If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  Resignedly he explained that the cause was the universal use of bituminous coal costing only seventeen cents a bushel—cheap, but it coated the city with grime. Only Cincinnati’s rich could afford to wear light-colored clothing, houses were never truly clean, and even letters mailed from the city carried with them the reek of coal smoke. He deftly changed the subject by pointing to the new thousand-foot suspension bridge connecting Cincinnati and Covington. It soared a hundred feet over the river and could support, he claimed, the total weight of Cincinnati’s 250,000 people.

  We proceeded up from the river through a commercial gridwork. From plain wholesale outlets—I glimpsed Proctor and Gamble’s soap factory on Second—we moved upward to showier retail establishments like Shillito’s, where the Olympics bought dress shirts on sale at $1.25 apiece. Champion, meanwhile, kept talking: Cincinnati now boasted sixty-four millionaires; it ranked third in the nation in manufacturing and fourth in the production of books—due largely to McGuffey’s famous readers.

  Longworth’s Wine House on East Sixth was a stop popular with the Olympics. Flickering candles illuminated cellars holding two hundred thousand bottles. Ohio’s wines rivaled those of California, Champion claimed, but only Germans seemed able to run vineyards profitably. I noticed that prices ranged from a dollar for local Catawba to three-fifty for Longworth’s special Golden Wedding Champagne—certainly not the cheapest drink in town.

  Above Fifth, about half a mile up from the river, the buildings grew shabbier. We crossed the Miami Canal, a sluggish channel as wide as a street bisecting the city at sharp angles. A string of barges moved slowly on the viscid surface, powered by polemen. On the other side lay Over the Rhine, the huge, thriving German section constituting roughly a third of the city’s population. I looked in wonder at red brick houses with wooden gingerbread trim, charming clock towers, window boxes bursting with geraniums, narrow alleys, busy beer gardens. I promised myself the treat of exploring this city within the larger city.

  The foothills were dotted with slaughterhouses and breweries. We stopped before a huge new building. Its sign read: BANNER SLAUGHTER AND PORK-PACKING HOUSE.

  Christ, I thought, does he really mean to take us in there? He did. It was vivid.

  What Andy had said was true: Cincinnati still reigned as the country’s primary meat packer. Here a system had originated of packing fifteen bushels of corn into a pig, packing the pig into a barrel, and sending it across the mountains to feed others.

  Accompanied by a hellish, deafening squealing, we watched as hogs weighing up to six hundred pounds were killed, scraped, dressed, cut up, salted, and packed. This miracle of efficiency went on ten hours a day and six days a week during the four-month packing season. Only the strictest division of labor made it possible, each worker repeatedly performing the same specific task. The gutter, for example, a highly paid specialist earning six-fifty a day (no other worker topped four dollars), removed each hog’s entire respiratory and digestive systems in less than twenty seconds with several rapid cuts. He performed this task, which would take an ordinary butcher ten minutes, some 1,500 times daily. Should the gutter be replaced by a substitute who could do the job only, say, one-fifth as fast, then the whole production process would slow to a fifth of normal output.

  The others were visibly impressed by the man’s wage. The Olympics received no salary but shared gate receipts. Among the Stockings, only the Wrights and Brainard earned as much as the gutter. But he could have made millions, for all I cared. I stared at the pools of blood and intestines and steaming water, at flabby, naked, quivering hogs, at men in oilskin suits shiny with wetness and grease.

  Outside, I breathed the sooty air as if it were elixir, still noting information on my pad: hams went to the smoking department, salting pieces to the cellar, tongue and feet elsewhere; bristles brought seventeen cents, the tongue a nickel; the fat of the intestines alone paid nearly the entire cost of packing.

  A triumph of the industrial revolution. A showcase of the assembly line. In this four-month season 180,000 hogs would be slaughtered by this house alone, and nearly half a million altogether in Cincinnati.

  Hail, Porkopolis!

  We went up into the hills that rose like ocean swells around the city. Above the pall of smoke were Clifton and the other elegant wooded districts, where the wealthy built their mansions. It was clear that Champion expected to take his place among them someday.

