Cliff Chatsworth, Boxing Couch, Gibbon’s Gym – The First Day

            Cliff Chatsworth waited on the corner of Franklin and Hennepin for the street-car to take him across the river to Pig’s Eye.

It was still dark and there wasn’t any activity on the street, with the exception of old-blind Arnie setting-up his newsstand.

            There was a fellow helping him who Cliff recognized from Gibbon’s Gym, or The Rose as the fighters called it, in the basement of the Hamm’s Brewery where he did some coaching.

Johnny Holiday was his name, and Cliff thought he was a promising boxer, even though at this moment he was moving about like a drunk. It was an early start to the day, probably just a late night for the boy, he thought to himself...but still, booze and boxing don’t mix, may as well be pouring talent in the gutter.

            He couldn’t make out their conversation but they were laughing a good bit. It appeared to him that the two of them knew each other well, and Johnny was being of service, which he took as a sign of good character.

            Cliff had gotten his paper before Johnny had pulled up in his convertible. He held it folded tight and read a column off the front page, and he allowed his mind to wander…

It had been five days since the last gunfight in the city, and there had been no other murders to speak of. These violence-free days were the longest stretch since January, when Karl Thorrson’s war with Colonel Forrester had begun…and which now appeared to be over, with the Giant Thorrson having gotten the upper-hand.

            Cliff had worked for the Colonel when he was younger, not directly, but he had met and spoken to him a couple of times…though never about business. At sixteen he had taken a post as a road agent, their objective was to stop commerce along the Mississippi, Minnesota and Red Rivers, the full length of the border Minnesota shared with the Lakota Confederacy.

            After that Cliff had spent a dime in the Stillwater Penitentiary for Bank Robbery, a job he had done on the Colonel’s behalf. He never got any help from the old man, not even so much as a word of thanks for his service.

            Those were the breaks, Cliff told himself while he did his time.

He might have had a great life as a gangster, he certainly enjoyed it while it lasted; he might also have ended up in an early grave like so many of the fellows who had lost their lives in the year of terror St. Anthony had just gone through.

            Cliff tried to shake these thoughts from his head.

There was no escaping the past, and he had learned to box in prison…coaching came natural; that’s what they told him down at the gym. He was on the straight path now, following the sweet-science, and through it he had found his purpose, so he had no regrets.

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Jean Francois, Old Man on Campus - The First Day

            Jean Francois sat on his stoop watching the rain fall.

            It had been a quiet day at Augsburg even with students beginning their return to campus. The heat of August and the impending storm kept the traffic muted.

            After weeding his garden in the morning, Jean swept his sidewalk and scrubbed his front steps. Now he sat on his porch at his home off Riverside, smoking his pipe and sipping brandy.

He was enjoying a quiet afternoon, just as he thought he would when he was a younger-man working for the Park Board.

He had been hoping to spend the day watching blonde-haired Lutheran coming back to school, Jean never grew tired autumn’s annual peregrination, of commencement with all the students dressed in their best, and the girls showing a little more leg every year…it was why he built his hose here across the street from the theatre arts building and the athletic field.

Jean stared at a patch of peeling paint on his window trim, he had not planned on touching the east side of the house until next spring. He felt a sense of dismay upon seeing it at this time of year.

 Perhaps it was due to the excessive heat and rain we had endured over the summer, Jean thought, though in his heart he blamed himself for a job poorly done.

While sitting on his porch he watched a nice sedan pull up to a sudden stop across the street. He recognized Dr. Johnson driving it, a distinguished member of the faculty who had joined the college in the previous year.

Jean had been instructed to monitor his comings and goings for Ermes Batelier, the Commissioner of Parks, a very powerful man in the city, and jean’s former boss.

When Dr. Johnson had first come to campus Jean had received a call from the Commissioner who had asked him to keep tabs on the man and to make regular reports of his activities, including the company he kept. He told Jean that he would call for the reports as needed.

Jean was happy to do it, and happier to see an extra ten dollars a week appear in his pension check for his troubles.

It wasn’t a bad life, he thought.

The tall and slender, bird-like Dr. Johnson got out of his car and rushed into the building where his offices were, just as the heavy rain began to fall.

  Jean thought he looked disheveled, his clothes were already damp, if not with rain then he had soaked them with sweat.

