Woodys apartment. It felt as empty on Sundays as churches were during the week. Before each business day, before the trucks and the crews got started, Woody jogged five miles in his Adidas suit. Not on this day still reserved for Pop, however. Although it was tempting to go out and run off the grief. Being alone hit Woody hard this morning. He thought: Me and the world; the world and me. Meaning that there always was some activity to interpose, an errand or a visit, a picture to paint (he was a creative amateur), a massage, a meal—a shield between himself and that troublesome solitude which used the world as its reservoir. But Pop! Last Tuesday, Woody had gotten into the hospital bed with Pop because he kept pulling out the intravenous needles. Nurses stuck them back, and then Woody astonished them all by climbing into bed to hold the struggling old guy in his arms. “Easy, Morris, Morris, go easy.” But Pop still groped feebly for the pipes.
When the tolling stopped, Woody didn’t notice that a great lake of quiet had come over his kingdom, the Selbst Tile warehouse. What he heard and saw was an old red Chicago streetcar, one of those trams the color of a stockyard steer.
Cars of this type went out before Pearl Harbor—clumsy, big-bellied, with tough rattan seats and brass grips for the standing passengers. Those cars used to make four stops to the mile, and ran with a wallowing motion. They stank of carbolic or ozone and throbbed when the air compressors were being charged. The conductor had his knotted signal cord to pull, and the motorman beat the foot gong with his mad heel.
Woody recognized himself on the Western Avenue line and riding through a blizzard with his father, both in sheepskins and with hands and faces raw, the snow blowing in from the rear platform when the doors opened and getting into the longitudinal cleats of the floor. There wasn’t warmth enough inside to melt it. And Western Avenue was the longest car line in the world, the boosters said, as if it was a thing to brag about. Twenty-three miles long, made by a draftsman with a T square, lined with factories, storage buildings, machine shops, used-car lots, trolley barns, gas stations, funeral parlors, six-flats, utility buildings, and junkyards, on and on from the prairies on the south to Evanston on the north. Woodrow and his father were going north to Evanston, to Howard Street, and then some, to see Mrs. Skoglund. At the end of the line they would still have about five blocks to hike. The purpose of the trip? To raise money for Pop. Pop had talked him into this. When they found out, Mother and Aunt Rebecca would be furious, and Woody was afraid, but he couldn’t help it.
Morris had come and said, “Son, I’m in trouble. It’s bad.”
“What’s bad, Pop?”
“Halina took money from her husband for me and has to put it back before old Bujak misses it. He could kill her.”
“What did she do it for?”
“Son, you know how the bookies collect? They send a goon. They’ll break my head open.”
“Pop! You know I can’t take you to Mrs. Skoglund.”
“Why not? You’re my kid, aren’t you? The old broad wants to adopt you, doesn’t she? Shouldn’t I get something out of it for my trouble? What am I—outside? And what about Halina? She puts her life on the line, but my own kid says no.”
“Oh, Bujak wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Woody, he’d beat her to death.”
Bujak? Uniform in color with his dark-gray work clothes, short in the legs, his whole strength in his tool-and- die-maker’s forearms and black fingers; and beat-looking—there was Bujak for you. But, according to Pop, there was big, big violence in Bujak, a regular boiling Bessemer inside his narrow chest. Woody could never see the violence in him. Bujak wanted no trouble. If anything, maybe he was afraid that Morris and Halina would gang up on him and kill him, screaming. But Pop was no desperado murderer. And Halina was a calm, serious woman. Bujak kept his savings in the cellar (banks were going out of business). The worst they did was to take some of his money, intending to put it back. As Woody saw him, Bujak was trying to be sensible. He accepted his sorrow. He set minimum requirements for Halina: cook the meals, clean the house, show respect. But at stealing Bujak might have drawn the line, for money was different, money was vital substance. If they stole his savings he might have had to take action, out of respect for the substance, for himself—self-respect. But you couldn’t be sure that Pop hadn’t invented the bookie, the goon, the theft—the whole thing. He was capable of it, and you’d be a fool not to suspect him. Morris knew that Mother and Aunt Rebecca had told Mrs. Skoglund how wicked he was. They had painted him for her in poster colors—purple for vice, black for his soul, red for hell flames: a gambler, smoker, drinker, deserter, screwer of women, and atheist. So Pop was determined to reach her. It was risky for everybody. The Reverend Doctor’s operating costs were met by Skoglund Dairies. The widow paid Woodys seminary tuition; she bought dresses for the little sisters.
