The houses were tidy here, but the cars were in bad shape. The one passing him right now was nothing but a lace of rust, its bumpers held on by bungee cords. Back home—back in Portland—a car that age might have five more years in it if you kept the oil changed. But here they salted the roads.
Or was it the salt, really? That was what his father had told him. But how he felt it was the great widths of this flat landscape that sucked the life out of cars. Storms swept hard across the prairies, with no mountains to block their effect; maybe the North Pole, its effects also undamped by terrain, pulled molecules of metal out of cars, leaving them riddled and weakened. Then the weather finished them off.
They got off the freeway and headed west on Capitol. Parks and fast-food places that might have been anywhere; suburbs whose names he’d forgotten. Seen from street level, the houses weren’t really so tidy: paint was peeling, shingles loose. Midwestern winters were hard on houses. Or maybe it was the neighborhood; he had not lived here in so long, he didn’t know if this was one of the bad ones. Probably that was it. There were too many boarded-up storefronts here for a “good” neighborhood.
But something in him believed those stores were not closed, just boarded up against the pull of the prairie—the infinite widths of horizon that kept drawing his eyes from the road ahead of him. Like a hurricane, he thought. He imagined cautious Milwaukee shopkeepers boarding their windows against the horizon: grim Germanic faces, starched white aprons, pencils tucked behind ears... and ten-penny nails clamped between white lips, eyes glancing over shoulders as the shopkeepers nailed up another sheet of plywood.
Unlike a hurricane, though, the horizon never went away.
He turned right on Brookfield. Though closer to home, this area was less familiar. It had been farm country while he was growing up; now it was all strip malls and condominiums. Square boxes bolted to the land, with parking lots like scabs.
He gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles whitened, but his hands still trembled. He was sure his wife could feel the car shimmy. She touched the back of his hand, an offer of comfort. He held her hand briefly, then clutched the wheel again. Not speaking.
His father had always gone very quiet at times of high emotion. His silences burned like pure hydrogen, a hot invisible flame.
Left on Bluebird. Lots of new houses, but there was the Johanssens’ place. Someone had stuck a cedar deck onto it and given it a hideous sky-blue paint job.
And now his house. This tiny, cartoon thing, with its faded yellow paint, had been his home for sixteen years? That gable, that black window, had been his bedroom? He had often wished for a tree outside his window, like the trees down which boys in adventure stories climbed, but he had had nothing but a sheer drop to the concrete patio. That drop didn’t look like so much from here.
It wasn’t his bedroom now. It was his mother’s sewing room. Had been. Empty now. Empty of people; full of possessions, of memories. All had to be sorted, cleared, sold off. His wife had told him about clearing out her grandmother’s trailer after the funeral. But there had been sisters and cousins to help there; it had been a family event. He was an only child.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay in a hotel?” He realized he’d been sitting in the driveway with the ignition off for some time. Still gripping the wheel. Staring up at the bedroom window.
“No. Waste of good money, when there’s a whole house sitting here empty.” It was exactly what his mother would have said.
“Well, we should go inside then.” She opened her door, and a polite repeated chime sounded from under the dashboard. A cold March wind tugged at her hair. “Are you OK?”
“I’m... good enough. Just leave me here for a moment.” He pulled the keys from the ignition, silencing the chime, and handed them to his wife. “The key with the yellow thing on it opens the front door. I’ll be along in a minute.” She kissed him on the cheek and closed the door behind herself. He heard the trunk open and close.
The horizon was tremendous. Terrifying. Three hundred and sixty degrees across. He was glad of the car’s roof pillars, glad of the tiny house and the garage, glad of anything that could hide a little of it.
The sun was beginning to set, that enormous sky shading orange to purple, brushed with trails of cloud like finger paints. Lights came on in the house.
Finally he could delay no longer. He unbuckled his seat belt. He opened the door.
He clung to the armrest as he climbed unsteadily out of the car. Gravel crunched under his shoes.
