Kings of Broken Things

by Theodore Wheeler

  The husband sat on a cot next to his wife. A dry little man, he stared at the cap in his hands and muttered something in a Slavic tongue, giving over the only chair in the room to Maria. She set her bags down and took the seat. It was a minuscule place, even for a tenement. Neither of the old couple was large, however. The cot cradled them both, they were so slight.

  The men in the doorway said the couple had only lived here a month. He was a Serb, she a German from Alsace-Lorraine. Somehow they ended up here. The husband, the men told, was confused at the mention of Omaha or Nebraska, as if these were faraway places he’d never been. Maybe they’d been looking for Milwaukee or St. Louis but boarded the wrong train at Grand Central in Chicago. If they arrived here lost and broke, in some unknowable wend of the map, there was little that could be done to right their course. Anyway, the wife was dying.

  Maria tried speaking German to the husband. He nodded, closed his eyes, then muttered to himself. Maria shrugged and looked to the others. “He doesn’t understand. She’s gone. She’s dead.”

  Anna didn’t know what they’d do. She’d backed under the eaves, where the ceiling sloped lower and lower to refract the angle of the roof. Wool blankets sagged from the rafters where someone tacked them there for insulation, stinking wool that smelled like coal oil and fish, mildew. Anna crouched over herself so the wool didn’t rub her hair. She watched as the old husband muttered his prayer. The wife lying there, her face uncovered. Her eyes closed. Her lips sunken and toothless. Under the blanket was her body, a black silk dress exposed, a crucifix on her flattened breasts. Maria leaned near the husband. She whispered something short, a Psalm in Plattdeutsch, then pulled the blanket over the woman to make clear she was gone.

  The old man wrung his cap harder. He said something no one understood then felt along a ridge in the blanket where his wife’s chin and nose marked a difference in the fabric. He repeated the something no one understood.

  The men in the doorway entered. They were a group of singers, one of them explained, a touring Liederkranz from Bremen that was stranded here because of travel restrictions. They rehearsed across the hall twice weekly to stay in practice for the day they could tour again. Each doffed his cap and offered condolences to the husband. They were his friends as much as anyone and now lined up to lay hands on his shoulder. The leader nodded and they began singing, the baritone first, then the rest of them. It was “An der Weser.” Anna recognized the song. It came out of nowhere. Anna, Maria, the old husband, they turned to the singing men, their somber faces, and then to the floor because the rendition was sad and spare, sullen and beautiful too. The melodies intuitive and precise. Anna put a hand to the eaves, to the old wool, to keep from falling, her body forgetting itself. Everyone who heard must have stopped in their tracks. Each of them glassy-eyed, faces drooping, longing for homes unreachable, for friends long gone. The singers rolled it out magnificently. Anna let herself get carried away. She let a remembrance of Europe slip into her mind, the burial of her mother. The song was miserable and satisfying. She wished it could last forever.

  When they returned home, there was a black Ford waiting at the curbstone. The front door of the Eigler house was cracked open. Herr sat inside with the inspector and a woman in a stiff blue skirt and jacket. The way Herr sat humped into himself, his eyes rimmed red, there was no mistaking what was going to happen.

  “I tried to make them tea,” Herr said. “I don’t know where you keep the kettle down here, Frau Maria. Isn’t that embarrassing?”

  “There’s no need for that,” the woman said. She was annoyed, like she’d had to repeat this to Herr already.

  “That’s right,” the inspector agreed. “Will you go upstairs now, Anna? And make up a suitcase to bring? We’ve told your father here and now it’s time.”

  “Your papers have been processed,” the woman said. “Now you’re to come with us.”

  From upstairs Anna could hear them arguing in the parlor. Maria wasn’t going to put up with this. This was America, wasn’t it? They couldn’t just come and take a girl away.

