Venable Park. Tom Flynn

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СКАЧАТЬ awhile by Wednesday we’d have a backed up shipment of coal or by Saturday we’d be polishing off a week’s supply, so we’d be in a hurry, but Mondays came and went the same way most every week of the year.

      The foreman lit into Stanley a little in the morning, but about what, I am not sure. He is not overly particular in what he yells about, so it’s tough to guess. He once gave me an earful for not going by Hank instead of Henry, saying Hank was a lot easier. I told him he could call me Hank all he wanted because I couldn’t hear him with the belt on, anyways. This did not sit well with him, and so he made a point of yelling “Hank” at me after that, even though I did not naturally take to it. I’d heard many a sergeant louder than that foreman and wasn’t too impressed by yelling.

      At lunch we knocked off, and all three of us just took a seat down right where we were.

      “I got up to see my folks yesterday,” Reginald said.

      “Your dad mention the jobs up there?” I asked.

      “He did. He said he’d put in a good word and maybe they’d give you a day a week. Show up next Sunday morning. I got in a half-day yesterday, and it went off pretty well.”

      That felt funny for a minute, a colored fellow putting in a good word to get me a job and with Stanley behind me and listening.

      “Will a good word from him help, Reginald?” I asked.

      He sat for a moment, looked at Stanley and me, and had things squared away pretty quickly, I imagine.

      “It’ll help, Henry,” he said.

      “I’ll be up there Sunday,” I said, and we were done.

      This week was unremarkable. The coal came in, and some stayed on, and some fell off the belt, without much that would jump out at you. They said that on some days during the war it was the busiest place on earth and there is more than one textbook written that will bear that fact out. They forged the steel here and built ships, and they came out quickly, and the coal was needed to fire everything up. Those weeks they tell stories about, but they will not mention this one.

      By Saturday’s whistle I’d put in a good week, as had everyone around me, and I walked on home, this time alone. I’m not sure why that was, but Stanley and Reginald must have been off to other things. That was fine with me as I walked home a little quicker than usual to think through things for the next morning.

      There was not a lot to think through, but I did have to figure out whether I should dress nicer than normal to make an impression that would land me a job, or whether I should just wear my work clothes so I could start right away if I got it. What I settled on was in the middle, work clothes that I had just laundered and that happened to be the best I had. You bought everything from the company store down here, and they were not inclined to run a special on things that millworkers needed like work clothes. You could pick up yourself some nice clothes for church, though, at a real break because I think the mill wanted to nudge you in that direction.

      With thoughts about what to wear settled in my head, I drifted off to sleep pretty easily that night.

      * * *

      The next morning gray skies had settled over the Point. Rain is no stranger down here in spring, but it’d been dry most of the month throughout, so I noticed it this time. I took the 26 up over Bear Creek towards the city. It is a sketchy matter taking that trolley over the creek as it doesn’t quite fit the tracks right and every lurch has you wondering if you’re going in the drink, ass over tea kettle. I think it helps to be tired when crossing so you nod off through the shaking and don’t heed it all that much. I met Reginald on the 26 early, and about a half hour later, after switching trains, we was on 33rd street pulling up towards Venable.

      As I said, the stadium opened up just two years ago. Before that there was Venable Park, which was really a half-filled old quarry. I remember reading where a little boy drowned in there once, which tells you how much of a park it was. It was a good idea to put a stadium in there because we got some good football games and all sorts of events. It made Baltimore feel more like a place you’d come to and not just a place you worked in or lived in because it just happened that way. But because of how quickly it was built, it took a lot of work to just keep it on as a working stadium.

      When I got back from the war, I spent some time staying on in the service up at Camp Upton on Long Island. Once I’d moved on to Baltimore and landed a spot with Beth Steel I took a place at the boarding house straight off as rents at the Point were a good deal lower than they were in the city. I hadn’t been up for a game at Venable yet, but I followed it in the papers pretty closely and had seen the photographs. The pictures did not do it justice.

      The entrance was all fine plaster, painted white and fresh with columns on both sides and a pair of matching tunnels on either side for you to walk through to get to the field. Coming from the Point, which had St. Luke’s but not much beyond that, it was about the grandest place I’d seen in the States. I’d pick up the paper and read about what they was doing out in Chicago with the big stadium in Grant Park and all that, but that was something I’d likely never see. This was right here and all in white like the finest statue, and now I was going to try to get a job working in it. It was hard to imagine.

      While I was busy looking up at the front, Reginald got ahead of me.

      “Over here, Henry,” he called back to me as I sort of pulled out of daydreaming and came back to why we was there.

      We walked over to the very center of the entrance, which had a building built into it. It had eight white columns that stretched up over two stories where they met at the roof to form sort of a porch, but the nicest you have ever seen. I cannot imagine the White House looking much nicer. I should have dressed up more.

      “You go in there, tell them your name and that you’re Harold Spector’s apprentice.”

      “Apprentice, Reginald? What am I apprenticing at?” I asked him.

      There was no mention of my being an apprentice on the ride in or at any other point since we’d been talking about this job. Reginald left some big holes in a conversation sometimes.

      “Don’t worry about that. You get yourself over to my dad, and you’re set. My father’s colored, but they respect him around here, at least some do. You’re his apprentice.”

      He turned then and walked away, as if that sewed it up neat as a pin and there wasn’t another word to be said about it. Down at the Point no wasting words was a good idea, with the belt moving and all, but out here in front of these white columns, I could have used a little more material to get a job with. Reginald was no further help, now gone away to one of the big ramps that flanked the sides of the entrance and climbed up to the top of the stadium. It was just me.

      I took a breath for a moment, trying not to think of the place as that grand. After all, it was just a football stadium that on its best days had a bunch of guys running into each other right in the middle. I took off my cap, brushed my hair back to the side, and walked through the front door.

      There were people coming and going, and I had no idea which way to turn. Finally I saw a door to my right that had that smoky glass like some of the managers rated down at the mill. It had a taped piece of paper on it that simply read “Work,” and sure enough, that was what I was here for, so I opened it and walked a little ways in.

      Inside it was pretty big, and the floor was made entirely of white tile like you might see in a fancy kitchen. At the far corner of the room was a man sitting behind СКАЧАТЬ