The House on Alexandrine

AFTERWORD

CHAPTER 1

It was fortunate that Duane met Isaac Hough panhandling for seventeen centses in front of the Penn–Central Station. Duane had just arrived in the city, having walked across the Ambassador Bridge from Canada. He had never been in Detroit before and was drawn toward the station because it was so big. The only places he knew were the small farm towns of southern Ontario.

Isaac didn’t realize their meeting was fortunate. He was primarily aware of the ninety–degree heat and he was wondering what he would have for dinner.

Isaac was a professional panhandler. He said it was the one thing he did well, except for barbering which he learned in prison and swore never to do again. As a professional, he knew he couldn’t ask for spare change and expect to be successful. Therefore, he asked for seventeen cents or twenty-seven cents or even thirty-seven cents if he were feeling lucky. When asking for money, he was able to give the impression that he had a sick wife somewhere.

Isaac was a tall, thin man in his late sixties. When he walked, he looked like a reed in a high wind. He had a ragged, drooping moustache, and white hair that hung a little below his collar. There was always a slightly startled expression in his blue eyes as if he had just learned about death. He had very few wrinkles.

Mostly he panhandled in front of bus and train stations. People assumed the seventeen cents was the remainder he needed for a ticket. Usually they didn’t have seventeen cents, so they gave him a quarter. That was what Duane did.

Isaac said later that he hardly noticed Duane the first time, being only aware of a young man in blue jeans, and young men in blue jeans often gave money. It was nearly seven and the sun was going down. Isaac wanted to get home and take a cold shower. The heat seemed to be baking him and his shirt was stuck to his skin.

Excuse me, could you spare seventeen cents?

Duane fished around in his pockets. I got a quarter, is that okay?

I’m afraid I don’t have change.

Take it anyway. Duane passed into that mammoth and practically empty waiting room where whole football teams could disappear without anyone noticing.

He spent about fifteen minutes wandering around inside, impressed more by its size than its ghostliness. Often he would talk about it with people he met during the next few weeks. My Dad’s house can fit in it, and the barn, and the sheds, and all the machinery, and the whole lawn, and half the orchard. Maybe more. For a long time in Detroit, it was size which impressed Duane most.

When Duane came back out, Isaac was still asking for seventeen-centses. Excuse me, could you spare seventeen cents?

I’ve got another quarter, will you take that?

Isaac now recognized him but he took the quarter. If the kid wanted to give it, he’d be a fool not to take it. Isaac forgot him again. Then, looking up, he saw Duane watching him from a parking meter about twenty feet away.

Isaac said later: At first I thought he might be a cop, but that was stupid. Peach fuzz on his face and he didn’t look eighteen. Besides, he was carrying one of those little blue airline bags. I’m getting too jumpy for this kind of life.

Duane kept watching him. A businessman came out of the station. Isaac asked him for seventeen cents and was refused. Then he saw Duane walking toward him, but he passed into the station without speaking.

Isaac was just forgetting about him when Duane returned. Here, he said.

Isaac reached out his hand and Duane dropped seventeen cents into it. Then Duane walked back to his parking meter feet and stood watching.

Another businessman emerged from the station. Isaac asked him for seventeen cents in a conspiratorial whisper that Duane couldn’t hear. The businessman glanced at him quickly and hurried away. Turning back, Isaac found Duane standing beside him. Here. He gave Isaac another seventeen-cents.

Isaac took it. I suppose you have a whole pocket full of seventeen centses.

Duane dug into his jeans and pulled out another seventeen cents. Here.

Isaac looked at the seventeen cents. I suppose you’re rich. I suppose you can keep handing out seventeen-centses till Christmas.

I’ve got one hundred and fifty Canadian dollars, said Duane.

Isaac realized he should walk away and not say another word. Talking about it later, he said: I stared at him. Here was this kid, looking like he’d just come off some farm, which he had as it turned out, giving away money like a Rockefeller. He’s got one hundred and fifty dollars. He’s really proud of that. I want to shake him and say, ‘Look, this is the city of Detroit. You don’t go around passing out money. You don’t say how much you got. You don’t act so goddamn dumb.’

