Chapter five

 

 

                Long before Alexander Hamilton adopted Paterson as the great industrial hope of the new nation, fourteen families dominated the region, spreading their influence over 10,000 acres, controlled initially by a coop called the East Jersey Proprietors. After trading with, stealing from and hoodwinking the Indians, these fourteen families form the basis of a control that would last over a hundred years. Their names, while forgotten by the general public, were immortalized in the names of streets thought was what then called "Haquequeunck" and later became Clifton, Paterson, Passaic and Little Falls.

                By the end of the American Revolution, ten dwellings graced the banks of the river below the falls including, one church -- thought this lacked a pastor. Although by this time, Alexander Hamilton had come and gone with his great plans for mill manufacturing, developed the roots of the society for the establish of Useful Manufacturers, no lawyer, constable or justice of the peace could be found within three miles.

                Of the original ten structures, only three or four remained as late as 1856 -- on structure, partly destroyed in the great flood of 1810 -- had become a land mark, and to many residents, a symbol of Paterson's role in the revolution. George Washington and General Lafayette frequently visited the Passaic Hotle, which was famous at the time for its fishing and hospitality. While Maxwell had never been able to establish its exact location, he guested from a study of old maps that the Hotle sat on the banks of the river where modern West Broadway crossed over.

                Old books claimed the building itself had been constructed about a quarter of a century before the Revolution, and that during the Revolution, the hotel was owned and operated by Jacob Van Winkle -- whose family was one of the fourteen to dominate business, politics and social life in Paterson until the rise of the Silk Barons. By 1824, the Passaic Hotel was known as the Godwin House, after General Abraham Godwin, who had taken over ownership in the intervening years.

                Under either name, the hotel had a reputation as a place of good cheer and find food, a reputation that extended far beyond Paterson. It's fame as a resort drew fisherman from up and down the coast. But the hotel also served as a convenient halfway house for travelers moving along Old York Road and up Hamburg Turnpike into the highlands. At the building's doorstep was an important bridge connecting the North side of the river with the south. During the Great Flood of 1810, a newly constructed bridge here was washed away, despite the desperate effort of local farmers on both sides to secure it with stones. One man named Uriah Van Riper, whose farm was on the northern bank of the river -- directly across the bridge from the Passaic Hotel -- had to travel fifteen miles out of his way down to the bridge in Belleville, then back up to get to his farm.

                **********

                Maxwell got back to the loft to find a naked Jack sitting at the table, the naked man staring into space as if still asleep, the loft heavy with the scent of a chemical sweetness Maxwell had caught here before but had never identified.

                "Jack?" Maxwell said. "Are you all right?"

                Jack blinked several times, each blink bringing a little bit more back to consciousness.

                 "Max!" Jack said finally, still sheepishly. "What's wrong with you? You look like you've seen a ghost."

                "I thought something was wrong with you," Kenny said and settled into a chair across the table from Jack. "You were sitting there in a daze, with an almost unconscious look on your face."

                "I must have been daydreaming," Jack said, his words still slurred and his face bearing an expression Maxwell had seen on drunks trying to look sober after a traffic stop.

                But he wasn't drunk. There was an agitation to Jack, a nervous energy that couldn't be explained with the term daydreaming -- but an agitation that seemed to evaporate even as Maxwell studied his sweating roommate.

                "You'd better get dressed," Maxwell said. "We have a busy day ahead of us."

                Jack nodded and rose, staggering slightly as he made his way towards the bathroom to take his shower.

                "And don't use both towels," Maxwell called after him. "I have to take my shower, too."

                "Nag," Jack grumbled and vanished into the small phone-booth-sized space.

                Something glinted on the floor near where Jack had been sitting. Kenny retrieved it, and held it up between his forefinger and his thumb -- a tiny empty bottle that looked a little like a test tube. Whatever it had contained had a chemical scent.

                When Jack remerged, he hurried out, leaving a trail of words that said he needed coffee and would set up the store for the morning crowd while Maxwell got ready -- locking neither of the doors on his way out.

