Chapter 2

The American Automobile Association announced an unexpected rise in new enrollments this past quarter. The company attributed the rise to the rapidly aging car fleets across the country and decisions of thousands of American households to put off purchasing a new car until the economic climate improves. Ernest Ludlow, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute, argues that economic indicators are strong and that these numbers from the AAA are an aberration..."

The fresh potholes on Route 3 competed with the uneven repairs of previous potholes. The highway looked more like a sea of potholes than a highway to Brendan. The roadway confirmed for him that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. There was that sentiment and then there was the fact that the bumps felt like kicks to his kidneys. Nearing home, Paul and Brendan drove past the Meadowlands Complex on their left with its three distinct stadiums.

"Hey, you go to games at the Meadowlands anymore?" Brendan asked. The metal stanchions gleamed in the late afternoon sun.

"Nah," Paul said. "They gouge you on the price, make you wait two hours in security lines and then make you stand for the National Anthem and the Loyalty Oath. That oath thing sticks in my craw."

"Why do people go if it's so expensive and such a hassle?"

"I dunno." Paul shrugged and gave a small snort. "If you got the money, what the hell else is there to do?"

"Strip naked and run screaming down the middle of the street. Always worked for me."

"You can't make jokes like that anymore, Danny Boy. The wrong ears hear it and the next day you're arrested as a sexual deviant."

Brendan watched the polluted marshlands flash past underneath the bridge. The grasses looked sickly and bent over. "It's gotten that bad?"

"The rumor is that there is a secret federal program that pays for snitches locally. I asked Charlie Grove about it. He joined the Secaucus police about a year ago, and he wouldn't say nothin' about it. Didn't deny it, though, which I think is his way of saying without saying."

Brendan turned to his brother. "Headbanger Charlie joined the police force? What is the world coming to?"

"Yeah, he got himself a girl and a baby. A man has got to pay the bills and the jobs just aren't available. He did what he had to do."

Brendan was surprised his brother was defending their old friend. Charlie had been a stoner, a crotch rocket fanatic, and a heavy metal aficionado. That the man could turn a hundred and eighty degrees, shave his head and beard and turn to the dark side was a lot to swallow.

"Does he go to the Meadowlands?" Brendan asked.

"Asshole."

The car dropped down from the highway and sat waiting at a traffic light on Paterson Plank Road. Brendan felt the car idling a little roughly as they lingered in a long, unmoving line of traffic. As he glanced down both sides the street, he was surprised that several of the businesses he had known were now boarded up and had "For Rent" signs tacked up.

"Pasamanik's went out of business?" Brendan asked.

"The IRS shut him down because he wouldn't pay the New Immigrant Tax on his green card employees. I give him credit for standing up for what he believed, but was it worth it to lose his business? I respect him, but I don't think I could do what he did."

A dark pit opened up inside of Brendan as they slowly passed by the empty storefront. The world had only gotten worse since he had been put away as far as he could tell. The good people were disappearing, run out of town or co-opted into the very system they despised. Paul, his big brother, had never been afraid of anything, and now Paul acted like the thought police were going to find him out and cart him away.

Maybe Paulie isn't paranoid, Brendan considered. What if he isn't being unreasonable at all?

Brendan gave a start when the car stopped and Paul turned off the motor. Brendan studied his childhood home with the stupid aluminum awning now faded to maroon and dirty white. The house looked sad. Looking back at Paulie, his face looked sad as well.

"I don't want to get out, Paulie," Brendan said.

"You don't have much of a choice, Danny Boy. Suck it up and behave. I've got a bottle of bourbon hidden behind Sheila's side of the bed that we can bust into after we finish here. Consider it a reward for being nice to Mom and Eddie."

With a feeling that he was trading one incarceration for another, Brendan reached for the door latch.

"Did they make you work while you were away, Brendan," his mother asked as she spooned mashed potatoes onto Eddie's plate.

"Yeah, Mom. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has a requirement that every prisoner has to pay for part of his incarceration. My penitentiary has a General Electric factory on the property."

