Chapter 20

 

                By most accounts, the founding fathers came close to naming Paterson after Alexander Hamilton. He was, after all, the master mind behind the foundation of America's first industrial city. He had come to the great falls at the urging of George Washington, and the gushing water impressed him just as it had impressed earlier explorers. While no the Victoria Falls of Africa to which they had been compared, the Great Falls -- then known as the Totowa Falls after the local tribe of Indians -- fired up in him the idea of cheap power.

                In 1791, he and several prominent local leaders applied to the state for aid in setting up a city which would be based on factories and production. The state legislature granted the project $1 million for capital stock, legislation signed immediately by then Governor William Paterson. At a meeting on Nov. 22, Hamilton drew up the charter incorporating the Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufacturing (SUM). Stock was sold in shares of $100 each.

                Under the provisions set by the state, the society could purchase land, manufacture goods, build canals, lakes, dams and collect tolls. Their property would be exempt from state tax for ten years and from local and county taxes forever. This group could even raise instant cash up to $100,000 by lottery if necessary. The state legislation also allowed residents of the six square mile area to incorporate and form a municipal government.

                This incorporation occurred in New Brunswick and included William Duer, John Denhurst, Benjamin Walker, Nicholas Low, Royal Flint, Elias Bludinot, Joh Bayard, John Neilson, Archibald Mercer, Thomas Lowering, George Lewis, More Furmans and Alexander McComb as its directors. Duer served as SUM's first governor, Mercer as his deputy. Stock subscriptions amounted to $20,000 and were soon increased to $262,000. These directors believed their city and the power source could mass produce cotton and other times, there by avoiding the costly procedure of sending raw materials overseas for manufacturing.

                Despite Hamilton's vision and Washington's recommendations, the Great Falls site was not immediately selected. The members of SUM instead put out advertisements in the New York and Philadelphia newspapers inviting proposals. West Jersey Association from South River, Perth Amboy, Millstone, Bull's Falls, Little Falls and the Great Falls were all considered with engineers sent to each to evaluate their merits.

                Engine Cassimer T. Grover of New York reported that the Great Falls could drive 247 undershot wheels where as the next best, Little Falls, could only drive about 78.

                At a meeting held on May 17, 1792 in Little Falls, members of SUM selected the Great Falls site for America's first industrial city. Here, three men from the neighboring community of Acquackanonk asked if water could be brought through a series of canals to factories planning in that community. Hamilton rejected the idea.

                SUM's governor, Duer, did not like the Great Falls site, even with its favoring engineering report, and asked the board to vote for Little Falls instead. This proposal was rejected.

                At the same meeting, some members proposed to name the new city, Hamilton. Hamilton, himself, urged the board members to reject this proposal, suggesting that the city be named after the man in Trenton who had signed the legislation enabling the city to exist. In the end, the board voted to name the city after then Governor William Paterson.

                ***********

                Even before Maxwell opened his eyes, he felt the room spin. His fingers fumbled for the edge of the cot and gripped, and yet the sensation of turning continued, like one of those boardwalk rides in which people sit in a cup and Sauser and all spin around faster and faster. But here, someone had removed the cup and laid him out on the Sauser, and the ride had been through its worst gyrations, slowing down after a night of furious turning.

                His body remember the fury of the ride, even if his mind could not. His stomach bore that queasy feeling suggesting a bout of vomiting might still linger ahead if he moved too quickly or opened his eyes too suddenly -- not that his throbbing eyes had any urge for light. They seemed almost relieved by the twilight cast upon them by the filter of the closed lids -- though the pain there eased, too, ever so slowly.

                Maxwell's arms and legs throbbed in a different way, recalling less the alcohol as the fight in the park, and the three faces merging into the image of a hideous black Trans Am.

                Finally, as he oozed back into consciousness, Maxwell noticed the sound of the alarm clock from the other room, the laughing, mocking, pathetic voice of Howard Stern, making morning miserable for many commuters throughout the metropolitan area, a voice that had likely woken Maxwell without his knowing, droning on and on from Jack's room as if it had been going on for quite some time.

                Maxwell threw back his thick blanket and rolled himself up, the whole room rolling with him and swaying as he opened his eyes. Bright sunlight streamed down into the loft from the skylight, filtered through the thin arms of the long-dead plants.

