Loon Lake

26

When Clara fell asleep I put on my coat, closed the door quietly and went out to look around. In addition to everything else snow had hit this burg, a heavy wet fall that stuck to your eyelashes and got into your shoes.

The rooming house was highway robbery — twelve dollars a week, paid in advance. Restaurants came to another two, three dollars a day. If I took her to the movies, another forty, fifty cents.

I had even bought her a gold wedding band — for her protection, I said.

I hadn’t told her there was no money to get the valves reground. She thought we were in Jacksontown another day or two at the most. I could manage two day-coach fares to Chicago. But what would we do in Chicago — freeze our ass there?

And so, hunched in his khaki coat from the Great War, the big spender wandered through downtown Jacksontown, Indiana — Heart of the Hoosier Nation, as the sign said. Everything built of red brick, the bank, the library, the city hall, the armory. Stores occupied, the black cars parked at angles against the curbs, he notices the traffic, a heavy traffic rolling quietly through the snow, the sky gray, heavy flakes like soundproofing tamping down the horns, muffling the engines, even the streetcars grinding along hushed in the flanges, sparks flaring in the dark afternoon, the dark turrets of the armory the dark green cannon on the lawn with the mantle of white snow.

I saw everywhere on every street jalopies of every description, valises and boxes strapped to their fenders, children and grandparents high in the rear seats, scarfs wrapped around their heads. I saw furniture covered with blankets tied with rope on the beds of broken-down trucks. I saw out-of-state license places: Kentucky Tennessee Georgia Arkansas Michigan Missouri.

I boarded the Railroad Street trolley to see what would happen. It banged its way sharply around corners and picked up speed. Soon it was out of the downtown area barreling between two endless rows of semiat-tached bungalows, block after block. Eventually it veered into a dark street, a canyon of the sides of buildings, moving slowly now, many men walking in the street, the bell clanged, an unbroken chain-link fence blurred my eyes, if I opened the window I could touch it.

Last stop the doors hissed open at the main gate. Here a crowd of men stood waiting to get in, a quiet intense crowd not orderly but silent. The snow came down. Even as I watched, the crowd grew pulsing like something underwater.

Behind the locked gates uniformed men stood chatting as if nothing was going on.

I looked up at the block-long sign across the tops of two buildings. BENNETT AUTOBODY NUMBER SIX was what it said.

That evening I took Clara to dinner at the Jacksontown Inn, the best restaurant in town. It had tablecloths, candles, black busboys, and the roast beef au jus went for two dollars and a half.

“I see in the paper where every state is covered with snow from here to the Rockies,” I said.

She eyed me warily. The true color of her hair beginning to come through, her hair was fluffier too, she had given up the beauty parlor she believed they would ruin her if she had her hair done in the Midwest.

“Anyway,” I said, “I did a little exploring while you were having a nap. We could be in worse places. There are jobs here, people have money in their pockets, they’re shopping in the stores and going to the movies. They have three movie houses downtown.”

She cut her roast beef.

“And you want to hear something funny? The big employer and why everything is humming is your friend and mine Frankie W. Bennett. His Number Six plant.”

She put down her knife and fork, dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and sat there.

“Oh, Clara,” I said. “I’d be happy if I could just look at you across this table for the rest of my life.”

“That would be a lot of roast beef,” she said.

“You didn’t wear your gold ring!”

“I forgot.”

I ate and drank energetically. “Anyway,” I said, “as long as we’re stuck here — so long — as we’re here awhile — I thought I’d tap into old Frank — build up our cash reserve for the run to California.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, they’re hiring at the Number Six plant.”

“So?”

A sip of water from my cut-glass goblet. “I caught on there this afternoon. Nothing to it. I just gave them my shining innocent face. I mean there were these guys standing around with their toolboxes and employment records all wanting the same dumb unskilled jobs I put in for. No contest.”

“Why?”

“Because it was obvious I didn’t have a union background. They don’t want someone who’s a wiseass. They want the ones who don’t know any better.”

“Why did you do it?” she said.

“I thought I explained,” I said. “I thought I explained that.”

She didn’t say anything, we resumed dining. Occasionally she’d look up and smile sweetly at me, in the silence there at the Jacksontown Inn the unarguable terror of things was driven home to me.

“I don’t see why you should get on your high horse,” I said. “Is it any worse than sleeping in his bed? Is it any worse than stealing his car?”

“I think I’ve got to leave now.” She stood.

“Do you mind if I pay the damn check?”

We walked through the snow back to the room. I grabbed her elbow, she shrugged me off. “Clara, for God’s sake, what is it I’ve done, after all? I got a job! A job! Is it a fucking crime to get a job? There’s no money! We’re here in the real world now, don’t you understand? There’s no money!”

In the room she started to pack. I willed myself to be calm, there were other roomers on the same floor, I didn’t need landlady trouble on top of everything else. “Clara, please don’t be like this. Please listen. All right, this is the worst shithole town in the frozenest fucking country there is. It’s so fucking cold I can’t believe how cold it is. And there’s no reason to stay here. Except that it’s Bennett’s! That’s why, Clara. That is the true reason why. Because I’m gonna work his line without his knowing and walk away from his machine with my wages in my pocket and he’s going to get us to California! That’s why.”

She was still.

“You hear me, Clara? Because it’s living right under his nose. That’s why. Because it’s the riskiest thing! It’s the toughest and most dangerous and the classiest thing. That’s why.”

She sat on the side of the bed. “And what am I supposed to do here all day while you work his line and make your classy wages? Huh, big boy? What am I supposed to do?”

My God, it was laughable, it was heartbreaking but at least she asked the question. Neither of us was twenty! We were children — who were we, what chance did we have? In her question was one half of an instant’s perceiving, dimly appreciated, of only the most obvious possibility of life comprising the history of mankind.

I sat on the side of the bed next to her, whispering in her ear, “You don’t realize what you’ve done to me. Me, the carney kid! You’re making an honest man of him, it’s horrible. I have all these godawful longings to work to support you, to make a life with you, I want us to live together in one place, I don’t care where, I don’t care if it’s the North Pole, I’ll do any fucking thing to keep you in bonbons and French novels, Clara, and it’s all your fault.”

“Oh Jesus, he’s crazy, this boy is crazy.”

But I felt this weird tickle-behind-the-spine unprecedented truth of what I was saying. Before I said it I hadn’t known I felt it: we could change, we could make our lives however we wanted! And the steps Clara had taken to molldom and to the high forest of Loon Lake were dainty steps, steps avoiding the muck of her reality and mine. And this was where we truly belonged, not on the road but stationary, in one place, working it all out in the hard life.

“You got anything better to do?” I said.

She sighed. “That’s the crying shame of it.”