Rules of '48

by Jack Cady

  He picked up the stack of unpaid bills. Among them were sheets of lined paper, like kids used in school, and a packet of letters. Words on the lined paper were in trembly, but once elegant script. The language wasn't Russian. He was sure it wasn't Russian.

  Lucky stepped onto the back porch. Brown grass in the backyard, a scraggy stand of chrysanthemums, a worn-out broom standing beside the door. Nothing. Just nothing.

  Step into the yard, and look around. Next door, the side of Wade's place shone painted and shiny. From out back came the sound of men huffing and puffing, wrestling something big into a truck. Lucky looked around, looked more closely at the porch, and saw where the man had lived.

  There was crawlspace beneath the porch, and a piece of plywood had been nailed to make a shield, or wall. A man could climb into the crawlspace, hide under the house, and the plywood would shield his entry.

  Lucky knelt, peered, saw remains of an old mattress. Paper sacks and a few tin cans lay here and there, clean; maybe licked clean. If the man had food, why starvation? The cans carried little freckles of rust. Only humidity could have done that, because the ground was dry.

  Lucky, who knew a good bit about the ways of the poor, began to tremble. These were cans scavenged from garbage cans, doubtless scavenged late at night; and scavenged awhile back when the man still had strength.

  The doc had said, "Never again. Not in this country."

  "We didn't know," Lucky whispered to the old mattress and the rusting cans. "We didn't know."

  He fumbled his way to the garage, stepped inside, and saw what Jim and Howard had seen. Dead flowers, wilting flowers, some sort of uniform, and a picture. He studied the picture and choked back tears. No one he knew. No one anyone knew.

  And then he wept, and did not a first understand that the death of one man explained the death of millions. He leaned against the wall of the garage, objectivity gone, dispassion gone, even fear gone before the horror of knowing, and feeling, the cost of war and hatred.

  He turned back to the house, still weeping. Blood from his cut had coagulated, and he still needed water to wash his hand. Before he left the kitchen he picked up the sheets of paper and packet of letters. Someone, somewhere, would know the language. Someone would be able to translate.

  When Lucky got to the front porch the doc sat in one of the old chairs, and he watched the corpse. The doc wasn't talking. He waited for an ambulance or meat wagon. He looked at Lucky's face, at Lucky's tears. Then, remembering, he reached in his bag. "Tetanus," he said. "Goddamn."

  Early Sunday Morning, September 20th

  Jackson St.

  The best city in the south, and one of the best in the country, lies sleeping in the nest of its great river. Along Jackson St. a patrol car drifts like slow footsteps along old brick. It slows even more beside the dark front of Sapphire Top Spot, then the cop gooses it a little and the car moves out. A cat crosses in front of headlights and the cop slows; the cat stepping prissy and sure of herself.

  Along the alleys of the city, rats run, dogs rummage, cats hunt. Somewhere in the darkness the ghost of Jolly hovers, and in the alley beside Lucky's store three men and two women hunker down, drinking beer, thinking thoughts; folks with never a home to go to, or worse, afraid to go home for fear of a beating, or woman-scold.

  "I want you have it baby, but I'm cuttin' my ass off. Can't do nothin' tonight . . . ." . . . a woman pleading her period, getting out of something.

  "Albert gotta open. Man drink in a damn alley don't suit."

  In his rooms, Lester dreaming dreams. Wade and Lester, a team, it might could be. Wade, ambitious, seeing ways to expand. Lester, satisfied for now with a raise in pay. Dreams, goddamn, sometimes do come true.

  Howard at home, asleep, dreaming hopeful dreams. Howard feeling safe because of his mother, because of Lester, because of Lucky.

  And up on Bardstown road a traffic light winking at itself, red and yellow and green flashes regulating traffic that isn't happening. Red flash on the windows of drugstore and car dealership, red flash across the asphalt lot of Shell station, red flash reaching into the dark depths of White Castle.

  Auction sitting dark and silent. Jim at home, dreaming ugly dreams; nightmare washing windows, washing and washing.

