The Falls

  A cook! But no one laughed.

  It was said that Stonecrop’s windpipe had been injured in a street fight and that was why he spoke in mumbles and grunts; in fact, Stonecrop had a deep, hoarse voice but a tendency to stammer, out of shyness. It was Bud, Sr., his father, who’d been severely injured in the throat, as well as elsewhere on his body: the sergeant had been ambushed in Mario’s parking lot, beaten nearly to death with tire irons by assailants described as “coke-crazed Negroes” with a vendetta against him. (This was the official police report. At the first precinct, where he’d been assigned for most of his career, and among Stonecrop’s relatives, other facts were known about the beating and his subsequent physical and mental condition.) He’d been retired from the NFPD with honors and a full disability pension at the age of forty-two.

  It was expected that Bud, Jr. would go into police work, like his father. There were police officers, parole officers, prison guards among the relatives. But from the age of eleven Stonecrop had been drawn to his uncle Duke’s Bar & Grill on Fourth Street; after quitting school he began working there full-time. Duke’s Bar & Grill was near the first precinct and the City-County Building and had long been a popular hangout for NFPD officers and staff and for burnt-out veterans from the district attorney’s office. Always there was a shifting contingent of women at Duke’s, many of them lonely divorcées. Already by early evening the atmosphere in both the bar and the adjoining restaurant was boisterous, smoky and convivial. Jukeboxes in both favored elemental rock music of the 1950’s and country-and-western, turned up high. The TV above the bar was always on, broadcasting sports events, though no one could hear it. In the kitchen of the restaurant, Stonecrop and co-workers listened to deafening 1970’s rock music on a portable radio. The older kitchen workers appeared to be fond of Stonecrop, the owner’s nephew; he was willing to do what they called shitwork, scraping plates, hauling out garbage, scouring away grease and washing dishes. To reward him, the cook sometimes let him prepare meals, under his supervision.

  Of course no one in the Stonecrop family approved of Bud, Jr. as a kitchen worker. Was this a joke? A kid that size, and not dumb? (Anyway, not so dumb. He was at least as bright as his old man who’d graduated from Police Academy and made quite a lucrative career as a cop “with connections.”) There was continual pressure on Stonecrop to get a “real” job, a “serious” job, a job “fitting for a man.” Through relatives he began working with Parks & Recreation but nearly amputated his right foot working with a chainsaw. For a hellish winter season he was a rescue worker for Niagara County, going out with snow removal trucks on ten-hour emergency missions. One of his better-paying jobs was at a local quarry but he’d hated such zombie work and wound up drinking with older guys though he was under age at the time, returning home drunk, or not returning home. By the age of seventeen Stonecrop had grown to six feet two, two hundred twenty pounds, and so there was talk among the relatives of training him as a boxer. Stonecrop’s semi-invalided father Bud, Sr. began to fantasize Bud, Jr. as the next heavyweight champion of the world, returning the crown to the Caucasian race where it belonged. (There had been no American white champion since Rocky Marciano who’d retired undefeated in 1956.) But Stonecrop was a reluctant boxer. He was a street fighter by instinct, with a tendency to throw powerful round-house rights from the shoulder, and so he had no patience, let alone skill, for more devious strategies of jabbing, slipping punches, moving adroitly on his feet. Stonecrop could intimidate an opponent with his size only if his opponent was not his size, or larger. At the gym on Front Street, training half-heartedly for his first Golden Gloves tournament (which would be held in Buffalo), Stonecrop became sulky, sullen. His small antic eyes became bloodshot, his lips swollen and cracked. He had difficulty breathing through his nose, which was all cartilage, now flatter than ever; after a few rounds, he panted like an ox. His eighty-year-old trainer admonished him as you’d admonish a young ox: “Boxing isn’t about getting hit, kid. It’s about hitting the other guy. See?” Stonecrop lacked the language to protest. Flat-footed and mute he stood in the ring allowing blows to rain upon his unprotected head, face, torso. His big white body, covered in the damp pelt, exuded an air of stoic, wounded dignity, brooding upon its curious fate. I don’t want to hit some guy. I want to feed him.

