Last Bus to Coffeeville

by J. Paul Henderson

  The dry cleaning store was a front, and Morris Fowler turned out to be not only a forger but also a fixer. People came to him primarily for new documents and new identities, but they also came to him as a man who knew how to get things. It worked like this:

  Although the store had the equipment to dry clean, none of it was in working order and the polythene-encased clothes hanging from the racks were purely for show. In the rare event that a customer actually left clothes for cleaning, they would be taken to another dry cleaner’s and then returned to the store. White tickets would be issued for such transactions. It was, however, the pink slip transactions that were the lifeblood of the store.

  Any person doing bona fide business with Morris knew to ask for a pink slip: that was the code. Such people would bring clothes to the store, usually a single jacket or coat, and within one of the pockets would be a note of what was required, and also payment. A week or even a month later, dependent on what had been asked for, the customer would return to the store with the numbered pink slip. He – rarely a she – would then be returned the clothes they’d brought in, and within a pocket would be the documentation or goods paid for.

  The documents supplied by Morris ranged from passports and driving licences to birth certificates, social security cards, high school diplomas and degree certificates. For such products he determined his own prices. For the goods he supplied purely as a middleman – firearms, explosives, pharmaceuticals, machine tools, duplicate keys and risqué photographs – he added thirty per cent to the price charged him. It was a marketplace where questions were never asked, where paper trails were non-existent and the only medium of exchange was cash.

  Bob worked front of house, taking and returning clothes from customers and giving out and taking back the pink slips. Every once in a while he gave out a white ticket, and took these clothes to an actual dry cleaners; even on these transactions the store made a profit. Other times, Morris would send Bob to churchyards and cemeteries, not just in Washington but in surrounding states: Oregon, California, Idaho and Nevada. This was the part of his job that Bob enjoyed most, driving on open roads through new countryside, and exploring towns and cities he’d never before visited.

  The purpose of such journeys was to collect the names of children who never had the chance to grow old; children who had died at different times and in different decades. Morris gave Bob a list of his requirements: white children, black children, Hispanic and Chinese children; children with Polish names, Norwegian names, German names, and children who’d been born with true-blue Anglo-Saxon names. Bob was then to visit libraries and read old editions of newspapers to find out as much about these unfortunate children as possible, and also their equally unfortunate families. Morris then took this information and, by exploiting cracks in the system, brought them back to life as new identities for those wishing to escape old ones.

  Morris lived in a large apartment immediately above the store, and Bob lived in similar quarters on the third floor. They spent most of their evenings together in one or another of the apartments. Sometimes Morris prepared the meal and sometimes Bob – though neither could have been described as a good cook. Morris came to look upon Bob as the son he’d never had, and Bob, upon Morris, as the father he’d never known.

  One evening when the two men had finished eating and the pots been cleared, Bob asked him how he’d got started doing what he did. Morris poured a large measure of bourbon from the bottle that sat between them.

  ‘It’s a long story. You’re sure you’re up for it?’

  ‘Sure,’ Bob replied. ‘Somethin’ I been meanin’ to aks fo’ a while.’

  ‘Okay, then.’ Morris paused and drew breath. ‘You ever heard of the Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW?’

  ‘No, sir, cain’t says I has.’

  ‘In that case you probably won’t have heard of Centralia – that’s where I’m from. It’s a small town over in Lewis County, not a place you’d visit unless you knew people living there. I got arrested there when I was twenty-nine and charged with second degree murder. I got acquitted, but it took ’em long enough to figure out I hadn’t done nothing wrong in the first place. Even now, I get a bad taste in my mouth when I think about it.

  ‘My best friend back then was a man called Wesley Everest. We were born in the same year, 1890, went through school together, worked as lumberjacks together and fought in World War I together. Both of us were lucky enough to get back in one piece, and we went back to lumbering.

  ‘It was hard work but we didn’t mind that. What we did mind though was the lumber company we worked for. It’s not so bad these days, but back then companies played by their own rules. They were ruthless. Workers didn’t have any rights, wages were piss-poor and people got hurt. If they didn’t get killed outright in an accident, then they were maimed bad enough to wish they had been. There was never any compensation paid. Me and Wes thought it wrong, so we joined up with the Industrial Workers of the World.

