Waiting for Harvey (The Spirits of Maine) (15 page)

“Good evening,” he declared and smiled his usual smile.  Honestly, it looked more like a sinister grin.  Another clap of thunder shook the world, and I fought to control my fear.  Playing his part well, Harvey pretended not to notice.

“Hi,” I managed.  Silently I begged him to go, but I couldn’t utter the words aloud.  The thunderstorm was still building, and I didn’t want to be alone through it.  I would have preferred John’s company far more.

“I died on a night like this,” he announced.  The comment made my blood run cold.  “You have badgered me for the details of my life and death, Erik,” he smirked with the coziness of a corpse.

“You made it clear that you didn’t care to tell me,” I replied, in hopes that he would end the conversation and go.  I no longer wanted to hear his story.  It was nothing to me and I had been stupid to ask.  He appeared to be determined to tell it and I had no idea how I might stop him.

“No, I don’t mind,” he assured me.  “The storm will provide the energy I will need to tell the lengthy tale.”

My stomach clenched.  I offered a polite nod out of habit.  My mouth went dry and I wished for a bottle of whiskey.  Foolishly, I had hounded him to tell me the account of his life and death.  It had become my way of needling him after I realized that he did not want to tell it.  As he offered it freely, I regretted my childishness.  Another clap of thunder rattled the windows.

“I was born in Biddeford, Maine in 1900,” Harvey began.  I didn’t want to hear it still I was hanging on every word as he told it.  “My father was a hard worker in the textile mill.  He was a cruel man who lamented the arrival of each of his fourteen children.  He deeply resented the time we took from our mother.  Father was quick with his fists and showed no love to anyone but his beloved wife. 

Early in my childhood I had already grown to hate him passionately.  Six days a week my siblings and I walked to the mill with him.  We were employed in the dangerous rooms with the fast moving machines.  At the end of the week, he collected our pay and put it in his pocket.  If any of us had mustered the nerve to challenge him about it, he would have reminded us that he used it wisely to provide for us.  In the three bedroom apartment, in a dangerous neighborhood in Biddeford, our family of sixteen existed.

I was twelve when one of the supervisors assigned me to work at my father’s side.  He repaired the machines and my job was to carry his chest of tools and be ready if he needed assistance.  It was dangerous work.  My father would ask only once.  If the wrong tool was provided, or I failed to respond swiftly, he would deliver a quick, forceful punch.  I hated working with him.  Standing beside him, I fought the urge to push him into one of the busy machines that would end his life.

My siblings shared my dislike for the man.  I don’t believe they thought about his demise the way I did.  Perhaps they were more charitable than I was.  Or maybe they hadn’t suffered as much from him.  None of them had worked at his side daily at the mill.  On Sunday as we walked to the church he always found me and gripped my hand.  My fingertips went numb as he squeezed it mercilessly.

Paul, my oldest brother, once told me that I was the only one of us who resembled our paternal grandfather.  Our father and grandfather had parted ways before I was born.  My curse was that I reminded him of the man he hated.  There were many days when I wished that my parents had given me away in my infancy before he recognized the old man in my face.

Only days before my thirteenth birthday, I slipped out of our crowded apartment in the middle of the night.  I carried one change of clothes, they were all that I owned.  My tin lunch pail held a chunk of stale bread and a portion of fatty ham.  I put on my only pair of shoes and followed the roads that led me out of my neighborhood.  Through the day I travelled north to Portland.  I never saw anyone from my family again.

Living on the streets of the city, I learned to steal what I needed to survive.  In time, I grew taller and stronger.  The girls told me I was handsome but can you trust the word of a woman? 

With friends, I broke into businesses at night and mugged people on the streets during the day.  We were angry and desperate.  The world was filled with enemies and we had few allies.  Yet we were happy in our own way.  We were far closer to each other than we had ever been to our families.  There was fierce loyalty between us, and we pledged our lives for one another.

Like my friends, I had been arrested more than a few times.  I took my lumps from the rods the cops carried.  As my face became more familiar to them, the beatings became more vicious.  I can’t say they weren’t deserved now and then or that I never retaliated, but I could have stayed home with my father if I had wanted to live that way of life.

