Butt

 

 

“Butt, hey Buuu-ttt!!!” The voice rang out across the field, and in the distance she heard the whistle of the coal-train, working it’s way up the long grade,

“Mom, mooo-ooom! Get up.” When Butt awoke out of her cat-nap, Eddie was tugging at her sleeve. She heard the commotion out in the passageway, and sat up on the edge of the bed, to clear the cob-webs.

“What is it honey? What’s going on?” she asked, putting on one of her black pumps, and feeling around underneath the bed for the other.

“He’s at it again, mom.”

When Butt stood up, even in high-heels she stood barely over five-feet tall. Her long, black hair, a bit disheveled now from the nap, had been neatly pulled up, and rolled into a cylinder over each ear, in the fashion of the day. She ran her tongue over her lips, in a girlish attempt to gauge the amount of lipstick she still had on, and made a face at the closed door.

“Oh boy, I wonder what it is this time” she muttered. When she opened the door she was surprised to see a small crowd of people had formed outside the compartment, and they were jabbing one another and laughing. There were two soldiers – one was holding Billy, while the other was just letting go a heavy metal plate and fitting it back into position on the deck. He got up, and swiped away some dust from the pant-leg of his uniform.

Billy saw his mom, and ran to her, tears streaming down his cheeks, and buried his face into her lap, and she began to stroke his blonde curls.

“I don’t know how he managed to get it up, ma’m. It’s pretty heavy,” the soldier said. “Problem was he couldn’t put it down. And I don’t know what woulda’ happened if he fell in.”

Butt just stood there, holding Billy. She didn’t know whether to kiss him or spank him, so she started to cry.

“I could help you with him…”

“No you won’t,” she reacted. “He’s been very sick…”

“I meant we’d be happy to keep an eye on him for you, ma’m, while you rested a spell. My buddy and me both love kids, and it wouldn’t be any trouble.

Indicating Eddie and Karin peeking out from the compartment, he added, “Why just by hisself, he’s got you outnumbered. And you got two others.”

“Three,” she corrected him. “The baby is asleep inside.”

When Butt was alone at last in the compartment, she lay down on the bed and the rattle of the train began to work it’s soothing magic on her, relaxing and cooling her. She pulled the cover up tight around her shoulders, and tucked in her chin. Trains always put me to sleep, she thought, just like Billy and vacuum cleaners. She chuckled at the memory of him following her through the old house on Farr Street, whenever she ran the cleaner, and finding him fast asleep, his ear right up against the canister. I suppose he got it from me, she thought. Or how, when he was sick with pneumonia and wheezing at night and couldn’t breathe, she and Ed would take him out in the car and just drive him around until he nodded off. She wondered if she was doing the right thing by him, if the weather in California would really make a difference. Ed thought it would. And there was work out there – she had written the letter to the Santa Fe herself. But she had only done that to get rid of him, to get him off her for a while. And now she was on a Santa Fe train, going to be with him. How long, she wondered. How long has it been since I had any real sleep? Not since the night before we left, she thought. Nearly two days ago.

The day they left, the train had been on-time. The Phoebe Snow, Lackawanna’s New Streamliner had arrived at the Scranton station from Hoboken at 1:45 that Thursday in April, and left five minutes later. Thankfully, Butt and Edith had done all of the heavy packing the night before. They got to the station well ahead of the train, entrusting all of the luggage to one of the black porters, and Butt might have been able to catch her breath, if Ma hadn’t given Billy that darn paper-sack full of pennies. When the train pulled in, blowing steam, Butt and Mabel were on their knees, picking pennies off the floor of the station.

They boarded the train together, she and Mabel and all the kids. Karin and Eddie had been little angels all day, or maybe they better understood there was a spanking awaiting them at the end of the line if they misbehaved. Billy became Butt’s primary focus, her only real raison d’etre as it were, and she was rapidly running out of steam, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with which to bribe him. Then Mabel had left the train in Buffalo, where they made their tearful good-bye on sooty station.

While Mabel was heading back to Scranton, she had put the kids to bed, and spent her first night alone in the compartment. I wonder how much I should tip the porter, she thought. He’s been awfully nice. Snooping around her confines, she had found a brochure for the Phoebe Snow, with a cute little jingle. “A cosy seat, a dainty treat, make Phoebe’s happiness complete… “

Phoebe couldn’t have gone all the way to Chicago, she mused. Chicago was a nightmare, she hoped she would not remember in the days to come, literally dragging Billy, who wanted to play with all the children he saw, and lugging little Cheryl across town from the LaSalle station to the Dearborn station. But after Chicago everybody was worn out, and it looked like it would be smooth sailing all the way to Los Angeles, until Billy found a way to mischief, while she dozed. But now all was quiet again on the western front.

