40 Patchtown

by Damian Dressick

  “It ain’t your fault,” he says finally. “We just gotta look after ourselves.”

  Then he grabs me by the hand, and we start back through the alley towards Main Street. Pulling me along behind him, Buzzy tells me how Facianni clued him in that cops was looking for him all over Windber.

  “They was asking all the Eye-tiez in Dago Town if they seen me.”

  “What ya gonna do?” I ask.

  Buzzy shoves his hands deep in his pockets. He says he figures there ain’t nothing he can do but hoof it back to 40 and take his chances. He says he damn sure ain’t gonna go running out on the lam and there’s only so long ya can hide in Windber or any of these patchtowns.

  “Besides, Chester,” Buzzy smiles at me. “I done took far worse a hidin from our pa than I’m ever gonna get for swipin some damn pocketful a fruit.

  Eight

  I follow Buzzy the whole way down the wood board sidewalk of Main Street still trying my red letter best to walk natural. I keep my eyes straight ahead and try not to hoof it too fast or too slow. But when we pass in smelling distance of the horse Cossacks on the corner of 12th Street, fear runs through my gut like lye. Buzzy keeps saying shit to me about the baseball, talking ’bout the shellacking Jackie Scott put on them World Series batters last month.

  I whisper that I can’t be talking this damn baseball cause I’m scared as hell. Buzzy says he been in some spots like this before and we just gotta make like we’re a couple of miners going down the road. But the further we push into the East End, the more something don’t feel right. Even for the curfew there’s too many Cossacks lurking on the corners and it seems like every one of them Pinkertons has got eyes just for us.

  Buzzy must feel it too, cause his eyes are twitching from guard to guard and corner to corner. His hand is gripping our sack extra tight hoofing past the line of black Ford cars in front of St. John’s Polish church. He creases up his forehead and don’t say another thing ’bout them New York Giants or nothing else. His head swivels round from the guard pretending to loaf in front of the 6th Street Dairy store back to the horse Cossacks closing up ranks on Main Street behind us.

  “Ya sure ya just took them pears?” I says to Buzzy.

  “Shit,” Buzzy says. “They can have ’em.”

  My heart’s pounding and I’m scanning all the frame house yards for some way we can get clean outta sight of all these damn guards. When I spot an open place in one of the hedges over by Kinjelko’s Meat Store, I grab Buzzy’s coat sleeve and start pulling at him. But before we even get two steps, a black deputy sedan comes barreling down 8th Street and screeches stopped kitty-corner in front of us.

  When Buzzy sees that it’s McMullen hisself propped at the wheel, his face goes white as wood ash. His jaw drops and he whips his head round for a quick gander at them horse Cossacks trotting up the street behind us.

  “This ain’t about no damn pears,” Buzzy says to me.

  He drops our sack onto the middle of the sidewalk. We look across the frame house yards for some kind of exit, but I don’t see no way to get shot of them damn horses.

  Looking mean as the devil, McMullen’s full flung outta the car and sprinting round the front bumper. Ripping his coat open, he reaches for the gun belt round his waist. He rips that big chrome steel pistol up with both hands and points it at Buzzy and me.

  “Get yer hands in the air, ya murderin pollock!” he yells to Buzzy.

  I’m looking over at Buzzy. My heart’s thumping fit to come straight the hell outta my chest. Buzzy puts one of his hands part way up, but I can see his eyes darting from one yard to the next, till he fixes on that hole in Kinjelko’s hedge.

  “You too, little pollock, get ’em up!” McMullen waves his gun at me.

  I’m so scared I don’t even move for a second. I just look at that big damn pistol. Then I look back over to Buzzy. He ain’t moving, but I can see in his eyes, he’s fixing to bolt.

  Things is happening so fast that I don’t really start putting two and two together till I got my hands up and McMullen says something for the second time to Buzzy ’bout being a murderer. Then I know for sure this ain’t got nothing to do with no pears, stole or otherwise. This ain’t even about Buzzy slingshotting that guard down the train station. McMullen’s done got wind of who killed that Eye-tie scab up behind 40 and it’s time to pay the piper.