Jean had never seen the professor in such a state, though he nearly always radiated a sense of nervousness, as if he was always expecting the worst and was never satisfied with anything.

Jean shook his head in judgement, an unpleasant fellow he thought.

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King Hakon of Norway - The First Day

            King Hakon was alone in his council chamber. He was busy examining maps of his holdings in Europe and America where they lay in bas relief on top of modular tables.

He touched them lightly, his fingers brushed across the contours of the arctic circle, from Norway to Greenland and Iceland, from the Canadian Rockies to Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.

Hakon’s people had been migrating into Alaska, which Hakon had purchased from the Russians in exchange for military support for the Romanoff Czar, in his war with the Bolsheviks.

The Norwegians and the Russians, the Vikings and the Rus, together they had squeezed Finland and Sweden. They had secured stability and independence for themselves, fomenting an age of ascendancy fueled by Alaskan Gold.

At the end of the Great War the German Kaiser had taken possession of Canada, and now Germans and Austrians, Poles and Czechs were flooding into Hudson Bay and settling the Canadian interior.

Seizing control of the Canadian provinces had been the Kaisers aim from the outset, and at the end of it, when the English and French finally sued for peace, the Kaiser demanded their holdings in the great northern frontier in exchange for a relative degree of autonomy in the government of their respective nations.

Hakon was not keen on these developments, but he had seen them coming for years, and he advocated policies that allowed his own people to push east into Canada, from Alaska to Winnipeg, across a vast landscape that was largely unexplored by Europeans.

Tall mountains, covered in glaciers, marked the border of his domain; but the Canadian interior was wide open and impossible to police or defend by ordinary means, and the Norwegians were eager to control as much of it as they could.

Hakon had received word from Winnipeg, concerning an old comrade of his from the war for independence. His friend Bjorn Elmquist had been smuggled across the border from Minnesota, he was in desperate condition.

Bjorn had received a blow to the head with an axe…from his wife. It should have killed him, but it didn’t…yet the attending physician wrote that it almost certainly would, given time; meanwhile his friend was paralyzed and had lost the ability to speak.

Hakon was being asked to give Bjorn succor, believing that he would recover. The physician indicated that his old friend would remain in a permanent vegetative state.

Hakon believed that Bjorn’s associates, the Magnusson sisters and Karl Thorrson, whom he knew and considered to be degenerates, though dangerous…were merely grifting.

Nevertheless, Hakon had written an order to provide for Bjorn in Winnipeg until his death from natural causes. Bjorn had sacrificed much for him during the war and he deserved to be taken care of. Thorrson had also fought in the wars and had been a capable soldier, but Hakon neither liked nor trusted him.

If Thorrson is grifting, the king thought, I will not begrudge him taking something for himself.

Hakon stared intently at the map of Minnesota and the border it shared with the Lakota Confederacy along the Minnesota and Red Rivers.

He stared so intently at the base relief he thought he could see his canal being dug between the two rivers, anticipating the trade that would be flow north from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay, into the great Cities he would build throughout the tundra, and he considered whether the Magnusson sister’s might be of some use along the way.

 

Luke Ingelson, Muscle – The First Day

            Luke Ingelson pulled over on Lake Street in front of Franky’s tavern. He had collections to make and he wanted to get them done before the weather broke for the worse. He knew the storm that was coming would be fierce because the air-pressure was bothering the broken drum in his cauliflowered ear, as it had been more days than not over the past few months.

            He got out of the driver’s seat and took note of the number of girls already walking the street. There was a steady flow of traffic on the strip, cars pulling up at the curb to place orders for dope: cocaine or heroin, both…and other pharmaceutical grade chemicals.

Luke was not a small fellow, he stood six feet two inches, and had been a ranked heavy-weight fighter when he was younger, but that wasn’t why the tough guys on the street stepped out of his way when they saw him coming.

He and his brother James had been all up and down Lake Street, from Excelsior to the Marshall Avenue bridge, they had a reputation among the local merchants, which they had earned, a reputation that put him and his brother on good standing with all the pimps and the players on the street, but it was his bosses reputation that mattered more than anything else, and Luke knew it.

His boss was the fearsome-giant, Karl Thorrson, who, in a very short time had wrested control of the city from one of its founders who represented the old power.

            Luke went into Franky’s and stepped up to the bar.

