Sutton

by J. R. Moehringer

  I asked for this assignment, Photographer says.

  Did you kid?

  Even though it was Christmas. I told my old lady, I said, baby, it’s Willie the Actor. This guy’s been fighting the Man for decades.

  Well, I don’t know about the Man.

  You fought the law, brother.

  Okay.

  You were an antihero before they invented the word.

  Antihero?

  Hell yes, man. This is the Age of the Antihero. I don’t have to tell you, Willie, times are hard, people are fed up. Prices are soaring, taxes are sky high, millions are hungry, angry. Injustice. Inequality. The War on Poverty is a joke, the war in Vietnam is illegal, the Great Society is a sham.

  Same old same old, Sutton says.

  Yes and no, Photographer says. Same shit, but people aren’t taking it anymore. People are in the streets, brother. Chicago, Newark, Detroit. We haven’t seen this kind of civil unrest in a long long time. So people are crazy about anyone who fights the power—and wins. That’s you, Willie. Have you seen today’s front pages, brother?

  It’s a nonstarter, Reporter whispers to Photographer. I already went down this road.

  Photographer is undaunted. Just the other night, he says, I was telling my old lady all about you—

  You know all about Willie?

  Sure. And you know what she said? She said, This cat sounds like a real-life Robin Hood.

  Well, Robin Hood was real life, but anyway. She sounds lovely.

  Oh, I’m a lucky guy, Willie. My old lady, she’s a teacher up in the Bronx. Studying to be a masseuse. She’s changed my life. Really raised my consciousness. You know how the right woman can do that.

  Your consciousness?

  Yeah. She knows all about the trigger points in the body. She’s really opened me up. Artistically. Emotionally. Sexually.

  Photographer starts to giggle. Sutton stares at the Life Saver eyes framed in the rearview—Photographer is stoned. Reporter is staring too, clearly thinking the same thing.

  Trigger points, Sutton says.

  Yeah. She’s studying the same techniques they used on Kennedy. For his back. I got a bad back—this line of work, it comes with the territory—so every night she works out my knots. Her hands are magic. I’m kind of obsessed with her, in case you couldn’t tell. Her hands. Her hair. Her face. Her ass. God, her ass. I shouldn’t say that though. She’s a feminist. She’s teaching me not to objectify women.

  You had to be taught not to object to women?

  Objectify.

  Oh.

  Reporter clears his throat. Loudly. Okay then, he says, shutting his door, spreading Sutton’s map across the Polara’s dashboard. Mr. Sutton has kindly drawn us a map, places he wants to show us today. He insists that we visit them all. In chronological order.

  Photographer sees all the red numbers. Thirteen, fourt—Really?

  Really.

  Photographer drops his voice. When do we get to, you know? Schuster?

  Last.

  Photographer drops his voice lower. What gives?

  It’s his way, Reporter whispers, or no way.

  Sutton bows his head, tries not to smile.

  Photographer throws up his hands as if Reporter is robbing him. Hey man, that’s cool. It’s Willie da Actor—he’s da boss, right? Willie da Actor don’t take orders from nobody.

  Reporter pulls the radio from the dash. City Desk? Come in, City Desk.

  The radio squawks: Are you guys garble leaving the static garble Plaza?

  Ten four.

  Photographer puts the car into drive and they lurch forward, toward Fifth Avenue, cruising slowly past the former sites of two banks Sutton hit in 1931.

  Traffic is light. It’s seven o’clock Christmas morning, the temperature is twelve degrees, so only a few people are on the street. They turn onto Fifty-Seventh. Sutton sees three young men walking, debating something intensely. Two of them wear denim jackets, the third wears a leather duster. They all have long shaggy manes.

  When exactly, Sutton says, did everybody get together and decide to stop getting haircuts?

  Reporter and Photographer look at each other, laugh.

  Sutton sees an old man rooting in a trash can. He sees another old man pushing a shopping cart full of brooms. He sees a woman—youngish, pretty—having a heated argument. With a mannequin in a store window.

  Reporter peers into the backseat. Was the homeless problem bad before you went to prison, Mr. Sutton?

  Nah. Because we didn’t call them homeless. We called them beggars. Then bums. I should know. When I was your age, I was one.

  Hey Willie, Photographer says, if you’re hungry, man, I bought donuts. In that box on the seat.

