'Maybe plenty. Maybe he's why I put you on the spot with Dawes. You don't dare
'Nate. Nathan Why- why this bitterness? What have I done to you?'
'You haven't done anything. You've done me favors.'
'Yes I have. I got you on the force. Could your father have done that?'
'No, and he wouldn't if he could. He hated the cops, and it was the saddest day of his life when I joined up. And you knew that; that's why you helped me get on. You didn't do it for me. You didn't give a damn about me, one way or the other. It was to get back at Pa. Because him you hated.'
Silence hung between us like a curtain.
Finally he said, 'I didn't hate him, Nathan.'
'Then why did you kill him, Uncle Louis?'
'Kill him? What obscenity are you speaking…'
'You kept your eye on me. didn't you, Uncle Louis? Kept track of your nephew on the force. You were thick with Cermak, way back when, and you've always been thick with the politicians and all the boys behind the scenes.'
He shrugged, not following me. exactly. 'I- I suppose that's right.'
'Well, somebody in the know told my father where the money came from that I gave him for his shop. Somebody told him it was blood money. Somebody told him his son Nathan was a crooked cop.'
Uncle Louis, looking more than ever like a thin version of my father, a shadow of the man my father had been, said nothing; his eyes were wet and his bottom lip trembled.
'You told him, Uncle Louis. You told him. And he killed himself.'
Uncle Louis said nothing.
My eyes were wet, too. I pointed my finger at him. 'I disinherit you, fucker. I disown you.'
And I left the guilt there with him.
Tower Town April 9-June 25,
Winter was over, but it was still cold. Mary Ann Beame and I set out for a Sunday drive under overcast skies that didn't let the sun peek through once in six hours- which is how long a Sunday drive we took, starting out around noon and heading across the state toward the Mississippi River and the Tri-Cities, where Mary Ann and her lost brother Jimmy had been bora and raised.
This was my first cross-country trip, and even with paved roads. I was a little uneasy about it. The '29 Chevy had been getting me around the city well enough, but clear across the state? That suddenly seemed overly ambitious, particularly under a sky this nasty.
But soon I was going a confident 40 mph down U.S. 30, farm country whizzing by us on either side- though I did slow down for the dozen or so little towns along the way. Eviction notices in the farmyards, and out-of-business signs in store windows, said that hard times wasn't something Chicago had cornered the market on. All that farmland, stretching out flat to the horizon, looking wasteland-barren this time of year, broken only by the occasional farmhouse/silo,/barn, came as a shock to a city kid. I knew this rural world surrounded Chicago, but I'd never really seen it before, and when we pulled up to a gas station outside of DeKalb, a farmer in coveralls and floppy straw hat, his face as barren as the land, leaned against his pickup truck, which was getting filled at the next pump, and regarded us like visitors from another planet. So did a couple more farmers sitting leaned back in chairs in front of the station, chewing tobacco, apparently not minding the somewhat chilly day.
Mary Ann didn't seem to notice these folks as anything special; she'd come from a rather rural community herself, and in fact she sat with her nose in the air, ignoring the riffraff, going high-hat like so many expatriates do when they finally condescend to come home.
She sat in the Chevy in her white hat and black-and-white-checked dress and waited for me to get her a grape Nehi from inside, where I found more farmers playing rummy at a table, drinking bottles of Zollers beer. I got two bottles of pop from the cooler and paid the attendant, a kid about twenty with red cheeks and bright eyes who asked me where I was from. I told him Chicago.
'Are those Cubs gonna take it this year?' he asked me.
He meant the pennant; first nonexhibition game of the season was this coming week.
'Wouldn't be surprised,' I said. They'd won it last year and were favored to again.
'I been to a same in Chicago.' he said, grinning. 'More'n once.'
I grinned back at him. 'Me. too.'
I went out and stood by the car and handed Mary Ann in her bottle of grape pop; mine was orange. Over to one side of the station, some farm kids were pitching horseshoes.
'It's a whole different world.' I said.
'What is?' Mary Ann asked flatly, doing her best to drink from the pop bottle with dignity.
'This is.' I said, pointing to two barefoot farm kids about eleven who were going in the station. A minute or so later, they came out. a kid clutching a half-pint of Hey Brothers Ice Cream and another with two small wooden spoons in one fist, fishing a jackknife out of a pocket with his other hand. They sat over by the slightly older kids