  A single car, a '41 Cad cruises Bardstown Road, coming from deep in the Highlands. It stops before the red light. Nary a car in sight. Stores dark. The car sits through red, green, yellow, red. Then it hangs a right into Cherokee park, cruises; Lucky sleepless, Lucky telling himself it is unfair to Rachel if he allows himself to go crazy.

  Because now he understands how a man can starve in the midst of plenty, and how a man can drive himself beyond all seeming depths of sorrow. And now he understands a million deaths, and death is real. And now he understands what his mind has tried to conceal through years of war and years of peace.

  Must some men destroy so that other men learn? Learn what? Must Able kill Cain, or must Able kill Able?

  Or is the root of all sorrow, simply hatred, the kind that stretches its long and vicious tongue across history? "Kill them, they are not like us."

  Those words should be sung as a dark anthem, words hissing their song through all of human history. Because no matter how hard a man tried, or no matter how hard lots of men tried, the song kept hissing.

  Roll along the dark and tree-lined roads of the park, Hogan's Fountain, Big Rock, drive round and round and round.

  But the park is too beautiful. Go someplace sad.

  Down Bardstown Road, past Charlie's old place now decked out like a carnival. Times changing. Maybe, not for the better. Charlie dead, and not two months . . . Charlie a symbol of what used to be . . . and some of it good, and some bad . . . and maybe it is just as well that Charlie lies in the cool, cool ground of Cave Hill.

  Hang a left down Broadway, right at Jackson St. He pulled up to his store, smart enough to know why. At his store he felt like a man with purpose, a man who was not a cipher. He left his car and walked to his store. He unlocked, the lock clicking.

  A shadowed face peered around the corner of the alley. "Lucky robbin' his own store," a voice whispered, but loud. "Gonna sue the insurance."

  Once inside he did not turn on lights. Instead, he pulled up a stool behind the counter where he could watch and hear the silence of Jackson St. where southern ghosts might drift, and might be seen.

  But no European ghosts would appear, except in his own mind; and that mind clouded because the tale, he knew, must always be incomplete. The tall man, the tall son of Mrs. Samuels, had been a Polish soldier. That much was certain. During the war the Jewish soldiers of Poland established a failed but heroic record, right along with the rest of the Polish army.

  The peoples and wars of Europe have always ebbed and flowed. Refugees now fled from the northernmost points of Finland to the southernmost points of Greece. From the Balkans people flooded into western Europe.

  And the tall man had somehow rescued, having traced, his brother. A miracle, because both men survived. In the middle of dispersion.

  And they came to America, to a place where their father had once had moderate success. All of that was speculative, but it was what 'had to have been'.

  A police car cruised Jackson St. Lucky ducked behind his counter as a searchlight walked across the front of his store. The searchlight probed the alley. The cop car slowed, then, as the cop decided 'ta hell with it' speeded up. From the alley came the sound of muted cussing.

  The rest of it was definite, because once translated, the lined pages of trembling script became a record. It was not a journal, exactly, or a diary. It explained, but mostly it grieved.

  When Mrs. Samuels died, it was from diabetes. Her sons knew it was coming. She knew it was coming. She feared the cost of death, the expenditure of remaining money. The scrawled pages told about that. Then the pages recorded her sons' small satisfaction in the midst of great grief. She had died thinking her sons would live under a cloak of freedom.

  And
she died not knowing that her eldest son, savior of her youngest, was also dying from a wound; metal working its way in slow sureness toward death. The burden of that knowledge rested with the younger son.

  The tall man, the oldest son, ended quickly. When his pain became too great, and while he thrashed about in semi-consciousness, his younger brother shot him . . . no depth of sin greater, no height of love greater.

  The living brother moved the corpse, hid a bloody pillow, and planned to dig a grave in the garage. And then the horror began.

  Discovery. Someone entering the garage. Only moments to hide beneath the house. Police breaking down the front door. To the mind of a man who spoke no English, police were police. Brown shirt or blue shirt. Storm trooper or cop. To the mind of a man who had been in a death camp, police meant only one thing.

