40 Patchtown

by Damian Dressick

  Lottie’s running round pouring coffee for some of them studda babas and the twins is both on the parlor floor setting next to ma. Ma is praying and she’s crying some every so often, but nothing like before. I set with them in the parlor for a couple Hail Marys, then I go back out to the kitchen to be with the union men while we all wait for the Polish priest.

  I’ve got down some of them pierogies, and I’m having a little of the whiskey somebody brung from over Third Street when Charlie Dugan comes over to me. He says that he gotta head back up to Cresson on the union’s business. He tells me again how he’s real sorry ’bout what happened to Buzzy. Then he says if there’s anything I need, I should talk to him direct.

  I says thanks to him for that and I ask him if he wants to take anything to eat with him. He says he’s all right and we go out on the porch where some men are smoking cigarettes. Standing there, we shake hands like men before Charlie starts down the sidewalk and heads across the street to get in his Ford.

  When he drives off, I go back into the kitchen and Father Mizou comes a couple minutes later. Everybody puts down their plates and all the glasses of beer and we all shuffle into the parlor. The funeral man and Father Mizou lift the lid off of Buzzy’s casket. The funeral man changed Buzzy’s clothes, so you can’t see he was shot down, but his face is awful white. I take a good, long look at Buzzy’s face, trying to get it burnt into my mind, so I don’t never forget it, but it ain’t even been one day and he don’t look nothing like he did alive. So I just say forget it and stand with Lottie behind our ma who’s setting up next to the foot of the casket.

  All the people, the union men and their wives and the studda babas gather round behind us and Father Mizou stands up by Buzzy’s head. He reads from the missal ’bout how Buzzy’s gonna rise up with the Lord Jesus in the last days. I want him to rise up now, but I ain’t saying nothing. Lottie snatches hold of the twins and puts them back away with Johnny in the kitchen when they start screaming and carrying on. Ol Man Kosturko and his wife are crying some. But off to the side of the casket, my ma really starts to break down again. Weeping full on, she looks like somebody stole all the bones right outta her face.

  The next morning, we haul Buzzy off to the Polish Cemetery in the Miners’ Lodge horse wagon. Lots of folks from all over 40 and some from other patchtowns and even some from Windber come up for the burying. Father Mizou gives Buzzy the dust to dust and then my ma and me and Lottie and the twins and Johnny all toss a handful of dirt down on Buzzy’s casket. Then some Miners’ Lodge fellas lower Buzzy into the ground and all the studda babas dirge out the Anioł Pański which is the Polish funeral song and the saddest song in the world.

  After they’re done, me and Lottie grab up my ma’s hands and take hold of the other kids. With everybody walking behind us, we hoof it slow down the curve of the Ridge Road back to 40 with nobody saying nothing.

  Ten

  The Cossacks only wait a week to come calling, till the union men and all our neighbors are gone away from our house back to their own troubles. That’s when the sunsabitches march up, eviction papers crumpled in their dirty mitts. The first two Pinkertons stomping up the walk, big-bellied and stinking of corn liquor, they’re strange to me. But the older one trailing up behind, I recognize right off. His name is Coulson and he’s blond-headed and lanky with his lip is curled up funny so his long, flat face always looks like he just pissed his pants. More than once since this strike started up, I spied him huddled with Buzzy in the alleyway behind the 40 Hotel when they thought nobody was looking.

  That first Cossack, he shoves them eviction papers under my nose and pushes right past me onto the screen porch like I’m standing on the porch of his house. Hollerin like a teacher who been wanting to kick you outta the oneroom all year long and finally got the go-ahead, he tells me since Buzzy’s dead we gotta shag our pollock asses outta the company’s house. I tell him that I’m a loader on the B seam at 40 mine, so we can stay on that. But he won’t go for it nohow. He says he don’t give St. Peter’s pecker if I’m superintendent of Eureka 37, we gotta hit the road.

  “Make yourself some pollock tracks, little pollock,” he yells at me.

  Then he twists the screen door off the hinges and stomps right into our house. He’s rampaging through the kitchen,

  He’s yelling, “Younz got till dark to get your pollock shit the hell out a here.”

