Spindle City

by Jotham Burrello

  “That’s a small fortune in golf balls.”

  “You’ll make it up in lower wages and taxes.”

  “I’m making plenty right here.”

  Kicking a divot on the fairway, Howard said, “That will soon change.”

  That morning Evelyn expected she’d have to pry him out of bed to make the tee time. But when she swung open the door, the bed was empty. She found Joseph at the breakfast table nibbling toast. The Bordens had always buoyed him. The invitation had been a surprise, but when a Borden summoned you, you accepted. Joseph hoped Howard was channeling his father’s business acumen, and he would use his leverage to propose a new initiative, a postwar Fall River plan, to help shake off his recent malaise. (Behind his back Evelyn called him Mr. Bumble.) The Manufacturers’ Association’s half-baked Put Our Boys to Work initiative, which guaranteed returning soldiers a job—was a publicity stunt. And nonmembers, like the Iron Works and Cleveland, were singled-out in bogus editorials as unpatriotic for not helping the vets. Joseph’s lieutenants, who ran the Cleveland day-to-day operations, were the ones in the line of fire. The agent position Will was supposed to fill remained vacant. And Mary Sheehan skipped Sunday walks to devote herself to church charities. Joseph feared that Father Curley’s decades-long disapproval of their relationship had finally worn the woman down. In the spring, Joseph spent weekends at the farm, but soon realized it was João’s to run. His claim to Otis’s farmhouse had passed. In May, Joseph bought more farmland and Newport real estate with his mountain of profits. After the shareholder checks were cut, he received a letter from Saint Augustine on orange stationery. Hannah Cleveland thanked him for the high returns and invited him to join her in Cuba the following winter. During his afternoon nap, he found temporary solace in dreams of orange groves.

  * * *

  As they made the turn to the back nine, Joseph was down thirty-five dollars, and he had not yet brought up business, preferring instead to concentrate on being outside. The fresh air somehow energized him; perhaps this sudden lightness was to blame for him believing his golf game was up to snuff. He had wrongly agreed to the princely sum of five-dollar skins after sinking his first two practice putts. Now, after shooting fifty-four on the front nine, he was resigned to losing all seventy dollars. He hadn’t given anything to the game and, after his first round in nine months, didn’t see it giving him anything in return. The graybeards playing ahead disappeared into the rough. Golf courses are where young men hide from their wives, and old men come to die, he thought. Otis never had the patience for the game. Joseph spat on his ball and wiped it down his knickers. There was a streak of red in his saliva, and he ran his tongue around his porous gums. Joseph motioned for his driver and joined Howard on the tee box.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors that we’re unpatriotic.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it.” Howard leaned against his club. “I’ve contacted the army and plan my own announcement during their Labor Day party. It will be in all the papers.”

  “No one seems to remember that I hired the men that came home with Hollister. Deformed and mentally damaged boys. Good workers, though. Their minds don’t tend to wander.”

  “That’s why you get awards, Joseph, and the rest of us just fat profits.” The operative newspaper, the Labor Standard, recently announced they were honoring Joseph with an achievement award for “a lifetime of dedication to the wealth and welfare of mill operatives” at next week’s Cotton Week Celebration.

  “But that, too, will soon end,” Borden said. “War profits like this come only once a lifetime.”

  “Let’s hope.” Joseph paused. “About the wars.”

  “I heard about your boy Hollister. Matter of fact . . .” Howard stopped walking. “My daughter had her portrait drawn during her last visit. Not half bad.”

  “Off and running, he is.”

  “He’ll make a killing next week.”

  For some, the city-sponsored Cotton Week over the Labor Day holiday was a flashback to the successful centennial festival eight years prior, and the chamber of commerce billed it as such. But to Joseph, it lacked the legitimacy of the centennial; it rather stunk of a manufactured event designed to reassure the choir how well they could sing. Though, this time around, there would be no Horse Show, no Auto Parade, no daredevil aviators at Sandy Beach, no visit from a sitting president, and no carnival midway. Thank God for that, Joseph thought.

