Spindle City

by Jotham Burrello

  * * *

  Joseph and João leaned over the paddock gate, watching a cow drink from a bathtub trough. “Kitty said the girl has been pretty tight-lipped,” Joseph said.

  João nodded.

  Joseph blocked the sun with his hat. “She could talk, though. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she going to?”

  João wanted to ease his friend’s concern about his son’s fate, but he could only guess at the venom that Maria kept inside.

  The girl speaking to the authorities—or worse, the press—was the only angle Joseph hadn’t covered. And really, he didn’t want to, but now, after all this time, he worried more for her than for Hollister. It had been a point of pride with him that he would never lie about what had happened, but then, no one had asked him directly. There were rumors in the mill, but none stuck. One had her married off to a New Bedford angler. When Billy Connelly from the Gazette came sniffing around the mill, Joseph had braced himself for an attack. Instead, the girls in the cloth room clammed up; they hid Maria’s mother in the latrine, and the trail went cold. But the stress of that event caused another of his teeth to fall out.

  In the past year Joseph had spent countless nights hunched over the mill store account ledger trying to decipher Hollister’s figures and eraser marks. After the incident, Hollister had said there were other girls but refused to name them or rather, if he was to be believed, that he couldn’t remember their names. So Joseph spent nights refiguring purchases and double-checking prices to see where his son had begun to overcharge the girl operatives. After two months, he’d narrowed down the suspect accounts to ten, though judging by the eraser marks, there could have been as many as fifteen. (Joseph’s first note in the margin was a reminder to fire Hollister’s supervisor.) Unsure which girls had been wronged by his son, he decided to list a ten-dollar credit for all fifteen suspect accounts. After that, Joseph set about figuring a larger credit for Maria’s mother. Since the girl could no longer collect it herself, he decided to give the woman fifty dollars. He wrote the number and shut the ledger. After a minute, he flipped the ledger back open and employed the eraser himself. He removed the fifty dollars and put down twenty-five. Fifty dollars sounded too much like a payoff. No, sir, I am paying compensation to an employee who had been wronged by the Cleveland Mill. Given the woman only made twenty-eight dollars a month, fifty would look like hush money. Joseph reopened the ledger a third time and again turned up his eraser. He changed the two to a three, giving Maria’s mother thirty-five dollars in credit. He tapped his pencil against his son’s nameplate. The boy was lucky that Otis wasn’t alive. He slumped back in his son’s old chair and slowly shut the leather ledger with the tip of the pencil. Joseph pressed his palms into his eye sockets. A chill shook his body. Fifty dollars. One hundred. A thousand. No matter. He still couldn’t sleep through the night.

  * * *

  Joseph turned back toward the house, and João fell in beside him. Usually when Joseph visited the farm, João seemed buoyed by some great invisible balloon. But not today. João fidgeted with his reading glasses and failed to hold Joseph’s eye.

  Joseph pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket. “Deposit this in the farm account. There’s enough for the fall improvements and one of your new projects.” He raised his hand to stop João from speaking. “It doesn’t matter what it is. Circumstances have changed. Just make sure it can turn a profit in two to three years. Also, I need to postpone our state-of-the-farm meeting.” Joseph spun his hand in a circle. “There are some things I need to wind up first. But before then, ask old man Pennywich what he wants for his acreage over yonder there. His boys aren’t coming home to work it. But play dumb. Make up some cock-and-bull story about you wanting your own lands. Bad-mouth me. He’ll come running to the city to squeal on you. When he tells me he doesn’t want the land falling into Portagee hands, I’ll offer him half of what he told you it was worth. He should have sold out years ago. His river access will make for a nice cranberry bog. Don’t you think?”

  João smiled, though he was unsure if it was because he was angry at Joseph’s presumption that he didn’t want his own land or because his boss always seemed to be a beat ahead of him. He had not shared his bog idea with anyone.

  “I got ideas,” João offered.

  “Then we’ll discuss them in the fall.”

