Baker Towers

by Jennifer Haigh

The strike had lasted a hundred days, the longest in Bakerton’s history. Now the bowling alley resumed its regular hours. Women quit their jobs at the Quaker. Easter came and went. This year nobody cared much for celebrating. Everyone went back to work.

  The snow melted. Sandy Novak wandered the town in his summer suits. There was no more Friday poker. The Bernardis and Poblockis were back on day shift. Dick Devlin worked Hoot Owl. Once or twice he and Sandy played pool, after Dick had slept off his shift.

  One night the telephone rang. Dozing in front of the television, Sandy heard Dorothy’s soft “hello.”

  A brief pause as she listened.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s no one here by that name.”

  When she woke the next morning, Sandy was gone.

  Eight

  Forever after, when the story is told—in newspapers and on the radio, by public figures in commemorative addresses, by aged grandparents years later, when the world seems a safer place—the telling begins, rightly, with the weather. So: that December was the warmest on record. On Polish Hill, Evelyn Stusick’s crocuses bloomed. Hunters rushed their kills to basement freezers. Christmas trees cut too early lost their needles in the heat.

  At the diamond behind the junior high, jackets and sweaters were piled on bleachers. Boys ran the bases in their undershirts. The Knights of Columbus held a car wash in the Quaker parking lot. Tinsel Santas looked garish in the bright sun.

  “June is bustin’ out all over,” said the weekend weatherman on KBKR. The barometric pressure stood at thirty and a half inches. It was a piece of information nobody registered: thirty inches of what? A week later, a generation of schoolchildren would know what it meant.

  The false summer lasted through the weekend. Then, on Sunday night, a cold wind blew down from Canada. Monday morning the windows were crusted with ice. Coats were dug out of closets; hats and mufflers, boots and gloves. Winter came overnight for everyone but the miners. For them there was only one season. It was always fifty degrees underground.

  THEY SAT IN THEIR USUAL SPOTS—Mrs. Hauser at her desk, Susan Jevic at her smaller one in the front row—eating the lunches they had brought from home. Outside the snow had begun to fall. Joyce was relieved at the change in the weather: the balmy afternoons had made her pupils squirrelly. The last hour of each day had seemed interminable. Only Susan seemed interested in discussing The Red Pony, taking notes in her careful hand.

  Joyce had taught eighth grade for just more than a year, taking over the classroom Viola Peale had surrendered when she retired. A few changes had been made since then: new desks, a filmstrip projector on a wheeled cart at the back of the room. Above the chalkboard hung a color portrait of the young president, which Joyce had placed there herself. For weeks, now, she had avoided looking at it: the handsome face, the unbearable hopefulness of his intent blue gaze. Soon another photo would arrive, a framed portrait of President Johnson. Joyce would hide it in the bottom drawer of her desk.

  She’d been married three years, the exact length of Kennedy’s presidency. Married life suited her: the quiet evenings alone with Ed, watching television or reading before the fire. Their small house was pleasant and orderly, a silent sanctuary after the noisy corridors of the high school. To her relief, the marriage had produced no children, though Ed reached for her every Saturday night without fail. She did not tell him that childlessness suited her, that after years of caring for her mother, Sandy, Lucy and Dorothy, she felt entitled to this freedom. Her husband was a capable man, reasonable and self-sufficient. She had no one to worry about but herself.

  The truth was that she had raised a child already. She had loved Lucy like her own daughter, admired and disciplined and protected her, even sent her away to college—a fact Joyce still found incredible. A good student, Lucy had won a small scholarship to the nursing program at the University of Pittsburgh, enough to pay her living expenses. Joyce’s savings—from her air-force pay, then the dress factory, then her school secretary’s job—had covered the rest. It was a moment she would never forget, writing the check to cover Lucy’s first-semester tuition: more memorable than her wedding, her own college graduation. It was the best thing she had ever done.

