Sutton

by J. R. Moehringer

  Count me out, Eddie says, shoving his cup away. This is Rockefeller’s war. And his butt boy, J. P. Morgan. I aint takin a bullet for them robber barons. Don’t you realize we’re already in a war, Sutty? Us against them?

  I’m surprised, Willie says. I really am, Ed. I thought you’d jump at the chance to kill a few Dagos. Unless maybe you’re afraid those Dagos might get the best of you.

  Happy laughs. Eddie grabs Willie’s shirtfront and loads up a punch, then shakes his head and eases himself back onto his stool.

  Sutty the Patriot, Happy says. Don’t you worry, Sutty. You’re feeling patriotic? There’ll be plenty of ways to do your part. My old man says every war brings a boom. Sit tight. We’ll soon be in clover.

  Within weeks it’s true. New York is humming, a hive of activity, and the boys land jobs in a factory making machine guns. The pay is thirty-five a week, nearly four times what Willie and Happy were making at Title Guaranty. Willie is able to give his parents room and board and a little more. He watches them count and recount the money, sees the strain of the last few years falling away.

  And still he has something left over for a bit of fun. Every other night he goes with Eddie and Happy to Coney Island. How did he live so long without this enchanted place? The music, the lights—the laughter. It’s at Coney Island that Willie first realizes: no one in the Sutton household ever laughs.

  Best of all he loves the food. He’s been raised on wilted cabbage and thin stews, now he has access to a sultan’s feast. Stepping off the trolley he can smell the roasted pigs, the grilled clams coated with butter, the spring chickens, the filet chateaubriands, the pickled walnuts, the Roman punches, and he realizes—he’s been hungry for sixteen years.

  No delicacy at Coney Island is so exotic, so addictive, as the recently invented Nathan’s Famous. It’s also called a hot dog. Slicked with mustard, slotted into a billfold of soft white bread, it makes Willie moan with pleasure. Happy can eat five, Eddie can eat seven. There’s no limit to how many Willie can put away.

  After gorging themselves, and washing it all down with a few steins of beer, the boys stroll the Boardwalk, trying to catch the eyes of pretty girls. But pretty girls are the one delicacy they can’t have. In 1917 and 1918 pretty girls want soldiers. Even Happy can’t compete with those smart uniforms, those white sailor hats.

  Before catching a rattler home Eddie insists that they swing by the Amazing Incubator, the new warming oven for babies that come out half cooked. Eddie likes to press his face to the glass door, wave at the seven or eight newborns on the other side. Look, Sutty, they’re so damn tiny. They’re like little hot dogs.

  Don’t eat one by accident, Happy says

  Eddie yells through the glass door. Welcome to earth, suckers. The whole thin’s rigged.

  SIX

  There are hundreds sprinkled throughout the city, but Happy says only two are worth a damn. One under the Brooklyn Bridge, the other on Sands Street, just outside the Navy Yard. Happy prefers the one on Sands. The girls aren’t necessarily prettier, he says. Just more obliging. They work ten-hour shifts, taking on three customers an hour, and more when the fleet is in. He relates this with the admiration and wonder of a staunch capitalist describing Henry Ford’s new assembly line.

  Around the time of the Battle of Passchendaele, and the draft riots in Oklahoma, and the mining strikes throughout the West, the boys pay their first visit together to the house on Sands Street. The kitchen is the waiting room. Six men sit around the table, and along the wall, reading newspapers, like men at a barbershop. The boys grab newspapers, take seats near the stove. They blow on their hands. The night is cold.

  Willie watches the other men closely. Each time one is summoned it’s the same routine. The man tromps upstairs. Minutes later, through the ceiling, heavy footsteps. Then a female voice. Then muffled laughter. Then bedsprings squeaking. Then a loud grunt, a high trill, a few moments of exhausted silence. Finally a slammed door, footsteps descending, and the man passes through the kitchen, cheeks blazing, a flower in his buttonhole. The flower is complimentary.

  When it’s their turn Willie feels panic verging on apoplexy. At the upstairs landing he hesitates. Maybe another time, Happy, I don’t feel so good. My stomach.

  Tell her where it hurts, Willie, she’ll kiss it and make it better.