  Sutton opens the pink box. An assortment. Glazed, sugar, jelly, crullers. Thanks kid.

  Help yourself. I bought enough for everybody.

  Maybe later.

  Donuts are my weakness.

  You’d have loved Capone.

  Why’s that?

  Al used to hand out donuts to the poor during the Depression. He was the first gangster who gave any thought to public relations.

  Is that so?

  That was the rap against him anyway, that it was all for show. I met him once at a nightclub, asked him about it. He said he didn’t give a shit about PR. He just didn’t like seeing people go hungry.

  Sutton feels a burst of pain in his leg. It flies up his side, lands just behind his eyeballs. He lets his head fall back. Eventually he’s going to have to ask these boys to stop at a drugstore. Or a hospital.

  So, Photographer says. Willie, my brother—how does it feel to be free?

  Sutton lifts his head. Like a dream, he says.

  I’ll bet.

  Photographer waits for Sutton to elaborate. Sutton doesn’t.

  And how did you spend your first night of freedom?

  Sutton exhales. You know. Thinking.

  Photographer guffaws. He looks at Reporter. No reaction. Then back at Sutton’s reflection. Thinking?

  Yeah.

  Thinking?

  That’s right.

  You didn’t get enough time in prison to think?

  In the joint, kid, thinking is the one thing you can’t let yourself do.

  Photographer lights a cigarette. Sutton notices: Newport Menthol. Figures.

  Willie, Photographer says, if I was in prison for seventeen years, and they let me out, thinking is the last thing I’d do.

  I have no trouble believing that.

  Reporter starts to laugh, pretends it’s a cough.

  Photographer squints at Sutton in the rearview, runs two fingers down the stems of his Fu Manchu.

  Sutton sees signs for the tunnel. In a few minutes they’ll be in Brooklyn. Jesus—Brooklyn again. His heart beats faster. They pass a movie theater. They all look at the marquee. TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE. Reporter and Photographer shake their heads.

  What a coincidence, Photographer says.

  Of all the films to open this week, Reporter says. I’ll have to work that into my story.

  Sutton watches the marquee until it’s out of sight. Who plays Willie Boy? he asks.

  Robert Blake, Photographer says. I saw the coming attractions. It’s a Western. About a guy who kills his girlfriend’s father in self-defense, then goes on the run. There’s a huge manhunt for him, the largest in the history of the West—it’s based on a true story. Supposedly.

  They pass the corner of Broadway and Battery Place.

  Canyon of Heroes, Reporter shouts over his shoulder. Seems like, this year, we’ve had a ticker-tape parade along here every other week. The Jets, of course. The Mets. The astronauts.

  Isn’t it telling, Sutton says. When someone’s a hero, they shower him with little pieces of the stock market.

  Photographer laughs. You’re singing my song, Willie.

  Sutton sees some ticker tape still in the gutters. He sees another bum, this one curled in the fetal position. Bums lying in ticker tape
, he says. They should put that on a postage stamp.

  I covered every one of those parades, Photographer says. Got beaucoup shots of Neil Armstrong. Cool guy. You’d think a guy that just walked on the moon would be stuck up. He’s not. He’s really—you know.

  Down to earth, Sutton says.

  Yeah.

  Sutton waits. One, two. Photographer slaps the wheel. I just got that, he says. Good one.

  Everyone praises Armstrong and Aldrin, Sutton says. But the real hero on that moon shot was the third guy, Mike Collins, the Irishman in the backseat.

  Actually, Reporter says, Collins was born in Rome.

  Photographer gawks at Sutton. Collins? He didn’t even set foot on the moon.

  Exactly. Collins was in the space capsule all alone. While his partners were down there collecting rocks, Collins was manning the wheel. Twenty-six times he circled the moon—solo. Imagine? He was completely out of radio contact. Couldn’t talk to his partners. Couldn’t talk to NASA. He was cut off from every living soul in the universe. If he panicked, if he fucked up, if he pushed the wrong button, he’d strand Armstrong and Aldrin. Or if they did something wrong, if their lunar car broke down, if they couldn’t restart the thing, if they couldn’t blast off and reconnect with Collins forty-five miles above the moon, he’d have to head back to earth all by himself. Leave his partners to die. Slowly running out of air. While watching earth in the distance. It was such a real possibility, Collins returning to earth by himself, that Nixon wrote up a speech to the nation. Collins—now that’s one stone-cold wheelman. That’s the guy you want sitting at the wheel of a gassed-up Ford while you’re inside a bank.