  And so he hid. And so he attended to the memory of his brother. And, late at night, he sorted through garbage. And then, becoming weak, and weaker, and weaker, plucked two flowers for his brother. And then in desperation he struggled toward the world of men, and made it only to his front porch. And then he died under no cloak of freedom.

  Over east, over the tops of old brick houses along Jackson St., and beyond the river, first faint reaches of dawn stretched orange across the sky. From the alley came the distant sound of snoring, raspy, desperate in-drawing of drunken breath. From the hospital, over on Preston St., sounded an ambulance siren. Soon the city would wake, do business, make gossip, play politics. People would brag or complain, and some, like Howard, would get on with their dreams.

  Lucky sat, watching, and telling himself that maybe a man couldn't win. Maybe the point was not winning. Maybe the point was to keep on trying; and what in the outrageous name of a fretful god did that mean? Above him, high on shelf, Lola the guinea hen seemed cluck-y, and Thomas, the Plymouth Rock rooster watched Jackson St.; Thomas, after these many hard weeks, looking even more crazy than he had ever looked, ever before.

  What Came After

  And so they ended, those seven deadly weeks. They ended with the burial of that younger son (paid for by Lucky), and then the living turned back to the business of living. Some did well, and some badly.

  Ozzie lasted until 1951 when he was shotgunned down at a crossroads in rural Arkansas. What brought him to such a deadly place no one knows, and not many cared. Blue took up with Zeke for a while, but couldn't stand him. In her early years she bore two kids, raised them at least better that she'd been raised, and today is an old lady in a housing project. She sits before TV and gossips with the next-door neighbor. Both ladies agree that youngsters, these days, do not own a speck of politeness.

  Albert died of heart in '50, and Alfonzo the same in '55. Albert and Alfonzo left us before Jackson St. began to change. The Sapphire Top Spot passed to other hands and stayed open through 1967.

  Fudd complained and bitched. He spent his last years absolutely sure someone was trying to steal from him, maybe as much as a dime. No one noticed when he passed. One day he wasn't there, and no one wondered.

  Gloria is almost 90, and riding ramrod over the day room in a terribly expensive and snazzy nursing home.

  Daniels, in the late '70s, traded to get himself a new Cadillac and eighty acres in Indiana. He covered the hillsides with goods. He had to build barns to hold " . . .one of every damn thing that has ever been made."

  Wade and Lester did good for three years. They worked hand-in-glove until friction built. They groused at each other. They pissed and moaned. They became great friends.

  And, then, in August of '51 a dry goods store that opened in Charlie Weaver's place went bust. With Wade chagrined, but cheering him on, Lester opened his own place; a black man standing where Charlie Weaver once sat; a black man jazzing where Charlie had once done dry humor.

  Lester's business rocked along, almost making it, sometimes on the edge of going broke. And then it took a turn, because Lester and Miz Esther caught hold of each other, and held tight. Lester had found his woman.

  Miz Esther went no-nonsense at the business. Lester's auction turned to consignment house, with auction on the side, and Lester joined the church. Miz Esther gave him a daughter, Marjorie, who now does social work in Chattanooga; and a son, Jackson, who runs a hospital laboratory; plus Howard.

  Lester is a happy man. If, sometimes in the long reaches of night, he thinks of his communist girl Mona, it means not much. Who among us have not (one time or another) thought of our first loves?

  These days Lester is retired, and, if not rich, awful comfortable. Rockin' chair kept stalking him, and finally caught him; but he rocks fast.

  Wade bulled his way through the '50s, through the '60s, and just barely through the '70s. He worked hard. When he lost his wife to illness, his family fell into such sorrow and disarray it never really recovered.

  Wade started drinking more than he ought, but kept working; because work is what he knew. Like Alfonzo and Albert, heart is what got him. When he died he left instructions that his body lie beside his wife, back in Blackford County. He claimed he didn't mind being caught dead there, he just didn't want to live in the damn place.

  And his kids, who had spent their young lives fearing or detesting him, found that they missed him badly. As years passed that feeling did not change.

  Wade's daughter, our beloved Miss Pushy, had stayed beside her dad. She married. Took over the auction. Finally moved it to better rooms on Oak St.

