Month: May 2019

Not long after Santiago Holmes died, I asked my mother why she had taken such care of him. She had moved away from Berwick by the time he passed and was living 45 minutes north in South Hampton. She’d left Berwick after I graduated college, saying there were too many old memories lurking in the streets. I didn’t know what she meant, but I was 22 and not coming home for anything, so the move didn’t matter much to me.

I had settled myself in New York City, far enough away where I could get home if there was an emergency, but not so close I could go home every weekend or feel guilted into doing so. I called ma once a week, most often on my walk home from work. I did so until I ended up moving back to Berwick, but that wasn’t until after Santiago Holmes died.

While Santiago was sick, I would talk to Ma when she was in the car. She drove to and from Berwick every night once Santiago was diagnosed. I could hear the weariness in her voice each time we talked, but didn’t know what type of support to offer.

She was named branch manager of a Berwick Trust in South Hampton. A move that could have happened in Berwick had she not held the opportunity at arm’s length for years. Being herself she was unable to work “banker’s hours,” so she put in full 10-11 hour days at the bank, then she would get in her car and drive to Berwick. She would cook dinner for Santiago, clean his apartment, do the laundry or a million other things to make sure he was as comfortable as possible. 

He still worked in the cemetery. When Pap passed, he’d been given the job of caretaker. Pap had demanded that from the board of directors. Even in death, Pap had a final poke at the town. He knew people didn’t like Santiago Holmes being involved in dimming the last light their loved ones would experience on Earth or caring for their memorials. It was Pap’s final middle finger to the town.

With Santiago’s illness the calls between Ma and I had become short. I couldn’t stand the guilt of hearing her sounding so bone-weary, while I was hundreds of miles away from all of it. I think she it was fine with her because most of the time when I called I complained about some aspect of my life and as time went on I don’t think she had the energy to push me back from the ledge of that week’s imagined crisis.

Ma never once called me in all the year’s I was in New York, except when she found out about Santiago’s diagnosis. I’d never seen or heard her in tears before, but I could tell she was fighting them off when I picked up the phone. My heart skipped three or four beats, as my imagination ran off to all the potential scenarios that would cause her to call me in tears.

“The worst thing has happened.”

“What is it Ma? Are you okay?”

Through a stifled sob she said, “Santiago has been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer.”

I didn’t realize how tense I was until the wave of relief washed over me at those words, “Oh, okay. You’re okay though?”

“Me? What? No. I’m not okay. Santiago is going to die.”

I’d spent summers working for him in the cemetery in college after Pap had died. We felt out over a burial the summer before my senior year of college, more than 20 years ago now. I hadn’t said a word to him in all that time.

I’d like to say it was the anger from our fall-out that made me so indifferent to his passing, but I know it wasn’t. Time had moved me past the anger. No, my indifference was due to my being a bitter, self-centered, middle-aged man, so my reply was to be expected.

“That’s too bad, but it’s not surprising given the amount he drank. I’m surprised it took this long.”

“That’s so uncharitable of you. I raised you better than that,” Ma said, hanging up the phone.

I skipped our regular call for the next few weeks out of my fear. She wielded guilt with the deft hand of a surgeon. I felt guilty for waking up most days, so the silence between us caused me to ache. I would have crumbled had she made the slightest cut with her tongue.

After a time, the guilt of not talking became too much and I called. It was as though nothing had happened. Ma’s normal, pleasant disposition was back. She asked after all things me, and as per usual, I neglected to ask anything about her.

When I did remember to ask, she’d say she was busy with work and driving between Berwick and South Hampton. The exhaustion was in her voice whether I asked how she was doing or not. It made her sound fragile, a word I had never associated with her. I left many of our calls unsure of what I should do, so I did nothing.

Even though he was a major cause of her exhaustion, I would often neglect to ask after Santiago Holmes. He was a toxic balloon held between us and I didn’t want it to burst.

I’d let him run on for a while, wanting the story to run its course, but even then I could see there was some hesitation – a change in delivery – at the point when he made it in to the Tavern.

“You don’t know what you said?”

He squirmed, uncomfortable with the question. This was a man, who up to that point in my life, I had never seen uncomfortable, and I never would again. He shook his head.

Pressing my advantage I said, “You have to know.”

“I don’t have to know anything. I was dead drunk,” a hard edge came into his voice, matching the black cloud that passed over his face. 

“Tell me.”

Another look passed across his face. Not black rage, but something more dangerous from this man who was always agitated: calm.

He shrugged his shoulders, “If you think you can handle it…”

“Please, I haven’t said anything through this point.”

“Alright then. No interruptions.”

I nodded my agreement.

“I only know what I said, because Pap told me the next day. He had this bemused look on his face that told me it was quite a show. As he recounted my words I understood why he had enjoyed it so much. 

“I only knew the words I spoke because many were the nights I sat at the top of the stairs listening to my parents. My father would rail against these people to my mother when he’d get home from a night of imploring them to invest in the new equipment needed to keep the mills running.

“I accused Stan Millen of selling out the town. He’d had an opportunity to refurbish and move into one of the mills to produce his clothing. My father had offered him the space dirt cheap in hopes of reinvesting the money he made in the other mills, but Stan had refused. Instead, six months after saying he wasn’t looking to expand, he moved his entire production to China, telling my father even with the deal on the mill, the savings on the labor overseas were too good for any reasonable businessman to pass up. 

