Summer in the City

By Kevin Phelps

The city is Chicago, the summer is 1966. It's an eventful time in America and Corey Mack, a  delivery boy for the corner drug store, finds himself suffering from teenage angst, sexual discovery, and the responsibilities that come with being self-reliant as two of the 20th century's greatest crimes reach out to scorch his unsuspecting young life: a notorious bank heist, and the Holocaust. While other 14 year old boys enjoy summer camp or fun at the beach, Corey is busy working at two jobs to provide for himself while his absent and alcoholic mother swears him to a secret. Little does he know that unseen eyes are watching and tracking his movements, but for what purpose, and by whom? Corey is taught that life is like a shit sandwich and seriously considers his measure of portion control. Only when his reality finds context can he finally hope to see beyond the metaphors we all inhabit.     

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Phelps
• Release date: Mar 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393173311

Book preview

May 1958

Beware or Be Gone

He walked slowly and quietly amid the crawling ground fog. His effortless footsteps, unheard and unhurried, likened the early twilight of dawn as if death might be considering a holiday, or perhaps simply retreating from out of the shadows while the light of another promising day began spending its hope. The air smelled dank with foul odors as dead fish floated nearby; he stood momentarily listening to his surroundings, surveying carefully for any signs of movement, and allowing for anything unexpected by remaining calmly aware and consciously prepared. A freight train, off in the distance behind him, slammed its empty cars together as it abruptly surged along a road of rails and ties toward some far away destination. The sound of a train moving out of sight transits along an indistinguishable horizon: sensed, yet seldom seen.

Coming into focus before him now were the rolling waters of the Saint Lawrence River – Canada’s Big Mighty - a great aortic body of fresh water pulsating between two great nations and kissing their shorelines with prosperous affection. But for this man, native to nothing but the triumph of his will to survive, searching instinctively through the fog until the object of his interest appeared gradually out of a misty shroud, did he finally recognize the harbor tug squatting along the shoreline looking deceptively asleep. He approached the boat from the stern as her name came into view clear enough to read. She was christened Amelie, a painted lady in rustic blue skirted by black tire fenders and a weathered wheelhouse of faded whitewash. A red masthead light gave the old scow a dimpled hallow for night crawling across water; a soggy maple leaf hung limp from her mainmast, waiting and wanting only to be aroused by a passing fresh breeze. Two strangers patiently waiting for each other in the shadows of destiny. A place everyone visits, but never stays.

Water smacked gently against her hull like sloppy wet kisses while the old lady groaned and creaked from age. Gulls soared overhead squawking for their daily provender while night was gradually being left behind for whatever disturbances another chance to set sail might promise across the rolling waters of the big river. A rusted hatch door squeaked open suddenly on the wheelhouse revealing the silhouette of a brawny man in oiled slicker and wearing a captain’s long-billed cap. A strong odor of perique flavored pipe tobacco wafted in the cool air toward the stranger ashore, signaling recognition, or perhaps nothing at all. The man ashore stopped and stood amid the creeping fog, a formidable presence bearing a broad frame which supported a sea bag over one shoulder; a ruck sack was slung over the other shoulder revealing the outline of something formed and weighty. Each man took then the measure of the other in quiet acquiescence, like two goldfish reconnoitering the bowl and considering their options. When the captain was satisfied, he gestured with his pipe toward the hawser line, an all-clear to come aboard without further delay. He then turned and re-entered the darkened wheelhouse. A throaty rumble of engines followed shortly as the tug began drifting slowly into the channel and away from land. The rendezvous had been met as scheduled, and without the notice of suspicious eyes. It would prove to be a decisive little voyage.

Once the stranger had secured his chattels inside a tool locker behind the wheelhouse he climbed a bridge ladder and joined the vessel’s master who was attending wheel and throttle while paying close attention to his compass. The scruffy old master was furiously puffing on his crooked pipe toward deeper waters as he shot a quick glance in the direction of his passenger.