  There were rumors of a postwar tension between local banks and the mills. Cotton Week organizers gave in to Central Savings’ pressure to put the recently financed millinery on the governor’s tour schedule; a new fuel oil factory made the second page of the program. the largest in new england, read the headline. There were new beaus at the Cotton Ball.

  A cloud blocked the sun as the foursome ahead emerged from the woods and walked out of Howard’s range. As he bent over to tee up his drive, he said matter-of-factly, “Eighty percent of Fall River mills will be out of business in ten years.” He reared back and smacked a drive down the middle. For a moment, he stood on the tee, admiring the shot. “Boy, I’m slugging it today. You know, Joseph, down south you can golf twelve months a year.”

  Joseph’s hand shook as he jabbed the tee into the turf. He aimed to the right of the fairway bunkers. His hands choked the grip. The forearm tendons bulged and reddened. The club whipped around his neck and back. The ball sliced right, vanishing into the woods. Howard lurched forward, listening for a knock, and then watched the fairway, thinking the ball might ricochet free. There was no member’s bounce this time. Joseph pounded the club head into the turf like a sledgehammer.

  “Right postage, wrong address,” Howard joked. He tossed another ball at Joseph’s feet. “If you break that club, you’re buying it.” Joseph teed up the second ball. A bead of sweat fell from his forehead to his right toe. His heart thumped in his chest. He torqued the club so far around his head he nearly grazed his left knee; the club head snapped back around, smacking the ball. It launched deep into the woods.

  “Goddamnit!” Joseph hurled the club over his head. It cartwheeled down the fairway.

  “Lateral hazard,” Howard called, already tramping down the fairway.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Joseph charged down the front of the tee box, cutting him off.

  “It’s a stroke penalty. I’ll let you forget about the first one. Call it a mulligan.”

  “I’m not talking about the stupid ball. The mills, Howard. All failing?”

  “Eighty percent, I said—eighty percent.” Howard’s caddie held out a five-wood and Howard motioned it away. The sun returned as the foursome on the ninth green looked up from their putts. Howard waved to the men and then motioned for Joseph to walk.

  “Not in front of the sheep, Joseph. They find comfort in their ignorance,” Howard whispered. He spat and adjusted his knickers. “Living in New York allows me the long view,” he said. “Twenty-one percent of Fall River’s mills use modern Northrops to seventy-plus in South Carolina alone. You know it’s cheap to operate—the labor, taxes, construction. New England can’t compete. All the New York banks are committed down there. You know as well as I what Father preached, what a capitalist’s hard-on the Southern states were. Heck, you said as much ten years ago when you went away from printcloth. Listen, friend, I’ve always respected your efforts to keep the city honest, but this flood is too big for you to contain, and the association never learned to swim. The war is over. In one, two years, imports will return. Profits will bottom out against the competition. The association’s antiquated mills will follow. The market’s boot will bear down on the city’s windpipe. It’s time to make like a bird and head south. Now watch out.” Howard grabbed his five-wood, then effortlessly lifted a shot down the middle of the fairway.

  Joseph dropped in the middle, not bothering to go look for either of his drives. He was six to Howard’s two. He remembered the n
ight on the steamship Commonwealth when Matt Borden had asked him to watch out for his boys. Oh, how he had failed Uncle Matt. Joseph smacked a five-iron a few feet above the ground, then dropped the club where he was standing, afraid he might sock Howard across the ribs. Denial. I am not in denial, he thought. Astonished, yes, but blinded? No. Howard’s math was wrong. Ten years maybe, but there was time to turn the ship around. He kicked his ball forward, waiting for his caddie to catch up. He bladed a seven-iron across the grass, but this time the ball found a bunker. Denial was pretending your operatives weren’t human. Denial was thinking you could abandon your city without getting any blood on your hands.

  Howard’s approach also hit the sand. Golf wasn’t the only thing on his mind, either. Joseph wondered if Howard was just realizing the prophecy his father had first shared with him when he had mentored with the old man at J. and E. Wright and Company. Joseph knew that if the shrewd bastard were alive, this shift in thinking would have taken place the day after the Paris armistice. But this didn’t comfort him. Awash in bubble profits, 30 percent or more, it was widely known the owners had poured little capital back into the shop floor, even though the South now matched New England’s fine-cloth output. The Fall River system resisted product diversification. No new mills had been constructed in over ten years. A new oil factory might employ a few hundred, but a new mill fed thousands.

