Santiago Holmes was reviled throughout Berwick. The Holmes family had been the most prominent in the small town for generations but had fallen on harder times toward the end of the 20thCentury as the desire for the textiles created in their mills dried up and became automated. As the business’ finances deteriorated, Santiago’s father made multiple poor investments in a desperate effort to save the business.
The family’s fall from prominence was rapid and without grace. Santiago’s father died in a fire town lore said he set in one of the mills in an ill-conceived scheme to reap an insurance windfall.
Santiago’s mother, who had a reputation for illicit behavior in Berwick before marrying his father, had left before the funeral with one of Mr. Holmes’ business acquaintances.
This same acquaintance had convinced the elder Holmes to invest in a start-up technology company – in the infancy of start-up technology companies – he was a silent partner in. Being desperate for any type of innovation that might save the mills, Mr. Holmes ignored the misgivings he felt and pumped money into the tech company even as it faltered. He wore the same blinders into his relationship with his wife.
The business acquaintance and his two partners’ were taking all the money Holmes was investing and paying themselves without producing any product. They had concocted a few income statements showing positive returns and high costs, which they attributed to the start-up nature of the business. They kept telling Mr. Holmes a larger payday was a mere six months down the road.
He was so desperate for any sort of income to help meet his payroll requirements; he took their word as the gospel right up until his end.
Mrs. Holmes and businessman moved across the country and were never heard from again. She took with her what money was left at the time of Mr. Holmes’ passing, leaving Santiago with nothing.
With both of his parents gone the just turned 18-years-old Santiago was left to fend for himself in a town that blamed him as the only remaining Holmes for the failure of the mills and the loss of hundreds of jobs.
The anger of the people of Berwick ran deep. Where once they had given Santiago the benefit of his youthfulness, now their rage blinded them. With his father’s death, they saw him as the cause of their misfortune.
Scorned by the town, not only for the failure of the mills but also because they would no longer look past the air of superiority he had adopted from his mother and lorded over them since he was old enough to take on airs, and with both parents gone, he had nowhere to turn.
Had his father still lived, someone might have taken him in. Despite the failing mills and his arrogance, the town had loved him just a few years before as he had pitched the high school and Legion baseball teams to state championships.
Beyond the amount of Pabst you could handle on a Saturday night, athletic achievement was the next greatest currency in Berwick. It kept Santiago and his loose mouth from trouble on more than one occasion.
The currency gained on the athletic fields had dried up at the time of his father’s death. He had no other skills, having not been required by either of his parents to apply himself in school or in life. On his best days he was an indifferent student whose teachers had done everything in their power to ensure he would pass on to the next grade so as not to have his disruptions in their classrooms.
Though there were a few other people in attendance, he stood alone in the rain at his father’s burial. Pap was waiting in the backhoe to give Mr. Holmes his Last Rites. He sat under the cover of the tractor’s roof, listening to the rain drum it’s beat, waiting for the last of the mourners to leave.
This was the part Pap hated, seeing there was a job to do, and not being able to get it done because of other people. There were always stragglers and he hated waiting on them.
When I was working for him, sometimes I’d sit in the truck with him and he’d complain about having to wait:
“Why don’t they get on with it?” he’d ask.
I would try to stammer together an answer, but I knew nothing would please him.
“We’re going back where we came from, back into the ground. This and taxes,” he’d mutter.
“What and taxes?”
“Death.”
“What about death and taxes?”
“They’re the two things that are inevitable in this world, the two things we can’t run away from, no matter how hard some people try.” Pap had never once paid taxes. “I don’t know why these people come out here and snivel and sniff and make such a fuss about the inevitable.
“I wasn’t a puddle when your gram passed. She’d had a heck of a run, but her time was up. I missed her for a minute, I still do, but I kept on going. You hear stores about these people who can’t get off the couch after a family member dies.
“I mean don’t all these people believer they’re going to a better place? Isn’t that why this bone orchard is here? Shouldn’t these people be happy for those who aren’t down here in this dump anymore?
“And if they need to snivel about it, why can’t they do it at home? Don’t they know we have work to do?”
There weren’t many people in attendance at Mr. Holmes’ graveside service. A couple of town historians showed up out of respect for the family name. They were joined by a couple of regulars from the Tavern and one of the bartenders; about all the family he had remaining in Berwick.
