Authors: Rob Levandoski
“There are a lot of them all right,” Gus said. “And look at all these pretty little Negro stores, one right after the other. Pull it over, Ace.”
I kept flying. “Don't you think we should take Will to a doctor first? Or a hospital? I bet Chicago has lots of hospitals.”
Gus watched the little Negro stores blur by. “We will, Ace, I promise. Once we get some of this Negro cash in our pockets.”
I knew he was making excuses. “We've got plenty of cash from those Baptists,” I said.
“Not enough for Chicago,” he said. “You need lots of cash in a city like this. Now please pull over.”
I was watching Will in my rearview mirror. He was still staring and blinking, as if solving some terrible arithmetic problem in his head. “He doesn't look very good.”
Gus looked at me like I was crazy. “He's been shot. How good can he look? But he's gonna be OK. I had a brother get bit by a rattler and he looked that way for nearly two weeks. Then all of sudden he got up and started dancing.”
We flew past a prosperous little grocery with baskets of fruit and vegetables stacked on the sidewalk. Gus pointed his shotgun in my general direction. I stopped. The street was lousy with Negroes, some just hanging out, some on their way to someplace important. Gus and I jumped out. “Come on, Gladys,” he said, “I'll steal you whatever you want.”
She didn't budge.
“Come on, sweetie pie. Clyde can watch Will.”
She didn't budge again.
Gus's hillbilly voice twanged up a full octave. “Ain't you coming?”
“I wasn't planning on it,” she said.
Up another octave. “Well, I'm planning on it.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her, right over the top of the door. He raised his hand to slap her but didn't. The three of us went inside. It looked just like Ruby & Rudy's. Smelled the same. Pickles and bananas, peanuts and dust. We strolled toward the counter, Gus's shotgun hidden behind his back, the floor squeaking. Behind the counter stood a middle-aged Negro couple. Except for their skin they looked just like the Zuduskis, smart and clean, all business. The man even wore wire-rimmed glasses like Rudy's.
Gus swung his shotgun over his shoulder. Didn't stop walking until his belt buckle was rubbing against the counter. “Evening folks. I'm Gus Gillis. Professional stickup man. The Weebawauwau Warrior they call me.” He took off his fedora and extended it upside down. “Kindly put your green right in there.”
The Negro Ruby and Rudy couple didn't budge.
Gus's smile went weak. “I was hoping we might complete our transaction without me taking this gun off my shoulder.”
Two fists the color of dark Dutch chocolate, a left from the man, a right from the woman, plowed into Gus's pink face. Gus went over like a bowling pin. His head cracked on the floor. His shotgun exploded, killing the pickle barrel. Green brine washed over the floor. Gus's suitcoat soaked it up like a sponge.
Gladys bent down and wiggled his broken nose. “You all right?”
He was out. I took her arm and lifted her. “It wasn't a hail of bullets,” I said, “but it's close enough.” I tried to pull her toward the door but her feet were nailed to the floor with indecision. “Come on,” I said. “You're free now. We're all free.”
She unnailed her feet. We backed out, arm in arm. “Sorry about the pickles,” I said to the Negro couple. “He's got plenty of Baptist money in his pockets you can have for the damages.”
Gladys cranked the Gilbert SXIII and got in next to me. We flew off. We never saw Gus Gillis again, though we did learn two days later when we were sitting in a precinct holding cell that he was dead. Not from those dark Dutch chocolate fists. He died a much more embarrassing death than that. Even more embarrassing than Will's father's death.
The setting sun was on our left. That meant we were heading north. Buildings were getting bigger. A lot bigger. There were more and more white people on the sidewalk. Pretty soon no Negroes at all. “He's acting funny,” I heard Clyde say.
Will wasn't blinking anymore. His breaths were long and noisy. I saw a bubble of blood on his lip. “We're going to get you to a hospital right now,” I said. “Everything's going to be fine. Absolutely fine.”
