Bottomland

by Michelle Hoover

  I frowned. What kind of boy did she mean? Closer to Chicago, other trains cut past, near as spitting. Far off, towers smoked, buildings shouldering each other and too many people. Since the war, I’d forgotten there could be so many at once. The kind of boy who forgot, I guessed. The car was shaking. I thought it’d shake us straight off. But with the woman next to me and my stomach full, I grew some sure of myself.

  “No work,” I said. “My sisters live there too.”

  The train station in Chicago was brownstone and granite, close to a river and smelling the way rivers do. Grand Central they called it. But the words sounded wrong. Central wasn’t so grand, not the way a sky was, or a summer storm. But words were better than numbers. It was numbers I forgot. How many months it took to get me home from the war. How many days this time I’d been gone. The station was high as barns. Higher than that. Glass and steel, the floor a shiny kind of stone. From the roof, a rush of voices dropped like a single thing. Outside the streets went off in every direction, the smell of burning. The clock tower was the tallest structure yet, pinning the station to the ground. I crouched against it. That wall was steady, at least, my head full of engines. All I knew about the place was that my sisters didn’t belong.

  “You’re white as a ghost.”

  I blinked. The sun seemed brighter than it’d been. There was Helen, holding her bag. Others circled her feet. The sack I’d brought had only a poster of the girls. A blanket and a change of trousers. A square of soap. “I’m not used to the place is all.”

  “I supposed you’d be long gone,” Helen said. She tapped the watch on her wrist. That blank space in my head, sometimes I lost minutes to it.

  “Tell you what,” Helen said. “You help me with these bags and I’ll give you something for your pocket. My sister can’t lift a spoon.”

  “I couldn’t take money from you, ma’am. I’d do the bags for the rolls.”

  “That was a favor you did me, eating those. And look at you.” She touched my forehead.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Hot as a gourd. I’ll give you something for a good meal. Just a dollar for help with the bags. Any more and my sister will think I’ve gone loony.” She studied me. “You don’t know where your sisters are, do you?”

  I wiped at my eyes.

  “Are they together?”

  “We think so.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  I shook my head.

  “Where do they work? Do you even know that?”

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  She stepped back and squinted at me. “Are they as young as you, these sisters?”

  I nodded.

  “They’re even younger, aren’t they?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “My dear, dear boy. You’re lost as a pup. You’ll never find them here.”

  A trembling worked in my insides. That buzzing in my head, it was more than engines. I slumped against the wall and closed my eyes.

  “Oh now, I didn’t mean to scare you worse,” Helen said. A car pulled up behind us and she gave it a glance. The car was running, but the sister didn’t get out. Helen lifted my chin. “The factories, that’s where you should start. Back of the Yards, in New City. Might take you hours to walk it, but the elevated is terrible for nerves, cost you some pennies too. You’re young enough to go without it. Then I’d try the boardinghouses. If they’re here at all, that’s the only proper place for a girl to find sleeping quarters.” Eyeing the car, she opened her purse and drew out a map. She pressed it flat against her thighs. “Look,” she said and pointed. “There’s the yard. That’s the closest of the factories at least, though there’s hundreds. And up here, whole streets of houses for workers. The Germans . . .” She stopped. I nodded it was all right. “ . . . They’re the ones who tend to the Near North Side. Or at least they did.”

  Helen eyed the car again. The sister had rolled her window down. “I’ve got to go.” She put the map in my coat pocket and I helped with her bags. When I closed the car’s boot, I was a run of sweat. But for those minutes of lifting, I knew the work even if I didn’t know anything else. Helen opened her purse and dropped a dollar in my hand. Too much for bags.

  “Lee, you’re a good boy,” she said. “I know you won’t listen, but I think you should leave those girls be. Go home. They’re surely here for their own reasons. You have to take care of yourself.”

