Riverside Drive: Border City Blues

by Michael Januska

  Border City Blues

  RIVERSIDE

  DRIVE

  Michael Januska

  for Laurie

  The first policeman I saw needed a shave. The second had a couple

  buttons off his shabby uniform. The third stood in the center of

  the city’s main intersection — Broadway and Union Street — directing traffic,

  with a cigar in one corner of his mouth.

  After that I stopped checking them up.

  — Dashiell Hammett

  from Red Harvest

  Four and twenty Yankees, feeling very dry,

  Went across the border to get a drink of rye,

  When the rye was opened, the Yanks began to sing,

  God bless America, but God save the King!

  — A Prohibition toast

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First I have to thank the Anti-Saloon League’s Wayne Wheeler for conceiving and drafting the National Prohibition Act, and Andrew Volstead, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee for helping make it law in 1919. Cheers to them.

  Kidding aside, I have to thank Marty Gervais whose writings and tireless enthusiasm for the Border Cities continue to be a source of inspiration. There are other people in my hometown who each endeavour in their own way to preserve and share its rich history. I have them to thank as well (and now we can all be crazy together).

  An early version of the chapter “Ojibway” appeared in the Windsor Review, and I would like to acknowledge the Review for their support and Alex McKay for shepherding that through and for the occasional kick in the pants.

  It is such a boost to have one’s work recognized. I’d like to thank again the Scene of the Crime Author Festival for twice honouring my work, two short stories, both of which were set in the world of Riverside Drive.

  Hats off to my editor, Allister Thompson, who was an early champion of Riverside Drive and got me to pull it out of the bottom of my desk drawer. And thanks to the rest of the talented individuals at Dundurn for helping putting it between covers, both paper and virtual.

  Much thanks and gratitude to family both near and far for their patience and encouragement. I know writers can be such tiresome people.

  Lastly I would like to express my gratitude for the teachers I had who never stopped telling me that creative people do indeed have a valuable place in society. I know not all of us get to hear that.

  FALSE STARTS

  (APRIL 1919–JULY 1922)

  — Chapter 1 —

  DEMOLITION MAN

  April, 1919

  Jack McCloskey returned from the war so restless and full of nervous energy he couldn’t stand without pacing or walk without running, and whenever he got behind the wheel of his car it was a test of the machine’s endurance. While folks in town may have sympathized, they were also getting a little tired of dancing around him like he was an unexploded artillery shell.

  The turning point for Jack came one April morning when he set out in his Olds 37 for the post office on the main road and wound up lost in the next county. He pulled over onto the shoulder when he realized he had been driving around blind for close to an hour. An old farmer mending a fence on the other side of the ditch gave him directions home. When the same thing happened a few days later he didn’t pull over or even bother to slow down, not even after he noticed the blood smear on his shirtsleeve. He just kept driving.

  He was somewhere on the other side of Wheatley, heading east on the Talbot Road along Erie’s north shore. Stealing glances at the stony beach and rough blue water, he wondered if he wasn’t somehow trying to drive himself back to his senses. He listened to the tires grind the road and the gravel ping off the fenders. He watched the farms shrink in his rearview mirror before disappearing in the clouds of yellow dust. Putting the last couple of months behind him would be a good start, he thought, a good first step.

  He thought about that for a few more miles before deciding to take the long way home around Lake Erie. He suddenly felt a small measure of calm. He told himself he was doing the right thing. He hoped his father would understand. He knew his brother wouldn’t. But understanding was never something they expected from each other. What they expected, and got in spades, were rivalries and petty differences that too often blew up into fistfights. Their father tried not to take sides, but there were times when it was the only way to settle a matter.

  The road wound away from and then back towards the shore. Sometimes it was level with the beach while other times it traced the edge of a bluff. He felt like he was stitching the land to the lake. At one point the road disappeared into a dense cluster of maples. When it broke through, McCloskey looked out and noticed a couple fishing boats heading into the open water. It occurred to him that he hadn’t been stateside since he was a boy, on mysterious journeys with his father that he now knows were rendezvous with other smugglers. That was a lifetime ago.

  McCloskey re-examined the blood on his shirtsleeve. It had turned brown. Was it his? He didn’t seem to be cut anywhere and wasn’t in any kind of pain. He searched his mind but had no recollection of leaving the house, let alone the circumstances under which he did so. He rolled up his shirtsleeve and turned his mind back on the road.

  A couple of weeks passed before Frank McCloskey received word from his eldest son that he was working on a construction site in Toledo. Jack had been nearing the end of his 600-mile odyssey when, approaching Michigan, he saw a sign for the Canadian border and hesitated. He wasn’t ready to go home quite yet, though that’s not exactly what he said in his first postcard home. He simply told his father everything was fine but not to expect him any time soon.

  Jack got himself hitched to a team of labourers hired to demolish and excavate a city block. They worked right alongside the tractors and steam shovels with their crowbars and sledgehammers. It was brutal work but he threw himself into it. Having succeeded in driving himself from distraction, he was now set to realign his mind and body. The workers, many of them veterans, were put up in barracks. On the off hours they gambled, drank, and beat on each other. Eventually these three activities were amalgamated into bare-knuckle matches fought in the back room of Buckeye’s — the local watering hole.

