“That’s all?”
“She pulled off her hat and shook out her hair.”
“Blond?”
“Black as the ace of spades.”
Augie’s replacement came and we went to Pete’s for a two-straw root beer, only this time I plunked down the nickel which came out of my original forty-seven cents. I was keeping the two quarters in my felty liner an untouched secret.
“So what do you think of this Pringle guy?” Augie asked.
“Well from the way he dressed, all starchy and bankery-looking, I never had him pegged as a ladies’ man, did you?”
“Yup, I did.”
“How come?”
“When I took you into J & J he was showing a diamond bracelet to a woman and the way he was holding her hand to fit it on.”
“Sexy?”
“Very. She was mooning at him. He gave her his card.”
“Even so how has that anything to do with—”
“Look, Aaron, we’re just a couple a kids. If I were a grown-up I’d a hopped in my car and tailed them and maybe got some clues but—”
“But you did get a clue, just in her picking him up. Listen to me, Augie, that fat guy who peeled off the wall and slid behind my father was somebody who knew Dad was coming at three o’clock and the only way he could have known that is if someone at J & J had tipped him off. We find who that was, we find the killer.”
“Yeah, I know. But besides the J & Js there’s one other person the cops are looking at.”
“Who?”
“Your pop.”
“What!”
“I know, I know, he’s your pop but if you’re detectifying you have to consider that he’s down and out, owes a lot of money, wants to get his ring from the pawnshop, so there’s this guy he knows that wants to rob the J & J so all your father has to do is tell him the time and the guy promises him a payoff. That’s how these things work.”
“My father wasn’t into anything like that. No way!”
“I’m not saying he was, it was just a for-instance.”
“Well I’m still going to detectify on the others. That Grace person, so jiggly and giggly and she’s pretty darn nervous.”
“How do you know?”
I almost said “Elementary, my dear Augie,” but I held back and all I said was she nibbles her fingernails clear off. “I’d like to find out why she’s so nervous. And I’d also like to know how come a beauty like Bonnie Porter, who’s quite a lady, works here in a nothing job wearing all those beautiful clothes.”
“One thing I can tell you, she’s married to an actor who does radio stuff on KMOX and acts at the Muny. Their pictures are in the paper at special events.”
“If you ask me she’s covering something up.”
“How do you know?”
“Inhibition.”
“What?”
“Inhibition.”
“You mean intuition?”
“Crap! Why do I get these mixed up?”
“Listen don’t knock yourself. For a twelve-year-old you do all right.”
“Thirteen is getting very close.”
“We’ll celebrate with root beer and hot dogs on me.”
I noticed his straw had slurped up more than mine. “You know what? We stay at it we might just get lucky.”
“Yeah, lucky, we sure haven’t had a ton of that.”
Happening 17
The Eads Bridge Hooverville looked different now that I was on the ground than it did when we passed over it in the trolley. What seemed to be a packed jumble of rickety shacks one on top of the other was really rather organized. Everybody had their own space and there was a kind of open path where you could walk along the shacks from one end of the Hooverville to the other. It was a huge area starting on the ground below the ramp of the bridge and ending at the water. Some of the shacks had wobbly chairs and kiddie swings in front of them, and there were many with mounds made of bricks or stones where they could light a fire and cook. Even though the Mississippi water was at the end of the Hooverville, it was a far haul to get it to the main part of the camp, so the ground was coated in dust as was everything else. Enough water was carried in pails to wash clothes that hung from lines everywhere. Groups of kids played as best they could, with grown-ups sort of keeping an eye on them.
I walked through the camp taking all this in. It was getting dark now and some cooking fires were lit and the kids were being called to dinner. Several sheds had kerosene lamps burning. As I reached the center of the camp I came on a large group of Hooverville people listening to a radio. Seeing the radio made me aware that I hadn’t heard any music and that everything was pretty quiet except for the noises kids made when they were playing.
This radio was an Atwater Kent same as the one we had at the Westgate until the tubes burned out and we didn’t have the money to replace them. That’s probably why nobody had their radio going—either busted tubes or the pawnshop or the fact that there was no electricity in the camp. This Atwater Kent was attached to a very long extension cord that was plugged into a light socket on the bridge high above. What was coming from the radio was President Franklin D. Roosevelt giving one of his fireside chats. It was turned up very loud and you could hear his voice all over, the way he talked, so easygoing and kind of confidential like he was talking directly to you, not speechifying like most everyone else who’s government. The people he was talking to, all around me, had lost everything, their houses, their jobs, their cars, I mean everything, just like we did, and yet here they all were, having to live under the ramp of a bridge in dirty shacks, their bellies as empty as mine, huddled together, feeling good from listening to FDR, just like me, more of us no better off than we were when he got elected but when he says it’s all getting better we believe him, and no one in this group leaves or boos when he says things are a little better today than they were two months ago. We applaud. He says two months ago the country was dying by inches but we’re fighting back. Applause. Mortgages are being saved. Applause. Young men with families being put to work by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Applause and whistles. Banks that were closed, reopening. Applause. Farms saved. Applause. And now thanks to a bill he has just signed we can all drink beer! Biggest applause. (Two guys drinking from bottles of Budweiser pass them around.) That he and Congress, Democrats and Republicans together, are now working hard to stop all those things that came close to destroying our whole way of life. Applause and cheers. He says it’s a good beginning but he needs us to believe together as we go forward.