            There were a couple of hungry looking broads looking at him as if he might solve all their troubles for a day or two.

            Luke said good morning to them, and as if on cue they got up-off their stools, came over to him, and started rubbing their perfumed bodies against him.

            There wasn’t much fabric between their skin and his, and Luke could feel every bit of them as they hung off his broad shoulders, while with their purring voices they expressed their marvel at how big his muscles were.

            Just as one of them was reaching down the front of his trousers there was some commotion from the back room. Frankie came out with an envelope in his hand, apologizing to Luke for making him wait.

            Luke took the envelope and said, “No trouble Frankie. I’ll just take these two with me for the day, along with whatever they need to see them through, that’s all the tax I’ll charge you…this time.”

            Frankie looked at his girls and struggled with a response.

            Luke had just been joking, so he cracked a smile and slapped Frankie on the shoulder, but it occurred to him that he could have gotten away with it. Luke thought that was good to know…he planned on taking advantage of his new status at another time.

            “On second thought, ladies, I’ll take a rain check. We’ll make it a double-date with me and my brother.”

            “Sure thing,” they said, slightly disappointed. “Whenever you come around we’ll be waiting.”

            Luke took the envelope and continued his tour down Lake Street.

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James Ingelson, Muscle – The First Day

            James Ingelson sat behind the big desk in the office at the casino on Big Island.

            It was raining hard and the ferry driver wouldn’t leave the docks in Excelsior to bring new gamblers over to the park.

Those who were already at the casino could not leave, so that was good for business James thought, but not as good as new faces with full pockets and fresh hopes.

His employers main man, Ivan “The Wolf” Wolvenson, had just left the island in a small craft to go shake things loose and force the ferry driver’s hand.

The Wolf had a reputation; he probably wouldn’t have to say a word to the man, just one look from him and the wheels would get turning.

The poor sap of a boat driver was nice enough, James thought, but he would probably get replaced in short order, and then…disappear…the Wolf didn’t tolerate a man who wouldn’t obey an order.

James stared out the window into the dark and thought about the future.

The war for St. Anthony was just about over, his boss had won, and he was still alive…along with his brother Luke.

They had risked a great deal for Karl Thorrson over the past few months. They had done their share of dirty work, and James was hoping they would be rewarded now that it was over. He was hoping for more than cash, he wanted a position of authority running one of the operations, maybe I am sitting on top of it right now, James thought. The Casino, the Amusement Park, there was talk of a hotel.

James considered taking one of the boss’s cigars from the box on his desk, then he decided against it. The one-eyed giant he worked for was keenly observant, and James didn’t want to answer any questions about a missing stogie, no matter how much he wanted to light one of those fine cigars.

He poured himself a whiskey instead, put his feet up on the desk and sipped slowly from the tumbler.

He and his brother had gotten where they were by tenacity and loyalty, and by showing that they could keep their heads about them in a fight.

He was thinking that he had made a place for himself on easy street. Not that there wasn’t more work to do, but the war was over, and when they gathered all the pieces there would be plenty to distribute. His, and his brother’s share would be good.

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Genevieve La Salle, Nurse – The First Day

           Genevieve La Salle enjoyed her morning walk down Douglass Avenue, past the Seven Pools, across the bottleneck where Lyndale and Hennepin Avenues merged and through Jewett’s Park. She could always go around the southside of it, which was a more direct route to the hospital where she worked, but she preferred to walk over the bridge that crossed the little pond, where she would stop to feed the ducks and goldfish crumbs of crust from her morning slice of toast.

            It was a pleasant walk, even on a humid morning like this one.

She had left her apartment feeling well-composed and pretty, she walked slowly so as not to overheat. Her neat and freshly starched white uniform crinkled as she went, her white shoes were quiet on the pavement, and her long dark curls were tightly coifed in her nurses cap.

Genevieve was proud of her profession.

            She went past the shuffleboard and the tennis courts, where she might see some young men playing at their games.

She liked to see them shirtless and sweating.

Genevieve was always on the lookout for one particular fellow, a man who looked to be her age, perhaps a little younger.

He was tall and handsome, and wore a suit that looked like it needed mending.

            She would often see him sitting on a bench reading the paper, or perhaps writing in a notebook and smoking…which Genevieve did not like.

There was something mysterious about him and she found it alluring.

