The Day Steam Died Read online

  Red worked at the Shops too and drank when he wasn’t working. He was a large man whose red nose glowed against his ruddy face that always looked like it needed washing. A bottle of cheap Wild Turkey was all he needed to stay warm in the winter. His wife Alice, daughters Ann and Jo Lee—named for the boy he wanted but never got—wore coats or sweaters in the house to keep warm. It wasn’t unusual for Red to drink up the money they needed for coal to feed the Heatolator in their living room. His false German-Jewish pride wouldn’t let Ann and Jo Lee go down to the rail yard like the Barnes boys to pick up coal that spilled from the hopper loader filling up the twenty-plus trains a day that came in for inspection and repairs.

  Roy thought about the house Mary Beth wanted all day at work. When he got home, he went through his daily ritual of dusting the soot off his denim jacket into the coal scuttle by the cook stove and hung it on a hook by the door.

  “Tell the boys to go pick up some coal tonight,” Roy said. “It’s almost as cold and drafty in here as that old Back Shop building. I can’t stay warm even when I’m using my torch all day down in the pit.” Still warming his hands over the stove, he asked in submission, “When can we go look at the house?”

  Roy seldom argued with Mary Beth, mostly because she was usually right, but also it just wasn’t his personality. He went along quietly as long as it was a fair compromise. But, when provoked, he could show his temper. Like the Sunday morning after church at a Deacon’s meeting. He was the only one who voted against the addition of a youth center to the church building while they were still in debt for the parsonage they’d bought. He let his feelings be known, stood up quietly, bid them good day, and then walked out of the meeting.

  “Next week,” Mary Beth answered. “I already called Miss Gobble, and she’s expecting us after supper Thursday. She wanted us to come Wednesday, but that’s prayer meeting night.”

  “Fine. When will supper be ready?” he asked on his way to the frigid bathroom.

  “By the time you get cleaned up,” she answered, “just like every other day.”

  Rick came into the kitchen from their bedroom where he’d lost an Indian wrestling contest with Wil to see who would clean up the room—they needed space to do homework after supper.

  “Momma, we can go pick up the coal now while Daddy is cleaning up,” Rick said.

  Will had come into the kitchen just in time to hear Rick volunteer him to help pick up coal. He shot Rick a dirty look but said nothing.

  “Okay, but don’t take too long. You know how he wants everybody to be at the supper table on time. And wear your hats and gloves!” she called after the two boys half way out the door.

  “Speak for yourself next time. It’s too cold out here,” Wil complained as he took stairs three at a time to catch up with Rick.

  “Shut up and come on. Old man Carnes will be down at the barn milking when we pass by, and I brought my peashooter for Bossie. I bet I can get her to kick the milk bucket over again.”

  “You’re going to get us into real trouble one of these days,” Wil said, a stickler for going by the rules. “What if they tell momma you made Bossie kick a full bucket over? They won’t sell us any more milk, and I’ll be in trouble because of your stupid prank.”

  “Scaredy cat. He has to catch us first. He’s deaf as a stump post and didn’t even know we were around last time.”

  “Just the same, I think we should pick up the coal and go home. I’m cold,” Wil swung his coalscuttle as they approached the barn in the open field between their house the rail yard.

  “Shhh! Listen. He’s already milking. Come on, let’s go around to the door on the other side.”

  The brothers circled the barn. They peeked around the corner to find Bossie tied up and Mr. Carnes sitting on his milking stool hidden on the other side of the cow.

  Rick sat his coalscuttle down quietly. “Stand out of sight.” He raised his peashooter, took aim, and drew in a big breath to send a dried green pea on its way.

  “Gotcha this time!” Glen, the Carnes’ youngest son, growled as he grabbed Rick by his coat collar, forcing him to swallow the pea. He dragged him and Wil into the barn. “So you’re the ones making Bossie spill Pa’s milk.”

