home, Daisy.”
“Aw,” Martha pouted.
“C’mon,” Jack said. “I’ve got to get back to the store soon, anyway.”
As they headed back across Main Street and rounded the corner of Maple, it dawned on Jack that Emaline might be home when he dropped off Daisy. He couldn’t face her—not right now. He knew jealousy was written all over his face, and he didn’t want her to see it. So he dropped Daisy off at the foot of her driveway. He watched her until she disappeared inside, then challenged Martha to a race back home.
Emaline and Lydie cut through Paradise Woods on their way home. The dirt path was covered with end-of-year pine needles, and the leaves on the trees were already tinged yellow and red, but it felt more like summer than autumn. The woods ran on for miles, dense with scaly-trunked trees, spiky evergreens, jagged vines, and prickly shrubs, but if you stuck to the paths, there were some handy shortcuts, especially on a bright day like today.
“George Lingstrom sure thinks you’re the bee’s knees,” Lydie said as they passed the boulder they called the Sausage Stone.
“Really?”
“Anyone can see he’s goofy over you. And what about you, Em?”
“What about me?”
Lydie pushed her glasses up her nose and looped her arm through her cousin’s. “Do you fancy him back?”
“Well…”
“Well what? The fall festival dance is coming up, isn’t it, and I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts he’s going to ask you. You’ll say yes, won’t you?”
“I suppose I will…I mean, yes. Probably. Yes, I’d love to go to the dance. With George. If he asks.” It wasn’t like Jack was going to ask her, after all. It wasn’t like Jack could ask her.
“He’ll ask.”
“Hmm?”
“I said, he’ll ask you.”
“You know, his father’s a drunk—at least, that’s what Ma says, ever since he lost his job at the aluminum works. Cussing and hollering all day, and I hear—”
“But you’re not going to the dance with the old man, are you?”
“Yeah…hey, do you have any ciggies on you?”
“Almost a full pack,” Lydie said, stopping to spit out her gum. She pulled the box out of her coat pocket and lit one, handed it to Emaline, then lit another one for herself. “Let’s duck behind that tree.” She led Emaline to the same fat oak where Jack had held her hand.
“Mmm, that’s good,” Emaline said, taking a puff.
“Mother says they turn your teeth brown and your fingers yellow.” Then she laughed. “She’s such a worrywart.”
Emaline leaned her head against the tree, exhaling a slow plume of smoke. “They remind me of Daddy, how he smelled like tobacco—tobacco and shaving cream. He smoked every night after supper and whenever we went driving. I wonder if he and your daddy were smoking when the accident happened. I wonder if the last thing they did in this life was take a puff of their Lucky Strikes.”
“Couldn’t say,” Lydie said without much interest.
“You don’t talk about him—about your daddy—much,” Emaline said. “I probably talk about mine too much. Everything, everyone reminds me of him. Ma especially. She reminds me of him every time I see that look in her eye, that awful, sorrowful look. I don’t know how you did it, you and your ma—you pulled yourselves together lickety-split.”
Lydie let her ashes fall to the ground. “Maybe that’s because—this is probably a terrible thing to say—but I don’t really miss Father. I don’t think Mother does, either. Oh, don’t look so shocked. You know how he could be—his spells, as Mother called them. We never knew who was coming to dinner at night: the gloomy father, the mean and angry one, or the sweet one.”
“I…oh.”
“Don’t tell me you never noticed.”
“I guess so. It’s just…”
“Just what?” Lydie asked, flicking her ashes on the ground.
“You know, denigrating the dead.”
“That’s the best time to denigrate someone—when they’re dead. They don’t get their feelings hurt that way. Honestly, I bit my tongue so often when he was alive, I’m lucky I can still talk. Ma and I are better off without him, and that’s the truth.”
Emaline tried to take a puff, but the smoke made her cough this time.
“Sorry,” Lydie said, rubbing her cousin’s back. “Sorry to spout off like that. Didn’t mean to make you have a fit.”
“I’m okay. I’m glad you told me. I should have figured it out for myself. It’s just, you know, thinking about the accident and all…well…Ma wanted us home by 12:30 and it’s past that now. We should go.”
“Right.”
Lydie and Emaline dropped their cigarettes and stamped them out with their feet. “Here, I have some Lifesavers,” Lydie said. “Take one. Aunt Jenna will have a cow if she finds out what’s been keeping us.”
Mrs. Durham was heating a venison stew when the cousins walked in. “Finally,” she said, pulling her hair back and leaning down to breathe in the gamey aroma. “Ah, that’s perfect.”
“I’m starving, Ma,” Emaline said.
