1921
McCloskey left Monroe under a pale dawn hoping he had enough gas to get him the thirty or so miles upriver to Detroit. He braked for nothing and no one, coasting through intersections in Trenton, Wyandotte, and Ecorse. It turned into a game to see how far he could get without either stopping or slowing down.
Approaching Zug Island he knew that Ojibway, his hometown and the westernmost Border City, was just over there on the other side of the river. Even if he didn’t have Zug to give him bearings, he knew where he was by the angle of the light on the water.
He stayed close to the shoreline, taking Jefferson Avenue all the way into Detroit. He finally had a clear view of the Canadian shore when he came around Fort Wayne, and where the river bends at its narrowest point he could make out the spire of Assumption Church amid the budding trees and the cars moving along Riverside Drive. Those were his people over there; that was home. He hadn’t realized how lonely he was until now.
He had been wandering the desert, trying to heal, and learning more about the world along the way. His mind rolled back two years to when he originally set out on his journey. It was a clear April morning not unlike this one, but his head was in a fog. He felt he was a different person now, better equipped for life. He had crossed paths with a lot of veterans in his travels. Some had found their way while others were still pulling themselves out of a mental foxhole. He could tell when one of them wasn’t going to make it. He could see it in their eyes. He wondered what others saw in his.
There was a lot of a commotion around Union Depot, and he had to stop for a train crossing Jefferson and heading into the station. Taxis and luggage wagons were jockeying for position around the departures area so he dropped down to Atwater. He could have taken the ferry across at Woodward Avenue, but when he saw the crush of people at the docks he was convinced he was doing the smart thing by taking the side-door entrance into the Border Cities upriver. Ford City was his objective anyway.
Fortunately, there were enough fumes in the engine and quiet in the streets that he was able to just make it through the downtown. He let his dilapidated Olds roll to a stop near the corner of Dubois. He abandoned the vehicle and its contents, resisting the impulse to take a match to it. Instead he hoofed the last few blocks to the bottom of Joseph Campau Street. The air was cool, but he could feel the sweat on his brow and the anticipation stirring in his belly. We’re going to take things one step at a time, he reminded himself, one step at a time.
It was early morning and commuters were gathering at the dock: drab pencil pushers from the distillery scanning the business columns of the Free Press and talking export duty, and a couple middle-management types from Ford’s discussing productivity. McCloskey walked up to the kiosk where he exchanged his life savings — a nickel — for a ticket to Walkerville.
The ship’s whistle blew once and then a second time.
He boarded and climbed the stairs to the top deck as the little wooden ferry pushed off. To his left the sun was peaking over Belle Isle, burning off the thin fog that was clinging to its beaches. Straight ahead was the Canadian shore. He watched the perspective enlarge from a postcard to life-size view. When he could clearly read the “Distillery of Canadian Club — Walkerville” sign he got a lump in his throat. It was like seeing the dome of St. Paul’s after spending months adrift at sea. Only a local could get this sentimental over rye.
The water was blue-black and smooth as glass. Near the imaginary line running down the middle he glanced back and forth between Detroit and the Border Cities. A mile of water separated them but these two communities seemed worlds apart. On the American side was a sprawling metropolis, factories that were putting the world on wheels, buildings that poked the sky; hustle and bustle, challenge and ambition.
In contrast, the Canadian side was still very green in places. Cottages and clapboard houses stood alongside the small factories along the shore; church steeples watched over tree-lined streets. The downtown still had an old-world feel and the pace was slower. There was still less horsepower than horse power.
The ferry docked and McCloskey was the last one to disembark. When he entered Canada Customs he was greeted by a portrait of King George V in full regalia, eyes bulging and beard sharpened to a point. He would have preferred a greeting by a barmaid pouring shots of homemade peach brandy, but he knew that would come later. The official asked the usual questions and McCloskey, penniless and jobless, returning home with little more than the shirt on his back, answered politely and played the veteran card. The official waved him through and once outside, he took a deep breath.
Devonshire Road looked the same as it did before the war — the Peabody Building, the train station, Crown Inn. He resisted the temptation to drop to his knees and kiss the cobblestone and instead started picking his feet up and putting them down again until they got him all the way over to Ford’s, about a half-dozen blocks up Riverside Drive.
He wandered around and then fell in with some workers sharing a cigarette around a smouldering scrap heap. They exchanged stories about France and then McCloskey told them about his post-war life on the other side of the border. When he felt he had their trust, he told them he was willing to wager that after putting in a day’s work on the assembly line, he could step into a ring and demolish any challenger.
He did a good job of selling himself. Word quickly got around, and by the end of the day he got himself a job at the engine plant and an invitation from an old comrade from the 99th Battalion to stay with him until he got a place of his own. The soldier and his young wife kept an apartment above a store on Drouillard Road. It wasn’t much, but after all the nights he’d spent sleeping in his car, McCloskey was more than happy for a warm spot on the chesterfield. Fortune seemed to be smiling at him again. It felt good to be home.
It was a few days before McCloskey got a match. His opponent, Vito “the Volcano” Tarantino, worked in casting. McCloskey checked him out at shift change. He was a mountain of a man with a bald head and hairy shoulders, and the word at the plant was that he could bend and twist automobile parts with his bare hands like he was making balloon animals at a kid’s birthday party. McCloskey smiled to himself; he was back in the game.
The fight was set for the third Saturday of the month, a couple of days before a big referendum on Prohibition in Ontario. The bookies had a field day with it. The short money was on a victory for the wets and the Volcano. If you wanted to hedge, you saw a potential victory for the drys since the rest of the province never seemed to go along with what the Border Cities wanted.
McCloskey was the long shot. People weren’t familiar with his fighting skills, and when they saw him he didn’t exactly inspire a whole lot of confidence. He was six feet but not that big, weighing in at 180 pounds. And despite the broken nose and scar over one eye, he seemed too well-preserved to have had the experience needed to flatten the Volcano. With his jet-black hair and sculpted features, he didn’t look like a fighter so much as a Hollywood actor playing one in a movie.
When the bell rang McCloskey got right to work on the Volcano, driving blow after blow into his face and torso. The Volcano stood his ground. His massive body and granite-like head absorbed every hit. The timekeeper’s bell was mounted on a board perched on his lap. After three minutes he gave the string a yank and the bell went ding. McCloskey walked back to his corner, surveyed the audience and saw a bunch of yolks with stupid grins on their faces. He wondered if he hadn’t been suckered into something. He glanced down at his weapons: fingers and hands wrapped in a thin layer of cheesecloth begged off a butcher at the local delicatessen, already bloodied. It would be a bad thing to lose his first fight in the Border Cities.
The bell opened the second round. McCloskey immediately decided to open things up a bit and offered the Volcano a few golden opportunities, but they were ignored. It became clear his opponent’s strategy was to lie