  In his first Golden Gloves bout, at the Buffalo Armory, Stonecrop went down in fifty seconds of the first round, felled by a sixteen-year-old black heavyweight, and was counted out by the appalled referee.

  In this way, Stonecrop was allowed to quit the gym forever and to return to Duke’s Bar & Grill, working longer hours. (Still, his uncle paid him hardly more than the minimal wage.) Stonecrop’s father, sinking by degrees into more serious illness, often semi-paralyzed, would not forgive him, and never asked after Stonecrop’s work at the restaurant. When the cook quit, Stonecrop stepped in. He learned to execute orders swiftly and with increasing confidence. Though within a few months he became restless with the grill menu, preparing fatty hamburgers and cheeseburgers, pork sausage, fried eggs, bacon, buns, and toast, frying everything in shimmering grease. As a boy of ten he’d begun preparing meals at home in the absence of his mother and he had his own ideas about food, in defiance of his Uncle Duke. Lost in scowling concentration in grease-splattered apron and cook’s hat, slope-shouldered, head bowed over the chopping block, Stonecrop ventured to insert chopped Bermuda onions, green peppers and chili peppers into ground beef; he experimented with novel ways of preparing even Canadian bacon, Birds Eye frozen fish, chicken wings and chicken-in-the-basket, french fries. Stonecrop annoyed his uncle by using new types of pickles, potato chips, cole slaw. He developed his own spicy version of Campbell’s tomato soup, a staple of the restaurant’s menu, laced with spices and chunks of fresh tomato. He developed his own Italian dishes, primarily spaghetti and meatballs. His corned-beef hash and special chili began to find customers. In time, Stonecrop would develop an interest in “greens” other than iceberg lettuce, and in fresh vegetables instead of canned or frozen. Perversely, he came to prefer chunk cheddar cheese to sliced process American cheese for burgers, which narrowed Duke’s margin of profit. He had his own ideas about rib steaks, “chicken-fried” steaks, London broil and pork chops. Pork and beans, breaded halibut and cod cakes, even mashed potatoes. When customers began to remark upon, or to complain of, the new, exotic taste of Stonecrop’s burgers, his Uncle Duke lit into him in fury. “You little cocksucker, what’s this? What kind of shit is this?” The older man, shorter than Stonecrop by inches and slighter by perhaps thirty pounds, stabbed open a hamburger to reveal incriminating chips of onion, pepper, chili pepper in the meat. He took a bite, chewed suspiciously and took another bite, shook ketchup onto what remained of the meat and tasted it again. He conceded, “Well. It ain’t bad. It’s different, a little like dago food. But this goes on the menu as a special—Bud’s Burger. And next time you experiment in my kitchen, kid, tell me beforehand, or I’ll break your ass.” Red-faced, sullen, Stonecrop wiped his sweaty face on his apron and mouthed Screw you, so that the kitchen laughed loudly.

  As the months passed, Stonecrop began to acquire customers who liked his food. The burnt-out ADAs and the lonely divorcées were among the first.

  As Budd, Sr.’s health deteriorated, Bud, Jr. spent more time away from the house on Garrison. When he wasn’t working at the restaurant he cruised the city, along the river and into Buffalo and back in a meandering loop. He had a second-hand Thunderbird he’d bought with the intention of repairing but neglected instead. Sometimes he prowled the neighborhood on foot. He asked no girls out, had no apparent interest in girls. (That anyone knew of. It was speculated that Stonecrop might have had a secret life.) A hulky boy with a scowling, flattened, blemished face, dishwater eyes and that brutal shaved head, Stonecrop exerted a perverse attraction upon certain of the female customers at Duke’s, some of whom were observed waiting (in the bar) for the kitchen to close at 11 P.M., to take Stonecrop home with them. Though the shaved-head
ed boy’s mother had been missing for more than a decade, yet Stonecrop was frequently spoken of, by such women, as a “motherless boy”—“that poor, motherless Stonecrop boy.”

  Stonecrop’s father was an invalid at home, tended primarily by an older, unmarried sister. When he’d been in better condition, Bud, Sr. had made everyone in the family sign a document promising never to check him into a nursing home. Among the Stonecrops, as among most families in the Baltic Street neighborhood, such a desperate measure was rarely taken. Better to die at home, with your own kind.

