Cuyahoga Read online

  No one known for sure who authored the exploding. On the Cleveland side they named a dozen reasons why it must have been Ohio city, and on the Ohio side, those dozen reasons were rearranged against Cleveland – even as it were generally suspected that August Dogstadter were involved. Every piece of evidence were either proof of the other side’s guilt, or proof of your side’s clean hands. In Cleveland at least there was certainty that the bridge were worth protecting. In Ohio we could not decide whether we were for bridges or against them.

  * * *

  Mayor Frawley – after his dignity recovered from his tumble – called a meeting of Ohio city to settle whether we backed TWO BRIDGES or NONE. At the fifteenth of July, Ohio men come together at Dogstadter’s grocery to see what their brains added up to. The meeting begun with Dog announcing he would stand refreshment, which put a cheer in the room. With toasts still ringing off the weapon-hung walls, Dog made another grand gesture. From nowhere he produced a firkin of gunmeal and thruncked it to a tabletop next to a flickering lard-rag lamp. A cat fled and whiskey jiggled in cups in alarm.

  Dog threw a gaze around the room like he were slapping people in the face, while his lips wrestled together. Before he could let rip, Frawley pushed him toward a seat. Which took a measure of exertion despite Dog’s advanced age. During their scuffle Philo went to move the burning lamp away from the keg. As Phi clomped away, the flame seemed to reach back for the barrel like a babe for teat.

  With Dog pacified, Frawley waved his short arms to hush us and went straight to matters.

  Will we have TWO BRIDGES? A flap of his right arm to some sober yeas. Or NONE? A flap of the left to many oaths and bangings on tables.

  Dog nominated himself to speak on behalf of NONE. His lawyering were admirably brief. If we could not have our own bridge, Cleveland should not have theirs. Half of the Columbus crossing were ours by right, only Mr Clark had forgot to say so in his will. If half the bridge belonged to Ohio, then Ohio had the right to half-destroy the bridge. Cleveland could do with their half how they liked.

  Even with Dog speaking so bald in favor of destruction, and thruncking kegs of powder, Frawley kept up the charade that the first bombing had been the work of Cleveland. He said that he appreciated Dog’s vantage but that it was too much like the late and untoward attack by unknown felons from the east  The mayor found his taste for hot air. In the race to be the great metropolis of the west, the victory of Ohio city is inevitable  he reasoned. And war will only slow matters  Our destiny is to overtake Cleveland  And we wish it done sooner than later  Only a second bridge will do

  Every table in the place come in for banging – both sides of the question were offended. The NONEs bellowed dissent and the TWOs asked what money would pay for a new bridge.

  I BEG YOUR PATIENCE said the badger mayor to quiet the rumpus. You forget that we possess a natural wealth  We have got a spirit at loose ends for work

  Mr Job spoke up here on Big’s behalf.  Mayor  Big cannot work for free any longer

  Of course not  I would never suggest it

  So you propose to pay him hard money for the making of a bridge?

  Money of a sort

  Before he run off, Carl Swarthout were a farmer. He tilled the soil and brung its fruits to market, trading for what he needed and taking the rest in paper money. He got along fine in this way until paper money went to squirrels on him. On one of his trips into town from the country Carl Swarthout went to swap shinplasters for home provisions. But the merchant pulled out a paper listing the trustworthiness of bank money, and said he would take Carl Swarthout’s dollars at one-half their stated amount.

  Carl Swarthout were wroth at this. He informed the merchant that he did not care for such japes. The merchant said that Carl Swarthout could keep the money and he would keep the merchandise. So Carl Swarthout choked down his wrath and paid his bill and gone back to tilling. Each time he called on a merchant, it seemed his paper money were in worse regard. Of course you cannot have a household without stuffs, so Carl Swarthout were soon deep in credit. Before too many trips Carl Swarthout were promising next year’s harvest to pay yesterday’s bill to get today’s credit. So it only took one bad harvest to bust him wide open.

