Page 28 of The Bootlegger’s Bride
F irst day back after his suspension everyone stared at A.J.
and his fading black eye as he moved down the aisle toward the back of the school bus.
No one said a word, which meant they knew what happened or at least a version or two of it.
Lonnie Sullivan winked at him as he approached, and A.J. patted his shoulder.
They rode alongside the railroad tracks toward town in relative silence, passing a slow-moving line of coal hoppers pulled by a chugging steam locomotive.
The rattletrap bus, however, was anything but quiet, engine clamoring, gears grinding, seats and windows squeaking and clanking.
Wind buffeted through the lowered panes on an Indian Summer morning that smelled of engine exhaust and coal dust.
The bus pulled to a stop in front of the massive brown-brick high-school building. When A.J. stepped off Lana Markopolus stood awaiting him—straight black hair, bangs, red-and-white Warrior cheerleading uniform. God, she was pretty. She squinted at him and said: “Shiner’s looking better.”
“How’s Gibson’s nose look?”
She smiled. “Hard to tell what with all the bandages.”
“When your dad set it I hoped he gave him a big hooked schnoz to remember me always.”
Lana laughed. “The mark of Nowak.”
“His own damn fault.”
“Melissa said Tom told her it had to do with what Gibson said about me.”
A.J. frowned. “Just something he muttered after I rocked him with a clean tackle. Told him, ‘Say that again and I’ll kick your ass to Collinsville.’ That’s when he got in my face and pushed me, acting the All-American Golden Boy quarterback.
Stupid of him to yank his helmet off, grandstanding for the guys. Cost him the broken nose.”
Lana looked up to him eyes smiling. “I can sort of guess what he said… I ever tell you how much I admire your tackling technique?”
A.J. pictured it, feeling his stomach flutter. “You phrased it different.”
“Will I see you tonight after practice?” She bit her bottom lip. “I can give you a ride home.”
Her resemblance to his mother was not lost on him.
However, his feelings for Lana were of a much different character.
He now fought against those urges, telling himself to stick to the plan despite the visceral allure of the “ride home.” He needed to do this now rather than later since he didn’t know about later.
“No, go on home, Lana. Got some things I need to take care of. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Her eyes told him she knew something was up. They were always straight with each other, and he hated keeping her in the dark. Still it would be better to wait till it was more settled.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I’m good. And everything’s fine with us, Lana. You know that.”
Once inside the building he went to his locker and retrieved his brown suede jacket and a library book he wanted to keep. He doubted they would miss it or that anyone else would ever want it. When the class bell rang he moved back out the building’s front door and down the sidewalk.
On Madison Avenue he caught a county bus that carried him southwest across the city, up a bridge over railroad tracks, and down into Venice, Illinois, which was nothing like the Venice, Italy, he’d read about in Edith Wharton and Henry James.
The American Bottom flatland that bordered the Mississippi across from St. Louis was marked by steel mills, slaughterhouses, rail yards, oil refineries, munitions factories, and chemical plants.
No floating gondolas or gondoliers that he knew of.
Near the river at the end of the bus line he changed to a waiting green East Side Railway streetcar, faded and rusty, with worn brocade seats, dating from another era.
Maybe the same streetcar his grandfather rode from St. Louis to the Granite City steel mill every day for decades.
It soon carried him up and over the Mississippi via the McKinley Bridge, tracks running down the middle of the automobile lanes.
Once on the Missouri side the car curved left on a wooden trestle, steel wheels squealing as it leaned over scrapyards fifty feet below, the electric line crackling above.
Next the tracks bent west and dropped into a subway tunnel that led to the 12th Street terminal.
There A.J. detrained and climbed concrete stairs from the underground station to street level and walked north through the crisp autumn day.
He crossed Cass Avenue and turned onto Howard Street, lined with redbrick tenements.
Despite the sunny day and brilliant autumn leaves the neighborhood struck him as somber.
It smelled old, not fresh like Long Lake, and looked unkempt, with old tenements, abandoned storefronts, and litter in the gutters.
The city lay decaying and neglected, particularly the older inner city, where much of the housing dated from long before the Civil War.
He paused and pulled a yellowed envelope from the back pocket of his chinos. Once more he studied the return address before jamming it back into his trousers.