  Suddenly Joseph was upbeat. Farm business was an excellent tonic for his family woes, just as the mill had provided him a distraction during Lizzy’s demise. He told João to draw up a new five-year plan, taking Pennywich’s land into account. Joseph had already figured a plan in his head, but it had included him running the show. He’d shape João’s figures, but he knew for the plan to succeed it had to come from João. Joseph would get to work on a ten-year plan. By then Hollister could run the mills. Hollister run the mills? Joseph rolled a pebble under his shoe. That would be the day. Joseph resisted pegging his dreams to Will. He kicked the pebble. But he would have to see Maria before prognosticating any further. One look in her eyes, and he’d know if he could ever trust Hollister with the family’s legacy.

  Joseph scratched his chin with his stub pinkie. “All right, João. It’s time.” He took the younger man’s hand and squeezed. “You’ve done me a great service this past year.”

  “We all even now,” João said. He held Joseph’s hand fast, waiting for a gleam of recognition in the older man’s eyes. When he was sure Joseph understood what he meant, he pulled his hand away, believing he’d gained too much from his friend’s misfortunes.

  The light had fallen in the west. The sun kissed the horizon beyond the cornfield. Joseph turned his back on the blazing sunset and then paused to admire the shadow of his head and shoulders cut out in the gravel. He turned his head to see his profile. João did the same. The young man’s chin was a perfect square, while Joseph’s resembled the curve of a baseball. Joseph squinted into the sun. He wondered if folks in western Rhode Island shared the same sunset. At what longitude did the sun kick up a degree? He imagined a day when a man could travel between time zones—take his salad in Massachusetts and dessert in California.

  João stepped between Joseph and California. His bushy black hair blocked the sun. “So?” he said, wanting an instruction.

  “I’ll wait in the car.” Joseph pointed to the horizon. “When the sun goes, we go.”

  João sucked his teeth. He glanced at the horizon, and then turned and jogged to the house.

  The smell of fresh meat and olive oil filled his nostrils before the door was half-open. A casserole of rabbit pieces and bacon and chopped yellow onion browned on the range. A cup of rice stood near a tub of Rose Butter.

  Maria stood over the wooden chop-block cutting round angel muffins from a roll of sweet dough with a tin cup, her cheeks flush from standing over the hot oven. She stroked her neck as she spoke. “I don’t feel cold no more,” she said in English.

  The shadow João had seen through the window had not been Maria making tea but rather her pacing between the kitchen and the tree stump out back used to slaughter small game. Far off, he heard the dogs barking. No doubt fighting over rabbit guts. But the time for a Portuguese meal had long passed.

  She spoke his name for only the second time. “I’m no leaving, João.”

  João stumbled to the chopping block as if cut down at the knees.

  She spoke fast. A smudge of white flour gleamed on her dark cheek. “My people was farm folks too. Maybe I wouldn’t do so good with a city job. I stay here with the simple-minded prince.”

  João stood up straight. His heart flipped. He opened his mouth, but she raised the tin cup.

  “After supper you’ll help me back to Kitty’s. And in two weeks, if you are willing, on a Sunday, we marry. I ask Kitty’s cousins to play our music.”

  He slowly nodded as a smile stretched across his face.

  “Again we dance. And af
ter—”

  Maria stopped talking suddenly and slumped to the floor, out of breath. Her almond face lost its hue. It was more than she had spoken in the past year.

  “Head down,” he instructed. As he caressed her warm back, his hands shook. “Breathe. Good. Breathe it in.”

  He glanced at the open window. The evil eye had lifted.

  By the time João finished explaining Maria’s decision to Joseph, his voice had reached a fever pitch. Panting, he waited for a reaction, but the older man didn’t speak. In fact, a complete lack of recognition seemed to glaze over Joseph’s face, as if he’d been coldcocked. João persisted, “May we have your blessing?”

  Joseph wondered what had transpired in the short time João had been in the house alone with Maria. Or had João known all along of the girl’s intentions? Or had it in fact been her intention at all? He spotted Maria’s twisted nose pressed against the glass of the kitchen window. Her eyes darted between the two men. Even from such a distance, Joseph could see the gap in the hairline where the broomstick had split her scalp. He should have been relieved. Indeed, her staying on the farm meant Hollister could return to Fall River. The army wouldn’t pay him forever. But Joseph wasn’t relieved; rather, he was anxious, fearing another confrontation with his son. But he was just a boy, a boy with an adult’s strength. The father in Joseph wanted to bring Hollister home, while the man in him wanted to beat him with that same broomstick. His glimpse of her the night after the accident had not been a dream.