In 1917 several of my friends went off to war.  I considered enlisting with them and going along as they sailed for France.  They talked of fighting the Kaiser and becoming heroes.  I liked the idea of being seen as a hero.  Even the cops respected the war veterans.  I would see the world beyond the borders of Maine and return as a conqueror, as well.  As a hero, I could return to my family in Biddeford to show them what I had made of myself. 

My closest friends were Leon Tripaldi and Abel Hilaire.  Late one Saturday night, we sat at the edge of the wharf talking.  We were ready to join up on Monday morning.  The air was alive with the electric excitement between us.  We passed around a bottle of whiskey, a loaf of bread, and salami we stole from Paquette’s Market.  The breeze stilled and we talked quietly.

We discussed our grand plans for the future.  The following Monday we would enlist in the Army together and would leave Maine on the first train south.  We believed that we would be on a military ship bound for France before the end of the week.  There would be tremendous battles and we would take on the German Army.  With our help, the United States would end the conflict quickly and parades would be given in our honor.  Our photographs would be plastered on the front page with stories about our heroism.

Victorious, we would come home and the women would all want to celebrate us.  Not the cheap women like the widow, Mrs. Trilby or the Pelletier sisters who gave us whiskey and wine when they invited us in.  We would have women who looked like Mary Pickford, Marion Davies, and Theda Bara.  We would be National heroes and everyone we knew would come to kneel at our feet.

Our immoral and illegal activities would be forgiven and forgotten.  We might even marry fine ladies and have children.  The dreams we shared helped us to forget the lives we were living.  They were ridiculous, but we needed them to give us hope.  A life without hope is too painful to go on with. 

A ship sailed into the harbor as we passed the bottle around again.  Abel Hilaire announced that he was obligated to marry Eloise Killion before we enlisted.  Eloise claimed to be in the family way and he’d admitted that he wronged her.  To make an honest woman of her, he planned to marry her on Monday morning. 

Leon Tripaldi and I had known Abel for years.  He had been orphaned early on, and he had no family to speak of nor any that would speak of him.  My old man beat me brutally, yet he always put food on the table and paid the landlord to give us a roof.  That meant we had heat from the coal fed furnace through the harsh Maine winters.  He offered them grudgingly, but each of us was given one new coat and pair of boots each year.

Abel didn’t get what he needed when he was a kid.  His bones broke easily and were slow to mend.  He was small and frail.  Leon and I looked out for him.  He was likely to die in the war, too fragile to stand his ground against the burly German soldiers.  We would safeguard him if we could, but we’d seen the movies and there were a lot of German troops.  If he didn’t make it home again, we would make sure he was honored.

When Abel talked of marrying Eloise Killion, Leon and I both knew he couldn’t make an honest woman of her, not ever.  Eloise had delivered a baby already and it was left on the steps of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception before sunrise one morning.  She claimed it died, but we all knew.  Eloise wouldn’t make a good wife, but Abel was likely to die anyway so why not let him do it if it made him happy.

Leon nodded to me and I nodded back.  We understood each other best.  Eager to change the subject, Leon told us about the movie he had seen the day before.  He had escorted MaryAnn Gelinas to the Nickel Theatre to see Cleopatra, starring Theda Bara.  I envied him greatly until he told us that MaryAnn’s Aunt Hortense and been her chaperone. 

“The dreadful old spinster sat between me and MaryAnn,” Leon carped.  Abel and I laughed delightedly at the idea of it.  We’d seen the crazy old lady in Deering Oaks Park, kicking at the ducks and throwing rocks at the squirrels.  Leon would do well to forget Mary Ann Gelinas and her whole nutty family.

“Do you mean to marry her?” Abel asked.  He was oddly naïve, given the life he had lived.

“Don’t be stupid!” Leon responded and gave Abel a gentle shove.  “I don’t want a wife to nag on me night and day.  I just want to see what MaryAnn has hidden under those frilly skirts.”

