Page 3 of The Bootlegger’s Bride
S aturday morning Helen Robinson Lomax, wearing sky-blue pedal pushers and a white sleeveless blouse, moved barefooted with her basket of strawberries from the patch by the garage.
Mid-morning sun warmed her bare arms and calves.
By the end of summer, she’d be brown as a berry herself.
That’s what her mother always said, warning her against getting too dark.
Mom’s fault. That’s from where the Cherokee blood sprung.
She crossed the gravel-and-grass driveway to the piebald backyard of the tar-papered house—a sandy, beige covering of fake brick.
Grass didn’t readily grow in the shady backyard thanks to the tall maple, willow, and fruit trees that surrounded it.
A white cloud floated across the sun, and Helen looked up to the plum tree atop the lake bank and saw that the fruit was beginning to ripen.
Same for the raspberry bushes that clung to the graying picket fence beneath it.
The cherries were already finished. Later would come peaches, apples, and, in the garden, watermelon and cantaloupe.
Also, vegetables: beans, peas, corn, okra, onions, and tomatoes.
It would keep her busy picking and canning for months. A labor of love in the home she loved.
Before marrying Raymond she had known only city streets, living a short drive from the Granite City steel mill where her father—like her husband and his father—worked, but in the office, not in the plant.
Though the lake home was small and cold in winter, the well water hard and unpalatable, and something always needed fixing, to her it was Eden.
The fresh-smelling air enveloping her, the placid lake beckoning her, and the birdsong awakening her each morning year round came as daily revelations of nature’s force and beauty.
Their home was near perfect in her eyes.
The only thing lacking was children, for which she continued to pray.
Raymond sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee and reading the Press-Record , his pecs and biceps bulging inside his white tee shirt.
Like most men at the mill, he had started at the bottom, pulling hot bricks from cooling ovens and other taxing labor.
That encouraged him to attend night school to learn to read blueprints and sharpen his math skills.
Now he no longer worked with his muscles, though that hard history still showed on him, he worked with his mind and his eyes as an inspector of the steel castings, railroad supplies, and tank turrets that the mill produced.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Helen said as she approached, and bent to kiss his forehead before moving towards the sink to rinse the berries.
Raymond said, “You’ll be pleased to learn no more late nights for me. They’re killing the second shift.”
She turned back to him. “What happened?”
He nodded at the newspaper spread on the tabletop before him. “Looks like a stalemate brewing in Korea. Folks in Washington finally losing their taste for war. Or maybe they just milked all they could from this one… New orders are way down. Laying off half my shift. Looks like I’m okay for now.”
“Let’s hope.”
“If I lose this job I’ll find another. Not like before The War.”
“At least the defense work kept you out of that one and this one.”
“The thought of leaving the lake and fields to go off and die in the dirt of Germany, Iwo Jima, or Inchon…” He moved his head side to side and ran a hand through his short-cropped red hair. “I guess you do what you got to do. Just glad I didn’t have to go.”
Helen looked out the window over the sink, staring across the adjacent vacant lot and past the tall cottonwood trees in the Sullivans’ backyard, picturing her sister’s home beyond the bend in the lake. Without turning she whispered: “Poor Hazel… I couldn’t bear losing you…”
He turned to the sports page. “What’d you say?”
She bit her lip, realizing she had spoken her thoughts aloud. “Just talking to myself.” Helen turned to him. “What would you say, handsome, to some strawberry shortcake?”
He looked up and spread his arms. “Beautiful!”
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Raymond drove them in his black ‘41 Plymouth—a car that resembled the dented lunch pail that he carried to work each day—to the Tri-City Grocery in Granite City.
Now they traveled back toward the lake, turning away from Nameoki Road and the train tracks at The Blue Note nightclub as a steam locomotive with its long tail of hoppers heaped with coal from Southern Illinois mines roared past clanking, headed into town and the foul-smelling steel mills.
Another reason Helen loved living on the lake, away from all the smoke and noise.
She wondered if Raymond had stopped in at The Blue Note for a drink on his way home from the mill last night.
Helen was long asleep when he slid into bed beside her.
