Daddys Caliban | Page 7

The keys jangled with every slamming step of his feet. I was mortified that I had to chase him down, scared that I wouldn't catch him, and terrified that someone would see him with that big ring of keys and somehow know what they were. And more to the point, tell Daddy later.
I knew I couldn't catch my almost-brother by sheer speed. He was always a few steps faster and few punches stronger than me -- had been all my life. But even on Saturdays Midsummer Avenue was busy. Cameron was glancing back at me, grinning. I was watching for cross traffic, a turning truck or a horse cart pulling away from a delivery.
Cameron actually ran flat in to a brewery truck emerging from a side street as he looked over his shoulder. He bounced off like rubber ball to make a couple of feet of air before landing on his butt in the gutter. I sprinted and caught up just as he was back on his feet, tackling him to pull him down to the curb.
"Give me the keys right now," I said, "or it ends here."
"No boat?" He jangled the keys in front of me, keeping them just outside my reach. "You going to fly across the river, bro?"
"We're already so busted thanks to that mess you made back at the house. You want the rowboat, we do it my way."
Cameron laughed, his ape-grin on his face, and tossed me the keys. "Okay, little Daddy. Whatever you say."
"I say we walk like normal people. Don't draw no attention to ourselves. And see what's what when we get down to Caliban."
"Caliban, Caliban," Cameron chanted, "I just can't understand, what it is that any man, would hope to find at Caliban."
"And shut up," I told him.
Lady, he was annoying. I prayed that never in life would I act like my almost-brother.
*
Caliban Products stood before us, its ash-darkened stacks rising into the sky like three brick fingers echoing the magic of the Old Tower.
The mill was a complex really, spread out across a number of buildings, but it was all centered around the main plant and the powerhouse. The main plant was more than a quarter mile of brick, four or five stories high, though with only one level within -- Daddy had given me a tour once, when the management had decided that a Family Day would be good press, he'd told me. Windows like fields of little square panes filled the walls of the main plant though most of the glass had been replaced with wood or cardboard or just painted over. Ornamented eaves hosted tribes of pigeons.
The powerhouse hulked by the river. Windowless as a prison, it gave an impression of bulky age though it was in fact one of the newest buildings. Daddy had explained to me that when the waterwheels were decommissioned and the great steam boilers brought in, Caliban had razed the old millhouse to its foundations, strengthened the brick and concrete courses where they anchored to the exposed rock of the riverbank, and built it all over again.
That was where we wanted to be. The boathouse would be tucked in to the foundations on the river side of the powerhouse.
I glanced around. We were before the main gate. Though no one seemed to be watching, it struck me as foolish to open that up and march right in. I knew there was a smaller gate to our left where the Caliban property met the Boott property. "Come on," I said to Cameron, and headed that way.
Inside the fence nothing moved. Railroad cars sat heavy and long on their rails, waiting to be drawn within the plant buildings or to carry coal to the powerhouse. Bricks and concrete stamped out any inch of nature that might have once existed. The buildings were all dark and age-grimed as the stacks.
It was like a great prison designed to confine the spirits of men and exclude all of nature.
No wonder Daddy went to drink with the railroad men.
We came to the little gate close by to where the walls joined. There was something carved in the stone arch over the door that I couldn't understand, even if hadn't been badly weathered. "LASCIATE OGEN SPERANZA," it read. Boott had a similar small gate just to the left that also opened onto the broken concrete of Midsummer Avenue's sidewalk. I imagined old man Caliban and old man Boott slinking out here on a stormy day to share cigarettes and plot their business, dividing competition and talking over which troublesome workers should not be further employed in Mabton.
Daddy had a lot of work keys and it took me a nerve-wracking time to find one that would fit the gate. The first I tried wasn't the right one and I had to