"So you built things for the company," his father said.

"No, not me. I was lucky if that's what you call it. As a certified teacher, I taught GED certification courses for the Bureau; it paid better than sweating out in the Hot Box. That's what they called the factory."

"You got paid?" Eddie asked.

Every time that Eddie said something, Brendan wanted to reach across the table and smack him. The nasally whine grated on him and the man's inability to follow a conversation was pushing Brendan towards a regrettable brink. He glanced at Paul who gave him a flash of all ten fingers over his plate as a signal to take a deep breath and calm down.

"There isn't any pay, Eddie. We work to pay for our room and board."

"That doesn't sound so bad," Eddie said.

"You ever listen to a grown man being raped up his ass in the middle of the night, Eddie?"

"That is enough, Brendan!" His mother shot him a furious look. Brendan didn't have to answer any more questions for the rest of the meal.

While Mrs. Capelli washed the dishes with the sniveling Eddie helping her, Brendan followed his father into the family room. From behind the stereo in the cabinet his father brought out a dusty bottle of Cutty Sark. He unscrewed the top, took a slug and passed to his son. Brendan took a slug and then passed it to Paul. Paul drank and then Sheila took a belt when she came in the room from clearing the table. The bottle went back to its hiding place.

"Did anything bad happen to you while you were in there, son?"

"No. I had friends and we watched each others' backs. I also had special status among the population as a political convict. In the crazy view of the world behind bars, being convicted of a political crime is like being crowned king of the world. I was some sort of celebrity among the wife-beating, baby-eating, gun toting American thugs of this world. There are animals of all sorts in there, but most people generally left me alone. The others — my friends and I kept them at bay for the most part."

They sat.

"Paul says you can't find a job, Dad," Brendan said.

"There ain't nothing happening at the docks, Danny Boy. The ships aren't coming to unload at Elizabeth anymore, or New York, or Philadelphia or Wilmington. There are more unemployed crane operators up and down the East Coast than there are taxi drivers in Manhattan."

Brendan let the exaggeration pass without comment. "What about the union? Can't they help?"

His father shook his head. "They are helping. They're using the strike fund to give us a bit of cash. The check isn't even enough to cover the groceries each month but at least it's something. God bless 'em. They're the only ones who haven't abandoned us."

"What about the Enterprise Zones? I thought they were supposed to encourage job creation by making it cheaper to buy stuff," Brendan said.

Sheila began her lecture with a sigh at Brendan's apparent ignorance. "Enterprise Zones were a state program where the state lowered its sales tax to 3%. Since the Feds cut subsidies to the States for the zones, New Jersey had to raise its sales tax. Jersey was still cheaper than New York, but New York started patrolling the parking lots in Jersey and recording New York license plates. People going back over the bridge or through the tunnel were getting pulled over and fined for tax evasion."

"Jeez" was all Brendan could say.

Sheila continued. "When the cops started busting New Yorkers for buying in New Jersey, they sucked the life out everything on this side of the river. They were even searching bags at the ferry terminal at Liberty State Park. It's fucking insane. The Lincoln Tunnel costs $15 to get into Manhattan and it's still cheaper to pay the toll and buy your stuff in Jersey, but who wants to go to jail for it. For the rest of us, Jersey ain't as cheap any more and they're talking about having to raise the sales tax again, or put a tax on food because people out of state aren't buying here anymore."

Brendan took note of Sheila's grammar and let it pass. He had corrected grammar in his Bradford classroom, explaining it as everybody had to learn the difference between the way people speak and the way the system speaks. If a man wanted to make it on the outside, he had to learn "System Speak." His student inmates bought his reasoning. For his family, however, Brendan just let the "ain't no's" slide.

"No money for job training, I guess," Brendan said.

The gloomy silence answered that question. With a funk in the air, Eddie wandered into the family room grumbling about how he had had to dry the dishes.

Brendan rebuked him without thinking. He had said the same thing so many times over the years that he didn't give it any thought. "You live here. You do the chores."