The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows
I hated him. “I wasn’t talking to you,” I said.
He set two bottles on the counter and peered at me. “Let’s see if I can guess.” He stretched out a finger toward my face, but I jerked away. I’d sooner let a rat crawl on me than let him touch me.
Hurriedly, I laid out Mrs. Bucklew’s money. Mostly dimes and nickels and one soft dollar bill.
He paid no mind to it; he just kept looking at my face with his head cocked a little to one side. I could smell his sour sleep smell, he was that close, and I could see the yellow stain on the side of his mouth that meant he chewed tobacco, and inside me I shivered, but I couldn’t break away from his pale eyes.
Finally, slowly, he said, “I’ll be goddamned. She Felix Romeyn’s kid?” He swung round to Mr. Houdyshell like he couldn’t believe it.
“Go on, Willa,” wheezed Mr. Houdyshell. “Get.”
I quick lifted away the blue cloth and put the bottles into Mrs. Bucklew’s basket, but Brennus was shaking his head in amazement. “Felix and Sylvia’s kid. Jesus. Your mama was the most beautiful girl I ever seen. That hair,” he sighed.
I’d heard that plenty. My mother had had long golden hair, and people fell all over themselves telling me how beautiful she was. Usually they finished up by staring sorrowfully at me.
“You don’t favor her much,” Brennus said, as if he was breaking the news to me.
“I know. I look like my father,” I said proudly.
“Psssh,” he sneered. “Nothing to brag about. Your daddy.”
“Shut up, Brennus,” Mr. Houdyshell said. He sounded stronger now. Or louder, at least.
Brennus straightened up and looked behind him at Mr. Houdyshell. Then he leaned close to me. “Listen, you give Sylvia my regards, all right? When you see her? Say Brennus Gower sends his regards, all right?” He rubbed his hands together.
“But I’m not going to see her—” I began.
“But when you do,” he insisted. “You say Brennus Gower was asking after her. Okay?”
“My mother dyes her hair,” I said. “It’s not golden anymore. It’s gray. So she dyes it.”
He drew back like I’d spit on him.
“Go, Willa,” Mr. Houdyshell said wearily. “You got to go.”
I gathered up Mrs. Bucklew’s basket. “I hope you feel better, Mr. Houdyshell,” I said, zigzagging between sawhorses to the door.
As I pulled it open, Brennus Gower started to yell, “Your daddy’s a bootlegger all right, girlie! And everybody in town knows it! He been running whiskey for years, and that ain’t all. He’s as crooked as a barrel of fishhooks, for all his high-class airs, and you can tell him I—”
I slammed the door so hard I was surprised it didn’t fall off.
—
Mrs. John turned her smooth face in my direction as I came through her screen door. “If she wanted thread, all she had to do was ask,” she said. Her needle cracked through her canvas again.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m glad to help,” I said.
It was the wrong thing to say. “I help her,” Mrs. John sniffed. “I spend every blessed minute helping her.”
“I’ll just take this upstairs now,” I said, mealymouthed as could be.
She shrugged. “Fine.”
I was proud of how slow I walked across the porch and up the stairs. “It’s me,” I said, tapping on Mrs. Bucklew’s door.
“Thought you’d got lost,” said Mrs. Bucklew, and I went in. She was sitting on her bed, waiting. “Bring them here.”
I took her the basket, and she quick rustled underneath the thread and the cloth and brought out a shiny bottle of Four Roses. “Praise the Lord,” she said, and snapped the paper that held the cap on. “You’ll excuse me,” she muttered, and tipped the bottle right up to her mouth. I watched. Those roses looked like tulips, I’d always thought. She brought the bottle down and wiped her lips. “Got to check George ain’t watering the product,” she explained. I nodded and she drank again. “Oh my,” she sighed when she had swallowed. She peered into the dark glass. “That had better settle my hash for now. Got to make it last, don’t I?” She lifted her hand and patted my cheek. “Thank you, honey. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Is Mr. Houdyshell a criminal?” I blurted.
“George?” She looked up, surprised. “No. He just sells a little liquor under the table.”
“But it’s illegal,” I pressed. “Won’t he get in trouble if he gets caught?”