We were suddenly downtown. The streets were clogged with cars and people and noise. The cars weren't moving very fast, but the people sure were. Even a line of tattered men in front of a soup kitchen was moving fast. A traffic cop made me take a right. Another made me turn left. We were now on Michigan Avenue. I remembered from Will's maps that Michigan was Chicago's main north-south spine. Somewhere to our right was the World's Fair. Will was breathing like a punctured accordion. More blood was bubbling on his lip. “Hold on,” I said. “We'll find a hospital any minute now.”
“Take me to the World's Fair, Ace,” Will said.
My steering wheel was slippery with sweat. “You're talking out of your mind. I bet there's a hospital right up here, after this next stoplight.”
“I want to go to the World's Fair, Ace.”
“I can't take you to the Fair, Will.”
“Ace.”
“I can't, Will.”
Will's voice was drifting. “I've got to show Gladys the Transparent Man,” he said. “She thinks he's real. But he's just made out of plastic. Someday everything will be made out of plastic.”
“Well, you're not made out of plastic,” I said. “I've got to get you to a hospital.”
“Ace!”
I was crying and I could hear Gladys and Clyde crying, too. The traffic was terrible. The light wouldn't change. It just hung there over the intersection, electric blood.
“Take him to the Fair,” I heard Gladys say.
“Take him,” I heard Clyde say.
Goddamn. Sonofabitch. The light finally changed and I made a right, knocking off one of my stubby wings on a light pole. “All right, we'll go to the World's Fair,” I yelled. “But I'm not spending all night in the Hall of Science, that's for damn sure.”
“You'll want to when you see it,” Will said. “It's 240 feet long, sixty feet wide with a ceiling fifty-seven feet high, packed with everything you'd ever want to know about mathematics, geology, biology, chemistry, physics, and medicine.”
Gladys asked him if the Transparent Man was in the Hall of Science.
“Sure is,” he said. “So is the Clock of the Ages. It's got a ten-foot dial that compresses two billion years of the earth's history into one four-minute revolution. Mankind doesn't appear until the last second or two.”
The downtown gave way to a broad swath of railroad tracks. On the other side, looking like a huge Christmas tree lying on its side along the endless indigo lake, against an endless black eastern sky, lights and ornaments of every color, skyride cables strung through the air like garlands, sat the Chicago Word's Fair. We were spellbound. I pulled right up on the railroad tracks and stopped. Will mumbled “Jeez” a dozen times in a row.
I'd been looking at the photographs of the World's Fair in Will's guidebook for more than a year. Tiny black and white pictures. This was real. This was immense. This was in color. Bright colors. Audacious colors. Wanton colors. Bright blues. Bright greens. Bright reds. Bright oranges. Bright yellows. Hues that would make a good Methodist look away. And the buildings. Audacious shapes. Wanton shapes. Some as ornate as old parlor chairs. Some as plain as cereal boxes. All huge. Bathed in rainbows of light. Castles where only Martians could live. Flags by the hundreds, some as big as our barn on Stony Hill Road, flapped in the steady lake wind. Fountains rising and falling. Searchlights slashing like giant swords.
Thousands of people, tiny as bugs, were moving in and out of these buildings, in and out of the rainbow lights. Their collective feet and mouths made the air shake. Scores of songs were playing at once. Exotic smells were butting heads.
We just looked and listened and smelled. I remember thinking that we were as far from Bennett's Corners as anyone could get. Clyde began reading the huge words splattered all over the huge buildings: SEARS, ROEBUCK AND COMPANY; FIRESTONE; TIME; VALVOLINE MOTOR OIL; GENERAL MOTORS; FORD; CHRYSLER; reassuring words; words everybody knew in their heart; knew in their soul; knew would eventually save us from the depression.
“There's that big dinosaur,” Gladys said. “It looks alive just like you said.”
“It isn't though,” Will answered.
We looked and listened and smelled some more. “We made it, Will,” I said. “The technological wonders of the modern age, smack dab in front of us.”
Will didn't answer me. Will was dead.
His father had died only thirteen months earlier. Both should have lived a lot longer.
Will's father had survived the dogfights over France. Survived the wild Atlantic Ocean, going and coming. Survived barnstorming and racing cars. But he couldn't survive his weakness for bootleg whiskey. He couldn't survive hundred-year-old lath and plaster.