  Both the other Pinkerton and Coulson start in after him, but I snatch hold of Coulson’s blue dye coat and give it a tug.

  “Ain’t there nothin you can do?” I ask him. “Ya know my brother just got shot.”

  “Younz is lucky ya got to stay on this long,” he says soft.

  “We pay our rent,” I tell him.

  “Ya paid more than that.”

  “How ya mean?”

  Coulson pulls me over to the corner of the porch and says low to me that’s the deal they had going with Buzzy. Them other Cossacks didn’t like him none, but ten dollars every month put on top of the ten dollar rent and they let us stick. Now I understand how come I kept seein him sneaking round with Buzzy the beginning of every month.

  “Shit,” he says. “’Thout that sugar money younz woulda been throwed outta here six months ago like every other trouble maker.”

  “What if I can get you the money?” I ask him.

  “Too late now,” he says. “With Buzzy bein in a shootout and all, McMullen would cut my throat he knew you was stayin on in a company house.”

  I’m ’bout ready to tell him that Buzzy wasn’t in no shootout. He just got shot. But I hear my sister yelling all high-pitched from upstairs. She’s screaming for them Cossacks to keep away from her. So, I leave that damn Coulson holding his hat and go running into the house. I grab my ma’s big sewing shears off the darning bench in the parlor and take them wood stairs two at a time.

  I find them all in the back bedroom. Them bastards got Lottie pushed back into the corner of the room next to the clothes cabinet. She’s cursing and holding ’em off with a dressing table chair stuck out in front of her.

  I grab a water pitcher off the dresser top and throw it up against the wall. It shatters, spraying shiny square pieces of glass cross the bedroom floor. Both of them Pinkertons look at me like they’re gonna tear me in two.

  “Get outta here, boy!” they tell me. “Get your dumb ass back downstairs.”

  But my blood’s up and I just don’t care what happens. I flip the sewing shears open and hold them out in front of me. I try to spread my weight over both feet like I seen Buzzy do in a knife fight with a fella from out 42.

  “I ain’t got nothing to lose,” I tell them Cossacks. “Younz better scram on outta here or kill me right here and now. I’ll find ya whereever ya go. Kill ya both, if I have to set fire to ya while ya sleep.”

  The look on their faces changes, and I wonder if I’m looking just crazy enough to scare ’em off. Then I look closer and see that they’re looking behind me, over my head. That Cossack Coulson’s standing in the doorway. He’s got his hands on his hips and he’s shaking his head.

  “I ain’t gonna let this happen here,” he says. “We come down here to throw these pollocks out and we’ll do it. But younz fool with that girl, I’ll fix ya my own damn self.”

  The two Cossacks start trying to argue him into going along, but this Coulson ain’t having none of it. He throws his coat open and shows ’em the chrome steel pistol parked in his dark, polished holster. They look at each other like they’re trying to figure whether to shit or go blind. I’m still standing there waving the sewing shears out in front of me and watching Lottie, who’s let the chair drop ’bout halfway to the floor.

  When Coulson lowers his hand to the pearl butt of that pistol, them other two Pinkertons look at him like he’s lost his mind.

  “Bobby Coulson,” one of them says. “Ya mean to tell me you’d shoot down yer own kind for these pollocks?”

  “What we’re doin here,” Coulson says slow, almost tired like, “throwin
these pollocks in the street, might not be right. But I got two kids to feed. So, if it ain’t right, so be it. But what ya wanna do to that girl’s just plain wrong. I’ll tell the both of you right now, I ain’t goin to hell just so ya can get a piece a Polish ass.”

  The whole time Coulson’s been saying this, his hand’s been slowly wrapping itself around that pistol butt. When them bastards hear the click from his thumb snapping the holster tab open, it seems to settle the matter for everybody. They step back away from Lottie and she lowers the chair the rest of the way to the floor. I move off to the side of the door frame so them sunsabitches can get clear of the room without getting too near to me, just in case beating my ass ain’t a hell causing kinda sin.

  “Thank you, mister,” I says to Coulson when the other Cossacks have gone down the hallway.

  “Don’t ya thank him,” Lottie says. “He didn’t do nothin for us. It’s his soul he’s worried about.”

