Working-Class Heroes

WORKING-CLASS HEROES

Rick Zabel

Copyright © 2016 Rick Zabel

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One: This Place Is Killing Me

Chapter Two: Storm Warning

Chapter Three: Barbie Dolls And Manic Depression

Chapter Four: Poor Lost Soul

Chapter Five: Sacred Vows

Chapter Six: Christmas Party

Chapter Seven: The Bunker Story

Chapter Eight: Girl Talk

Chapter Nine: True Romance

Chapter Ten: I Think I’m Going To Kill Myself

Chapter Eleven: A Rose Is A Rose

Chapter Twelve: Funny Money

Chapter Thirteen: The Honeymoon Is Over

Chapter Fourteen: Breaking The Bank

Chapter Fifteen: Trapped

Chapter Sixteen: Getting Out

Chapter Seventeen: Naughty Little Girl

Chapter Eighteen: Do The Right Thing

Chapter Nineteen: Out Of The Past

Chapter Twenty: Gun Crazy

Chapter Twenty-One: Life Is Full Of Surprises

CHAPTER ONE

THIS PLACE IS KILLING ME

After learning that he would soon be walking through the valley of the shadow of death, due to a long, lingering ailment that had chewed out most of the pockets of his seventy-eight-year-old lungs, former sheriff Harve Poindexter of Beaver Flat, Illinois, told his successor, Mickey Gillespie, about a ghastly incident which took place in the town the night of July 17, 1940:

It was a stinking hot summer day, he said, sitting before Mickey in the sheriff’s office. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old at the time, but I’ll remember what happened every day the rest of my life — and I’ll never forgive myself as well.

Poindexter stared past Mickey out the window behind the big, chipped old chocolate-colored oak desk. Sheriff Flannery ran the office back then. And one day he arrested a colored guy who was maybe twenty or so - a kid, mind you - for forcing himself on a white girl and beating up her boyfriend. He threw him into one of the cells here, and kept him there most of the night, until everyone in town heard what happened and formed a posse filled with men, women, and children to storm the jail and bring the boy to justice. Christ, you’d have thought we were living in the Deep South.

Mickey sat slouched in his worn brown leather seat, stroking his fingers gently over the black stubble on one side of his shadowy, unshaven face as he watched Poindexter gaze out the window to the thin main street, across to Beaver Flat’s small white church. With his sharp jaw line, large pointed nose, and jet black hair which receded broadly on each side of his forehead temples, he was kiddingly and cruelly known as Crow Face Mickey.

Flannery was a peace officer, said Poindexter, and he didn’t believe in mob mentality; in fact, it was his bound and sworn duty to halt civic aggression. But he knew he would never be able to stop the town from breaking the colored out of jail, so he sprung him loose and told him to make a run for it.

What happened? Mickey asked.

He ran, said Poindexter. He ran like hell, but he didn’t get far. The town, they had the poor boy scampering from one area of town to the next, hiding behind cars, in and out of dark alleys, all the way over to the Prairie Lutheran Church.

The church?

That’s right. Poindexter pointed an old wooden cane he held at his side toward the window. The colored, he ran inside and hid behind the front pews. Then the crowd broke in, and somebody cried ‘There he is, get him!’ and he ran out the back door.

Did he get away? Mickey asked.

Almost, said Poindexter. He damn near made it.

Why, what happened?

Well, the boy made a big mistake. He ran out to the old Crawford house — the one Dallas Pittman is moving back into — and old man Crawford let him hide in that big concrete tornado bunker he had built out in the back yard.

That was good of him.

Good my ass. When the mob ran out to the house, the first thing Crawford did was point to the back and yell out ‘He’s down in the tornado shelter!’

Oh, no.

Oh, yes. That’s where they found him. It was a death trap — nowhere for the kid to run — and before you knew it, they dragged him out of that hole in the ground, and back over to the church. Poindexter shook his head. "The poor boy, he was screaming and crying and kicking his legs, trying to get free. But all the townspeople - men, women, little boys and girls - even some of the old folks, they was laughing it up and having a ball, like it was a big party. The men tied a rope around one of the branches, and then strung a noose around the boy’s neck real tight.

Someone yelled out ‘Hang that nigger high!’ And when they let it drop, a big cheer went up from the crowd. You could hear him gagging. His legs jiggled, and then his feet wiggled until he stopped moving."

God, that’s awful, said Mickey.

You better know it. Poindexter reached inside a pocket of his coat and pulled out a large, slightly torn, faded black and white photograph, which he held before Mickey. Someone even took a picture.

