Sutton: A Novel Part 8

FIVE.

As Willie listens from the hall, Father and Mother sit up all night, a gas lamp between them, going over the family account book. Mother asks, What will we do? Father says nothing. But it's the way he says nothing.

First it was those newfangled bicycles everywhere, now it's these accursed motorcars. Not long ago people said the motorcar was a fad. Now everyone agrees it's here to stay. Newspapers are filled with ads for the latest, s.h.i.+niest models. New roads are going in all over the city. The fire department has already switched to horseless hose trucks. All of which means hard times for blacksmiths.

The summer of 1914. Despite his troubles at home, despite running the streets with Eddie and Happy, Willie manages to graduate from grammar school at the top of his cla.s.s. There's no thought of high school, however. The day after he gets his diploma he gets his working papers. His mother's dream of him in priest robes gets shelved. His own dreams are never mentioned. He needs to get a job, needs to help his family stay afloat.

But it's hard times for more than just blacksmiths. America is mired in a Depression, the second of Willie's young life. Willie applies at the riverside factories, the downtown offices, the dry goods stores and clothing shops and lunch counters. He's bright, presentable, many people know and admire Father. But Willie has no experience, no skills, and for every available job he's competing with hundreds. He reads in the newspapers that crowds of unemployed are surging through Manhattan, demanding work. Other cities too. In Chicago the crowds are so unruly, cops fire on them.

Daddo asks Willie to read him the newspapers. Strikes, riots, unrest-after half an hour Daddo asks him to stop. He mutters into the potato sack curtains: f.e.c.kin world is ending.

To save money the Suttons quit Irish Town, move to a smaller apartment near Prospect Park. They have so little, the move takes only one trip in a horse-drawn van. Then Father lays off his apprentice. Despite slower business, despite an arthritic back and aching shoulders, Father now puts in longer hours, which aggravates his back and shoulders. Mother talks to Daddo about what they'll do when Father can't get out of bed in the morning. They'll be on the street.

Father asks Willie to join him at the shop. Big Brother, thrown out of the Army, is helping too. I don't think I'm cut out for blacksmithing, Willie says. Father looks at Willie, hard, not with anger, but bewilderment. As if Willie is a stranger. I know the feeling, Willie wants to say.

After a day of shapeouts, interviews, submitting applications that will never be read, Willie runs back to the old neighborhood. Eddie and Happy can't find jobs either. The boys seek relief from the rising temperatures and their receding futures in the East River. To get in a few clean strokes they have to push away inner tubes, lettuce heads, orange rinds, mattresses. They also have to dodge garbage scows, tugboats, barges, corpses-the river claims a new victim every week. And yet the boys don't mind. No matter how slimy, or fishy, or deadly, the river is sacred. The one place they feel welcome. In their element.

The boys often dare each other to touch the sludgy bottom. More than once they nearly drown in the attempt. It's a foolish game, like pearl diving with no hope of a pearl, but each is afraid to admit he's afraid. Then Eddie ups the ante, suggests a race across. Perched like seagulls atop the warped pilings of an abandoned pier, they look through the summer haze at the skyline.

What if we cramp up, Happy says.

What if, Eddie says with a sneer.

The mermaids will save us, Willie mumbles.

Mermaids? Happy says.

My Daddo says every body of water has a mermaid or two.

Our only hope of getting laid, Eddie says.

Speak for yourself, Happy says.

Willie shrugs. What the h.e.l.l have we got to lose?

Our lives, Happy mumbles.

Like I said.

They dive. Tracing the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge they reach Manhattan in twenty-six minutes. Eddie is first, followed by Happy, then Willie. Willie would have been first, but he slowed halfway and briefly toyed with the idea of letting go, sinking forever to the bottom. They stand on the dock, dripping, gasping, laughing with pride.

Now comes the problem of getting back. Eddie wants to swim. Willie and Happy roll their eyes. We're walking, Ed.