Everyone cheered him and shared their good feelings as they started to go back to their shacks. Me too. I feel up not down even though I’m really hungry, I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight, if I can detectify my father out of jail, and whether my mom might die in that sanitarium. But these were none of the things President Roosevelt could do anything about.
Happening 18
As I left the radio group, I became aware of, or I should say my stomach got stirred up by, a nifty aroma that was coming from a fire that was sending sparks floating up into the sky. As I got close to the fire I could see that it was coming from an oil drum that was burning hunks of wood. There were three boys standing around the drum, fourteen or fifteen, I guess, maybe couple a years more, eating pieces of potatoes that were roasting in the fire. If you ask me nothing beats the keen smell of a roasted potato with its crispy crunchy skin and its white crumbling inside especially if a little salt and butter can be forked its way.
“Whatcha lookin’ at, kid?” one of the boys said. “You never seen a hot potato?” He was the biggest of the three, a lot taller than me.
“You’ve got a nice fire for the potatoes,” I said. He tore off a hunk of the potato he was eating, holding it on a piece of newspaper. “Here, try a piece.” I took the newspaper with the potato, thanking him. It burned my tongue a
little but it was one hundred percent wonderful.
“My name is Jim,” he said. “What’s yours?”
“Aaron.”
“Where’s your brother?”
“I don’t have—”
“Moses. Old Mo around?”
More potato would have been wonderful but I could tell big Jim was trouble and I started to leave. He grabbed me by the arm.
“Where you headed, Aaron? You haven’t paid for that potato you ate.”
“Okay, Jim, enough,” one of the other boys said.
Jim kept a tight grip on my arm. “Tell you what…” He snatched my felty from my head and put it on his. “Perfect fit. Now we’re even.”
“Come on, Jim, why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
“Yeah? Well why don’t you put little Aaron on your shoulders? That should make him just about my size.” He gave me a sharp bop on the top of my head with his fist that rattled my teeth.
I was feeling this rise in me I get when I have to defend myself. I forget the name of it but it like charges you up. He not only had my felty but he also had the quarters inside it.
“Whadaya say, Aaron, gonna get on Frank’s shoulders and duke it out?” He gave me a sharp push and took a poke at my head. I saw his hand coming and I dodged it with a Vernon twist of my head. The other boys were yelling at him to cut it out but he poked at me with his other hand and I made him miss again. I was really fired up now, I mean all-out fired up, and before he could make another move on me I kicked him hard between his legs and he let out a yell and doubled over with short breaths and little cries and I took my felty off his head.
“Now I brought you down to my size,” I said as I put my felty back on my head and walked away. The boy called Frank caught up with me. I feared it was maybe more trouble but he handed me a whole roasted potato rolled up in a double piece of newspaper.
“Thanks, Aaron,” he said. “You did what we’ve been aching to do.”
* * *
—
I FOUND a place to sit and ate the hot potato as slowly as my hunger would allow, trying to make it last as long as possible. I was sorry I had to use such a crude way to fight my way out of the bad spot I was in, but the years of the Depression had taught me you have to do what you have to do to survive, even if it’s to kick a bully in the balls.
When I finished the potato, the empty newspaper in my lap and the sizzling St. Louis nighttime heat weighing me down, I felt empty. Not that the roasted potato didn’t help, it did, but I could really eat a couple more. I mean empty like there’s nothing ticking in me, the stuff that was making me believe that a twelve-year-old boy could detectify that killing and get his father out of jail and the lock off the door and the Ford out of hiding and the Bulova case returned. I was awful close to the one thing that I must not, must not, must not ever feel and that’s sorry for myself. I’m not! I’m not any run-of-the-mill kid. I’ve been through a lot and I’ve learned a lot and I know who I am and what I can do and what I sure as sure can do is not feel sorry for myself! So I don’t have a place to sleep tonight, zillions of people don’t have a place or money or relatives or…
“Aaron!” I heard. “That you, Aaron?” Now I was hearing imaginary voices.
The imaginary voice belonged to a girl who came up to me and gave me a big hug. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Ella, oh, Ella!” I said as she laughed and we both said at the same time, “Are you living here?”
Ella McShane and her mom had lived two rooms away from ours at the Westgate Hotel. Ella was three years older and a head taller. We were good friends and she told me about all the places they had lived when her father was with them and he was sent to those places for his work. Ella was very smart and she read a lot but she had epilepsy and couldn’t go to school. Her father no longer lived with them but he sent money so they could buy special medicine for her epilepsy with a little money left over so they could get some food and maybe pay some rent. They had left the Westgate before we did but I can’t remember if they were locked out like we were or just decided to leave.
