Sutton (6 page)

Canyon of Antiheroes.

What’s that, Mr. Sutton?

Nothing. Did you boys know, after the three astronauts returned, Collins got a letter from the only man who understood how completely alone he’d been? Charles Lindbergh.

Is that true?

They enter the tunnel, drive slowly under the river. The cab of the Polara goes dark, except for the dash and Sutton’s glowing cigarette. Sutton closes his eyes. This river. So full of memories. And evidence. Guns, knives, costumes, license plates from getaway cars. He used to hammer the plates into tiny squares the size of matchbooks before dropping them in the water. And former associates—this river was the last thing they saw. Or felt. We’re here, Reporter says.

Sutton opens his eyes. Did he doze off? Must have—his cigarette is out. He looks through the fogged windows. A lifeless corner. Alien, lunar. This can’t be it. He looks at the street sign. Gold Street. This is it.

You committed a crime here, Mr. Sutton?

Sort of. I was born here.

He wasn’t born, Daddo always said—he escaped. Two months early, umbilical cord noosed around his neck, he should have died. But somehow, on June 30, 1901, William Francis Sutton Jr. emerged. Now, emerging from the Polara, he steps gingerly onto the curb. The Actor has landed, he says under his breath.

Down the street he goes, dragging his bad leg. Reporter, jumping out of the Polara, flipping open his notebook, follows. Mr. Sutton, is your family—um—still?

Nah. Everyone’s a fine dust. Wait, that’s not true, I have a sister in Florida.

Sutton looks around. He turns in a full circle. It’s all different. Even the light is different. Who would have thought something so basic, so elemental as light could change so much? But Brooklyn sixty years ago, with its elevated tracks, its ubiquitous clotheslines, was a world of dense and various shadows, and the light by contrast was always blinding.

No more.

At least the air tastes familiar. Like a dishrag soaked in river water. The energy feels the same too. Which may be why Sutton now hears voices. There were so many voices back then, all talking at once. Everyone was always calling to you, yelling at you, hollering down from a fire escape or terrace—and they all sounded angry. There was no such thing as conversation. Life was one long argument. Which nobody ever won.

Reporter and Photographer stand before Sutton, concerned looks on their faces. He sees them talking to him but he can’t hear. They’re drowned out by the voices. Old voices, loud voices, dead voices. Now he hears the trolleys. Night and day that ceaseless rattling is what makes Brooklyn
Brooklyn
. Let’s take the rattler to Coney Island, Eddie always says. Of course Eddie is long gone, and there is no rattling, so what is Sutton hearing? He puts a hand over his mouth. What’s happening? Is it the champagne? Is it the leg—a clot rattling toward his brain? Is that why he now hears his brothers taunting him, Mother calling from the upstairs window?

Mr. Sutton, you okay?

Sutton closes his eyes, lifts his face to the sky.

Mr. Sutton?

Coming, Mother
.

Mr.
Sutton
?

THREE

Chickens, horses, pigs, goats, dogs, they all walk down the middle of Gold Street, which isn’t a street but a dirt path. The city sometimes sprinkles the street with oil to keep the dust down. But that just makes it an oily dirt path.

Neighborhood boys are glad the street is dirt. Gold Street got its name because pirates buried treasure beneath it long ago, and on summer days the boys like to dig for doubloons.

There. A narrow wooden house, three stories tall, like all the others on Gold Street, except for the chimney, which tilts leeward. Willie lives there with Father, Mother, two older brothers, one older sister, and his white-haired grandfather, Daddo. The house is painted a cheerful yellow, but that’s misleading. It’s not a happy place. It’s always too hot, too cold, too small. There’s no running water, no bathroom, and a heavy gloom hangs in the tiny rooms and narrow halls since the death of Willie’s baby sister, Agnes. Meningitis. Or so the Suttons think. They don’t know. There was no doctor, no hospital. Hospitals are for Rockefellers.

Seven years old, Willie sits in the kitchen watching Mother, grief-sick, at the washbasin. A small woman, wide in the hips, with wispy red hair and bleary eyes, she scrubs a piece of clothing that used to be white and never will be again. She uses a powdered detergent that smells to Willie of ripe pears and vanilla.

