That Night at the Palace (5 page)

It was then that he began to realize just how bad this crash really was. Lockyer and Hornsby weren’t the only ones closing their doors. Most firms were closing. There wasn’t a firm in town with a job opening. That being the case, Darnell began to try relentlessly to get hired as an accountant, but no one needed an accountant if they weren’t making any money. By the spring of 1930 almost no one was making money. As mid-summer approached, Darnell Blankenship, the man who a few months earlier was on his way to owning Wall Street, was now five months behind on his payments to Dianna and living with a collection of out-of-work misfits in an alley behind a now closed toy factory.

Right after the crash, Darnell began drinking heavily. He hadn’t been much of a drinker prior to that day, though he would have a little gin whenever he and Dianna went to a speakeasy. Now he had a bottle in his pocket almost all the time. It wasn’t so much that he liked the taste of it. The cheap homemade stuff was strong and burned and had metallic aftertaste that lasted all day, but it calmed his nerves. He didn’t know if it was from stress or something really physically wrong with him, but his hands had begun to shake most of the time, as if he was cold. The booze helped him relax, and when relaxed he didn’t shake. So now he kept a bottle close by all the time. Whenever he got a job interview or some day-work, for that matter, he’d take a few drinks to settle him down.

It was his shaking hands that earned him the nickname “Shakes.”

Finally one morning, as he was standing in line for day-work at a construction site, a private investigator and two thugs working for Dianna’s lawyers found him. They dragged him into an alley and beat him so badly that he could hardly stand. Their message was a simple one: quit drinking and get a job.

Darnell already knew that he couldn’t get a job because there weren’t any. What he didn’t know was that he couldn’t quit drinking.

That night he hopped his first train, the first of many. Over the years he crisscrossed the mid-west a dozen times. Often he didn’t even know what state he was in. All he had were the clothes on his back and a blanket to sleep on. He carried two tin bottles, one for water and one for hooch. He carried a third tin that he used for cooking and eating. Aside from those necessities, the only possession he had was the fedora made specifically for him at Johnny Tyus’ shop on 79th Street and Racine Avenue back in Chicago. That hat was all he had left of his former life.

He lived in the shantytowns, and his meals came from the soup kitchens or the few pennies he could make from day-work here or there. One day he got off a train and realized that he was in East Texas. He had grown up in Rusk, just a few miles away, so he decided to walk into town and see his sister. He really didn’t know what to expect. Their last conversation hadn’t gone well at all. He didn’t know where she lived, so he went to their father’s old hardware store on the square across from the county courthouse. Just as he got to the door, she and two little boys came walking out.

When he said “hello” she stopped for a long minute and looked directly in his eyes. At first she had a look of surprise, but that quickly turned to disdain.

The older of the two kids asked her, “Who is that man, mommy?”

She turned her gaze to the child and answered, “That’s a stranger. We don’t talk to strangers.”

She then led the kids away.

He left Rusk for the last time and headed for Elza where there was a shantytown. Everyone on the rails knew where to find a place to sleep or get a meal or a day’s work. Elza didn’t offer much work, and there wasn’t a soup kitchen, but it offered a safe place to sleep without having to fear being run off. The shantytown, as it turned out, was on a bend in the track a little below New Birmingham. As a kid he and his friends had explored the old ghost town. So when he learned that the shantytown was just a little way from the old ruins, he decided to explore it again, this time with the idea of making himself a little home. In the back of the old hotel he found a room that no one would ever find without climbing over the debris, and that wasn’t likely because of the chance of getting hit in the head by falling rubble. Before long, Shakes had himself a nice little apartment. It was the perfect little home. There were plenty of farms where he could get a little work or steal a few vegetables, and down the tracks was a river with fresh water and fish. When he needed money he could hop a train into Houston or Dallas, where he’d find a few day jobs to keep his little home supplied with canned food and hooch. It wasn’t the apartment on Michigan Avenue, but it was a far cry better than shantytown.

#

After walking through wooded trails for more than half an hour, Jesse and Jewel had begun to feel that Cliff had led them on a snipe hunt. Basically it’s an East Texas version of a wild goose chase, except your friend runs off and leaves you in the woods looking for a mysterious “snipe” while he goes home and has an RC.