  “Humph. Won’t your folks be proud to know their boys just cost them a gallon of milk,” Mr. Carnes grunted between tobacco-stained teeth as he let fly a brown stream of warm tobacco juice that barely missed Rick. “Let’s go, boys. We need to pay a visit to your folks.”

  “Please, Mr. Carnes!” Wil pleaded. “Can’t we pick up our coal first? We were headed to the—”

  “Shoulda thought about that sooner,” Mr. Carnes interrupted. “Glen, hold on to those two and let’s see what momma and daddy have to say about their hard working boys.”

  Glen, who worked as a “car-knocker” rebuilding wooden boxcars at the Shops, held Rick’s shoulder in a grip that kept getting tighter and tighter until he winced in pain. “Aww, is the little baby’s arm hurting? That ain’t all that’s gonna be hurting if I catch you down here again.”

  Chapter 2

  “People came here from all over the country to join John Bank’s grand dream and break the shackles of the Great Depression, to start a new life with a good job in a company town built just for them.”

  Punishment has its rewards

  Roy opened the kitchen door to the hall after three loud knocks pulled him from his evening newspaper. His sons stood there with their heads hung low, and Mr. Carnes stood over them.

  “Mr. Carnes, what brings you and Glen here? Come in. Boys what’s this all about?”

  Rick and Wil ducked inside without answering while Mr. Carnes and Glen stepped in and surveyed the kitchen before explaining their surprise visit.

  “Looks like we’ve had some mischief from your boys,” Mr. Carnes said.

  “And what might that be, Mr. Carnes?” asked Mary Beth, who had been setting the supper table.

  Mr. Carnes pulled Rick’s peashooter from his bib overall pocket and threw it on the kitchen table. “They been coming down at milking time, using that peashooter to make Bossie kick the milk bucket over. I want it stopped. You’re good folk, and I know you’ll make it right. All I need is the fifty-cents you owe me for a gallon of spilt milk they made Bossie kick over last week. And if you want to keep buying milk from me, you better keep these boys away from my barn.”

  Mary Beth went to her pocket book sitting on the breakfront, took fifty-cents from her coin purse, and then handed it to Mr. Carns. “I’m sorry for their misbehavior. They’ll be punished and rake out your barn and put down fresh hay for two weeks. After that they won’t go near your barn again. You have my word.”

  “Thank you.” Mr. Carnes and Glen turned around and slammed the kitchen door behind them.

  Eating supper after that was the last thing Rick and Wil wanted to do. Sitting at the table and enduring Mary Beth’s steely glare was worse than the sting of Roy’s belt ever was.

  Mary Beth’s face was twisted in anger; finally she spoke in a firm and controlled voice. “You boys will repay me out of your allowances and come home every day after school and rake out his barn, bring in two scuttles of coal each, and do your homework until bed time. And if you ever go near that barn again, I will use your daddy’s belt myself!”

  “Yes, mam,” they said in unison.

  She’d never resorted to the belt before, but if looks could kill, they would both have been dead by now.

  To get away from the apartment and her drunken father, Ann Nestlebaum sneaked out to go pick up coal with Rick and Wil. She kept them company while they cleaned out the Carnes’ barn and helped them put down fresh hay.

  Rick approached Ann the next day at the barn. “What happened?” He could see her bruised cheek as he held the lantern up to her face. For the first time in all the years they’d lived
across the hall from each other, he only now noticed how pretty she was. Her thick blond hair tucked under the hood of her coat framed her soft face, and her dark blue eyes sparkled when she smiled.

  She removed her heavy coat to help rake, revealing her developing breasts and rounded figure stretching the seams of her jeans. “Jo Lee accidentally hit me last night while we were horsing around.”

  Rick gently touched the red handprint. “When did Jo Lee’s hand get so big?”

  Ann pulled away. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Your mother shouldn’t let him hit you.”