The name of the detergent, Fels, is everywhere—newspapers, billboards, placards in the trolley cars. Children, skipping rope, chant the Fels advertising slogan to keep rhythm.
Fels—gets out—that tattle—tale gray!
Meaning, without Fels, your gray collar and underpants will tell on you. Judas clothes—the idea terrifies little Willie. And yet Mother’s constant scrubbing makes no sense. A noble effort, but a waste of time, since the second you step outside, splat. The streets are filled with mud and shit, tar and soot, dust and oil.

And dead horses. They keel over from the heat, fall down from the cold, collapse from disease or neglect. Every week there’s another one lying in the gutter. If the horse belongs to a gypsy or ragpicker, it’s left where it falls. Over time it swells like a balloon, until it explodes. A sound like a cannon. Then it gives off an eye-watering stench, bringing flies, rats. Sometimes the New York City Street Cleaning Department sends a crew. Just as often the city doesn’t bother. The city treats this nub of northern Brooklyn, this wasteland between the two bridges, as a separate city, a separate nation, which it is. Some call it Vinegar Hill. Most call it Irish Town.

Everyone in Irish Town is Irish. Everyone. Most are new Irish. Their hobnailed boots and slanted tweed caps are still caked with the dust of Limerick or Dublin or Cork. Mother and Father were born in Ireland, as was Daddo, but they all came to Irish Town years ago, which gives them a certain status in the neighborhood.

The other thing that gives them status is Father’s job. Most fathers in Irish Town don’t work, and those who do drink up their wages, but Father is a blacksmith, a skilled artisan, and every Saturday he dutifully, proudly places his weekly twelve dollars on the outstretched apron of Mother. Twelve dollars. Never more, but never less.

Willie sees Father as a fantastic collection of nevers. Never misses a day of work, never touches liquor, never swears or raises a hand in anger to his wife and kids. He also never shows affection, never speaks. A word here, a word there. If that. His silence, which gives him an aura, feels connected to his work. After eleven hours of hammering and pounding and swatting the hardest thing in the world—what’s to say?

Often Willie goes with Father to the shop, a wooden shed on a big lot that smells of manure and fire. Willie watches Father, streaming with sweat, slamming his giant hammer again and again on a piece of glowing orange. With every slam, every metallic clank, Father looks—not happy, but clearer of mind. Willie feels clearer too. Other fathers are drunk, on the dole, but not his. Father isn’t God, but he’s godlike. Willie’s first hero, first mystery, Father is also his first love.

Willie thinks he’d like to be a blacksmith when he grows up. He learns that when you make a piece of metal longer, you
draw
it, and when you make it shorter, you
upset
it. He learns to pump the bellows, make the flames in the hearth swell. Father holds up a hand, signaling
careful
, not too much. Every other week another blacksmith shop burns to the ground. Then the smith is out of work and the family is on the street. That’s the fear, the thing that keeps Father hammering, Mother scrubbing. One bad turn—fire, illness, injury, bank panic—and the curb is your pillow.

If Father never speaks, Daddo never stops. Daddo sits in a rocking chair by the parlor window, the one with the curtains made from potato sacks, delivering an eternal monologue. He doesn’t care that Willie is the only one listening. Or doesn’t know. A few years before Willie was born, Daddo was working in a warehouse and a jet of acid spurted into his eyes. The world went dim. The hard part, he always says, was losing his job. Now all he does, all he can do, is sit around and blether.

Most often he talks about politics, stuff that goes over Willie’s head. But sometimes he tells larky stories to make his youngest grandson giggle. Stories about mermaids and witches—and little men. To hear Daddo tell it, the Old Country is overrun with them.

What do the little men do, Daddo?

They steal, Willie Boy.

Steal what?

Sheep, pigs, gold, whatever they can lay their grubby little mitts on. Ah but no one holds it against the lads. They’re just full of mischief. Bad little actors.

Do you remember the exact spot where you were born, Mr. Sutton?

Sutton points to a tan brick building, some kind of community center. Tell them Willie Boy was—here
.

Was it a happy childhood, Mr. Sutton?

Yeah. Sure
.

Photographer shoots Sutton in close-up, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway behind his head. The expressway was built while Sutton was in prison. God what a monstrosity, Sutton says. I didn’t think they could make Brooklyn uglier. I underestimated them
.

Cool, Photographer says. Yeah, brother, right there. That’s tomorrow’s front page
.

