In the Walled City

by Stewart O'Nan

  “Will you let me read it myself?”

  “And I told everyone fame wouldn’t change you.” He patted Crandell on the back.

  “Take a leap,” Crandell said.

  In two weeks the semester would be over; the kids were acting like it already was. The house they were building was pretty much finished. The little Cape seemed huge indoors. It covered the long back wall of the shop, a single face with two windows, a door and a slope of roof. The Pergament on Hempstead Turnpike donated everything. When it was done, Crandell would come in one weekend and tear it down, salvage what he could and send Pergament a list of what he needed for next semester’s. He had first period work on shingling, second the roof, while he thought about the DeLucas.

  Third was his free period, and he called the fire department. They told him to call the police, who referred him to the Department of Social Services. They gave him the address of the fire.

  “If it just happened yesterday, we’re not going to have it,” the man told him.

  “Who would have it?”

  “We are the only ones that would have it.”

  “When?” Crandell asked.

  “When their caseworker files it. Right now they’re probably in some sort of temporary housing.”

  “Where?”

  “The caseworker would have all that information but she’s probably out there with them right now.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “I honestly can’t tell you,” the man said.

  “Thank you,” Crandell said.

  Sixth period, O’Neill came in twenty minutes late, his jean jacket stinking of dope. The rest of the kids were up on the roof, banging away.

  “I’m marking you absent,” Crandell said. “And you’ve got detention.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Delbert.”

  “What is it with you?” The hammering had stopped, the class was watching them. “Go to the office,” Crandell said.

  O’Neill shrugged and held up his hands to show he was innocent, turned, and walked out the door. The hammering started up again.

  In detention, O’Neill was the same kid. It wasn’t just show, he really didn’t care. It was the dope, Crandell figured. He’d seen him out by the smokestack, getting stoned at seven A.M., or walking by his windows during class time. He wasn’t a bad kid —an evil kid the way some were. He liked the lathe. Crandell told him he could leave after a hundred shingles, and stood there to count. The boy put them up crooked, but he knew the steps and his stroke was sure. He took off his jacket.

  “So you’re supposed to be the big hero,” the boy said.

  “That’s me.”

  “You saved that girl’s life?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s wild, you.”

  “It could have been anyone.”

  “No,” the boy said, and stopped. His eyes were pink. “No, it was you. It’s like, it was waiting there for you —like you go through all this other bullshit just to do that one thing, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t believe it.”

  “I won’t,” Crandell said.

  On his way home, watching the house pass, he glimpsed the Big Wheel behind him. On Sunrise he passed a cop doing seventy-five. They had broiled sole and he wasn’t on the news.

  “They lost them,” he told Millie.

  “Who lost who?”

  “The people from the fire.”

  “There are people who get paid to take care of these kinds of situations.”

  “They’re the ones who lost them.”

  “I’m sure whoever is responsible is doing the best they can.”

  On the phone, George thought the same. He was more interested in the fire, in how his father felt in the burning house.

  “I remember I was surprised when I fell down the stairs. I didn’t have time to take inventory.”

  “You were there,” George said.

  “Sorry.”

  They put Craig on but he wouldn’t say anything so they put Sherry on. “When you goed in the fire?” she brought out.

  “Went.”

  “When you went in the fire was it scary?”

  “Yes,” Crandell said.

  “Sometimes Craig gets scared of Mighty Mouse and I have to turn off the television.”

  “Aha. Is Daddy there?”

  Eleanor came on and talked about plans for Christmas, then George came on again. Crandell checked the clock; the call was getting expensive. He mentioned it and said he’d remember something about the fire for next Tuesday.

  The steak the night before had done something to him. He read in the John and got to bed late. He had to watch it becoming a habit. That was how people got killed driving to work, they’d fall asleep and pancake the person in front of them, shoot across the median.

