by Robert Ward
My grandfather sat down heavily on a rotted bench that looked out over the waterfront. In front of us an old tug called the Wanda bobbed in the water. She looked warm, secure, brave.
“Frank Walsh was like a dad to me. Ever since my own dad had died, he’d taken care of me and helped me learn all I had to know to navigate. He gave me my first berth on a ship, and he bought me drinks down at the old Wishing Well Tavern. Many a time he staked me to food or a five-spot that I’d take home to your grandmother. He was just a good mate. And that man could talk, too…. Funny, sometimes when I lay in bed at home, I think of him now, and his voice is as clear as a bell in my head. That happens when you get old. It’s the damnedest thing. It can fool you totally. You hear a voice, and you could swear the person is alive, like old Frank … but he’s been gone for nearly thirty years.”
Then an extraordinary thing happened. My grandfather’s voice broke. He was easily the toughest man I have ever met, and I had never seen much sign of emotion from him before. But now he began to sob, and I didn’t know what to do or say. I stared out at the Wanda and tried to act as though nothing extraordinary was happening. Slowly, I moved my hand onto his shoulder. And this time he didn’t jerk away.
“He was my friend, and he wasn’t afraid of nothing. He talked up the union right down here on the docks. He handed out flyers, and he buttonholed guys in bars, telling them to join up. He did a lot of the latter ‘cause Frank was a great whiskey drinker. One of the big owners and crimps was Grimek, Owen Grimek, and he was one tough guy himself. He didn’t want any goddamned union, and he hired some boys from outta Washington, D.C. Plug uglies … they come around and wailed up on two of the union boys, Wally Davis and Bobby Hale. Beat the hell out of them, right down there on Thames Street.”
My grandfather pointed down the street. There was an old man walking a small white dog.
“But that didn’t do it. Both of them come back fighting for the union. And Frank gave interviews to the papers, naming Grimek as a scum sucker. I knew all hell was gonna break loose soon. By now the union was getting men to join. People were so damned broke they didn’t care anymore. They had been pushed as far as they could go. And Billy and Terry were making speeches. So I felt I had to join or I couldn’t look at my friends anymore. I came home and told your grandmother. I thought she might put up a fight about it, since we had two kids, but she just looked at me and said, “I knew you were going to do it. I’ve been thinking about it myself, and I’ve decided to come down and march with you.”
“That sounds just like her,” I said, and I thought of the Negroes again.
“Yeah, don’t it?” my grandfather said.
“So did she march?” I said.
“She did … one time. But she had some problems after that. So she gave me moral support at home.”
“Problems?” I said. “What kind of problems?”
My grandfather looked down at the ground, then up at me.
“Had a few of her spells,” he said. “Bad ones, too. Took to bed for about three months.”
“Really?” I said.
“You never seen her spells?” he said. “Can be bad. Walks in her sleep … bad stuff.”
I started to tell him that I knew what he was talking about, but decided against it. It was clear that he didn’t want to go on about it, and I knew if I pushed I might not learn about the union.
He rubbed his lined face with his old callused hand.
“Was about a week later when Frank got drunk down at the Wishing Well. I was with him for most of it, but I finally went down and fell asleep at the YMCA. They had rooms there you could pass out in if you were too drunk to make it home. The Y was started by church types trying to get sailors off the booze. Good intentions, but dull-as-hell preachers. Anyway, the guys told me the next day that Frank had left the tavern about ten to two. He was pretty well lit. He only lived up on Aliceanna Street, two blocks away, but he never made it home.”
Now my grandfather stopped talking altogether and gasped for air.
“Cap,” I finally said. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” he managed to say. “I’m fine. Thing is—they found Frankie floating facedown off of Pier Five. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. That’s the way my best friend died.”
He sobbed a little more, and I put my arm around his shoulders. I felt tears come down my own cheeks now, and I didn’t give a damn who saw me.
“Guess they thought by killing Frankie it would stop us, but if they did, they had another thing coming. We buried Frankie down at Greenmount, and a big bunch of us joined up and then the fight really started. It was bloody, and it was ugly. That’s how I got this.”
He pointed to the scar above his eye.
“Grimek’s guys gave you that?”
My grandfather shook his head.
“I wish. No, sir, I got this from the union boys themselves.”
“What?” I was stunned.
“Yep. Things got kinda complicated after that. Our union went on strike, but we were never supported by the longshoremen. We tried to get them on our side, but they wouldn’t go for it, because their New York leaders were all bought off by the damned owners. Now these new guys showed up, guys who were professionals, if you know what I mean, and they beat the hell out of some of our guys, and the word was they were in the pay of our so-called brother union—the longshoremen. I finally ran into it myself. I was coming back from a strike meeting, on the streetcar, down at 33rd and Greenmount right in front of the Boulevard Theater. Three guys jumped me right at the corner and hit me over the head with a lead pipe. They only got me a glancing blow, and I managed to scrape one of them across the face … as I was falling. He yelled like a cat … which startled me, and I tried to break away. But they caught me and took me back behind the Boulevard. Then they started in hitting with pipes. Hands, kicking me. As they were wailing away on me I could hear all these people laughing inside the theater. It was some old Wallace Beery movie, Min and Bill, I think. Real funny stuff, from the sound of it. I did my best out there. I got one of them pretty good with a right hand, but the other had a piece of a ball bat in his coat and he staved in the right side of my head. It went on like that for a while, and then I fell down in the alley and I stayed down.”