  Happy pushes Willie toward a pale blue door at the far end of the hall. Willie knocks lightly.

  Come.

  He pushes the door in slowly.

  Shut the door, honey—there’s a draft in that hall.

  He does as he’s told. The room is dim, lit only by a candle lamp. On the edge of a frilly bed sits a girl in a baby pink negligee. Smooth skin, long full hair. Pretty eyes with dark lashes. But she’s missing her right arm.

  Lost it when I was six, she says when Willie asks. Fell under a streetcar. That’s how come they call me Wingy.

  It must also be the reason she’s on Sands Street. Not many other ways for a one-armed girl in Brooklyn to get by.

  Willie puts a fifty-cent piece on the dresser. Wingy rises, drops the baby pink negligee. Smiling, she comes to Willie, helps him undress. She knows it’s his first time. How do you know, Wingy? I just do, darlin. Willie calculates—it must be her hundred and first time. This month. As he stands with his pants bunched around his feet, she kisses his chin, his lips, his big nose. He begins to shake, as if cold, though the room is stifling. The windows are shut tight, fogging. Wingy leads him to the bed. She lies on top of him. She kisses him harder, parts his lips with hers.

  He draws back. Half her bottom teeth are missing.

  Merchant marine knocked them out, she says. Now no more questions, sugar lump, just you lie back and let Wingy do what Wingy does.

  What does Wingy do?

  I said no more questions.

  Her touch is surprisingly gentle, and skillful, and Willie is quickly aroused. She drags her rich chestnut hair up his chest, across his face, like a fan of feathers. He likes the way it feels, and smells. Her hair soap, Castile maybe, masks the room’s other baked-in scents. Male sweat, old spunk—and Fels?

  It struck him when he first walked in, but it didn’t register. Now it registers. Whoever launders Wingy’s bedclothes uses the same detergent as Mother. It’s a common detergent, he shouldn’t be surprised, but it confuses and troubles Willie at a climactic moment of his maturation.

  More confusions. Willie thought Eddie could cuss, but Wingy makes Eddie seem a rank amateur. Why is she cussing? Is Willie doing it wrong? How can he be, when he’s not doing anything? He’s pinned on his back, helpless. If anyone should be cussing, it’s him. Wingy’s abundant pubic hair is coarse, nearly metallic, and it chafes and scrapes the tender skin of Willie’s brand-new penis. In and out, up and down, Wingy does her best to pleasure Willie, and Willie appreciates her diligence, but he can’t stop dwelling on the gap between reality and his expectations. This is what makes the world go round? This is what everyone’s so excited about—this? If there’s any pleasure at all in the experience, it’s the relief he feels when it’s over.

  Wingy curls against him, commending his stamina. He thanks her, for everything, then gathers his clothes and gives her a ten-cent tip. He doesn’t stick around for the complimentary flower.

  Photographer turns down Sands Street. The road is being repaired. He weaves slowly among orange cones, sawhorses. Anywhere along here, Sutton says.

  Photographer pulls over, slips the car into park. Ninth floor, he says in an adenoidal voice—ladies’ handbags, men’s socks.

  What happened on this corner, Mr. Sutton?

  This is where Willie lost his innocence. A house of ill fame. That’s what we called whorehouses back then.

  Was she pretty? Photographer asks.

  Yeah. She was. Though she had only one arm. They called her Wingy.

  Which arm?

  Her left.

  Why didn’t they call her Lefty?

  That would’ve been cruel.

  Repo
rter and Photographer look at each other, look away.

  Do you want to step out, Mr. Sutton?

  Nah.

  Willie, Photographer says—why exactly are we here?

  I wanted to visit Wingy.

  Visit?

  I can feel her, right now, smiling at us. At your questions. She didn’t like questions.

  The ghost of a one-armed prostitute. Great. That should make a nice photo.

  Okay, boys, next stop. We’ve seen where Willie lost his innocence. Let’s go to Red Hook and see where Willie lost his heart.

  With the Armistice—November 1918—all of New York City becomes Coney Island. People fill the streets, dance on cars, kiss strangers. Offices close, saloons stay open around the clock. Willie and Eddie and Happy join the crowds, but with mixed emotions. The war was the best thing that ever happened to them. Peace means no more need for machine guns. No more need for them.