  He showed us the stone house of Henry Probasco, a local magnate who had begun as an errand boy in the business he eventually headed. Into this house Probasco had poured limitless money, decorating each square inch to the limits of human ingenuity. Champion’s voice quavered with moral fervor as he described it all, his subtext obvious: Labor hard to elevate yourself and look at what might happen. . . .

  At the Mount Auburn Young Ladies School we ascended to a high cupola overlooking woodlands dotted with villas encircled by groves and gardens. Far below sprawled the city, broiling in its overhanging haze. I gazed in wonder around me, enchanted by sylvan vistas. The hilly suburbs were indeed Cincinnati’s glory.

  Descending again, we passed the austere Lane Theological Seminary, where Henry Ward Beecher had studied in a bare, forlorn room. The city possessed remarkable religious diversity, according to Champion. Protestants and Catholics actively cooperated. Rabbis—some twelve thousand Jews lived in the city—and Christian clergy actually exchanged pulpits to deliver sermons.

  We passed the entrance to the newly finished Garden of Eden Park. I imagined myself strolling over the green expanses inside, Cait at my side. It made a pretty picture.

  The news shook me, although most of the others didn’t seem too surprised. Just before we took the field that afternoon, Harry informed us that he’d removed Hurley from the team for breaking rules. He didn’t elaborate, but Brainard later told us the full story. Hurley had gotten roaring drunk the previous night in a Vine Street saloon—Brainard termed it a doggery—and broken three fingers in a brawl. Harry bailed him out of jail and kept it quiet—even Millar didn’t know—but Hurley was definitely finished. I had the sobering realization that, for now anyway, I was the Stockings’ only substitute.

  I sat beneath a red canopy and manned the score book. On this humid Saturday nearly five thousand at the Union Grounds exulted in the knowledge that Cincinnati was fast becoming a capital on the sporting map. The West End park swarmed with kids trying to sneak over or under or through the fences. In the Grand Duchess dandified swells and lavishly dressed ladies created what Millar called an “Arabian Nights aspect” of vibrant color. The red-trousered Zouaves were on hand, and when they played “My Johnny Is a Soldier,” women sang along and some wept.

  The crowd was astonishingly polite, applauding in the first inning when the Olympics held us to one run and scored four themselves. Harry seemed proud of their sportsmanship. Not so Brainard, whose fastballs had been hammered.

  We broke it open with sixteen runs in the fourth and fifth, coasting to a 25-14 win. Harry had his best day so far with six hits. Andy got an ovation in the third when he drove a shot between the outfielders, tore around the bases, and dove under the tag for the game’s only homer.

  “Fast little cuss,” a Washington reporter commented.

  “He was loafing,” I told him. “Wait’ll you see him really turn it on.

  Andy drew me aside in the clubhouse to say he’d sent the money to Newark. Brighid had wired back saying the grieving household was lifted to know that Mother and Father would be reunited forever in the homeland.

  “Being the youngest,” Andy said ruefully, “I didn’t credit how much it meant to the others. I’m obliged to you, Sam.”

  “Good,” I said, “buy me supper.”

  “I sent Cait word too,” he said. “She wants to talk.”

  “To me?”

  “No, to the wall there.”

  My breathing seemed jumpy. “Well, that’s fine. Just fine. When?”

  “She asked if I’d bring you by t
he boardinghouse she keeps. How about tomorrow after I’m done with church?”

  “Well, that’s a pretty busy time, but I guess just this once I could clear a space in my appointment book.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Ain’t that a dinger?”

  We found Hurley packing in his room, disconsolate and drunk. One hand was encased in plaster and his face bore bruises. He resisted our attempts to cheer him.

  “I’m done here.” he said. “Harry caught me out more times that I can count. He gave me every chance.”

  “Why couldn’t you stay square, Dick?” said Andy.

  “I don’t know.” His words were slurred. “Maybe I’m just not one to prosper. God knows, I scarcely think about anything else—but I have no answer. The drink’s taken hold.”

  “You know,” I began, my heart going out to him, “I’ve had some problems with the stuff too, and—”

  “Let it be, Sam,” he interrupted. “It’s all done.”

