John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“Trinity.”

“Trinity, right — they go down by at least three scores.”

They reach the carpentry building and wait at the door for the work detail to pass inside.

“I’ve got Army over Georgetown by four,” says Kelso when the gang has cleared.

“I’d steer clear of that. Georgetown is turning out a real eleven this year.”

“But Army—”

“—can’t bring their artillery onto the field.”

“Yer wrong about that, laddy.”

Shoe shrugs. “It’s your funeral, Sergeant. Personally, I’d run away like it was on fire.”

Lachman, the contractor, has the shop already banging away when they step in, cons at their benches sawing and staining, hammering together crates and coffins. Shoe worked here for a year, after they’d run him through the baskets and the horse collars, and he always loved the smell and having something to pound. Nose DiNucci is waiting by the chair on the keeper’s platform, his metal basin on a stool and his tools in a box on the floor. Kelso eyes the basin as he steps up.

“Is that water hot?”

“Hot as I can get it, Sergeant,” says the Dago, dipping a thin towel into the basin.

Kelso sits and leans back in the chair, sighing with pleasure as DiNucci wraps the hot, wet cloth around his beezer. Shoe stands on the floor next to the platform, by Kelso’s right hand, waiting. Runner duty is the beans — no heavy lifting, a chance to roam around the joint and poke your sniffer into things — but a lot of standing and waiting goes with it. Kelso starts to talk with the towel over his face while DiNucci makes with the brush and cup, working up a lather.

“I’m already under the blankets with the Missus,” he sighs, “when the fecking telephone rings. We’ve got the service now, the Warden insists on it — and they tell me there’s a passenger car been put on the night run from Buffalo and we’ll be getting a special delivery around three o’clock. ‘It’s the middle of the cold dark night,’ says I. ‘What could you possibly need me there for?’ Unawares as I was of the tragic events at the Pan.”

Shoe has been following stories of the great Exposition in the scraps of rag he’s been able to glom on to. Every watchpocket cannon and con artist not wearing stripes must be in Buffalo, working the herd.

“I don’t read the evening editions,” Kelso confides to the Dago as he carefully peels the towel off, “as I don’t find it conducive to sleep. A stroll around the block after your meal, says I, a friendly hand of pinochle with the neighbors, but nothing to tax the mind.”

“So — big news at the Exposition,” Shoe offers casually. The keeper’s train of thought is prone to frequent derailment, and Shoe has learned to steer him back on track.

“A terrible business. A national shame.”

DiNucci, who is bending down with razor in hand to scrutinize the Sergeant’s lathered neck, looks to Shoe, who nods for him to get busy.

“ ‘Just get yourself down here on the double,’ says the PK, and an order is an order, so I climb into the uniform and I says to Margaret, says I, ‘This will be a great deal of effort about noth ing when it comes out in the wash.’ ”

The Sergeant points his chin toward the ceiling to help DiNucci with his scraping.

“And so you can imagine my bestonishment when I arrive to find several hundred extremely agitated citizens, many of them strangers to our town, camped across the street at the station.” Kelso raises his voice to be heard over the whine of an electric table saw. “ ‘Michael,’ I says to myself, ‘this is not the new policy of the New York Central Railway, these are not passengers awaiting transport in the wee hours, but an unlawful assembly determined to obstruct the orderly machinations of our judicial system.’ ”

“All these years on the job,” muses Shoe, “have sharpened your powers of deduction.”

Kelso raises an eyebrow at Shoe.

“And who, might I ask, is the one of us with STATE PRISON stamped on all his buttons?”

“You got me there, Sergeant. So — there was a crowd—”

“A mob, it was, with the bloodlust in their eye, refusing our instructions to peacefully disperse themselves. Captain Singleton was in the process of reading them the Riot Act—”

“That’s a real thing?” interrupts the barber. “The Riot Act?”

“Real as rain. There’s a copy in Warden Mead’s office.”

DiNucci shakes his head. “Live and learn.”

“So this mob—” prompts Shoe.

“Disrespectful is the least of it. Halfway through the Captain’s declamation the train pulls in and all hell breaks loose. The boys in Buffalo have been all over this Goulash fella, you can see that the minute they drag him off the car, he’s been through the wringer backwards and forwards, and he takes one look at his reception committee and his knees give way, the detectives on either side holdin him up by the bracelets, and then the crowd rushes forward — careful of that bit there, it can be tricky—”

Nose carefully shaves the cleft in Kelso’s chin.

“Goulash,” says Shoe.

“Some sort of Hunkie appellation,” frowns the Sergeant. “I heard him say it in the Warden’s office when we took his information, but it’s Goulash to me. Oh, the mob went after that lad hammer and tong they did, and they had him on the ground more than once before we could drag him up the steps and into Administration. I split a few heads with my stick, I can tell you, and there was others got a rifle butt in the chops for their trouble. Twas like one of your lynching events in Old Dixie, only instead of a blackie on the rope it’s an alien assassin that’s insinuated himself onto our fair shores to strike a blow at liberty.”

“It sounded like a hell of a donnybrook out there.”

“I tell you, Shoe, if it hadn’t been for the bravery of our boys in blue they’d have cheated the State for sure.”

“An assassin.” Shoe muses. If you show too much interest they start to think it’s dope you shouldn’t be in on.

“A sniveling little hop o’ me thumb that’s laid a great man low.”

And sometimes you just have to pop the query. “Who did he kill?” asks Shoe.

The Sergeant turns his head to glare. “And where in God’s name have you been?”

“Cell 43,” says Shoe. “Third tier, north wing.”

Kelso raises a brow. “Not so easy to follow the game when you’re incarcerated, is it? That’ll teach you a lesson.” He closes his eyes and settles back, as if the subject is closed.

DiNucci begins on the Sergeant’s cheeks, stretching the skin with his thumb and shaving with long, careful strokes. Shoes gives him the nod to pitch in.

“Sergeant,” asks the Dago, idly curious, “have you ever seen a moving picture?”

It isn’t what Shoe had in mind. DiNucci is in for thirty, having settled his unfaithful wife, as it happens, with a razor, and when asked why by the judge was reported to answer “Cause I didn’t own a gun.”

“Indeed I have,” answers the keeper.

“And what is it, exactly?”

“Just what the words say. A picture that moves. Say you had one of their cameras pointed at us right here. Once the fillum was developed, an audience in New York or Buffalo would be able to see every flick of your blade, every snip of the scissors.”

DiNucci frowns. “Why would they want to see that?”

“It’s the novelty, isn’t it? Seeing it projected on a wall rather than in actual life.”

“There’s plenty things I’d rather see than a shave and a haircut.”

“As would we all. But could you get the camera apparatus close enough to photograph them?”

The Dago ponders this, wiping foam from his blade onto his apron.