Willie’s two older brothers despise him. For as long as he can remember it’s been true, a changeless fact of life. The sun rises over Williamsburg, sets over Fulton Ferry, and his brothers wish he were dead.

Is it because he’s the baby? Is it because he’s William
Junior
? Is it because he spends so much time with Father at the shop? Willie doesn’t know. Whatever the reason—rivalry, jealousy, evil—the brothers are so united against him, they pose such a seamless two-headed menace, that Willie can’t tell them apart. Or doesn’t bother. He thinks of them simply as Big and Bigger.

Willie, eight, is playing jacks on the sidewalk with his friends. From nowhere Big Brother and Bigger Brother appear. Willie looks up. Both brothers hold egg creams. The sun is bracketed by their giant heads.

So feckin small, Big Brother says, glaring down at Willie.

Yeah, Bigger Brother says, snickering. Feckin runt.

Willie’s friends run away. Willie stares at his jacks and his little red ball. His brothers move a step closer, looming over him like trees. Trees that hate.

It’s embarrassin, Bigger Brother says, bein known as your brother.

Put some meat on your bones, Big Brother says. And quit bein such a sissy.

Okay, Willie says. I will.

The brothers laugh. What happened to your friends, Willie Boy?

You scared them.

The brothers pour the egg creams over Willie’s head and walk away. You scared them, they say, imitating Willie’s thin voice.

Another time they make fun of Willie’s big nose. Another time, the red bump on his eyelid. They always make sure to tease him in the streets, away from any grownups. They’re as sly as they are heartless. They remind Willie of the wolves in one of his storybooks.

When Willie is nine his brothers stop him on his way home from school. They stand directly in his path, their arms folded. Something about their faces, their body language, lets Willie know this time will be different. He knows that he’ll always remember the high blue of the sky, the purple weeds in the vacant lot on his left, the pattern of the cracks in the sidewalk as Big Brother knocks him to the ground.

Willie writhes on the sidewalk, looking up. Big Brother smirks at Bigger Brother. What are we gonna do with him?

What can we do, Brother? We’re stuck with him.

Didn’t we tell you to quit bein such a sissy, Big Brother says to Willie.

Willie lies on his back, eyes filling with tears. I’m not.

Is it liars you’re callin us?

No.

Don’t you want us to tell you when you’re doin somethin wrong?

Yeah.

That’s what big brothers are for aint it?

No. I mean yeah.

Then.

I wasn’t. Being a sissy. I promise I wasn’t.

He’s callin us liars, Big Brother says to Bigger Brother.

Grab him.

Big Brother jumps on Willie, grabs his arms.

Hey, Willie says. Come on now. Stop.

Big Brother lifts Willie off the sidewalk. He puts a knee in Willie’s back, forces him to stand straight. Then Bigger Brother punches Willie in the mouth. Okay, Willie tells himself, that was bad, that was terrible, but at least it’s over.

Then Bigger Brother punches Willie in the nose.

Willie crumples. His nose is broken.

He hugs the sidewalk, watches his blood mix with the dirt and turn to a brown paste. When he’s sure that his brothers have gone, he staggers to his feet. The sidewalk whirls like a carousel as he stumbles home.

Mother, turning from the sink, puts her hands to her cheeks. What happened!

Nothing, he says. Some kids in the park.

He was born knowing the sacred code of Irish Town. Never tattle.

Mother guides him to a chair, presses a hot cloth on his mouth, touches his nose. He howls. She puts him on the sofa, leans over him. This shirt—I’ll never get these stains out! He sees his brothers behind her, hovering, glaring. They’re not impressed that he didn’t tattle. They’re incensed. He’s deprived them of another justification for hating him.

The sidewalk whirls like a carousel. Sutton staggers. He reaches into his breast pocket for the white envelope. Tell Bess I didn’t, I couldn’t—

What’s that, Mr. Sutton?

Tell Bess—

A stoop. Six feet away. Sutton lurches toward it. His leg locks up. He realizes too late that he’s not going to make it
.

Willie, Photographer says, everything cool, brother?

Sutton pitches forward
.

Oh shit—Mr. Sutton!

It varies widely, for no apparent reason. Sometimes the brothers simply knock Willie’s books out of his hands, call him a name. Other times they stuff him headfirst into an ash barrel. Other times they scratch, punch, draw blood.