Isaac took Duane’s arm and led him about a dozen feet away from the station entrance. Why the hell you are giving me these seventeen-centses?

Do you need more?

No, I don’t need more, dammit. What are you doing here? Waiting for a train?

I was just walking by. I walked over the bridge. It shakes when trucks go over it. And there are holes in the sidewalk so you can look down and see the water right under your feet.

Isaac decided to ignore that. Where you from?

Glenorchy, Ontario. My Dad’s got a farm outside of town. I left this morning, and I hitchhiked over to the big highway, and a truck driver picked me up, and he said. . . .

Why?

Why what?

Why Detroit? Why come here?

I’m looking for my sister. He answered politely as if answering a teacher and he nodded his head a lot.

Where is she?

She’s in Detroit. I think she’s at Wayne State University.

Don’t you know?

Well, when she left home, she said she might go there, and the truck driver thought she might go there. He gave me all sorts of good advice. He even said I could stay with him and his wife in Windsor for a day or so, but I wanted to get started. Then he wanted to give me five dollars, but I told him I already had one hundred and fifty.

Isaac wiped the back of his neck with a gray handkerchief. You been in Detroit before?

No.

When did your sister leave home?

In June.

Have you heard from her since then?

No.

How old are you?

Eighteen.

How old’s your sister?

Seventeen.

Isaac looked at him gloomily. The kid was no business of his. He had given him one dollar and one cent but that didn’t mean Isaac was beholden. He thought of leaving, of saying, So long, kid, and walking off, watching the kid standing there watching him back.

Where you plan to stay?

Maybe a hotel. I never been to a hotel before.

What’s your name?

Duane, Duane Thrushman.

What’s your sister’s name?

April Thrushman. She was born in April.

Isaac said later: I should never have asked his name. That did it. I mean, he talked so funny. He spoke right up like he mostly didn’t know much of anything but he knew what I asked him and he gave his name like it was something to be proud of.

Although they talked some more, Isaac knew already what he was going to do: he would take Duane back to the house on Alexandrine. But Isaac kept asking questions, hoping to learn that Duane was on drugs or enjoyed pulling the wings off flies. Nothing turned up. Duane kept giving his bright answers and Isaac’s sinking feeling grew deeper.

At last Isaac said, Come on.

Where we going? There was no surprise in Duane’s voice.

I’m taking you back to my place. You can’t stay in a hotel with one hundred and fifty goddamn dollars.

Isaac lived in a house on the north side of Alexandrine between Second and Third. Downtown Detroit was about a mile and a half to the south. The main part of the Wayne State University campus was six blocks in the other direction, although the Department of Mortuary Science was on Alexandrine, right next to the Detroit Dry Cleaning & Laundry Institute on the corner of Second.

The area between Wayne and downtown Detroit was called the Cass Corridor. It was about half a mile wide. The population included Blacks, Appalachian Whites, Mexican–Americans, students, American Indians, Iraqis and Chinese. They didn’t fight much but they watched each other a lot. The Corridor was the second highest crime area in the city.

The prostitutes hung out mostly on Third: women with skin the color of skim milk and dyed, shiny black hair down to their waists or dyed red hair brushed out to look like a giant helmet. They went in and out of the bars, clicking their high silver heels and wearing dresses that looked like silk but weren’t. If they were having a hard time or were feeling particularly positive, they might stop a man on the street to see if he wanted to do a little business. Otherwise they waited.

The prostitutes were greatly outnumbered by the bums, but the bums weren’t so obvious. They stood alone or in small groups drinking from bottles hidden in brown paper bags. They matched the bags: clothes, faces, hands, hair—all that pale, brown color. Sometimes one saw them going into one of the many places that bought blood or hanging around the missions or lined up in front of a day–labor office, but mostly they were just standing around with their brown paper bags.