“Wash up and I’ll get you some. Say, what’s in the box?” She lifted the lid and examined the hat from different angles. A tall, statuesque redhead—people said she looked like President Coolidge’s wife—she had a good eye for fashion and was always smartly dressed. “Very nice. Perfect for the autumn. By the way, Daisy was right behind you, wasn’t she?”
“No,” Emaline said.
“I just sent her out to call you. Told her you could all have lunch together. I thought that’s why you came.”
“We just got here, is all. Plus I’m famished.”
“You must have crossed paths then. Well, she’ll be along when she’s done straggling.”
Mrs. Durham sprinkled the stew with a medley of herbs and salt that she kept in an old milk bottle. She loved milk bottles and used them to hold everything from flowers to spices to the occasional pollywog. They were her closest connection to her Frank, who’d run the Sweet Creamery Dairy with his brother, and she kept them in every room.
She ladled out two bowls of stew and set them on the table. “All right, clean up after yourselves, girls. I have some bulbs to plant out front. I think I’ll just give Daisy a shout first.” She opened the back door and made a long, low whistle.
Gus Poulos was standing behind the register at the Sit Down Diner counting the dollar bills, while Sarah Gelman took inventory in the pantry and Tiny, the cook, stood over the deep-fryer.
“Twenty-three,” Gus said to no one as he bit down on his cigar. “Twenty-three miserable little clams. And that’s before you take out wages. For this I left Salonika?”
“You say something?” called Tiny.
“Yeah. I want you to tell me where to find the glittering gold roads and the marble sidewalks people told me about when I was a kid.”
“Don’t I know it?” Tiny said in his Irish brogue. “We all think we’re going to live the life here, and we end up just barely getting by.”
“Amen to that.” Gus started to light a fresh cigar when the diner door jangled open and Roy Royman limped in. Royman hobbled to a stool at the counter and leaned his walking stick against the railing. “Morning,” he said.
“You’re late,” Gus said.
“Hey, Tiny, whatcha cooking back there?”
“Shepherd’s pie, meatloaf, doughnuts about to come out of the fryer. You want?”
“Any hash browns left?”
Tiny shook his head.
“Eh, give me a slab of meatloaf, and save me a couple doughnuts, plain.”
Gus led Royman to the table nearest the noisy window fan.
“We on for tonight?” Royman asked.
“Rum boat’ll be here between midnight and two, depending.”
“Depending on what?”
Gus shrugged. “Depending on everything. Anyhow, get the truck here by eleven-thirty.”
“Why’s it got to be so late, that’s what I don’t understand,” Royman said. “What am I supposed to tell the missus?”
“My Bettina just thinks I’m out gin milling. Anyway, let’s make it eleven straight up, just to be sure.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say.”
Gus and Royman’s smuggling operation was easy money during these Prohibition days. Whiskey and wine were legal a scant mile across the St. Lawrence River in Canada. All it took was knowing one Canadian with a boat who was willing to load up with alcohol and meet you somewhere. Then you let a few discreet friends know you had a supply. You might let the Mr. Lingstrom-types know, too. You might even let a Jew know because the Jews used wine to welcome the Sabbath, and if you couldn’t get business from the sheenies on your pies and meats, you might as well get them with the hooch.
Better yet, you kept your direct dealings to a few trusted customers, and let them sell their stuff to the Jews and the drunks.
Tiny appeared with a plate heaped with meat and biscuits. “Doughnuts’ll be another minute,” he told Royman.
“Anyways, I gotta work,” Gus said as the first paying lunch customer strolled in.
When Lydie and Emaline finished their stew, they settled into the living room to do some beading. Emaline was finishing up the bracelet she was making for her mother’s birthday next month. Lydie decided to try her hand at a choker.
After a while, Mrs. Durham came in from the garden and walked over to the telephone. “It’s 1:30,” she said. She picked up the receiver, then put it down, hesitated, then picked it up again. Finally she spoke to the operator. “Good afternoon, Bess. Would you put me through to my sister-in-law? Thank you.”
“Clarisse?” Mrs. Durham said after a moment. “Yes, Lydie’s right here. She can stay as long as she likes. Listen, Daisy didn’t happen to walk over there, did she?…No, everything’s fine. Maybe she wandered back over to the Pools’ house…Yes, I do trust that family, Clarisse… Yes, I know them well enough—Eva Pool is my friend…No, nothing else. I’m positive, Clarisse.”
Next, Mrs. Durham tried phoning the Pools, but no one answered. Then she called her cousin Mickey and the Pikes down the street, whose new litter of barn kittens drew the neighborhood children, but they hadn’t seen her. She called the Pools once more, again with no luck.
“Emaline,” Mrs. Durham called.
“Yeah?”