  He left that night, a solitary figure on the late train. We accompanied him to the depot. He said he’d scout around his hometown in Pennsylvania, maybe get a teaching job, play local ball till he could hook up with a top club again. We wished him well and told him he’d be missed on the Stockings.

  “Beware the hold of those bright leggings on you,” he said.

  “Horses are tied by the head; dogs and bears, by th’ neck;

  monkeys by th’ loins, and men by th’ legs . . .”

  He waited for me to guess.

  I cleared my throat and played his game one final time. “Macbeth?”

  “The Fool,” he said, “in Lear.”

  He waved once from the train. I waved back, hoping I would see him again. As things turned out, I would not.

  Sunday was the Fourth of July, but in these God-fearing times no celebrating would occur until the following day. I slept late, dozing over a copy of Dickens’s Dombey and Son I had borrowed from the Mercantile Library.

  I dreamed of Andy’s two sisters. I kept trying to see them close up, but each time I did their features were those of Stephanie, my ex-wife.

  Enough, I told myself, and got up.

  It was a large two-story frame house with wisteria climbing over a jigsaw-piece veranda. It sat in the middle of a block not far from the Sixth Street marketplace in the West End. Andy and I took a horsecar out Eighth and walked the remaining blocks. He led me through the front door and sat me down in a small parlor. There I waited with growing nervousness as he went upstairs to get Cait.

  Around me were houseplants, a small reed organ, horsehair chairs. Framed on the wall opposite was a large scroll decorated with an Irish harp, sunburst, and wreath of shamrocks. Inscribed in the center was an inscription I took to be Gaelic.

  A cutting voice behind me said, “‘They shall never retreat from the charge of lances!’”

  I wheeled around to find a dark-suited, mustached man with penetrating blue eyes standing in the parlor doorway. The eyes seemed to pierce me. I was vaguely aware of a woman and a boy behind him.

  “What?” I said.

  “You were trying to read it,” he said, jabbing a finger impatiently at the scroll. The gesture matched his aggressive tone; his voice was knife-edged, a weapon. “‘They shall never retreat from the charge of lances!’” His fixed stare challenged me.

  I felt myself bristling. “How quaint of them.”

  As if I’d physically threatened him, he recoiled into an even more rigid stance, the ice-blue eyes flashing. I met his stare with my own.

  Andy edged into the parlor and shot me a look that said he didn’t like the guy either. “I didn’t introduce you proper the other night,” he said, drawing the woman in. “Sam, this is my sister Cait.” He nodded toward me and said, “Sam Fowler.”

  She wore a dark dress and a hat with a veil. Through it I saw gray-green eyes and a pale face. She stood very still, nearly as tall as Andy and the other man.

  “Mr. Fowler,” she murmured.

  “Nice to see you again,” I said. My brain was doing odd blippy little things. “Call me Sam.”

  “She certainly will not!” snapped the man.

  Andy looked pained. “Sam, this is Mr. O’Donovan.”

  “Captain Fearghus O’Donovan, sir!”

  So this was O’Donovan. My pulse danced faster, more irregularly. “Right,” I said, and turned to the boy. He was about seven or eight, a good-looking kid with alert gray eyes and his mother’s black curly hair. He wore short pants, a jacket and tie. His Sunday best, I thought. All three of them, in fact, looked spruced up. For what? I wondered, and said to the boy, “You call me Sam, okay? What’s your name?”

  “Tim O’Neill,” he said forthrightly. “Are you a ballist, like Andy?”

  “Not like Andy,” I told him. “Andy’s the best—an ace. Are you coming out to see us?”

  I saw I’d dropped a conversational bomb. The boy looked beseechingly at his mother, who said nothing. Andy shifted his feet uncomfortably. O’Donovan, whose face had darkened when I snubbed him, looked grimmer yet.

  “I want to,” the boy said. “At school they talk of nothing else but the Red Stock—”

  “Timothy, mind yourself!” said O’Donovan, glaring at him. “You know your mother’s wishes. We’re not here to talk of a game.”