Ella and I walked to her place so I could see her mother, a swell woman who sometimes helped my mom when she was sick. They lived in one of the better Hooverville shacks, a large, solid square tent that had cots and a little kitchen and place for a table and two chairs. They even had a few pictures on the wall. There was a kerosene lamp on the table and a spot where they kept bathroom things. They also had a Victrola you could crank up by hand. Ella had a nice voice and she knew a lot of songs. At the Westgate she had wanted me to sing along with her but at school I was even banned from singing “America the Beautiful” because I was told I had a voice that made all the other voices sound bad.
Mrs. McShane was every bit as nice as I remembered her. She served us raisin cookies and asked all about me and my family.
“But, Aaron, aren’t you a little young to get grown-ups to take you seriously?”
“That’s the whole point,” I said. “The murderer might talk to a kid like me.”
“Well, just be careful, kill once, kill twice, you know. Maybe you should keep track of things.” She took a little notebook from a drawer in the table and handed it to me along with a stub of a pencil. I thanked her and put them in my back pocket. “You be careful, hear?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, I always make sure who’s behind me.”
“Now, let’s get to the immediate. You’ve got to have a place to sleep. As you can see, we are squished in here as is.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about me, Mrs. McShane,” I said. “I have a place in Forest Park if I want.”
Ella had a package of cinnamon gum and was offering me a stick when it happened. The first thing I knew, her arm went stiff-out and she let out a little scream and fell to the floor. She was making a kind of grunting noise, and I was petrified. Her whole body was very stiff and I could see the rolled-up whites of her eyes, and her legs were jerking like someone was poking something hot at her feet. I was really scared to death.
Her mother ran to the table and got something and ran back to Ella. It was a stick like the nurse at school used to look down your throat. Mrs. McShane poked the stick into Ella’s mouth. “Quick, Aaron, quick!” she said to me. “Raise her head, she’s swallowing her tongue!” I bent down and picked up Ella’s head and Ella’s mother kept working the stick in her mouth till she pulled her tongue out. Ella’s body was jerking all over now, and she was making little crying noises and she broke wind several times. I wanted to help. Oh God how I wanted to help, but I didn’t know what to do.
Then just as suddenly as it had started, it ended. All at once. Her eyes came back in place and she relaxed and her body smoothed out. Her mother took a wet cloth and wiped her face, and then we helped her to her feet. I picked up her glasses and handed them to her.
“Are you all right, dear?” her mother asked.
“Oh, sure,” she said, trying to smile. She was very white and she had freckles I hadn’t noticed before.
“I’d better be getting on,” I said, and I thanked Mrs. McShane for the cookie. I felt terrible. Really terrible.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. McShane said to me. “Ella hasn’t had one of those for a long time.”
“Was it awful?” Ella asked me. She was holding her fingers together very tight.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Now, Ella, let Aaron be on his way.”
“I just want to know if I did anything really bad,” Ella said, her voice louder.
“Well,” I said, wanting to die, “you were sick and now you’re all right.”
“Here,” she said, “you didn’t take your gum.” She offered me the stick of cinnamon gum which she still had in her hand. I took it and put it in my pocket.
“I didn’t have my medicine,” she said. “I’m all right as
long as I take my medicine.”
“I was a dollar short,” Mrs. McShane said, “and the druggist refused, even though I promised to pay as soon as my money came. Even offered to leave my watch.”
“Do you have the empty package your last medicine came in?” I asked. “And a prescription?”
“Yes,” Ella said. “I have the empty bottle in it.”
“Is the pharmacy near here?” I asked.
“Yes. Two blocks down.”
I said, “I’ve got an idea.”
* * *
—
THE EADS PHARMACY was busy. A few of the Hooverville people were there. I gave the prescription to the woman at the pharmacy desk. She disappeared and came back with the package of medicine. She put it on the counter in front of us and told me to take it to the cashier. The cashier totaled up the charge. I looked at the bill and said, “There must be a mistake. We never pay that much, do we?” I said to Ella.
“I should say not,” she said.
“That’s the charge,” the cashier said. “Take it or leave it.”
“But my sister absolutely needs the medicine,” I said, laying it on thick. “Life or death.”
“Sorry, but that’s it. Take it or leave it.”
“All right,” I said, “I guess we have to leave it.”
The cashier put the package on the shelf behind her. “Next,” she said.
We went back to Ella’s shack and opened the package with the new bottle of pills that I had exchanged for the empty one I had taken from my pocket. Ella swallowed a pill and it seemed to improve her spirit.
“You’re a lifesaver, Aaron,” Mrs. McShane said.
“The way he did it, Mom, smooth as Jell-O. And to think of switching like that.”
“I can’t take credit,” I said. “I watched my father get my mother her medicine that way.”
“I had an idea while you were gone,” Mrs. McShane said. “Have you seen Captain Arnold lately?” she asked Ella.
The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom Page 6