She pursed her lips. “I guess he might. Everybody knows he’s doing it, though, honey. Everybody in town knows it already, including the police chief.”
I nodded, feeling better. “So where does Mr. Houdyshell get it? Does he go to the ABC? Or does he,” I made my voice casual, “get it at Cooey’s?”
She frowned. “Cooey’s Red Apple? What do you know about that?”
“I know it’s a bootlegger’s,” I said airily.
“You do, do you?”
“Why do you go to Mr. Houdyshell?” I asked. “Whyn’t you send me to Cooey’s?”
Her fingers closed over my arm. “You listen, Willa. Cooey’s is no place for you. You hear me? You just keep out of there.”
I swallowed. Mrs. Bucklew had never seemed to think twice about sending me to Mr. Houdyshell’s, but there was something about Cooey’s that spooked her. And that spooked me. “Why is it different, what Mr. Houdyshell does and what they do at Cooey’s?” I asked, kind of nervous.
“Cooey’s is for—well, it’s just different, that’s all.” She looked at me. Her eyes were bloodshot already. “You stay out of there, you hear?”
I nodded. I didn’t want to go there, anyway. “Are they criminals? In Cooey’s?” I thought of the man in the white hat.
She folded her lips tight and unscrewed the cap again. “No,” she said, and took a gulp. Then she winked at me over the top of her bottle. “Glass houses,” she said, and giggled.
—
I walked home slowly, thinking it out. Mr. Houdyshell said my father wasn’t a bootlegger. Brennus Gower said he was. I liked Mr. Houdyshell. He’d always been nice to me. I’d never seen Brennus Gower before, and I hoped I’d never see him again. He’d been mad at me. Why did I believe him and not Mr. Houdyshell? Because I’d seen Father come out of Cooey’s Red Apple with my own eyes. Because Father’s special case was locked. Because Mr. Houdyshell hadn’t been able to look at me, and Brennus Gower had.
I stopped walking and practiced thinking it: My father is a bootlegger. Oh, my father? He runs whiskey. He runs whiskey out of Cooey’s Red Apple. I remembered Mrs. Bucklew’s face and felt nervous again. He probably didn’t spend much time there, at Cooey’s. Maybe it was just the once. It was jumping to conclusions to think he worked for whoever was inside there. Maybe they wanted him to but he wouldn’t. I started walking again.
Was he a criminal? I made my mouth shape the words: My father is a criminal. Then I tried to say it out loud, but I couldn’t, not even in a whisper. He didn’t seem like one, anyway. The only criminals I knew were the ones in movies, who talked without moving their mouths and fired guns out of car windows. Father wasn’t like that. I thought of how he stroked my hair sometimes and how he laughed so low and soft. He wasn’t bad, no matter what. Criminal was the wrong word. He was more like an outlaw. Like the Three Musketeers and Robin Hood. Suddenly it occurred to me that some people would say that I was an outlaw, too. After all, I was Mrs. Bucklew’s bootlegger, in a way. Runs in the family, I thought, and felt better. We were practically an outlaw band, Father and me, even if Father didn’t know it. Maybe someday we would go into the bootlegging business together. He’d have to tell me all his secrets then. Right now I just knew the one, but I’d take good care of it. His secret was safe with me.
23
Layla looked sideways at Jottie. Was she wearing lipstick? She was certainly more dressed up than usual. To go to a mill? Well, Layla thought, perhaps it does count as an outing, in a town like this. Again, a sideways look. Really qu
A shadow fell over them as they turned on to East Main Street. It was the mill. Its vast expanse of red brick stretched out for the length of two city blocks and up, too, into the hot-metal shimmer of the sky. They passed a wide yard boiling with trucks and approached the only vaguely ornamental portion of the edifice—a wide stairway leading to a pair of shiny wooden doors.
Jottie hesitated at the foot of the stairs. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been here,” she said apologetically to Layla. “Kind of gives me the willies.”
Layla nodded, her eyes on a sign above the door: American Everlasting Hosiery Company, Est. 1900 The Socks That Keep America on Its Feet.
“The socks that keep America on its feet,” Jottie repeated. “Sounds like something that came to Ralph in a dream.”
“Better than the socks that bring America to its knees,” said Layla.