  Waiting on the fourteenth, Howard told the caddies to wash all the balls in his bag. He motioned Joseph to join him on the tee. Joseph noticed Howard’s boyish face, nearly forty-two and still the same sandy blond hair and smooth cheeks. The man ruled via telegram from New York, Florida, and Europe, never troubling himself with the details of workers’ lives, while Joseph toiled in the factory din. Perhaps Joseph worked for Howard, too, keeping the peace on Main Street. Joseph sat on a bench, dumbstruck; he had rarely considered his role in the larger print of the textile world. He suddenly realized why the establishment had never accepted him. It wasn’t his breeding or lack of formal education but that he didn’t think large, like Howard’s ilk—men who dreamed, like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Morgan; men who believed themselves giants on this earth. But what have they done for the people of Fall River? Where are the libraries bearing their names?

  Over the scratching of the ball washer, Howard said, “There’s more. I’ve charged my man down south to start pricing land. I’m keen on Tennessee. Within eighteen months, perhaps longer, we’ll lay the cornerstone for a new Borden mill.”

  “The Southern menace has won.”

  Laughing, Howard waved his finger at Joseph. He called, “Ball,” and his caddie tossed him one right from the washer. Howard bent over and stabbed his tee into the turf. “It’ll house about a thousand operatives, a hundred thousand spindles, and two thousand looms. That’s a ballpark. The Iron Works will continue, but I’d guess we’ll be out of Fall River by the end of the next decade.”

  “You might as well engrave RIP on that cornerstone.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “She’ll go faster than the Titanic.”

  “You can lay this at my feet, but I’m going to jump right over it.” Howard hopped to his right.

  Joseph walked up to the front of the tee box so Howard couldn’t address the ball.

  Howard stepped away. “You think I should use an iron?”

  “The tax base will plummet.” Joseph threw his hands in the air. “There’ll be no other industry.”

  “Well, let’s see.” Howard stroked his jaw. “Whaling is harpooned, and fish stocks are trending down. We don’t make automobiles or guns or appliances or refine oil. I got it—those new hat factories everyone is so keen on. There’s your future.”

  Joseph kicked Howard’s ball off its tee.

  “Was that necessary?” Howard’s caddie came running up with the ball. “I’m a businessman, Joseph, not Jesus Christ. Anyone with his head not up his ass can see what’s coming.” Howard nodded, and the caddie set the ball back on its perch. “We’ve known each other a long damn time, Joseph. I’m telling you this because Daddy was fond of you, loved your old man. Now don’t ruin his memory by getting loose in the jaw about my plans. There’s nothing left to discuss. We’ll keep in touch and, perhaps, see what I can do for Cleveland down there.”

  Joseph stepped to the side. He removed his cap and squinted down the fairway. “In 1900, we set the market for cotton in this country.”

  “I’m nostalgic, too, Joseph. But it’s over. Our boys will run mills in the South.”

  “Maybe yours.” Joseph motioned for a club. “And in the meantime?”

  “I’m no hypocrite. Our band will march in their damn parades; we’ll pay our taxes. In fact, I pity the city for its myopic ignorance. They’ve done better than most. Take Lowell, for example, but now they’ll get what they’ve sown and rot on the vine.” Howard paused. Joseph’s head dipped between his shoulders. Drops of sweat—or was it a tear?—fell to his shoe tops. Howard squeezed his elbow. “Sorry, old friend, your award is well deserved, but I fear it is a swan song, an achievement for past wars fought, and not a star on the horizon. And I can bet you those pesky unions will think you owe them a favor nonetheless. Now watch and learn.” Howard set his feet and swung, driving the ball down the middle of the fairway.