                With his bare feet slapping against the worn wood, Maxwell hurried across the loft, in and out of the patches of light, glancing up the streaked glass of the skylight and the one cracked pane he vowed perpetually to replace, along with the ring of dead plants Creeley had left, green then, but victim to Maxwell's inability to sustain plant life. The plants had withered within weeks of Creeley s departure with branches hanging down like skeleton limbs. At night, after Maxwell had turned out the lights and readied himself for sleep, he sometimes mistook these for hands seeking to work their way through the glass from the outside.

                Maxwell weaved around the wicker chairs and the spindle, and made his way to the far corner of the rectangular room, to a slight indentation that was out from under the slanted ceiling, the roof door to one side of this space, the door to the front stairs to the other, neither door was locked, the brass fixtures grinning at him like Jack's facetious smile.

                 "Enough's enough," Jack once told Maxwell. "Bad enough you got a half dozen locks on the downstairs door, what do you need them up here for, too?"

                "In case somebody gets in town there," Maxwell told him. "That s a dark stairway. Once somebody's inside, they can do what they want."

                 "If someone's clever enough to get through those locks, what makes you think they'll have any trouble with the ones up here?"

                "The sound would warn us."

                "Warn us for what?"

                "To escape," Maxwell said.

                "Damn it, Max. This isn't jail. We don't have to live in a cage."

                Of course, Jack was the first person to complain when Ann Marie dropped in uninvited, sliding down the stairs from the roof.  Still, the roof was less risky than the front door. A thief would have to climb through over the wall to the carport, passed the landlord's dog, then know enough to pull down the string to the rusty fire escape ladder. Then, too, Maxwell always locked the roof door just in case. It was Ann Marie's peering down through the skylight and tapping on its glass that disturbed Jack most, who seemed to have an exaggerated sense of privacy.

                Maxwell found other aspects of the skylight disturbing, especially the inability to keep out the cold.

                Winters here were a test of endurance. Even in the shower with the hot water turned to full, Maxwell shivered. But with Spring breaking, Maxwell found himself breathing deeply the change of air, washing himself in the remarkable light. It was the light that first attracted him to this place when first coming asking for Creeley's help, and the light, which kept Maxwell here long after Creeley had gone. Jack called the loft a cave, and continually grumbled about feeling shut in. Maxwell saw it more as a grotto, the skylight letting the better aspects of the world filter in, while keeping the undesirable elements out. Miracles fluttered down through that glass, and he sometimes imagined Gods peeping in on his life, not thieves.

                Snapping closed the upstairs lock, Maxwell sighed then followed Jack's wet track into a scalding shower. The gush of the water erased the last of the morning haze from Maxwell's thinking, and he emerged again into the sunlight of the large room, feeling revived. He folded his blankets and sheets, and stuffed them – along with his pillow – into two large drawers beneath the bed. His clothing sat on the chair beside the bed, neatly folded, with his socks stuffed into his shoes just beneath. Maxwell dressed, grabbed his jacket from a hook near the door, his keys from another hook, then plunged out the door and down the stairs to the street.

                ************

                Paterson by daylight looked like a cheap whore without her makeup, every crack and crevice showed revealing the impact of all 200 years of her incorporation as a city, a sagging and crumbling posterior that routine tax breaks to incoming business could not repair. Maxwell had never seen the city in any better shape, though he could recall the temporary revival that had brought a "better quality" people to its streets, that after-the-world-war boom that had used downtown Paterson as its central shopping district, as returning GIs made plans to move to suburbs. Over the last decade, the decline was made obvious by the lack of such people, Paterson growing more and more like an impoverished Port-au-Prince or San Salvador, with a market place of cheap clothing and foreign foods, and shaded-skinned people chattering in a hundred variations of Spanish, Polish and Arabian. The landmarks Maxwell had thought permanent during his growing up here, crumbled slowly into dust, more part of the white man's dream than the dreams of those who now invaded the city.