“You’re right there,” agreed Jottie. She took a deep breath. “I’ll just walk you in.”
They stepped through the door into a cavernous space with the proportions—though little of the furniture—of a lobby. Around them, the heavy throb of machinery welled from a hundred invisible sources. “Hello?” called Jottie, approaching an empty desk. “Anyone home?” Her voice was lost in the din.
“Is there a bell?” yelled Layla.
Jottie shook her head. For a minute they stood, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.
“Honestly,” Jottie said at last. “This place has gone to hell in a handbasket. Come on!” She whirled around and strode confidently to a corner where, Layla now saw, a hallway led off the lobby. Clearly in familiar territory, Jottie breezed past several glass-paned doors and pushed open a metal one. Inside was a broad staircase of shining wood. “President’s office is on the second floor,” Jottie said over her shoulder.
After the lobby, the second floor seemed hushed and serene. Layla followed Jottie along a bank of windows until they reached a sober paneled door, unmarked and considerably more dignified than those flanking it. Jottie looked at it for a moment, snorted, and pushed it open.
“Good afternoon—why, Jottie!” From behind a desk strewn with papers, a woman stood up, smiling broadly. “Jottie Romeyn! I haven’t seen you in years.”
Jottie held out her hands. “Mrs. Tay!”
“Call me Margaret, honey. You’re all grown up now.” They clasped hands.
“And Daddy isn’t here to give me the dickens for it,” laughed Jottie.
“Puh. Wish he was,” muttered Mrs. Tay. “How you been keeping, Jottie? You’re looking fine.”
“Can’t complain,” said Jottie. “And you? How’s Quincy?”
“Oh Lord, Jottie, didn’t you hear? He went off to Florida, thinking he’d find some work down there, which I told him he wouldn’t, and very first thing, he meets some trashy girl in the burley-cue.” Mrs. Tay rolled her eyes suggestively. “Next thing I know, he’s calling me collect to tell me he’s gone and married her! I swear, Jottie, I don’t know where that boy was when they were passing out the brains!”
“Well,” said Jottie, attempting to keep afloat under this deluge. “Isn’t that something?”
“Who’s this?” said Mrs. Tay, pointing her chin at Layla.
Chagrined to find her stature so thoroughly dwarfed by Jottie’s, Layla said loftily, “I am Layla Beck. I’ve an appointment with Mr. Shank at two o’clock.”
Mrs. Tay resumed secretarial coolness. “I’ll let Mr. Shank know.” She stood and opened a door behind her. “Mr. Shank, Miss Beck is here.”
“Miss Who?”
Jottie and Layla exchanged glances.
“Miss Beck from…well—” There was a pause, and Mrs. Tay stuck her head around the edge of the door.
“She’s writing The History of Macedonia,” called Jottie. “Don’t you want to be in it, Ralph?”
“Jottie? Is that you?” Sol pushed out of Shank’s office, past Mrs. Tay, and stood before her.
It had happened. “Sol.” She lifted her chin and smiled at him. It was much easier than she had expected.
He looked at her in silence, the usual anxious question on his face. His unease steadied her, allowed her to captain the craft. “I was just showing Miss Beck here the way,” she explained. “She’s interviewing Ralph. For her book. The History of Macedonia. The sesquicentennial.”
Layla watched curiously as Sol nodded without removing his gaze from Jottie’s face. She certainly is the apple of every eye at this mill, thought Layla. She’s like the visiting countess. It was intriguing. It suggested a childhood of privilege similar to her own. Layla pictured the worn kitchen on Academy Street, Jottie’s endless round of housework. What had happened?
“Miss Beck,” called Mrs. Tay. “Mr. Shank will see you now.”
“Thank you,” said Layla. She touched Jottie’s shoulder. “Thanks, Jottie. I’ll see you at supper.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Jottie, a little breathlessly. “See you then.” The door closed behind Layla, and with Sol still disconcertingly silent, Jottie turned to Mrs. Tay. “Well, Margaret, I guess I’d better let you get back to your business. I hope I see you again real soon….” She took a preliminary step toward the door.