That’s McNair Island up ahead, said the captain, indicating with the brim of his cap. Best we swing around the north end; get out of the way of bigger traffic headed out to sea. An early high tide usually brings out the tubby ore tenders. He paused to wait for the man to acknowledge, or at least affirm, his maritime decision, but only a slight nod was given in reply. They passed the time in silence.

The solar position of the sun in May saw it rising southeast and abeam of their projected course down river. Its shimmering glint across the water began sending shards of light bright enough to make a blind man squint, as if thousands of Morse lamps were blinkering out some portentous signal of warning: beware or be gone.

After a patient interval of studied quiet the captain, a crusty curmudgeon well known along the river, raised up his right arm and pointed toward the shore that was receding from their stern and announced, these waters are noth’n but topsoil for a graveyard of wrecks. His passenger seemed to agree with another nod, but continued to remain silent. The captain had known quiet men before and they always irritated the hell out of him. This one was no exception, he concluded.

Over in that direction, northwest of the shoreline and about a mile or two further down, lies the Henry C. Daryan. I was a young seaman back in 1941 when she sank. Even the war was young in those days, he declared in a thoughtful pause. It was in the middle of a game of rummy when she struck a shoal during heavy fog. I remember it well because we all tumbled hard below decks, some with busted arms and bleeding heads, but we all managed to get off the ship quick enough. She flipped completely upside down when she sank. Great big steel freighter like that……. He paused to allow the memory to once more slip beneath the surface of yesterday with unspoken reverence. Anyway, she was a good ship.

They were making pretty good time down the river when, still under the sun’s obscuring penumbra, the Amelie began to tack closer to the craggy shoreline of the United States. Oak Point may have been just a name on a Rand McNally map, population nil, but it was only a few hundred yards from New York state highway 12 where a car had been arranged to wait. The trip had taken less than an hour.

At a small, almost imperceptible, outcropping of rocks the tug slowed and then drifted close enough so that the man could easily disembark over the port side gunwale and onto the rocks without having to wade through deep water. Once ashore he climbed up a short distance to the crest where he could look down as the tug chugged away and back out toward the sea lanes. An inscrutable wave or salute was gestured by the stranger with his right arm before he disappeared from sight. It was the sort of trip others like him had taken before, and would again in the future, without incident or interference by law enforcement. Human smuggling has always been an evasive crime toward some unrealized freedom. But the consequences, like a boa constrictor wrapped tightly around the neck, can squeeze both life and liberty from anyone attempting to escape.

A lumbering dark sedan was waiting as planned, a 1953 Hudson Hornet, parked under a sprawling silver maple tree. The stranger piled his belongings in the back seat and, without so much as uttering a word, was driven away in a cloud of dusty haste. When the car and its passengers had reached less than a mile down the highway, a thunderous explosion ripped through the morning air as a plume of thick black smoke began rising in their rear view mirrors. The unassuming two lane black top would stretch long into another dispassionate tomorrow.

But these things generally begin with other yesterdays.

June 1966

Recall

"It’s 66 degrees here at the station with O’Hare reporting in at 63; along the Magnificent Mile, traffic is moving easily through the Loop and the inbound Dan Ryan is so far accident free this Monday morning under clearing skies. The time is 6:31 as we roll back to January and the number one hit single from The Vogues wishing it was already a Five O’Clock World. Broadcasting at 890 on your dial, this is WLS Chicago."

He rolled over and brought his arm out from under the bedcovers until, without looking, he silenced the clock radio. The waking world was anything but peaceful.

A garbage truck, its grinding maw chewing the morning calm, could be heard easing down the narrow alley between grimy canyons of aging brick apartment buildings as trash cans were pitched and tossed in a metallic cacophony for their idle refuse, then left spent and scattered like empty shell casings. Sirens wailed from a distance as horns honked from the streets below while nearby a woman called out a foul name as her back door slammed a final ‘fuck you too!’ A city’s noise transmits a short wave of its own in a language rich in tones and tenors that’s comparable to arias ripping through the air in dynamic dissonance. A teakettle whistled somewhere for attention.