  I got my hands high in the air now, but McMullen ain’t even looking at me. He got his pistol pointed right at Buzzy, but Buzzy still ain’t putting his other hand up. He’s just holding it down by his pants and his eyes is flailing from place to place, hopping from Polish Church to the meat store hedge to the line of black Ford cars behind us on Main Street.

  There’s a second when Buzzy’s eyes freeze to mine and that’s when I know he ain’t giving it up nohow. He takes a quick half step towards me like he’s gonna try for the hedges, but then he jumps back the other way putting one of them Fords between hisself and McMullen.

  Cursing, Mullen roars two shots into the windshield of the Ford Buzzy’s ducked behind. The window crumbles and crashes all over the street. I drop to the ground, but I don’t think none of them bullets get anywhere near to Buzzy, cause when I turn round he’s still scuttling round the car. He’s breathing hard and biting his lip like he’s trying to work up the nerve to make for the hedges of one them frame house yards.

  But McMullen firing them shots—it’s like he give the high sign to every damn Cossack in town, cause the whole mess is headed up Main Street at a full gallop, guns drawed and sighted on Buzzy.

  His pistol cinched out in front of hisself, McMullen heel-toes it towards the car that Buzzy’s hiding behind. He lets go another shot into the fender to move Buzzy further around the car. Buzzy’s trying like hell to keep that car between him and McMullen, but it don’t matter nohow cause them horse Cossacks are closing in and there ain’t a damn thing he can do.

  “Give it up, boy!” McMullen says to him.

  But Buzzy won’t quit. He pushes off the car door and makes a dash up 8th Street, but it ain’t no good. McMullen watches him run for the hedge fronting a house in the middle of the block. He rests his pistol on the top of his other arm and sights it in real careful. Then he cracks a shot straight into Buzzy’s back.

  I just sit there on the wood of the sidewalk and watch Buzzy fall. His body slaps down into the 8th Street dirt. McMullen and them other Cossacks all walk up and gather round. They kick at Buzzy a few times and then turn him over so they can get a look at his face.

  Somebody says, “There’s one dead pollock.”

  All of these bastards are laughing at my brother shot down like a dog.

  I fly up off the sidewalk and dart over toward Buzzy. I’m shrieking and swinging my fists straight into the backs of them Pinkertons. I don’t even feel it when they hit. Just bring ’em back and swing again.

  I don’t know how long I give it to them before somebody grabs hold of me from behind. I just feel hands on me, pulling me back, yanking my arms behind me. Then that goddamn McMullen is standing in front of me. Smiling. I’m screaming so loud I can’t hear nothing but my own voice. It ain’t even words coming outta my mouth. McMullen looks to the other Pinkertons and then points down to Buzzy with the high polished toe of his boot.

  He smiles at me one more time before he pulls his fist back and crashes it into my face straight on. Then I’m on my behind in the dirt next to Buzzy. I’m crying so hard I can’t even get no breath.

  Nine

  Telling my ma and Lottie, telling what happened to Buzzy, is plain, flat horrible. When I yank ’em outta bed, my ma tries to make a ruckus ’bout my eye being swolled shut. I can’t even give that the time a day. I just pull both of ’em downstairs into the kitchen to get good away from Johnny and the twins before I say anything at all.

  I try to be real strong like Buzzy was when I was a kid and he come home off the evening shift on the Marion seam. He wrapped his arm round my shoulder and set me down on the stoop to tell me about o
ur pa getting killed down in the longwall cave-in with two other fellas. He told me we was going to have to look out for each other. But I can’t make it. It ain’t but two seconds after telling how they done for Buzzy that I’m hunched down at the kitchen table and gone to bawling.

  My ma pulls at my arms, asking what happened, like she ain’t heard nothing I told her. She just keeps asking the same questions over, like if she asks ’em enough times she’ll get some different kind of answers. She grabs me tight and spins me round on the chair to face her. She keeps telling me, telling Lottie, that I must be wrong somehow. That there’s some kinda mistake.

  “I know yer brother wuz hard,” she cries to me. “I know he wuz. But they wouldn’t a kilt him. He was a boy.”