Woody, now sixty, fleshy and big, like a figure for the victory of American materialism, sunk in his lounge chair, the leather of its armrests softer to his fingertips than a woman’s skin, was puzzled and, in his depths, disturbed by certain blots within him, blots of light in his brain, a blot combining pain and amusement in his breast (how did
“But what will you tell Mrs. Skoglund?”
“The old broad? Don’t worry, there’s plenty to tell her, and it’s all true. Ain’t I trying to save my little laundry-and-cleaning shop? Isn’t the bailiff coming for the fixtures next week?” And Pop rehearsed his pitch on the Western Avenue car. He counted on Woody’s health and his freshness. Such a straightforward-looking body was perfect for a con.
Did they still have such winter storms in Chicago as they used to have? Now they somehow seemed less fierce. Blizzards used to come straight down from Ontario, from the Arctic, and drop five feet of snow in an afternoon. Then the rusty green platform cars, with revolving brushes at both ends, came out of the barns to sweep the tracks. Ten or twelve streetcars followed in slow processions, or waited, block after block.
There was a long delay at the gates of Riverview Park, all the amusements covered for the winter, boarded up—the dragon’s-back high-rides, the Bobs, the Chute, the Tilt-a-Whirl, all the fun machinery put together by mechanics and electricians, men like Bujak the tool-and-die maker, good with engines. The blizzard was having it all its own way behind the gates, and you couldn’t see far inside; only a few bulbs burned behind the palings. When Woody wiped the vapor from the glass, the wire mesh of the window guards was stuffed solid at eye level with snow. Looking higher, you saw mostly the streaked wind horizontally driving from the north. In the seat ahead, two black coal heavers, both in leather Lindbergh flying helmets, sat with shovels between their legs, returning from a job. They smelled of sweat, burlap sacking, and coal. Mostly dull with black dust, they also sparkled here and there.
There weren’t many riders. People weren’t leaving the house. This was a day to sit, legs stuck out beside the stove, mummified by both the outdoor and the indoor forces. Only a fellow with an angle, like Pop, would go and buck such weather. A storm like this was out of the compass, and you kept the human scale by having a scheme to raise fifty bucks. Fifty soldiers! Real money in 1933. “That woman is crazy for you,” said Pop. “She’s just a good woman, sweet to all of us.”
“Who knows what she’s got in mind. You’re a husky kid. Not such a kid, either.”
“She’s a religious woman. She really has religion.”
“Well, your mother isn’t your only parent. She and Rebecca and Kovner aren’t going to fill you up with their ideas. I know your mother wants to wipe me out of your life. Unless I take a hand, you won’t even understand what life is. Because they don’t know—those silly Christers.”
“Yes, Pop.”
“The girls I can’t help. They’re too young. I’m sorry about them, but I can’t do anything. With you it’s different.”
He wanted me to be like himself—an American.
They were stalled in the storm, while the cattle-colored car waited to have the trolley reset in the crazy wind, which boomed, tingled, blasted. At Howard Street they would have to walk straight into it, due north. “You’ll do the talking at first,” said Pop.
Woody had the makings of a salesman, a pitchman. He was aware of this when he got to his feet in church to testify before fifty or sixty people. Even though Aunt Rebecca made it worth his while, he moved his own heart when he spoke up about his faith. But occasionally, without notice, his heart went away as he spoke religion and he couldn’t find it anywhere. In its absence, sincere behavior got him through. He had to rely for delivery on his face,