Willie's first time on the Brooklyn Bridge. Those cables, those Gothic brick arches-beautiful. Daddo says men died building this bridge. The arches are their headstones. Willie thinks they died for a good cause. Daddo also says this bridge, when first opened, terrified people. It was too big, no one thought it would stay up. Barnum had to walk a herd of elephants across to prove that it was safe. Part of Willie is still terrified. Not by the size, but the height. He doesn't like heights. It's not a fear of falling so much as a queasiness at seeing the world from above. Especially Manhattan. The big city is intimidating enough across the river. From up here it's too much. Too magical, too desirable, too mythically beautiful, like the women in Photoplay. He wants it. He hates it. He longs to conquer it, capture it, keep it all to himself. He'd like to burn it to the ground.

The bird's-eye view of Irish Town is still more unsettling. From the apex of the bridge it looks slummier, meaner. Willie scans the chimneys, the ledges, the grimed windows and mudded streets. Even if you leave, you never escape.

We should take the BQE, Photographer says.

No, Reporter says, stay on surface streets.

Why?

Buildings, stores, statues-there's stuff on the streets that might jog Mr. Sutton's memory.

While Reporter and Photographer debate the best route to their next stop, Thirteenth Street, Sutton rests his eyes. He feels the car stop short. He opens his eyes. Red light.

He rolls his head to the right. Tumbledown stores, each one new, unfamiliar. Is this really Brooklyn? It might as well be Bangkok. Where there used to be a bar and grill, there's now a record store. Where there used to be a record store, there's now a clothing store. How many nights, lying in his cell, did Sutton mentally walk the old Brooklyn? Now it's gone, all gone. The old neighborhoods were just cardboard sets and paper scenery, which someone casually struck and carted off. Then again, one thing never changes. None of these stores looks to be hiring.

What's that, Mr. Sutton?

Nothing.

Sutton sees an electronics store. Dozens of TVs in the front window.

Stop the car, stop the car.

Photographer looks left, right. We are stopped. We're at a red light, Willie.

Sutton opens the door. The sidewalk is covered with patches of frozen snow. He steps carefully toward the electronics store. On every TV it's-Willie Sutton. Last night. Walking out of Attica. But it's also not him. It's Father. And Mother. He hadn't realized how much his face has come to look like them both.

Sutton presses his nose against the window, cups his hands around his eyes. On a few screens closer to the window is President Nixon. A recent news conference.

Reporter walks up.

Did you ever notice, kid, how much presidents act like wardens?

I can't say as I have, Mr. Sutton.

Trust me. They do.

Have you ever voted, Mr. Sutton?

Every time I took down a bank I was voting.

Reporter writes this in his notebook.

Tell you one thing, Sutton says. I'd love to have voted against President s.h.i.+fty Eyes here. f.u.c.kin criminal.

Reporter laughs. I'm no Nixon fan, Mr. Sutton-but a criminal?

Doesn't he remind you of anybody kid?

No. Should he?

The eyes. Look at the eyes.

Reporter moves closer to the window, looks at Nixon, then back at Sutton. Back at Nixon. Now that you mention it, he says.

I wouldn't trust either of us as far as I could throw us, Sutton says. Did you know that Nixon, when he worked on Wall Street, lived in the same apartment building as Governor Rockefeller?

I'm not really a Rockefeller fan.

Join the club.

Personally, I liked Romney. Then, after he dropped out, I rooted for Reagan. I was hoping he'd win the nomination.

Reagan? G.o.d help us.

What's wrong with Ronald Reagan?

An actor running the world? Get a grip.

When the river is too cold for swimming, the boys take their fis.h.i.+ng poles to Red Hook. They buy tomato sandwiches wrapped in oil paper, two cents apiece, and sit on the rocks along The Narrows, dangling their lines in the slimy water. Even with no jobs, they can at least contribute something to their families if they catch a striper or two.

One day, the fish not biting, Eddie paces the rocks. Whole f.u.c.kin thin is rigged, he says.

What thing, Ed?

The whole thin.

Behind him a tug plows through the silver-green water, a barge glides toward Manhattan. A three-masted schooner heads for Staten Island. The sky is a chaotic web of wires and smokestacks, steeples and office towers. Eddie gives it all the evil eye. Then the middle finger.

Eddie's always been angry, but lately his anger has been deeper, edgier. Willie blames himself. Willie took Eddie to the library, persuaded him to get a library card. Now Eddie has books to support his darkest suspicions. Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Peter Kropotkin, Karl Marx, they all tell Eddie that he's not paranoid, the world really is against him.