  ‘Anyone belonging to that union was called a Wobbly. Don’t ask me why; something to do the Ws is my guess. Anyway, if you needed help, the Wobblies were the best people to have on your side. If angels feared to tread some places, the Wobblies never did: they just rolled up their sleeves and marched right in. They’d do battle with scabs, take on the police and not one of ’em was afraid of going to jail. They were fearless, and that’s why they were hated.

  ‘It wasn’t just the lumber companies who hated ’em neither – it was all the factory owners they tangled with. And when you messed with management in those days, you also messed with the local politicians and the newspapers. Always the best of buddies those people. And then, after the IWW opposed US entry into World War I, the government in Washington DC, started to take an interest in ’em too, and tried to smash the union.

  ‘Wobblies were arrested left, right and centre, and some of ’em imprisoned. The government accused ’em of being un-American and unpatriotic and, after the war, accused ’em of being Bolsheviks. They whipped up public opinion and got ’em to hate the Wobblies. Vigilante mobs took to the streets and attacked meeting halls owned by the union, and any Wobbly found inside was dragged out and beaten to a pulp.’

  Morris paused to refill his glass and then started to recount the events of November 11, 1919.

  ‘There was a parade that day to celebrate the first anniversary of the Armistice. The Wobblies knew it meant trouble for ’em, because the last time the town of Centralia had a parade their meeting hall was attacked and those inside it beaten up. This time though they decided to take precautions and armed ’emselves with guns. They weren’t looking for trouble, but they’d just got ’emselves a new meeting hall and didn’t want it destroyed. Me and Wes went down to help out – and if needs be – defend the place.’

  ‘Was you armed?’ Bob asked.

  ‘No. I didn’t even own a gun. Wes did though and he took his. If he hadn’t, he might well be alive today…

  ‘Anyway, the parade got set and started to move through the town: American Legion war veterans, civic groups and a bunch of thugs hired by the lumber companies. They stopped outside the IWW hall – only time the parade ever did stop that day – and there was the sound of gunfire, shots ringing out. I don’t know who fired first, but if it was one of us then it would’ve been in self-defence. All hell let loose and the next thing I knew the doors of the hall were being kicked in and men were charging at us.

  ‘I saw Wes fire his gun and hit someone, but that’s the last thing I did rightly see. I got clubbed unconscious and woke up in a police cell. I heard later that Wes shot and killed two people and wounded a few others, but the man must have feared for his life to do this. Wes wasn’t a violent man. Apart from when we were in the war, I never saw him hit another person once. Hell, the man didn’t even cuss!

  ‘He got brought to the same jail I was in, but he wasn’t there long and I didn’t get to see him. The guards turned him over to a mob that’d gathered outside…’ Morris paused,
collecting himself before he continued.

  ‘The mob took a rifle butt to his teeth. Smashed ’em. Next they castrated him. Then they took him to the Mellon Street Bridge, put a rope ’round his neck and threw him over the parapet; not once, not twice. Three times. The last throw broke his neck and they left him dangling there, and used his body for target practice. By the time they got ’round to cutting him down his neck had stretched to around fourteen inches.

  ‘You know what the coroner said the cause of death was? Suicide! Wesley Everest, he said, died at his own hand!’

  Morris stopped talking and Bob waited until he was ready to finish his story.

  ‘Twelve of us were put on trial for second degree murder. They dropped charges against two, and me and another man were acquitted, but the other eight got convicted and sentenced to twenty-five to forty years. Anyone but a Wobbly would have got the normal sentence in those days – ten years!’

  Morris went on to explain that after his acquittal it was impossible for him to find work in Centralia or any place close by. He moved with his wife to Seattle, and through the IWW got a job as a stevedore. He worked on the docks for three years until a box of machine parts slipped from the unloading cradle and smashed the bone in his leg. He found himself out of work, a Wobbly who actually wobbled. And then his luck changed. He was walking towards Pike Place Market one day when he heard someone calling his name; it turned out to be the man he’d shared a prison cell with while waiting to be tried. Morris admitted to Bob that the man was an out-and-out chancer, but likeable with it.