  The next morning he was careful to make his exits. Snowflakes dissolved on the windshield. A stake truck sat in the mud yard of the house, on the tailgate several men in work boots and hard hats sharing coffee and smoking. The Big Wheel was still behind him. He would call DSS again, maybe they’d know something by now.

  A few blocks from school he saw O’Neill trudging uphill. The boy had on his jean jacket, his hands jammed in his pants pockets. Crandell slowed beside him and hit the button for the passenger window.

  “Want a lift?” he called.

  “That’s all right.”

  “Come on, you’re getting soaked.”

  “No, really, Mr. Crandell, go ahead. I got to meet some of my boys.”

  “See you in class,” Crandell said, and pointed, “on time this time.”

  There was nothing in the paper. Ward came in during homeroom, shaking his head. “Yesterday’s heroes,” he said, “where are they now?”

  First period finished the house. He had second work on their own projects and dug up some pine for anyone who wanted to hone up on the router. No one seemed very enthused. He would have to put something together for the last week of class. He had the crazy idea it was all the work O’Neill did that threw off the schedule. Sitting at his desk with his feet up on the pullout, with the house across from him, complete, over, Crandell thought it might be good to get the kids involved with the teardown. Maybe give O’Neill a thrill, let him claw off the first shingle.

  This time the guy at DSS was polite. He gave Crandell an address in Bellport, practically in his own backyard. Millie knew some people over at St. Jude’s who might be able to do something for them. It was better than Islip, especially for a kid. Last year a kid in his fourth period got shot over a pair of sunglasses —a kid like O’Neill, just wild enough to be in the wrong place with the wrong crowd. It was way better than Islip, and the news kept him whistling.

  The bell starting sixth period rang, and no sign of O’Neill. Crandell lingered in the hall, hopeful, then toed the stop up and closed the door.

  “He’s here,” Mervin Tate said, “I saw him at lunch.”

  “Thank you for the news,” Crandell said.

  He let them work on their own stuff.

  Halfway through class, a few boys behind him started laughing. O’Neill was passing by outside, waving. Crandell hustled down the hall, around the turn, and bulled through the heavy outside doors, but the kid had taken off. He stood in the meager snow, gasping. His class pressed against the windows.

  The stake truck was crammed with lumber. Next to it sat a huge blue dumpster. The workmen had rigged a tube to a second floor window; debris slid into the dumpster and threw up clouds of dust. Someone behind him honked; the light had changed.

  He knew the address; it was a quiet street down near the water. Summers he and Millie would cruise through around sunset and watch the gulls and fishermen, the ferry to Fire Island coming back packed with bleary day-trippers. The bungalows had once been summer homes but were now fenced off from each other, big Chevys falling apart in sandy drives. Rushes grew in the ditches, dinghies rotted on the mud flats. Today, with the snow and the wind off the wa
ter, the long vistas, it seemed desolate. Crandell searched the mailboxes for numbers.

  He was a block away when he saw the motel. It was low, eight or nine units hidden by a shaggy pine hedge. He’d thought it had gone under. The sign was missing its neon, just a big swooped arrow pointing to the drive. He did not have to look at the address.

  He pulled up next to the office. As he was getting out, he saw a man peek from behind the curtain of number one, then pull back out of sight.

  The office was locked and dark. He went to number one and knocked on the door.

  The man who’d been peeking answered; he left the chain on. “Yeah?” he said.

  “I’m looking for an Irene DeLuca and her daughter.”

  “That for the girl,” the man said, pointing to the Big Wheel. His teeth didn’t fit right and he spoke too loud.

  “You know her.”

  “As much as I care to. Number nine.”

  The girl answered the door. She had a cast on her wrist. The room behind her was dark, in a corner a TV mutely strobing cartoons. She did not recognize him, but saw the Big Wheel and took it from him. It was too heavy for her and dropped with a clunk. The place was stifling hot and reeked of cigarettes; on the dresser sat a clump of beer cans, red in the cartoon light.

  “Is your mother here?” Crandell asked.

