He shook his head resentfully. “She can barely even raise her boy. Yet she claims Brighid an’ her an’ me each have to cover a third. Says for me to borrow the money. She’ll pay her part if it takes the rest of her days.”
Thick curly dark hair, pale face glistening with tears, muted green eyes . . . I tried to dredge more from the brief moments before I had departed the previous night—but could picture only Cait’s photograph. I said, “So where do things stand?”
“Same as they’ve always stood—it’s up to me.” The words faded into a groan. “I’m the son, the man.”
And finally I understood his dilemma: to confess unwillingness or inability to meet his mother’s dying wish—or to burden the family for years to come.
“Listen to me, Andy,” I said urgently. “I’ll supply the money.”
His mouth twisted. “You gonna tell me it’s what your dear rich auntie wanted?”
“If that’s what you’ll listen to.”
“You never had no rich aunt, and the answer’s no.”
“I wasn’t too proud to ask you for money, remember?”
“No.”
“Andy, forget the damn rich aunt. I went to get this money because I promised your mom I’d try to help. And because you’re my best friend ever. Who else ever stood up and sang for me, for God’s sake? The money means nothing. I won’t even miss it!”
“Sam, I can’t let you—”
“I was sent here for this!” I beat the air with my hands. “Remember when you said it seemed right for us to come together? Like brothers? Well, I think I got left at that train station so this could happen! It’s all part of it—and somehow she knew!”
He stared downward. “I can’t take your money.”
“Put it this way, then: Will you accept a loan?”
He drew a long, shuddering breath and turned away. I put my hand on his shoulder, felt him trembling.
“Cmon, little brother, you shouldn’t have to carry this all by yourself. What am I for?”
When he finally spoke, the single whispered word came so softly I could scarcely hear it.
“Okay.”
The $2,500 draft was payable to Andrew J. Leonard, transferable to the eastern bank of his choosing. I tucked it in my pocket and walked away from the banks that roosted like fat stone hens along Third Street. Ann Leonard had come to America in steerage. She would go home in style.
Champion’s message arrived that evening. I had a job on the terms I’d suggested, starting immediately. An hour later I met him at the new depot at Plum and Pearl to greet the Washington Olympics arriving on the B & O “Fast Line.” Millar was there too. He said he was pleased about my new role with the team and that he’d be happy to help me with press connections. The pudgy reporter didn’t seem so officious now; we were comrades of the fabled tour.
I escorted the Olympics to the Gibson House, where I’d arranged supper and quiet rooms. The next morning I took voluminous notes on Champion’s spiel as we toured the city.
It was a booster’s tour. Emphasis on growth, on industry, on bigness. We began at the river, where, before the coming of the war and the railroads, hundreds of craft, from keelboats to floating palaces, had crowded Cincinnati’s six miles of curved levee. Now, fewer than twenty paddle wheelers floated lazily at dock.
The Ohio was low in its bed that morning, exposing wide shoulders of shiny ocher mud. On the Kentucky side lay the dark, low shape of Covington, a mass of blackened brick factories. Champion ignored the lung-scratching smoke they emitted until several Olympics asked about it.
Resignedly he explained that the cause was the universal use of bituminous coal costing only seventeen cents a bushel—cheap, but it coated the city with grime. Only Cincinnati’s rich could afford to wear light-colored clothing, houses were never truly clean, and even letters mailed from the city carried with them the reek of coal smoke. He deftly changed the subject by pointing to the new thousand-foot suspension bridge connecting Cincinnati and Covington. It soared a hundred feet over the river and could support, he claimed, the total weight of Cincinnati’s 250,000 people.
We proceeded up from the river through a commercial gridwork. From plain wholesale outlets—I glimpsed Proctor and Gamble’s soap factory on Second—we moved upward to showier retail establishments like Shillito’s, where the Olympics bought dress shirts on sale at $1.25 apiece. Champion, meanwhile, kept talking: Cincinnati now boasted sixty-four millionaires; it ranked third in the nation in manufacturing and fourth in the production of books—due largely to McGuffey’s famous readers.
Longworth’s Wine House on East Sixth was a stop popular with the Olympics. Flickering candles illuminated cellars holding two hundred thousand bottles. Ohio’s wines rivaled those of California, Champion claimed, but only Germans seemed able to run vineyards profitably. I noticed that prices ranged from a dollar for local Catawba to three-fifty for Longworth’s special Golden Wedding Champagne—certainly not the cheapest drink in town.
Above Fifth, about half a mile up from the river, the buildings grew shabbier. We crossed the Miami Canal, a sluggish channel as wide as a street bisecting the city at sharp angles. A string of barges moved slowly on the viscid surface, powered by polemen. On the other side lay Over the Rhine, the huge, thriving German section constituting roughly a third of the city’s population. I looked in wonder at red brick houses with wooden gingerbread trim, charming clock towers, window boxes bursting with geraniums, narrow alleys, busy beer gardens. I promised myself the treat of exploring this city within the larger city.
The foothills were dotted with slaughterhouses and breweries. We stopped before a huge new building. Its sign read: BANNER SLAUGHTER AND PORK-PACKING HOUSE.
Christ, I thought, does he really mean to take us in there? He did. It was vivid.
What Andy had said was true: Cincinnati still reigned as the country’s primary meat packer. Here a system had originated of packing fifteen bushels of corn into a pig, packing the pig into a
