Bottomland by Michelle Hoover

Author:Michelle Hoover
Language: ara, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2016-02-10T15:41:38+00:00

The doctors said I’d been in the hospital from fall to spring. Half a year, they’d said. I couldn’t account for that. They said I’d have some trouble accounting for many things. I’d want to keep clear of noise, not work too hard when I got home. But home was work, I said back.

Now Chicago, that was work and noise both, and I’d been in the place only hours. I raised my collar to my ears. The city felt used. The men walked with their hats low, the women with purses tight to their elbows. Trains rattled overhead, fast with the smell of oil, the streets beneath shadows. Along every window and in the alleys, gray spots of snow. By midafternoon, my map was a sore piece of paper and I’d searched only a few blocks. The factories in the yards were wide and long as fields. High as three houses put together, sometimes more. The windows on the upper floors looked dark. The glass up there hardly bigger than a porthole, but what a noise. I imagined whole rows of engines behind those walls. Lines of wheels, pistons, and belts. And such a whir, the whole building breathing together. I breathed hard myself. Back of the Yards was a funny name, but it felt right. Nothing save brick and stone. Everyone was at work inside.

A whistle sounded above my head. I ducked into an alley to make it less. Minutes later, every door in the yard opened and out they rushed. Noon break. I stayed in the alley to let the men pass. Their hair was thick with a sticky kind of dust, their faces too. They walked and rubbed their eyes as if they didn’t have time enough. Soon the yard emptied, all but a circle of men standing for a smoke. They gave me a look and I nodded. They didn’t nod back. Not one of them seemed ready for talking. Least about two missing girls.

A hard place. Harder than I’d thought. The sun was high but the streets felt cold as knuckles. A whistle went off, my ears a drum, and the men filed in. Long through the afternoon I watched for another break, tracing one block after the next. At a store, I bought a spot of bread. Some cheese and a pickle. The man who sold it wore an apron over his front, and he dropped the change in my fingers like so much trash. “Here on business?” he asked. I thought of pulling the posters out, but the man only frowned.

“Just seeing the place,” I said.

“Best you keep to the Loop. Only workers here and only on breaks. We price for them. With the factories’ help. The unions don’t like a spare man wandering around, buying up someone else’s bread.”

I let myself out. When I looked back, the man stood at his window, arms crossed.

The afternoon was getting late. That whir from the factories, it never did let up. The light between the buildings grew heavy and still it was cold.

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