  “We were being noisy and woke him up, that’s all. Come on, let’s finish the barn and get the coal picked up before Daddy comes looking for me”

  Under a cold, starless night with four scuttles of coal, Ann, Wil, and Rick quietly climbed up the back stairs and tiptoed down the hall while trying not to wake Red passed out on the Nestlebaum’s couch.

  “Please don’t say anything about what happened. He’ll kill me if he ever found out I told.”

  “Okay, but if he doesn’t stop hitting you I’m going to show him how it feels.” Rick puffed up his chest as he spoke.

  Ann smiled and blew him a kiss. “See you tomorrow,” she whispered as she carefully opened the door then disappeared inside.

  Before going to bed, Rick hunched over the tiny table in the corner of the sitting room and wrote secretly in a dog-eared, spiral-bound tablet. It wasn’t homework, but a journal pouring out his newly discovered feelings about Ann. She wasn’t like a sister or that pesky little kid across the hall anymore. She made his body tingle and aroused his budding manhood.

  Chapter 3

  “He didn’t just want to build the best repair shop, but the finest town to support his state-of-the-art facility at the time . . .”

  Terror at the barn

  The final day of punishment arrived, and Rick told Wil he would clean the barn by himself. He wanted to have some time alone with Ann. He was going to miss spending every evening with her, talking about dreams of going to college and becoming a journalist. She listened to his stories, to his dreams and thoughts with wide eyes and a smile that cut straight through him. The way she looked at Rick made him feel important, like he’d done something right.

  Cleaning up the barn wasn’t hard work. It gave him inspiration to write in his journal how much he liked being with Ann. When she didn’t show up some nights, he developed a knot deep in the pit of his stomach.

  “I heard your daddy really screaming last night,” Rick said. Ann was busy sweeping the floor while Rick scrubbed what had already been cleared. “My daddy says he may lose his job if he doesn’t stop coming to work hung over. He already caused one colored helper to get burned when he lit his torch standing too close to him.”

  She looked over and smiled but didn’t say anything.

  “Does he still hit you?”

  “Not as long as I stay outside.” Ann chuckled and came over to give him a peck on the cheek. “I worry about Momma. She’s always tired and is gettin skinny. She says she’s okay, but I know better. I see her holding her side and crying when she doesn’t know I am watching.”

  “Don’t you have an aunt over on Third Street that would let you and Jo Lee—”

  “What the hell are you doing down here with him!” a voice shouted from behind the barn door. Red staggered into the edge of the faint glow of Rick’s lantern, a bottle in one hand and his face flushed.

  Ann froze. She couldn’t move or make a sound from the fear of seeing her enraged father.

  Rick stood between Ann and Red. “Mr. Nestlebaum, she’s just down here keeping me company while I—”

  “Shut up, boy. I know why she’s down here. She’s just like her momma. Never saw a man she didn’t like, but old Red got her and showed her what happens when she forgets who she belongs to,” Red said with slurred speech. Red lunged for a pitchfork leaning against one of the stalls.

  Rick leaped for the pitchfork and snatched it away.

  “You little bastard . . .” Red cursed but couldn’t stop his momentum and slammed headfirst into the stall wall and collapsed to the hay-covered floor, unconscious.

  “What are we going to do now?” Ann’s voice quivered.

  Rick stood over him, pitchfork in hand. “We’ll just cover him with Bossie’s old Army blanket and leave him here. He won’t freeze. He’s got too much alcohol in him. Tomorrow is Saturday, so he can sleep it off and won’t remember a thing in the morning.”

  Leaving vapor trails from their breaths in the cold night air, they ran back to the apartment house without saying a word, still shaken from the surprise encounter with Red. Rick slipped his arm around Ann with his free hand as they reached the bottom of the shaky back staircase. Quietly they climbed the stairs and tiptoed to the Nestlebaum’s door.

  “Why haven’t you ever tried to kiss me?” Ann whispered when she nestled her head on Rick’s shoulder.

