Sutton by J. R. Moehringer Read Free Book Online Page A

hear. They’re drowned out by the voices. Old voices, loud voices, dead voices. Now he hears the trolleys. Night and day that ceaseless rattling is what makes Brooklyn Brooklyn . Let’s take the rattler to Coney Island, Eddie always says. Of course Eddie is long gone, and there is no rattling, so what is Sutton hearing? He puts a hand over his mouth. What’s happening? Is it the champagne? Is it the leg—a clot rattling toward his brain? Is that why he now hears his brothers taunting him, Mother calling from the upstairs window?
    Mr. Sutton, you okay?
    Sutton closes his eyes, lifts his face to the sky.
    Mr. Sutton?
    Coming, Mother .
    Mr. Sutton ?

THREE
    Chickens, horses, pigs, goats, dogs, they all walk down the middle of Gold Street, which isn’t a street but a dirt path. The city sometimes sprinkles the street with oil to keep the dust down. But that just makes it an oily dirt path.
    Neighborhood boys are glad the street is dirt. Gold Street got its name because pirates buried treasure beneath it long ago, and on summer days the boys like to dig for doubloons.
    There. A narrow wooden house, three stories tall, like all the others on Gold Street, except for the chimney, which tilts leeward. Willie lives there with Father, Mother, two older brothers, one older sister, and his white-haired grandfather, Daddo. The house is painted a cheerful yellow, but that’s misleading. It’s not a happy place. It’s always too hot, too cold, too small. There’s no running water, no bathroom, and a heavy gloom hangs in the tiny rooms and narrow halls since the death of Willie’s baby sister, Agnes. Meningitis. Or so the Suttons think. They don’t know. There was no doctor, no hospital. Hospitals are for Rockefellers.
    Seven years old, Willie sits in the kitchen watching Mother, grief-sick, at the washbasin. A small woman, wide in the hips, with wispy red hair and bleary eyes, she scrubs a piece of clothing that used to be white and never will be again. She uses a powdered detergent that smells to Willie of ripe pears and vanilla.
    The name of the detergent, Fels, is everywhere—newspapers, billboards, placards in the trolley cars. Children, skipping rope, chant the Fels advertising slogan to keep rhythm. Fels—gets out—that tattle—tale gray! Meaning, without Fels, your gray collar and underpants will tell on you. Judas clothes—the idea terrifies little Willie. And yet Mother’s constant scrubbing makes no sense. A noble effort, but a waste of time, since the second you step outside, splat. The streets are filled with mud and shit, tar and soot, dust and oil.
    And dead horses. They keel over from the heat, fall down from the cold, collapse from disease or neglect. Every week there’s another one lying in the gutter. If the horse belongs to a gypsy or ragpicker, it’s left where it falls. Over time it swells like a balloon, until it explodes. A sound like a cannon. Then it gives off an eye-watering stench, bringing flies, rats. Sometimes the New York City Street Cleaning Department sends a crew. Just as often the city doesn’t bother. The city treats this nub of northern Brooklyn, this wasteland between the two bridges, as a separate city, a separate nation, which it is. Some call it Vinegar Hill. Most call it Irish Town.
    Everyone in Irish Town is Irish. Everyone. Most are new Irish. Their hobnailed boots and slanted tweed caps are still caked with the dust of Limerick or Dublin or Cork. Mother and Father were born in Ireland, as was Daddo, but they all came to Irish Town years ago, which gives them a certain status in the neighborhood.
    The other thing that gives them status is Father’s job. Most fathers in Irish Town don’t work, and those who do drink up their wages, but Father is a blacksmith, a skilled artisan, and every Saturday he dutifully, proudly places his weekly twelve dollars on the outstretched apron of Mother. Twelve dollars. Never more, but never less.
    Willie sees Father as a fantastic collection of