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

nevers. Never misses a day of work, never touches liquor, never swears or raises a hand in anger to his wife and kids. He also never shows affection, never speaks. A word here, a word there. If that. His silence, which gives him an aura, feels connected to his work. After eleven hours of hammering and pounding and swatting the hardest thing in the world—what’s to say?
    Often Willie goes with Father to the shop, a wooden shed on a big lot that smells of manure and fire. Willie watches Father, streaming with sweat, slamming his giant hammer again and again on a piece of glowing orange. With every slam, every metallic clank, Father looks—not happy, but clearer of mind. Willie feels clearer too. Other fathers are drunk, on the dole, but not his. Father isn’t God, but he’s godlike. Willie’s first hero, first mystery, Father is also his first love.
    Willie thinks he’d like to be a blacksmith when he grows up. He learns that when you make a piece of metal longer, you draw it, and when you make it shorter, you upset it. He learns to pump the bellows, make the flames in the hearth swell. Father holds up a hand, signaling careful , not too much. Every other week another blacksmith shop burns to the ground. Then the smith is out of work and the family is on the street. That’s the fear, the thing that keeps Father hammering, Mother scrubbing. One bad turn—fire, illness, injury, bank panic—and the curb is your pillow.
    If Father never speaks, Daddo never stops. Daddo sits in a rocking chair by the parlor window, the one with the curtains made from potato sacks, delivering an eternal monologue. He doesn’t care that Willie is the only one listening. Or doesn’t know. A few years before Willie was born, Daddo was working in a warehouse and a jet of acid spurted into his eyes. The world went dim. The hard part, he always says, was losing his job. Now all he does, all he can do, is sit around and blether.
    Most often he talks about politics, stuff that goes over Willie’s head. But sometimes he tells larky stories to make his youngest grandson giggle. Stories about mermaids and witches—and little men. To hear Daddo tell it, the Old Country is overrun with them.
    What do the little men do, Daddo?
    They steal, Willie Boy.
    Steal what?
    Sheep, pigs, gold, whatever they can lay their grubby little mitts on. Ah but no one holds it against the lads. They’re just full of mischief. Bad little actors.
    Do you remember the exact spot where you were born, Mr. Sutton?
    Sutton points to a tan brick building, some kind of community center. Tell them Willie Boy was—here .
    Was it a happy childhood, Mr. Sutton?
    Yeah. Sure .
    Photographer shoots Sutton in close-up, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway behind his head. The expressway was built while Sutton was in prison. God what a monstrosity, Sutton says. I didn’t think they could make Brooklyn uglier. I underestimated them .
    Cool, Photographer says. Yeah, brother, right there. That’s tomorrow’s front page .
    Willie’s two older brothers despise him. For as long as he can remember it’s been true, a changeless fact of life. The sun rises over Williamsburg, sets over Fulton Ferry, and his brothers wish he were dead.
    Is it because he’s the baby? Is it because he’s William Junior ? Is it because he spends so much time with Father at the shop? Willie doesn’t know. Whatever the reason—rivalry, jealousy, evil—the brothers are so united against him, they pose such a seamless two-headed menace, that Willie can’t tell them apart. Or doesn’t bother. He thinks of them simply as Big and Bigger.
    Willie, eight, is playing jacks on the sidewalk with his friends. From nowhere Big Brother and Bigger Brother appear. Willie looks up. Both brothers hold egg creams. The sun is bracketed by their giant heads.
    So feckin small, Big Brother says, glaring down at Willie.
    Yeah, Bigger Brother says, snickering. Feckin runt.
    Willie’s friends run away. Willie stares at his jacks and