  Better for whom, wasn’t asked. There were some things you just didn’t do, out of duty and guilt.

  It was observed that Stonecrop had become increasingly tense and short-tempered over his father’s decline. He’d fought with Bud, Sr. for years but maybe he loved the old man after all? Stonecrop was a mysterious boy, evolving into a more mysterious young man. By this time he’d dropped his old friends. Sometimes he took a weekend off from the restaurant and disappeared. At Duke’s, as his cooking came to be more appreciated, and new customers joined the old regulars, Stonecrop had a way of storming out of the kitchen if his feelings were hurt by his uncle. Duke fired him, and rehired him; and fired him again. But there were local restaurants keen to hire him, at good wages, so Duke hurriedly rehired him, grudgingly raising his salary. Stonecrop’s sense of family obligation must have been such, he kept returning to Duke’s Bar & Grill, like a kicked large-breed dog warily returning to his seemingly repentant master. “The little bastard has a mind of his own,” Duke said, with grudging approval. “But the premises are mine.” The Stonecrop men were not given to tactful speech, especially in their business dealings. When Duke called his hulking nephew “asshole”—“little shit”—“piss-pot”—“cocksucker”—Stonecrop reacted with indifference, knowing these to be backhanded forms of endearment; but when his uncle called him “stupid”—“retard”—“deaf-mute” in front of witnesses, Stonecrop reacted with violence. He might rip off his apron, throw it down and stalk out of the restaurant. He might smash plates, overturn platters of hot steaming food, or plates piled with garbage. Once, Stonecrop was observed seizing a heavy, hot iron skillet off a stove and advancing upon the older man with the apparent intention of killing him. The shaved-headed boy had had to be forcibly restrained by several NFPD officers who happened to be eating in the restaurant. “If we hadn’t stopped him, the crazy kid would’ve broke Duke’s skull.” This episode quickly became part of the Stonecrop family legend, recounted frequently, with mirth.

  One evening, Royall Burnaby and his sister, Juliet, were having dinner at Duke’s, seated in a booth against the outer wall, and there hovered Stonecrop in the kitchen doorway, brooding and impassive. This was an evening in November 1977, several weeks after Royall had moved away from home; Juliet had come to visit him in his apartment on Fourth Street. Brother and sister were talking quietly together. “Mom misses you,” Juliet said. “She keeps sighing as if her heart is broken.” Royall shrugged. With a knife and a fork he was idly beating out a rock rhythm on the Formica tabletop, accompanying Bill Haley’s classic “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” on the jukebox. Since moving out of the house on Baltic Street, Royall seemed older; even to himself he seemed more self-sufficient, and more secretive. He wasn’t nearly so lonely as he’d thought he might be. “I guess I miss you, too,” Juliet said, ducking her head as if embarrassed.

  The record ended abruptly, leaving Royall exposed. Awkwardly he said, “It doesn’t mean anybody loves anybody less, not living with them. It just means…” Royall’s voice trailed off, uncertain.

  Royall had ordered a large bowl of chili, into which he’d crumbled a handful of oyster crackers, and Juliette had ordered a Spanish omelette. Both Royall’s bowl and Juliet’s plate had been heated. On Juliet’s plate, in addition to the omelette, was a garnish of baby carrots and parsley, and thin sliced cantaloupe arranged like petals. The omelette was so exotically spiced and so packed with stir-fried tomatoes, onions, chopped green and red peppers, Juliet was having difficulty finishing it. What an enormous meal! It was like opening a familiar drawer, and something magical balloons out, you can’t quite recognize. And the cook had sent out a hefty basket of baking powder biscuits, hot from the oven. The waitress said, “He says it’s for you, it’s extra. No charge.” Royall regarded Juliet’s plate doubtfully. In an undertone he said, “That looks sort of runny. Is it any good?” Juliet said, “I think an omelette is supposed to be soft inside. Folded over, and soft inside.” Ariah, a hasty cook, had always prepared omelettes for the family by simply scrambling eggs and dumping them into a frying pan and letting the mass puff and whiten and congeal to something resembling a pancake; often, Ariah’s omelettes tasted of scorch. Royall had grown up with simple, crude tastes; he trusted only eggs that were toughly textured, even rubbery. Juliet said, “This is the most delicious omelette I’ve ever had. Want some?”