  “She went out with Manny’s friend.” She got a coat —brand new but cheap, an ugly orange —pushed the Big Wheel out the door and closed it behind them. She pedaled a few feet, then looked up at Crandell. “Did you bring a bottle?”

  “No.”

  “Someone’s going to bring a bottle.”

  “Someone,” Crandell said.

  “Someone Manny knows.”

  She bumped over the curb and started doing a circle, the plastic wheels drumming over grit. A different TV was going somewhere inside. His was the only car in the lot.

  “Will you tell your mother that Mr. Crandell from the fire came by?”

  The girl finished the circle and stopped next to him. “You’re not a fireman,” she said. “You don’t have a fire hat.”

  “Tell her Mr. Crandell,” he said.

  “Crandell, Wandle, Dandle,” she said, and started off again. He hustled across the lot to cut her off, but stopped halfway, at the center of the circle. It was snowing again, and the road was empty, the lot quiet except for the Big Wheel. He looked at the ruined sign, the rusty blue Pepsi machine with its thin door, the moss between the shingles. She was still going around when he pulled out.

  The next day O’Neill didn’t show again. Crandell kept stepping out into the hall, hoping.

  “You didn’t hear, Mr. C?” Mervin Tate said.

  “Hear what?”

  “He’s in Juvie. He got picked up over Wyandanch last night.”

  Crandell broke out the prybars and sledges. He did not try to instruct them, only warned them not to hurt themselves. They buttoned their sleeves and tugged their gloves on. The only things off limits were the door and window frames. He sent them in in shifts, switching every few minutes. At first they were uncertain, but after the first assault they were hacking and slashing, amazed they were allowed. By the end of the period it was all down. They left sweating and happy.

  The bells rang, in ten minutes rang again to clear the building. Ward came by with his lunch pail and his Newsday and said he’d see him at the game Sunday. “Little early?” he asked about the house.

  “A little,” said Crandell.

  He walked down to the lounge and called Millie, bought a coffee and came back through the empty hall, shoes scuffing on the marble. He pinched off his tie tack, undipped the tie and dropped it on his desk, then rolled down his sleeves, pulled on a pair of gloves, and began sorting through the wreckage, trying to decide what could and could not be saved.

  Econoline

  Willie T. saw the van on his way home from the bakery. Fat and rounded, it leaned in Waynoka Ford’s used lot, one rusted brake set on a cinder block. “Where’s that from?” he asked Gar, slowing. Gar shrugged and kept walking. Willie T. sped up, caught him. “You seen it before?” Gar shook his head. “Nice van to be for sale round here,” Willie T. said. “Real nice van.”

  Gar stopped and faced him. “Now why are you worrying about some van?” he said, pointing to the van with his lunch pail. “You don’t got enough trouble without worrying about some dumb van?”

  Willie T. looked at him, then away, then at the van. “All I’m saying is, it’s a nice van for around here.”

  “Like you’re gonna buy it or something.”

  “If I have a mind to.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Gar said. “That van’s five, six thousand easy. Mind to, go on.” He started walking.

  They walked the refinery fence, stacks black in the dusk, and up onto the bridge. Below, sunk in the mud, a doorless refrigerator gleamed white. Gar said, “Sometimes you’re like them Indians. Know they’re gonna lose and they go to the movie anyway. Be wishing all the time.” A tractor-trailer loaded with steel pipe rumbled by, shaking the bridge. Willie T. watched it around the bend. “What’re you gonna do with something like that anyway?” Gar asked.

  “I’ll haul people around. Like the kids goin’ to school. Like the meals-on-wheels. Yeah, and I’ll haul around stuff too. Groceries and junk. You can do anything with a van.”

  “Give me shit, haul people around. The county’s got people to do that already. Plus you got to have more than one. Schools got a whole yard full of vans, with special paint jobs and everything.”

  “I’d fix it up to look good, think I’m stupid? It’d be just as good as them fancy vans. Better, cause I’d look after it too.”