  Anna packed her suitcase like the inspector told her to. This was something she’d thought about before so she’d be prepared when the time came and would know what to bring. She only had the one suitcase and it wouldn’t even hold all her clothes. So she packed pajamas, two sets, and a few books, and a nicer pair of shoes in addition to the ones on her feet. Still the adults argued in the parlor, Maria louder and louder because the two from the state wouldn’t listen to her. The woman made the mistake of telling Maria that she had no say in the matter. Then Anna packed a couple dresses and a week’s worth of undergarments. The suitcase was nearly full. Her straw hat wouldn’t fit. Anna worried the inspector would take the hat if she tried wearing it out, so she took it off her head and hung it on the baluster for safekeeping. She’d come back for the hat. If she wasn’t gone for long. If the state didn’t keep her forever.

  They were still at it when Anna came downstairs.

  “It’s my recommendation,” the inspector insisted, “that Anna be moved to a state home. The situation is clear. You know very little about the actual condition of Anna’s health. That’s the deciding factor.”

  The woman walked across the room and kneeled to Anna. “Has anyone told you that you have rickets?” Nobody had. Anna didn’t know what that was. They’d explain it to her in the car. A bone disorder. Calcium deficiency. An absence of vitamin absorption. Knock-kneed, bow-legged. “Now give me your suitcase. Nobody will steal that. Hand it over.”

  The woman walked Anna across the room.

  “But what’s the place for?” Herr wanted to know. “Is it for the terminally ill? For the mentally strange?”

  “None of those,” the inspector said. “Mr. Miihlstein, I’m beginning to think it’s you who is deficient. Anna will be taken care of. She is sick in her bones and only the doctor will know what to do.”

  Anna told herself she’d be all right, she’d be okay. She hugged her father good-bye, let Maria lift her and kiss her on the cheek, then heaved herself into the backseat of the government Ford. There was no time to wait for Silke and Theresa to come home. Anna had a train to catch, the woman explained. “It’s better this way. No bawling over each other. You’ll see your sisters soon. Believe me.” The woman rambling now that she was alone in the backseat with Anna, this sick girl who’d been removed from home.

  “It’s for your own good. Save them from bawling good-bye and let them get on with their day. Let them forget sooner.”

  A letter was left at the house that told where Anna’s family could visit her. She shouldn’t worry.

  RED SUMMER

  Autumn 1919

  Jake had cause to leave Omaha. They left him no choice.

  Working for the machine lost all propriety without the veneer of the election. They’d lost the vote and reality came crashing back. Reformers cleaned out the police department and held judges to task. There were crackdowns in ethnic zones, from Clandish to the neighborhoods surrounding the stockyards. With Ed Smith as the new mayor and Dean Ringer calling the shots for the police, the city focused on cleaning out the River Ward. Ringer established something called the Morals Squad, a coalition of his own cronies who were tasked with throwing out Dennison’s cronies. There were outrages in the dailies with all relevant clergy and politicians consulted—the same confederacy that won the vote—and something had to be done. Paddy wagons were filled with bartenders to be booked on charges of public depravity. Kegs of beer were chopped in the gutter for newspaper photographers. There would be no drinking for a night, but by morning a machine captain would make bail for the bartenders and pay their fines. New kegs could be procured. Business would be back to normal by shift change at the mills. It was all theater.

  Sometimes Jake was the guy who made bail. That July, 1918, a kid came to get him early one morning. It wasn’t even five yet. Jake could tell from the way the kid rambled that he’d been up all night, sick on chewing tobacco and snuff
. The kid said there’d been trouble with the cops.

  The courthouse was elegant early in the morning, when it was quiet. Jake waited inside the bronze doors to see the vaulted dome. Its panes glowed like emeralds in the first light. He paced the rotunda and stared up at the murals, waiting for a judge, and lit a cigarette to see its tails of smoke twist in still air, one of the few times he liked to smoke, alone like that, the building alive with morning sun. He felt that the space belonged to him. In a way it did. If the clerks weren’t there, or the nuts debating their fines, or all the real estate people and lawyers, the cops and government men, the street girls being held up to fork over a percentage of what they’d made. Jake stared at the murals—mosaic plowmen, broad-shouldered balers of hay, a Sioux chief in headdress defending a teepee camp—but a judge never came. A police captain did. The police captain said to follow him to a fourth-floor room. Inside was a body on a table bound in a wool blanket.