“And they were guys from the New York Longshoremen’s Union?”
“Yeah, bought and paid for by the owners. That’s how it was. Some kids who was sneaking in the back door of the theater found me lying in my own blood. They took me over to Union Memorial, and the Chink doctor sewed me up. Those kids hadn’t come along, neither one of us would be sitting here, and that’s the God’s truth.”
I shook my head. I had a lot of romantic ideas in my head about unions from the folk songs of Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan, but I’d never heard one yet about union members beating each other’s heads in.
I found myself hugging my old white-haired grandfather.
“I’m damned glad they found you,” I said.
He smiled.
“That makes at least two of us,” he said.
“Did you ever find out who the bastards were?” I said.
“Yeah … two of ‘em were from out of town. The other was a kid named Dubinski, dumb Polack, would do anything for a buck. But the leader, the one I scraped across the face, him I knew.”
“Who was he?” I said.
“Few days later I was up and about with a bandage on my head and one hell of a headache to boot. I seen a guy down at the hall, got a big scrape crossed his left cheek, and a couple of other bruises. He said he’d had an accident with his kids, playing ‘round … but I knew that was three kindsa bullshit.”
“Jerry Watkins,” I said, breathless.
“One and the same,” my grandfather said.
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “And that’s why you fought him at the Oriole Tavern?”
My grandfather looked surprised. “How’d you hear about that?” I laughed.
“My God, Cap,
everyone knows about that.” He smiled slightly and rubbed his head.
“I reckon they do,” he said. “But I’m not proud of it. I wouldn’tve done nothing about it out of respect for your grandmother, but he got drunk and started laughing at the union one day…. He made a crack about Frankie, too. I couldn’t abide that.”
“Jesus,” I said. “The Watkins family.”
“Yeah, they’re bad,” my grandfather said. “Say what you want, but they’re just bad apples. The lot of ‘em.”
I felt a cold chill come, and I got up and lent my grandfather a hand.
“Let’s walk back before we freeze,” I said. “What happened to the union then?”
“Well, I was pretty beat up. I had headaches and couldn’t get my balance just right. Never did come back all the way, neither.”
I started at him in shock. So that was why he tilted from side to side when he walked. And all along I had thought it was because he was drunk or that it was just some “colorful” old salt characteristic. I felt like a fool.
“I wasn’t sure I could stay with it, but Grace picked right up. She nursed me, night and day, and she come down here and she organizes the other women. I mean she was the one who did it, and they start marching for the strike, and they go right up to Grimek’s home over on Bolton Hill with signs, some of them carrying babies. Man, I was worried to death, ‘cause it wouldn’t be beneath him or the other guys he was in with to strike down women and children. To those guys money comes before everything. I went with her a few times, and all the men admitted the girls had more courage than we did. They were out there singing union songs in front of his house and marching around with signs. Cold, rain, she and the other women were out there, and that’s the damned truth.”
“Did she have spells then?” I asked. He looked at me, surprised.
“Yeah, the worst yet. She had to spend some time in the hospital.”
“What hospital?”
“Out the Grove.”
“Spring Grove Mental Hospital?” I said. “No …”
“I don’t guess nobody ever told you that either,” he said. “Funny, some of the things that don’t get passed down.”
“For how long?” I said.
“Month or so. They give her pills, and she stopped having them nightmares, but she wasn’t the same after that … always a little afraid.”
“But what could have caused them?” I said.
“You already asked me that, and I already told you I don’t know,” my grandfather said, and suddenly I could see a flash of his famous temper. “You want to hear the rest of the union stuff or not?”
“Sure.”
“Well, then, listen up. Seeing the women march, that gave us all a boost. And in the end, we convinced the local longshoremen to come over to our side. They broke ranks with the national union up in New York.”
“Great,” I said. Where was this history in public schools? Man, I thought, the Reverend Gibson is right. I could write some book reports on this stuff A lot easier than on Silas Marner.
My grandfather pulled his coat up to his chin and continued, as we headed back up Broadway, past the Acropolis Bar, which featured “Real Live Greek Belly Dancers.”
“We had a big overall union meeting at Saint Stanislaus Church on Aliceanna Street. It was a great day, all the guys—our union plus the local longshoremen—in one boat. But the national longshoremen’s union head, Ryan, from New York, he’s pissed. He comes marching all the way down here and brings some of his boys, like this neck-breaker, Chowderhead Cohen, to kick ass and convince the local guys not to break ranks. So they get here in their big, black limousine, but we had the door to Saint Stan’s locked so they couldn’t get in. Then when the vote was finished and we’d carried the day, voted to strike, we opened the church doors and Ryan is yelling and screaming, ‘You’ll be sorry! You’ll regret this, you bastards!’ And there’s a moment when nothing happens, then all hell breaks loose. All of us swarmed Ryan and chased him and old Chowderhead back to their limo. Man, people were ripping up the streets and throwing the damned cobblestones at them. Took four squads of gendarmes to get ‘em out of there, and there wasn’t a damned window left in that limo as they headed back up Broadway and on to New York City where they damn well belonged.”