  Reporter looks searchingly in the backseat. Seems like you’ve given this a lot of thought, Mr. Sutton.

  In the joint I read everything I could get my hands on about the moon shot. The hacks even let us watch it on TV—in the middle of the day. A rare privilege. They put a set in D Yard. It was the first time I didn’t see black guys and white guys fighting over the TV. Everybody wanted to watch the moon landing. I think some of you people on the outside might have taken the whole thing for granted. But in the joint we couldn’t get enough of it.

  Why’s that?

  Because the moon shot is mankind’s ultimate escape. And because the astronauts were in one-sixth gravity. In the joint you feel like gravity is six times stronger.

  The car windows are fogging. Sutton wipes the window to his right and looks at the sky. He thinks of the astronauts returning from the moon—250,000 miles. Attica is at least that far away. He lights a Chesterfield. Some nerve, he thinks, identifying with astronauts. But he can’t help it. Maybe it’s that setup in a space capsule—two in front, one in back, like every getaway car he’s ever ridden in. Also, he’d never say it out loud, not if you hung him up by his thumbs, but he sees himself as a hero. If he’s not, why are these boys chauffeuring him through the Canyon of Heroes?

  Canyon of Antiheroes.

  What’s that, Mr. Sutton?

  Nothing. Did you boys know, after the three astronauts returned, Collins got a letter from the only man who understood how completely alone he’d been? Charles Lindbergh.

  Is that true?

  They enter the tunnel, drive slowly under the river. The cab of the Polara goes dark, except for the dash and Sutton’s glowing cigarette. Sutton closes his eyes. This river. So full of memories. And evidence. Guns, knives, costumes, license plates from getaway cars. He used to hammer the plates into tiny squares the size of matchbooks before dropping them in the water. And former associates—this river was the last thing they saw. Or felt. We’re here, Reporter says.

  Sutton opens his eyes. Did he doze off? Must have—his cigarette is out. He looks through the fogged windows. A lifeless corner. Alien, lunar. This can’t be it. He looks at the street sign. Gold Street. This is it.

  You committed a crime here, Mr. Sutton?

  Sort of. I was born here.

  He wasn’t born, Daddo always said—he escaped. Two months early, umbilical cord noosed around his neck, he should have died. But somehow, on June 30, 1901, William Francis Sutton Jr. emerged. Now, emerging from the Polara, he steps gingerly onto the curb. The Actor has landed, he says under his breath.

  Down the street he goes, dragging his bad leg. Reporter, jumping out of the Polara, flipping open his notebook, follows. Mr. Sutton, is your family—um—still?

  Nah. Everyone’s a fine dust. Wait, that’s not true, I have a sister in Florida.

  Sutton looks around. He turns in a full circle. It’s all different. Even the light is different. Who would have thought something so basic, so elemental as light could change so much? But Brooklyn sixty years ago, with its elevated tracks, its ubiquitous clotheslines, was a world of dense and various shadows, and the light by contrast was always blinding.

  No more.

  At least the air tastes familiar. Like a dishrag soaked in river water. The energy feels the same too. Which may be why Sutton now hears voices. There were so many voices back then, all talking at once. Everyone was always calling to you, yelling at you, hollering down from a fire escape or terrace—and they all sounded angry. There was no such thing as conversation. Life was one long argument. Which nobody ever won.

  Reporter and Photographer stand before Sutton, concerned looks on their faces. He sees them talking to him but he can’t hear. They’re drowned out by the voices. Old voices, loud voices, dead voices. Now he hears the trolleys. Night and day that ceaseless rattling is what makes Brooklyn Brooklyn. Let’s take the rattler to Coney Island, Eddie always says. Of course Eddie is long gone, and there is no rattling, so what is Sutton hearing? He puts a hand over his mouth. What’s happening? Is it the champagne? Is it the leg—a clot rattling toward his brain? Is that why he now hears his brothers taunting him, Mother calling from the upstairs window?

  Mr. Sutton, you okay?

  Sutton closes his eyes, lifts his face to the sky.

  Mr. Sutton?

  Coming, Mother.