The bars on Third had such names as Anderson’s Gardens, Daisy Bar, Mayfair Bar, Shooters Bar (The Jumping-est Bar In Town), Candy Stick Lounge, Horse Shoe Inn, King of Clubs Bar, Sweetheart Bar and the Willis Show Bar (Les Exotics, Strip-o-rama, Girls*Girls*Girls, Welcome Delegates). Most of the bars were one-story, cinderblock affairs with small windows in their front doors.

Third’s other businesses tended to be small restaurants and groceries, party stores, discount centers, laundries, stores selling old clothes and used furniture. There were a number of small apartment houses, usually brick or sandstone, and now the color of those brown paper bags. Most of the people had rooms in houses built between the 1890s and 1920s. Some were extravagant Victorian structures with turrets and Gothic arches, but the majority were shabby: asbestos siding, broken windows, broken-down porches, drunks sitting on the front steps with brown paper bags.

Third was a street covered with glass. Junked cars had been abandoned on every block. The stores had bars and steel grates over windows and doors; a final piece of vanity because little was worth stealing. Third was a one-way street heading downtown.

Second was more respectable, being wider and a one-way street out of town. Occasionally one saw a house with a small garden and an old man in a buttoned-up sweater trying to keep his pansies from dying. The stores were larger on Second and there weren’t so many bars, junked cars, burnt-out buildings. Several Chinese restaurants could be found there and an occasional hippie boutique. The apartment buildings were bigger but had that same soot color.

Of the four main streets in the Corridor, Second was the only one that a person could walk down without being regularly asked for money, offered dope, a whore, stolen watches, car tape players, rhinestone jewelry. In the spring and fall, dust blew down Second, filling one’s eyes and mouth, stiffening the hair, covering the clothes with a thin layer of the city.

Cass itself made small leaps at respectability, but rarely caught hold.

The street seemed jammed with people barely getting by on unemployment or bad jobs: ADC mothers, people who washed cars or dishes, swept out offices, guarded empty lots.

The Chinese section was mostly on Cass: a few restaurants, groceries and novelty stores, laundries. One of the groceries had dried shrimp and squid, rice in large burlap bags and iron pagodas. Clerks used an abacus to tally their sales.

Woodward was perhaps the worst street because it was the most visible, being one of the largest coming into Detroit. In the Corridor it was full of pawn shops, novelty stores, peek shows, all night movies, stores selling pornographic books and magazines: naked cover girls lying on their backs with their knees up and wide apart, mouths half open, tongues lolling out, huge boufanted hair.

The pimps stayed on Woodward, while their whores waited in nearby restaurants and bars. Pushers were there too, plus a lot of people selling anything illegal or stolen. There were six lanes of traffic. Police cruised along the parked cars. Sometimes a whore was arrested but she would be out on the street again the same day.

Anything could be found between these four streets. There used to be a hotel off Cass that specialized in whores and midget wrestlers. On sunny Saturday mornings they could be seen talking to each other on the sidewalk: the wrestlers staring up at the silk covered breasts of the whores; the whores looking down at the midgets as if looking at their private definition of men.

If you lived in the Corridor, then moved away, you would have a memory of dust, broken glass, the bright faces of the hustlers, the pallor of the whores, people looking like bits of cinder block, washed out blue sky, junked cars sinking into the pavement as they’re stripped of every saleable part, and sirens: rescue wagons, ambulances, police cars, fire trucks—putting out the fires the rummies start, taking away the people shot up in two-bit murders.

If you lived there, then moved away, you became conscious of how you arranged your life in the Corridor. What you did without being aware of it: not getting out of a car without seeing who else was on the street; always knowing who was walking behind you; always watching for the slightly unusual: the angry drunk, the small gang of black teenagers, the car slowing down beside you. You don’t walk around much at night. You buy burglar proof locks and learn they can be burglarized. You find that compromise between having what you want and not having too many things that are stealable and saleable. You get used to your car being broken into until at last you leave it open with nothing inside. Then you get used to having the tires stolen, the antenna broken off, a window smashed because someone felt like it or got angry.

