6 minute read
Fiction John Smolens
The Superior Gatsby
(part III)
By John Smolens
Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
The first law Gatsby learned from Dan Cody was: people will do anything for money. When his employer and mentor said anything, he gave the word a deliciously sinister twist, as though proffering Eden’s forbidden fruit.
As the evening light bathed the Lower Harbor in supple autumnal hues, Gatsby sat in the Duesenberg, thinking about Cody’s first law as he waited for darkness to engulf the ore dock and the trestle, which bore trainloads of cargo to and from its summit. Tucked in the breast pocket of his blue blazer was the note that Lila Banks had left under the Duesy’s windshield wiper: Meet me beneath the trestle 9:00 tonight.
He watched a boy scurry along Lakeshore Boulevard, a burlap sack filled with clinking bottles slung over his shoulder. Earlier in the day, while reclining in a barber’s chair with hot lather coating his face, Gatsby had observed this boy as he entered the shop. Every harbor town on the Lakes had kids like him, and Gatsby could not lose sight of the fact that he was once one of them.
“Lost John,” the barber said. “Back again?”
“Empties, sir?” The lad spoke with the feigned innocence that belies devious intent.
The barber, a rotund fellow with a waxed mustache, removed three hair tonic bottles from his cabinet and deposited them in the boy’s open sack. “You rinse them out good, eh?” he said as he ran the straightedge down Gatsby’s cheek. “Don’t want my whiskey tasting like pomade.”
“No, sir!” Lost John said as he fled through the shop door.
Now Gatsby watched the boy, weighed down by his cache, enter the tailor shop in the shadow of the ore dock. Moments after he disappeared inside, a man emerged wearing a wool overcoat, far too heavy for this mild September evening. The tailor would fill the bottles with contraband hooch delivered to Marquette by Cody’s yacht Toulomee and then sew them into the lining of customers’ overcoats. Here was Cody’s law at work: the boy earning pennies for his collection of empty bottles, the tailor earning dollars for filling the bottles with Canadian hooch. The line ran from the Bronfman family in Canada, to the rum runners who worked the border along the St. Mary’s River, to U.S. customs officials who then sold the confiscated booze to Cody, who then distributed the contraband to ports on the Great Lakes. Everybody got a cut of the action. There are no peasants in America, only serfs who willingly serve their master Mammon. Lost John, lugging his sack of bottles, understood that it was necessary to do anything to get in the game. And because he understood this one principle, the boy had potential. One day, he too could be sitting in a fine automobile waiting to meet a woman in a fur coat that would conceal wads of pilfered cash.
•
At nightfall Gatsby left the Duesy and walked toward the trestle. There, beneath the intricate network of timbers, he found Lila, reclining against a weathered beam.
Her eyes closed, she appeared to be asleep, but then she whispered, “The dream is finished.” She spoke with effort, her husky voice reduced to smoke.
“A lovely thought…but dreams come at a price.”
She seemed not to comprehend what he was saying as she raised a hand to his face, her fingers touching his shaved cheek. “Loyalty and love, the two greatest obstacles to dreams. All you need is conviction.”
Lila’s fur coat fell open, and Gatsby leaned down expecting to see wads of cash, but her sequined dress was stained around a pearl-colored handle. “Please…take it out.”
“You have much to learn. Please.”
Gatsby took hold of the knife handle, which trembled as she exhaled. As he drew the blade out, her body went rigid, and then she slumped against the timber, leaving only the lilting music of water lapping against the base of the ore dock—until Gatsby heard footsteps behind him. He turned, knife extended, to confront Lost John, empty burlap bag draped over his shoulder. The boy halted, gazing at the knife—not with fear but the rarest form of approbation.
He dropped the knife and began to walk, his shoes slipping on the wet sand, and when he emerged from beneath the trestle he began to run. •
It wasn’t until he was rowing the dinghy across the harbor that he became aware of the blood. His hands, his white duck trousers, his double-breasted blazer—all smeared with blood. Tuolomee lay ahead at anchor, her lights shimmering on the glassine water. Dan Cody would expect him to deliver Lila…and the money.
He could make up a story. James Gatz was good at that. He could say both he and Lila had been assaulted by Tuukka Hautamaki, a marplot bent on thwarting their designs. He could tell Cody it was Tuukka’s man Emmet Jones who had wielded a knife. He could look Dan Cody in the eye and tell him she was dead, murdered beneath the ore dock trestle. That part was true—and the most convincing lies are always those that are sheathed in the truth.
Gatsby considered the blood on his hands and trousers. The evidence could be diluted, soaked with lake water, but the fabric would never be the same. Like loyalty. Once he had entertained Lila’s idea about throwing Cody overboard into Lake Superior, the stain would always remain in the fabric of his mind. It would haunt him; color his every thought, his every decision. When you relinquish loyalty to others, you have no choice but to become your own man. An animal, bent on survival.
Gatsby stood up in the dinghy and plunged headfirst into the water. The cold was a shock. His clothing clutched at his limbs as he pulled himself to the surface. If he were truly loyal, he might just let the current take him, carry him out into the infinite depths of Lake Superior. He would have the satisfaction of being remembered by Dan Cody as the handsome young man who was truly loyal. What was it worth, to be remembered well? Was it worth giving your life? Was that the true value of a life, how it is remembered?
The cold water caused his breathing to become labored. The Tuolomee’s crew joked that the only reason to wear a life jacket while cruising Lake Superior was so the body might be found. But he would most likely not be found. His body would descend into the dark, frigid depths, where he might not decompose but remain forever. Forever remembered as the loyal young man who would bestow his smile like a gift.
About the author: John Smolens, NMU professor emeritus, has published 12 books, including Cold, Out, Fire Point, The School Master’s Daughter, Quarantine, and Wolf’s Mouth, a Michigan Notable Book selection. In 2010 he received the Michigan Author Award from the Michigan Library Association. His most recent novel is Day of Days.
