Father Divine's Bikes

by Steve Bassett

  Gazzi watched them walk outside, then turned to Milt, “Smart ass kids. I get the feeling there’s something going on they know, and I don’t.”

  “How’s your coffee doing?” Milt knew it was best to play dumb when a cop was around.

  Fifteen minutes later the boys were sitting on Marvin’s stoop when Leo and Carl swaggered back from the Kosjaks’. The two rakes gave acknowledging flicks of the wrist as they walked down the block. Billy watched with envy as they disappeared into Milt’s for recuperative sodas. He glanced at Marvin, then followed his upward gaze.

  “There it is,” Marvin said. “I gotta get going.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to run around chasin’ those shitty pieces of paper?” Billy said.

  It was their first sighting of the U.S. Navy blimp, a fat silhouette that seemed to hang suspended against the sun behind St. Mark’s steepled cross. A continuous stream of larvae poured from its underside.

  “Yep, for my little brother Benji. He’s got the mumps, gotta get him a fistful to cheer him up.”

  “What the hell, I’ve got nothin’ better to do right now,” Billy said. “I’ll give ya a hand. Let’s hike it to High. They’ll prob’ly drop most of the stuff near downtown.”

  The wind had carried some of the droppings as far as Court Street. A few spun erratically to the ground on the other side of High. Billy and Marvin made backhanded grabs.

  Another blimp, its U.S. Navy markings clearly visible, appeared not more than a mile away. It seemed to be heading straight up Court. You could even see the crewmen in the door, kicking out packets that exploded into thousands of fluttering bits of paper.

  Kids raced across sidewalks, between cars, and into the street in pursuit of the bomb-shaped paper scraps.

  At the corner of Court and Shipman, Lt. Col. Ret. Jonathan Quincy McAdams, his white air-raid warden’s helmet strapped in place, stiffly saluted the passing dirigible.

  Billy and Marvin were caught up in the excitement. Their pants pockets bulged with the worthless bits of paper. They speared the missiles in flight and retrieved them from atop cars and off the street and sidewalk.

  “That was a hoot!” Billy shouted.

  “Yeh, the same for me,” Marvin laughed as they trotted down Court, shoving each other while weaving around passersby.

  They had just begun to stuff some of the bombs inside their shirts when they realized they hadn’t even read the slogan:

  6th War Loan Drive

  For Smashing, Unconditional Victory

  And on the other side:

  Your Stamps and Bonds Mean More Guns and Bombs

  They shrugged, crossed Shipman, and stopped to catch their breath. Two blocks away loomed the burnt-out Herman’s Potato Chip factory. With its roof still intact, the challenge was obvious.

  “Lots of bombs up there, I betcha,” Marvin said.

  “Wanna try it?”

  “Ever been up there?”

  “Nope, have you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Safe?”

  “Shit, I don’t know.”

  “Wanna try it?”

  “Game if you are.”

  “Game.”

  “Let’s go,” Marvin said.

  They vaulted onto a blackened loading platform, entered a side door and walked across the first floor toward the rear of the building. They gingerly sidestepped debris and the turds of kids and bums who found the building a handy outhouse. In back there was a fire escape that led to the roof of the three-story building.

  What they found was not reassuring. The fire escape had been torn from the large steel plates welded to the building. The rusty steps were dangerously suspended from four I-beams that reached to the level of the roof. The carcass squeaked and swayed in a slight breeze as Billy and Marvin approached it.

  “We really need any more of these shitty pieces of paper?” Billy said.

  “We’re here.”

  “I’m game.”

  “Sheeit, let’s do it.”

  Their first steps, at best hesitant, became openly fearful after they reached the top of the second floor. The stairs paralleled the building as they crisscrossed between the I-beams. The higher they got, the more the vibrating skeleton swayed. The climb to the top became as much a battle of balance as progress.

  “I’m gettin’ seasick,” said Billy, clinging to a rail.

  “How d’ya know—ever been on a boat?”

  “Yeah, a small one.”