  Susan finished her lunch, then rose to wipe the chalkboards. Afterward she would take the erasers outside to dust. She performed these tasks without being asked, a child used to doing what needed to be done. She was a serious, pretty girl, with a long straight nose and somber brown eyes, more at ease with adults than with children her own age. Watching her, Joyce wondered if her stillness was innate or acquired, a reaction to growing up in the chaos of the Jevic household. She spoke often of her brother and sister—the youngest Jevics, now in high school. Joyce had taught each of them in the eighth grade. Susan was as different from the chatty, effervescent Monica, the boisterous, high-spirited Billy, as a child could possibly be.

  How’s your sister doing? Joyce had asked her once. Still working at the factory?

  Susan seemed surprised. You know Irene?

  Of course, Joyce said. We were in school together. We were very good friends.

  I didn’t know, Susan said. She never mentioned it to me.

  The bus was nearly empty that evening. Two hours before, in Pittsburgh, Lucy had secured a seat up front. The bus had stopped a half-dozen times since then, in towns so small they had no stations: Temperance, Buckhorn, Salt Lick. Passengers debarked at churches and gas stations, at lunch counters with signs in their windows: BUS TICKETS SOLD HERE. By four-thirty night had fallen. The dark window reflected her face back at her.

  She looked the same, or nearly so—a bit thinner, her hair cut shorter and teased into a flip. Her eyes were circled with black liner, a look Joyce detested. Lucy read the disapproval in her tight smile, but for reasons she didn’t understand, Joyce did not criticize. Her sister had changed. Never affectionate, she now embraced Lucy each time she saw her. Instead of giving orders, she asked a million questions about classes and professors, and listened intently to the answers. To her own surprise, Lucy didn’t mind the questions. She preferred Joyce’s tidy house to Dorothy’s messy one, her sincere interest to Dorothy’s moody silence. Her first night back they would talk for hours at the kitchen table, long after Ed had gone to bed.

  The bus climbed Saxon Mountain: lights in the valley, rooftops covered with snow. Lucy made the journey four times a year—Christmas and early summer, at midsemester breaks in spring and fall. Each time she rode into Bakerton one person—her confident adult self, fast moving and fast thinking—and rode out someone smaller and softer, crippled by tenderness. Her visits unfolded according to a pattern. Her first day in Bakerton she felt displaced and restless, preoccupied with the life she’d left behind: friends and classes, a boy who’d hurt or disappointed her, another who’d asked for her phone number, who seemed different from the rest. But in a few days the friends and classes, even the boys, would seem distant and imaginary. Exams and term papers, her job at the campus pub, walking back to her dorm at night, the dark, noisy streets—her entire college life would seem hopelessly beyond her, like something she’d dreamed. She’d begin to dread leaving Bakerton: the interminable good-byes, the long bus ride alone.

  Leonard Stusick was waiting for her when she stepped off the bus.

  “Hi there,” she said, surprised. “What are you doing here?” She hadn’t seen him since summertime: he’d started at Penn State that fall, and their midsemester breaks hadn’t coincided. Occasionally—late at night, after her shift—she considered writing him a letter, but rejected the idea as corny.

  “Waiting for you.” He was taller than she remembered, his plaid hunting jacket too short in the sleeves. He’s still growing, she thought, amazed. He had started college a year early; he was only seventeen.

  “Ed’s coming to pick me up,” she said.

  “No, he’s not.” Leonard grinned. “I saw him uptown this morning. I told him I’d come and get you.” He took the suitcase from her hand. “Come on.”
>
  He led her to a pickup truck parked at the curb.

  “Your dad has a new truck?”

  “It’s mine,” he said proudly. “I got it secondhand, but it runs like new.”

  Lucy blinked. At school she traveled on foot, or took the trolley. She had never considered owning a car, herself. It struck her as very adult.

  They drove to Keener’s and ordered sandwiches. Lucy had eaten dozens of meals there—with Marcia Dickey, or Marcia and Davis—but never with Leonard. Cookies and milk at her house, or peanut-butter sandwiches made by his mother, that was more their speed. She watched him study the menu, the careful way he laid his napkin across his lap. She felt suddenly shy.

  He talked about his classes—biology, organic chemistry, calculus and statistics—his part-time job at the student union, a second job he would start next term, working in a lab with his biology professor. They had taken a booth in the corner. Over his shoulder she stared out the plate-glass windows, watching the snow fall.