  In the book of Genesis, when the fruits of Cain’s fields are spurned by God, Cain kills his brother Abel as a consolation and runs off to the Land of Nod. Carl Swarthout did not have a brother to kill and did not consider that God were responsible for the trouble with the shinplasters – which are not mentioned at all in the Bible. But he went ahead and chased himself off all the same. He did not wait for any mark of sin, not wanting his creditors to find him. In honor of Carl, we made a Webster’s word of his name.

  To SWARTHOUT were to go fugitive and vagabond from your debts.

  * * *

  Big’s salt had lost even more flavor in the weeks after Cloe’s latest spurning on July 4. He spent his nights in a jug and his days abed.

  Which is where Mayor Frawley found him the day after the grocery debate. It tickled me some to see the mayor and other dignified folks in our barn attic, making an embassy to a snoring Big. Mr Philo tickled at Big with his visiting leg and eventually one beady eye popped open. The idea of waking did not please Big and he made it known with bearlike swats at Philo.

  He eventually gave in and was greeted with a proposition. Mayor Frawley dared him to consider the adoration awaiting the hero who built a new crossing  right in the gut of the river docks  sure to carry commerce and custom

  Big said I will get after that bridge once you learn me to make adoration into hard money  His manners was threadbare but he made a fair point.

  The mayor leaned over to whisper into the tangle of shining hair over Big’s ear. Big nodded slow and said I suppose so  I do not know what he supposed or what Frawley proposed, but all parties shook hands.

  With the embassy concluded, the day begun in earnest – I whacked away at coffins and Big wandered off. When he returned to roost that evening, he held funny flowers in a hundred colors. Shinplasters and bank papers and promissory notes by dozens, folded over as thick as a prayer book. Big went searching for Cloe to make a gift of this bouquet, but she were on errands. So he left the money in a heap on her bedding and came to fetch me.

  Little brother  let us build a bridge

  * * *

  Big were not any carpenter like Mr Job and I. But he could swing a hammer, and with enough nails, anything will sit still. He had brains enough to look for a primer on where the nails belonged. The day after his paper money come in, he rose early and dragged me behind him on Agnes’s wide back. We went down to the bridge, still singed from the bombing, the tollbooth guarded by two sheriff’s men. Big hidyed them and said his intent.

  We are surveying the bridge  he announced.

  The voice in the tollbooth said Surveying is not allowed  This bridge belongs to the city of Cleveland

  I only want to look at the bridge  I promise I won’t bust it any

  Looking at the bridge on purpose is not allowed

  Big considered this for a moment, then clobbered one of the sentries in the face. The other only made a curtsy with his arm as if to present the vista.

  Big asked the voice in the booth if he minded.

  No answer.

  Give us some peanuts as well

  Peanuts are a penny

  * * *

  After the voice had his penny and we had our peanuts, Big dug paper and coal from his shirt and shoved them into my hand. From there he commenced to swing around the bridge like a circus ape, climbing above and beside and below and hollering back what he seen.

  A heap of stones around each leg  Maybe a hundred rocks the size of a good ham

  Hanging from underneath by his legs with his hair falling toward the river.

  Timbers one forearm wide

  Standing atop the whole works.

  Thirty-three Bigs long

  Five and o
ne-half Bigs wide

  Three and one-half Bigs in height

  I did my best to put all the numbers down as he called them. I would not swear that I caught every single one.

  * * *

  For steady weeks Big made a dervish at the site of the second bridge, hammering and sawing and splashing in the water. Mrs Tab brought him cakes and bacon so that he could keep at his tools – she would never say so but she were tickled at his useful turn. The dervishing went on until the last day of July, when Big announced his bridge ready.

  Another celebration were required.

  * * *

  Even in the rosiest mood you could not say my brother’s bridge were handsome. Big had been raised by a carpenter but he had never learned to work wood neat. His creation wore mismatched timbers all over. In some places the planks were too long, in others too short, and nowhere straight. The whole contraption seemed to have a touch of rheumatism. But by all looks, it went from one side of the Cuyahoga to the other. So you could not call it anything but a bridge.