  I set there in the kitchen chair and I tell her that I wished I was wrong. That I wished I was a hundred percent wrong, but I seen Buzzy ducking behind that car, and I seen him making for that hedge. I heard them gunfire cracks and I touched the blood spread on the back of his wool coat. I tell her how I seen all of them bastard Pinkertons stand there laughing after they shot him down.

  After I says that, my ma is backed up against the parlor door and screaming loud enough to drown out the tipple roar at high noon and I figure that I got to get hold of myself. That I can’t be saying that stuff to my ma. I march out onto the porch and plop down onto the stoop. I watch the street for a while just looking at the moonlight shining crooked off the reddog pavement. I’m setting there trying to come to my senses like.

  Lottie’s really the only one of us who acts like she got some brains. She gets the lamp lit up and starts a pot of coffee on the coal stove. When my ma starts yelling to the whole neighborhood that she wants to see Buzzy’s body, it’s Lottie that takes her into the parlor and kneels her down in front of the crucifix.

  My ma prays in Polish and she prays in English. Kneeling on the parlor rug, she’s begging Saint Stanislaus to put in the word for Buzzy with Mary and with the Baby Jesus. She’s weaving them rosary beads in her hands and cursing the Pinkertons too, but more than anything else, she’s just crying, weeping like she ain’t never gonna stop.

  Later, Lottie pulls me back out onto the porch and takes a good look at my swelled up face. She asks me if I’m in trouble with the law too, but I just shake my head. I tell her them guards didn’t seem to give two shits about me one way or the other. After, when I was lying there, they went walking back to their horses and McMullen went to his car. They sent for a man to get Buzzy’s body up off the street. Then they talked ’bout going to get some beer from a bootlegger up in Scalp Level.

  Lottie is really something. Setting down next to me, she takes my hand and tells me we’re gonna be okay. She says to me that I shouldn’t have had to see Buzzy get shot like that. We set there for a little while and then head back into the parlor and set with our ma on the sofa. When it gets towards light, my ma tucks herself into her print dress and slides her feet into her church shoes. We let Lottie to watch Johnny and the twins, and me and my ma head up to St. John’s Church to see the Polish priest about a funeral for Buzzy.

  Father Mizou don’t need telling what happened. He says he seen the whole thing out the rectory window, so he knows why we come knocking on his door. He lets us in and puts his arms around my ma. She cries all sobbing like into his shoulder. He tells us to follow him into the rectory and we set down in the kitchen. Standing at the table, he takes a gander at the ridge around my eyes, swolled black and blue. He shakes his head and blows out a puff of air.

  Father Mizou says for his housekeeper to give my ma some coffee, and he slips a little whiskey into the cup. I listen while they make a plan for Buzzy to get laid out up at our house today. Father Mizou says he’ll call up the Miners’ Lodge to send the funeral man and how our Lodge dues will pay the freight for Buzzy getting coffined up and hauled to the Polish Cemetery for burying.

  My ma seems all right talking ’bout the wake and the graveyard plot and all. I mean she ain’t screaming or fussing too much. But when it’s time to go, she don’t wanna head back out into the street. She has some more coffee and then Father Mizou wraps his arms around her again. On our way out the rectory door, he looks at my eye again and takes hold of my hand. He slides a quarter into my palm.

  “Take care a yer mother, Chester,” he says to me. “She’s goin to have it rough.”

  I nod my head and drop the quarter in my pocket. We’re all gonna have it rough, I wanna say. But Father Mizou’s been nice, and I don’t wanna be no kinda smart ass. So I walk down the steps and take hold of my ma’s arm and walk with her on the plank sidewalk. I keep my body close to hers, so she can feel that somebody’s there.

  We walk like that the whole way through Windber. My ma ain’t too steady on her feet and she has to stop every so often to blow her nose into the handkerchief she brung. While we’re standing in front of La Monaca’s Bakery, she takes a step back from me and firms up her face. She draws in a big breath, and she’s wagging her finger in my chest and crying some.

  “I know you’re a good boy,” she says to me. “But for all our sakes, ya gotta keep outta trouble now.”