This seemed to jolt Sol into action. “I’d better show you the way out, Jottie,” he said. “Otherwise you’ll probably get lost.” Suddenly he was smiling. “Don’t want you to get lost! Can’t have that, can we, Margaret?”
Mrs. Tay smiled indulgently. “Sure can’t, Sol.”
He opened the door with a flourish. “You just come with me, Jottie. We’ll have you out of here in no time. I know a secret way.” He whisked her out into the hallway. “Yessir.” He seemed to be talking to himself. “I know a secret, secret way.” He walked rapidly down the hall, half a step ahead of her, and then swung sharply to the right and proceeded down another corridor.
“Where on earth are you taking me, Sol?” Jottie panted, nearly running to keep up with him.
“Downstairs!” he said gaily, swinging around a corner. “Here we are!” He yanked on a nearby door. “Come along.”
It was a stairwell, a different one than she had taken with Layla. It was dingier and narrower and it smelled of dust. The pounding of the machines grew louder. Sol stopped on the landing and turned toward her, his face glowing. “I can’t believe you’re here, Jottie. I’m awful glad to see you.”
She knew he was. His gladness frightened her. “Me too,” she said, and it sounded spare. Spare and mean. She pushed Felix away and said boldly, “I’ve missed us being friends.”
His eyes seemed to widen with his smile. “You have? I thought you—well, I thought I was public enemy number one.”
She shook her head. “No. That’s not what I think.”
He dipped his head to look into her eyes. “So, all this time, you’ve just been toeing the line? Felix’s line?”
Suddenly a sea of weariness lapped at her. Maybe she didn’t want this, after all. “Oh, Sol. Don’t let’s begin on all that.” She put her hand to her head. “Let’s pretend we just met. Let’s pretend we met a week ago.”
“A week ago?” His forehead wrinkled. “Doesn’t give me much to go on, a week.”
“Sure it does, Sol. Why—you could show me this fine mill you work in. I hear you make socks.”
“Socks?” he repeated, frowning, and impatience bloomed up her spine. But then he understood. “How’d you like a tour of the American Everlasting Hosiery Company, Jottie? As my distinguished guest.”
“That would be grand,” she said.
He was actually chomping on a cigar, Layla noted, just like a cartoon magnate. She suppressed a smile and moved on to her next question. “When I was preparing for our interview, I noticed that American Everlasting employed over nine hundred and fifty people in 1928. What is the current number of workers you have here?”
“I’ve built the company up plenty since then,” he replied irr
Layla assumed an affronted expression. “I’d like to ask you some questions first. Mr. Davies particularly asked me to give an account of the state of local industry.”
“Parker doesn’t want you bothering me with frivolous questions, miss. Let’s just say that American Everlasting is the leading industry in Macedonia. Hell, you can say it’s the only industry in Macedonia if you want to. Pretty near true.”
“There’s Leland Brickworks,” she challenged. “United Lime and Stone. The Equality Mill. Spilman’s Nail and Wire Foundry.”
“Jew business,” he observed.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Well, it is. And Equality’s a small operation. Doubt he has more than two hundred guys. Nothing like this.” He waved his cigar at the floor, indicating all below him.
“Why, then, we’ve come right back to my original question: How many people do you employ here at American Everlasting?”
He looked at her coldly. She could see that he thought well of himself; his thinning hair was carefully combed, his nails were trimmed to scrupulous evenness, and his tie sported a lavish Windsor knot. She straightened in her chair and gave him a dazzling smile. After a moment, he smiled reluctantly in return.
“You’re a persistent gal, aren’t you? One thousand and sixty. Give or take.”
She noted it on her stenographer’s pad. “I understand from an article in the Sun that Interwoven Mills made an offer to buy American Everlasting several years ago. Do you have any plans to sell the company?”
He scowled. “I don’t care to answer that question, miss. If I want to sell the company, I’ll take the matter to the board, not to you.”
Mentally, she sneered. You think I’m scared of you, Mr. Ralph Shank? You never met my father. “It certainly would be a blow to Macedonia if the company were removed to Martinsburg.”
“It’s not going to happen,” he said. “They don’t have the capital anymore.” He showed his teeth in a smile. “And I take the interests of my employees to heart, of course. They’re like part of my own family. I will never let them down.”