  She got in the car and went off, waving to me before she was out of sight. I pulled the map from my pocket. It was worse than ten years old and thin as a leaf. In the corner the words chicago title and trust co. in red ink. Circles in the same ink grew around a center point. A mile marked by one circle. Two miles by one bigger than that. It was to that center point Helen thought I should be going. A place of some importance with so many street crossings, the names crowded and hard to read. Still, a good half of the map was nothing but white, and inside that, the words lake michigan.

  I folded the map straight, careful not to rip the edges. I thought of what Helen had said about home. It was late morning on the farm. Nan would be in the garden, readying the winter vegetables for canning. She’d rake hay over the rest. After their chores, Patricia and Agnes would come in for noon dinner. Ray after that. But Father wouldn’t. He’d stay in his room until dark. Maybe he’d go sit in his dugout. At the table, they’d have five empty places. One for Father. One for Mother. Two for the girls and one for me. If I could, I’d take four of those empty places back. Lee, Esther had asked. You know how to trick that lock, don’t you? If a girl asked for it?

  The doctors said I’d been in the hospital from fall to spring. Half a year, they’d said. I couldn’t account for that. They said I’d have some trouble accounting for many things. I’d want to keep clear of noise, not work too hard when I got home. But home was work, I said back.

  Now Chicago, that was work and noise both, and I’d been in the place only hours. I raised my collar to my ears. The city felt used. The men walked with their hats low, the women with purses tight to their elbows. Trains rattled overhead, fast with the smell of oil, the streets beneath shadows. Along every window and in the alleys, gray spots of snow. By midafternoon, my map was a sore piece of paper and I’d searched only a few blocks. The factories in the yards were wide and long as fields. High as three houses put together, sometimes more. The windows on the upper floors looked dark. The glass up there hardly bigger than a porthole, but what a noise. I imagined whole rows of engines behind those walls. Lines of wheels, pistons, and belts. And such a whir, the whole building breathing together. I breathed hard myself. Back of the Yards was a funny name, but it felt right. Nothing save brick and stone. Everyone was at work inside.

  A whistle sounded above my head. I ducked into an alley to make it less. Minutes later, every door in the yard opened and out they rushed. Noon break. I stayed in the alley to let the men pass. Their hair was thick with a sticky kind of dust, their faces too. They walked and rubbed their eyes as if they didn’t have time enough. Soon the yard emptied, all but a circle of men standing for a smoke. They gave me a look and I nodded. They didn’t nod back. Not one of them seemed ready for talking. Least about two missing girls.

  A hard place. Harder than I’d thought. The sun was high but the streets felt cold as knuckles. A whistle went off, my ears a drum, and the men filed in. Long through the afternoon I watched for another break, tracing one block after the next. At a store, I bought a spot of bread. Some cheese and a pickle. The man who sold it wore an apron over his front, and he dropped the change in my fingers like so much trash. “Here on business?” he asked. I thought of pulling the posters out, but the man only frowned.

  “Just seeing the place,” I said.

  “Best you keep to the Loop. Only workers here and only on breaks. We price for them. With the factories’ help. The unions don’t like a spare man wandering around, buying up someone else’
s bread.”

  I let myself out. When I looked back, the man stood at his window, arms crossed.

  The afternoon was getting late. That whir from the factories, it never did let up. The light between the buildings grew heavy and still it was cold. It was colder when a person wasn’t working, only walking about. The city was more than wind. Ugly with the sound. The pictures in the magazines, they’d looked washed clean. But here the streets were something different. They flattened every hill, constant as netting. And that dust, thick in the men’s ears, thick in their hankies. Worse than any chaff in the barn. Finally, the whistle sounded again. A stream of men and women broke around me as if I was a stone. I couldn’t get up my voice to ask questions, not with those faces. And not a one of them looked like my sisters, uniforms or not. In only minutes the workers were gone again. Then it was dark.