He pointed to the photo. See that man with the grey felt hat, grinning from ear to ear? That’s my daddy. And the little fellow at his side, smiling for the camera, Bible in hand? That’s me. Poindexter chuckled several times. When you look at the face of the poor boy hanging from the tree, he has this quiet look of slumber on his face, like he just made peace with his maker.

Why in God’s name do you keep a picture like that? Mickey asked.

Poindexter’s lips broke curtly upward. I don’t know, he said. Reminds me of the good old days, I guess. Poindexter seemed wistful.

Funny thing is, back then Beaver Flat was smaller than a piss hole, even smaller than it is today. Not even big enough to be a dot on a county map. But somehow that photo hit the national papers, and people from all over the country suddenly came from miles around, just to get a look at the tree where a colored man was hung. It became a landmark and drew a lot of tourists, made it good for all the businesses in town.

So what happened to the tree? Mickey asked. The closest thing to a tree I can see by the church is a big fat stump.

That’s the tree, said Poindexter. What’s left of it, at least.

Why, what happened? Did the state make Beaver Flat take it down?

No, God did.

God?

That’s right. God thought Beaver Flat was getting too big for its britches, what with all the money it was making off the tourists. So one night the Almighty struck it with a bolt of lightning, splitting it in two. People considered it to be an act of God, so they sawed it down to a stump.

Poindexter drew a long, heavy sigh. The irony of the whole thing, he smirked, is that at the time, whenever visitors asked why the colored boy was hung, folks in town said God made them do it.

That’s crazy, said Mickey. This whole town is crazy.

Ain’t it, though? It makes me wonder why in the world Dallas Pittman wants to come and live back here, instead of stay up in Chicago.

He says he wants to live closer to home. That’s why he took that accounting job at that auto plant a few miles outside Kawatsi.

Who would want to live in that old shit shack he’s moving into?

It’s his home, said Mickey. It’s where he was bought up: him, Lewis, and Sammy.

It’s nothing but a damn eye sore.

His wife says they’re planning to fix it up, make it look nice again.

Shit, said Poindexter, If I was going to make a new start of it, I sure as hell would find some place other than Beaver Flat.

* * *

Leaving the sheriff’s office to go on his afternoon round through Beaver Flat, Mickey was unsure whether or not to believe Poindexter’s horrific and absurd story about a young black man being hung by people in town over sixty years ago because God made them do it. Harve had a penchant for telling asinine tales, whether it was over a medium rare sirloin steak and a cold Schlitz at the Porky Barn every Saturday night after bowling, or while throwing horseshoes at the county tournament. The guy was always coughing his guts out in front of everybody from smoking five packs of cigarettes a day to the point where his fat flabby cheeks turned dark orange and his eyes watered. And people assumed that he told his tall tales just to delight in seeing the look of disbelief on their faces.

Still, there was that photograph. It reminded Mickey of a picture he had seen once of a couple of black men hanging from a tree over in Marion, Indiana, not far from Beaver Flat, taken back in 1930, when they also were hung for raping a white girl and beating up on her boyfriend.

So it was possible, he supposed, for something like that to happen just ten years later in Beaver Flat. Prejudice certainly had no boundaries. Even today, from stories he read in the newspaper, there are plenty of neo-Nazi nut heads running around - some of them still in high school, for Christ’s sake - who are convinced that it’s their lot in life to create a supreme race.

He couldn’t agree more, though, that Beaver Flat had certainly seen better days. The old cow town was the mecca for terrific teenaged terror in the county seat just a few decades ago, rather than the haven for hopelessness it had become since. In its heyday, the A&W burgers stand was where kids would go after the drive-in movie, but both had been closed for the past nine or ten years. The screen remained standing, no longer blank and torn, but used instead as an advertisement billboard for a fireworks factory. The last movie Mickey remembered seeing there was either Jaws II or Rambo III. There was a Dog ‘n’ Suds over the state line in Indiana, but it just wasn’t the same. Even the high school, where several county basketball tournaments were held, would soon be abandoned and used as a huge garage for farming equipment, leaving kids to take the bus miles away to another school. Mickey pursed his lips into a tight grin. Me and the Pittman brothers - Dallas, Sammy, and Lewis- all of the kids - we used to have a hell of a good time in Beaver Flat.