  “She’s right,” Coulson almost spits at me. “I didn’t do nothin for ya. So ya make sure ya got all of yer pollock shit outta here before dark.”

  Now, I don’t understand how Lottie could say he didn’t do nothing for her. If he hadn’t a stepped up, she might be getting it from them Cossacks this minute instead of standing here talking, but now Coulson just seems to want us to get our stuff and get the hell out, so I don’t know.

  When Coulson and them other Cossacks is gone, I says to Lottie that we best tell our ma ’bout getting the boot out. But Lottie’s setting down over by the clothes closet in the chair she was fending them Cossacks off with. She’s got her hand on her forehead and she’s just staring into the wall looking played out and I’m thinking maybe the business with them Cossacks took more outta her than she wants to let on.

  I tell her it’s all right, that she can just sit there for a while and I’ll go tell our ma about the papers. She don’t say nothin, just keeps looking blank at the paint peeling wall of the back bedroom.

  My ma is at the neighbor’s down on First Street cross from the pick-me store. She got the twins and Johnny with her and the neighbor must have give ’em some kinda sugar candy for a bribe cause they’re all keeping quiet for once. I come up on them setting on the porch to hear my ma telling the neighbor lady ’bout how hard it’s been not having no husband for so long and how maybe if my pa hadn’t gotten killed down West Virginia, Buzzy might a turned out different. She sounds to be damn near crying, saying ’bout how she can’t hardly stand this no more.

  She can’t see me cause the porch is built up high on cinder blocks, and I’m skulking down by the coal chute underneath. I give her a second to quiet down before I pop up them steps. When I do clomp up, I make it good and loud, so she’ll know I’m coming.

  “Hey ma,” I says to her.

  “Chester,” she says back. When she sees me, she’s still breathy and weepy in her talk, but she tries to say my name all regular, like she’s not that sad at all.

  “I know ya don’t need no more of it,” I says to her, “but I got some bad news.”

  My ma looks at me with her mouth flopped open while I tell her ’bout getting served up the papers. I don’t say nothing ’bout what happened with Lottie and the Cossacks. I figure if my ma’s already had too much to take, learning ’bout that on top of us getting throwed out might just send her round the bend.

  Now, my ma knows they only give ya till dark to get your stuff outta them company houses when ya get served up papers, but she ain’t getting up or nothing. I grab hold of her arm and give her a heave, but like I said before, my ma’s a big woman and she don’t go nowhere till I look over for the neighbor lady to say something.

  “Anna,” she says to my ma. “Ya gotta get home and pack what ya can get out or them Cossacks is gonna get all your stuff.”

  My ma snuffles out she don’t care ’bout who gets nothing. She says she don’t even know where we’ll go. But then maybe she figures out she sounds like a little kid saying she don’t care who gets our stuff or maybe she realizes that we’re gonna go down to Tent City like everybody else in 40 what got their stuff set out, I don’t know. But after a second, she gets up and pulls her dress straight. She grabs Johnny’s hand and tells me, “Chester, lay hold of them sticky twins. We gotta pack.”

  Eleven

  While my ma and Lottie are trying their best to get what they can of our stuff packed up, I head up to McKluskey’s farm with Ol Man Kosturko to borrow their wagon.

  Them McKluskeys must feel bad ’bout us getting the boot out so quick after Buzzy being shot down cause they don’t even ask for no money to use the horse wagon. The oldest of the McKluskey boys just says to make sure to have it back to them before dark.

  Ol Man Kosturko and me bounce on the buckboard of the wagon down Patchtown Road past Eureka 40 to Ash Alley where we jerk a right up onto Second Street. When we draw even with my house, Stash and Baldy are setting on the porch on top of some packed up freight boxes. Stash says to me they’re sorry they didn’t come up to the house for Buzzy’s laying out.

  “We was scared to even show up at the buryin,” Stash says. “We didn’t know if them Pinkertons was gonna be waiting up there at the cemetery for us.”

  “Ya know, hiding behind tombstones,” Baldy says.

  I give a look to Ol Man Kosturko and he goes in the house to help my ma. Then I says to Baldy and Stash that I don’t think them Pinkertons ever found out about nobody beside Buzzy. I tell ’em that them bastards coulda had me dead to rights, they’d a wanted. But they just let me lay.