                Signs showed everywhere of a more permanent demise, from the fires that routinely engaged the historic district to the lack of fire that should have been burning in town hall. The Paterson News talked of rising violent crime, and those few honest business people who clung to these streets in hope of revival, slowly growing disillusioned. The craze of the shopping mall did not vanish the way they had predicted, and the crowds did not reclaim the Paterson streets the way they had hoped. The women from Wayne refused to return, taking their chances of rape in the parking lots of Willowbrook Mall, rather than Main Street. The faces of the customers rapidly darkened. Local public institutions became places from which the poor begged. Frightened white men and women who made their living here remained scared every day of their lives. No one threatened most of them. They just picked up on the vibe. All knew better than to be here once dark descended on this city, that hour of darkness when people turned into beasts.

                ************

                Bums cluttered the doorway when Maxwell arrived at The Greasy Spoon, bent and gray men and women whose ethic identity hid beneath their dirt, neither black nor white, Irish nor Italian, Jewish nor Latino, having shed all that the moment they came upon the streets. They huddled over the broken plastic trash bags like a pack of dogs, tearing open the innards, sorting through the stained napkins and burned aluminum foil for scraps of meat and bread and French fries.  Maxwell had lectured Jack about putting the trash out too early, leaving the bums hours before the trash truck's arrival in which to investigate their horde. The pack laughed over each discovery, holding up a piece of bun with all the glee of prospectors coming upon a nugget of gold. They looked and acted perpetually hungry, and might have devoured each other, if not for their filth.

                "Hey!" Maxwell shouted, drawing up their startled stares. "Get the hell away from there!"

                Maxwell charged them, and they fled, like a flock of crows from a cornfield as the approach of a farmer.

                But a few stayed fixed in place, hovering over the open bags, their green or gray or brown eyes fixed on him with hatred, wondering if their numbers might overwhelm him, defiant for that instant as if the might be willing to fight for their well-earned prize. Maxwell slowed as he neared them, lowering his arms as well as his voice, prepared to meet their attack if it came, find his center as he steadied himself.

                "Bums," he thought, trying to ignore their stink, the stench that their gray flesh gave off, which he had found more disgusting than any other smell, something totally human, something that would not have washed from their bodies now if they had bathed for a week. The smell had seeped into the pores of their flesh, and would take death and rotting for them to be rid of it.

                "I said get out!" Maxwell shouted, when he came as close as he could stand, four or five men, two women, all in equal layers of decay.

                "Why, Mister?" one of them asked, a woman with two missing front teeth. "What's this stuff to you? You’re just throwing it out."

                "We don't put it out for you to live off," Maxwell said. "If you want food, beg, or better yet, get yourselves jobs. This isn’t a charity bin or a homeless shelter."

                The group stared at him, as if they expected to find something sympathetic in their eyes. He did not. He found none of the romantic comedy stuff of old depression era movies in them, no warmth, no sense of humanity, no harbors of secret hope. Each looked as hard as the sidewalk they slept on, and he knew – under the right circumstances – any one of them could cut him open just as easily as they had the plastic bags, all in the name of survival.

                "If you don't go, I'll call the police," he said finally, when they hadn't moved.

                The word "police" sounded grotesque, even to Maxwell, who had learned a long time ago, they were not people’s friends. Creeley had warned him again and again upon relying on their protection.

                "You call of them, they come, but there’s no telling what happens after that," Creeley said.

                Yet the word still had some magic, and the groping fingers dropped their bits of trash, and the gray, humanless bodies to which they were attached, shuffled back, one by one, away from the bags, from Maxwell, from the store, fading slowly into the morning rush of people like ghosts.

                ***********

                Maxwell could never quite describe the feelings he got when he stepped inside The Greasy Spoon. The store front eatery had many of the same smells as the house in which Maxwell had grown up. Even the building had some of the same features of that pre-war Victorian building, turn of the century designs painted over, but never totally eradicated.

                Easing through the door now, Maxwell felt as if he had just come home, despite the stench of burned eggs, souring milk, Pine Sol cleaner, cigarettes and coffee.

                The store’s pressed-tin ceiling sagged in the middle, the eras of paint pealing from it under the assault of heat and steam from the grill. Maxwell could nearly trace the room’s history, and in places, found his own place in that history, the present and that remote 1967 past when this place had not been an eatery at all, but a head shop.

                On some warm mornings, Maxwell could still smell the marijuana, which had burned for so long and at such an intensity that had it worked its scent into the wood. A close study revealed the screw holes for the black lights and the painted-over brackets for the stereo speakers.