  “Hi ho,” Kitty called, trotting down the lane toward the car. “Forgot my kerchief.”

  Sensing she had interrupted, Kitty simply waved the hankie to indicate she had found it on the passenger seat. She jogged back up the lane, but her appearance had changed the mood, and Joseph knew the moment for sharing his deeper feelings had passed. He tugged at his collar and pinched the seat of his pants. Lately none of his clothes seemed to fit properly.

  João had not taken his eyes off Joseph. He expected an answer.

  “So if you marry, she won’t be leaving the farm?” It was a silly question, but Joseph wanted to be clear, and João answered straight-faced, understanding his friend’s need to bury the past.

  “She never be happy without some land under her.” João turned back to the house, his face suddenly flushed with pride.

  Joseph extended his hand a second time, and João took it, knowing this gesture was how Americans made deals. But it also signified he had his friend’s blessing.

  “What gift for the bride and groom?”

  João shook his head. “Otis outfitted the house well. More levers and machines than I understand.”

  “For the girl then.”

  João’s grin widened as he remembered the reunion in Westerly. “She likes to dance.”

  So did Lizzy, Joseph thought. “You’ve given me an idea,” he said, picturing the Victrola in his parlor. He’d have the Troy Store deliver a new model to the farm next week.

  Joseph looked at the house, then back to João. “Wishing you a blessed life together.”

  Walking up the dirt road to his car, Joseph stopped. He snapped his fingers. “The gold chain.” He’d heard the story of Lourdes and the fisherman’s son and the dive at Parrot Beach. The chain was missing from João’s neck. He heard the house door sweep open then slam shut. He turned. Tiny dust devils swirled a path to the house. In the kitchen window two silhouettes danced. The sun dipped below the horizon. Far off, a cowbell rang.

  the lessons of troy

  Will squeezed his butt cheeks, but the noxious gas continued to escape. The glass of water he’d gulped down to wet his dry mouth was also working against him, but he feared that if he redistributed pressure from his bowels to his bladder, he’d surely crap his pants. And on anyone’s embarrassment meter, someone urinating himself would register as forgettable, while exploding in diarrhea would become a tale retold by Troy Store employees well into the 1920s.

  The Troy manager, Mr. Knipper, busied himself with paperwork across his large mahogany desk. At first he relished hearing the poor boy’s stomach churn—a big point of holding the boy was to scare him—so when he caught a drift of the boy’s flatulence, he ignored it, wanting the kid to pine a tad longer, but after sustained putrid volleys, his nostrils began to burn, then drip. He pressed his palms into his deep-set eye sockets and let out a long breath that sent a shiver over his corpulent frame.

  He pointed his ink pen at Will and then to the door. “Lavatory: through the door, then a left. Back in three minutes, or I send the dogs.”

  Of course he had no dogs, but Will didn’t even notice the threat. In fact, so much of his concentration was focused on the emergency in the lower half of his torso that when he left the office, he forgot which way the manager had said to turn. The faint strains of rushing water pulled him to the left. And just in time. Instead of a series of gates opening along the track of his bowel like so many locks along a canal, it was as if a stopper had been removed from a drain. His body emptied in one giant whoosh, and he took his first deep breath in some hours as a stream of urine splashed against the porcelain lip of the bowl. A powerful ache filled the pit of his empty belly. He wiped and pulled the chain, and then he fell forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He clutched his pinched pale face between his open hands and sat for the remaining two minutes thirty-four seconds wondering why Helen hadn’t come to his aid. And what in the world would he tell his father?

  * * *

  That morning, when she woke to overcast skies, Helen sent Will a picture postcard with instructions to meet her at the Troy Store at three o’clock that afternoon, and to wear his father’s largest overcoat with the sleeves rolled up. Troy’s selection couldn’t be matched. After one recent walkabout, Helen brought home knitting needles, Nottingham lace, and smoked codfish. Usually the first item was what she was after. The others just presented themselves as she floated department to department, making sure not to linger. In summer, only foul-weather days made the trip worthwhile.