  * * *

  Joseph settled his golf debt and paid for the putter snapped over his knee on the eighteenth green and hopped the trolley back to town. Wiggins was only too happy to get back to his gambling behind the caddie shack. Joseph jumped off on Main Street near the Granite Block. The heat had broken. The streets were choked with people and wagons and trolley cars. People enjoying the Sunday afternoon. He missed Mary. Near city hall the businesses had dusted off their red, white, and blue bunting. Long yawns of the stuff were draped over the completed Victory Arch. Folks streamed from the downtown hotels and lined up outside the restaurants. There was laughter and friendly joking between couples waiting outside the Savoy for the next showing of Lon Chaney in The False Faces. Joseph thought Fall River every bit as cosmopolitan as Boston or Chicago—he passed Sheedy’s Vaudeville at the Academy of Music and a packed dining room at Charlie Wong’s—yet, she was a one-industry town and unable to survive without her mills. He saw the idle chimneys dotting the horizon. The future. Au revoir, free dental care. Adeus, libraries. Arrivederci, city pharmacy. An emptiness filled his stomach. Howard’s proclamation would come to pass: grass would grow up Plymouth Avenue. “My land will be better used for grazing livestock than producing prints,” Howard had said as they parted. “The big mills have no choice, and the smaller ones never followed your lead.”

  Joseph paused by the front window of a new ice cream parlor, the Dairy Bar. Inside, hundreds of multicolored lights hung in streamers from the ceiling. A boy plucked a chocolate-covered cherry from a tulip-shaped dish and dropped it in his sweetheart’s mouth. Perhaps Howard was right, and the town would blow away after the mills left, brick and granite, steel and glass swept into Mount Hope Bay on the wake of the departing Fall River Line. But what of the people? Such hard workers. He thought of the baby, now a little boy, born on the wood floor of a tenement in the Cogsworth slum. The future prince of a shuttered city. Joseph was sorry he would live to be a part of it. The transition would be devastating. Inside the parlor, Joseph sat at the counter before a large marble soda fountain like he had as a boy each Saturday afternoon on the walk home from the mill with his father. He ordered the same malted milkshake with an egg. Soon folks wouldn’t have enough money to keep the place in business. He wanted to shout that the end was near but instead slurped his shake. The cream soothed his upset stomach. Howard’s word, “hypocrite,” had caused the indigestion. At a recent Textile Club luncheon, Joseph had laid out a rosy picture of the future, but it was the hyperbolic jolt his audience—politicians, mill agents, and newspapermen—needed to hear. He saw one banker shake his head at the projections. The upcoming Cotton Week would
bring merriment to streets as the centennial had years before. But the day was coming when shipping coal from West Virginia, cotton from the Deep South, and then turning around and shipping finished products west was drawing to a close. Cotton Week revelers wouldn’t know the celebration was a wake.

  * * *

  “I’m home,” he called from the vestibule, as he did each day, but there was no answer. He dropped his key in the crystal dish below Otis’s portrait. Today the old man’s expression was stern, a streak of late-afternoon sun turning his eyes red.

  “It’s over, old man.”

  How could you give up so easily? old Otis seemed to ask.

  “I’ve tried.”

  When there were no markets, we made them from scratch.

  “There’s nothing left to do.” Joseph lifted the frame from the nail and set the portrait in the hall closet. The old fart is right, Joseph thought, but he couldn’t do it without the boys. He exhaled and swallowed a mouthful of metallic spit. He went into his study and locked the door.

  He sat behind his grandfather’s old oak desk. Beneath an early draft of his acceptance speech for the labor award was a contract to supply Marshall Field & Company with premium bedding. He signed it and put it into an envelope addressed to his second at Cleveland. He dug under his yellow fingernails and bit two of them. He picked at the dry skin around his thumb with his index finger and then tore off a nub of skin with his teeth and rolled it over his tongue. The thumb began to bleed, and he sucked it. He noticed the perfectly squared blanket draped over the couch, his books organized by subject matter, and the three logs stacked in a neat pyramid in the fireplace. Nothing was out of place. He sat for the rest of the afternoon, picking and biting in hope someone would call for him. He was about to strike the lamp, when a crushing sense of failure came over him. Eventually he fell asleep at the desk. He woke an hour later to the ticking of the old clock; nothing had changed except the light.