                On mornings after a night of drinking the images of the past struck him particularly hard, recalling not just the long hair and beads, but the emotional turmoil of one then 16-year-old Maxwell trying to make sense of the changes going on around him at that time: the riots in Newark and Detroit, the insanity of his grandfather, and the death of his Uncle Charlie in Vietnam.

                "Is this really the same place?" he wondered. "What on earth keeps bringing me back here, why now after twenty years? Is something I missed that fate has forced me to come back and find?”

                Jack crowed the moment he saw Maxwell, his bulky shape waddling from one end of the long counter to the other, scratching out orders on his greasy pad.

                 "Finally!" he yelled.

                Around Jack stood the disaster Maxwell had expected: dishes piled high around the sink and stove.

                Jack -- with catsup stains splattered his apron  touched with mustard and grease – looked wounded, and struggled to fill the surge of order pressing at him through the service window. A line stretched from the counter to the door, with Jack just quick enough to keep people from rioting, new patrons filling the seats at the tables and counter just as the previous patrons finished and left.

                "Help me, Maxwell," he said. "Grab an apron, I m swamped."

                Maxwell weaved his way through the line, clouds of cigarette smoke curling around him. Behind the counter, the disaster proved even more intolerable: spilled food, broken dishes, soiled rags forming an obstacle course through which Jack somehow managed to make his way. Trails of unidentifiable liquid dripped from the arms of his suit jacket like melting wax.

                "Look at yourself, Jack," Maxwell said. "Why do you insist on wearing a suit and tie in here?"

                Jack, with three plates balanced in two hands, grinned over his shoulder, his deep set of brown eyes glittering under the over hang of his brows. "Dressing for success, my boy," he said, then proceeded to serve several customers at once, mixing up their order, attempting to understand their complaints though each jabbered at him in Spanish.

                Maxwell stepped up to the take out window where the numerous familiar faces stared back, nameless men and women who he knew from daily contact. Some grinned, toothless mouths shaping out the few shattered bits of English they needed to get them breakfast or lunch.

                "Eggs," one said, though neglected to say sunnyside up or overeasy, scrambled or omelet. Maxwell slapped a fried egg on a roll, salted it, patted it with catsup and shoved it through the window on a plate.

                Order followed order, each set of greedy hands accepting what Maxwell dished without complaint, each anxious to catch the next bus out to jobs along the north end of town. Many of the men worked in the paper mills in Saddlebrook and women as housemaid for the rich families in Wayne. Some men shovel stone for day by day gigs at distant construction sites in the Meadowlands, trucked off from the local union hall if they got there on time.

                Today they seemed particularly anxious – Jack claiming in between his trip to pick up dirty plates from the tables that the first bus had broken down, causing a backup and panic.

                "That's the third time this month," Jack grumbled. "Things just haven't been right since Public Service sold out.”

                "It's not just the buses," Maxwell said. "I've noticed things going wrong in other place around town. There's been a lot of fires down in the Historic district.”

                "That place is a dump," Jack said. "The only historic in that section of town is the human wreckage that sleeps there or uses the hollowed out buildings to shoot their dope. The city ought to knock the whole thing down and start over."

                "Let s talk about something else," Maxwell mumbled, unwilling to get into an old argument.

                "Fine," Jack said, leaning on the counter so that his shirt sleeves absorbed additional grease. "Let s talk about your night time habits."

                "What about them?" Maxwell asked,

                "You seem to be going out more often and coming in later." 

                "Once a week is not often."

                "Don't plow me with that bullshit," Jack said. "You're out more than once a week. One night you stay till the bar closes. But other nights you come in stinking of beer."

                 "So I stop for a beer," Maxwell said. "What's wrong with that?"

                 "Nothing s wrong with having a beer. I have my share every week. But you're hanging out in a bad place," Jack said. "You don't know the kind of crowd that populates that place."

                "You exaggerate, Jack," Maxwell said. "I'll admit the place has changed since they played jazz there. But the people are more interesting now."

                "And dangerous. That's a mob bar, Max, and you walk in like a lamb, giving them every chance to devour you."