  Laid off again, the boys scramble. They comb the wants, fill out applications, canvass. But the city is crowded with soldiers also hunting for work. Newspapers forecast another Depression. The third of Willie’s life, this one looks to be the most severe. Things get so bleak, so quick, people wonder aloud if capitalism has run its course.

  The boys sit on the rocky waterfront at Red Hook, fishing, while Eddie reads aloud from a newspaper he pulled from the trash. Strikes, riots, unrest—and every other page carries a grim profile of another boy not coming home.

  One of every forty who went overseas, Eddie reads, won’t be back.

  Christ, Happy says.

  At least they did something with their lives, Willie says.

  Eddie stands, paces. He pitches rocks at the water. Nothin’s blunth changed. We’re blunth right back blunth where we started.

  He stops, lets the rock in his hand fall to the ground. He stands still as a statue and stares into the distance. Willie and Happy turn, follow his gaze. Now they too stand slowly and stare.

  Happy sprints toward her, removes his tweed cap, bows. She jumps back, but it’s an act. She’s not startled. A coiled cobra wouldn’t startle this girl, you can tell. Besides, it’s Happy. She was hurrying somewhere, walking purposefully, but now, coming upon a specimen like Happy, she’s got all the time in the world.

  You gotta hand it to that Happy, Eddie says. He sits, adjusts his hat, checks the poles. Willie nods, sits beside him. Every few minutes they turn and shoot a wistful look at their friend.

  Happy brings her over. Okay, you bums, look alive, on your feet. Bess, this here’s the Beard Street Fishing Club. Of which these are the presidents, Mr. Edward Wilson and Mr. William Sutton. Fellas, say hello to Bess Endner.

  She’s an ash blonde, that’s how police reports will later describe her, but in the light of late autumn her hair contains every kind of yellow. Butter, honey, lemon, amber, gold—she even has golden flecks in her bright blue eyes, as if whoever painted her had some yellow left over and didn’t know what to do with it. She’s petite, five foot four, but with the graceful strides of a taller girl. Fifteen years old, Willie guesses. Sixteen maybe.

  She’s carrying a wooden basket. She shifts it, shakes hands with Eddie, then Willie.

  What’s in the basket? Happy says.

  I’m bringing lunch to my father. That’s his shipyard right over there.

  Some big shipyard, Happy says.

  Biggest in Brooklyn. Founded by my grandpa. He came to this country in the hold of a ship, and now he builds them.

  Willie stares. He’s never seen such confidence. The next time he does, it will be in men with guns. Eddie stares too. It doesn’t seem to make her uncomfortable. She probably can’t remember a time when people didn’t stare.

  She points to their poles. Fish biting?

  Nah, Eddie says.

  What are you using for bait?

  Bottle caps, Willie says. Nail heads. Chewing tobacco.

  Water’s kind of icky, isn’t it?

  We give the fish a hot shower and a shave before we cook them, Willie says.

  She laughs. Sounds delish. On the subject of food, I better run. Daddy gets cranky when he’s hungry.

  She wiggles her fingers goodbye. Is it Willie’s imagination or does she hold his gaze for half a second?

  The boys stand shoulder to shoulder, watching her walk down Beard Street. They don’t speak until she passes into her father’s shipyard. Then they still don’t speak. They lie back on the rocks and hold their faces to the sun. Willie, eyes closed, watches the golden sun spots float under his eyelids. They remind him of the flecks in Bess Endner’s blue eyes. He’d have a better chance of kissing the sun.

  A cat or rat scurries in front of the car. Photographer swerves. What the—? A block later, another cat or rat. So this is Red Hook, Photographer says—people live here?

  And die here, Sutton says. In the old days you’d hear two guys at a lunch counter. One would whisper to the other, I dropped that package in Red Hook. Package meant corpse.

  Reporter points to a pothole that looks like a lunar crater. Look out.

  Photographer drives straight through it. The Polara begins to rattle like an old trolley.

  You cracked the axle, Sutton says.

  Brooklyn is full of potholes, Photographer says.

  Brooklyn is a pothole, Sutton says. Always was.