“His seat on the City Council seemed ironic considering the actions he had taken. I told this to the bar.

“I asked Zeke Watson why the shoe company he had founded had stopped buying their textiles from the Holmes mills? Answering for him I spoke of Vietnam and cheap labor and materials.

“This brought up the question of why he kept such a stranglehold on his seat on Holmes Textile’s Board of Directors? It felt a bit hypocritical. A position I asked the bar to weigh in on.

“Linda Knox was president of the state power company. She sat on the Berwick Commerce Committee. I brought to the room’s attention that she had been a driving force behind the damming of the Melanski for the power company’s use. 

“This had cut off more than half of the mills’ natural power supply and forced them to purchase electric, just as she was raising prices on electricity across the state. It took a big chunk out of the mills’ profits by increasing their electrical costs multiple times over.

“The move was great for the power company as their profits had soared, but the mills began making their first layoffs soon thereafter.

“Will Braithwaite, president and chief loan officer of the Berwick Savings and Loan was at the Tavern that night. My father had never once asked for a loan. Not one cent had he asked from anyone, until he was left with no choice. He was desperate for the money to bring in the equipment needed to produce new synthetic fibers that were becoming all the rage.

“Will Braithwaite denied the loan, stating there was too much uncertainty in the industry, citing textile mills failing across the country. Instead, he encouraged my father to let go his employees, sell off what he could and spend the rest of his days living off the profits the family had accumulated over the years.

“Not a week later, he granted a loan to Zeke Watson that allowed him to grow his operations in Vietnam. So much for the bank’s slogan, ‘Here for Berwick, here for you.’

“Then there was Big Mike Tatum, the foreman. He was a huge man, well over six-and-a-half feet tall and at least that far around. He had a barrel for a chest and tree trunks for legs. His hands were the largest I’d seen, calloused and cracked from years at the loom, but still strong enough to crush walnuts. He was a larger than life character and an agitator.

“He had convinced the workers to form a union. With that accomplished, he began to work non-stop to convince the men to strike for better pay, more time off, better insurance, and so on. There wasn’t a Friday or Saturday night he wasn’t holding court at the Tortoise, trying to convince then men to hold out for more.

“As business began moving overseas, he pushed harder and harder for concessions stirring up fears of reduced hours, cuts to benefits and lost jobs.

“For years my father had kept an open dialogue with all the employees in the mills. Anyone from a new hire to a 30-year man could come into his office and air out their concerns. He believed in transparency, and didn’t want anything hidden from the employees. 

“Because of this dialogue, the men knew the troubles the company was experiencing and they understood the moves my father was making to keep the mills running.

“Big Mike wanting to prove himself as savvy a businessman as those he drank around at the Tavern kept pushing my father even after every concession he granted. And my father did grant them every last thing they wanted. He understood their struggle. We lived in the middle of it.

“I’d heard Big Mike’s deep voice thundering out many at the Tortoise blaming my dead father for the downward turn in the men of Berwick’s lives. It was the same voice I’d heard coming from behind my father’s office door on one of my after school visits, begging him for more money for the men, and a small loan for himself, to get to next Friday.

“Well, that night I told Big Mike he wasn’t much of a leader, or much of a man for that matter. I told him my father had spent sleepless nights pacing the floors of the house trying to figure out new ways to help the men and grant the concessions Mike kept demanding while keeping the mills solvent. I told Mike if he’d worked his hands as hard as he worked his mouth when the mills were running, they might still be running to this day.

“According to Pap, it was after that he hit me. Pap claims never to have seen a man take flight until Big Mike slugged me.

“I guess it was a good thing I’d had all of Coop’s ‘shine because I didn’t feel a thing, and I don’t remember any of it. I do recall your mother standing above me with a golden light over her head, handing me a towel wrapped around a chunk of ice. She guided the hand holding the ice pack to the back of my neck, then I don’t remember much again.

“I woke up back in the apartment, so I figure Pap must have got me home. He’d left a note saying we were taking the day off.

“Anyhow, you’d think, maybe having put these truths out there, the people of Berwick might have started thinking about the town ‘leaders’, and maybe, just maybe started cutting me some slack. They might start looking at me with less pity and anger, and just treat me like a human. I didn’t want their respect, at least not any more than they would give to any other human being. I hadn’t done anything to earn it, but I also hadn’t done anything to earn their ridicule either, though that didn’t stop them from piling it on.

“Nope. None of the above happened. If anything, the pity left their eyes and was replaced by a darker hatred. It’s like I said before, it was easier for them to go on hating a dead man’s name than trying to dig beneath the surface of his ‘failings’ and see whom else might have been to blame. My father wasn’t innocent of all blame, but he didn’t act alone either.

“The working class hated me because of my last name. The upper class hated me because I knew their dark secrets, and I’d told them to the town, so what if no one understood or believed me. I was a living, breathing sign of their guilt, their culpability. Look that word up.

“After that night, I stopped trying to talk sense to anyone. Stopped trying to clear the Holmes name. I stopped my full moon ramblings. I decided it was easier to live with their hatred. I took to hating them back.”