OK, Kiddo, rise and shine, came a sleepy voice from down the hallway as bare footsteps creaked along the old wooden floor planks until the bathroom door squeaked closed with a dull thud. The young boy had by now forgotten all about any five o'clock world; it was the Mamas and Papas now reminding him of the sorrows that went with ‘Monday, Monday.’ He noticed rain droplets puddled on the windowsill, little jellied jewels shimmering and wiggling with each passing of the early June breeze, and then wondered if there would be any hot water left to bathe. Usually after 7:00am the apartment, a third floor walk-up, turned into a cold water flat as the building’s crotchety superintendent, Mr. Johnson, closed off the main hot water valve to save steam because he was too lazy to shovel coal on summer mornings. Yet during the winter, when temperatures dropped well below zero and everything was frozen solid, he’d have the basement furnace stoked so hot people would dry their laundry next to the cast iron radiators, and then watched as the paint peeled away from the walls. It was an upper lower class neighborhood in Chicago’s 49th ward called Rogers Park.

When a bare foot slung out of bed hit the wooden floor so did the book he was reading the night before, ‘The Philosophy of Space and Time,’ by Hans Reichenbach, a loner got from Mr. Zielinski who owned and operated Z Florist Shop on North Clark Street. After picking up the book and leafing through its pages, he placed it among the others that were stacked next to his bed and tried to remember the difference between time and space, or was it eternity and infinity. His mother didn’t think much of his interests or his books, claiming he wasted too much time with his head in a cloud – a mind ahead of its time, perhaps? After all, she was a confidential legal secretary who worked for lawyers downtown, so what could they possibly know about anything, he asked himself. Just a bunch of Perry Mason wannabe’s who couldn’t solve shit without their Stella Street-smart secretaries, he concluded.

The sound of a jetliner streaking for altitude snapped his memory back in roaring recall –

Holy shit, yelled a young cadet amid the excited din of the barracks; there was a scramble for the nearest windows. Another wagered, I’ll bet that was an F86 from Homestead, maybe even one of those new Sabre jets. Homestead Air Force Base was only a few miles away from the all-boys Miami Military Academy along the shores overlooking Biscayne Bay. The calendar date was late October 1962.

The approximately 450 students that made up the corps of cadets were anxious with thrill that Thursday afternoon; the faculty officers, most of whom were veterans of World War II, appreciated the present danger unfolding 90 miles offshore in Cuba and felt real apprehension. President Kennedy had spoken to the nation on TV three nights before and outlined his sober ultimatum which really put the scare into the soon-to-be bleached bones of Americans. Except for a skinny bird loving cadet stretched out on his bunk bed trying to read a well-worn paperback titled, To Kill A Mockingbird, the worries of the world seemed not so important as that of a scruffy little southern girl named Scout. An older boy, a cadet lieutenant named Starkey, halted at the bunk of the young reader and said, You better ditch that book in the trash, if you know what’s good for you, then walked away. The young reader looked puzzled. When he glanced at his friend Dolan sitting on the next bunk the only comment was, maybe he don’t like birds.

I ain’t a-scared of no turd puffin ‘Castro, boasted a baby faced cadet named Pedraza, his Puerto Rican blood fulminating in a muy macho flavored accent.

Shoot man, why we got more bombs then those Cubans got boogers, drawled Hickey from Atlanta. His red hair and ample red freckles earned him the nickname Rooster. Two bunks away another cadet chimed in with his recommendation that, everybody aughta just cool it. Nobody does war anymore, not with nookie A-bombs.

Better cool that nookie talk, came an unsolicited piece of advice.

Fixler, suggested an older cadet, why don’t you just dry up?