She’d never question his whereabouts but was curious whether he had seen her sister there.
Though it didn’t really make much difference.
If she wasn’t there she was at Sis’s Tavern or at clubs in East St. Louis or across the river.
Helen didn’t like the idea of A.J., just ten, on his own like that.
Which was why they’d been taking him in on weekends.
Being around Raymond, whom he worshipped, was good for them both.
He’d been teaching A.J. to ice skate, to box, and to handle a fly rod.
Things his father would have done. It was a role Raymond took to heart.
Having the boy in the house was good for her, too.
“What have you got planned for you guys today?” she asked as they passed the silver-green Mobil Oil tanks—announced by a tall sign with a flying red-winged horse—just the other side of the rails that ran north to Mitchell and gave their lake community its unofficial name: Tank Town.
“Thought we’d do some weeding in the garden this afternoon and then get out on the boat and catch some sunfish for dinner.”
“He’d like that.”
“Tomorrow afternoon the Cardinals are hosting the Phillies. Let’s go sit in the bleachers and drink some beer.”
“I have a better idea. Let’s sit behind third base and sip in the shade.”
He turned and gazed at her with pale blue eyes. “I can never say no to you, Helen.”
“Likewise, as you’ve no doubt noticed.”
They turned right and followed the lake south for a bit. Soon Raymond slowed the Plymouth and steered it onto a gravel drive shaded by sycamores and bounded by thick grass, past an engraved cedar sign hanging from a wooden post reading “Lazy Lane.”
The house—a real clapboard dwelling with central heat and modern appliances, not just a gussied fishing shack like theirs—sat back a hundred yards from the road, facing the lake.
Maple trees atop the lake bank shaded the backyard and boat dock.
Somehow Jan had been able to pay cash for the home in 1941 despite having no real job.
“Car’s not here,” said Helen. “Maybe she went to town for something.”
“Yeah, something,” Raymond said, shaking his head as he braked to a stop.
He wasn’t unsympathetic to her sister’s plight.
Losing your soul mate would be like losing an irreplaceable part of yourself.
It could drive anyone to drink. Still, Hazel’s behavior—her heavy boozing and carousing—grated on his sense of propriety, devotion to family, and affinity for orderliness in life.
They walked to the back of the house where windows running floor to ceiling allowed morning sun to warm the home in winter. Down the lake bank a rowboat bobbed tethered to the dock on which rested two Adirondack chairs beside a small boathouse.
Helen pushed through the home’s back door into the bright den, the cold stone fireplace at the far end, crammed bookshelves running the length of the room floor to ceiling, a white baby-grand piano angled in the corner to the right.
“A.J., we’re here!”
She moved into the adjoining kitchen, Raymond following. “Hello?” she called.
The house lay silent. Helen walked through the dining room to the living room, checked the bedrooms and bathrooms, and returned to the kitchen.
“No sign of him.”
“Maybe she took him with her.”
“I told her yesterday we’d be here around noon.”
“Could be he’s gone fishing. I’ll check the lakeshore.”
Helen sat at the kitchen table thinking about what she had just seen in Hazel’s bedroom—rather, what she had not seen. Hazel used to keep Jan’s picture on her dressing table. She wondered what that meant.
Then, startled, she turned to her right where she had heard a noise. A whimper. She frowned looking toward the kitchen sink. As she rose and moved toward it, Raymond returned.
“No sign of him at the lake. And the boat’s there.”
Helen held up a hand to silence him then knelt before the sink. She reached out and eased open the two cabinet doors hinged there. Inside crouched beneath the sink sat A.J., head resting against the wall, asleep, his late father’s bone-handled hunting knife clutched to his chest with both hands.
She felt Raymond’s hand on her shoulder and looked up to him, seeing his jaw clench.
“We’ll take him home now, Helen. But I’m not bringing him back.”
No, she saw in his eyes that he couldn’t, that he never would, and nodded.
She turned back to A.J., brushed his cheek with the backs of her fingers, and lifted the knife from his grasp. God moved in mysterious ways. Seemingly her prayers had been answered after all.