                The temperature in the room had risen, winter's grasp loosening on the world outside, though Maxwell's legs still grew goose bumps as he stood, a shiver his response to the still-cool air.

                The voice from the radio ranted on, making Maxwell wonder why Jack hadn't slammed down on the snooze switch as was his custom. He peered into the bedroom, and found no sign of the man among the mess. Nor did Jack occupy the bathroom the way he sometimes did at night, a regular Nepoleon, giving up no ground until he was through digesting. In the kitchen, however, Maxwell found signs of passage, a dirty cup on the table, and Jack's coat missing from the back of the chair. Re-tracing his steps, Maxwell discovered all Jack's work clothes missing as well as his keys from a hook near the door.

                "That son of a bitch actually got his ass up early," Maxwell said, his voice echoing his amazement across the loft.

                This amazement grew into absolute wonder when Maxwell realized it was not Jack's day to open the store.

                Maxwell took his time, moving through his own morning ritual in slow motion, as he showered and dressed, and then came to the hall to get his coat to go. Here, he found a note taped to the wall near the hook.

 

Dear Max,

I thought you might need a little extra sleep this morning. You snore wonderfully. Yu also fight like a demon and I appreciate your rescue last night. I'll try and repay you for it.

                                                                                                                                                Jack

 

                Maxwell folded the note in two, dropped it into the trash, struck not by its humor, but the sense of fright behind the words, as if they had recalled more specifically the details of the fight: the Boss' thugs and the mounting gambling debt the boss would later try and collect.

                How much?

                Maxwell couldn't remember the figure. Yet now, sober and in day light, the whole thing took on a twisted shape. Jack had kept this part of his life secret, and it made Maxwell wonder what else Jack had kept from him.

                Maxwell dressed and hurried out, his feet clomping down the long front stairs to the street. Outside, the crowd was already three deep at the bus stop, Latino ladies, black boys, grey-haired Italian men with cigars, all of them yammering in variation of English Maxwell did not understand.

                Maxwell hurried on, passing the doorways of shops not yet open, yet filled with the bodies of waking bums, each of whom stared at him from the other end of reality, with hopeless accusation, as if word of his activity had already speed among the homeless community, with each face hating him as much as Nathanial did.           They said nothing. They only followed Maxwell with their stares. Yet they reminded Maxwell of his appointment to deliver Suzzane to the shelter.

                Maxwell hurried his step, slipping through the mass of flesh that made up most of humanity, that greedy, gruesome and throbbing flesh that reacted but did not think, that struggled for small comforts when the great ideas lay in waste, smelling of perfume and body odor, garlic and booze. Maxwell struggled not to breathe as the accumulated assault rose to his head, causing his condition to worsen. His head spun again by the time he reached the door to The Greasy Spoon.

                "About time you got here, sleepy-head," Jack mocked as Maxwell eased through the door into the crowded shop, the last load of factory workers lined up along the counter waiting like jail inmates for their meals.

                "You should have woken me up," Maxwell said, hurrying around the counter to lend Jack a hand.

                "Not a problem," Jack said. "I've got it all handled."

                The landscape gave lie to Jack's statement, reveling the disaster of the morning in stacks of grease-stained platters and piles of coffee-soaked cups, all waiting for their turn in the overfilled sink.

                "This won't work, Jack," Maxwell said, rolling up his sleeves as he ran hot water over the dishes in the sink and squeezed out lemon soap over them to create some suds.

                "I don't get you, Pal," Jack said, shoving another platter through the serving window at one of the many sets of waiting hands.

                "I can't protect you against The Boss."

                Jack paused, caught in the limbo between one customer and the next, pretending to look shocked, pretending not to stare at Maxwell, though staring intently from the corner of his eye.

                "I don't know what you mean," Jack said.

                "I think you do," Maxwell said. "I think you think if you do enough for me, I might hold off The Boss' dogs, keeping them from ripping your throat out."

                "So why can't you?" Jack asked, turning around to face Maxwell. "I've seen you fight. You're better than anyone The Boss has working for him."

                "Because I'm not your body guard," Maxwell said. "Sooner or later, the Boss will get you despite my protection    and he'll do more damage than if I hadn't interfered, damage to both of us. To you because you owe him money, to me for helping keep him from collecting."

                "That's bullshit," Jack said.

                "No, it's truth    hard, sad truth. Somehow you're going to have to settle the score with the boss, or he'll make life hell for both of us."