A.J. found the home, climbed the worn marble stoop and, heart pounding, knocked on a door where dark green paint peeled.
Beyond the door he soon heard heavy footsteps approaching. It swung open to reveal a tall, bearded man in a green corduroy shirt and black slacks, dark hair flecked with white strands. He gazed at A.J. in bewilderment.
A.J. cleared his throat and said, “Godfather, I am Alexander Jan Nowak.”
Bogdan Zawadski spread his arms and stepped forward to embrace A.J., pressing him to his chest and crying like a child.
§
They sat at a mahogany kitchen table, china coffee cups before them.
In the adjoining dining room in lieu of a dinner table a green baize poker table rested beneath a brass chandelier.
Six high-backed armchairs surrounded it.
Post-impressionist prints in gilt frames hung on the walls, papered in dark green and red stripes as if from another era.
The front room they had passed through from the street also claimed an anachronistic elegance, as if harkening back to when the city served as an anchor of New France.
“How many years, A.J.? I am so ashamed I too abandoned you. I should have done more.”
“No, please…”
“There were such troubles. Let me explain…” He drew a breath and gazed off over A.J.
, remembering. “I found out about Jan aboard ship six months after he died. My sister Magdalena wrote me. When I get back and go to see you and your mother she’s not the same woman.
Two years since your father was killed. I figured time heals. In her case I was wrong.
“Whenever I visited I felt unwelcome, that I made her uncomfortable. Maybe made her feel guilty. You see, after Pearl Harbor Jan and I got drunk and vowed to enlist in the Navy together. Next day he tells your mother, and she talks him out of it. They weren’t drafting guys with kids yet, and she tells him maybe he wouldn’t have to go at all.
“When he says has to break his vow that we’ll go in the Navy together, I see it ripping him up. So, I let him off the hook, say it’s no big deal. We were drinking! I shrug it off and tell myself, What do I know about being married? What do I know about women, really?
“But here was the payoff for her. If he had gone in the Navy with me he’d still be alive.
That’s what she thought. She said so once on the phone when I called to see how you all are doing.
‘If I’d only let him go…’ She was in her cups, of course.
Wouldn’t listen when I tried to talk sense.
She wanted to wallow in her guilty feelings, to punish herself.
“Too bad she was Protestant. She could have a used a priest and some absolution. She needed to confess, get God’s forgiveness, and get on with life.
To forgive herself and stop cursing Fate.
Which ain’t real anyway. That’s what I tell her.
But she wouldn’t listen. She had written a tragic script for herself and could not stop playing her role.
I saw the direction she was headed—spiraling down. I felt powerless to help.
“Next year the Christmas card I sent came back. I tried to call but the phone was disconnected. So, I ask around and find out that your mother died the winter before, but I don’t know what happened to you. No one knew anything. I prayed you were being well cared for.”
“I was, and I am. My Aunt Helen and Uncle Raymond took me in.”
“Good folks. I first met them on the day your father saw your mother at the racetrack…”
Bogdan stirred his coffee and again gazed off.
“…Jan and I went to the paddock between races to check out the horse we were playing. There was a dark-haired woman, so fresh looking, standing alone at the rail watching the ponies. Jan couldn’t take his eyes off her.
I never seen him like that. Women were always like interchangeable parts moving past him down an assembly line.
He lifted his chin at her and said, ‘There she is, Bogdan.’
“‘Who?’
“‘The woman I’m going to marry.’
“Of course, I think he’s joking… He goes over to her and talks her up awhile. Then he comes back and says, ‘I owe you one, my friend.’
“‘Why?’ I ask.
“He says, ‘I gave her the winner in the next. But didn’t tell her about the quinella or the fix.’”
A.J. sat mesmerized, seeing it in his mind—flying to the racetrack and time traveling, just as he had done as a child when listening to The Lone Ranger or Captain Midnight on the radio.
Bogdan went on to recount Jan and him growing up together and life on the streets.
Then Prohibition, The Great Depression, Hooverville, and the flavor of the neighborhood in distant days.
This was not what A.J. had come for. He had yet to ask Bogdan for the favor he wanted—the whole point of his trip across the river. Yet now, sitting with his godfather, he was getting something even better. In his stories Bogdan brought A.J.’s father back to life.
At last Bogdan paused and studied A.J.