            On occasion they said good morning to one another. He was always polite, and she was always demure, but she did not see him today.

            Genevieve had been thinking about him, and now she felt the emptiness of disappointment that comes…not from losing something, but from not having her expectations met.

            She was still thinking about him when she checked into the nurse’s station at Abott Northwestern, east of the park.

            Maybe I’ll see him this afternoon, she thought to herself as she began her rounds, having quickly recovered from that sense of void, and now she was feeling hopeful again.

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Marcus Lexington, Student at St. Thomas – The First Day

            Marcus Lexington was in his room at the University of St. Thomas, busying himself with the chore of unpacking two weeks before the fall-semester was to begin, and he was missing his friend, Johnny Holiday.

            He had been hoping that Johnny would return to classes this fall, but when he checked into the dormitory, he was notified that he would have a new roommate for the upcoming term.

            Johnny had been his roommate but he also kept an apartment off campus, so it had been particularly nice for Marcus to have him as a roommate, because it meant that he nearly always had the entire place to himself, it was a small room after all. He liked the privacy, and he liked the extra space to spread out his studies.

            It was the desire to be alone that had him moving back to campus a week early. His parents house was only a couple of miles away, down Summitt Avenue. It was up on the hill near St. Paul’s Cathedral, overlooking the State Capital, downtown Pig’s Eye and its port on the Mississippi River. When he was home, his mother and father were always after him to be productive; if it was not them, then it was the servants who never let him be.

Marcus was just finishing arranging his wardrobe in the small closet and was about to unpack his books, being careful to confine them to his half of the room, when he heard voices outside his door in the Hallway.

It was the boys from the R.O.T.C., returning from their drills.

Johnny had been in the R.O.T.C. and Marcus wondered if any of them had heard anything about his return.

Marcus wasn’t the soldierly type.

He wasn’t athletic at all.

His mother said he was too fragile to go out for sports, and he had always been the subject of ridicule from the boys on the football team and most of the other jocks all-throughout his life….at least until last year, when he started college.

At St. Thomas he was able to make a place for himself helping the guys who struggled with academics: he tutored, he edited papers and helped them prepare for tests…if they asked.

More importantly, Johnny looked after him.

Johnny had gotten him a place on the rowing team, which was probably the greatest single favor any fellow had ever done for Marcus, not as an oarsman, he did not have the physique for that. Marcus was small and light and the made him the coxswain; he called the cadence and steered the boat and he had led the team to a championship the previous year.

Marcus was worried about his friend.

Johnny had gotten into some trouble and had been asked to suspend his studies, but it had been his understanding that Johnny would be allowed to return.

The captain of the R.O.T.C., a fellow named Bivens, had been one of the people who had filed a complaint against Johnny…for insubordination.

Marcus figured that Bivens would know if Johnny was expected back, so he stepped out into the hall to see if he could strike up a conversation and put the question to one of them guys, if not to Bivens himself.

When he stepped out of his dorm-room door, he got the feeling they were actually glad to see him.

Marcus had Johnny to thank for that.

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Benjamin Corcoran, Hustler - The First Day

           Benjamin Corcoran was a born hustler.

He was adept at the short-con.

He cheated at cards, he carried a set of fixed-dice and a double-sided coin; he played the shell game with tourists in the red-light district.

He always kicked up to the street-boss.

            Tonight, it was raining hard, and the only action to be had was honest work delivering brown paper bags to the cars that pulled up to the curb looking for a score, holding doors open for the dames jumping into the back seats of sedans, going out to turn a trick.

            On a lucky night, some big-spender might hand Ben a tip for his troubles, or he might get an offer to turn a trick himself.

            He was happy to make a dollar anyway he could; because he knew that if he wasn’t earning, he was spending, and he was always a day away from being broke.

            Ben watched a group of college kids park and go into the Round-up, they were all his age, and neatly dressed. He figured they were stupid as hell and would be easy to fleece if the storm would let up and the street dry out.

            Ben kept his eye on the Round-up, in case they should leave and go somewhere else; if it looked like the weather was clearing he would follow them and see what might come of it. 

            Down the block there was a skinny blonde girl, shivering and soaking wet; theoretically she was trying to turn a trick, but she was standing out of the way in the shadow of an awning.

