Sold on a Monday: A Novel

No one could have predicted how the article would spread. It was like a brush fire leaping from one paper to the next. First to Jersey, then Maryland, Rhode Island, and Illinois. Down to Texas, as far west as Wyoming. The dailies that had rerun Ellis’s feature currently totaled nine. Ten if he included the original in the Examiner.

It was darkly intriguing, in a way. The sight of strangers in dire straits had become so commonplace that they were as good as invisible to most. But shine a spotlight on members of a single family—a pair of cute kids huddled together, a desperate mother shielding her face—and they became human. Folks who deserved compassion.

To be fair, Ellis had never intended to submit the picture of Geraldine. He hadn’t realized Mr. Baylor had presented it to the chief until learning it was approved. Even now, well into October, the portrayal of the family still left Ellis unsettled.

In truth, everything about that photo did. The more compliments and success it garnered, the more deceptive he felt. So much had happened without planning and in such a short span. It was just two months ago when he’d managed to sell his big pitch to the chief.

Sometimes he wondered what else he’d sold on that Monday. His principles? His integrity?

At least readers’ responses helped combat the guilt that gnawed at him. Kind letters continued to stream in, along with donations. Already he’d made three trips to the Dillards’, leaving boxes of gifts on their porch late at night. He’d become a reverse thief, avoiding the awkwardness of directly handing them off, of having to explain how greatly the article’s reach had widened. While the attention would thrill Ruby—maybe her brother too—clearly their mother would feel otherwise.

In any case, all Ellis could do was move forward. So far, it was working out reasonably well, both in pay and opportunity. For his last two pieces, he’d featured Siamese twins born in Philly who had defied medical odds, then a local actor once known from silent films, now frail and living in a shantytown dubbed Hooverville.

Such displays of a common humanity struck a note with readers. But it was Ellis’s upcoming feature that made him particularly proud. The idea of highlighting coal miners in Pittston had come to him a week ago. As he rode a streetcar, the sight of a shoe shiner, pint-size and cheeks smeared with polish, jogged a memory.

Ellis had been about the same age, seven or eight, when he visited a mine near his childhood hometown of Hazleton. It marked one of the rare occasions when his father was stuck dragging him to work. As a machinery supervisor for the Huss Coal Company, his father was conferring with a drill operator when Ellis stumbled upon a pack of young boys eating lunch out of pails. From cap to boots, the kids were so dusted from coal that the whites of their eyes almost glowed.

His father’s deep voice had shot from behind. Gruff as a roar, it had made Ellis literally jump. I told you, stay in the truck. The man was normally so stoic; it was the first time Ellis became truly aware of his father’s solid, towering form.

Together they’d marched back to the truck, where his father took hold of the steering wheel. His hands shook with such anger that a belt whupping at home seemed a surety, punishment for wandering off. But the longer they drove, the calmer his father became. Finally, he said to Ellis: Those mines are no place to fool around. He looked as if he’d say more. Instead, he fell into the usual silence that accompanied their drives.

Ellis had known well enough to stay quiet, but his curious nature won out. Pop, who were those kids? His father’s gaze had remained on the road, his answer grim and barely audible. Breaker boys, he’d said, a clear end to the conversation.

In time, Ellis learned more about the children, as young as six, used for sorting coal. Ten hours a day they’d labor over chutes and conveyor belts in a breaker, enduring cuts from slate and burns from acid. Losing fingers and limbs in the gears. Developing asthma and black lung. Some were even smothered by the coal itself.

Today, breaker boys were a thing of the past. Now there were machines that could do the job, but also laws regulating child labor. Laws that would never have been written, let alone enforced, without strong public support. How did that largely come about? Journalists.

The revelation had hit Ellis soon after that day at the mine. He was sipping a malt at the drugstore counter as his mother shopped for goods. A female customer was speaking to the owner, outraged over an article involving another breaker boy being maimed. She commended the “brave newsmen” for reporting such things—atrocities, she said—that the big coal companies wished would pass quiet as a whisper.

Typical of an only child, Ellis was always an avid reader. But from that day on, newspapers became his read of choice. When his mother attempted to sway him to the classics, worrying that local accounts of murders and corruption were inappropriate for a child, he took to sneaking articles under the covers after bedtime.

