Daddys Caliban | Page 7

in front of
our house it was wide enough for mill busses, automobiles and horse
carts to all pass each other at once. To the north it ran through
downtown, where it acquired a double row of guardian cherry trees,
then into the mill district before it ended at the gates of Caliban
Products.
When he was feeling proud of his work Daddy liked to say the Puca
family needed no other street. If Mommy was around, she would smile
at him and remind him that the church was on Oak Street, and didn't we
need that, and that his horrible little tavern was on Coal Street, and he
seemed to need that as well against all common sense.

Right then Midsummer Avenue was the Puca family racecourse.
Cameron was ahead of me by fifty feet or more. 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