  Mrs. Samuels' house stood for another year in disrepair. Then a carpet dealer bought it. He put on a roof and painted the place in green with red trim. He installed fluorescent lights. He swore like a maniac because there was no way in the world to get enough light into that house. Too much darkness, too many shadows. It made his inventory looked ratty. After another year the house was bulldozed and became a parking lot for White Castle.

  Jim wandered. As a young man he went to sea for a while, then returned home. He married (but not auburn-haired Miss Stacy Hall who married . . . nobody seems to know). Jim's marriage didn't take. Nor did the second one, or third. He drifted here and there, learning things (half of which he wished he hadn't), made a living in various ways; and in his old age, having found the right woman, started writing small histories.

  Howard, naturally enough, got his store. What with having two fathers, Lucky and Lester, it was predestined. Today, Howard has three stores, a wife (though not science teacher Miss Sarah Jones who married a fireman), two kids, and five grandkids. Howard is aging but active and still skinny; except with a little potbelly. He hires his relatives, plus other kids; young boys mostly, teaching them a trade.

  Lucky, who had finally come fully alive to the haunts of history, mourned in the manner of good men. He mourned for the dead. He mourned for his country. He watched the political hounds who he feared, as they began to run in packs. He watched the awful witch hunts of the '50s, the high-striding mindlessness of Joe McCarthy, before Mr. Joe drank himself to death. And, though Lucky was not a drinking man, he was apt to mention in the presence of preachers that good red whiskey certainly had its charms, if it killed Senator Joe McCarthy.

  Because, for quite a while, Lucky became bitter. Instead of seeking a fortune, he had stayed on Jackson St. where he was needed. In his quiet way he had set out to change the world for the better; and the world just got worse.

  He remained bitter until 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled against school segregation and spanked the butt of Topeka. He perked up during the '60s when youngsters, ignorant and obnoxious, took rebellion to the streets. Lucky was not fooled about the youngsters—God knows, Lucky knew kids—but among all the howling ignorance of mostly-spoiled brats, there was a spirit that rebelled.

  And he watched a series of Presidents, so enamored of their love affairs with themselves, that they forgot to love their country.

  And he watched the rise of Israel, and he mourned as Israel struggled against a religious right that became what it hated; a right wing with the rhetoric of Nazis.

 
; And yet, Lucky like so many Jews kept hoping, as Jews still hope; while fearing the next witch hunt, the next dispersion.

  Lucky ran his store, until in the '70s Housing and Urban Development bulldozed most of Jackson St. and built a project. The heart just went out of Lucky, and he retreated into silence. He and Rachel retired to Miami.

  He had set out, in that modest way, to change the world; and figured he had failed. None of us know, to this day, if he ever understood that he sure as hell changed part of it.

  And Louisville-town, what of it?

  Nothing good comes easy. In 1954 a white liberal named Carl Braden bought a house in a white subdivision, then sold it to a colored man named Andrew Wade. Crosses were burned. The house was bombed.

  The Louisville establishment, including the liberal Courier-Journal, reacted like a man goosed with a cattle prod, whimpering and wondering "why, oh, why?" Most liberal white folks and liberal colored folks ran for cover. The police blamed Braden, and the police investigation was a sham.

  Then, A. Scott Hamilton, public prosecutor, witch-hunter and red-baiter extrordinaire, tried Braden for sedition. A hick newspaperman named John Hitt incited action by screaming 'Communist'. And a lump of Ku Klux excrement named Millard Dee Grubbs, proclaimed that the Roosevelts (Franklin by then dead, but Eleanor still alive) were the power behind a communist move to place niggers in every white neighborhood of America.

  Yes, Louisville went through a lot. But, also, by 1954 parks were integrated. There were other improvements. A colored man or woman could walk into any library in town and check out a book. The fire stations started mixing white and colored firemen.

  Then came school integration. The man in charge was a dry stick who knew administration, but knew no more about teaching than a hog knows about a Bible. Omar Carmichael administered integration of the schools, and there was no violence. There was also not much integration. The schools stayed steady until the '70s when busing began. Then, for a while, all hell broke loose.