“Daisy must still be in the woods. Go fetch her, will you, before that stew spoils? Both of you.”
“Can we finish our beading first?”
“No,” she said more sternly than she meant to.
“Okay. Come on, Lydie.”
Mrs. Durham handed Emaline a biscuit in a paper bag. “Here,” she said. “Give this to her right off. She’ll be half-starved by now. And keep at it till you find her, you hear? I’ll whistle for you if she beats you home.”
After Emaline and Lydie had hiked the forest path for a little while, chatting and calling for Daisy every now and then, Lydie put a fresh piece of gum in her mouth and said carefully, “Your mother seems pretty upset.”
“She’s always upset,” Emaline said. “Upset and worried. Like I said, we haven’t pulled ourselves together like you and your ma have. She’s just overreacting. Honestly, how far could Daisy have gone? She’s only four year old! She’s probably poking around for frogs or stones, the way she always does.”
“Daisy?” Lydie shouted.
Another half-hour passed.
“Little girl, little girl, where have you been? Gathering roses to give to the Queen,” said Emaline. “Little girl, little girl, what gave she you? She gave me a diamond as big as my shoe. Daisy?”
“C’mon, Daisy, we’ve got a biscuit for you,” Lydie called. Her voice was getting scratchy. “What time is it, anyway? It gets dark so early this time of year.”
“It’s…God! It’s going on four. I had no idea. She’s been out here since—when did Ma say she sent her out?”
“I don’t know. Hey, do you see any deer traps?”
“Oh, no,” Emaline moaned. “Boys and girls come out to play, the moon does shine as bright as day. Come with a hoop, and come with a call, come with a good will or not at all… Daisy!”
The girls walked on until they were dragging. “Are your feet hurting as much as mine?” Lydie asked.
“They’re burning,” Emaline said. “I’d love to dip them in the river about now…the river! Ma never lets her near the water alone, it’s so cold, and the undertows and the drop-offs, what if she accidentally…?”
“No one jumps into the river by accident, Em, not even a little kid. Calm down. You either jump or you don’t, and she knows better…hey, listen.”
“What?”
“Shhh. Listen. Over there, I think, in the brambles. Footsteps.”
“Daisy? Daisy?” Emaline called. Twigs and leaves crackled underfoot, but no one answered. “Daisy?”
A raccoon waddled out into the open. It rubbed one eye and swished its plump tail, blinked, and scooted back into the brush.
“If I’d just gone straight home like I promised,” Emaline said. “If only I’d been on time. If only…”
“Look, maybe Daisy’s already home,” Lydie said. “Maybe your ma whistled for us but we were too far away to hear. Maybe that’s why we can’t find her.”
“So should we—?” She straightened abruptly. “Lydie, listen. I hear something…Daisy?”
“Nope, just us,” came a man’s voice. Emaline’s neighbor Jed Pike and his son Emmett stepped out from a crowd of evergreens. “Your mother called us about Daisy. Afraid we haven’t had any luck so far.”
Emaline stole an anxious glance at Lydie.
“Don’t you fret now,” Mr. Pike said, stepping closer. He smelled like cows and hay. “My nephew is out here too, and your mother had an alert put on the radio, so there’ll be others. We’ll find her. Say, you ladies have lights?”
“Lights?” Emaline said. “No. We didn’t think we’d be out this long. We thought we were just—”
“You might want to get something then,” he said. “The sun’ll set in another hour.”
The girls stared at him.
“Good idea,” Lydie finally said. “C’mon, Em, let’s scoot back to your house for a flashlight or a lantern.” She tugged at her cousin’s arm until Emaline finally let herself be pulled along.
When they got to the house, Emaline couldn’t find her mother—the house was so crowded with neighbors and friends. “What are all these people doing here?” Emaline asked Lydie. “Look at all the food they brought, like for a funeral.” She looked around for Jack, but he didn’t seem to be here. Maybe he was out looking for Daisy.
“Why is everyone staring—?” Emaline said. She stopped mid-question, her legs suddenly wobbling, her head light.
Lydie helped her onto the sofa. “Let me get you some water,” she said, lifting Emaline’s feet onto the coffee table. “Or some juice. You need something—I’ll fix you a plate.”
“No, I’d gag on it.” She leaned her head against the sofa and closed her eyes. “I’m fine, I just need a minute. Just one minute.”
“Miss Durham?” came a deep voice overhead. “Emaline Durham?”
Emaline looked up to see her Aunt Clarisse and a uniformed man hovering on the opposite side of the coffee table.
“Emaline,” said the big man with the brick-red mustache. “I’m Victor Brown, state trooper, and I want you to know—”
“I’ve seen the trooper. He’s older than you. And a lot shorter.”