“It ain’t gonna work, Clifford.”

“I promise; it’s somewhere up ahead.”

Jesse and Jewel stopped on the trail. Both knew better than to trust Cliff too far.

Cliff noticed them and pleaded, “I swear, I’m not lyin’. It’s west of the river, north of the highway, and this side of the road. We’ve gotta be close.”

Jesse and Jewel looked at one another and reluctantly began to follow.

“Cliff Tidwell, if there’s not a town up here, I’m going to beat the snot out of you,” Jewel threatened.

“Oh, like you could,” Cliff retorted confidently.

Jewel stopped still, crossed her arms, and glared at him. “Do you want to try me?”

The two boys stopped and looked at Jewel. Jesse began to laugh at the thought of the two fighting.

“My money’s on her, Cliff.”

Jewel and Cliff stared at one another.

“It’s too hot to fight a girl. Besides, there’s a clearing up ahead,” Cliff said as he shrugged her off and headed on up the trail.

“You’re just afraid to have a girl give you a black eye,” Jewel replied as Cliff headed away.

Jesse followed the other two, laughing as the trail led to a clear stretch through the woods that had once been a road. The road was almost waist high with grass, but there were the remnants of wagon ruts.

“This has got to be it,” Cliff said, now relieved that the story he’d been told was probably true.

To their amazement, in the middle of the woods they walked into what was obviously a town. There was a main road lined with buildings and even some side streets with a few buildings and houses still standing. Most of the structures had been brick, but a few wooden buildings still stood as well. As they came to the main road, there was a sign.

NEW BIRMINGHAM, TEXAS

Pop. 1462

“THE IRON QUEEN OF THE SOUTHWEST”

Though the trees and brush had grown up, it was clear that there were once a lot of buildings and houses there. Most of the buildings had fallen down, but many had walls remaining. At the far end of the street was even a tall smokestack.

“That must have been the furnaces,” Cliff pointed out.

Jewel walked along, wide-eyed with amazement. “This place is unbelievable. All this time we lived right down the road and had no idea it existed.”

At the center of the town they came to a large four-story building. On the front was painted “The Southern Hotel.” It was an enormous structure that was at least a city block long with a porch that extended the length of the front and a balcony on the second floor that did the same.

“That was a hotel?” Jesse asked in amazement.

“I’ve never seen a hotel that big before,” Jewel interjected.

“I haven’t either,” Jesse added as he walked up the front steps toward the front door.

He stepped carefully, knowing from seeing all the rotted wood that the porch could easily break beneath him.

Jesse peered inside, but the roof had collapsed, and all four floors were now a pile of crumbled debris. Still, it was easy to tell that it had been a fine hotel at one time.

Deep in the building, past the former lobby, Shakes Blankenship peered from a dark shadow at Jesse as he looked into the building. In the year that he’d been living there, this was the first time anyone had wandered into his little paradise, and he wasn’t at all happy about it. This tiny little crumbling boomtown was all Shakes had in the world. It was his refuge. It was a place where he could escape all the things that had gone wrong with his life.

But only a few feet away stood three kids who could, with only a few words, put an end to his private sanctuary.

Shakes watched with anger as Jesse looked around the hotel and finally walked back out to his friends. All this kid had to do was mention to a cop or a sheriff that there was a bum living in the old hotel in New Birmingham and it would all be over. One word and Shakes would be back on the rails.

When Jesse turned back to face the others, Cliff explained, “Pa said that this was once one of the fanciest hotels in Texas.”

The three began to walk along the street in silence as they looked with amazement at what was once an enormous town, far larger than Elza and maybe even larger than Rusk or Jacksonville. Near the end of the street they came to an old mine. The building had burned down, but the smoke-stack from the smelter remained. There was also a mineshaft with a crumbling wooden framework around it. As they approached, Cliff picked up a pebble and tossed it into the shaft. The stone bounced and echoed, and finally they heard the splash of water. All three looked down into the deep shaft, making sure to maintain balance lest they fall in.

