Characters in Roadwork

“And that guy”—the mechanic was rolling now—“is Alan.” The bowling ball left Alan’s hand and thundered down the alley. Pins exploded everywhere and then Alan made a disgusted noise. He had left the seven-ten split. He tried to hang his second ball over the right gutter and get them both.

You knew who you could borrow a cup of sugar from when you were tapped out. Where are they? Tony and Alicia Lang are in Minnesota because he requested a transfer to a new territory and got it. The Hobarts’ve moved out to Northside.

And this guy named Piazzi had a black mongrel bitch named Andrea, but everybody just called her Mr. Piazzi’s dog. He kept her chained up all the time, but that dog never got mean, not until this one hot day in August. It might have been 1937.

In the next aisle he got a G.I. Joe for Bill, and after some deliberation, a chess set for Andy. Andy was twelve, an object of some worry in the family. Old Bea from Baltimore had confided in Mary that she kept finding stiff places on Andy’s sheets.

Gene Voreman punted. Andy Cocker of the Chargers returned the ball to the Mustangs’ 46. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut had so shrewdly pointed out. He had read all of Kurt Vonnegut’s books. He liked them mostly because they were funny.

Sometimes when Angie and I were with her I’d think of all those orange rods sticking through the cement down in the basement. It was like a secret thought.”

“Yeah, Arnie Walker.” He shook his head slowly. “I dunno, Mr. . . .?” “Dawes.” “I dunno, Mr. Dawes. I seen him in one of those examinin rooms. He looked pretty banged up. He ain’t a kid anymore. He looked bad.” “I’m very sorry,” he said. “That’s a bad corner.

“Sure,” he said. “Look at me, I never bought a gun in my life and I’m mad.” He wrote his name and address in the book: Barton George Dawes 1241 Crestallen Street West “They’re into everything,” he said. “This is nothing to what they’d like to do,” Harry said.

… Old Bea from Baltimore had confided in Mary that she kept finding stiff places on Andy’s sheets. Could it be possible? So early? Mary had told Bea that children were getting more precocious every year. Bea said she supposed it was all the milk they drank, and vitamins, but she …

And they were. But when Betty Keeson slipped on the wet floor and broke her arm, the Tarkingtons paid the hospital bill and there was ten bucks a week for food until she could come back.

In the next aisle he got a G.I. Joe for Bill, and after some deliberation, a chess set for Andy. Andy was twelve, an object of some worry in the family. Old Bea from Baltimore had confided in Mary that she kept finding stiff places on Andy’s sheets.

Playing golf over at the Westside course or taking the wives to Ponderosa Pines and driving those little go-karts. Remember the time Bill Stauffer drove his right through that board fence and into some guy’s swimming pool? Yeah, I remember that, George, we all laughed like hell.

The phone rang twice more that day, but it was not Olivia either time. • • • Around two in the afternoon Mary called him from Bob and Janet Preston’s house—Bob and Janet, who always reminded him, like it or not, of Fred and Wilma Flintstone. How was he? Good.

“Thank you for dialing the WDST Weatherphone, and be sure to watch Newsplus-Sixty with Bob Reynolds each weekday evening at six o’clock for a weather update. Good-bye.” “You’re not kidding, I know it’s a lot.”

If so, give a call. If not, bring Mary. Carla always enjoyed the chance to see Mary and blah-blah and bullshit-bullshit, etc., et al. And another letter from the highway department.

Every night it seemed he and his son got together in one dream or another. Barton George Dawes and Charles Frederick Dawes, reunited by the wonders of the subconscious mind.

He wandered down an aisle of dolls, and picked one up for each of his three nieces: Chatty Cathy for Tina, Maisie the Acrobat for Cindy, and a Barbie for Sylvia, who was eleven now. In the next aisle he got a G.I.

… all around the town/I’m the gal who wrecked your yearbook/Writing inside down—A.F.A., Connie”), then the photographs of long-ago teachers, frozen behind their desks and beside their blackboards, smiling vaguely, then of classmates he barely remembered with their credits (FHA 1,2; Class Council 2,3,4; Poe Society, 4) listed beneath, along with …

In front of it, open, marshy land stretched toward the suburban hem of the city’s outskirts. A young reporter named Dave Albert was doing a series of man-on-the-street interviews while he and his co-workers waited for the mayor and the governor to arrive for the ground-breaking ceremony.

The laundry began its day at seven when Ron Stone, the foreman, and Dave Radner, who ran the washroom, got there and ran up the pressure on the boiler. The shirt girls punched in at seven-thirty, and the girls who ran the speed ironer came in at eight.