  Jake walked to the end of the room and stared out the window, not even slowing when he passed the body. His fingertips were on the glass before the captain had the door closed. He faced south and could see a long way. There was the library across the street, the Flatiron and its tan bricks, a red boardinghouse that looked like a barn, Clandish Street and the tenements south of there, then freight lines and long, winding boulevards that led to Deer Park and South Omaha.

  The police captain thought Jake was stupid. “You still sleeping?” Jake grinned like a clodhopper, in no rush to reveal how he was feeling, to let his face twist up or cry or shout and take a swing at the police captain in revenge. He just wanted to run out the door, to not have to face that body in the blanket. His chest was tight; he could hardly breathe, holding all that in, making himself grin.

  The captain explained how there was a fight. Men from Jake’s crew were caught with alcohol outside a club downtown. When confronted by police, they refused to surrender the liquor. One of them took a swing at a cop. That’s what cops always said, and it was probably true. Most machine workers weren’t afraid of reform cops. But the skirmish went too far this time. Shots were fired.

  Jake asked who it was. “See for yourself,” the captain said. He was there to transfer custody of the body. Jake was to take the body away and arrange for burial. “We won’t make a big deal out of this,” the captain said, “if you and your boss don’t either.”

  Jake lifted the blanket. It was Ingo Kleinhardt. Ingo was a man Jake hired. The cops shot Ingo through the mouth. His teeth were shattered.

  Jake lost his stomach for the work after they buried Ingo. He went up to the office above the tobacco shop and told Tom Dennison he wanted to quit. Jake expected Tom to try and talk him out of leaving, but Tom did nothing like that. Tom was as bitter about how things had turned out as Jake was.

  “Those men are your responsibility,” Tom said. “Whether you’re running the crew anymore or not, you hired him. You brought him in.”

  “You got to leave,” Billy Nesselhous said. “Either do something to get back at Ed Smith or get the hell out of town. We don’t need useless men.”

  “What should I do?” Jake looked at Tom like they were the only two in the room. Other men lined the walls, the toughs. Their heads dipped as they glared at Jake.

  “Do your job,” Tom said. “This wouldn’t of happened if you were on top of it.”

  “Make up your mind and get in the game,” Billy goaded him, “or we have no use for you anymore.”

  “I can quit? I can leave?”

  Jake leaned forward in the chair opposite Tom’s desk, hands in his lap.

  “It’s not that easy,” Billy said. “There’s the money you owe.”

  “The thousand,” Tom said. “What about that? You think you should get to keep it?”

  Jake couldn’t have paid back a tenth of what he’d siphoned off, and he’d left the thousand at Evie’s the last time he’d seen her. She’d probably spent it. Jake knew it wasn’t right to take that money. Nobody had to tell him that. But so much of what they did was questionable. It was all illicit money they trafficked in. All under-the-table, all off the books. There were worse things he could have done.

  He kept his mouth shut about Evie. What Jake said was that he’d give back everything he had left. He emptied his pockets onto Tom’s desk. “There’s thirty here, some change.”

  “What about that ring?” Billy picked out what was once supposed to be Evie’s ring. The silver band with a diamond chip. “This too.”

  “It isn’t worth much,” Jake said.

  “It’s something.”

  Jake didn’t mean to dump the ring, but it was too late to take it back. “Fine. There’s all this. Another fifty in my room. You can sell the clothes.”

  “There were others like you.” Tom swept the money back across the desk to Jake. Billy kept the ring. “There were others with promise. You ended like they all did. A disappointment.”

  Jake couldn’t believe it. Were they really going to let him walk?

  “Am I done?” he asked. “Can I leave?”

  “If you can live with it, keep what you owe.” Tom motioned to a trio of thugs along the wall. “Get him out of here,” he said.

  “To the train station,” Billy added. “That’s fair. If you had what you owe us, we’d be square. Since you don’t, you got to leave town. That squares us.”

  They put him on the evening train to Lincoln. After that Jake could go as far as the thirty he had left would take him.

  There wasn’t time to say good-bye to Maria or the Miihlsteins before his train embarked. He didn’t have a chance to tell Evie he was leaving. They put him on the train and he was gone.