“How deep do you suppose it is?” Jewel asked.

“It’s hard to tell. All I see is black,” Jesse replied.

Shakes watched the kids peering into the mine from only twenty feet away. He had gone out the back door of the hotel and followed them along, keeping to the side street, out of sight. It occurred to him that all he had to do is run across the street and give the three a little push and that would be it. If someone came looking for them, all they would find was that three kids had fallen into a really deep hole.

All he had to do was run and give them a push.

The kids walked back through the town and came out the rutted road that led them in. When they came to the trail they had followed in, Jesse turned down it, but Cliff stopped. “Let’s take this road. I think it’ll be shorter.”

“Do you have any idea where it goes?” Jewel asked.

“No, but it goes in the direction of the railroad tracks, so it has to put us out close to home,” Cliff argued as he headed up the road with Jewel behind.

“Are you sure about this?” Jesse asked before following the other two.

“No, but we don’t have anything better to do.”

The three followed the lane to the railroad. It was obvious that before the tracks were built the road went straight through. When they climbed up on the tracks, the road on the other side that had once gone straight to New Birmingham now curved and followed along the tracks. Instead of leading to New Birmingham, the road now led to a little shantytown.

Jesse was wide-eyed with amazement. He knew about shantytowns. Lowell Thomas talked about them on the radio all the time, and he had seen one in a movie. He knew the place existed, of course - hobos wandered into Elza almost every day - but he had never seen the town and had no idea that so many people were there.

His mother called those people freeloaders and bums, but his father said that they were just normal folks who were down on their luck. Most had lost their jobs and then their homes because of the Depression and were trying to make their way to California.

The town covered about an acre of land where the railroad tracks curved to the south next to a county road that led out to the highway near McMillan’s. There were around a hundred men and women and children, most living in tents and lean-tos. Some were living out of cars and wagons. All had the same downcast look upon their faces.

Until that moment Jesse had never thought of his family as wealthy. He knew that they were one of the better-off families in Elza. Just living on Red Oak Avenue said it all. There were only a few two-story brick homes in town, and they were all on Red Oak. In fact, there were only two houses bigger than his. One belonged to the bank president and the other was Fitches Funeral Home.

He also knew that they had it a lot better off than Cliff’s and Jewel’s families. Both of their fathers were farmers who had to take part-time work at the mill to make ends meet. Farming, his father had often told him, had made pretty good money before the depression. Crop prices dropped dramatically after the crash of ’29, and many of the farmers had to find jobs. Others lost their farms to the banks. Elza was lucky to have the pulp mill even though his mother complained constantly about the smell of burned wood and tar. According to Jesse’s father, the only reason the town survived was because there was one good business that continued to hire workers. Murdock Rose often liked to remark, to Garvis’s utter humiliation, that Jesse’s grandfather, the late Horace
McCracken Hamilton, would still be in business had he the wisdom to convert his lumber mills to pulp rather than investing in whores and cheap whiskey.

Jesse realized, as he Cliff and Jewel followed the tracks past the little village that the Rose family might not be rich, as his mother regularly informed him, but he had a home and a bed and a meal every night, which was considerably more than these people.

Just ahead, where the railroad tracks turned to the south, Chief Thomas Jefferson Hightower slowly drove along the corrugated road toward the three in his old 1928 Model AA Flatbed truck. The chief had bought the truck second-hand from old Mr. Bradford over in Maydelle whose son used it to deliver groceries and feed for their family store. The Ford’s cab was powder blue and was so faded and oxidized by the sun that if you rubbed your hand on the door it would come up a dirty white. On the side door you could still see where the word “Bradford” was once painted.

Jefferson had been fighting with the town council for years to get a police prowler. He argued, quite rightly, that a police chief shouldn’t have to go running down the street every time someone called for help. He also made the sound argument that it was embarrassing to the entire town that on those rare occasions that he made an arrest he had to buy bus tickets for him and his prisoner to go before the judge at the county seat in Rusk. The town council naturally understood, but argued that the town, quite frankly, could barely afford to pay his salary, let alone buy him a car to drive around in.