The lively though boyish banter was once again interrupted by the low fly over of military aircraft headed southeast and out to sea. A higher level of agitation quickly became evident throughout the barracks as everyone scrambled over and between bunk beds to glance outward and up with nervous intrigue. What appeared to be several B-47 jet bombers lumbered overhead rattling the glass window panes and sending quick glances ricocheting off scrubbed faces with saucer wide eyes. Something significant was definitely afoot in sunny south Florida. The clammy barracks air smelled thick with sweaty jock straps, athletic socks, and boyish exertions seeking fresher insight in a world of grown-up chaos.

At the far end of the barracks a door quietly opened and Major B.G. Rohn emerged to survey the commotion. Wearing the school’s insignia on one collar point and the gold oak leaf of his retired military rank on the other, he inspired both respect and a sense of awe even among his peers. Badly scarred from burns along his chin, neck and arms, he spoke in a deep resonant voice of authority practiced from teaching the finer points of algebra and calculus. One rumor had it that he had been burned bailing out of a B-17 while on a bombing mission over Nazis Germany; another claimed that SS Stormtroopers had set flamethrowers on him and other captured POW’s rather than have them liberated from concentration camps by allied forces. Whatever the truth, Major Rohn kept his own counsel and remained as silent on the subject as the wild blue yonder from which he parachuted from. The constricted facial muscles caused by the burns however gave him such a crooked looking smile that it became known as the ‘Heisenberg’ after the famous principle of uncertainty in physics. It was now on full display.

A-Ten-Hut! The command brought everyone to the front of their bunks and into immediate silence. The major walked a few steps before he calmly ordered, stand at ease, boys. An audible sigh was collectively released throughout the barracks and sixty two sets of eyes locked on a not-so fatherly looking target.

Gather round and listen up, he instructed, and like docile children they obeyed without a word spoken. So much youthful promise now looked upon a ravaged face of war’s past sufferings. He began speaking slowly and deliberately.

The motto of this school is, ‘Boys Today, Men Tomorrow,’ and that has been the case around here for more than thirty years. I do not anticipate any exceptions to that rule for the immediate present. He paused to let the moment define itself.

Tomorrow is Friday and I know how anxious you boys must be, looking forward to spending the weekend with your families and friends; escaping homework for a few days; no assembly, drills, and no demerits. But keep in mind one thing: whatever you hear, don’t pay any attention to those talking about war. It isn’t going to happen. All these airplanes you hear flying overhead is the rattle of sabers, and since the United States has the biggest saber, we make the loudest noise. Don’t let it scare you. Instead, feel secure and safe because a lot of those boys who became men are now making sure that you will be here, on time, for classes Monday morning. The faces of resignation to the future prospect of school as usual accomplished the major’s objective and he summarized with a crisp, dismissed!

You think there’s homework after you die, imagined a young voice amid the crowd of disappointed cadets. The skinny bird lover bent down for something under his bunk, unconsciously assuming the duck and cover position, and said to no one in particular, it’s all a bunch of beeswax!

Later that evening President Kennedy signed Security Action Memorandum 199 which authorized the supreme allied commander in Europe to load bombers and fighter aircraft with nuclear weapons. Where, in the blinding light of a thermonuclear explosion, could there ever be found any lasting field of honor?

I’m going, Kiddo, his mother yelled, her high heels clicking smartly down the hallway toward the front door. He was half way under his bed reaching for socks when he heard the chain unlatch, the locks open, and the dead bolt slide free. By the time he had raised up to say good-bye the door had already closed behind her as she made her way down the three flights of stairs to the street below. It was just another eternal recurrence of weekly life that seemed to never change, unless somebody was sick or hung over.

Corey Mack was a tall lanky boy of Irish ancestry with coal black hair, porcelain white skin, two cowlicks, and an old soul at fourteen years of age. His grandmother said he was descended from Irish kings with all the blarney kissed from the Gaelic and passed on as well-meaning bullshit to successive generations, including those yet to be heard from. He was also an urban urchin of the street who seldom had a steady address to call home after attending five schools in four states simply because his mother had a fancied fondness for altars. An only child without the company of siblings to commiserate with he wondered sometimes if he wasn’t a one night accident turned mistaken nature. Fortunately, he didn’t brood on it.

