Not surprisingly, Piper isn’t here… some things never change.
After we’re done playing, Jimmy and Annie and I are walking back down to 64 building when I tell Jimmy it’s too bad he had to let all his flies go and he says, “You don’t care about flies.”
“Yes, I do,” I insist.
“You try to, but that’s different.” He nods toward Annie. “Annie’s never liked the flies, but she told me right at the start. It’s easier that way. This island is too small for pretending.”
I feel the slap in his words and I really want to tell him he’s wrong, but he’s not. “Sorry, Jim,” I say.
He shrugs, takes his glasses off, and cleans them on the tail of his shirt. “We’re all sorry about something,” he says.
“What are you sorry about?” I ask hopefully. I hate to be the only guy who messed up.
“Telling Scout about the secret passageway.”
“Yeah, why’d you do that anyway?”
Jimmy shrugs and rubs his glasses harder. “I thought you were going to tell Scout yourself; I wanted to beat you to the punch. And I was hoping Scout’s opinion of me would… you know.”
“Rise above the status of dead girl?” I ask.
He grins into his glasses.
“I’m not sure which is worse, dead girl or auntie,” Annie complains, shifting her baseball pants the way a guy would.
“Okey-dokey is what I said,” I tell her.
“This is supposed to make me feel better?” Annie snaps. “Not that I care. I’ve never been sweet on you, Moose. I’ve always thought you were a slug.”
“Well thank you,” I say, looking out across the bay where a flock of pelicans are flying in awkward formation.
“You’re welcome.” She smiles a little. “I have no idea why my mother would say that. It couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“No offense, Annie, but your mom has some nutty ideas. She and her needlepoint…” I tell her.
Annie snorts. “Moose, Moose, Moose, don’t get me started on that. My mom thinks you love needlepoint.”
“It’s hard to tell when he likes something and when he doesn’t,” Jimmy grumbles.
I wish Jimmy would let up.
Annie’s big lips pucker like she’s thinking about this. “But that’s what we like about him too, isn’t it?” Annie looks past me to Jimmy. “That he tries so hard with everyone.”
I’m glad Annie has said this. I am just being nice. What’s the matter with that? But then I remember walking onto the boat with Seven Fingers’s arm choking my throat, One Arm marching Natalie across, Buddy dragging Piper.
People say I was heroic by calling for help the way I did, but I know how close I came to staying silent.
I scared myself that night. I saw how much I want to get along. But sometimes you have to make trouble. Sometimes making trouble is the right thing to do.
Life is complicated. You’d think on a prison island-what with the bars and the rules and everything-it would all be so clear… but it’s not.
37. THE YELLOW DRESS
Monday, September 23, 1935
Nat’s going back to the Esther P. Marinoff School today. She hasn’t pitched a fit about it either. Of course my mom has made sure her yellow dress is brand-new clean-the one with the buttons Sadie sews on every time she’s done something well. My mom is in the kitchen packing up the lemon cake to take along, just in case Trixle decides to sharpshoot into the bay like the last time. Even though Trixle admitted Natalie helped apprehend the cons, he still isn’t her biggest fan. I don’t think there’s anything Natalie could do to change his mind about that either. Trixle’s mind is made of stone. It doesn’t change; it just chips off here and there.
Nat is smiling to herself and running her hands along the buttons on her yellow dress.
“Good idea Sadie had there. Kind of like badges the generals wear,” I tell her, surveying the small collection of buttons on Nat’s dress. They look like they belong on the dress because Sadie has sewn them so artfully.
“New button.” Nat runs her fingers along the bottom button, which is small and ordinary-the kind sewn on a man’s shirt. But when it comes to buttons there’s no such thing as ordinary for Natalie. It’s like me and baseball games, I guess. No two are alike.
“I’ll bet Sadie will give you a new button if you cooperate today,” I tell Natalie.
Nat shakes her head emphatically as if she wants to jiggle the hair right out of her scalp. “New button.” She points again to the simple white button.
“Not that new. You haven’t seen Sadie in two weeks,” I tell her.
“No Sadie.”
“No Sadie. Mom put that on?”
“No Mom.”
“Dad?” My voice squeaks hopefully, though I can’t imagine Dad threading a needle, much less sewing a button on.
“No Dad.” Natalie keeps shaking her head. “Moose.”
“I didn’t sew it on, Natalie. Mom’s just kidding about me sewing.”
“No Moose,” Natalie agrees.
“Who did it then?” I ask.
“Good job,” Nat answers, handing me a scrap of paper-brown with lines folded in half in handwriting I’ve come to know so well.
Good job, it says.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Alcatraz Island… What Really Happened?
Al Capone Shines My Shoes is a novel, grounded in history, but heavily embroidered by my imagination. While the characters of this book and the actions they take are completely fictional, some of the scenes came from true stories.
It was true, for example, that the families of most Alcatraz guards lived on the island during the years Alcatraz was a working penitentiary. Jolene Babyak described her experience living on Alcatraz this way: “ Alcatraz was like a small town with one bad neighborhood. Children played baseball, flew kites and played ‘guards and cons’ under the shadow of the cell house.” [1]
The year 1935 was in the midst of the Depression. Money was scarce. Convicts who had trade skills worked for free as plumbers and electricians, painters, movers, custodians, gardeners, and trash collectors in the “civilian”-as the families on the island were sometimes called-homes and apartments.
Jimmy and Moose’s dilemma about how to dispose of the bar spreader came from a true fact of island life. Since the convicts acted as trash men, island residents had to be careful about what they tossed out. As one island resident remembers: “No glass, razor blades or other sharp objects in our garbage as prisoners were detailed to pick it up.” [2]
The convicts did the laundry for everyone who lived on the island. Though note-passing through the laundry was a figment of my imagination, the laundry sometimes did provide a vehicle for convicts to let hated guards know how they felt. Rocky Chandler, who grew up on Alcatraz in the thirties, described the phenomenon this way: “Convicts had their own small ways of hassling. Because the wind was cold up on the tower catwalks, most guards wore long john underwear beneath their uniforms. Occasionally EF Chandler ’s underwear would come from the laundry starched stiffer than a board.” [3] There were other island families who refused this service, as the laundry often “came back mangled.” [4]
Convicts on special detail were accompanied by a guard, but human nature being what it is, rules were occasionally relaxed or even broken. Surprising alliances formed in the most unlikely of circumstances. George DeVincenzi, a guard from 1950 to 1957, told me one of the most feared convicts on Alcatraz, Jimmy Groves, came to his aid one night when he had night duty in the cell house. Night duty was long and tedious at best, terrifying at worst, and one boring evening George fell asleep at his desk. He was awakened by Jimmy throwing crumpled-up sheets of paper at him from his second-tier cell. Groves, who had a bird’s-eye view of the cell house corridor, saw George’s supervisor approaching and he didn’t want George to be written up for falling asleep on the job. [5]
[1] JOLENE BABYAK
[2] ERIN CRAIG lived on Alcatraz Island from 1947-1949. Letter to Alcatraz Alumni Association President Chuck Stucker.