Just five months before Prohibition ended in December 1933, a Model A filled with gallon tin cans of bootleg sped down Townline Road, more than likely on its way to some illegal drinking establishment in Cleveland. It was a rainy black night and the driver didn't know the stone steps of the Methodist church came right down to the gravel road. The A's front left wheel hit the bottom step. It flipped and skidded across the road on its roof, right onto the community ballfield. Driver crawled out and ran. In the morning they found all that green whiskey. They emptied the cans into the ditch. Rudy Zuduski supplied a box of stick matches. The ditch burned all day.
Two days later Will's father disappeared. Two days after that, halfway through the Sunday sermon, the church ceiling caved in. Will's father, gallon tin cradled in his arms, came down headfirst. Broke his neck on the back of a pew. Two rows in front of where Will and Clyde and Mrs. Randall were sitting, praying for his return.
It was an embarrassing way for a man to die. Especially a good family man like Will's father. A good man who gave away free Cokes and candy bars and always had something friendly to say. A good man who bought the shirts and caps the Bennett's Corners baseball team wore. He was scoutmaster of Troop 203. Took us camping all the way to Niagara Falls. He performed the church's janitorial chores free of charge. A man with only one weakness. A weakness God said was unconscionable. A weakness the government said was unconstitutional.
Apparently Will's father heard that Model A flip in the night and went out to investigate. I suppose he looked inside and saw those shiny cans. He probably had a key to the church on his belt. He only took three cans and hid them in the church attic, figuring that when he was alone dusting under the pews, he'd sneak up and take a few swigs.
But that whiskey wouldn't let him back down. He might have swigged a whole can, slept that off and swigged another. Lost track of time. Lost track of his senses. Maybe the Sunday morning hymns woke him, the scolding voices of earthbound angels vibrating around his feet. Maybe he tried to crawl out across the rafters. He came right down through the lath and plaster. Broke his neck on a pew. Five months later everybody in the country agreed Prohibition was a big mistake and ended it. For years Bennett's Corners was known as that place where the drunk fell through the church ceiling during Sunday services.
There was nothing embarrassing about Will's death. Yes, it was sad and senseless and absolutely preventable. Yet it was a noble death. He died for a good reason. He wanted to see the technological wonders of the modern age, to prepare himself for the glorious future that was sure to bloom just as soon as Franklin Delano Roosevelt figured the depression out. He planned our trip to the Chicago World's Fair thoroughly. Dreamed it thoroughly. Finally, in August 1934, we started out for Chicago. Odds were we'd get there and back with no trouble at all. Odds were Will would learn exactly what he wanted to learn, and be as ready for the future as anybody alive.
I'm not saying Will would have done something grand with the things he'd learn. He probably wouldn't have invented anything. Found the cure to anything. Wouldn't have built a great corporation. But Will might have become a teacher. I could see that. He might have taught at the high school in Brunswick. Or he might have opened a little business fixing radios and phonographs and eventually television sets.
I've often wondered how Will would have died had Pruitt taken that milkman's pistol away. He'd talked some about taking night classes at Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, so he might have been killed in a car crash returning home half asleep. He might have been killed in the war, though I doubt the Army would have let somebody that smart anywhere near the front. But his ship might have been torpedoed or his barracks bombed or he might have died on some island in the Pacific from malaria. No, I doubt they would have let him get anywhere near a gun. Those blinky eyes and that cautious demeanor.
He might have died of cancer or a heart attack, the way most people die. He might still be alive, living with me here at Sparrow Hill, reading to me every day out of the
National Geographic
s stacked on the coffee table in the sun room.
I wonder how my life would have been different had he lived a full life. He might have dragged me off to Baldwin Wallace College with him. When the war broke out, he might have gone with me to that recruiter in Akron, and talked me out of signing up for cooking school. “Hold out,” he would have said. “You were born to fly, Ace.” Of course that might have gotten me killed fifty years too soon, but my life sure would have been different. Infinitely better. More noble. He might have talked me out of opening the R&R Luncheonette. Might have talked me out of marrying Lois Cobb. Even if he didn't, our marriage might have been different. God knows she wouldn't have had Will's ghost in bed with her. We might have had a son and she might even have let me name him Will.