            She was young and new to Lake Street, she looked hungry and sick, sick enough to die right there on the corner.

            It won’t be long, Ben thought. The poor in St. Anthony weren’t just the great unwashed, they were the great unloved. She’ll be forgotten when she’s gone, along with the few people who might know her name.

            From where he was posted Ben recognized someone else he knew, Johnny Holiday, a fellow from the Washburn Home for Boys. They had lived in the same dorm for a time.

            Ben recognized him right away but didn’t want to let on, or be the first one to say hello; when the moment came that they made eye contact, Johnny looked right through him like he was invisible.

            They had both came up through the orphanage, they had been on the streets together. Johnny hustled newspapers, while Ben hustled anyone and anything he could, and Ben was bothered by the fact that his old pal had not given him a nod of the head or even a hello.

            Ben didn’t think Johnny was being rude or anything, he thought perhaps he had changed too much from his years of grifting, while Johnny looked like he had only became more of himself. He considered the disappearing girl on the corner and had a moment of self-doubt.

            He watched Johnny buy a flask of whiskey in the drug store and take a long shaky pull off the bottle.

            Johnny has his demons too, Ben thought, with a little bit of satisfaction. He’s a drunk, He’s my age and he’s a drunk…

            He made a mental note of it, like scratching NB in the margins of a book.

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Zebulon Zenith, Working Class Man - The First Day

            Zebulon Zenith was glad to hear the whistle blow signaling an end to the workday, when he did, he and his crew headed for the gates without delay.

            He hung up his work hat, goggles and duster.

            He splashed some water on his face and washed his hands.

            He donned his bowler, grabbed his lunch box and thermos.

            He punched his timecard and left the flour mill off Main Street by the river.

            He walked up to Hennepin Avenue, on his way to the polka bar with the boys for a pint.

            It was raining hard, so Zeb walked swiftly, but he didn’t run. The weather felt good to him after a hard-hot and dusty day at the mill turning wheat into flour.

            As he passed the old church, Our Lady of Lourdes, he stopped to put a penny in the offering plate, it was his way of saying thanks for getting him safely through another shift, with all his fingers and toes in the right place.

Zeb dipped his fingers in the marble basin with the holy water in it, and crossed himself like a good Catholic boy.

            He waited in the front alcove for a minute while a hard bit of wind passed through. He took a couple of puffs on a Chesterfield and watched a long black car roll down the Avenue until it stopped next door to the polka bar, at the polonaise.

            He watched a tall-thin and strange looking man get out of the driver’s seat, go around the back of car to open the door for the two ladies who had been riding in the back.

They were too much in a hurry to get inside to wait for the valet.

            The two women who emerged from the sedan looked like movie stars when they into the lights under the canopy at Nye’s. They wore clear plastic raincoats that gathered beads of water along the surface, each one shining like a diamond; they appeared to be wearing little else underneath.

            Zeb felt his heart pounding like a man in love.

He walked toward them like he had a date with destiny; they were going to the same establishment, if not the same place, and he was mesmerized by their luster.

            Zeb was headed to the polka bar for some suds and a song.

The starlets were going for fancy cocktails at the polonaise lounge. They went in along the red carpet, turning heads as they entered the rom.

Zeb went in through the smaller door down at the foot of the hill, but they would all be inside together.

            He almost walked right into them, and would have walked right in with them if the ostrich like man they were with had not blocked his path and pushed him off.

            Zeb was dazzled, but the glamour began to fade as soon as the two beauties entered the building and left his sight. He took the measure of the awkward looking fop who stood in his way, knowing that he could have turned the guy into a pretzel if he had wanted to…which he did not.

            Instead, Zeb shook his head like he was shaking the water from his hat, got his wits about him and had himself a good laugh.

            He could hear the band playing, and he knew there would be a glass of beer waiting for him on the table; when he got inside he raised it to his friends and they all shouted hurrah!

Zeb didn’t know what they were cheering for, but he joined along.

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Willie Longfellow, Ferry Pilot - The First Day

           Willie Longfellow sat in the boat house at the Excelsior docks listening to the rain pound the tar roof of his little shack.

The wind that night was ferocious and he wouldn’t go out in the storm.

There were plenty of people wanting to take a ride across the water and get to the casino, but the wind was too strong and the chop too high for the paddlewheel he drove back and forth to Big Island.