  “Thanks, no! I’ll take your word for it.”

  They saw that Stonecrop, the shaved-headed cook who was only a year or two older than Royall, had emerged from the kitchen to the rear and was behind the counter now, preparing to clean the grill. He’d been watching Royall and Juliet covertly but now he appeared to take no notice of them. Royall called over, meaning to be polite, “Hey, Bud. This is terrific. Both our dinners. You made this?” Royall meant well, but Stonecrop’s warm, flushed face darkened with blood as if he’d been insulted. He returned to the kitchen abruptly, the door swinging shut in his wake. Royall stared after him, struck by Stonecrop’s steely, anguished stare in the instant before he’d turned away. Juliet was folding her paper napkin, in silence. She’d eaten about two-thirds of the omelette and most of a biscuit and all of the lovingly arranged garnish.

  Royall muttered, “Shit. I guess I said the wrong thing.”

  Driving Juliet home to Baltic Street, Royall said, “That guy, Bud Stonecrop. He looks at me funny sometimes. What about you, Juliet?” Juliet murmured she wasn’t sure. “Like there’s something between us,” Royall said. “But—what?” Royall was uneasy thinking that the shaved-headed Stonecrop, of whom it was rumored he was built like a horse, had a thing for Royall’s eighty-nine-pound sister, at this time fifteen years old.

  11

  Shame, shame’s the name. You know your name.

  Come to your father in The Falls.

  It’s the anniversary of his death. The voices are clearer now. Less confused, and less reproachful. As if what Juliet will do, she has already accomplished. Like the fifteen-year-old Irish girl. Penitent, breathless, numbed bare feet in the wet grass.

  Juliet! Burn-a-by! Come come to us.

  Now at the railing above The Falls. Her hands gripping the wet railing. Her face wet with blown mist. Thrashing white-water rapids like the muscles of a great beast rippling beneath its skin. How many times Juliet has seen the Niagara River at close range and yet it’s different at this twilit time before morning, the eastern sky banked with cloud like dirty concrete yet laced with a faint golden-bronze light, it’s different, or Juliet is different, light-headed yet somber, yet smiling. Regretting only that she didn’t leave a note for her family, and now it’s too late.

  No turning back from The Falls.

  Burn-a-by! Burn-a-by! Come.

  The voices are more sympathetic, at close range. Juliet isn’t so frightened now. She isn’t unhappy. It isn’t unhappiness nor even sorrow or grief that has drawn her here. It’s knowing that this is right, this is the right place, and this is the right time. The voices in The Falls are not threats, and not admonitions. She hears them now as music. Like My country ’tis-of-thee she’d sung with other children at Baltic Street Elementary and the music teacher had singled her out for praise though Juliet had not known what ’tis-of-thee meant. Like Silent night holy night round yon virgin mother-and-child which was the most beautiful of the Christmas carols she’d sung but she had no idea what round you virgin meant, nor even, somehow, for she’d heard it as a single phrase, mother-and-chil
d, and there were heavenly hosts and hallelujah utterly mysterious to her, codified, like the vast world itself, in adult speech. Have faith, trust in that vast world to give comfort to you and to protect you, Juliet had tried, she’d tried to have faith, but she had failed. But now she would redeem herself, as others had redeemed themselves, in The Falls.

  It isn’t yet 6:30 A.M. Except for the overcast sky, it would be dawn. The embankment along the river, facing Goat Island, which will be crowded with tourists in a few hours, is deserted now. A heavy yellowish fog has been slowly lifting but billowing clouds are being blown westward from The Falls and as Juliet stares there’s a sudden schism in the cloud-impacted eastern sky and a glow as of phosphorescence in the river and in her mesmerized light-headed state Juliet wishes to believe that this is a sign; this is the vision meant for her alone, as the Irish dairy maid had a vision meant for her alone, long ago; a lightning-stroke of sunlight, and rising from the Gorge a giant, shapeless figure, nearly opaque columns of mist teasingly forming, dissolving, and reforming continuously out of the great Gorge. Amid the deafening roar of The Falls the near-inaudible but unmistakable murmur Juliet! Juliet! Come come to me it’s time.