Duane met Isaac on September 1, 1973. During that month 3,304 burglaries were reported in the city; 1,618 robberies were reported, 3,202 larcenies and 847 assaults. The police commissioner announced this as good news, saying crime had dropped about nine percent from the previous September. Car thefts, however, increased 14.8 percent to reach 2,294. There were 104 rapes, an increase of 62.5 percent, and 68 homicides, an increase of 13.3 percent.

The commissioner expected homicides to run ten to twenty percent higher than the record 693 of 1972. These were not all murders, since they included justifiable homicides, such as people shot by the police. About fifty percent of the dead were killed by friends, relations or acquaintances. It was probably foolish of Isaac to take Duane back to the house on Alexandrine. Statistically, he would have been safer in a hotel.

Isaac rented one of the two garret apartments in a three-story redbrick house built about 1900. Years ago it had been broken up into rooms and small apartments. Fifteen persons and three dogs lived there on that September 1st.

Isaac shared his apartment with Duncan Rapp, a short, wiry man in his mid-sixties. The two had become friends while serving terms in the Rhode Island penitentiary. That had been more than twenty years before and they had remained together ever since. Isaac had been convicted for selling a phony insurance policy to a woman in Providence. Duncan had been serving a manslaughter sentence.

Originally, Duncan had been a watch repairer, but after leaving prison he had refused to work at it. Instead, he earned his living as a part time locksmith and by swamping at a bar on Cass: cleaning up the glass, the puke and cigarette butts.

Duncan’s face was a rectangle twisted out of shape. The wrinkles on the left side of his forehead were horizontal, while those on the right went up at a forty-five degree angle. His left eye was higher than the right. He wore a cheap upper plate which twisted his small mouth. The plate was loose and every few minutes Duncan would pull his upper lip down over the plastic looking teeth and yank his jaw back in order to straighten the plate.

Duncan had the small paunch of a thin man and a thin fringe of gray hair. He had the appearance of a person who gnawed at himself and he prided himself on taking no abuse from a world which he felt was constantly insulting him. Despite this, he could be friendly, even funny at times. He was protective of Isaac and carried a knife.

While Isaac was walking up Third with Duane, Duncan was sitting at his kitchen table playing chess and drinking ice water with Daniel Corbin, who had the other apartment on the third floor. The previous February Corbin had burnt the five-hundred-page manuscript of a novel about his father. He considered it the smartest thing he had ever done. Corbin was thirty years old, a little over six feet and a little under two hundred pounds. Noticeable bits included brown hair that hung just past his collar, straight white teeth, blue eyes. His nose had been broken in college football and was a little flat and leaned to the left. The muscle developed in football was turning to fat and this depressed him. Between the ages of ten and thirteen, Corbin had spent a lot of time in front of the bathroom mirror saying, Shazam, Shazam.

Corbin wore an old white t-shirt and a pair of blue gym shorts that were too tight on him. The cotton fabric gripped his thick thighs and the seams left red marks on his skin. Duncan wore green work pants and a long sleeved green work shirt buttoned at the neck despite the heat. It was drenched with sweat.

Duncan and Corbin weren’t actually friends but they were friendly enough to play chess. Corbin worked part time as a bartender at the Turveydrop on Cass, which was where Duncan worked as well. In fact, Corbin had got him the job after Duncan had been fired from a bar on Third for pulling a knife on a customer. This formed their main bond and Duncan remained grateful. This embarrassed Corbin who hated people pointing their emotions at him. He liked Mallarmé’s phrase the world exists to be put in a book. As far as Corbin was concerned, the sooner the world was put in a book, the sooner he could deal with it.

Duncan was winning their chess game. Corbin was brooding about a short story he had been working on which he felt was awful but he didn’t know why. It was about a hundred degrees on the third floor and both men were sucking ice cubes.

As Corbin thought about his story, Duncan was talking about the standard of living. It was one of his topics. Those fuckers, they spoil everything. They fix it so we live in a fucking trash heap. He pronounced it fecking which made it a noticeable obscenity. When he talked, his false teeth clicked as if his speech was constantly being accompanied by the sound of castanets.

"Standard of living isn’t having a color TV and two cars. It’s having things break down or not break down. Every fecking thing breaks down. The teachers are going on strike. The Tigers are nine games behind. There’s no gas. No cause for alarm, they say. Hospitals running on their generators. People throwing rotten food out of their refrigerators. Who picks it up?