  Although he was passionate about boxing and had won many regimentals, McCloskey wasn’t interested in any of this. He figured if he got injured in a fight he could be out of a job as well as out of a purse. And judging by the size of the purse, it wasn’t worth the risk. He could be quite pragmatic. That is, until he got inspired.

  A few weeks later, under a blazing hot Fourth of July sun, he and several thousand other fight fans sat in a makeshift arena over in Bay View Park and witnessed Jack Dempsey take on Jess Willard for the world heavyweight title. Dempsey looked disciplined, focused as he timed the release of each devastating blow. Willard had at least forty pounds on Dempsey, but Dempsey’s skill and ferocious power almost crippled the defending champion before the end of the first round.

  Willard staggered about the blood-splattered mat for another six minutes; taking hit after hit, his right eye swollen shut, his face a crimson mess. Before the bell signalled the start of the fourth round, someone from Willard’s corner threw in the towel and it landed at Dempsey’s feet. Dempsey had battered Willard within an inch of his life. Cheering fans swarmed the ring and carried off their new champion. The next morning McCloskey found a gym and started training.

  A fellow from the payroll office who knew a thing or two about keeping a book arranged for McCloskey to go a few rounds with a steelworker from the site. Bets started rolling in and the steelworker quickly became the odds-on favourite. He had a larger-than-life personality with matching shoulders, and when he
wasn’t dragging his knuckles on the sidewalk he was using them to drive rivets into fastener plates.

  The match was held on a hot and humid August night. Everyone came out to witness McCloskey’s suicide, filling the back room at Buckeye’s with their stench, noise, and cigar smoke. After the initial bell there was about a minute of dancing around that attracted groans and empty beer bottles from the crowd. The steelworker reacted by throwing a few careless swings at McCloskey’s head. And then McCloskey came out of nowhere with a barrage of punches culminating in a powerful left hook that crushed the steelworker’s cheekbone and sprinkled a few of his teeth across the mat. He went down. His trainer doused him with buckets of cold water, but his lights stayed out for a good long time.

  McCloskey stood over his opponent’s mangled body and smiled through the blood and sweat trickling down his face. Everyone was amazed at the fury and intensity of McCloskey’s blows. He was like a force of nature, moving from unforeseen to unstoppable in a matter of seconds. He surprised even himself. The site foreman lost money on the fight, big money, the kind of money that’s hard to forget.

  The next day McCloskey was told his services were no longer required and that he should hit the road. That was fine with him. He was confident that he could find work elsewhere by selling himself as both a skilled labourer and a fierce contender, and he did. He became a regular in the factories and shipyards that dotted the western shores of Lake Erie, fighting in bloody, bare-knuckle bouts that re-established his old regimental nickname: Killer McCloskey.

  This went on for just over a year until jobs started getting scarce. Recession, labour unrest, and an influenza epidemic were taking their toll on the economy. McCloskey considered going home. He didn’t doubt there were opportunities back in the Border Cities; what he was afraid of was relapsing into the twisted wreck of a man he was at the end of the war. At the same time he felt guilty about not keeping in touch with his father and brother. He had written them only two or three times since he left home, and even then it was only a few lines on a postcard.

  Days passed between jobs, and the bitter cold sharpened his hunger pangs until they were like a knife in his gut. He rang in the New Year unemployed and without a roof over his head. He was beginning to appreciate how quickly one’s fortune could turn. It was a bad spot to be in: even if he could get himself a match, he couldn’t fight tired and with no food in his belly. He was running on empty, in every sense.

  One morning while on a job hunt he found himself parked on the shoulder of Telegraph Road at the north end of town, staring at the sign that had stopped him from going home once before: CANADA 60 MILES. This time it felt like Toledo was showing him the door. He checked his mirror and saw a truck approaching. He let it pass before merging with the traffic heading into Michigan.

  When he reached Monroe he pulled over at a filling station to chisel the ice off his windshield and replenish his cigarette supply. At the counter in the garage there was a conversation going on between the mechanic and a teamster. It had something to do with the local stamping plant. Apparently as of this morning there were a few openings. The driver told McCloskey that if he was interested he should head over there pronto.

  For once McCloskey’s timing was perfect: he landed himself a job at the plant. He felt saved in more ways than one. With what little money he had left he got himself a hot meal and a room at a run-down hotel near the train station. It would feel good to be working again. He stretched himself out on the bed and listened to the boxcars shunting back and forth until night fell. He closed his eyes and sleep came swiftly.

  When he finished his shift the following afternoon and he felt he had a read on the place, he made some noise about being in need of a punching bag. The line workers knew what he was on about. One of them introduced him to a foreman who doubled as the plant’s unofficial sports and entertainment director. The foreman immediately paired McCloskey with a regular, a fighter who hailed from Oklahoma and went by the name Kid Okie.