“Do you remember Dick Jackson?” Bart stuck out his hand and the slim man shook it. “You and your wife lived on our street five . . . no, seven years ago. Is that right?” Jackson nodded. “We’re out in Willowood now.” Housing development, he thought.

They got it home, and an excited Dick Keller from the first floor helped him carry it up, and that night they had watched TV until the national anthem had come on the last operating channel and then they had made love in front of the test pattern, both of …

Ray and his dad, Don Tarkington, ran it. Don got it from his father, who started the Blue Ribbon in 1926. It was a non-union shop and I suppose the labor people would say all three of the Tarkingtons were paternalistic exploiters of the uneducated working man and woman.

No one had foot-fucked this snow. In past years Don Upslinger’s boy Kenny sometimes used the backyard express to get up to his friend Ronnie’s house.

… Mary had asked him if he didn’t think Donna Upshaw had seemed a little . . . well, off. Now, sitting here, he could remember Mary, slim and oddly, fetchingly taller in a pair of white sandals she had gotten to celebrate summer. She had been wearing white shorts, too; …

“Look,” Dr. Younger had told them on that bright, just-right-for-golf June day. He had unrolled a long scroll of paper, an ink-tracing of their son’s brain waves. He produced a healthy brain wave as a comparison, but he didn’t need it.

… A man came up from the back and told Duncan that the Bowl-a-Score machine wasn’t working right. Duncan went back to look at it, and he sipped his beer and looked at the TV. There was a soaper on, and two women were talking in slow, …

“What are you doing way over here?” Jack smiled a little. “I haven’t got used to the other store yet, so . . . I thought . . .” “Where’s Ellen?” “She had to fly back to Cleveland,” he said. “Her mother died.” “Jesus, I’m sorry, Jack. Wasn’t that sudden?”

… mouths like comic strip balloons—Tom Granger, Ron Stone, Ethel Diment, the shirt girl who usually got tipsy on her lunch break and then burned the hell out of unsuspecting shirt collars all afternoon, Gracie Floyd and her cousin Maureen, both of whom had worked on the ironer, and ten or …

Are you running a fever?” “Dno. Well, baybe a liddle.” “Want me to make an appointment with Fontaine for you?” “Dno. I will toborrow if I don’d feel bedder.” “You’re really stuffy.” “Yes.

Damage done to the payloaders and bulldozers was minor, according to Francis Lane, whose company got a substantial subcontracting bid on the crosstown extension, but the demolition crane, valued at $60,000, is expected to be out of service for as long as two weeks. Two weeks? Was that all?

A body in every trunk.” Tom laughed and tapped more ashes into his plate. Gayle came back and asked them if they wanted more coffee. They both ordered more. “I got those cotter pins today for the boiler door,” Tom said. “They remind me of my dork.” “Is that right?”

Gene Voreman punted. Andy Cocker of the Chargers returned the ball to the Mustangs’ 46. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut had so shrewdly pointed out. He had read all of Kurt Vonnegut’s books. He liked them mostly because they were funny.

… hell out of unsuspecting shirt collars all afternoon, Gracie Floyd and her cousin Maureen, both of whom had worked on the ironer, and ten or fifteen others. The highway department had put out yellow sawhorses and smudge pots and large orange-and-black signs that said: DETOUR The signs would route traffic …

… a doctoral student at City College); the Stauffers; Hank Albert, whose wife had died of emphysema four years ago; the Darbys and just four houses up from where he was parked and shaking in his car, the Quinns. And a dozen other families that he and Mary had a nodding …

Then, behind the steely-eyed generalship of Hank Rucker, who might have seen the Heisman trophy once in a newsreel, the Mustangs mounted a six-yard drive. Gene Voreman punted. Andy Cocker of the Chargers returned the ball to the Mustangs’ 46.

Your cousin will have to sign for them on the other end, that’s all.” He wrote his name on one of Harry’s business cards. The card said: Harold Swinnerton 849-6330 HARVEY’S GUN SHOP Ammunition Antique Guns “Say,” he said. “If you’re Harold, who’s Harvey?” “Harvey was my brother.

“Oh, what a dirty shame. And so close to Christmas.” “Did someone go out to Deakman to pick up his load?” She looked at him a little reproachfully. “Tom sent out Harry Jones. He brought it in five minutes ago.” “Good,” he said, but it wasn’t good. It was bad.