  I hadn’t thought about night. I didn’t know where to take myself. Boarding, that’s what Father had done. Helen had said the same. But a knock on one door after another and they didn’t have room. “We’re only for workers,” a woman said. I walked farther, leaving the yards behind, and knocked again. “Too late,” the last said. He was an old man, suspenders holding up his trousers. He hugged a hard role of salami in his fist and took a bite. “You’d do better tomorrow,” he said. “If we lost a man or another, there’d be room. There’s a George here, he might go. He might not.” He eyed me close. The smell of that salami, it got my stomach going. “You look like a tidy one at least,” he said, chewing. “Not like these others. Is that right?”

  “Yes sir. I suppose.” A doughboy face, Esther used to say. After the war, I wondered if it still was. “But I don’t know the others, sir.”

  The man laughed. “You’re a funny one. Remind me of my brother. Quiet like that. Look, if George leaves, there’s a room to share. At seventy-five cents a night. Supper for seventy-five more if you want it. The missus does a fair spread. That’s all I got.”

  I tipped my hat. “You’re a sure help,” I said. After blocks of walking, I found a street alley cleaner than most, near to dry, and I threw my blanket out. The alley was just wide enough to stretch my legs. A bit of dirt, something softer than bricks. I counted my bills, couldn’t see numbers. Twenty-six, it felt. Twenty-six dollars. At seventy-five a night, seventy-five for supper, I could make it two and half weeks. More if the alley worked all right. I had my return ticket. And I had two extra for the girls. Already I’d imagined it, opening a door and there they’d be, Esther and Myrle. Lee, they’d sing out. I could be a George if the man wanted. I could be anyone. That’s what I knew in France when I stepped off the boat. It was different than sleeping next to Ray and pretending at being alone. The boys had already made a name for me before we’d shipped out. Hush.

  I turned on my side. A shadow scuttled along the wall. I didn’t flinch. A barrel or two sat at the far end, a fair stink. I’d spent nights in worse. The cold was the same as the camps, the dark less. Here, I could see my hand if I held it to my face. In France when I stood watch, I imagined a German at every turn. When a rat jumped, I had my Springfield on him. Some of the boys when they slept, they never kept their mouths shut. A man or two close to me as spitting, lined up in our bags like barnyard cats. Back then, you only hoped for a bit of space, but now the alley seemed a narrow block of nothing much. A hum far off, the rattle of the overhead cars, as if the city was running from itself. I missed Squire. I missed the others too, with all their talk. It kept a person from thinking too much. Trust in God, our K.P. said every morning with his slop. Have Faith. Our K.P., he wore a cross round his neck. His Good morning sure set a man right. Every hour over our heads, such a roar, the planes flying out to supply the lines.

  I woke. It was nowhere near to light. There were no K.P.’s here, no planes either. I had more hours to sleep if I could. In the morning I would need to do better. If I could raise my voice, at least once or twice. Keep from being a stone. Why I hadn’t shown those posters to Helen, I couldn’t say. What my sisters looked like, seemed Helen already knew.

  III

  “Hey there, move on why don’t you?”

  I stood at the boarding docks in the morning, hands over my ears, and watched a man unload the trucks. Already he’d called me off twice. As dark a man as I had seen. Dark from his fingers to his nose, an even darker beard. I couldn’t help but stare, thinking he knew what was important.

  “Do they have girls working here?” I asked.

  He spat and wiped his mouth. When he brought back another load, his face was fierce. “Listen,” he said, “you’ve got it all wrong. We don’t help with girls.”

  I reached into my pack, pulled the poster out. “These girls.” The paper was creased hard down the middle, the edges broken with little tears. The girls’ faces were sure different on either side of that crease. Esther with her stare, that turn in her smile. She was up to something. But not Myrle. With her coloring, the picture of her seemed too washed-out to be any picture at all.

  The man frowned. “Never seen them. Why you looking anyway? Man comes around for girls and a man like me gets worried.”

  “They’re my sisters.”

  “They don’t look like sisters.”

  I studied the poster again. I couldn’t tell if they did or not.