  Big would not let anyone cross until the celebration was done, so we roasted up pigs and picknicked and threw bowls and spectated at rastles. Everyone come out in their finery, even Mr Clark’s dandified orphans. Big rastled Barse Fraley and flung him through both sides of a barn. We all laughed when Barse limped back, dipped in manure and feathers and smashed eggs. Asa and Agnes chased after each other like pups, and jugs seemed to empty themselves. Across the water there were a small crowd of Clevelanders gathered, puffing at pipes and watching us make merry. They did not seem angry, only curious. Back in Ohio, Big kept looking for Cloe – he wanted that she would join him in crossing first.

  * * *

  Mr Job and Mrs Tab and I known something Big did not, on account of his working so keen. Cloe had run off some days before. She had tied up Big’s money in an old rag and left it at the attic along with a letter. Big had not found either because he had not returned home to sleep. Mr Job and Mrs Tab did not know what the letter said, but they might have imagined.

  I swear I only put my nose into the letter by mistake.

  Big.

  I am run off.

  Do not look for me.

  You ought to stop asking us to marry.

  I will not answer any different.

  Your sister,

  Cloe.

  I should have told Big right away, but he were so cheerful at his work.

  * * *

  The carousing around the new bridge gone past the late July dusk, and lanterns and flambos come out. But no one crossed. Big kept to his idea that he and Cloe be the first, even as patience wilted some under the late hour. It come into my mind that I ought to tell Big about Cloe – that we ought not wait for her. I found him sat among the rubbish of the great picknick meal, watching the moon climb over his bridge. In the sparse lamplight, his hair did not shine but flicker.

  Cloe is run off again, Big

  He wore a face like his guts had not moved in a month.

  I surmised

  I expect she will come around  I said without belief.

  I am afraid she means it, Meed

  Means what?

  That she does not wish to marry  I am afraid she is telling the truth

  I were struck to hear my brother say he were afraid of something. For nine years on end nothing had scared him, excepting night pigs.

  * * *

  After Big nursed his hurt feelings a bit longer, he went off to tell Mayor Frawley that the bridge ought to open. The mayor were much too refreshed, and gone right to hollering how we will invade Cleveland and wag our rears under their noses!  We will not pay any toll to do so!

  His braggadocio galvanized the gathering. Folks grabbed up the lamps and lights hung around the celebration and run for the bridge. From the stampede you would think that half of Ohio had bet on themselves to be first to cross. Thukthukthuk of five hundreds of shoes and hooves on timbers, and lanterns bobbing in the night like monster fireflies. What a sound and sight! You could never fit such spectacle inside a theatre.

  Big and I watched from the riverbank. He did not voice pride in his creation, but only wallowed in sorrow over Cloe. I accused him of sentimentality in my mind, but allowed that he were only drunk and disappointed. Just as I forgave him, I heard a different noise from the bridge, louder than all the thukthukthuks, like an empty bucket banging the insides of a well. Then a sound like pitching straw, and a general wailing. The great cloud of fireflies went down to the water and extinguished. Big’s bridge had fallen.

  The disaster shook Big from his melancholy. He set to the work of rescuing with an appetite. Thrashing in the dark water of the river, he grabbed up every living thing he found in the busted timbers. Before a half hour had gone, Big had swum to the wreck a dozen times and pulled to dry land every single soul that had been on his bridge. They were bruised and generally bothered but alive, all thanks to Big.

  * * *

  Even with the consolation of rescuing folks, failure trimmed Big’s pride considerably, and he took it hard. On the morning after the disaster, I found his strawtick empty once again and his Agnes gone from the barn. And the morning after, and the morning after that, stretching into weeks. We was used to runnings-off from Cloe, and now Big had got the taste. He had authored the occasional spree before, but nothing like this summer’s vanishings.