  Reporter points at a street sign. There it is—Beard Street.

  Photographer turns on Beard, slides the Polara along the curb, scrapes the hubcap. Sutton steps out, limps across the cobblestones to a raised, railed sidewalk along the water. He steps up, grabs the railing, stands like a dictator about to address a crowd-filled plaza. Now he turns back to Reporter and Photographer, who are staying by the car. He calls to them: What are there, three billion people in the world? Four? You know the odds of finding the one who’s meant for you? Well—I found her. Right here. On this spot.

  Reporter and Photographer cross the street, one jotting notes, the other shooting.

  Boys, you’re only really alive, in the fullest sense of the word, when you’re in love. That’s why almost everyone you meet seems like they’re dead.

  What was her name, Mr. Sutton?

  Bess.

  SEVEN

  Out of work, nearly out of cash, the boys still spend nights at Coney Island, but they skip the hot dogs, the rides. They merely pace up and down the Boardwalk, looking at the Christmas lights. And the girls. Happy has an old ukulele. Whenever a beautiful girl passes by on the arm of a soldier, he purposely hits an out-of-tune chord.

  Then, a miracle. The most beautiful girl in the crowd isn’t with a soldier. She’s with two girlfriends. And she recognizes Happy. And Eddie. Then Willie. If it isn’t the Beard Street Fishermen, she cries.

  She runs over, dragging her two girlfriends. She introduces them. The first has red hair, pale green eyes, slightly recessed, and thick eyebrows. Double thick. Get a load of this bird, Eddie whispers. When they was handin out eyebrows, she must’ve got in line twice.

  But First Girlfriend and Eddie discover that they have several friends in common, so they pair off.

  Second Girlfriend, with long brown hair and a snub nose, doesn’t speak, doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t seem to want to be here. Or anywhere. Her aloofness sparks Happy. He takes her by the elbow, turns to wink at Willie. Meaning, Bess is yours.

  She wears an aqua blue hat, the brim pulled low, concealing her eyes. When Willie compliments the hat, and her matching blue dress, she slowly raises her face to him. Now he sees the golden flecks. They capture him, paralyze him. He tries to look away, but he can’t. He can’t.

  She makes a favorable remark about Willie’s attire. Thank God he didn’t pawn his Title Guaranty suits. Thank God he wore one, the black one, tonight.

  They follow their friends up the Boardwalk. Willie asks Bess where she lives. Near Prospect Park, she says. Me too, he says. President Street, she says. Oh, he says, well, you live on the nice side. Biggest house on the block, she says, you can’t miss it. Bigg
est house, Willie says, biggest shipyard. Means nothing to me, she says, it’s not my shipyard, and it’s not my house.

  They talk about the war. Bess reads everything. She sits with her father every night, scouring the Times, and she never misses an issue of Leslie’s Illustrated. She says it’s criminal that bankers are balking at President Wilson’s plan to grant Germany a merciful peace. Criminal.

  You certainly do have strong opinions, Willie says.

  Don’t you think it a shame I can’t express them at the ballot box?

  Oh, well, women will have the vote soon enough.

  Tomorrow would not be soon enough, Mr. Sutton.

  Of course. My mistake.

  He tries to steer the conversation away from politics. He mentions the balmy weather. Unseasonably warm winter, isn’t it?

  I should say so.

  He asks if Bess is her proper name.

  I was born Sarah Elizabeth Endner, but my friends call me all sorts of things. Betsy, Bessie, Bizzy, Binnie. I prefer Bess.

  Bess it is.

  They fall silent. The sound of their shoes clicking along the Boardwalk seems inordinately loud. Willie thinks about the impossibility of knowing anyone, of getting to know anyone, ever.

  Say, uh, Bess. Did you know Coney Island was named by an Irishman?

  Oh?

  Coney is Irish for rabbit. I guess there were a lot of wild rabbits around here once.

  She looks around, as if trying to spot one.

  Big ones, Willie says.

  She smiles weakly.

  Wild, he says.

  She makes no reply.

  Willie racks his brain, trying to remember what he and Wingy talk about. He tries to remember what the hero says to the heroine in every Alger novel. He can’t think straight. He calls to Eddie and Happy. Hey fellas—what should we do next?