  She’d spent many evenings like this, listening to a boy in a diner, her mind and eyes wandering. Boys she’d met on campus, at parties, in the pub; confident boys who joked and flirted, who smiled down at her as she served their drinks. Leonard did not joke. He was describing, now, the research being done by his professor, something to do with the Krebs cycle. A familiar feeling washed over her, an odd mix of irritation and tenderness. Oh, Leonard, she thought. So sweet and so hopeless. His sincerity was both touching and tedious.

  “It sounds like you’re very busy,” she said politely. “What do you do for fun? You know—on the weekends.”

  “Well, I come home,” he said, as though the answer were obvious. “That’s why I bought the truck.”

  “You come back every weekend?”

  “Sure.” He looked puzzled. “Wouldn’t you, if you had a car?”

  Lucy considered this. She was happy at school, and happy at home; what pained her was the transition between the two. She could not imagine so much leaving: every Sunday, more good-byes.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  He gave her a searching look. “Don’t you miss anybody? Dorothy? Joyce?”

  The waitress arrived with their sandwiches.

  “Sure,” Lucy said. “I miss them all.”

  They ate fast and silently. She was hungrier than she’d imagined. Outside, a boy and girl crossed the street, their hands joined. Someone had put money in the jukebox: Brenda Lee singing “Break It to Me Gently.” Lucy ate half her hamburger, then lit a cigarette.

  “You’re smoking?” Leonard said.

  At that moment the door opened and the young couple came in, stamping snow from their shoes. In the distance the fire whistle squealed, as though someone were in danger. Lucy’s heart quickened. She would have known them anywhere: Steven Fleck and Connie Kukla.

  “Oh, brother,” she said in a low voice, sliding down in her seat. “Don’t look now.”

  He turned his head toward the door.

  “Leonard!” she whispered. But it was too late: Connie had already spotted them.

  “Lucy?” she called in a high, clear voice. “Is that you?” She wore fuzzy earmuffs. Her blond hair was flocked with snow.

  “Hi, Connie,” she said miserably. The fire whistle rose in pitch. She felt Steven Fleck’s eyes rest on her a moment. She smiled uncertainly, her cheeks heating. His eyes darted away.

  “There’s an open table in the back,” he mumbled, his hand at Connie’s waist. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “It’s nice to see you,” Connie called, giving Lucy a little finger wave. “Merry Christmas.”

  Lucy watched them go. Steven sat first, his back to Lucy. His broad shoulders were dusted with snow.

  “What gives?” said Leonard. “Aren’t they friends of yours?”

  “Sort of.” After the night under the bleachers, Steven had never spoken to her again. She’d passed him often in the school corridors, hand in hand with Connie. When the two girls exchanged hellos, he’d kept his eyes on the floor.

  “Not really,” she said. “It’s hard to explain.”

  Later that evening, she would remember the fire whistle. At the time it had barely registered, so distracting was the noise of her heart.

  The music on the radio had changed. It was the first difference George noticed that year, the Christmas he brought Arthur home to visit. Driving over Saxon Mountain, he dialed through the usual riot of AM stations: polkas, Christmas carols, a cowboy singer’s crackling baritone. In the valley they faded into static. On the local station, the DJ played the most requested tune of the week, a sweet ballad called “My Blue Heaven.” George hummed along softly—a strolling rhythm, the breathy moan of a tenor sax. He broke into a smile. Negro music in Bakerton! A town that had never seen a black face, now clamoring for Fats Domino.

  He reached to turn up the volume, then stopped himself. Arthur was slumped down in the backseat, eyes closed, hands hidden in the sleeves of the winter jacket he hadn’t quite grown into. His dungarees looked stiff and new; he would outgrow them before they could fade in the wash. He had little need for casual clothes. At the Wollaston School he wore white shirts and crested blazers, a maroon cardigan after hours in the dorms.