                "Yeah, sure, make me settle the score while you scoot off with his girl. Some truth that is."

                Maxwell ceased washing dishes and glared at Jack, who now scraped another set of eggs from the grills, slowing them and some has browns onto a platter. This he shoved through the window for another set of customer hands to grasp.

                "Patty is my concern, not yours," Maxwell said.

                "She's trouble for both of us if you keep Tring to hump her."

                "If I were humping her it still wouldn't be any of your business," Maxwell said. "But as a matter of fact, I'm not, never did, never will. I'm through with her, so you have no excuse to bitch at me."

                Then for a few minutes, each man stayed silent. The chatter of Spanish, the clatter of plates, the scrape, scrape, scrape of the spatula on the grill, filling the space left by their angry voices. The workers in blue uniforms came to the window in what seemed like an unending procession, men and women almost pleading for peace, their faces cracked with lives of worry, their eyes shifting this way and that, like nervous or frightened rabbits listening to the sound of hounds    poverty, job loss, rent increases or a child's illness or arrest, or any other personal disaster capable of tipping their world and sending them to the street, to grow grey and grimy the way the other bums had. Not many of them owed $25,000 to the local loan shark the way Jack did, but all likely owed something, all looking for some edge up on life. Maxwell had seen many on line outside the local lottery shop, pushing wrinkled bills into the hands of the state's authorized agent for a few pale cards offering hope.

                "I'm sorry I jumping on you," Maxwell said when the line had thinned to two and the pile of dirty dishes had fallen to what remained scattered around the room at the tables.

                "I know," Jack grumbled, scraping another set of eggs from the grill. "You have this thing about letting people help themselves."

                "Sometimes," Maxwell admitted. "I guess you think that's hard of me."

                "No," Jack said. "I just figured since you were helping people like..." he waved the greasy spat Chala towards the rear room. "I figured you might help me, too."

                "She's different, Jack."

                "Yeah, I know. She's a woman. You've got found memories of humping her."

                "Will you please get off this humping jag," Maxwell moaned. "It has nothing to do with that."

                "What does it have to do with?"

                "Her problem is easier to fix," Maxwell said. "All she needs is someone to care for her and to watch over her. You need a division of paratroopers."

                Jack snorted out a begrudging laugh as he handed over the last plate of eggs to the last set of grasping fingers. "Maybe that's not enough," he said. "Since The Boss has most of Paterson's police force on his payroll."

                "Really?" Maxwell said. "The man is that well connected?"

                "He owns the Paterson from the mayor down," Jack said. "At least that's the word on the street. They say he pays everyone a salary from his operations."

                "I can't believe everyone is that crooked."

                "Not everyone is," Jack admitted. "But everyone whose managed to claw his or her way to the top is, and those down below keep their mouths shut or find themselves without work, or worse. That's how The Boss can operate so openly. And that's how he gets everything he wants."

                "Everything?"

                "What people don't give him, he takes for himself. No one -- except for you -- has ever stood up to him for long. That's why I figured..."

                "You figured if I can stand up to him once, I can do it again."

                "Something like that."

                "I appreciate your confidence," Maxwell said. "But as you said, not many people stand up to him long. Now that I know what I'm up against, I'd be crazy to keep rubbing his nose in things. If the whole town is on his side, I'm not going to get in his way again."

                "But someone has to stand up to him," Jack said.

                "You seem to be confused, Jack," Maxwell said. "At one moment, you're warning me to stay out his way, the next you're telling me to go play David and Goliath with him. Which is it?"

                "I want somebody to push that asshole off his throne," Jack said. "I didn't think it should be you at first, but I've been thinking since then, and I'm beginning to think that if anyone can take him on, you're the one."

                "Alone?"

                "Someone has to start. If one person stands up to the bastard, others will follow."

                "Not if that one person gets killed first," Maxwell said.

                "I thought about that, too," Jack said. "The Boss won't try and kill you. Not at first, anyway."

                "That was a pretty fair imitation his boys did the last night in the park."

                "That wasn't The Boss' doing, that was that punk acting on his own. The Boss will try to buy you off at first. That's the way he always operates."

                "And if I can't be bought?"

                "Then he'll make some threats."

                "And after that?"

                Jack stayed silent so long Maxwell wondered if he had heard, then when Jack coughed slightly, and looked pale, Maxwell had his answer.