… HARVEY’S GUN SHOP Ammunition Antique Guns “Say,” he said. “If you’re Harold, who’s Harvey?” “Harvey was my brother. He died eight years ago.” “I’m sorry.” “We all were. He came down here one day, opened up, cleared the cash register, and …

“Not a bad job,” was his only comment, “considering the jackass that did it.” He picked up another fifty dollars paneling the walls of Henry Chalmers’ new family room—in those days, Henry had been the plant foreman—and painting Ralph Tremont’s aging Chris-Craft.

Back to the game. The Chargers punted. Hugh Fednach, the Mustangs’ deep man, collected the football and ran it out to the Mustangs’ 31. Then, behind the steely-eyed generalship of Hank Rucker, who might have seen the Heisman trophy once in a newsreel, the Mustangs mounted a six-yard drive.

I won’t take up much of your time, Mr. Dawes, I know you’re a busy man, but Jack Gordon thought I might as well swing out here since it was on my way and drop off this relocation form.

The RCA console.” “Oh, that,” Mary said, and then sneezed into her hankie over her TV dinner. • • • He ran into Jack Hobart at the Stop ‘n’ Shop. Jack’s cart was full of frozen foods, heat-and-serve canned products, and a lot of beer. “Jack!” he said.

The phone rang twice more that day, but it was not Olivia either time. • • • Around two in the afternoon Mary called him from Bob and Janet Preston’s house—Bob and Janet, who always reminded him, like it or not, of Fred and Wilma Flintstone. How was he? Good.

At last he called the home of his in-laws. Lester and Jean Calloway, Mary’s parents, were both nearing their seventies. On his previous calls, Jean (whom Charlie had always called “Mamma Jean”) had answered the telephone, her voice freezing to ice chips when she realized who was on the line.

I went into the living room for a minute to see if Jeff had come back, and when I went into the kitchen again, the arm and the hand was gone. It sort of worried me. Sometimes I dream about it.”

… out, like stations on late-night AM radio, all of it bright and meaningless. . . . Freddy and Jim didn’t have their time sheets so I . . . said that his mother died quite recently and he’s apt to go on a crying jag if he drinks too much …

Joanna was Joanna St. Claire, Jean Calloway’s cousin, who lived in Minnesota. They had been close friends in their girlhood (back in that pleasant lull between the War of 1812 and the advent of the Confederacy, he sometimes thought), and Joanna had had a stroke in July.

Because Moe at the Highway Commission told Joe down at Joe’s Construction, and Sue who works at the front desk at Joe’s told Lou at Lou’s Construction and pretty soon the big Waterford land boom is on and the developments are going up in the vacant lots, and also the …

The gospel these days is no deposit, no return. Use it up and throw it out. That Monday, after work, they had turned in thirty-one dollars’ worth of bottles, visiting four different supermarkets to spread the wealth around. They had arrived at John’s ten minutes before the store closed.

He walked down Fir Street from the corner, hearing the bus pull away behind him with its tiger purr. Then Johnny Walker passed him, headed out for his second pickup of the morning. Johnny waved from the cab of his blue and white laundry van, and he waved back.

• • • In the morning, the temperature was only 10 degrees. She asked him if he got a newspaper. “We used to,” he said. “Kenny Upslinger delivered it. His family moved to Iowa.” “Iowa, yet,” she said, and turned on the radio. A man was giving the weather.

At last he called the home of his in-laws. Lester and Jean Calloway, Mary’s parents, were both nearing their seventies. On his previous calls, Jean (whom Charlie had always called “Mamma Jean”) had answered the telephone, her voice freezing to ice chips when she realized who was on the line.

Maybe an extra month of time made it all worthwhile. According to Lieutenant King, the vandals fled the construction site in a station wagon, possibly a late-model Chevrolet. He appealed for anyone who may have seen the car leaving the construction area by Heron Street to come forward.

The Langs across the street; the Hobarts two houses down (Linda Hobart had baby-sat for Charlie, and now she was a doctoral student at City College); the Stauffers; Hank Albert, whose wife had died of emphysema four years ago; the Darbys and just four houses up from where he was …

… Commission told Joe down at Joe’s Construction, and Sue who works at the front desk at Joe’s told Lou at Lou’s Construction and pretty soon the big Waterford land boom is on and the developments are going up in the vacant lots, and also the …

Luigi Bronticelli, his name was. A good Jew like me, you know?” Magliore laughed. “He went up to pat Mr. Piazzi’s dog one day in August when it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, and he ain’t talked above a whisper since that day.

There is stillness. Then the shocked, tear-streaming face of Mary Dawes fills the screen; she is looking with drugged and horrified bewilderment at the forest of microphones being thrust into her face, and we have been brought safely back to human things once more.