  ‘He’d always been impressed with the drawings I did to pass the time, and he used to get a kick out of me forging his signature. He said I had a natural eye for facsimile. I’d always been pretty good at signatures, I knew that. I used to forge my mother’s when I was at school, and for a consideration I’d forge the signatures of other pupils’ parents. Saved ’em from having problems, and it gave me extra pocket money. I never thought it was something I could do for a living, though.

  ‘He brought me to the building we’re in now, the same dry cleaning store. It operated pretty much on the same lines, but in those days we used to fence more goods. The man who operated it took a shine to me and took me under his wing. I became his apprentice and me and my wife moved into the apartment you live in now. When he died, the business transferred to me. It’s worked out okay. I know what we do is illegal, but what governments do is often illegal; they don’t have a problem breaking laws when it suits ’em, and there’s no love lost between me and them. I’ll tell you straight, T-Bone, I’d rather shake hands with Ho Chi Minh than I would Richard Nixon, or any of his like.’

  Bob worked at the dry cleaners for twelve years. Returning from a week-long trip scouting the graveyards of North Dakota, he arrived back to find the door of the basement workshop wide open. He looked inside and found it empty. He went to Morris’ apartment and Morris met him at the door. He smiled at Bob.

  ‘I’m retiring, T-Bone, calling it a day. I’m ninety years old and feel like I’ve worked two lifetimes already. I have more money than I’ll ever be able to spend, and for the rest of my life I’m going to sit back and relax, do nothing.’ He noted the surprised expression on Bob’s face.

  ‘I’ve closed everything down, T-Bone, but I haven’t forgotten you.’ He handed Bob an old shoe box. ‘In there, you’ll find ten complete identities – in case you ever have need for a new one – and the deeds to the building: it’s yours now! There’s also $50,000 in cash. Call it severance pay, a pension, or what you will, but it’s yours to do with as you like, and I don’t want any argument. Tonight I’ve booked us a table at the best restaurant in town, and tomorrow I go to Florida. I hope you’ll come visit me there.’

  Bob ate his last meal with Morris at the Hunt Club in the Sorrento Hotel. A month later he flew to Jacksonville, hired a car and drove to Ponte Vedra Beach. There, he laid Morris to rest.

  Having spent most of his life in a Seattle basement, Morris Fowler had no intimate relationship with the sun; he was ignorant of its power and unaware of sunscreen. Shortly after his arrival in Florida, Morris died of hyperthermia.

  The sun he never knew cremated him, and the son he never had buried him.

  The Barbed Wire Flag

  When Bob returned to Seattle, he put the building he now owned up for sale. The decade of the eighties had dawned and gentrification was nibbling at the edges of the neighbourhood. The property sold easily, and if not rich, Bob was certainly now comfortable. He moved into a loft apartment in Pioneer Square and bought a small cabin in the Klamath Mountains of California. The money would run out eventually, but for the time being he had no need for a job. Rather, he spent his time reading, learning to paint and collecting pieces of barbed wire.

  Bob had never been a reader. His youth and early adulthood had been times of physicality rather than cerebration, and spent playing baseball with friends or shooting dead the nation’s enemies. He associated books with enforced study and had never once entertained the idea that a book might be an origin of pleasure, a source of enjoyment in its own right. Indeed, the only book he’d ever owned was a copy of the Bible given to him by his Aunt Selena on the day he joined the army, and although this book was still in his possession it remained pristine and unread. But now Bob had time on his hands, a cabin in the Klamath Mountains with no television, and a new girlfriend who worked in a bookstore.

  Marsha Hancock’s first impression of Bob wasn’t favourable. In fact, she thought he was as dull as a paintbrush. She’d noticed that he only came into the bookshop when it rained and made no pretence of even looking for a book. Rather, he would sit eerily still in one of the store’s easy chairs and hum tuneless drones to himself, only ever stirring to check on the progress of the rain outside; when the rain let up, like clockwork he would leave.