  The story was the Kid had been too young to go to war, so he stayed home and pulled his mammy’s plow instead. When she couldn’t afford to feed him any more because the crops were poor, she sent him into the rustbelt to seek his fortune. He was pocketing the money he made at the plant and sending his ma his meagre winnings. Little did the old lady know.

  When the Kid climbed into the ring, McCloskey took a step back. He was about the size of one of the smaller Midwestern states. His short-cropped hair was white, in sharp contrast with his ruddy complexion. His trunks looked like they were tailored from a couple of grain sacks, his fists like clutches of sausages. At the sound of the bell he ambled towards McCloskey. He looked like he meant to do harm.

  McCloskey got the Kid to swing first and then weaved to his left, sent a crushing right to his solar plexus and, as the Kid spun, a left to the kidney. The Kid straightened up just in time to receive another combination of furious body blows followed by an uppercut that broke his jaw in three places. He was rolling his wisdom teeth around in his mouth when McCloskey delivered the coup de grace: a solid left hook to the side of his head.

  Less than thirty seconds into the fight, Kid Okie was as cold and flat as the prairie in winter. He never knew what hit him. When they pulled him off the mat he was thunderstruck, like a soldier pulled out of the earth after being buried alive by a mortar blast. McCloskey felt sorry for the kid, but only for a minute. He felt sorrier for the Kid’s mammy, who wouldn’t be getting her accustomed envelope this month.

  There was another dry spell and several weeks passed without any fight prospects. Then McCloskey got laid off from the plant. Pretty soon he was idling fast and getting anxious again. He knew what this could lead to, and the choice was clear: either fall apart in the streets of Monroe or take his chances back home in the Border Cities.

  McCloskey did his best thinking while eating. He debated the pros and cons of playing the prodigal son over a plate of muskrat, potatoes, and cabbage, washed down with a pint of ale much improved by a shot of rye. When he finished he considered the rat carcass on his plate and the nickel change he had left. Maybe it was time to finally bring things full circle. Ready or not, maybe it was time to take it home.

  He jogged through a light spring rain back to his car, where he thought about it some more. Eventually he settled on a compromise: he’d go back to the Border Cities but wait to contact his family. He would get himself a job at Ford’s — far from Ojibway but still close to the action — and settle in. Only after he carved a space for himself would he then contact his father and brother.

  Satisfied with his decision, he leaned back on the door, stretched his legs across the seat and, listening to the rain gently fall on the roof of the Olds, fell into deep sleep.

  — Chapter 2 —

  THE SQUARE CIRCLE

  April, 1921

  McCloskey left Monroe under a pale dawn hoping he had enough gas to get him the thirty or so miles upriver to Detroit. He braked for nothing and no one, coasting through intersections in Trenton, Wyandotte, and Ecorse. It turned into a game to see how far he could get without either stopping or slowing down.

  Approaching Zug Island he knew that Ojibway, his hometown and the westernmost Border City, was just over there on the other side of the river. Even if he didn’t have Zug to give him bearings, he knew where he was by the angle of the light on the water.

  He stayed close to the shoreline, taking Jefferson Avenue all the way into Detroit. He finally had a clear view of the Canadian shore when he came around Fort Wayne, and where the river bends at its narrowest point he could make out the spire of Assumption Church amid the budding trees and the cars moving along Riverside Drive. Those were his people over there; that was home. He hadn’t realized how lonely he was until now.

  He had been wandering the desert, trying to heal, and learning more about the world along the way. His mind rolled back two years to when he originally set out on his journey. It was a clear April morning not unlike this one, but his head was
in a fog. He felt he was a different person now, better equipped for life. He had crossed paths with a lot of veterans in his travels. Some had found their way while others were still pulling themselves out of a mental foxhole. He could tell when one of them wasn’t going to make it. He could see it in their eyes. He wondered what others saw in his.

  There was a lot of a commotion around Union Depot, and he had to stop for a train crossing Jefferson and heading into the station. Taxis and luggage wagons were jockeying for position around the departures area so he dropped down to Atwater. He could have taken the ferry across at Woodward Avenue, but when he saw the crush of people at the docks he was convinced he was doing the smart thing by taking the side-door entrance into the Border Cities upriver. Ford City was his objective anyway.

  Fortunately, there were enough fumes in the engine and quiet in the streets that he was able to just make it through the downtown. He let his dilapidated Olds roll to a stop near the corner of Dubois. He abandoned the vehicle and its contents, resisting the impulse to take a match to it. Instead he hoofed the last few blocks to the bottom of Joseph Campau Street. The air was cool, but he could feel the sweat on his brow and the anticipation stirring in his belly. We’re going to take things one step at a time, he reminded himself, one step at a time.

  It was early morning and commuters were gathering at the dock: drab pencil pushers from the distillery scanning the business columns of the Free Press and talking export duty, and a couple middle-management types from Ford’s discussing productivity. McCloskey walked up to the kiosk where he exchanged his life savings — a nickel — for a ticket to Walkerville.

  The ship’s whistle blew once and then a second time.