  She smirked when they passed a sign painted with the Troy Store motto, you pay less here—she paid nothing. They strolled through the robin-egg-blue rooms past fine china and glass to the reassuring commotion of the fashion departments. She told Will to browse men’s fashions. She hit the ladies. She ran her fingers down a row of hanging corsets, thinking her mother would never get her into one of those. Next came outdated gingham skirts on discount. Even the operatives in the mills demanded finer cloth. Helen hovered around the silks. They were compact enough to hide easily and made good gifts. She rubbed a slippery bathrobe right off its hanger. She bunched it into her gaping pocket and browsed on.

  Inviting Will into her secret world had been a great risk, but after he’d told her why Hollister was sent away to military school, she felt obligated to reveal a secret of her own. When Will called her a liar, she produced a porcelain sugar bowl and Swiss chocolate. The Troy Store, she said boastfully, was where her sordid double life had flourished the summer her mother was abroad.

  Helen had discovered the joys of stealing by accident in Mr. Mongie’s corner store. Ray’s overcoat made her do it. It was a soggy day. Tommy sent her out in the rain to buy a pack of Chesterfields. She bought candy with the few remaining pennies he’d left her for the effort. At the candy rack, a Mary Jane toffee dropped into the rolled-over folds of the coat sleeve when she reached for a chocolate bar. As she went to fish out the Mary Jane, Mr. Mongie lowered his newspaper. “That all, Helen? Any licorice fish?” he’d said over his half-moon reading glasses, peering down at her like the retired policeman that he was. Could he send her to jail? Her mother said in some countries cheats and stealers got their hands cut off. Though when pressed, Mary Sheehan couldn’t come up with specific countries where the punishment was practiced. No, Mr. Mongie wasn’t the amputation type. No one had seen the Mary Jane fall. Was there anyone else in the store? Helen’s smile stiffened as th
e seconds passed. Mr. Mongie folded the paper and stood up from his stool. Now she was too embarrassed to put the Mary Jane back, surely he would think she was stealing, so she smiled harder.

  “Cigarettes and the chocolate then,” he said, ringing up the sale.

  She gave Tommy the Mary Jane, and he said she was all right, even offered to take her to Lincoln Park to ride the coaster. She nicked him a Mary Jane on each subsequent visit to the store.

  Helen stood under the South Park shelter, her brother Ray’s old overcoat laid out on the cement to dry. Aside from some bum asleep on a far bench, she was alone. The promised rain had kept the crowds indoors. Crime taught Helen that men held low expectations of pretty young girls, a fact she exploited. The male store clerk actually smiled at her before nabbing Will. (For this, she stole a tie.)

  When did boys corner the market on bravery? she thought. They’re all boneheads. Will’s a wimp, Hollister an ass, Tommy unlucky, Ray a half-wit, Mr. B a fake. Daddy would have invented the world twice over by now. She reached under her blouse to remove the silk tie; she draped it delicately across her lap and pressed the wrinkles out with her palms. It was Italian, a handsome new fashion, ocean blue with white strips going crossways. She held it up under her chin and caught the reflection in a splash of rainwater, imagining her father wearing it.

  The bum rolled over and grunted. She wound the tie around her fist and resisted the urge to punch the stuffing out of the old toper.

  What would Will Bartlett blubber on about when his father arrived? She had felt the bond between them grow over the summer, and she’d lowered her guard, so wanting a true friend. He would never get past this. She cursed herself for being so foolish. A dozen city blocks would forever separate their destinies.

  She removed from the waist of her skirt a bundle of white cotton dinner napkins with ugly pee-colored seashells embroidered in the corners. She had snagged them from a sale table during her retreat—she couldn’t help herself; they were so ugly she felt sorry for them. She used the napkins to wipe off the wet plank of the bench. She tossed them at the bum. Seated, she tried to think if there was a lesson to be learned in Will’s capture, but couldn’t figure one, except that she had broken her only rule: Crime and Partners Don’t Mix. Given that her first pupil was going to end up in the brig, it was a rule she’d never violate again.