  One day, Marsha confronted him and asked why he didn’t just buy a damned umbrella. Bob mistook her question as a sign of romantic interest and immediately asked her for a date. She snorted disdainfully, and told him he should ask her again once he’d read War and Peace – which to her way of thinking was the same as replying: not before hell freezes over, buddy! That Bob then purchased a copy of the book both surprised and disquieted her.

  The size of War and Peace similarly surprised and disquieted Bob. Had he known that within its pages five hundred and eighty characters lay in wait for him, it is doubtful the transaction would have been completed and their future together ensured.

  He returned to the bookstore six weeks later. Ominously for Marsha, the day was one of blue skies and streaming sun. Bob walked up to her holding an umbrella in one hand and a well-thumbed copy of War and Peace in the other.

  ‘You owe me least one date fo’ readin’ this mutha,’ he told her.

  Against her better judgement, Marsha agreed – but for one date at most, she told him. One date, however, led to another, and passing acquaintanceship became intimate relationship.

  Marsha Hancock was thirty-one, ten years younger than Bob, and happily divorced twice. Her father was a mid-level manager at the Boeing plant, and her mother a teacher in the city’s school system. She had two older sisters and a younger brother. She had studied at the San Francisco Art Institute for four years, but had subsequently failed to make a living as an artist. Critics described her work as competent but derivative, and hence her job at the bookstore.

  ‘What ’bout the two guys you divorced? They happy?’ Bob asked.

  ‘I hope not!’ she replied. ‘And that’s all I’m saying on the subject. What’s past is past. Concern yourself with the present and count your blessings that you have a date with the most beautiful girl you’re ever likely to date.’

  Bob laughed out loud. What Marsha had said was true: she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever dated. She was statuesque in appearance and had striking looks. Her hair was cropped close to the head and her cheekbones were high and chiselled.

  Tolstoy, or T-Man, as Bob called him, had
n’t been the easiest of introductions to the world of reading, and neither was Marsha’s second choice: Crime and Punishment by D-Man (or Dostoyevsky, as the Russians and the rest of the world called him). Melville and Hawthorne, despite being American writers, proved even worse. One night, while he and Marsha were lying in bed together, Bob plucked up his courage and made an announcement:

  ‘I ain’t readin’ no mo’ books published b’fore my parents was born, an’ – ’ceptin’ fo’ the Bible – I ain’t readin’ no book not written by an American. An’ I gonna start choosin’ my own books. You okay with this, Marsha?’

  ‘When were your parents born?’ Marsha asked sleepily.

  ‘I ain’t rightly sure, but I figure 1920.’

  ‘Okay,’ Marsha said. She then turned on her side and fell asleep. Bob could scarcely believe his luck; she’d given in so easily. That night he started to fall in love with Marsha, and, the next day, reading for pleasure.

  Bob wasn’t a discerning reader, but he was voracious. He attached the same importance to the writings of the National Enquirer and People Weekly as he did to the novels of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. He bought novels and serious non-fiction from bookstores, and quirk, trivia and gossip from supermarket checkouts. He also developed idiosyncratic habits. Possibly as a result of reading Tolstoy’s epic, Bob would always check the number of pages in a book. If the count was more than 320, he would put the book back on its shelf and choose another. The only exception he made to this rule was for the Bible.

  After twenty years of owning a copy, he opened Aunt Selena’s gift and read it from cover to cover, from Genesis to Revelation, from In to Amen. It was, he believed, the culmination of everything he’d ever read: War and Peace and the National Enquirer rolled into one, and wondered why it was never sold at supermarket checkouts.

  Marsha had given up painting abstracts long before she met Bob but, at heart, still yearned to be an artist. She decided therefore to try a different medium, and signed up for an evening course in screen printing. One afternoon, Bob returned to the house they now shared and found her old brushes, palettes and oil paints boxed up and set next to the garbage cans. He took them back into the house and waited for Marsha.