  Why are we here? I wondered.

  “Fearghus,” she said, “would you wait with Tim a bit?”

  “Caitlin,” he said heatedly, his pronunciation echoing Mrs. Leonard’s “Cat-LEEN.” “It’s not proper that you be left alone with this . . . gentleman.” The word sounded wrenched from him.

  “It’s not alone I’ll be,” she replied, and for the first time I heard a touch of brogue. “Andy will stay. It’s a family matter, Fearghus, please.”

  He turned reluctantly, reaching for the boy’s hand. Timmy ignored him and walked ahead toward the door.

  “Cait, why not let the lad come out to the grounds?” Andy said. “It’s all in fun.”

  “I’ll not have it discussed,” she said. The words were severe, but her voice held a timbre that intrigued me, a low, throbbing, restrained urgency that I found inexplicably familiar, holding some tonal quality that resonated deep within me.

  She reached up and removed her hat, revealing a dark curling mass of hair held by several green ribbons. I saw her features clearly for the first time. Where Andy’s eyes were emerald, hers were jade, long-lashed, far less open to the world than his. Her nose was straight and small, her lips full. Her skin was very white, with a faint splash of freckles over her nose and cheeks. Tiny stress lines converged at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Maybe she wasn’t the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Maybe. But no other had exerted such force on me.

  “Please do not regard me so,” she said abruptly.

  “I . . . excuse me,” I said. “I saw a photograph of you, and now I realize . . . well . . .”

  Her lips tightened. “I told Andy that I wanted to thank you. For a certainty, ’tis a great service you have done.”

  I looked into her eyes. “You’re welcome.”

  “But I wonder just why it is you’ve become the benefactor of our family.”

  “There has to be a reason?”

  “I believe so,” she said, frowning slightly as she studied me. “Shouldn’t there be?”

  “Well, okay, Andy’s like a brother to me,” I said, resenting the feeling that I was being grilled. “When I met your family in Newark, I liked them. Very much. Your mother especially spoke to me in a way that touched me—perhaps because I can’t remember my own mother—and so I was very happy to help make her last wish possible.”

  She paused as if considering it all. “And you are with the sporting club?” The unspoken message seemed to be, “Where did you get so much money?”

  “Yes, the sporting club.”

  “There’s no need for anger, Mr. Fowler.” The green eyes regarded me. “I believe my curiosity to be natural.”

  “I’m not angry,” I
lied. “Look, I never had a brother either. Does any of that make sense? Cait, there’s no ulterior motive. Would you rather I hadn’t done it?”

  “I am to be called Mrs. O’Neill.”

  I sighed, at the same time remembering that Timmy had used that surname. “Fine, you still just call me Sam.”

  “You are familiar, sir!”

  “And you are cold.”

  There was an intense moment as our eyes locked.

  “What the dickens’s got you two so peevish?” Andy demanded.

  She put her hat back on and adjusted the veil. “I appreciate what you’ve done, Mr. Fowler, and I intend to repay you,” she said. “You may count on it.”

  “Fine, I’ll start counting. Let’s go, Andy.” I walked outside, shook Timmy’s hand, exchanged a brusque nod with O’Donovan, and set off up the dirt sidewalk. Andy caught up with me half a block later.

  “Whew! You two didn’t ’zactly hit it off.”

  “Brilliant, Sherlock.”

  “Sherlock? Slow down, you’re walkin’ faster’n I can keep up. I tried to tell you, Sam. She’s been like that since Colm died.”

  “Well, I didn’t kill him,” I said. “And if that O’Donovan jerk is the one we were talking about, then he and McDermott deserve each other.”

  “He’s the one,” Andy said. “Colm’s friend. Made sure Cait got pension money and helped her get set in the boardinghouse.”

  For an instant I thought the milkiness was hovering, ready to descend. I shook my head, clearing it.

  “Wonderful warm guy.”

  “My hunch is that for Cait,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s not so much O’Donovan himself as the connection with Colm. And someone for Timmy.”

  We walked another block in silence.

  “Could be she’s jealous of you coming up with the money instead of one of us in the family.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”