A steady patron at the local branch of the Chicago Public Library, Corey excelled in curiosity while detesting school. He made few friends, yet spoke to anyone who might answer a question that frequently came to mind; and convinced, after plodding diligently through the story, that Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ was probably the best door stop ever printed. Maybe if Mrs. Wallis hadn’t made it a class assignment to read last year he might have felt different, but then there was the book report. Somehow the story digressed into the defeat of Napoleon’s army by raging Bolsheviks with AK-47’s after Julie Christi snitched to Doctor Zhivago. Although an epic screw up that resulted in a passing grade for composition, the snickering admiration from his classmates satisfied him more. Mrs. Wallis called him a born revisionist, whatever that meant. He thought it was just so much hooey about a lot of old who-gives-a-hoot history.

He skipped the bath because of low water pressure, instead brushed his teeth, and then added a healthy dose of Vitalis to calm down his Alfalfa-like cowlicks while he thought about his new job at the Chicago Recreation Center down on Sheridan Avenue. It would be his first day as a summer councilor working in the wood shop instructing kids how to use the wood working machines and hand tools for making things like gavels, table legs, kitchen cutting boards, even toy boats. During the frigid winter months Mr. Schwab would let Corey take two nights a week from the drug store, where he delivered prescriptions to customers on his bike, and attend woodworking classes at the Rec house. Eventually his skills were so improved that the shop supervisor, Vince Longo, offered him the fifty-dollar summer job and a chance at some big money. The drug store only paid two dollars a night, three dollars for all day Saturday, plus any tips. Maybe now he could buy that new coat at Mac Turner’s over on Morse Avenue for next winter, the thermal reversible with zippers and a hideaway hood. His old navy pea jacket was threadbare after two winters, and now too short in the arms. Finally, he concluded, a summer vacation with benefits.

Once Corey had dressed in blue jeans, a short sleeved cotton pullover and his ratty-looking sneakers, he pulled the apartment door closed securing the locks with his two keys – one silver and one gold colored. His key chain was one of those retractable spools of thin cable with a brass ring at its end that clipped onto his belt leaving the keys to jingle-jangle with his bouncing stride, moreso whenever he descended the three flights of stairs that lead down to the small lobby. Yet whenever he passed Mrs. Feldman’s second floor apartment he would briefly lock eyes with the small mezuzah attached to her door frame and wonder about the contents of the still smaller scroll tucked away inside. His friend and classmate from school, Yitzhak Zielinski – everybody just called him Izzy – said that each mezuzah contained a secret message to God from the ancient Book of Deuteronomy, and this really intrigued his imagination. He thought about getting one for himself, but then if it was so secret, how would he know it was for God? And why put it where somebody could steal it? Still, it seemed like an interesting idea, he thought, even if he was Catholic.

Mr. Carnap lived in the first floor apartment and kept to himself most of the time, although the sound of typing could be heard at all hours coming from behind his door. It was assumed by the neighbors that he was probably some kind of writer, maybe one of those scholarly eggheads since he seldom went out during the day. Like Mrs. Feldman’s mezuzah, he was another secret waiting to be revealed.

Corey emerged from the apartment building into the long early morning shadows as sunlight filtered between the rows of buildings that stretched the length of Pratt Boulevard. Trees lined the local byways with their roots buckling sidewalks and often invading the underground network of old decaying sewer lines causing water shortages, and smelly backups from constipated city maintenance. This morning the streets and sidewalks were dank and damp smelling, a further reminder that it was trash day. Lumbering CTA buses, like fat green stogies smoking carbon monoxide, crawled along the city’s curbs belching their poisonous blue exhaust while the constant screech of brakes and blaring horns broadcast impending disasters of man and machine along the cracked arteries of asphalt. He paused for a moment to look up and down the street and wondered why anyone would brag about being born into the Hog Butcher of the World, a city that never really sleeps. People are weird, he decided, when in the blink of an eye, the unthinkable happened.

He didn’t mean to look, would have preferred not to have been a witness