He stood next to the car, holding onto the door with both hands.
Then, knowing what awaited him, he swallowed and let go of the door.
Slowly at first, he fell away from the car. Gravel sliding under his shoes, then under his knees. When he hit the black plastic edging at the edge of the driveway he began to tumble, rolling over and over across the flat, green lawn. It was like all the times he’d rolled down grassy hillsides as a child, the dirt and grass thudding against his shoulders and elbows. But as he tumbled faster and faster he began to panic. Clawed at the grass, pulling up clumps of sod and earth with his fingernails. No use. The tidy little house with the glowing windows, clinging like a limpet to the flat, flat prairie, dwindled each time it came into view. Then he was no longer tumbling, but falling.
Falling free.
He fell all the way to the horizon.
Brotherhood
Gus Collina died on a summer day, when the light slanted down through Kensington Steel’s tall soot-streaked windows and cut hard-edged columns through the filthy air. Outside those windows the Monongahela River oozed past the town of Monessen, water cooked brown and thick as pudding by the July heat; inside the plant it was hotter still, the year-round heat of the furnaces made even more intolerable by the blazing sun outside. It was one of those days where the sweat pools at the base of your spine, crawls across the palms of your hands under the thick leather gloves, and drips from your forehead onto the lenses of your safety glasses.
Gus was working the coil line that day, where red-hot iron ingots were rolled out into long sheets. He was just coming to the end of another double shift, pushing hard to meet the impossible quotas management demanded. After sixteen hours on the job he was bone-tired, but it was 1937 and he knew he was lucky to have a job at all, and so he kept on working. Until he stumbled, just a little, and one foot caught on the other. He put out a hand to steady himself—and touched the four-foot-wide band of steel, four hundred degrees hot and moving forty-five miles an hour.
Tony Collina saw him die. Tony was Gus’s brother, two years younger, and he watched from a catwalk fifty feet away as Gus was pulled into the works without even time to scream. Tony prayed to Saint Sebastian, the patron of steelworkers, as his steel-toed boots rang down the steps and pounded across the gritty concrete floor, but even as he rushed he knew it was already too late.
They found nothing but blood. Every solid particle of Gus’s body had been crushed out of existence between the turns of hot steel on the ten-ton roll at the end of the line.
-o0o-
Tony moved through the crowd of friends and relations at Gus’s wake, accepting condolences as he passed the hat for Gus’s wife—widow, now. Anna had two daughters, and a baby on the way, and no insurance or savings.
Gino Mattioli came through the front door still in his work clothes, his face filthy and bearing the red marks of his safety glasses. Not even death could slow the production lines at Kensington Steel. “Tony, I’m so sorry I missed the funeral. I came as quick as I could.”
“’S’okay, Gino.” Tony held up his hat, which rattled with silver and paper. “For Anna.”
Gino’s handsome face pinched into a scowl as he dug in his pants pocket. “Jesus, what a situation. How’s she taking it?”
“Not well. My wife’s with her now.”
Gino pulled his hand from his pocket, stared down into it for a moment, then with an expression of resignation dumped the whole pathetic handful of chan
ge into Tony’s hat. “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”
“Thanks anyway.”
The two men embraced, the hatful of money jingling in Tony’s ear. Before letting go, Gino asked “How about you?”
“Me?”
Gino pulled back, held both of Tony’s shoulders. “Yeah, you. How are you taking it?”
Fireworks of emotion exploded in Tony’s chest like the sparks from a Bessemer converter. Tony had always been the shortstop to Gus’s pitcher. They’d played together, fought together, got in trouble together, worked together. Gus had handled everything when Pop died of tuberculosis in ’34, shielding Tony from the diagnosis as long as he could. Gus had been the best man at Tony’s wedding, less than a year ago. And now... all of a sudden, at twenty-seven, Tony was the papa of the entire family.
“I’m all right,” he said. He turned away so Gino couldn’t see his face. “I’m all right.”
Gino squeezed Tony’s shoulder. “I’d better go in and pay my respects.”