  He was thirteen but small for his age. At Parents’ Weekend, George had been stunned by the maturity of the other eighth graders: the broad shoulders, the deep voices. Next to them Arthur still looked like a child. Undersized, with Marion’s long thin face, blue-veined at the temples; her intelligent gray eyes, alert, a little alarmed. He resembled George in invisible ways: the delicate constitution, the measles and ear infections, the periodic bouts with the flu. His sickness was nearly a year-round affair. In spring and fall, allergies aggravated his asthma. Every winter, from infancy on, he’d developed a stubborn chest cold and a resounding cough, a remarkable imitation of a coal miner’s guttural hack. Night after night, his coughing shook the house awake. For God’s sake, can’t we give him something? Marion had whispered to George in the dark—in those days, long ago, when they still shared a bed. She was a steadfast believer in somethings. But Arthur’s colds were impervious to treatment. He coughed for weeks on end.

  He was ten when Marion proposed sending him to Wollaston—her father’s school, and Kip’s; the alma mater of all the Quigley men. Arthur’s not a Quigley, George had pointed out, but Marion had merely shrugged. Wollaston was the best of the best, she informed him; no local school could offer a comparable education. Arthur would come home for summers and holidays, and George could drive up to Connecticut to visit him. Whenever you have time, she said pointedly. He worked at the store six or seven days a week. Even when Arthur had lived at home, George had scarcely seen him at all.

  The song ended and another began, a lively dance tune George recognized. Unconsciously his fingers found the notes, lightly pressing the steering wheel. He hadn’t played in years, but the impulse had never left him; whenever he heard music, he hammered out the notes with his fingers. Early in their courtship Marion had found this fascinating, him tapping on the small of her back as they danced. Now it drove her crazy. She had not danced with him in years.

  He wondered if Ev and Gene still danced together. George thought of her often lately. Redheads reminded him, and pregnant women and the fall weather. Her birthday was in September; on her sixteenth they’d had their first date. Before that her father hadn’t allowed it, so George had waited. He’d been patient then, sure in his devotion. A better man at sixteen than he’d been since.

  The fire whistle squealed in the distance, a sound George hadn’t heard in years. The noise sent a chill up his spine. In the backseat Arthur stirred.

  “That’s the fire whistle,” said George. “We’re almost there.”

  Arthur sat up. “What’s that smell?”

  “Over there.” George pointed. “They’re called the Towers. They’re bony piles.”

  “Why do they smell like that?” His voice nasal, as though he were holding his brea
th.

  “Sulfur gases. From the scrap coal.”

  Arthur considered this. “But why do they leave it there? Why don’t they throw it in the garbage?”

  “They’re landmarks.” George peered through the windshield. “When the wind blows they turn sort of orange. It’s something to see.”

  “They stink, though.”

  “I know,” said George.

  Abruptly the whistle stopped. Arthur settled back into his seat. Again his eyes closed. He’d spent the previous day on a train from Connecticut; now he seemed perfectly content to be driven into this town he’d never seen before, for reasons George had found difficult to articulate.

  Marion, for her part, had been dumbfounded. You’re taking him to Bakerton? For heaven’s sake, whatever for?

  Later, alone, George had pondered the question. Bakerton had been calling to him lately. Rose’s death, he supposed, though it was his father’s that haunted him—the funeral he’d missed nearly twenty years ago, a young soldier at sea.

  I grew up there, he said simply. I want my son to see it.

  In the end they compromised: he and Arthur would spend Christmas Eve in Bakerton, then drive back early the next morning. They would arrive in Haverford in time to eat Christmas dinner at the Quigleys’. At one time a battle would have ensued, but the years had drained the struggle out of his marriage. They had both stopped caring long ago.

  THE PORCH FURNITURE was shrouded in plastic, the floor covered with artificial turf. A wooden sign hung above the door: THE STUSICKS, fancy script burned into a flat pine board. In the front yard stood a statue of the Virgin Mary, up to her knees in snow.

  Ev’s eyes widened when she came to the door. “Georgie! This is a surprise.”

  “Merry Christmas.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Ev, this is my son, Arthur.”

  “How do you do.” Arthur stood up straight, removed his hat, and offered his hand. The Wollaston manners. For once they seemed worth the thousand dollars a year.