… collars all afternoon, Gracie Floyd and her cousin Maureen, both of whom had worked on the ironer, and ten or fifteen others. The highway department had put out yellow sawhorses and smudge pots and large orange-and-black signs that said: DETOUR The signs would route traffic around the block. The sidewalk …

Because Moe at the Highway Commission told Joe down at Joe’s Construction, and Sue who works at the front desk at Joe’s told Lou at Lou’s Construction …

What you’ve also got is a ninety-day option that runs out on Tuesday. What you’ve also got is a smart mick realtor named Monohan, who had been bluffing our pants off. It almost worked.” “What are you suggesting?” “I’m suggesting we let the option run out.

And this guy named Piazzi had a black mongrel bitch named Andrea, but everybody just called her Mr. Piazzi’s dog. He kept her chained up all the time, but that dog never got mean, not until this one hot day in August. It might have been 1937.

And Mrs. Ricker came over, smiling like a barracuda and she said: We’ll have such fun, Chuck, making him want to cry out: That’s not his name!

Francis Lane estimated total damage in the area of $100,000. In other local news, State Representative Muriel Reston again appealed for . . . He snapped it off. Now that he had heard, and had heard in daylight, things seemed a little better.

… BE TOLERATED (Local) Victor Winterburger, Democratic candidate for the seat of the late Donald P. Naish, who was killed in a car crash last month, said yesterday that acts of vandalism such as the one that caused almost a hundred thousand …

… sleep, “Will you accept a collect call from Olivia Brenner?” He was lost and could only fumble, “What? Who? I’m asleep.” A distant, slightly familiar voice said, “Oh for Chrissake,” and he knew. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll take it.” Had she hung up on him? He got up on one …

“No, not the man that’s selling you the plant. The one that’s selling the house.” “Olsen,” he said promptly, picking the name out of an internal litter bag. The news came on again.

“This is Dawes,” he said. “Barton Dawes. Can I talk to Mr. Magliore?” “Sal’s busy. But I’ll be glad to help you if I can. Pete Mansey.” “No, it has to be Mr. Magliore, Mr. Mansey. It’s about those two Eldorados.” “You got a bum steer,” Mansey said.

“Oh?” “This morning I had a phone call from Steve Ordner while I was down talking to Peter Wasserman. Mr. Ordner wants me to call him back. That sounds like he’s awfully anxious to know something, doesn’t it?”

But he wasn’t holding a drink, nor was there one on the table. “Another wanderer, I see,” the man said, and offered his hand. “Phil Drake.” “Barton Dawes,” he said, still dazed from his fright. They shook. Drake’s hand was twisted and scarred by some old wound—a burn, perhaps.

He was a lawyer. His name was Philip T. Fenner, and his client was the city council. These facts he announced with a shy grin and a hearty handshake. “Come on in,” he said, and sighed. He supposed that in a half-assed sort of way, this guy was a salesman.

He nodded and went back upstairs to look for Vinnie Mason, but Phyllis said Vinnie and Tom Granger had gone out to that new German restaurant to dicker about tablecloths. “Will you have Vinnie stop in when he gets back?” “I will, Mr. Dawes.

Then Ralph Albertson, who was the boss of the washroom in those days, got in a little fender-bender accident and died of a heart attack in the street while he and the other guy were exchanging insurance companies. He was a fine man.

His father had died in a garage, just like Johnny’s brother, but Ralph Dawes had not committed suicide. He had had some kind of stroke. A neighbor had found him with his lawn clippers in his stiffening left hand and a small whetstone by his right. A suburban death.

He picked up another fifty dollars paneling the walls of Henry Chalmers’ new family room—in those days, Henry had been the plant foreman—and painting Ralph Tremont’s aging Chris-Craft.

They both looked at him as he approached. “I’m Bart,” he said. “I’m Ray,” the man at the table said. “And that guy”—the mechanic was rolling now—“is Alan.” The bowling ball left Alan’s hand and thundered down the alley. Pins exploded everywhere and then Alan made a disgusted noise.

He was a fine man. The whole laundry shut down the day of his funeral. After he was decently buried, I went to Ray Tarkington and asked for his job. I was pretty sure I’d get it. I knew everything about how to wash, because Ralph had shown me.

as Ethel and Rhonda whipped them through. Peter told him the universal had gone on number four’s truck and did he want to look at it before they sent it out to the shop? He said he didn’t. He asked Peter if Holiday Inn had gone out yet.