“Yeah. You do that.” He wiped his eyes quickly and turned back. “Thanks.”
Gino walked into the living room, where Gus and Anna’s wedding photo sat atop a plain pine coffin and a huge cross of flowers perfumed the air. Tony tried not to remember that the coffin was empty except for a pair of bloodstained and mangled steel-toed boots, tried not to think about how much the coffin and the flowers and the priest had cost, tried not to worry about how he was going to support Anna and her kids as well as his own Sofia and little Bella... tried not to wonder how many more men would die before this job was finished.
Gino finished praying and rose to his feet. He kissed his fingers and touched them to the coffin. “It’s a damn shame,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “That’s—what, six already this year?”
“Seven.”
“Jesus.” He shook his head. “They’re killing us. Honest to God, Tony, they’re killing us with this schedule.”
“I know. But if we don’t make this deadline you know they’ll give the damn bridge contract to Inland and then every single one of us will be on the W.P.A.”
“Now you’re talking like management.”
Tony pursed his lips, drew in a breath through his nose. “I have to go and give this money to Anna.” But as he turned to go, Gino caught his shoulder.
“We don’t have to take this. We can fight them. We can unionize.”
Tony slapped Gino’s hand away. “And we can lose our jobs. Or worse. Remember Republic Steel?”
Everyone knew how the Republic Steel strike had ended. On Memorial Day 1937, a crowd of picketers were met by armed policemen as they approached the plant. Ten men died in the resulting melee, hundreds were injured, and the strike was broken. The newsreels called the strikers a bloodthirsty mob, but the steelworkers’ grapevine said they were just a Memorial Day picnic crowd, including women and children, armed with nothing but placards. Either way, the strike had been a disaster for the union.
Gino’s dark brows drew together as he stared hard into Tony’s eyes. Then he turned away and waved dismissively at Tony. “Go on, then. Tell Anna, if there’s anything I can do...”
“I’ll tell her.”
On the way to the back bedroom where Sofia comforted the grieving Anna, Tony passed through the kitchen. Warm smells of the lasagna and porcetta and ravioli brought by the aunts and neighbor women enticed his nose, but the stove was cold. Cold as death.
-o0o-
Tony sat up in bed. “Who’s there?”
At first there was no sign of what had woken him. Sofia snored gently beside him, and little Bella breathed peacefully in her crib beside the bed. Similar sounds came through the door, where Anna and her two children slept in the living room. Six people made a tight crowd in the four-room company house, but Tony could not shirk his family obligations.
Just as Tony was about to settle back down and close his eyes, he saw something move. It might have been the curtains stirring in the fitful breeze, but no—it was at the foot of the bed. Something rippled in the stripes of yellow light cast by the street light through the Venetian blinds.
Tony’s eyes snapped open and his heart pounded. “Anna? Is that you?”
“Don’t you know me, you moron?” The voice was familiar, but it sounded like a long-distance telephone call from the bottom of a freezer, and the hair rose on the back of Tony’s neck.
“Gus?”
“Who else?”
Tony squinted into the darkness. Was that a human figure perched on the footboard? Or was it just a shadow? Tony could see right through it to the Blessed Virgin on the wall behind it.
“You’re not Gus,” he hissed. He gripped the sheet so tightly he felt it start to tear.
The figure leaned forward, the stripes of light shifting across its face, and Tony thought he saw Gus’s big ears and prominent Adam’s apple. Just like his. “Who else would know about the deal you and I made with Walter Ailes?”
Goosebumps pricked Tony’s forearms. “I never should have let you talk me into it in the first place.”
The shadow seemed to shake its head. “I’m sorry about that, now.”
Tony closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose hard. “This is a dream, right?”
“Maybe. But even if it is, there’s one thing I want you to remember when you wake up.”
Tony let go of his nose, stared at the shadowy figure.
“You’re going to have to decide who your real friends are, little brother. Ailes gives you money, but...”