  They finally made it to the top. By this time the fire escape was teetering about three feet from the wall. To make it to the roof they would have to rock it. Starting slowly, they put their shoulders first to the front, then to the back upper railing of the rusty structure. The whole thing got away from them. They began to gyrate in an ever-increasing circle. Vringhh … vringghh …. vringghh … came the grating sound of metal against metal, as the broken weld slammed against the metal plate from which it had broken loose.

  Below, there was a cacophony of strange creaks and groans, as sheets of rust peeled away and floated to the ground.

  “Sheeit,” said Marvin, holding on for dear life.

  “You can say that again,” said Billy right beside him.

  They looked down—the descent into hell couldn’t be worse.

  They agreed they would have to jump to the roof. Miraculously, they timed their leaps just right. Billy, then Marvin, stood poised at the edge of the fire escape. When it made its grating pass alongside the building, each leaped onto the roof, sprawling head over heels onto the soot-encrusted tar paper.

  “Weeooh! Give me that ol’ time religion!” wheezed Marvin.

  “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!” Billy groaned.

  They sat staring at each other. Smiles crinkled their faces. With heroic disdain, they turned their backs on the fire escape, now but a Minotaur reeling in death’s agony. And what they saw was a bonanza. The roof was almost a blanket of propaganda bombs.

  In the center of the roof, next to the hatch leading to the floor below, was an unbroken packet. It had failed to break apart in the air and was still intact after impact. Stuck under the twine was a label that read: “6th War Loan Bombs. Property of U.S. Govt. Count 1,000.”

  Marvin picked up the packet and placed it on the ledge that ran along the front of the roof. The ledge formed the upper part of a façade that identified the ill-fated company. As he turned, his elbow accidentally knocked the packet over the edge.

  Directly below, followed by two of his aides, was Lt. Col. Ret. Jonathan Quincy McAdams. Billy and Marvin peered over the ledge just as the packet struck McAdams’ helmet, knocking it askew over his left ear. The straining twine snapped apart. The bombs cascaded off his shoulders to the ground.

  “Whereditcomefrom?” blurted McAdams.

  “Dunno,” said one aide.

  “Up there,” said the other, pointing to the two heads atop the building.

  “Reconnoiter,” ordered McAdams. “You there and you there.”

  The two men warily inched their way along either side of the factory. McAdams strode to the other side of Shipman for a better vantage point. Billy and Marvin ducked their heads.

  “They comin’ up?” asked Marvin.

  “Shit no. Let’s jes wait it out.”

  They glanced to the rear of the roof. The fire escape was still vibrating.

  “You two punk kids know what’s good for you, you’ll come down,” McAdams shouted.

  Silence.

  McAdams fingered the label from the bomb packet.

  “Come down, and through the chain of command, we’ll work something out.”

  Silence.

  “Do you know what the destruction of government property during wartime calls for?”

  Silence.

  “Goddamnit, get down here, or when I catch up with you, I’ll kick your asses from one end of Court to the other.”

  Silence.

  After ten minutes of unanswered surrender appeals, the three w
ardens, McAdams in the lead, strode away, heads high, eyes clear, alert.

  The two kids waited a few minutes before lowering themselves through the roof hatch to the third floor, then felt their way along the charred stairs to the main floor. Once outside, they breathed easier. Marvin headed home with his hard-earned booty, and Billy saved only a few of the paper bombs as souvenirs to show his mother and grandmother.

  On his way home, Billy realized that it was getting easier and easier to get along with Marvin than with some of the gang at Milt’s and most of his classmates at St. Mark’s. He had tried several times to figure out why, but always came up empty.

  In the autumn of 1945, sixty year old Sylvia Spratlin had been a widow for five years. That’s when the body of Guy Spratlin, an excellent swimmer, was found in only four feet of water not far from the family’s summer cottage on Lake Champlain, just north of St. Albans.

  There were two distinct lines of conjecture regarding Guy’s death: that he had committed suicide, or he had suffered a heart attack. Sylvia, never one to take a chance, forbade an autopsy, and the certificate read “death by drowning.”

  Billy’s grandmother was a vivacious woman who kept busy running the house for her daughter-in-law. She dined once a month with classmates from Bryn Mawr, attended opening night at the Met, and took in six Broadway plays each season, but only after carefully studying the nuances of every George Jean Nathan review.

