Author: zpotter

That day all those years ago had stung me so much, I reverted back to seeing him as much of Berwick did: the dirty man who worked for Pap in the cemetery. He was mean and ornery, though to me, he had seemed to soften over the years, until that last day.

As a child I was scared of him. Ma or Gram would have him over for Sunday dinner, and I was always tense throughout. I knew what the kids at school said about him. Those words stuck to my brain like the dirt clung to him no matter how hard he tried to clean himself up.

More often than not he’d had so much to drink he couldn’t string clear sentences together. His efforts at civility ended in a slurred jumble that furthered my imagination’s opinion he was some type of ogre. He was never able to leave the dark cloud of hate at the door. It hovered above his head throughout the meal. He seemed so unhappy. I don’t know why they invited him.

On the rare occasions I put my old fears and fresher resentments aside and remembered to ask, Ma would give small updates on his condition. For quite a while he was able to go on working at the cemetery. 

“You wouldn’t know he was sick. He’s still working seven days a week. As he says, ‘people keep needing to be planted, god knows they won’t stop for me.’ He also mutters something to the affect of joining them soon enough. Have I told you he’s taken to calling it the ‘bone orchard?’

“I don’t think anyone in Berwick knows about his condition, and if they do, they don’t care a hoot. Did you know the cemetery committee hasn’t let him hire a helper in all the years since Pap passed? Incredible.

“I think there was some sort of pressure from one of those old coots who used to drink at the Tavern who never forgave Santiago for being a Holmes. These grudges are so foolish, as though one person, or one family could be responsible for the death of those mills. It was a collective effort by the whole town. No one shirks the blame. I’m sure there is something every last one of us could have done to keep them running.”

Another time when I asked, when he was further along, she said, “I’ve known a few people from work who’ve gotten cancer or been dealt other bad health hands, and not a one of them have reacted the way Santiago has. A few have jumped in and said, ‘hey, I’m going to fight this,’ but most have found themselves victims of some power not their own. They’ve blamed everyone and everything but themselves.

“Santiago has done neither. He’s just accepted it and tried to make some sore of peace with it. I think he feels guilty for the way he’s handled some parts of his life – though god knows if the people of Berwick didn’t push him to the edge. I think his guilt is driven by loneliness, and now, faced with the end, he’s alone and I think he has regrets. Of course, he never says it in so many words, but it’s in there when we talk, hidden below the surface.”

At my mumbled surprise over the mention of their talking my mother laughed, “you didn’t think I came down here everyday and puttered around without speaking to the man? No, I talk to him.

“I know you two had a falling out, but I don’t wonder if you were being too sensitive. Santiago’s bark was always so much worse than his bite. It was the drink. I tried to get him to stop, or relax it some, but I don’t think he could have lived with the hate in his life without it. I never quite understood if it was the hate that fueled the drinking or vice versa, but the drinking has won out and will rule this last act of his life.

“You’d think he might have stopped drinking, but he hasn’t. He knows the diagnosis and knows it’s killing him, but he’s the same old Santiago; ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’ he says to me when I chastise him at the end of each evening. 

“You won’t believe this, but he has almost an embarrassed smile when he says it. It’s almost as if he knows how ridiculous the sentiment is, though I can’t argue the position with him. It is how he lived his entire life, right on the knife-edge. If he hadn’t fought back against them…

“But he did, and that’s what has kept him alone,” the sadness in her voice that day almost broke my heart.

When Santiago Holmes passed, two years after his diagnosis, Ma called me.

“He was stubborn until the end,” she said, “he kept working right up until his body gave out. They found him besides a push mower on top of the hill you used to hate mowing. He had a good view of the entire place at the end. For some reason, it comforts me to know that.”

“He was a hard worker,” was the reply I found, “despite the beer, which might have made the work he did get done all the more impressive.”

“He was more than that. He was a good man. Misunderstood by most, but a good man all the same. I learned a lot from him.”

“That’s good Ma,” I replied, the disbelief in my voice – even as a middle-aged man – was the unspoken thought what could you learn from a drunk, aside from how to drink, or the numerous reasons to never take up the habit.

“You don’t give him enough credit. You think he was a dirty drunk who wasn’t worth a spare thought.”

Mother’s have a particular talent for reading their children’s minds, the shock at which dulled my protest and Ma was not to be slowed.

“You didn’t see the beauty of the man, fighting his own David vs. Goliath styled battle against a town pre-programmed to hate him. Did you know there were teenagers in this town, young ones, 13, 14-years-old who would scream hate at him in the streets? What did these kids know about the name Holmes? No one even calls them the Holmes Mills anymore. And these kids, how have they been affected? It wasn’t their parents who worked in the mills. Their parents were just starting to have their own thoughts when the mills closed for good.

“Maybe their grandparents were affected, but then they carried that ridiculous hatred down through the generations, passing it to their children, who passed it on to their children. Not one of those generations stopped to say, ‘wait a minute, what did this family do to me? Who were the Holmes’s? What did this guy who works in the cemetery do to me?

“No one in this town has ever asked that question. So it is no surprise that right up until the end, Santiago raged back at them. Who can blame him?”

“The people of Berwick?” I offered in crude jest.

“Right, but don’t you think , if they’re going to spit on someone because of their name, they should know something about that name? The Holmes family was not just the one in charge when the mills shut down. They also opened them and kept them running for over 150 years, providing a wonderful living for all these angry children’s ancestors. Why is it that history, which also didn’t affect them, isn’t remembered and taken into consideration?”

“I don’t know Ma.”

“It’s the epidemic of our time, this lack of touch with the past. It’s a shame that poor man had to stand on his own in the face of such senseless stupidity.”

I’d never heard this type of fire in my mother’s voice. I was conditioned to hear only weariness. I should have taken a hint from this new tone and not asked why he mattered so much to her.

“Ma, I get that he’s died and it’s sad, and I know it was awful how everyone in Berwick treated him, but he wasn’t the most pleasant guy. I know, you’ve outlined why we shouldn’t blame him for that, but don’t you think if he’d tried a little harder things might have been better for him?

“I mean, putting aside our differences, he was good to me when I was younger, but I’m not broken up about his death. He drank like a fish. It was only a matter of time before his liver gave up the fight. I dunno, he had a good run, but it was like he used to say, ‘we all gotta die at some point.’ So I don’t quite understand why he means so much to you.”

I could her gather herself on the other end of the phone, “I was never as good to him as I should have been. I tried so hard, but I felt the stupid pressure of the town’s gaze. I wish I’d been more like Pap and not give a shit what they thought of me, but I wasn’t.

“Now, I find I was too late in my kindness. By the time I had the courage to stand up to the town and stand beside him, I had run away and Santiago was dying.

“I learned so much from his death. This hard, undignified man approached it with such grace. Yes, he was bitter for a time, but in the last six months, he had found peace with the inevitability of the outcome.

“I don’t know if I could have approached death in the same way without seeing him do it first. Now I’ll have a better idea how.”

“Ma, you still haven’t answered the question: why did he matter so much to you?”

She sighed through the phone, “Santiago Holmes saved my life. Come up for the funeral and I’ll tell you how.

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.”