“God, what a story,” I said. I felt as though I was drunk on the excitement of history. My grandfather and grandmother’s real history.
“You did it. You were part of something truly great,” I said.
My grandfather smiled. But it was no great victory grin.
“Yeah, I guess … but I sometimes wonder if it was worth the life of my best friend. You know, at your age you’re meeting new people all the time and you think you’ll have a million pals, but it usually doesn’t turn out that way. There’s maybe two or three guys in my sixty-odd years I thought of as mates, and nobody else like Frankie. Well, that’s all water over the dam, old battles that sometimes I can barely remember.”
“But they matter just the same,” I said. “They matter to me and to the guys who come after you.”
My grandfather smiled and put his arm around me. Just for a few seconds.
“You’re a fine boy,” he said. “And don’t let no one tell you any different.”
“Thanks, Cap,” I said.
“We’d best be getting home,” he said. “Your grandmother will be worrying about us.”
On the long, cold bus and streetcar ride back, my grandfather was quiet. It was clear both the trip and recalling those old and painful memories had tired him out, and I didn’t pry anymore.
But there were questions I was dying to ask him. What other demonstrations had he and Grace been involved in? As we rolled along the pleasant old car tracks I seemed to recall my mother telling me long ago that my grandmother was involved in a factory strike of some kind. I wasn’t sure what year that would have been or if it was even true. Maybe I’d invented it, as I was prone to do.
There was something else about that strike, too … something I’d half-heard long ago, but I couldn’t remember exactly what it was….
As we rolled up Greenmount Avenue on the old Number 8 streetcar, Cap fell asleep and his head lolled over on my shoulder. I started to move him back gently to his own side, but then thought better of it.
The truth was I liked his head there. I felt as though I were taking care of him. And that was fine.
As we rode along, I was overwhelmed with tender feelings for him. He was no longer just “the old salt” or my “colorful old granddad,” but a real person. A person who had suffered, fought for what he believed, fought and won most of his battles with liquor, and carved out a life for himself, my grandmother, and their two kids. And now, though he might not be fully aware of it, he was giving me something precious, too … a history I could be proud of.
Because of the stories he’d told me, there were places in my hometown that I would never see in the same way again.
And soon we came to one of them, the Boulevard Theater at 33rd and Greenmount. I’d been to the old neighborhood movie theater dozens of times, but now I wouldn’t remember the Jerry Lewis or cowboy pictures I saw there. No, instead I’d think of the alley behind the place, the alley where Jerry Watkins and his goons almost killed my grandfather.
As we went past the theater and I looked at the movie poster for The Wackiest Ship in the Army, I felt a cold fury run through me.
The goddamned Watkins family. How I hated them.
Bullies and creeps from three generations back. I had a fantasy of smacking Buddy’s head with a rock, then I thought of Grace, of Gandhi, of his teachings … the moral imperative to “love one’s enemies.”
A good and profound philosophy, no doubt, but when it came to the Watkins family, I didn’t see how I was going to pull it off.
Cap’s ship
T he morning sun was bright the next day, a respite from the gray cold weather we’d been having, and because I’d forgotten to adjust my blinds the night before�
�exhausted as I was by the emotional day with Cap—it shone brightly right into my eyes. I checked the clock. It was ten to six and I had at least another hour to sleep, so I forced myself from my aunt’s warm bed and went to the window in order to let the blinds down and shut them tight. I was half-finished doing just that when my eyes focused on the garage rooftops just beyond the alley behind my grandmother’s backyard.
At first glance I thought I was still asleep and dreaming one of those super realistic, down-to-the-last-and-tiniest-detail dreams that mimic reality to a maddening degree.
I shook my head, blinked, and looked around the room, then slowly turned my head and looked back out at the garage roofs.
No, it wasn’t any dream.
My grandmother was sitting in the lotus position on top of her garage. She was wearing a purple-and-green sari, the one Mr. Pran had given her several months ago as a token of appreciation for all the times she’d had him to the house. Grace’s hands were folded together in her lap, and she was looking up at the sun through oversized red-and-green sunglasses.
I recalled Mr. Pran teaching our family how to meditate on the living room rug.
Good Lord, I thought, that must be what she’s doing.
I stared out at her in silence. She looked to me like an Indian grandmother, an eccentric silent movie star, or the perfect combination of both: a mental patient. Then I remembered Cap saying she’d had to serve time at Spring Grove. What if she was having a full-fledged breakdown? I squinted into the burning sunlight and saw something move in her lap.
It took me a second to make out what it was: Grace’s cat, Scrounge, the rascal. He was happily rubbing himself against her.
The two of them looked warm and happy. Content. Mad.
I opened the window and started to yell down to her, but then I remembered that my grandfather’s room was also in the back of the house and that if he heard me and saw Grace on the garage roof, there would be hell to pay.