                "You're my room mate, Jack, not my mother," Maxwell said, poised over the sink as he struggled to scrub the hardened grime from some of the plates.

                "I'm not trying to be your mother," Jack said. "But even your old room mate would agree, you're playing with fire."

                 You're not Creeley either," Maxwell snapped. "I don't need you to bring him into this."

                "If I thought he could convince you to stop going to places like that, I'd give him a call," Jack said.

                "I go to one bar, Jack," Maxwell said. "It isn't like a take a tour."

                "You go to the wrong bar," Jack said. "Why don't you pick some place safe – across the border in Clifton?"

                "We've been through this before, Jack. I know how you feel about Paterson. You've told me a thousand times. And you know how I feel. That bar has history for me, so I go there from time to time."

                "Bah! What can any bar in Paterson know about history?"

                "You'd be surprised," Maxwell said, fixing the stopper in the sink again for a refill of fresh water.

                "If you want a place with real history, I can take you to places in New York, like McSorley's, where numerous American presidents used to wet their whistles."

                "I don't know about other presidents, but George Washington drank here in Paterson, and Hamilton helped establish this city."

                "Washington came to this fucking city to drink? Why on earth would he bother?"

                "For a number of reasons I won't bother going into right now," Maxwell said, "though Garret Mountain was part of the attraction. He camped there during the war. From the heights he could keep an eye on British troop movements."

                "Hey, I'm not stupid," Jack said. "And I've read enough American history to know Washington didn't fight no battles in Paterson."

                "Nothing in Paterson," Maxwell said, "but he did fight a few sorties to the south. This was part of his retreat from New York. He and Lafayette stayed here. They visited a place called the Passaic Hotel."

                "And where exactly would that be?" Jack asked, giving Maxwell a sharp sneer.

                "The old hotel burned down a long time ago," Maxwell said, ignoring Jack's tone. "Nobody really knows where it was exactly."

                "Yeah I believe that," Jack said. "I also believe Washington slept everywhere in Northern New Jersey people claim. What do you take me for? I may be from the mid-west, but I'm not stupid."

                "People have to sleep at night, even Washington," Maxwell said. "I'm sure if I followed behind you with a road map, I could put up a few hundred signs for places where you've slept, too. And more than one history book mentions his coming here. But if that's not enough I can show you something better than a sign. I can show you where he and Lafayette carved their names in stone near the falls."

                "Never mind!" Jack groaned. "I'm not going to crawl down into that pit so you can prove your point. But I do want you to come with me to McSorley's some night."

                "All right," Maxwell said. "The moment I can spare the time."

                The day went worse than usual, so busy, Maxwell just stopped when it was over, when all the dishes were washed, when all the tables scrubbed, when all the containers of mustard and mayonnaises and katsup were sealed and put into the refrigerator. He just stopped and stared, his legs and arms feeling the growing ache.

                "This was a Saturday?" Jack grumbled, obviously as weary as Maxwell. "Old man Harrison ought to jump for joy for all the money we made him today."

                "Yeah," Maxwell said, examining the room, noting a few things still undone. "Leave the rest. I'll come in tomorrow and finish up."

                "You mean you're not going to stay until every corner is dusted?" Jack asked.

                "I'm tired, Jack," Maxwell said, disliking the tone and the direction the conversation always took from this point.

                "It's all those late nights as the bar," Jack said. "If you live the night life, you have to sleep late."

                Maxwell stared at the back of his hands, at the tips of his fingers now wrinkled from hours in dishwater. The grease showed around his nails and his dug some out with his thumb nail.

                "Are you going over to that bar again tonight?" Jack asked.

                Maxwell paused, the door open just enough to emit outside air and the sound of traffic, cars fleeing downtown before sundown.

                "What if I am?"

                "Then, I would guess that you were in love."

                Now, Maxwell turned, and stared over his shoulder, the outside air blowing his hair in the wrong direction. He made no move to correct it.

                "In love? With who?"

                "The dancer you wrote the song for," Jack said, still beaming with his unchallenged humor.

                "That's ridiculous," Maxwell said. "Besides, she worked the club last night. She never works two nights in a row, and she never works on a weekend. Not when there's a home game tomorrow."