                "As I said," Maxwell said. "I don't want to get killed."

                "But he might not try it," Jack said. "Not with you."

                "What makes me different from all the others he's apparently persuaded with his gentle charms?"

                "You're strong. The Boss admires strength."

                "You mean strength that has been tested under fire," Maxwell said. "Let's drop the subject."

                "Easy for you to say," Jack groaned.

                "Look, Jack, I'd love to help you. But I can't fight the world for you. I can go and try and talk with the man, maybe cut some deal with him that will allow you to pay him off over a longer period of time."

                "He won't deal, “Jack said. "He's got me and he knows it. He has nothing to gain by dealing."

                "Why don't you let me try."

                Jack sighed. "Go ahead. I guess I've got nothing to lose."

                "Can you arrange a meeting?"

                Jack paused, seemed to suck on his teeth for a moment. "I suppose I can," he said. "It might take time. I'd have to send a message through someone. I couldn't talk directly to any of his boys. You know what happened last time."

                "Make the calls," Maxwell said. "Then finish cleaning up this place."

                "Where are you going now?"

                "To take Suzanne to the shelter."

                Jack nodded. "That's a great idea."

                Maxwell crossed to the telephone first, dropped in a quarter and dialed the number for the local cab company. The dispatcher was not surprised. The company got numerous calls from the area from workers who had missed the last bus out from downtown. He told Maxwell he'd have a cab at the curb in five minutes. Maxwell hung up and went to the back of the store to fetch Suzzane.

                The stockroom stank of her, that continued unmissable tang of the street that no amount of soap would remove in such a short time, oozing out of her pores from years of ingestion, to help infect the room itself. Several days occupying the space, the stock room had become hers, her scent mingling with the smell of mustard and pickles like a spreading disease.

                At first, Maxwell saw no sign of Suzanne, despite having all the lights lit. Signs of her occupation showed. Jack had managed to shape a bed for her out of folded aprons and uniform shirts, some on the surface looked ruffled and stained, but her light weight disturbed little. She might have been little more than a crumbling leaf for all the impression she left. Maxwell had to circle the room several times before he managed to stumble on her, a crumpled, pathetic shape wedged into a narrow gap between two sets of shelves. She had compressed herself into a space no longer than a bucket of pickles. At first, Maxwell saw only the eyes, large and round and so dilated they ceased to be blue. She shuddered the way dunked dogs did in Winter, very one of her bones seeming to clatter, although all he heard was her teeth.

                "Suzy?" Maxwell said softly. "Are you all right?"

                She shook her head.

                "What's the matter?"

                "I scared."

                "Of what? Me?"

                This time she gave a nod.

                "But why would you be scared of me?" he asked. "I'm only trying to help you. You believe that, don't you?"

                Again, she shook her head, then in mid shake, shrugged, her eyes taking on a confused expression. "I don't know," she said finally. "People always say they help, then hurt me."

                "You think I'll hurt you?"

                "You take Nathaniel away," she said.

                "But he was hurting you."

                "He love me."

                "By selling you off to the cops?"

                "He love me," she said more firmly.

                "Okay, I won't argue. But I love you, too, and I want to help you. I want to make it so you don't have to -- well, do things for the police any more."

                Suzanne blinked, her dilated eyes studying Maxwell's face, as if struggling to read the meaning behind his words. She seemed neither pleased nor displeased by his statement, though she appeared to shake a little less.

                "Nathaniel say I have to," she said. "He say the police chase us away if I don't."

                "You don't have to worry about the police where you're going," Maxwell assured her.

                "Going?"

                "I made arrangements for you to go to a shelter."

                Suzanne's body jerked so violently that she forced Maxwell back, her arms and legs springing out as if she intended to run, then, free of the shelf and out onto the floor, she crumbled, as if still too weak for any effort so violent, groaning with protests as Maxwell rushed to recover her from the heap on the floor.

                "What's the matter?" he asked, as he slid his hands between her arms pits and pulled her up.

                "No shelter! Bad shelter! Dangerous shelter, Nathaniel says. Bad, bad, bad!"

                Maxwell attempted a reassuring smile, though her panic had unnerved him a little, shaking his former confidence that all would be well with her. Flashes of the good priest's face kept erupting in his mind, each more negative than the last.

                "Calm down, Suzie," he said. "I've talked to them. They seem nice enough."