Willie might have been a drunk, but he was a competent sailor, and he wasn’t going to risk his life or the lives of his passengers, he had too much respect for the forces of nature.

His boat house was cramped.

There was a small desk with a kerosene lamp and a phone, a wood burning stove that was cold at the moment, but there was a small gas-burner on top of it that he used to boil water for coffee.

In the space between those fixtures there was barely enough room for Willie to turn around.

He drank his coffee hot with brandy, and smoked his Navy Cuts with the narrow door cracked open. He tolerated the weather coming into the shack because it would be too hot inside if he didn’t have a little ventilation.

Willie knew that if he went to the boat the people gathered at the dock would expect him to make way for the island; they would pester him until he did something stupid.

He didn’t want the pressure, and for that same reason he had taken the phone off the hook. One of the fellows at the Casino had been calling again and again, demanding that he bring people over…and to do it now.

Willie Longfellow had his own agenda…he was too salty to care what anyone else had to say about the matter. He had been a boatswain in the Navy for twenty five years, and he had dealt with much tougher men than the Norwegian gang that had recently taken over the operation out there….that’s what Willie believed, though he frequently had to remind himself of it.

He was just in the process of doing that when he watched a small boat pull up to the dock with its running lights on. He watched the slender silver haired man people called The Wolf, get out of the boat and approach his little shack.

Willie Longfellow made eye contact with him and a chill ran up his spine.

He wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything, but he knew enough to see this man for what he was…a killer who walked through the storm as if the rain couldn’t touch him.

Willie took the last swallow of his boiling coffee, flicked the butt end of his cigarette out the door, pulled on his raincoat and hat, turned on his flashlight and went out into the storm.

He tried to ignore the Wolf as he passed him on the dock, he kept his eyes on the people waiting beneath the shelter, waving to them to let them know that it was time to board.

The Wolf stopped him and said, “You’re an hour late.”

Willie mumbled, “Better late than dead.”

Lightning struck the water with a long flash and rolling thunder.

 “You know…the weather,” Willie said as he moved on.

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Roy Decker, Shipping Magnate – The First Day

            Roy Decker ate his dinner at the Saint Anthony Club.

            He poured whiskey into his coffee at breakfast and drank ale with his lunch. He had two Manhattans before dinner and now he was on his second bottle of Bordeaux.

            There was a bloody steak on his plate, half eaten. There were the obligatory potatoes and a platter of sliced tomatoes, lightly dressed with salt and pepper. He ate slowly while he talked with his guest, the Commissioner of Parks, Mr. Ermes Batelier.

            The Commissioner was one of the most powerful men in the city, and Roy had significant gambling debts to a man who reported directly to him, the notorious gangster, Karl Thorrson.

            Roy was not from Saint Anthony, but had been living there for several years while he oversaw his father’s shipping interests between the Port of Saint Anthony on the Mississippi River and Duluth Harbor on Lake Superior.

            Shipping and rail were the family business, shipping and rail and iron ore.

            The Decker Company was millions of dollars in debt, which it had acquired while financing a canal project between Lake Superior and the mighty river. It was a project that did not make sense to Roy because the harsh winters in Minnesota, while posing no impediment to locomotives, would only allow the canal to be used six or seven months out of the year, if it was ever completed.

            The Commissioner was a big proponent of the canal, and for some reason Roy did not understand, his father was beholden to him. Roy would have liked to know why, but at the same time he did not really care; he found the massive project was an easy vehicle for him to hide his losses at the casino, while only requiring him to visit his office for 1 – 2 hours a day.

            Tonight the Commissioner was in an excitable mood.

            Roy sensed that something transformative was afoot, and the commissioner wanted to discuss a new project along the Minnesota River, the scale of which made Roy’s head spin.

            It would be subject to the same problems the current project had, only this project would extend farther north, into Canada, to Winnipeg and Hudson Bay.

It would be practically useless as a transit route, and it would be exposed along its length to the dangers of the Dakota frontier, where there were occasional incidents of hostility between the United States and the Lakota confederacy.

Roy did not care how his father spent his fortune, so long as the old man didn’t ask too much of him on the day to day. However, it seemed to Roy that a project like this might threaten his own inheritance, and that made Roy uneasy.

The thought of being poor terrified him, and being afraid was something he could not abide.

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