  “Whatcha think happened?” Baldy asks me. “How’d they find out?”

  I know I ain’t seen Mikey since that day I stomped out of the 40 Hotel. I don’t think he would a give Buzzy up outright even for money, but I can see him letting something slip trying to make up for his not being down at the 40 station riot. But I don’t know that for sure neither, so I just shrug my shoulders like I can’t figure nothing.

  Baldy and Stash both gimme a nod, but I can see they don’t believe I’m giving them a hundred percent of the truth. For a second, they look at me like maybe it was me that said something. But they must realize I wouldn’t rat out my own brother nohow, because they don’t say nothing else about it. Maybe they’re thinking about Mikey being gone too.

  It don’t take too long to load what we got up into the back of the wagon cause Stash and Baldy give us a hand heaving them boxes. Besides, my ma knows we can only take so much to the Tent City. She gives some of our stuff to the Kosturkos and she sells the couple pieces of furniture we got to some Slovaks living over on Third Street.

  We make sure we get all of our clothes and dishes and pots and stuff like that loaded up onto the wagon before it’s even close to dark, cause them Cossacks come and nail your door shut the night they serve papers and whatever they find in your house after that they keep for theirselfs. Right before we roll the wagon out, Baldy and Stash tell me that they gotta get a move on back over the rock dump to 37 Patchtown. They’re acting like they’re still afraid of getting seen by them Pinkertons, but since Buzzy got shot down, the curfew’s lightened up a good bit it seems to me. So maybe they’re still spooked a little, but I wonder if it ain’t that they was Buzzy’s friends more than they ever was mine and just don’t want to be running with nobody who aint’ yet turned fifteen.

  “Okay, fellas,” I tell ’em. “I’ll see ya around.”

  Stash and Baldy start back through the yards towards Paint Creek and with the wagon balanced up with our stuff, we head off down Patchtown Road for the Tent Camp on the other side of the 40 Hotel.

  What folks call the Tent City is a camp of tents and chicken coops built up in the patch of scrub woods behind the 40 Hotel on land that belongs to one of the McKluskey brothers. He lives somewhere in Ohio, so he don’t gotta be ’fraid of the Berwinds giving it to him for letting the miners set up on his land. Since this strike started, it’s maybe half of 40 that’s got the boot out, but there ain’t that many left livin down in the Tent City.
A lot, I think, went maybe to Pittsburgh to try for steel mill work and some headed back east to load in the anthracite mines. More than a few just drifted the hell away.

  When I get the horse wagon off of Patchtown Road and take her up the Tent City Trail through the woods, all the people what’s there look up to see who’s coming in now. I recognize some fellas from the union meetings and I see a good many folks what lived down 40 before the strike, but ain’t been back on account of all the Pinkertons knocking heads. Some folks are pointing at me or waving cause they know I’m Buzzy’s brother or they recognize me from the B seam washhouse, but it seems everybody’s deep enough in their own troubles that they ain’t in no mood to be getting up and running over to give me a proper handshake.

  Spread through the trees, the Tent City is maybe thirty some tents and a bunch of festering coops and some lean-to’s built out of barn boards. Kids and women set on oak logs around a big cook fire burning in the center of the camp. Every one of them setting looks pretty glum, and none of the ones standing looks much better.

  I was thinking it might be tough to get a tent spot down here, but with all the folks that’s left or been run off, there’s a good many places already been cleared out of brush and the like, so we head over to one of them patches on the outskirts away from the smoke of the cookfire. I says to my ma that her and Lottie and Esther oughtta get to unloading our stuff off the wagon while I take Frankie with me to find the head union man so we can see ’bout getting us a tent.

  Walking back through the rough clutter of that tent camp sets me to thinking. I figured that we really had it bad down 40. But some of these folks in Tent City has been here since the beginning of the strike back in April and they look like they’re gonna be lucky just to make the morning. I ain’t lying. I mean kids is looking at Frankie all jealous and pointing, whispering behind their hands, and at first I can’t figure out why. But then I see these little kids ain’t got no kinda shoes. They’re walking around the rain puddles and the brambles with nothin but old strips of pit britches wrapped round their feet.