                "Shelter bad," she said again.

                "Not this one," Maxwell said, though haunted by his previous conversation with Jack, the tone of which was largely the same. "I've made arrangements for you at the regions shelter, not at any other the city-run places."

                Her chatter ceased. She blinked instead, again attempting to work out the meaning of his words from the expression on his face.

                "Religious?" she said.

                "That's right," Maxwell assured her.

                Jack knocked on the store room door. "Cab's here," he said, and as if to echo this, the cab's impatient horn sounded from the street.

                "Tell him we're coming," Maxwell yelled, then glanced at Suzane again. Although wrinkled, her clothing remained clean with only that ever-present suggestion of street life smell infecting them. The priest would recognize the scent, but could not object to it. All the bums brought it with them, dragging it in behind them like an extra set of luggage. In time, she would shed it, as bathing and laundered clothing became a regular features in her life.

                "Come on, Suzie," Maxwell urged. "We have to go."

                Suzanne did not resist exactly. She just didn't move in a way that helped him, her limbs so stiff he might have snapped off an arm or leg as he lifted her to her feet. A mannequin would have manipulated better, though after a moment, Maxwell managed to set her moving towards the door.

                During the time Maxwell had spent in the back room, the last bus to Wayne had come, collecting the rest of the breakfast crowd. Now only the dirty dishes remained, a wasteland of yolk and coffee stains Jack would have to clean up while Maxwell delivered Suzanne. Jack, who now stood to one side of the door, looked both nervous and anxious over the woman's leaving, like a child looking to return a pilfered carton of cigarettes to a store, yet afraid he might get caught in the process.

                "I won't be long," Maxwell told him, then directed Suzanne through the maze of tables and chairs to the door, then through the door to the street, where the green and white cab waited, driver at that moment ready to leave.

                "Where to?" the driver asked, mumbling around the butt of a unlighted cigar, the juice of which had long ago stained the whole corner of his mouth brown.

                "St. Jude's," Maxwell said, pushing Suzanne into the back seat then following behind her, closing the door before the driver could object.

                The driver's nose, however, did crinkle. "The homeless shelter?" he asked.

                "That's right," Maxwell said. "And could you hurry. We're already late."

                The driver snorted, grumbled some to himself, then engaged the gears, the car lurching forward with a jolt and a series of disturbing clanks -- down to the corner, then around it, clacking its way down Broadway. The rattle of the cap drew up the heads of the old Italians and polish immigrants, as well as a few cops, all of whom were oblivious to Maxwell or Suzanne int he back seat. Finally, they vanished, too, as the car huffed and puffed its way up the slight incline, under the rusting rail road trestle, passed the welfare office, the unemployment office and the Paterson Public Library, emerging eventually into the limbo between the downtown section of Paterson and the more suburban like sprawl where brick faced six storied apartment buildings gave way to three family houses.

                This section of Paterson lacked wealth despite its appearance. Many of the buildings here had come as a result of Post World Ward II GI loans, built in mass, built to look exactly the same, transformed over time with paint and renovation into walls of merely similar buildings. But the cheap construction had made them vulnerable, cracks forming, splintering their proud faces, giving them and the neighborhood a sense of perpetual crumbling. Out of the midst of these, the brick face of the shelter appeared, not newer, merely sturdier, and darker, its church steeple like a green dagger stabbing up at the sky.

                The cab pulled to the curb. Maxwell scrambled out, then reached in to draw out Suzanne, but she resisted, inching crab-like backwards to avoid Maxwell's grasp, her face as struck with horror as it had been in the store room of the Greasy Spoon.

                "Bad, Bad," she said.

                "Say, Pal, what kind of game is this?" the drive snarled.

                "She's just a little scared," Maxwell explained. "All right, Suzy. Just come out onto the sidewalk where we can discuss this. This man has other fares waiting for him."

                Suzanne's horrified expression didn't change, but she did managed to slide across the seat, pushing her feet ahead of her, all the time eyeing the brick building as if expecting a sudden attack from it. No sooner did her feet hit the sidewalk, and Maxwell closed the door, than the cab sped off -- not even waiting for the dollar fifty fair, the enraged glare of the driver in the rear view mirror, suspicious, the thoughts behind the eyes assuming Maxwell had tried to stick him with the woman.

                Suzanne shivered, hardly able to stand, bent over, her arms clutching her chest as if readying herself to vomit.