“I have Anna and your kids to support! There’s no way I can back out now.”
“Don’t make the same mistake I did.” And then, without transition, Gus was gone.
Tony gazed on the face of the Blessed Virgin. Her cheap printed smile was not very comforting. It was just a dream, he told himself. But then he put out a hand to the footboard where his brother’s ghost had sat. The wood was cold under his fingertips, though the July night was sweltering.
Tony put the pillow over his head, just like when he was a kid, and shivered until he fell asleep.
-o0o-
Molten steel glowed orange-red as it seethed from the giant ladle into the ingot molds laid out at Tony’s station. He pulled a bandana from his pocket and wiped the back of his neck as he watched the pour, then stuffed it quickly away before guiding the ladle to the next mold. Hot air and sparks roared out of the mold as the steel poured in, burning the scowl on Tony’s face.
Bruno the foreman slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re wanted at the office,” he shouted over the clang and rush of the plant.
The oak and glass office door closed with a thud, blocking out most of the sound from the plant floor beyond. “I’m Antonio Collina,” he said to the suspicious-looking clerk behind the counter.
Walter Ailes, the plant’s director of personnel, emerged from a back room a few minutes later. His hair and skin were very pale, and wire-rimmed glasses perched atop his hatchet-thin nose. Tony was ashamed of his own swarthy, grimy complexion.
“Thank you for coming, Mister Collina,” said Ailes. “Won’t you please come this way?” His skinny hand was cool and surprisingly strong, easily matching the pressure of Tony’s callused fingers.
Together they moved from the concrete of the plant floor onto hardwood. Tony became increasingly uncomfortable as they walked, acutely aware of the gray grit imbedded in his coveralls, his face, his hair. He was afraid to touch the clean cream-colored walls; he knew he stank of sweat and hot metal. “What’s this all about, Mister Ailes?” Tony whispered. “You said never to come into the office.”
“Yes. But Mister Kensington wanted to have a word with you.” Ailes opened a heavy door on which OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT was written in gold leaf.
The office behind the door was bigger than Tony’s entire house, with high ceilings and oak bookcases full of ledgers. The desk, also of oak, was the size of the altar at St. Cajetan’s. Behind the desk hung a portrait of OUR FOUNDER, Joseph G. Kensington.
And below the portrait sat Joseph G. Kensington II, President of Kensington Steel. He stood and held out his hand.
Tony had never met a Kensington before. He was nearly as pale as Ailes, but his nose was round and pink and his jowls seemed to bulge from his high starched collar like a big bubble-gum bubble. “Mister Collina, I was so sorry to hear about your brother Giuseppe.”
“Thank you, sir.” Kensington’s hand felt like a bunch of uncooked sausages. Tony didn’t want to grip it too firmly, for fear it would burst.
“I like to think of everyone here at Kensington Steel as family. And families stick together in time of hardship, do they not?”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
Kensington wiped his hand with a white silk handkerchief, then dropped it in the wastepaper basket. “I am aware,” he said, “that some members of the Kensington Steel family do not have the family’s best interests at heart. Mister Ailes tells me that the weekly reports that you and your brother have written on these agitators’ activities have been most informative.”
“Thank you, sir.” Tony gritted his teeth at the memory of the men who had lost their jobs as a result of those reports. But the extra six dollars a week in his pay envelope, which had been a luxury for a family of three, were a necessity for six. It would be even worse when Anna’s baby came.
“I want to make sure that these reports continue. Despite the unfortunate circumstances.”
“Of course, sir.” You cold-hearted bastard, he thought.
“We believe,” said Ailes, “that there may be an increase in... antisocial activity, in the wake of your brother’s death.”
“I don’t understand, sir.” But Tony knew what he meant, and he felt sweat trickling down his sides.
“We are talking about unionization, Mister Collina!” Kensington thundered. “Communists and anarchists. Bloodthirsty men who desire nothing less than the destruction of the American way of life!” His pink cheeks grew pinker.
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