  Sylvia also doted on her grandson, transferring to him the same sort of attention in the same sort of way that she had lavished on her son up until the day he was married sixteen years earlier.

  Sylvia Hargrave’s Episcopalian roots dated back to the Revolution. The family could point with pride that Philo Hargrave shared a pew in Philadelphia’s St. Peter’s Church with James Madison and other Founding Fathers.

  Sylvia had lost only one battle of note in her entire life. The prurient aspects of her defeat would forever shape her wary view of sexual abandon. It came during the summer before her final year at Bryn Mawr, when she shared a down quilt with a husky lifeguard amid the sand dunes of Cape May.

  Guy Spratlin took her virginity at exactly ten minutes before midnight, making the first painful insertion at the same time the barroom gong at the Regency Hotel was tolling last call. He seduced her two more times before the weekend was over.

  After the initial pain, she had thoroughly enjoyed herself. After the second time, she agreed to marry Guy. After the third time, she agreed with his demand that their children would be raised Catholic.

  They had only one child.

  Billy’s defacing of the synagogue had gone a lot smoother than he expected. He had the whole street to himself, not so much as a passing car. He had thrown the paintbrush down the storm drain, and returned the paint can and screwdriver to his father’s workshop. He couldn’t find any turpentine to remove the paint from his right hand, so it would have to come off with some hard scrubbing at the kitchen sink. It was after nine o’clock by the time he burst through the kitchen door and rushed to the sink.

  “You’re later than usual for a novena night. Your grandmother had been waiting up for you. She just went to bed,” his mother said from the doorway.

  “I stopped off for a while with the guys,” mumbled Billy without turning from the sink.

  “Any place in particular?” asked Margaret, now leaning against the door jam as she eyed her son at the sink, curious why he hadn’t turned to greet her.

  She had just combed her long chestnut hair and was dressed in a nightgown and house robe. She dropped the comb into the robe’s pocket and started towards her son. She was truly a beautiful woman, with the kind of beauty that needed little pampering.

  Tall, fine-boned, armed with an English degree from Bennington, possessor of nice teeth and an honest arrogance, she seemed almost a caricature of that certain type of upper middle class beauty that is native only to the United States.

  Her refinement began when Harold and Suzanne Covington decided their daughter, like her mother, would attend Miss Spence’s School for Girls. The raucous hustle and bustle of mid-town Manhattan blended well with the music, dancing, drama and intellectual curiosity fostered by Miss Spence. Margaret loved all the sports the school offered, but fencing was her favorite, and by the time she had reached the eighth grade she had mastered the intricate footwork necessary to parry and thrust.

  She met Walter Spratlin the summer between her junior and senior years of college. Their family eight-room cottages along the east shore of Lake Champlain were only a half-mile apart, but they had never socialized.

  Margaret had just taken a dip and was strolling north along the lake front when she spotted a bare-chested Walter pushing off from the Spratlin pier in his centerboard dinghy. It was sunny, warm and windy, a great day for small boat sailing. He was pulling himself out of waist deep water and into the hull when he spotted her.

  “Hi there,” Walter smiled. He dropped the thin centerboard into its slot in the hull, then turned to size her up. “Where in the world did you come from?”

  “Our family place is down by the cove just south of here.”

  “First time I’ve seen you, and you’re hard to miss. That family of yours keep you locked up? By the way, what’s your name?”

  “You first.”

  Why not play it a little coy, she thought, and see what happens. Tall, blond, probably blue eyes and doesn’t mince words. Who knows, he might even be a Mellon or a Vanderbilt. We’re here for another month and this could be interesting.

  “Nothing doing,” Walter said as he lifted himself out of the hull and back into the water. “I’ve got first dibs, you missed your chance. So come on, out with it.”

  “Margaret Covington. So now, big boy, your turn.”

  “Walter Spratlin,” he smiled as he waded closer. “My friends call me Walt, never Wally. I’ve another question. Want to go hiking?”

  “It depends on how good you are. There’s a strong wind. I’m not keen on chafing my ankles under hiking straps with a rookie skipper at the helm.”