One day he, too, would become a brave newsman, he’d vowed. He would do the exact opposite of the lowly muckrakers that his father griped about—“vultures,” he called them. In Jim Reed’s world, a man of real value created something tangible and useful to society, practical items that could last. And that didn’t include scandals and gossip in daily papers that amounted to “ink-stained kindling,” worth a penny and discarded the next day. No, Ellis would do more than that. His stories would make folks sit up and listen. Impart knowledge that actually made a difference.

Nobody believed he’d see it through, however, this big dream of his. Except for his mother. In Allentown—where his family settled years ago, after his father was hired by Bethlehem Steel—you got your diploma, then you worked at a factory, producing cars or trucks, pounding metal for the navy. And forget about college. Those money-grubbing institutions were meant for pampered Rockefeller types who’d never known a real day’s work. Or so it was said.

For a while, Ellis followed the crowd. He even dated on occasion until realizing it wasn’t fair to the girls, whose singular goal was to land a husband and start a family. He couldn’t risk being tied down for fear he’d never leave. Every week for more than a year, he just slung on his boots and gloves and ground away at a battery plant. But he did so merely to save up for his move to Philly and to buy engine parts for his junkyard find. To chase down the biggest stories, a reporter needed to get around.

His mother understood this, even when he quit his solid job at the plant to file newspapers for lower pay, only then to write drivel for the women’s pages. He never had to explain to her how each step led closer to his goal.

His father, on the other hand, failed to share their outlook and had no qualms about saying so—which would make supper at their home tonight all the more gratifying.

Although Ellis had sent his mother clippings of his first three features, earning her praise over the phone, this would be the first time he’d see his parents since the pieces went to press. At long last, his father would have to admit that Ellis’s career choices weren’t foolish after all. He would see that his son’s work held meaning, if at no other time than when Ellis shared his forthcoming feature about the mine.

It was just a matter of choosing the right moment.

• • •

“More pot roast, sweetheart?” his mother asked, seated to Ellis’s right at the dinner table. Her chair was always the closest to the kitchen.

“I’ve had plenty. Thanks, Ma.”

“How about some bread?” She reached for the crescents, heaped in a milk-glass bowl she’d owned since he was born. It was charmingly simple, yet purposeful and unchanging. Same as everything about his parents’ two-story bungalow home. “Don’t you dare say you’re full,” she warned, “or I’ll have to point out again how thin you’re getting.”

Ellis’s stomach was indeed running out of room—his weekly budget rarely allowed for a sizeable meal—but her smile was so encouraging he couldn’t say no.

“Sure. Just one more.” He swiped a roll, his third of the evening. The scent of warm bread always smelled like home.

When he took a bite, his mother sat a little taller in her floral housedress. Her blue eyes glimmered. They were a nice reminder of all the traits he’d inherited from her. Like the smile lines and rounded chin, the wavy black hair—hers invariably worn to her shoulders. She’d even passed down her medium build that ran slim through the hips.

Come to think of it, in his teenage years, a sturdier physique was the one way in which Ellis wished he’d taken after his father. Aside from the darker complexion they shared, reflecting their distant Portuguese roots, they bore little if any resemblance. Especially these days, with his father’s brown hair turning thin and gray, his black-rimmed glasses now worn full time—the latter being a product of his wife’s gentle but determined prodding.

“How about you, dear?” she asked her husband. “Another roll?” He was parked on Ellis’s other side, at the head of the table, though it was easy to forget he was there.

“I’m all right.” He waved off the basket, his hand calloused and fingernails stained faintly black. The same grease dotted his signature plaid shirt. He returned to the creamed corn on his plate.

The lull that followed didn’t survive half a minute. Ellis’s mother had long ago honed the art of filling the silence as one would potholes in a weathered road. She was a master of smoothing the tension with talk of radio shows, her knitting projects, health updates on the grandparents—her side living in Arizona for the sun, the others already passed—and the latest word on neighbors and friends, including those from Ellis’s school days.

His ties to old pals in the area had faded over time, but he nodded along. And every so often a topic would interest his father enough to chime in.

There was a single subject they would never broach, of course, despite its presence in the empty seat facing Ellis.

At the thought, he could almost smell wafts of cinnamon apples spilling from their old home in Hazleton. He’d been sitting outside, poking at the cast on his arm, fresh from a bicycle tumble that day. Inside, his mother was baking a pie. He didn’t realize the screams were hers—he’d never heard such sounds before—until she burst from the house with the swaddled baby, Ellis’s father right behind. Her face was frantic with fear as they both climbed into the truck. Ellis must have been at least five. Old enough to wait behind alone. Smart enough to save the pie from the oven, half of which he ate from the pan when hunger pangs set in.