                "Bad, bad," she said again. "Nathaniel tell me never, never come to this place."

                "Why not? What's does he say is wrong here?"

                Suzanne stared at Maxwell, lifting her head from her bent position to glare. "Bad," she said.

                Maxwell rubbed his face with his fingers, the tips calloused from playing guitar, scraping at his cold skin. He glanced at the shelter, the dark brick looking like one solid chunk of unmovable stone, pounded down into the middle of the three family houses and the dilapidated stores, as alien as a crashed meteor.

                "Look, Suzie," Maxwell said after a long moment. "I can't rely on Nathaniel's opinions. I was here already. I talked to the priest. He's a cold fish. I'll grant you that much. But he didn't strike me as mean or evil. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe Nathaniel can't stand being around anything too straight. I can't say. But this place can't be any worse than the police station steps, or do anything more horrible than the cops have done."

                ************

                Maxwell strolled back, covering some of the same ground he had when he jogged, only at a much more leisurely pace. Details his usual speed neglected to pick up on, leaped out at him, not just the bums huddling in the park, but the over all tenor of this part of the city. The sense of slow dying so evident in the stripped cars and broken bottles that even the early yellow green buds of coming spring could do little to ease.

                A nearly gothic heaviness hung over this place. Of all the sections of town that Maxwell had wandered through as a kid, this was the least familiar, one of those straight laced all American, blue collar neighborhoods that lacked the luster other parts of Paterson had. Although the river curved around this neighborhood on its slow turn from west to east and finally south, no Great Falls fell here, nor did nay huge crack of stone form a natural barrier as Garret Mountain did against the intrusion of change. Yet it had resisted change better than other, supposedly more protected parts of Paterson. This stretch of blocks had no department stores, sleazy bars, paper mills with columns of steam, it had only these pathetic three stories buildings with a few coffee and newspaper stores, dry cleaners, liquor stores, stores selling sewing wares. And each morning, these buildings spit out men in blue overalls, men carrying black lunch pales, men wearing weary faces and sagging shoulders, who marched up the block to the bus stop, waiting with newspapers and coffee for the bus, then disappeared to other parts of Paterson where they sweated out the day in hard labor.

                Those men had scared Maxwell as a kid, each of them so like another they might as well have been robots, doing the exact same thing each day, going through the exact same motions of breakfast, lunch and supper, feeling and thinking and saying the same things, each holding out some secret hope for the future, to win the lottery or inherit some wealth or find a buried treasure in their back yards, all in the end living hand to mouth without real hope of change, living in three storied houses that    except for the color and a few other minor variations and refurnishing had produced -- looked exactly the same.

                Coming here as a kid, Maxwell heard the siren calling him from inside each, and felt the tug of some string that connected him with what went on inside. Deep down, he knew someday he would find himself trapped inside one, popping out in the morning with the others like a coocoo out of a clock, bearing no more significance than to remind people of the time.

                He came to hate that feeling in himself and began to avoid this neighborhood, finding elaborate alternative routes that kept him even from its shadow.

                Yet now, as he walked among these houses again, Maxwell was struck by another feeling, a sense of peace and order that hung over each, a solid surety of feeling that came as the result of predictability. He knew when those front doors opened what kind of man would step out. He never had to question where each man would go or what each man would do when he got to where he was going. Even the repeated pattern of roof tops showed a quiet sanity against the confused skyline of varying shaped buildings that made up the rest of Paterson: church steeples, office towers, factories and clumps of stone and trees.

                Here and now with the hazy daylight filtering down out of a cloudy sky and onto these houses, Maxwell ached to climb any one of their front stairs, ached to knock on the door and ask if he could live there, go to work, come home, think about nothing but the mortgage and bus schedules, and whether or not the price of meat would cut out meatloaf as a Wednesday regular meal, and in any of them, he half expected to find his uncle, Charlie, not one dead and buried after his military unit was over run in Vietnam, but one who had come home and slid into that spot in life reserved for him, his hairy arms and knuckles stained from motor oil, his fingers blistered from twisting a wrench, his face red and wrinkled from years working a gas pump in the sun.

                Charlie's imaginary face faded, as did the mood, when Maxwell passed these buildings and came upon the park, the library, the unemployment office and the line outside the welfare building. Old Paterson grew into New Paterson trading Italians and Irish for people from El Salvador and Nicaragua, white skin melting into a spectrum of tan and brown and black.