Nobody. It lies in the fecking street. Paper, tin cans, glass. Garbage, that’s what it is. There was a dead fecking dog lying in the fecking gutter up on Third all last week. Now it’s gone. I bet someone took it home and ate it. You can’t blame them. Look at the price of meat. Maybe the fecking rats carried it off. Maybe one rat with a Cocker spaniel over its shoulder, they get so big.

Corbin looked again at the chess board and felt that his queen was doomed. He kept nodding as Duncan spoke. He was used to Duncan’s tirades. It was what the older man did in order to relax. Corbin moved up his knight.

Duncan shoved his castle across the board. Check.

As if in response, a dog started barking downstairs. They both recognized it as a terrier mutt named Beauty. Duncan got up and opened the door.

Isaac’s back. That fecking dog, eat that dog and you’d poison yourself.

With the door open, they could hear someone shouting. You’re the one that’s going to be reported! Goddamn queer, coming in here with your goddamn boyfriends!

Corbin turned away from his king and saw that Duncan was gone. There was the sound of shoes clattering down the stairs. At first Corbin decided to do nothing, then he swore under his breath and hurried after him. He hated conflict and it was too hot to run around. What had happened had happened before. The dog belonged to Lloyd Mallett, a security guard who lived with his wife on the first floor. Mallett was cross when sober and angry when drunk. Now his voice was furious. The dog continued yapping. It yapped at anyone who came into the house.

As Corbin ran down the stairs, he heard Isaac shouting back. You watch your language! You touch me and you’ll go to jail!

Catching up with Duncan on the second floor landing, Corbin grabbed his arm just as Duncan was trying to extricate a small knife from his pocket. The knife was caught in the fabric and Duncan was stamping his foot in frustration. Mallett was shouting something about breaking Isaac’s neck, which was the sort of thing Mallett normally shouted. Just as Duncan tried to pull away, Isaac came bolting up the stairs with Duane. Mallett’s door slammed shut.

Seeing Duane, Duncan stopped. Who the hell’s that?

There was a pause as the three men looked at Duane who was nervously looking back down the stairs. Staring at his reddish brown hair, Corbin tried to think when he had last seen someone with a crewcut.

Isaac took Duane’s arm and led him along the hall to the stairs. We’ll talk about it. He was nearly a foot taller than Duncan and they looked peculiar together.

A ragged, brown runner extended down the center of the hall, protecting the pale green linoleum. Since the runner was less than two feet wide and the hall more than six, walking down it always reminded Corbin of tightropes and falling. Duane was very careful to stay on the runner.

Duncan watched him, then gave his teeth a jerk.

Corbin wanted to slip away and get back to his apartment, maybe take a cold bath and read in the tub, but as he opened his door Isaac stopped him. You come too, Daniel. I want to talk to you.

They went through the small kitchen into the living room/bedroom. A rusty window fan whirred in one of the two high casement windows to the right, doing no more than angering the air and making them all aware of their different smells.

It was a large, square, cluttered room. A single ski pole leaned against a gray bunkbed, and under the dormer facing the street were four stacks of National Geographic tied with white string. The walls were light blue and the ceiling sloped because of the roof. The linoleum was half covered by a brown and purple braided rug and in the middle of the rug was an ancient black typewriter that Duncan still meant to fix one day. Against the left wall was a brown couch with stuffing coming out of the armrests. Against the right wall and under the window fan was a purple armchair. It too was losing its stuffing. There were cracker crumbs on the seat and a piece of yellow cheese. Duane stared at the cheese. The others looked at Duane.

Duncan, who had been muttering to himself, now said, So who the hell is this?

Isaac avoided Duncan s eye. I found him.

You found him? You mean like you’d find a dime in the gutter? Can he talk?

I can talk okay, said Duane.

Jesus fecking Christ. What the hell you plan to do with him?

Isaac glanced out the window as if he found something interesting there. He’s going to stay here for a while.