  Big’s failure also diminished his reputation somewhat. Kinder talk held that he were only out of practice, but there were whispers that his spirit were permanently reduced. I do not know about all that. All that were certain is that Big did not have the gift of bridge-making. Of course he has got weaknesses. We are all termited with them. But he is not ate up. He will come roaring back on you. I would bet it all day – call the wager.

  * * *

  You look vexed. You have got questions before you lay your bets. You would like to know what were our father and mother, how I am not a spirit, et c.

  To your last: Kin comes in colors like horses. I am not troubled by our difference. I do not resent my brother his nature. A touch of envy will not spoil my love, any more than pigs eating mess spoils their ham.

  I cannot story you on our father and mother who died before I had brains enough to know my sadness. The Stileses is the only parents I ever known. Big had a few years’ head start on me so he known our folks a bit. He recalled them as stout and good-natured, not spirited at all. He did not say so as scorning, only as a fact.

  I sense a curiosity. You wish to know where Big’s spirit truly come from.

  It come from fruit.

  * * *

  Ten years before today, before Big whomped the trees or the lake, before Cleveland had five thousand and Ohio city one thousand souls, our side of the river held barely a dozen houses – we had to cross into Cleveland on old Alf’s ferry for store goods. But both sides had certain notions already fixed in their brains – foremost the idea of SPEED. Men talked of how fast the cities would grow once the canal were cut, how fast dollars would stack up. In the meantime they satisfied themselves with races. Horse, boat, foot, anything at all you could bet on.

  Summer were the prime season for derbies. Folks made a contest of growing the largest vegetable, of the prettiest cows and sows, but mostly of whatever one body could do faster than another. Corn shucking and butter churning and plowing. As children we did not have horses to race or whiskey to drink so we made what races we could – running – treeclimbing – swimming – rounding up shoats or roaches and racing them. It is easy to race pigs if you have got slops. To race a roach, by vigorous poking, is a more intellectual manner of sport.

  At summer’s close, the sporting men of Cleveland declared a great race. A purse of twenty-five dollars to the fastest mile. All of Ohio city crowded aboard the ferry raft to gawk at Water-street, home of the speed-way. There the fast young men stripped down to shirtsleeves and Cossack-cut pantaloons, drank, insulted each other, rastled, drank, threw dice. The horses did their own preening, snorting a
nd stamping in the afternoon sun, wearing fanciful names of Virgil – Meteor – Rocket – Golden Hind.

  Like a cloud bursting, the tacalatacalatacala of thirty-two hooves roared up and down Water-street and every heart in the crowd tacalaed back. The handsome chestnut Decatur took the stakes by three lengths. Dollars and maids’ kisses for champion Luke Lumpkin. Refreshment for everyone.

  The younger brains in attendance caught fever at the spectacle.

  * * *

  A week later word spread all over Cleveland and ferried across to the western village – there was to be a children’s race in the middle of September, in imitation of the sporting young men. A quarter mile around the burying ground at Erie-street. Spread the word. Run however you like. On your feet or atop a spry cow, a mule, a sturdy dog, an elephant, a herd of roaches. The real cannonball news were that the winner would take a PRIZE stood by Mr Eells, whose emporium were near the graveyard.

  Mr Eells were grim and sturdy, resembled to a barrel of crackers. Perhaps his always being near to barrels made folks see one in him. He would not give any twenty-five dollars or maiden’s-kisses for prizes – only a barrel of apples. It does not sound like much but to a child, a barrel of apples is a fortune.

  * * *

  At the day of the derby, Mr Job had us help neighbor Mr Dennes to dig a latrine. As we worked, kind Mr Dennes listened to us chatter about the great race. At work’s end he made a lordly gesture. He unhitched his tired dray Samantha and said we could enter her in the derby as long as we brung her home and fed her after. Samantha come to be the Lord’s sewing needle. But I am in front of myself.