“Christmas shopping a little?” he asked Vinnie. “Yeah.” He chuckled. “I brought Sharon and Bobbie—that’s my daughter Roberta—over to look on Saturday. Bobbie’s three now. We wanted to get her picture taken with Santa Claus. You know they do that on Saturdays. Just a buck. But she wouldn’t do it.

He had heard Ron Stone and Vinnie Mason talking about that movie at the laundry, and Vinnie had said: They’d never let a cop carry a gun like that in the city. You can blow a hole in a man a mile away with one of those.

No one had foot-fucked this snow. In past years Don Upslinger’s boy Kenny sometimes used the backyard express to get up to his friend Ronnie’s house.

“Yeah, that’s right. Sally Magliore.” “Was that his name?” “Yeah, that’s right. Big guy with thick glasses. Nine chins. Salvatore Magliore. Sounds like the specialty in an Italian whorehouse, don’t it? Sally One-Eye, they used to call him, on account of he had a cataract on one eye.

“This salesman,” she said. “He’s been married fourteen years. He kept saying that while he was humping me. Fourteen years, Sharon, he keeps saying, fourteen years, fourteen years. He came in about fourteen seconds.” She uttered a short bark of laughter, rueful and sad. “Is that your name? Sharon?” “No.

“I’m going to take Sharon there when he gets rolling. Ten percent discount.” In a weird kind of overlay he heard Harry the gun shop proprietor saying: We give a ten percent discount on orders over three hundred. My God, he thought. Did I buy those guns yesterday?

A personal note from Stephan Ordner, one of the managerial bigwigs in Amroco, the corporation that now owned the Blue Ribbon almost outright. Ordner wanted him to drop by and discuss the Waterford deal—would Friday be okay, or was he planning to be away for Thanksgiving?

Down front, Ron Stone was tightening the drive belt on the old Milnor single-pocket while Dave and his helper, a college dropout named Steve Pollack, were loading the industrial Washex machines with motel sheets. “Bart!” Ron Stone greeted him.

Because Moe at the Highway Commission told Joe down at Joe’s Construction, and Sue who works at the front desk at Joe’s told Lou at Lou’s Construction and pretty soon the big Waterford land boom is on and the developments are going up in the vacant lots, and also the …

… the Acrobat for Cindy, and a Barbie for Sylvia, who was eleven now. In the next aisle he got a G.I. Joe for Bill, and after some deliberation, a chess set for Andy. Andy was twelve, an object of some worry in the family. Old Bea from Baltimore had confided …

He would also have urged them to be careful. He wandered down an aisle of dolls, and picked one up for each of his three nieces: Chatty Cathy for Tina, Maisie the Acrobat for Cindy, and a Barbie for Sylvia, who was eleven now.

“Except I’m Tina Howard Wallace now,” the woman in the black dress said. “My husband’s around here . . . somewhere . . .” She looked around vaguely, spilled some more of her drink, and swallowed the rest before it could get away from her.

He nodded and went back upstairs to look for Vinnie Mason, but Phyllis said Vinnie and Tom Granger had gone out to that new German restaurant to dicker about tablecloths. “Will you have Vinnie stop in when he gets back?” “I will, Mr. Dawes.

Three other pieces of mail: An overdue notice from the library. Facing the Lions, by Tom Wicker. Wicker had spoken to a Rotary luncheon a month ago, and he was the best speaker they’d had in years.

You knew who you could borrow a cup of sugar from when you were tapped out. Where are they? Tony and Alicia Lang are in Minnesota because he requested a transfer to a new territory and got it. The Hobarts’ve moved out to Northside.

“But do you remember when that new Italian place opened up? We took Mary and Verna.” “Yeah, in August. Verna still raves about that ricotta stuff . . . no, rigatoni. That’s what they call it. Rigatoni.” “And that guy sat down next to us? That big fat guy?”

“Tom Granger called. Then Ron Stone’s wife called. Then Vincent Mason called. They wanted to know what was wrong with you. And I didn’t know! I didn’t know anything was wrong!” “Mary,” he said, and tried to take her hand. She snatched it away as if he might be catching.

I accepted for both of us. But if you don’t want to—” “Wally?” He frowned. Walter Hamner was about their only crosstown friend. He worked for a local ad agency. “Doesn’t he know we’re, you know, separated?” “He knows, but you know Walt. Things like that don’t faze him much.”

They did. Wood from Wilbur Upslinger’s fence (ivy climbed on it in the spring and summer) sprayed everywhere, and part of it actually fell over into the snow.