Some f.u.c.kin system, he says. Every ten or fifteen years it crashes. Aint no system, that's the problem. It's every man for his-f.u.c.kin-self. The Crash of '93? My old man saw people standin in the middle of the street bawlin like babies. Wiped out. Ruined. But did those bankers get pinched? Nah-they got richer. Oh the government promised it wouldn't happen again. Well it happened again didn't it fellas? In '07. And 'll. And when them banks fell apart, when the market did a swan dive, didn't them bankers walk away scot-free again?

Willie and Happy nod.

I'm not saying the man who shot McKinley was right in his head, I only say I understand what drove him to it.

Get yourself pinched talking like that, Ed.

Eddie wings a rock at the water. Blunth-a sound like a fat man gulping. We're on the losin team, boys. We're Irish blunth and broke blunth and that makes us double f.u.c.ked. Just how the rich want it. You can't be on the top if there aint no one on the blunth bottom.

How come you're the only one talking about this stuff? Happy says.

I aint the only one, Happy. Read a G.o.dd.a.m.n book, w.i.l.l.ya?

Happy frowns. If he reads he won't be happy.

Of all the evil rich, Eddie thinks the evilest by far are the Rockefellers. He scans the horizon as if there might be a Rockefeller out there for him to peg with a rock. He's obsessed with Ludlow. Last year J. D. Rockefeller Jr. sent a team of sluggers to put down the mine strike there, and the sluggers ma.s.sacred seventy-five unarmed men, women, children. If anyone else did that, Eddie often says, he'd get the chair.

Tell you what I'd like to do, Eddie grumbles, winging a rock at a seagull. I'd like to go uptown right now and find Old Man Rockefeller's mansion.

What would you do, Ed?

Heh heh. Remember that Judas sheep?

Photographer circles Grand Army Plaza, swings right on Thirteenth Street. He pulls over, double-parks. It's gone, Sutton says, touching the window. f.u.c.k-I knew stuff would be gone. But everything?

What's gone, Willie?

The apartment house where we moved in 1915. At least the apartment house next door is still standing. That one right there, that gives you an idea what ours looked like.

He points to a five-story brownstone, streaked with soot and bird s.h.i.+t.

That's where I saw my parents grow old before their time, worrying about money. That's where I watched the lines on their faces get deeper, watched their hair turn white. That's where I learned that life is all about money. And love. And lack thereof.

That's it, Mr. Sutton?

Anyone who tells you different is a f.u.c.kin liar. Money. Love. There's not a problem that isn't caused by one or the other. And there's not a problem that can't be solved by one or the other.

That seems kind of reductive, Mr. Sutton.

Money and Love kid. Nothing else matters. Because those are the only two things that make us forget about death. For a few minutes anyhow.

Trees line the curb. They nod and bow as if they remember Sutton. As if beseeching him to get out of the car. My best friends were Eddie Wilson and Happy Johnston, Sutton says softly.

Photographer yanks a loose fringe off his buckskin jacket. You mentioned that.

What was Happy like? Reporter asks.

Broads loved him.

Hence the name, Photographer says, starting up the car, pulling away. Where to next?

Remsen Street, Reporter says.

Happy had the blackest hair you ever saw, Sutton says. Like he was dipped in coal. He had one of those chin a.s.ses like yours kid. A smile like yours too. Big white teeth. Like a movie star. Before there were movie stars.

And Eddie?

Strange case. Blond, real All-American looking, but he never felt like an American. He felt like America didn't want him. f.u.c.k, he was right, America didn't. America didn't want any of us, and you haven't felt unwanted until America doesn't want you. I loved Eddie, but he was one rough somb.i.t.c.h. You did not want to get on his wrong side. I thought he'd be a prizefighter. After they banned him from the slaughterhouse, he hung out in gyms. Then the gyms banned him. He wouldn't stop fighting after the bell. And if you crossed him in the streets, Jesus, if you did not show proper respect, G.o.d help you. He'd give you an Irish haircut quick as look at you.

Irish what?

A swat to the back of the head with a lead pipe wrapped in newspaper.

Their luck changes in the fall of 1916. Eddie lands a construction job at one of the new office towers going up, and Happy's uncle arranges jobs for Happy and Willie as gophers at a bank. t.i.tle Guaranty.