  Returning to his father and the farm in Jackson County crossed his mind. If the war had ended that moment in July—if it ended a few months earlier than it did—Jake might have gone home. But things didn’t happen that way. Jake was run out of Omaha. Lincoln was where they sent him. For the second time in his life, he arrived in a new city with only a little money and the clothes on his back. He’d be smarter this time.

  And life would be easier here, in a way. Lincoln was safe and bland, its people mostly prohibitionist dry staters, self-flagellating Protestants, Anglicans, Methodists, government workers, students and instructors, young academics, pioneer lawyers, ministers. Its streets emptied at night. And the war was almost over. The German army was on the retreat. There were riots in their cities, famine, discontent. Civil war gripped Berlin. Once it was clear Germany couldn’t win the war, the tenor was different in America.

  As it happened, Jake met Frau Voight, an old German who ran a lunchroom at the depot in Lincoln. She was plump and little. Frizzy hair fell in her eyes. She wore one of those drab dresses from the Old World, even in July, even in the kitchen, despite its layers and petticoats and white apron starched stiff. She ran around crazed, a pack of boys in her place for supper. A chicken had just finished roasting. She served it with sweet potatoes and yeast rolls and gravy. Frau Voigt watched her patrons eat, laughing and talking to herself. Young men were in her lunchroom, ranch hands headed west, college boys with nobody to cook for them, and Jake. She was happy to have them. “Ders plenty good gravy on dem sweet pertaters, yeah? I was waitink for yah boys to sit der.” She didn’t try to hide her accent; maybe she played it up. This wasn’t such a strange thing to Jake after living on Clandish, but her voice rang different in Lincoln. Frau Voigt had a lilt that made every phrase sound like it was plucked from a popular song. She called the boys meine Jungens and slipped them cookies from her apron after they soaked up the last drop of gravy with their last bit of bread. Jake laughed when the college boys teased about her accent, because she laughed too.

  Classes were out for the summer, so most houses around the university lacked roomers. Jake took the front room of a white bungalow on Vine Street. It was shaped like an oval, with the front porch wrapped around. There was a big window on the street side. A family of five, the Jeffries, lived in the main house.

  That f
irst evening Mr. Jeffries offered Jake work. He was a bricklayer and repaired walkways and streets that had sunk in the dirt. Most of the time he worked alone, he said, but he liked having a helper. His three boys were too young. Jake said he’d do it.

  Jeffries had a truck they used to pick up bricks from a furnace near the train station. Jake liked to ride in it. Folks gawked good-naturedly as the truck went by, its engine belching, its springs springing. He waved hello if they smiled at him. The rest of the day he’d dig up old pavers and pack dirt. They worked outside in clean air.

  He’d never really seen a place so flat. Lincoln was nothing like home—which was sandy and hilly, with streams and creeks hidden all over—or Omaha, with its bluffs and swampy backwaters. There was grass everywhere here. Jake saw why they grew so much wheat.

  In Lincoln, Jake worked. He lived in that room. He went to a football game on Thanksgiving Day when the Cornhuskers played Notre Dame. The game ended in a 0–0 tie, and Jake couldn’t figure what good the struggle did either squad. For hours they pushed and shoved and threw bombs downfield as hard as their might allowed. They punched and scratched and shouted and swore. Traded territory. Were injured. And for nothing. Not even one lousy point. But Jake got to shake hands with Knute Rockne afterwards, so that was fine. In winter he walked to the university library to read in its heated crannies. When the weather was nice, he went for long runs along the Missouri Pacific railroad tracks between Vine and Holdrege in the evenings. The air cleaned his lungs of black phlegm. Those who lived near the tracks must have thought Jake was some mad consumption patient trying to cough up diseased sputum, the way he hacked up the gunk he’d breathed in Omaha. He grew a beard after seeing the Swedes there with beards. His came in tinged red. He trimmed it every Sunday with grooming scissors. He improved his body. He couldn’t sleep otherwise. His brain wouldn’t shut off. He had to keep busy. Maria sent him letters from the Miihlsteins, from herself, and that helped him get along. Jake answered with a polite, stiff tone. He’d rip up half of what he wrote and cut it down so he wouldn’t embarrass himself by saying too much or writing too gaily. He didn’t understand why it was so hard to write the way one spoke. His writing always got in the way of what he was trying to say.