  “Shit, you’re gonna die on Nabisco time like the rest of us. Just getting upset over nothing.”

  They went by the lit Arco station and over the tracks into town, passed Big Ed’s Tavern and the bowling alley and came to Gar’s street. “All right, Willie T, I’ll see you tomorrow. And don’t think them cookies are gonna disappear overnight. They’ll be waiting on you in the morning.”

  “Yeah, they’ll be waiting on you too. All right, Gar, tomorrow.”

  Before dinner, Willie T. told Christine about the van. Boots off, he sat back in his stuffed chair, talking through the open kitchen door. Pans clattered and rang through the apartment. “That’s fine,” she called from the stove, as if she’d heard him, “That sounds fine, honey.” But he knew she hadn’t heard him, and he let it go. No sense stirring things up before he had to.

  He mentioned it again over the chicken and rice, a quick remark. “Is that what you were yelling at me before?” she asked, and shoveled another forkful.

  “It’s just nothing,” Willie T. said. “What were you up to today?”

  In bed that night, Christine snoring in the other twin, he thought about what he could do with the van. He had a few more years at the bakery, two, maybe three, but after that, who knew? His pension and Social Security went only so far. Rent alone would chew up what they had in the bank, and they weren’t poor enough for assistance. After he retired he’d have to get some kind of job, he knew that already, and driving around all day seemed like good part-time work. He’d miss Gar and the guys, but if there were passengers he’d talk to them. Maybe there’d be kids, that would be great. Or deliveries, and that would be OK too, as long as he didn’t have to load and unload. He lay in the darkness, listening to Christine, imagining himself at the wheel, a hack’s cap pulled down over his forehead. The windows were clean and the sun shone, rays bright streaks along the polished metal. In the windshield reflections of overhanging trees rose like flocks of wild birds.

  When they went by it, twice a day, to and from Nabisco, Willie T. said nothing. The first week, Gar made a few comments, but soon he gave up and kept quiet, forgot the whole thing. Each time Willie T. saw something new about the van. A cracked taillight held a pocket of brown water, the left rear fender bent in above the rusting brake. A decal on the front bum
per read, “Trust in the Lord”; the state plates said, “Oklahoma is OK.”

  At work Willie T. ran the salter with his usual touch, but he thought constantly of the van, of retirement, and after. As the grids of steaming crackers rolled beneath him, he bled salt from the hopper with the clutch, the rotor under his seat growling like a four-barrel.

  When Willie T. called at coffee break, a salesman told him the van cost two thousand dollars. Willie T. thought it was low because of the bashed-in rear. No problem: Beatty, an old friend who owned a garage, could bang out the quarter-panel and straighten the wheel. He’d have to buy a new tire and a new rim, that was only two or three hundred. Still, they didn’t have that much in the bank, and even if they did, Christine would never let him spend all of it.

  A loan would do it, but before he could think about a loan he had to see what jobs were open. He spent Sunday afternoon at the dinner table leafing through the classifieds. Christine, watching an old movie on TV, glanced over from time to time. He pretended it was the sports pages, grumbling, “Rangers trying to sign that fat boy Gedman. Says Herschel wants two million next year.” She waved her hand, shooing his comments.

  For all his searching, he found only one opportunity. “Personal Transit,” it read, “Individual to transport small treatment group.” He neatly tore the ad out and tucked it in his wallet.

  He called Monday. “Sunrise Home,” a woman answered, “I’ll connect you with personnel, please hold.” Buzzing, then a man came on. “Yes?”

  Four hundred a month, the man said. Noise from the floor made it hard to hear him. Two trips a day, five days a week, six patients per trip. Willie T. wanted to ask what kind of patients, then figured it didn’t matter. If they were crazy or dangerous they wouldn’t have advertised in the paper. The end of break bell rang, and the foreman stalked into the vending machine room. “What type of vehicle do you own?” the man asked.

  Willie T. lied.

  “Am I correct in assuming you have a carrier’s license and the proper insurance?”