  Mr. Sutton?

  THREE

  Chickens, horses, pigs, goats, dogs, they all walk down the middle of Gold Street, which isn’t a street but a dirt path. The city sometimes sprinkles the street with oil to keep the dust down. But that just makes it an oily dirt path.

  Neighborhood boys are glad the street is dirt. Gold Street got its name because pirates buried treasure beneath it long ago, and on summer days the boys like to dig for doubloons.

  There. A narrow wooden house, three stories tall, like all the others on Gold Street, except for the chimney, which tilts leeward. Willie lives there with Father, Mother, two older brothers, one older sister, and his white-haired grandfather, Daddo. The house is painted a cheerful yellow, but that’s misleading. It’s not a happy place. It’s always too hot, too cold, too small. There’s no running water, no bathroom, and a heavy gloom hangs in the tiny rooms and narrow halls since the death of Willie’s baby sister, Agnes. Meningitis. Or so the Suttons think. They don’t know. There was no doctor, no hospital. Hospitals are for Rockefellers.

  Seven years old, Willie sits in the kitchen watching Mother, grief-sick, at the washbasin. A small woman, wide in the hips, with wispy red hair and bleary eyes, she scrubs a piece of clothing that used to be white and never will be again. She uses a powdered detergent that smells to Willie of ripe pears and vanilla.

  The name of the detergent, Fels, is everywhere—newspapers, billboards, placards in the trolley cars. Children, skipping rope, chant the Fels advertising slogan to keep rhythm. Fels—gets out—that tattle—tale gray! Meaning, without Fels, your gray collar and underpants will tell on you. Judas clothes—the idea terrifies little Willie. And yet Mother’s constant scrubbing makes no sense. A noble effort, but a waste of time, since the second you step outside, splat. The streets are filled with mud and shit, tar and soot, dust and oil.

  And dead horses. They keel over from the heat, fall down from the cold, collapse from disease or neglect. Every week there’s another one lying in
the gutter. If the horse belongs to a gypsy or ragpicker, it’s left where it falls. Over time it swells like a balloon, until it explodes. A sound like a cannon. Then it gives off an eye-watering stench, bringing flies, rats. Sometimes the New York City Street Cleaning Department sends a crew. Just as often the city doesn’t bother. The city treats this nub of northern Brooklyn, this wasteland between the two bridges, as a separate city, a separate nation, which it is. Some call it Vinegar Hill. Most call it Irish Town.

  Everyone in Irish Town is Irish. Everyone. Most are new Irish. Their hobnailed boots and slanted tweed caps are still caked with the dust of Limerick or Dublin or Cork. Mother and Father were born in Ireland, as was Daddo, but they all came to Irish Town years ago, which gives them a certain status in the neighborhood.

  The other thing that gives them status is Father’s job. Most fathers in Irish Town don’t work, and those who do drink up their wages, but Father is a blacksmith, a skilled artisan, and every Saturday he dutifully, proudly places his weekly twelve dollars on the outstretched apron of Mother. Twelve dollars. Never more, but never less.

  Willie sees Father as a fantastic collection of nevers. Never misses a day of work, never touches liquor, never swears or raises a hand in anger to his wife and kids. He also never shows affection, never speaks. A word here, a word there. If that. His silence, which gives him an aura, feels connected to his work. After eleven hours of hammering and pounding and swatting the hardest thing in the world—what’s to say?

  Often Willie goes with Father to the shop, a wooden shed on a big lot that smells of manure and fire. Willie watches Father, streaming with sweat, slamming his giant hammer again and again on a piece of glowing orange. With every slam, every metallic clank, Father looks—not happy, but clearer of mind. Willie feels clearer too. Other fathers are drunk, on the dole, but not his. Father isn’t God, but he’s godlike. Willie’s first hero, first mystery, Father is also his first love.

  Willie thinks he’d like to be a blacksmith when he grows up. He learns that when you make a piece of metal longer, you draw it, and when you make it shorter, you upset it. He learns to pump the bellows, make the flames in the hearth swell. Father holds up a hand, signaling careful, not too much. Every other week another blacksmith shop burns to the ground. Then the smith is out of work and the family is on the street. That’s the fear, the thing that keeps Father hammering, Mother scrubbing. One bad turn—fire, illness, injury, bank panic—and the curb is your pillow.