That night, his mother had perched on his bed, her voice turned rough as sandpaper. Sometimes babies just stop breathing, for no reason at all. He remembered the tears on her cheeks and trying to comprehend how his brother had gone to live with the angels. He later awoke from his father’s heavy footsteps, traveling here and there over the squeaky floorboards. It was a late-night habit he continued for years to come, as if he’d lost something that could never be found.

If his father had laughed even once since that day, or uttered a word about Henry’s passing, Ellis couldn’t say for sure. Though he’d guess the odds were no better than his mother ever baking another apple pie.

“Ellis?” she said, pulling his mind back. “Would you like some peach cobbler?”

He smiled at her. “I’d love some.”

She was about to rise, leaving Ellis alone with his father. “Ma, hold on. You sit and relax. I can bring it out.”

Naturally she protested, but they reached a compromise. While he carted the used dishes to the sink, she served up the coffee and dessert, and they all settled back in.

“I hope it doesn’t have too much nutmeg,” she said as Ellis and his father took their first bites. “I was trying out a new recipe from Good Housekeeping.”

“It’s perfect,” Ellis insisted through a mouthful.

His father agreed. “Tastes fine, Myrna. Real good.”

She smiled with more pride than relief. Then she resumed leading the chitchat that would fill the rest of their meal, and Ellis realized his chance was dwindling.

When they’d first sat at the table, she asked him how all was going at the paper. The general question called for a general answer. Everything’s swell, he’d replied, certain she would eventually circle around and invite more detail. As of yet, that hadn’t happened, but she did ask her husband now about a new machine at the steel plant where he served as a supervisor. His face even lightened as he described the efficiency and safety benefits of the purchase he’d been advocating for a year.

Ellis found the topic refreshing, for both his father’s mood and the natural segue, since it tied in perfectly to the photo in his shirt pocket. He decided to finally bring it up himself, just as his father said, “How ’bout I check out your radiator before you go.”

It was the type of phrase that cued a guest to pack up, signaling the visit had drawn to an end.

“Um, sure. I appreciate that.”

In a single swig, his father finished off his coffee. But, as if reading Ellis’s thoughts, his mother intervened. “Oh, there’s still plenty of light out. No reason to hurry.” She succeeded in swaying her husband as only she could. “Tell us, Ellis. What new story are you working on?”

He could have hugged her right then. Thrown her a parade. “I’ve got a new feature in tomorrow’s paper, actually.”

“Another? Already? And in the Sunday edition, at that.” She brightened as she glanced across from her. “That’s tremendous, isn’t it, Jim?”

To answer, he gave his wife a mere nod, though his eyebrow lifted as if he couldn’t help being impressed.

Encouraged, Ellis straightened in his seat. “See, I was trying to think of a subject to cover, and with a picture that could mean a lot to local folks. That’s when I thought about the mines.” If nothing else, he’d learned that Philadelphians loved reading about their own. “I brought it along to show you.” He pulled out the photo and proudly slid it over.

“The two guys you see there, they grew up as breaker boys. And now they’re operating machines that sort the coal for them. More efficient and safer too, like your new buy at the factory, Pop. Can you imagine how many kids are alive and well today because of these mechanical sorters? On account of labor laws, too, thanks to the press not letting the problems go on as they had.” He hadn’t planned to insert the part about due credit; it just streamed out with the point of the article.

Yet something changed in the room. Ellis caught it in his father’s manner, his gaze, now absent of any levity from seconds ago. Could his father have recognized the efforts to prove him wrong? To discount old doubts over his son’s career, over notions of lowly muckrakers in the press? Or…was it something else?

His father always had a knack for spotting the strengths and weaknesses in any contraption. As a supervisor, he sought out the same in his workers. Maybe he alone could sense the fragment of deceit, like a faulty gear, in Ellis’s tale of success.

Whatever the cause, even Ellis’s mother appeared stumped by the wordless moment that was anything but quiet.

When his father came to his feet, his tone was raspy and low. “I better see about the car before it gets too late.” With that, he headed for the entry and grabbed his toolbox from the closet.

Once he was gone, Ellis’s mother pushed up a smile and handed back the picture. “Sounds like a wonderful article,” she said. “We’ll sure be excited to read it.”