Chapter One
April 6, 1944
In general I don't care to hear any word of advice, and I do my best not to give any out.
But there's just the one thing.
If you've managed to work yourself into a good job, steady work, the kind of a spot where you can keep a little respect for yourself, you should think for a time before you chuck your detective's badge at your captain's chest and walk out on the whole thing. That's how I found myself in a little rented flat in a three-story building on the east side, whiling away the hours and whittling away at my dwindling stash of money.
After the riot and all the mess of the previous year, I thought I knew what I'd be doing. I thought I might take a little job to keep me occupied. I had a vague idea that I could carry on a regular affair with Eileen. But it wasn't so. Through the summer and the fall of 1943, I prowled around the city and continued to eat myself up inside. With Eileen I'm not sure how it happened; it was like a record that had skipped off track. It wasn't right from the beginning, and then thoughts of Alex and Tommy and my father got to be heavy enough to darken everything. Gradually she soured toward me.
I moved from my rented house, which was too big for me, into a tiny flat. Then I spent so many hours stewing out on my little landing on the fire escape that I knew everything about the neighborhood—everything that could be noted along the interior of the block, along the alley that all the buildings backed into. I watched as daughters crept out for secret meetings with boyfriends; I noticed that husbands were more likely to smack their women as payday drew near and money grew tight; I came to know where the rats hid from the light during the day. You see a clearer picture of how people live when you look into their back windows.
Even with all the old ladies peeking through their curtains and all the old gents scouring the riverfront for Nazis night and day, Detroit was still a place where you could be left alone. I wasn't sure if any of my neighbors knew anything about me or what I had done. They knew my name, most of them. But you can't ever tell what people will say about you, you can't control how people will talk. I was just glad to be able to sit unmolested on the little landing on the outside fire stairs, halfway between my floor and the floor above.
I brought up a quarter sheet of plywood to keep the legs of my little kitchen chair from going through the grate. Though the rail was loose and rickety, it was wide enough for me to rest a can of beer or a cup of coffee on it. During the day, and just after school let out especially, the neighborhood kids chased up and down the fire escape and the alley, but then they were called to supper, and things were quiet enough for me to sit and think. Usually I crept out as dusk took hold.
Then one evening in April, after I had weathered the worst of the Michigan winter and early spring, sitting out sometimes even as the snow whipped through the alley or settled softly over me like a blanket, I swung out my window thinking that I'd be warm enough to sit till the moon crawled away. But as I started up, I felt the buzz that jolts you when you realize you're not alone; there was a man I didn't know sitting above me in my chair, the orange tip of a cigarette bobbing between his lips. The pale light from the street lamps down below threw a shadow over his face, but there was a weak flickering glitter in his eyes. I couldn't very well back down the stairs in such a case, and so I clomped up the remaining steps and said hello.
"This your chair?" he said, rising. "I guess it is."
"That's all right," I told him.
He got up stiffly and stepped clear. "I can't do right by stealing another man's chair."
There wasn't much to do but sit down. The slender stranger stood with his back against the stair rail for a time, pulling smoke from his brown cigarette and pluming it outward. The steady wind that came through the alley drafted the smoke quickly upward, spiraling away. I was wearing a work vest to hold off the cold—a vest that had been my father's—but this fellow just stood there in his shirtsleeves. Fred Caudill would have glad-handed him; he'd put out his hand as a natural thing to any man, friend or stranger, who came within ten feet of him. My brother Tommy would have put out the mitt, too. I sat and let my eye go out into the distance.
"My name's Ray Federle," the smoking man said. "We moved into the building last week."
"Pete Caudill," I said.
"Got the wife and two girls," he said. "Needed a cheap place."
"Yah," I said. "It's cheap all right."
My eye started to see a little better in the dark, and I could see that Federle was still a young man. He lit up smoke after smoke, and each time he passed the fire from the old one to the new, he chucked the dead butt over the rail. It was impossible not to watch them as they fell and splashed sparks on the alley below.
"Good Friday tomorrow," he said. "You follow that stuff?"
"No." I had fallen out of caring what day it was. With no regular job to press me, I had no cause to mark the days.
"For the Catholics it's a big deal on Easter," said Federle. "They get to eat again."
Federle's talk made me think of my mother in her house all alone—of family meals and laughter, gone now. Easter—I knew I'd be eating alone again.
"I got a job rolling fenders at Chrysler," he said. "How about you? You on the bum?"
"I get by," I said. "I work when I need to."
"Did you lose that eye—"
"I never went to the war," I said. "But I got a couple fingers missing, too. You want a look-see?" I waved my bad hand for him.
"If I'm too fresh with you, I don't mean anything by it. I got a case of nerves."
Federle was not quite as tall as me, and he gave up thirty pounds in the matchup. It made a question flicker through my mind: Were we high enough where a man would be killed if he fell from the landing, or would he only break his legs?
"You're lucky you didn't have to go," he said, rubbing his thumb over the black stubble on his chin. He tapped a light cone of ash from his cigarette, and it tumbled like snow over the hairs of his forearm. "It ain't no picnic."
"It's bad?"
"Let me tell you," he muttered. He held out his cigarette in the dark, as if his arm gestured to a faraway place that he could somehow see before him. "Sometime I'll tell you about it. It'll make your hair stand up like a porcupine. The wife don't want to know."
After that we were silent for a long time, as much as an hour. I could mark the time by the sounds of supper dishes being washed, children getting bathed, lights blinking out, the nails of mongrels clicking down the alley, rattling trash cans. Now and again a stumbling couple crept down the alley, taking the darker path toward the Alderton flophouse for an hour's entertainment. I thought I could hear a mystery play from someone's radio echoing down between the buildings. Another day gone, I thought. How many more? As much as the moon could make it stand out from the black sky, the smoke from Federle's cigarettes trailed away from us like silt kicked up in a slow-moving stream.
"Late at night," said Ray Federle, "when it's quiet like this, and people are lying down to bed—kissing their babies and tucking them in and whispering to them that everything's going to be all right—you'd think it would be a peaceful time. How the darkness comes down to soothe all the bad business and set you down to rest . . ."
He broke off to pull one last long drag from his cigarette. The ash came close enough to burn his fingers, and he twitched the butt away. I could see that his eyes were wide and staring and empty and his jowls were slack.
"That's when the spiders come out," he said.
My first thought was that it was still too cold, too early in the year, for spiders to be out spinning all night; but then I saw him bring two long fingers slowly up to tap his forehead, which was shining oddly with sweat. He stared out blankly into the night for a few moments more.
"Off to work," he said finally. "Boneyard shift."
He climbed stiffly up the steps toward his own window, hoisted it open, and went through with some difficulty. I made my way down to my own place and turned out the lights. Coming in from the night and then putting my face close to the lamp dazzled my eye. In the dark I stood for a time, trying to make out the solid parts of my paltry room. Filmy sheets of white bloomed and faded before me, and I turned to see them all around me. Gradually I became adjusted to the darkness again, and the ghosts left me alone. I sat at my little dinette table and wondered if sleep would come for me.
Copyright © 2006 by Mitchell Bartoy. All rights reserved.
