CHAPTER 52
Willa
Five years ago, if you needed rum to make punch at Christmastime, you just went to a store, bought some, and brought it home. I don’t remember what it was like for someone to buy rum because I was nine back then, and rum didn’t interest me in the least. I do remember the last day you could actually do that, though, because everybody was buying bottles of it—that and whiskey and Pabst Blue Ribbon and I don’t know what else—to hide away in their cellars because there wasn’t going to be any anymore. The next day it was illegal to make or sell or transport liquor. If you still had some in your house, you could drink it, but you weren’t going to be able to buy more and no one was allowed to make more. That last afternoon, Papa and Roland Sutcliff sat on our stoop with cigars and glasses of port—in front of all the world, as Dora Sutcliff described it—and talked about how the world was changing.
Dora, who was at our house and glaring through the glass at Papa and Mr. Sutcliff with her hands on her hips, told us girls that she was glad the temperance league got its way at last, and that those two mencould puff and sip and commiserate all they wanted, but it was going to be a brighter day without all those inebriates ruining everything.
“What are inebriates?” I’d whispered to Evie.
She’d answered that they are people who drink too much. “And then they cause unbelievable trouble!” Dora had added.
“Like peeing in the street,” Maggie chimed in.
She had Alex on her hip. He had only been two and he’d heard Evie say the worddrink, so he started saying, “Grink! Grink peas! Grink peas!” And Maggie had to go get him some milk in a cup so he’d stop asking.
“My stars! It’s not just the peeing in the street,” Dora had continued. “They are putting their wives and children in the poorhouse. It’s a travesty of the worst kind.”
“Why do they drink too much?” I’d asked Evie, but it was Dora who answered.
“Because they are dirty dogs and scum!”
“But that’s not why they drink too much,” Evie said. She was in college then and she already knew pretty much everything about everything. “People who drink too much usually want to forget their problems. They want to escape some kind of pain or frustration or just the dissatisfaction of everyday life.”
“Theycreatethe problem!” Dora had said. “They are the orchestrators of the pain and frustration.”
“How does the drinking make them forget their problems?” I’d asked, very interested in Evie’s answer.
“It doesn’t really, lamb,” Evie said. “After the drink wears off, their problems are still there.”
“Except now they are worse, because they’ve put their wives and children in the poorhouse!” Dora said. “They are dirty dogs and scum.”
I didn’t care much for scum. But I have always liked dogs, even if they are dirty. I had gone outside then to sit with Papa and Roland Sutcliff as they drank their last glasses of port.
That was supposed to be the end of saloons and taverns andinebriates and peeing in the street, but it wasn’t the end of anything. I don’t read the newspaper much, but I see enough and I hear enough of the conversations between Papa and Roland Sutcliff and my teachers at school and the ladies at church to know there’s plenty of bootleg liquor in this city and thousands upon thousands of speakeasies. That’s what they call the saloons and taverns now. They call them that because you’re supposed to talk quietly about them when you’re out in public, and when inside them, too, so they can be kept secret from the law. A speakeasy is the only place where you can buy a drink now, and Dora says they are full of gangsters who control all the money and booze, and crooked cops and lawmakers who take bribes to look the other way. She says speakeasies are nothing short of the stoops of hell itself.
I don’t know if Dora is right about all that. She’s probably right about them being run by gangsters—who else but criminals can get ahold of something no one is supposed to have? She might even be right about there being policemen who take bribes not to arrest anybody. But that day with Howie wasn’t the first time I’d heard beautiful music coming out of that speakeasy’s grate. I’d heard it once before when Howie and I walked home that way so that he could buy me an ice cream at Spanky’s.
So a couple days after Howie and I ran from that grate, I decided I would leave school a few minutes early on my own. That piano had called to me, and I wanted to go back and answer it somehow.
•••
I hover now at the grate, hoping and wishing and wanting the piano man to somehow know I am here and start playing. I don’t hear anything, though. I have no reason to be loitering here, and I know the longer I stay the more likely it is that someone might notice me and ask why I am here. There are fewer people walking about than there were the last time. Thankfully the vegetable lady is inside her store and not outside it. I decide that if someone does stop and ask, I will say I am waiting for a friend. I kind of feel like I am.
Please, please,I whisper in the direction of the grate.Just one little tune.
And then my wish comes true. I start to hear the notes of a song my mother used to sing to me. “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” The melody is faint, as though the vent is only partially open today. It is all I can do not to throw myself to the ground and pull up the grate so that I can fall into those notes and let them cover me. I close my eyes so that I can better concentrate on the music wafting up to meet my ears. I am only half aware that I’m singing the words just under my breath.
A hand is suddenly on my arm. The touch is gentle, but I startle anyway, nearly dropping the one schoolbook that I am holding—a volume of poems. I open my eyes, and there is the man in the suit who’d been smoking a cigar and leaning against the brick wall next to the grate the last time I was here. He wears a brown derby on his head today, and I decide he looks like he is made of sausages. He is big and round and has a crooked smile.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” he says. “You were the one singing here the other day, weren’t you?”
Despite his polite manner, I am too afraid to answer him. Is he a cop in street clothes? Will he haul me down to the police station for hanging about a speakeasy grate?
“It’s all right, missy. You’re in no trouble a-tall. In fact, we were hoping you’d come back this way.” His smile broadens. “My name’s Mr. Trout.”
“We?” I manage to say, my heart slamming in my chest. Why, oh why, hadn’t I waited for Howie? I look about for a clear way to dash past this roly-poly man and take off running.
“Yes, Albert and me. He heard you singing the other day when he was playing. Why, you’re a regular nightingale, missy. He told me to keep a lookout for you, and here you are!”
