Willie, Photographer says—why exactly are we here?
I wanted to visit Wingy.
Visit?
I can feel her, right now, smiling at us. At your questions. She didn’t like questions.
The ghost of a one-armed prostitute. Great. That should make a nice photo.
Okay, boys, next stop. We’ve seen where Willie lost his innocence. Let’s go to Red Hook and see where Willie lost his heart.
With the Armistice—November 1918—all of New York City becomes Coney Island. People fill the streets, dance on cars, kiss strangers. Offices close, saloons stay open around the clock. Willie and Eddie and Happy join the crowds, but with mixed emotions. The war was the best thing that ever happened to them. Peace means no more need for machine guns. No more need for them.
Laid off again, the boys scramble. They comb the wants, fill out applications, canvass. But the city is crowded with soldiers also hunting for work. Newspapers forecast another Depression. The third of Willie’s life, this one looks to be the most severe. Things get so bleak, so quick, people wonder aloud if capitalism has run its course.
The boys sit on the rocky waterfront at Red Hook, fishing, while Eddie reads aloud from a newspaper he pulled from the trash. Strikes, riots, unrest—and every other page carries a grim profile of another boy not coming home.
One of every forty who went overseas, Eddie reads, won’t be back.
Christ, Happy says.
At least they did something with their lives, Willie says.
Eddie stands, paces. He pitches rocks at the water. Nothin’s blunth changed. We’re blunth right back blunth where we started.
He stops, lets the rock in his hand fall to the ground. He stands still as a statue and stares into the distance. Willie and Happy turn, follow his gaze. Now they too stand slowly and stare.
Happy sprints toward her, removes his tweed cap, bows. She jumps back, but it’s an act. She’s not startled. A coiled cobra wouldn’t startle this girl, you can tell. Besides, it’s Happy. She was hurrying somewhere, walking purposefully, but now, coming upon a specimen like Happy, she’s got all the time in the world.
You gotta hand it to that Happy, Eddie says. He sits, adjusts his hat, checks the poles. Willie nods, sits beside him. Every few minutes they turn and shoot a wistful look at their friend.
Happy brings her over. Okay, you bums, look alive, on your feet. Bess, this here’s the Beard Street Fishing Club. Of which these are the presidents, Mr. Edward Wilson and Mr. William Sutton. Fellas, say hello to Bess Endner.
She’s an ash blonde, that’s how police reports will later describe her, but in the light of late autumn her hair contains every kind of yellow. Butter, honey, lemon, amber, gold—she even has golden flecks in her bright blue eyes, as if whoever painted her had some yellow left over and didn’t know what to do with it. She’s petite, five foot four, but with the graceful strides of a taller girl. Fifteen years old, Willie guesses. Sixteen maybe.
She’s carrying a wooden basket. She shifts it, shakes hands with Eddie, then Willie.
What’s in the basket? Happy says.
I’m bringing lunch to my father. That’s his shipyard right over there.
Some big shipyard, Happy says.
Biggest in Brooklyn. Founded by my grandpa. He came to this country in the hold of a ship, and now he builds them.
Willie stares. He’s never seen such confidence. The next time he does, it will be in men with guns. Eddie stares too. It doesn’t seem to make her uncomfortable. She probably can’t remember a time when people didn’t stare.
She points to their poles. Fish biting?
Nah, Eddie says.
What are you using for bait?
Bottle caps, Willie says. Nail heads. Chewing tobacco.
Water’s kind of icky, isn’t it?
We give the fish a hot shower and a shave before we cook them, Willie says.
She laughs. Sounds delish. On the subject of food, I better run. Daddy gets cranky when he’s hungry.
She wiggles her fingers goodbye. Is it Willie’s imagination or does she hold his gaze for half a second?
The boys stand shoulder to shoulder, watching her walk down Beard Street. They don’t speak until she passes into her father’s shipyard. Then they still don’t speak. They lie back on the rocks and hold their faces to the sun. Willie, eyes closed, watches the golden sun spots float under his eyelids. They remind him of the flecks in Bess Endner’s blue eyes. He’d have a better chance of kissing the sun.
A cat or rat scurries in front of the car. Photographer swerves. What the—? A block later, another cat or rat. So this is Red Hook, Photographer says—people live here?
And die here, Sutton says. In the old days you’d hear two guys at a lunch counter. One would whisper to the other, I dropped that package in Red Hook. Package meant corpse.
Reporter points to a pothole that looks like a lunar crater. Look out.
Photographer drives straight through it. The Polara begins to rattle like an old trolley.
You cracked the axle, Sutton says.
Brooklyn is full of potholes, Photographer says.
Brooklyn is a pothole, Sutton says. Always was.
Reporter points at a street sign. There it is—Beard Street.
Photographer turns on Beard, slides the Polara along the curb, scrapes the hubcap. Sutton steps out, limps across the cobblestones to a raised, railed sidewalk along the water. He steps up, grabs the railing, stands like a dictator about to address a crowd-filled plaza. Now he turns back to Reporter and Photographer, who are staying by the car. He calls to them: What are there, three billion people in the world? Four? You know the odds of finding the one who’s meant for you? Well—I found her. Right here. On this spot.
Reporter and Photographer cross the street, one jotting notes, the other shooting.
Boys, you’re only really alive, in the fullest sense of the word, when you’re in love. That’s why almost everyone you meet seems like they’re dead.
What was her name, Mr. Sutton?
Bess.
SEVEN
OUT OF WORK, NEARLY OUT OF CASH, THE BOYS STILL SPEND NIGHTS AT Coney Island, but they skip the hot