They stood to one side of the hole, feet shuffling in cold discomfort, while Santiago stood alone, hunched in on himself next to the priest. Pap thought the whole scene was ridiculous considering the weather, but figured it would move them along quicker, if the bag of hot air would move his sermon along.
When he finished speaking, he gave Santiago a pat on the back and moved off toward his car. The group from the Tavern left before his door closed. The two historians lingered long enough to give Santiago limp handshakes, leaving the boy by himself, umbrella-less, as the sky opened further.
Another five minutes passed as Pap watched the boy standing alone, not looking at the grave, but instead out through the pines at the river. Starting to feel the dampness in his bones and not wanting to stand out in the wet talking to the police if the boy did throw himself into the Melanski, Pap turned the key in the ignition and set the backhoe in the direction of Santiago.
“Well,” Pap said to the boy whose tears mixed with the rivulets of rain running down his face.
“Well, what?” asked Santiago, defeat taking the place of the aristocratic defiance in his voice.
“You gonna grab a shovel and help or stand there while I do all the work myself? Ground’s too soft for the tractor, so it’s gotta be the shovel.”
Santiago stared at him in disbelief.
“He’s your father.”
“I didn’t have a father.”
“Whatever you say. Go grab a shovel.”
The rain increased in pace as the two bent to their shovels, tossing the muddy earth back into the hole. They worked in silence, each prisoner to his own thoughts.
When they finished laying the last piece of sod Pap took a final walk over the area and spat in the middle of the grave mound. “Better him then me,” he muttered under his breath.” He moved off toward the backhoe, “you coming,” he called to Santiago.
Having nowhere to go and no plan, Santiago followed Pap to the backhoe then walked beside it on the way back to the garage.
While they were tossing dirt back in the hole, Pap had been thinking about what to do with the boy. He had heard the stories at the Tavern, about how the boy’s mother had left and the family was ruined, no money left to their name.
He knew how angry everyone was because of the mill closings, not that it mattered too much to him. He’d made sure to stay out of those death factories, where they broke your back for nickels.
He also knew how the town could carry a grudge. The week before Roy Doty and Mark Carlisle from the bank had giggled over wine coolers about how they would be foreclosing on the Holmes estate the day after the funeral. They had said nothing about the boy, or what would become of him when the house was gone.
He’d also heard Roy and Mark laugh about how the boy had no job prospects and how no one in the town would hire him because of what his family had done to the people of Berwick.
Pap had no lover lost for the Holmes family. Mr. Holmes had tried to have him fired multiple times because of insults Pap flung his way during his heavier drinking days at the Tavern. To Pap there was right and wrong, and it wasn’t right to attack the boy for something his father had done.
Pap never liked to be on the side of the majority, another reason he had stayed out of the mills. He also hated bankers and comments of Roy and Mark had lived down to his view that all bankers were criminals looking to squeeze every last nickel out of you – Ma was not excluded from this view.
Knowing it would keep with his rebellious nature in Berwick, Pap invited Santiago in to the shop for a beer and to hear his proposition. He pulled two frosty Buds from the fridge and handed one to Santiago. It was the first time anyone had offered Santiago a beer.
Pap watched him take a first uncertain sip, the bitterness of the beer crossing his face before the first swig hit his stomach and filled the hole created by his loss. The boy smiled.
“We start work at 7am,” said Pap.
A look of confusion flashed over Santiago’s face.
“You better get whatever things you have moved over from your house tonight. The apartment above the shop is available. Rent’s $400 a month. I expect three things from you: you show up on time, which shouldn’t be a problem since you’ll be right upstairs, you give me everything you got, even when you don’t have anything, every day, and you make sure your work is perfect. Close enough won’t cut it here.
“Do you have work boots? I imagine not. Take this, and yourself a pair tonight,” Pap said handing him a sheaf of bills, “I’ll take it out of your pay.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Santiago’s mouth, as he understood what Pap’s words meant.
“Quit grinning like an idiot. Odds are I’ll fire you within a week. Even more likely, you’ll quit. Drink your beer and go get your shit.”
And like that, Santiago had the job he would work for the next 40 years.