                People started at Maxwell. In this part of Paterson, Maxwell was the intruder, his white face a ghost of Paterson past, floating through the tangle of human pina like a European missionary through a famine struck African village, his well fed and untroubled face, a stark mockery to their plight. Anger stirred in the eyes of the people he passed, tension gripped their limbs as if they reading to run, as if they believed him a cop or welfare worker, wandering into their neighborhood to spy on them.

                Then, he passed these, too, passed down under the train trestle to the health clinic, college, and police station, then passed into the old Italian district, the smell of garlic and olive oil swirling out of dark shops like some secret magical elixir, a potion designed to keep the rest of the world away as if vampires   which Maxwell felt like by the time he reached the store and found Jack had made little progress in the cleanup.

                "You're friend from the lake called," Jack said as Maxwell eased down onto a stool at the counter.

                "What did you tell him?" Maxwell asked.

                "I told him to call back," Jack said, casting the same doubt glance at Maxwell as he had the night before when Maxwell came back to the car bearing Creeley's package from Rosey's Tavern.

                "What the hell is in there?" Jack had asked.

                "Stuff for Creeley," Maxwell said, placing in the trunk as he had in the past, for when he made the trip west to see the man again.

                "What kind of stuff?" Jack asked.

                Maxwell shrugged.

                "You mean you never asked?" Jack said.

                "Of course not," Maxwell said.

                "Then how do you know it isn't something illegal?"

                "Illegal? Like what?"

                "What do you think?"

                "Jack," Maxwell said with a weary sigh. "You don't know Creeley very well. He's an odd coot sometimes, and he's into a variety of odd rituals -- a lot of magical things, eye of noot type things I don't even know anything about. He had a special relationship with the local seed man the whole time he lived in Paterson, who ordered a lot of what he wanted special."

                "Rosey's isn't a seed store," Jack said. "But the place has its own reputation around town."

                "I don't get you?"

                "Let me put it this way, Rosey could get you nearly anything you wanted for a price."

                "Are you talking about drugs?"

                "Of course I'm talking about drugs, damn it," Jack exploded.

                "That's nonsense. Creeley's been hanging around Rosey's for years, and if he was going there for the drugs, I would know about it. After all I lived with him."

                "You live with me, too, and didn't know I was doing them."

                "That's different," Maxwell said.

                "Only to you."

                "What does that mean?"

                "It means you've been so out of touch with the drug world you don't know what is going on around you. If you got high, you would recognize the signs."

                "I got high."

                "I mean on more than beer or pot."

                "I did LSD once."

                "Acid? You? What did you do, flip out?"

                "Not exactly."

                "But you had a hard time?"

                "It was the company I kept, an old childhood acquaintance who made things bad."

                "What did he do?"

                "He killed someone."

                "WHAT?" Jack roared, his voice reverberating the car. "You saw someone die while you were tripping?"

                "Shot in the face," Maxwell mumbled. "If you don't mind, I'd like not to talk about it."

                "You lay something like that on me and you expect me not to ask questions? How old were you?"

                "Sixteen," Maxwell said. "It happened just after I moved in with Creeley."

                "And this friend of yours comes up, hands you some drugs, and says: `Here, take this. Let's go kill somebody?'"

                "I said I didn't want to talk about it."

                But Jack's talk had started Maxwell thinking about Creeley, the package, and the odd moments Maxwell recognized only now as suspicious, those times when Creeley had asked Maxwell to leave the loft or stay out for significant periods, claiming he was doing rituals Maxwell's presence would disturb.

                Maxwell fished in his pocket for a quarter, then weaved through the tables and chairs to the public pay phone. He dialed slowly, but Creeley answered on the first ring, his voice so raspy Maxwell didn't recognize it at first.

                "It's about Goddamn time you called," Creeley shouted    a violence Maxwell had heard only once before in all the years of their association, only that one time when Creeley had found Puck dripping on the door step and demanded that Puck go away.

                "I'm sorry," Maxwell said. "I got involved with other things around here."

                "So you left me to hang?"

                "I didn't let you hang."

                "Then, you got the package?"

                "Yes."

                "When can you bring it?"

                "Not until the weekend?"

                "Afraid not," Maxwell said.

                "Please don't be longer than that," Creeley said with a note of pleading in his voice.

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