“With linen white and silver bright, upon the road of anthracite.”

She knew all about the hard anthracite coal, and the men who dug it. She heard the sound of the train whistle, and her dreams took her back to Archbald Patch, the little mining enclave where she grew up, where the steam locomotives would pass, pulling up the grade a long line of coal hoppers, the name of the DL&W Railroad brightly painted on the side. Evenings she would sit out on the porch singing, and strumming her guitar, and Tom Butler would yell, “Play it again.” Later Tom would be drunk, and she could hear him beating young Tom with the strap, or taking his wife on the kitchen floor, or if he were in a good mood, smothering Betty with his sour kisses, and Betty would have to run next door and crawl into bed with Butt or Edith.

Sometimes when she found herself alone, like now, she’d imagine she was back there in the Patch, and in her mind she’d walk down Prince and Williams streets, visiting all the neighbors from one end to the other, from the mines to the woods. She’d always begin at the Sanchek house, where her own life had begun, where her dear friend Annie still lived, and little Georgie with the weak heart lay in bed upstairs. They were her neighbors until she was 7 years old, when a roomier place came vacant just down the street. Next came the Powells, and the Fraleys, and Doc Butler’s house with the big bulldogs. Doc was nothing like his brother Tom. Then came Betty’s house and the Markwick home, that her pa rented from the mining company. On she’d walk past her door, saying hello to the Sippels and the Echkharts, to the home of the pretty Bray sisters, with their pretty red hair and freckles. Emma Bray had polio, and her leg atrophied terribly and she had to wear a brace just when she needed to be pretty the most. Then together she and Emma would walk, Emma dragging her leg and hurrying as best she could.

And they would cross Keyser Avenue to the home that her grandfather built with his own hands, where she stayed for a long time with Gramma and Grampa Seibolt, and all of her uncles who worked in the mines. It was the only time she had ever been separated from her ma and Edith. Grampa Seibolt would draw cartoons, and play the piano, and she would cut her Uncle Lew’s hair, and he called her Butt, because she looked like little buttercup, a character in the funny papers. And the nickname had stuck, and one day even one of her teachers at Taylor High School, had asked her if he could call her Butt, and she had said yes.

And always they would stop at the intersection of Prince Street and Keyser Avenue, a major crossroad in her life. To the left was Taylor, where as a young girl she walked every day to high school, down past the James Store, until she became sick in her graduating year, and had to drop out and the whole left side of her face was left paralyzed. To the right was Mattie Prestwood’s store, and the O’Malley home, and beyond that lay the city of Scranton, where Butt would catch the Laurel Line, the first electric streetcar in America, that took her to Chickie O’Malley’s tavern, and to the home of the wealthy woman, a faith-healer who healed her face, and helped her to smile again.

She knew everybody on those two streets, and all the boys knew the pretty Markwick girls, and the bad boys all knew Betty. Her father coached many of the boys in baseball, and after the games he would drive them back to the Markwick home, and they would linger outside on the porch and in the yard waiting to talk to Butt and Edith. And whenever Butt would walk to town or to school, they would see her, and shout, and their voices would ring out across the field, “Butt, hey Buuu-ttt!!” And she would smile and wave, and wait for them as they came running.

One day a stranger from up the mountain came to the house with her cousin Jackie. He was a brash and rowdy boy, with a shock of blonde hair, and Butt didn’t know what to make of him. Jackie said his name was Eddie. He didn’t have to tell her the boy’s last name – the resemblance to his sister Susan, a girl in her class at Taylor High, was obvious. Eddie didn’t go to high school, but had dropped out after eighth grade to go to work.

After Pearl Harbor, most of the boys went away, but Eddie managed somehow to keep coming around. He joined the Navy, and was assigned to a PT Boat base not far away, in Rhode Island. On weekends he would come home and see his mother, and then he would walk down the mountain to Butt’s house. He became a regular fixture at the Markwick home, so much so that the Shore Patrol had to come and get him two times. Had Butt known the terrible punishment the Navy inflicted upon the sailors who were AWOL, she would have encouraged him to get back on time. But how could she, in her tiny little enclave, ever imagine that he was sitting for 5 or 10 days alone, in solitary confinement, with only bread and water, and his thoughts of her, to sustain him?