  There’s folks passing us on the sidewalk, but I’m looking right past ’em and past my ma talking at me. I’m staring back to the cross on the high spire of the Polish church. Standing there on the plank walk, I’m thinking about being in the rectory kitchen with Father Mizou, and I’m wondering if he’d a smiled at me and been so nice if he knew what we done to that dago fella up behind 40, if he knew what kind of man Buzzy really was.

  When we get back to 40 Patchtown, we see Lottie’s been real busy. She and Ol Lady Kosturko got all the ladies on Second Street to pitch in some kinda food for the wake. Ol Man Kosturko says he can get us a couple buckets of beer over in Paint. It means a lot, folks helping us out, cause I know they ain’t got much their ownselfs.

  I’m setting out on the porch when they horse wagon Buzzy’s body up to our house. He’s inside a pine coffin, and me and the funeral man and some of the fellas from the Miners’ Lodge heave the coffin box into the parlor. We prop it up on the black sawhorses the funeral man brought, and I tell him to leave the lid down on the coffin till the priest gets here tonight. I don’t want my ma or them young kids seeing Buzzy’s body no more than they have to.

  After we get the coffin fixed up and all, the funeral man heads back to Windber. He says he’ll come back next morning to haul Buzzy off to the Polish boneyard up on Cemetery Ridge. I flop back down on the porch step waiting for Ol Man Kosturko to come back with them beers. Frankie comes out and sets hisself down next to me.

  “Chester,” he says to me. “Is it true that Buzzy’s left us here to go to heaven?”

  I look down at Frankie’s bright blue eyes staring up at me and run the back of my hand cross my mouth and look away. I don’t wanna show Frankie none of what’s in my mind. Knowing what I know, I just can’t say, “oh yeah, sure, kid.” I just push my hand across the top of his head through his hair, blond and fine as cornsilk.

  “Yer brother Buzzy loved ya a whole lot,” is what I says to Frankie.

  “So he’s in heaven, right?”

  “He loved me and ma and Lottie. He loved you and Esther and Johnny too.”

  After I says that, I spring up off the porch and leave Frankie holding his hat. I walk down to the end of Second Street to the schoolhouse where I ain’t been for two years. I drop down on one of the wood board swings and just rock myself back and forth looking off at the high bony piles cross Paint Creek, trying to find some kind a way to make head or tail of the fix we’re in.

  I been setting there so long my hands are about froze when I see Charlie Dugan come trooping down Second Street. He’s wearing an overcoat and a hat and he ain’t smiling or nothing hiking down to the schoolyard. He comes over to where I’m setting and stands behind me. He puts his hand on my shoulder and says that he was down Windber and heard about what happened to Buzzy. He says that he come to offer his condolences.

 
“I hate ’em, Mr. Dugan,” I says to him.

  “I hate ’em, too, Chet,” he says back to me. “I hate ’em too.”

  I set there for a minute or so thinking ’bout this. Then Mr. Dugan says that I can call him Charlie and he gives my shoulder a bit of a squeeze. I get up off of the swing and turn around to look him in the face.

  “Someday we’ll be free of all of these Cossacks,” he says.

  I don’t say nothing to that, cause I just want Buzzy to come back and I don’t really give two shits ’bout any of the rest of this right now.

  “C’mon, Chet,” Charlie says. “Let’s go up to the house. See if your ma needs anything.”

  So I go walking with Charlie back up to our house and there’s all kinda people there now. A lotta men from the union brung beer, and some brang wine. They’re standing round the kitchen talking ’bout the strike and cursing the Berwinds. Some men are talking about how they got Buzzy, some are talking about what happened down the train station, most are saying we oughtta lynch that bastard McMullen. The men in the kitchen are saying about how my eye is yellowing up and swolled near to shut. A few says they’re sorry about that too. I just nod and try not to start crying in front of any of them.

  Them union men’s wives is there too and they brung pigs in a blanket and pierogies. There’s halushki too and blueberry blintzes for sweet.

  I find my ma in the parlor slumped in the chair in front of Buzzy’s coffin. Most all of the studda babas from 40 are either setting in the parlor or standing round behind her. Them old ladies are all drinking coffee, saying the rosary of the sorrowful mysteries.