Stay here! What’s he going to do, hold a pot of ferns?

Cut it out, Duncan. Isaac spoke softly.

Duncan abruptly walked over to the couch and stood facing a color photograph of John F. Kennedy in a black frame. Jesus fecking Christ, he said to Kennedy. He turned back to Duane. What’s your name?

Duane Thrushman.

What are you doing here?

I’m looking for April, that’s my sister.

You’re looking for her in this apartment? Duncan waved his thin arms at the wall. Maybe you want to check the closet?

Again Isaac said, Cut it out, Duncan. Then he told Duane to sit down. Duane sat down on the couch, sitting very attentively with his back straight and his knees together. Duncan waited for an explanation.

At last Isaac said, I found him at the train station. Maybe he found me. He gave me one dollar and one cent.

Corbin expected Duncan to interrupt, but Duncan waited while Isaac described his meeting with Duane, explained who Duane was and why he had come to Detroit. He ended with: He was going to a hotel. He’s got one hundred and fifty and he doesn’t care who knows it. I told him to come with me.

Duncan accepted this. Facing each other, the two men looked like a pair of friendly basilisks. Duane had taken several puzzles from his pocket. Each was made of two or three pieces of twisted metal. All his attention seemed focused on getting them apart. The puzzles made a thin clinking noise in his hands. He was the only one in the room who didn’t appear to be sweating.

Watching him a moment, Duncan briefly shut his eyes and turned back to Isaac. Where’s he going to sleep?

On the couch.

Duncan raised a shoulder, then dropped it. Okay. He went into the kitchen and began putting away the chess pieces, throwing them one by one into their small wooden box. Tock, tock, tock.

You know the university, Isaac said to Corbin. Duane thinks his sister’s there. Could you take him on Tuesday and find out? Monday’s Labor Day. Isaac spoke hesitantly. He knew how Corbin hated to be bothered.

Corbin looked from Isaac to Duane, then wiped the sweat off his forehead with his arm. The tiny golden hairs on his forearm glistened. He didn’t want to take Duane anywhere. The awful short story stacked neatly next to his typewriter kept saying, Fix me, fix me. Duane now had a small pile of puzzles on his lap but he hadn’t managed to solve any. He didn’t seem so much shiny as undusty, as if he had just been taken new from his carton. He wore a red and blue plaid polyester shirt that probably looked as fresh as the day it had been purchased. Watching him Corbin experienced the same hopeless feeling he had felt while losing the chess game. Sure, he said.

Duncan abruptly reemerged from the kitchen and made a short dash at Duane. Look, don’t be so dumb. He snatched one of the puzzles. Separating the pieces with a quick twist, he tossed them back to Duane, then snatched another. He solved the second just as quickly. See? It’s simple. Don’t be dumb.

Duane’s eyes widened as if Duncan had just walked on water. He turned back to the puzzles but still couldn’t get the others apart. He was a mouth breather and his mouth was always open about half an inch. It didn’t make him look bright.

Isaac made another vague gesture. He bought those at the station. He bought ten of them.

I don’t care if he bought a hundred at Saks Fifth Avenue. If you had to bring someone home, why’d it have to be an idiot? How’s he going to find his sister? He couldn’t find his way out of the fecking room.

Duane continued to work on his puzzles. Corbin couldn’t tell if the boy hadn’t heard or didn’t care. Maybe he was used to adults being critical.

He’s got a picture of his sister. Show it to him, Duane.

Duane drew a rumpled picture from the pocket of his plaid shirt and handed it to Duncan. Staring at it, Duncan said, Jesus fecking Christ. He handed Corbin the picture.

It showed a young girl standing in front of what seemed to be a silo. The picture was blurry but Corbin could make out a smiling face, blond pigtails and a flower print dress. The girl looked about twelve. There were probably twenty million women who could have been the subject of that picture.

Duncan snatched back the picture. You call that a picture? I thought your sister was seventeen.

She is. The picture’s three years old. I took it myself.

Duncan stared at Duane as if he was an unpleasant trick that somebody had played on him. The picture looks like nobody, nobody at all.