                "Home game?"

                "She's a New York Giants' fan -- at least, that's what I've heard. She goes to all the home games, and many of the away games, too. She'd no more miss one of them than stop breathing."

                "Then why are you going to the club?"

                "To relax. To sketch out stuff. The last time times I was there, she had her eye on me and nearly made it impossible to take any notes."

                "Notes! Notes! That's all you seem to do. What good do those notebooks of yours do, collecting dust on the shelves at home?"

                "They're for the future," Maxwell said. "I'm not always going to be here, and when I'm not, I'll need them to remember what this was like."

                "That's crazy."

                "Tell that to Creeley," Maxwell said. "He's the one who said I should."

                "Fine! I will. The very next time he calls."

                "Good night, Jack," Maxwell mumbled and moved through the door to the street. "Don't wait up."

                "I won't," Jack shouted, just as the door shut.

                Maxwell stared through the greasy glass for a moment, watching Jack's ghostly head shake slowly from side to side, trying not to appear as enraged as he was. Maxwell chuckled, then turned towards Market Street and ran smack into a bum.

                At first, neither he nor the bum appeared to know what happened, staggered back from the impact for a step or two, the mingled scents of grease and street between them. Maxwell didn't even recognize the man immediately, having glimpsed him only once before in the dark -- and that time, the man did not wear a black or dented bowler hat.

                "Why don't you0 looks out where your going," the small man squealed, only half his mouth able to shape the words, the whole right side of his face like melted wax -- a smearing mask of horror that sent Maxwell staggering back yet another step.

                "Me?" Maxwell said. "You're the one that's charging along here. This sidewalk is crowded. You shouldn't be running. Someone's bound to get hurt."

                "We does what we wants," the short man said, recovering the contents of a now-torn brown paper bag -- which he an obviously been carrying -- tow cans of Campbell's tomato soup, one can of A&P brand tuna fish, and a package of Wonder bread rolls -- the bit of mold around one edge belying the myth about the bread's chemical content.

                "Then don't complain," Maxwell said. "What are you in a rush for anyway? You can't be looking to catch a bus. That's not due here for a half hour yet."

                The gnarled man glanced with his good eye at the blue face of the bank clock diagonally across the street.

                "We doesn't catch buses, oh no," he hissed with a laugh. "We never catch buses. Bad drivers doesn't likes the way we smells. Oh, no, we goes home to her, we do. We goes home to be with her."

                Maxwell had no idea of who this "she" was nor did he care. He had recovered from the contact and hated the smell, agreeing totally with the bus driver for having refused to let such a vile creature board his bus.

                "Fine, go," Maxwell said, stepping aside with an exaggerated hand gesture motioning the man to pass. "If you're in that much of a hurry, don't let me stop you."

                But the small man did not seem in any hurry now, clutching the cans to his chest with his one good hand as he one good eye studied Maxwell's face.

                "We knows you," he said. "You's the one that’s stops us on Market Street, yes?"

                "Look, I'm not here to be questioned by you," Maxwell said, his face growing red as he again motioned for the man to go.

                "You wouldn't gives us money, no," the gnarled man said, taking a hobbling step towards Maxwell. "You says then for us to go away, too."

                "And I meant it," Maxwell said, backing up as the other man advanced, an unwitting partner to a perverted dance, a dance other people began to noticed on both sides of the street. Many were attracted not by the crippled man, but on Maxwell's growing animation that the man go away, his waving and his shouting. "I don't have to give you anything. I work hard for my money. I don't see where it is my place to feed and clothe every single welfare case that sticks a hand out at me..."

                Maxwell stopped abrupted, aware that he had said more than he'd intended, his hands shaking, his heart thumping inside his chest, and his face so red he looked as if he suffered a stroke. Then, his mouth snapped shut, and he quickly stepped around the figure, hurrying his step, pushing faster and faster away from the embarrassing scene.

                Behind him, the gnarled man hissed, then chuckled, though by the time Maxwell reached the corner and turned, the man had vanished, slipping onto to Broadway, headed in the direction of the homeless shelters along the East side of town.

 

 

  Paterson main menu 

email to Al Sullivan