  Surprised, Rick sheepishly said, “It’s not that I don’t like you . . . I do. A lot. I wanted to a couple of times but didn’t know if you wanted me to.”

  “It’s okay if you want to kiss me now.” Ann spoke softly and leaned toward Rick. Their lips met, gently at first, and then more forcefully as Ann wrapped her arms around Rick and squeezed him against her tingling body.

  The dim glow of a naked light bulb hanging in the frigid hall cast a larger than life shadow of the two bodies merged against the door.

  “I love you,” Ann whispered, and then pulled away from his grasp. “See you tomorrow.”

  Rick stood motionless, in shock. It felt like all the energy had been drained from his body. A big smile broke over his face. He felt the erection straining against his blue jeans and wondered if Ann had felt it too. After a few moments of enjoying the glow of his first intimate encounter, he shook himself back to reality.

  Rick tried to walk naturally past his parents when he entered through the kitchen door, concealing the bulge in his jeans. They barely acknowledged his presence while discussing the coming move over coffee at the kitchen table.

  “Turn the light off,” Wil whined when Rick went into the sitting room.

  Rick was too excited to go to sleep. He turned the lamp off and used a flashlight under his blanket, as he often did, to record deep feelings about Ann in his journal.

  I have a girlfriend! I am in love with the prettiest girl in school. I don’t care if Tank Johnson has all the other pretty girls in school hanging around him—they can’t compare to Ann. She is beautiful and she loves me. I will ask her to the Homecoming dance for our first big date. We just have to find a way to sneak out without her father knowing it.

  The Barnes family was still seated around the breakfast table after having finished off a big bowl of scrambled eggs, a platter of crispy fried bacon, and a dozen of Mary Beth’s homemade biscuits when the sun peaked over the horizon. Roy went to the stove for his second cup of coffee. Something outside the kitchen window caught his eye.

  “Look at that, would you? Red is walking up the path from the barn.”

  Not knowing what had happened, Wil shot a questioning glance at Rick.

  “What do you suppose he was doing down there this early in the morning?” Roy shook his head and sat back down at the breakfast table. He lit up his after-breakfast Camel and shoveled his usual three spoons of sugar into his steaming coffee.

  The extra cup of coffee was to help suppress the coughing spasm that erupted every morning after he took his first deep drag. He looked like a dragon with the blue smoke curling from his nostrils. During the week, his coughing served as the boy’s alarm clock that got them up for school.

  “You boys are awfully quiet this morning,” Mary Beth observed as she began clearing the dishes from the table.

  “We’re just a little tired and
glad to be finished with cleaning Mr. Carnes’ barn,” Rick answered, pretending not to be interested in Mr. Nestlebaum’s unusual appearance coming from the barn.

  “I sure will be glad when we move away from here and don’t have to put up with his drinking,” Mary Beth said, stacking dishes in the sink. “Why don’t you boys wash these dishes while I make up a grocery list? Rick, you wash and Wil can dry.”

  The sound of Red’s size twelve steel-toed safety shoes pounded louder and louder as he reached the top of the back stairs. “Open this goddamn door,” he shouted, pounding his fist hard enough that Rick could hear the hinges rattle across the hall.

  The sound of shattering tableware broke the tension when the plate Rick was handing Wil slipped from his fingers and scattered across the linoleum floor.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Rick repeated over and over as he grabbed the broom and began to sweep up the pieces of his mother’s favorite dish pattern.

  Mary Beth scowled at him, but her attention quickly returned to the sound of Red from across the hall.

  Roy snuffed out his cigarette and opened the door into the hall. Rick, Wil, and Mary Beth huddled together and watched what they could past Roy’s frame.

  “I saw you down there last night with that little bastard,” Red said, continuing to pound until the Nestlebaum’s door finally opened. He shoved his way past Alice just as Roy was getting ready to try to calm him down.

  Instead, Roy turned around and asked his boys, “What did he see down at the barn last night?” Roy aimed his question at Rick. “You have anything you need to tell me?”