  So she knows how to sail, and damn she’s pretty, Walter thought. There’s a month of sailing left, and what better way to find out what she’s made of. If I’m guessing right, this summer won’t be the end of it. Let’s get a little salty and see how she takes it.

  “You’ll also be bouncing that pretty backside of yours in the water at the same time. Come on, Meg, get aboard! Show me what you’ve got!”

  That sailing day was the first of several that August of ’28. Meg and Walt competed in five regattas, winning two and finishing second in a third. When not sailing, they came close to wearing out their welcomes at each family’s cottage. They coveted their times alone strolling the lake front, or huddled in their favorite St. Albans coffee shop booth. On three occasions, they beached Walt’s dinghy in an isolated cove, removed a blanket from its protective tarp, spread it on the sand and made love. Labor Day proved to be awkward, neither wanted it to end, but agonized on how to say so. That week they would be off to their senior years, Meg to Bennington and Walt to Stevens Tech, in what she jokingly referred to as “godforsaken Hoboken.” They would share holidays, and squeeze in as many weekends as possible. Neither Guy and Sylvia Spratlin nor Harold and Suzanne Covington doubted their kids’ intentions. Walt and Meg held off any announcement until after graduation.

  In the interim, the elder Covingtons and Spratlins were not idle. The attorney husbands and socially-attuned wives, enjoyed bridge up to a point, preferred scotch to gin, scoffed at croquet and badminton, played country club golf, and could sail with the best of them. After discovering they shared a mutual distrust of Jews, that inflation was playing hell with their wallets, and a belief that Herbert Hoover was a sure bet second termer, it was natural that amiable weekends would be in order.

  Walt and Meg were joined in a high mass wedding at St. Marks one year after graduation. A one month biking honeymoon through the Pyrenees concluded with a decadent four-day stay at the H
otel du Palais in Biarritz. They had purposely left themselves incommunicado. In Cherbourg, they went to the Cunard Lines office to pick up their return tickets for home when they were paged to contact the Mauretania’s purser. The message was beyond belief. Harold and Suzanne Covington were killed when their Eastern Air Ford Trimotor crashed into a coal-laden barge on the Delaware River. They were on route from Newark to Philadelphia. It was two weeks to the day after their wedding. Burial was a week later. Telegram after telegram bombarded the couple the entire length of the voyage home. It took weeks for Meg to understand the unfathomable, that her two vibrant and loving parents were gone forever. And that as the only child, she was sole heir to two estates, and the mistress of a sprawling home on Court Place.

  It took awhile for Meg and Walt to settle in. Her early pregnancy meant a complete overhaul of their social calendar. Trips to Manhattan for theatre parties with college chums became less frequent. At the insistence of Walt’s mother they agreed to maintain the two lakefront cottages in Vermont. For Sylvia Spratlin, summers without the lake would be unthinkable. Her mother-in-law’s stylized carping often had Meg running for cover. Sylvia would move in for the final months of Meg’s pregnancy, and to make sure that baby Billy’s cradle would be rocked with the loving care that only a grandmother could give.

  Walter was always something of a rebel, and Margaret wondered how he managed to get along in a structured environment like the Army’s. He had adapted well to Prudential, but only because he had carved a niche for himself within the mammoth insurance company. Walter had defied family tradition, one that his mother insisted he adhere to, by turning his back on the University of Pennsylvania. Spratlin men had called it their academic home for generations.

  Instead, he chose Stevens Tech in Hoboken, of all places. Walter called it “the best engineering school that hardly anyone had heard of.” He was a workaholic who chose accounting as his minor. His timing was perfect. The same year he graduated, Prudential was expanding its construction site program. High-rise buildings, both commercial and residential, were going up in cities all around the country. His degree in civil engineering got him a job. He was handed the Chellis Austin Project, a low-rent development in the Ironbound section of Newark. The project bore the name of one of Prudential’s most powerful board members. It was also a project that City Hall lusted to get its greedy hands on. City inspectors homesteaded at the construction site. It was a fitting encampment for them, so near the corrosive Passaic River, which in their case did not have to work hard to spread its contamination.