Turning his squad car onto the main drag of the town, Mickey sighed. It was so damn quiet; he could hear the wheels scrunching upon the hard, snow-packed road. The street wasn’t decorated for Christmas — as it usually was — with red, green, and blue lights strung from one light pole to the next. Some of the houses, along with a few businesses, such as the Banker’s Mutual Life Insurance Company and Al’s General Backhoe Digging, contained silver tinsel and flashing lights draped tiredly along the windows and edges of their roofs. Mostly, though, it was silent and dull, as Beaver Flat was forced to slash several items from its budget, and could no longer afford to have the streets lit colorfully for the holiday season.

That reminded Mickey that he had to stop by Value Village to do some Christmas shopping for the wife and kids. All the good stuff was probably sold by now. That electric dinosaur his little boy wanted would have to wait until next year - or the year after. Hell, who could afford the stupid toys kids cried their little heads off for these days? Still, it was hard to deny one’s child something other children were getting. It made kids feel unloved by their parents, and looked down upon by their friends. Worse still, like Mickey, it made them feel bad about themselves, reminding them how hard it was to provide their family with some of the nice and necessary things in life.

The flag in front of the American Legion hung lifelessly, like the black man strung from a tree in the photograph shown to Mickey by Harve Poindexter. A special meeting was being held there later that night for the members, as it was Pearl Harbor Day. Every old World War II veteran in town would be there to hang their heads and weep in silent prayer, reminiscing where they were on that day in history - a day that Mickey’s wife, Gladys, a high school history teacher, said many students either didn’t know or care about, along with various other tragic incidents which shaped the world that they lived in today. It wouldn’t surprise me, Mickey thought, if any young people would care about 9/11 in the future.

Then, next to it, stood that street clock — the tall, grey-black cast iron pole which had been fixated several years ago, since Beaver Flat was founded back in 1901, beneath dangling telephone lines, with streaks of icicles stuck like dead leeches upon its sides. The round eye of the clock scared the hell out of Mickey as he drove toward it. It stared menacingly at him, and he couldn’t remember the last time those hands moved. It reminded him of a line from that old Paul Simon song, My Little Town:

Nothing but the dead and the dying back in my little town, Mickey murmured. Maybe that’s when the clock stopped running — on the day that boy was hung on the tree next to the church; and maybe those hands would never turn again.

Just ahead, the red round lights of a railroad crossing began to flash in front of a crossing which ran along the side of the Farmers Co-Op Elevator. The arms of the crossing swung down before Mickey’s truck, making him feel as if he were being locked inside of a cell. That’s what Beaver Flat is, he thought, a cell - a prison for people who gave up on life. It drains the spirit out of a human being’s heart and soul, leaving it to rot in the muck of hell.

Mickey was mesmerized by the row of cars which passed before him. The Illinois Central, also known as the City of New Orleans, produced a clacketty-clacketty sound as it ran along the rusty tracks. This place is killing me, he thought, pushing his fingers firmly upon the right side of his face as he felt the bump of a light orange scar that ran jaggedly from his cheekbone to the cleft between his nose and lips. Life is slipping away.

I’ve got to get out of here if it’s the last thing I do before it’s too late - before it turns me into a freaking zombie like everyone else.

The shrill blast of the train horn made Mickey’s ears ring, reminding him how he felt each night in bed, listening to it sound faintly in the distance in the middle of the night. He would stare up at the ceiling, with a tight, vacant feeling in his chest, imagining himself hopping aboard the train, not knowing or giving a damn where it was bound, just to get the hell out of Beaver Flat.

Then he would turn over on his side to look at Gladys and wonder why, indeed, he didn’t do so. There was certainly no romance between them anymore; it had melted into blandness. Every day they would just go through the motions. He could always remember the last time they fought, but could never remember the last time they made love - not true love, at least - only robotic gestures. She just laid there; she didn’t seem to give a damn one way or the other. And lately, whenever he got the urge, and turned over to stroke her side or kiss her neck, she would tiredly brush his hand away, telling him to put it between two pillows, for she had to get up early in the morning to make breakfast and get to school. There were even times that he felt, though ashamedly, like paying a visit to a Porky Barn prostitute or two.

Mickey pulled his squad car close to The Oasis — a coffee shop owned by Sammy, the youngest of the Pittman brothers at forty-eight — and stepped into a mesh of dirty snow and slush in the gravel parking lot. Snowplows had pushed mounds of snow into a choppy row along one of its sides, and the stench of oil and gas from Corbin’s Standard Filling Station next door, on the other side of a rickety old picket fence, fumigated the air, making it stink to high hell. The