“That was Billy Moore.” He said the old trooper’s last name like it was MOO-wah, like it had no ‘r’ in it, like he wasn’t from around here. “He left a few weeks ago. I’m your trooper now. I’m in charge of this case.”
“Case?
“Case. Your aunt wants me to tell you—”
“Where’s my mother?” Emaline took her feet off the table and started to stand, but Lydie pulled her back down.
“In the kitchen, dear,” Clarisse said, taking a seat on the sofa and squeezing Emaline’s hand with her pudgy one. “She really wants to see you.”
“Well, what the heck does he want?”
“I just—your aunt wants you to know we got a lotta men searching for your sister,” the trooper said, twisting one end of his mustache between his fingers. “Upwards of a hundred, by my last count, including the whole fire squad. Won’t be long now till we get her home, I think. Anyways, you should call it a night, miss. It’s getting dark. No time for a young lady to be out.”
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s no time at all for a young lady to be out. So we’d best get Daisy in, hadn’t we? Now if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’m going to go find my sister.”
“I’m gonna insist now, miss,” he said. “We don’t need two girls going missing on us tonight.”
Emaline shot him an acid glare, then stood up and headed for the kitchen. As she went, she glanced at the mantelpiece clock. It was past six. Daisy had been missing since lunchtime—six hours!—and there still wasn’t a sign of her. She’d vanished, and no one knew where or how.
Mrs. Durham sat at the kitchen table, her chin on her hand. She was surrounded by a flock of women who stepped aside as soon as Emaline came in. The choir teacher and Sister Frances were there. So were most of Mrs. Durham’s quilting bee ladies, all of them with grim, pressed lips and narrow eyes.
“The poor dear,” one of the women whispered. “First her father and now this.” Did she really think Emaline couldn’t hear her?
“Ma?” she said, stepping closer.
When Mrs. Durham raised her chin, Emaline let out a small gasp. Her mother looked just like one of the mannequins at Pool’s Dry Goods—so stiff and pale, staring at nothing.
“Emaline, thank heavens you’re all right,” she said. “I was getting worried about you too.”
“I couldn’t find her, Ma. But I will. I’m going to find her.”
“No, stay inside. I don’t want you wandering those woods at night.”
The other women murmured their agreement.
“I have to, Ma.”
“But…,” She squeezed Emaline’s hands. “Just be careful then, do you hear me? Be careful. Promise.”
“I promise. I’ll be back as soon as I can, honest.” She glanced at the women, then back at her mother. Then she left the kitchen without saying good-bye or thank you or any other thing to anybody.
Lydie was waiting for her by the coffee table. “How’s your mother?” she asked.
“She looks just like she did the day Daddy died. Like a shell, like a broken shell.”
“I’m sorry, Em.”
“Yeah.” She scanned the room again and cleared her throat. “What’s going on out here?”
“Nothing but bull. Spud McMann is beating his gums about hungry bears walking down the middle of the street over in Potsdam. Mae Petru is yammering about the maximum-security prison in Dannemora, how it’s only an hour away, how she wonders if they ever escape. I blocked out the rest.”
Emaline’s eyes started to glisten.
“Come on, Em, they’re all just a bunch of saps, gossiping instead of doing something useful. Look, I found a flashlight in the other room. Let’s head back out.” She took her cousin’s hand and gave it a tug.
Emaline took a shaky breath, then the two of them hurried out the door where the first stars were twinkling in the evening sky.
Pool’s Dry Goods was closed for the night at half past six, but Jack, Mr. Pool and Roscoe were still there. Roscoe and Jack had been in the backroom all day unloading the winter clothes shipment and listening to the Yankees-White Sox game on the Canton radio station. Now Jack was sweeping the front walk and rolling up the window awnings while Roscoe collapsed shipping boxes for the rubbish.
“Jack,” Mr. Pool called out the open door, “that’s all for one day. Here, take this and eat at the diner, save your mother from cooking another meal.”
“Okay.” He took the dollar from his father. “I’ll have change for you.”
“Keep it. For your birthday.”
“Thanks, Pa. You coming home soon?”
“After a while.”
’Night, Roscoe. Who’s going to win tomorrow?”
Roscoe clicked his tongue. “Indians.”
“Not a chance, not against the Yankees. See you next week.”
The Sit Down Diner was busier than usual tonight. Old Man Claghorn had dropped in for a slice of pie on his way home from the aluminum works. Bucky Sanborn, the traveling paper salesman, was there, and so was Frenchie LaRoux, who didn’t order anything but was chatting with his table neighbors—Dr. McCarthy on one side and the Lorado brothers on the other.