  “So if they’re your sisters, why do you have to find them? I’d think you’d already know where they are.”

  I turned my back. How much a brother knows. How much he forgets. Was knowing more than not what made a girl a sister to him in the first place?

  “Hey,” the man called after me. “You should go to the garments. South Market. This here’s steel, blacksmiths. We don’t hire skirts.”

  There was a rush of girls on Market, but they stuck together at breaks. What they were afraid of, I couldn’t help but think. The men here, the ones who did or didn’t work, some of them seemed ghosts. Hollow like that, starved for something. Smart as they were, the girls stayed close. In their navy skirts and aprons, they wore their hair tied in a bunch. Their lunch pails banged their thighs, their hands in gloves. When some took those gloves off, their hands seemed sure raw. I held my poster out, tried to look no worse than a brother.

  “Have you seen these girls?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “They’re my sisters.”

  “Get lost.”

  One of the girls stopped. “What if he’s telling the truth?” Her bangs were a black line, the tip of her nose red. The others tried to pull her with them, but she waved them off. “Don’t worry about them,” she said. “They think everything’s fishy. But a person still has to be human, don’t you think?” She stretched the poster between her hands. “What happened to them?”

  “We think they ran away.”

  “Golly.” She sniffled, pale drops. With her mitten, she wiped them off. “Place gets to me,” she said with a laugh. “Just sitting at a machine, matching collars to shirts. Should be easy. But every time that needle goes in, it pulls something out. By the end of the day, all these bits are floating like bugs. It’s like breathing with a sheet over your face.”

  A whistle sounded. I bit the inside of my lip, tasted blood.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” It was that high kind of whistle, tall and shivering. It was rain inside my head.

  “You’re all balled up, aren’t you?”

  I tried to take the poster from her, but she held it.

  “Aw, it’s all right,” she said. “Most of the time, I’m balled up myself. What are their names?”

  “Who?”

  “Your sisters, silly.”

  “Esther and Myrle.”

  “Esther and Myrle,” she repeated.

  I cocked my head.

  “Nothing. Just funny names.”

  “Not so funny.”

  “No. But it’s those names, together like that. Se
ems I heard them before, but I can’t tell when. Just a feeling you get, you know? On the tip of your nose. And that one.” She pointed at the poster again.

  “That’s Esther.”

  She shook her head and squinted. “The tip of my nose. Then nothing.” She shrugged. “I sure hope you find them. You should try the Y. They have all the lists. Boardinghouses. And the Defender too. They run the ads.”

  I looked at her, puzzling.

  “The YWCA, silly. Don’t you know anything?”

  “Hey.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to be like that. I know if my own brother came searching for me . . .” She sniffled again. “I know I’d go with him in a snap.”

  She opened her fingers and the poster curled into my hands. Finally that whistle was quiet. I touched my hat to her.

  “Name’s Bernadette,” she called out, “but everybody calls me Nan.”

  I stopped.

  “You don’t like my name?”

  “I like it fine.” My face went warm. “If you see them, can you say I’m looking for them? Name’s Lee. My big sister, I don’t know what she’ll do if I come home alone. She’s like a mother to them.”

  “I’ll tell them, sure.”

  I rolled up the poster. Nan watched me slip it into my sack. That black cut of her hair, it made her look some pretty.

  “Lee, that’s a good name,” she said. “If I had a brother, I’d name him just that. And I’d never run off. If they know anything, they’ll let you find them, easy.”

  A girl with my sister’s name. A sign. And with Nan’s voice in my head, that tip of her nose singing as if she knew something, that was good to keep me going. There were dozens of houses on that list at the Y, a dozen more in the paper, though those seemed the sorrier sort. I went knocking at the ones on the list first. The women who opened the doors were matrons. Behind them, the smell of coffee and sweets. Their arms cupped their heavy stomachs, their faces showing nothing much. When I took my poster out, the crease had grown so thick I worried it might well split in half.