We laughed harder, rolling around at the end of the dock.  Leon punched my shoulder and I punched his in return.  We never punched Abel.  We feared we’d hurt him and if he didn’t heal then he could actually die.  Abel was like a little brother.  He was ours and we kept him as safe as we could in the world we lived in.  While Leon and I wrestled and fought, Abel remained on the fringe of the confrontation cheering one of us and then the other.

“What are you boys doing down here?” a husky voice called as the footsteps approached quickly.  A Portland cop had wandered down onto the wharf.  He held his billy club at an angle, ready to strike as he eyed us suspiciously.  “What are your names?” he demanded.

I recognized the cop’s voice.  He had arrested each of us more than once in the previous months.  If he hauled us in again that night it would ruin our plans to join the Army on Monday.  Abel had his little heart set on marrying Eloise Killion early that morning.  It was dreadful timing.

“Harvey Cloutier, Leon Tripaldi, and Abel Hilaire!” the cop announced as he swept his light across our faces.  “You filthy, thieving, little drunkards were ordered off this very wharf, only days ago!”

“We’re sorry, Sir,” Abel mumbled and looked down at his tattered shoes.  The cop took it for mockery and swung wide with his baton.  He connected with the side of Abel’s head and the boy dropped like a sack of flour. 

It all happened so fast.  Abel crumbled there on the dock, and his head made a horrible clunking sound as it struck the thick wood planks.  A dark pool of liquid spread out around his head.  I pulled an Italian Vitali automatic pistol from the pocket of my jacket.  With no hesitation, I aimed it at the cop’s face and fired.  He landed not far from Abel and I couldn’t resist kicking him hard as he lay there.

The 9mm ended the cop’s life as quickly as he had taken Abel’s.  Leon and I stood looking down at our little friend.  Leon knelt close and tried to detect some sign of life in him.  He put his hand under Abel’s shirt and held it there but his heart had stopped.  His chest didn’t rise and fall anymore.  In a flash, two men were dead there on the Portland waterfront. 

“More cops will be coming!” I warned.  Somewhere in the distance we heard the sounds of police being summoned.  Surely someone heard the gun fire, and they would find us quickly. 

“You just shot a cop, Harvey?” Leon admonished.

“He killed Abel!  What did you expect me to do?”

“I’m still with you,” he assured me.  “So what do we do now?”

“Gut him, so he sinks fast and stays under,” I suggested.

He pulled a knife from his boot and pushed it in just above the cop’s groin.  Quickly he moved upward and withdrew it again.  We dragged the big man to the side and lowered him into the water, trying not to create a great splash.  Another alarm sounded and more lights came on.  Police sirens were roaring through the area.  A boat motor fired to the south of the dock we were on.  Men were shouting, trying to determine which wharf the gun shot had come from.

Gently we lowered Abel’s limp body over the edge and followed him into the cold water of Casco Bay.  Moving as quickly as we dared, we swam northeast from one wharf to the next, dragging Abel along.  Behind us, we saw more bright lights illuminating the better part of the waterfront.  Sirens shrieked and senior officers shouted commands. 

Boat engines rumbled to life and we swam faster.  When they discovered the bloody dock, the search would intensify.  If they found the cop’s corpse in the water, and perhaps they had already, the hunt would be on!  We edged around the east end and climbed out of the water beneath the Eastern Promenade.  Taking turns, we piggybacked Abel up the steep slope to the promenade.  I had never been more grateful for dense clouds that smothered the moon.

At the top of the hill, Leon passed Abel over to me again.  He flopped over my shoulder and hung there.  We crept along the street, staying close to the grand houses with the majestic view of the bay.  The wind shook the flowering shrubs, blending the scent of the sea with the breath of beach roses and lilacs.

We made our way into Fort Allen Park without being challenged.  Concealed by the night, we looked out over the chaotic waterfront.  Several boats raced around the harbor.  They appeared to have no direction and may have been searching aimlessly for anything that was out of place.  I wondered if the cop’s body had been discovered.  With Abel removed, they might never connect Leon and me with the shooting.