Finally, one weekend he showed up in a car, and he took her and Edith to New York City, to Coney Island. It had been her first trip to the big city, and he wanted to take them on the parachute drop. Gazing up at the 200 foot tower, Butt needed no time to think it over. She said flatly “No,” and she meant it. She was deathly afraid of heights. Eddie rode the ride alone, and she and Edith clapped for him and held their breath, until the parachute opened, and he floated safely down. Little did she ever imagine, that a year from now, he would be in the Paratrooper corps, dropping from the sky for real, without a cable to assure his safety.

He dropped them off at home that night, and she didn’t see or hear from him for a long time after that. In the vacuum he left behind, they came to the house, men from the government they were, with a lot of questions about Eddie, about his loyalty to the country, and particularly about the night they went to Coney Island. The next time she saw him, he was wearing an Army uniform, and showing off his newly earned airborne wings. He told her the Navy had kicked him out, for going AWOL, and he had been ashamed to tell her. Then he went away again, and didn’t write.

After the war was over in Europe, Eddie was the first of the boys to return. He asked her to come with him to his mother’s house. She lived up on the mountain west of Scranton, in Ransom township. It was a long walk from Archbald Patch. Eddie showed up on her porch bright and early that morning, and she had packed a lunch. When they got to the home, she was saddened to see that it was an old shack with dirt floors and no plumbing or hot water. The old woman, who still lived there with Eddie’s niece, told Butt that when she first saw the place, she cried. She was only thirteen years old when she came to America to marry Eddie’s father. Their first child, Mary, died in 1918 of influenza when she was 10 years old, and her husband died when Eddie was a boy.

On the way back down the mountain, they stopped to eat, and Butt kicked off her alligator shoes, opened up her basket and began to lay out the picnic she and her mom had prepared. Eddie lay down beside her and began to kiss her, and suddenly he wasn’t the same person. He began to kiss her hard, and it hurt, and his hands groped beneath her dress and touched her in the wrong place. And then he was on top of her, and she couldn’t match his strength, and he was inside of her and had his way. Anger, like she had never felt before, welled up inside of her, while she lay helpless beneath him, and when he was done she slapped his face as hard as she could and shoved him off.

She gathered herself together and ran down the mountain, and he came running after her, but she shook him off. “Get away from me, ” she cried, and he ran off down the mountain ahead of her. “Run, you son of a bitch,” she yelled after him, biting her lip. And he did. But he didn’t run away, he ran to her mother’s house.

When Butt got home, she could hear his voice inside, from out on the landing. He was begging for his life, swearing that he loved Butt and only wanted to marry her.

“He raped me, mama,” cried Butt, charging into the room, pointing at the despicable face of the animal that stood before her. “He held me down, and he…he…” His presence sucked the air out of the room, and she couldn’t get the words out of her mouth, but she formed her thumb and index finger into a ring, and stuck her other index finger through it, and repeated it over and over. “Like this, mama,” she cried, “like you taught me how it was done, that’s what he did.”

That was nearly ten years ago. And now she was on a train, going to meet him, the man who had given her four children in less than ten years. Her mother had betrayed her. Butt couldn’t understand, how ma could ever have taken his side, after what he did. They were married at City Hall, and when they were leaving, a teenage girl asked if they had just gotten married. Butt had somehow managed to smile. If he had only run away, she thought.

When she awoke, she was still alone with the baby, and the compartment was already bathed in the dim light of late afternoon. Tomorrow at 11:15 the train would arrive at Union Station in Los Angeles, and Butt had no idea what to expect, what her future would be like. She knew the baby would be up all night, but past that she couldn’t speculate. She had dreamed so much that day, it all still swirled around in her head. She loved her children, but she wasn’t sure if she could ever truly love the man she had married. He hadn’t changed at all; he still bullied her once in a while, and there was a darkness inside him, and when she beheld it she could only stand frozen with fear, like little Billy when he had lifted the heavy plate from the floor of the train, and gazed into the dark abyss below.

She sat down and started to cry, but just then she heard footsteps outside in the passageway. She hurriedly pulled a piece of tissue from her pocket, and daubed the tears from her cheeks just as the door came open. “Mommy,” they cried. Karin and Billy ran in, each of them wanting to be first to wrap their arms about her. “We had milk and cookies.”

“You did?” she laughed.

Hands in his pockets, Little Ed sauntered in last, but Butt reached out and pulled him in too, kissing his face all over and making him blush. The soldier who had brought them just smiled, and turned on his heel, and when Butt looked up to thank him, he was already gone. She held her little family tight, and didn’t want to let go. And up ahead, she heard the whistle of the train, and the voice of someone who loved her was calling, “Butt, Hey Buuu-ttt!!!”

~ by dobee on February 13, 2007.