Fiction: How the Wild Came to Rest (a short story)

Author’s portrait painted
by Jane B. Mudd

By Bob Boldt

Mike Magliano exuded an air of motorcycle-jacket danger, ducktailed sexuality, and the scent of felony made all the stronger by how little we actually knew about him. He just showed up at the beginning of my sophomore year at Naperville Community High School unannounced and unexpected.
    Everyone was in the midst of the flagrant optimism that had produced The Bomb, the Marshall Plan, the GI Bill, and the Eldorado tail fin. We were the first generation to grow up with the horrible thought that we might all become radioactive crispy critters if the Russians decided they didn’t like us. In spite of the hormone flow, the “Rock around the Clock,” and unexpected boners, all the “Duck and Cover” bullshit was just that, bullshit. Growing up in the glorious Atomic Age was not the wonderful thing they promised it would be in displays at the “World of Tomorrow” exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. President Eisenhower’s fatherly demeanor was reassuring to our parents, not so much to us. Youth opinion at the dead middle of the 20th Century was good for a Life Magazine cover story and the manufacturers of cosmetics and pimple care products, but the world paid us less heed than they did our opinions.
    Mike seemed untouched by all the fears, insecurities, and frustrations that so troubled me and my peers. He was what Marlon Brando, Dean Moriarty, and even The Fonz came to represent – the authentic outsider. Said of Paul Newman: women wanted to be with him. Men wanted to be him.
    The Eisenhower Expressway was the circulating bloodstream of the limb bringing goods, wheat, arms, and brains – commerce in short – from the plains of the Midwest into the growing, hungry Hogbutcher. All the prosperity and persuasion in the world would not have moved one yard of concrete or planted one mile marker without first having it demonstrate some defensive, military reason. We had to move those missiles swiftly from silos in Maine to Arizona without getting bogged down in local and rural roads. Our old ally the Soviets had caused us to rename the War Department to the more innocent sounding Defense Department.
    The expressway gave an open invitation to a new generation of suburban drivers to explore the Windy City with an ease, agility, and impunity none had experienced before. Even before I had wheels, I would take the Burlington train in to explore places like the Blue Note and the Gate of Horn, and meetings of the Flying Saucer Society and the Young Communist League. As long as I was back on the eleven o’clock train I was home free. I had an extra Ace, however, because I was friends with a couple from home who had a place for me to crash that was across North Dearborn Street from the Gate. The Gate of Horn was my favorite hangout anyway. The folk revival was one of the earliest alternative music genres to start lapping at the fringes of the Pat Boone culture of the mid fifties. Artists like Josh White, the Clancy Brothers, and Odetta were at the top of their game and were all at the Gate all of the time. I had no worries, Spike and Mary Beth Flanders were my home away from home in the big, bad city.
    Of course, with cars came a fantastic exploratory uptick. Our range now extended to the blues and jazz clubs on the South Side, where Howlin’ Wolf roamed and Waters ran free and Muddy. I saw them all. My best friend Tom Clemens and I were the only Caucasians attending these venues. We felt safer and more looked after in those dark and funky Negro clubs than we would have in the Chicago Loop at noon.

I have no idea how the idea struck us. The Museum of Science and Industry, on the South Side, had just received one of the largest World War Two war trophies, a German U-boat. The U505, proud member of the once infamous Wolf Pack, was moored on the lawn of the museum awaiting the construction of an entrance pavilion to provide full public access to the interior. I was not sure who came up with the plan but we thought, wouldn’t it be a gas to explore this trophy before it was open to the public? We in this case was me and my two equally clueless buddies, George Pradel and Charles Ellenwood.
    George was mischievous, but harmless. We had been studying the names of various body types in biology class: ectomorph, endomorph, and mesomorph. George was the perfect endomorph. He was short and chubby. He was always getting into trouble, more through ineptitude than any malice. He was, often as not, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I should have paid more attention to this jinx in including George on our adventure, but he would have been so mortified at our leaving him home he would never have forgiven us.
    Charles was the classic endomorpth. Tall and sallow, he was also a melancholic. Charles’ obsession was steam engines, which were all but extinct, muscled aside by the modern diesel locomotive. Charles couldn’t bear the thought. It was like a loving and loved relative was passing away.
    Both of George’s and Charles’ parents were from the other side of the tracks. In the post-war golden age of universal prosperity, when everybody owned their own home and were effortlessly raising two and a half kids and a dog, poverty was viewed with a mixture of suspicion and fear. Our high school had three distinct classes separated by semi-permeable boundaries – permeable but rarely crossed. There were “the beautiful people,” at the top of the social pyramid: heads of all the important social niches in the hierarchy, captain of the football team, king and prom queen. There were the nerds: members of the chess club, the debate club, the science club – you know, the slide rule and the white tape across the bridge of the coke bottle glasses set. And finally there were the greasers: into truancy, causeless rebellion, custom cars, greasy hair – in short, lower class, although their macho points often attracted outliers like me from the other classes.
    Naperville Community High School had no black students. I learned my Hypocrisy 101 from the fine Liberal folk who applauded brotherhood every Sunday but took up racism on Monday. Hooded white sheets would have been considered in bad taste.
    I don’t know how it happened, but at a certain point in our plans Mike must have gotten wind of our plot to storm the sub. In spite of the oath of secrecy, we Three Musketeers were suddenly four, just like in the story. There was no second thought about his horning in; we were surprised and honored. Mike was a loner and his acknowledgment of our little band and our enterprise gave us some added confidence and an ineffable sense of purpose and authenticity.

The appointed Friday arrived and we were on our way. The setting sun threw the long shadow of my dad’s Chrysler longer and longer ahead of us as if racing ahead to our destination, the Museum of Science and Industry. The Eisenhower Expressway was under construction and, though it would be finished in only five years, the stretch through the near suburb of Oak Park seemed to be taking forever to complete. After a glorious, futuristic speed-ride on the most modern silken highway they could have built, and just on the verge of the great metropolis itself, we were suddenly detoured for about three miles around construction onto local streets.
    By the time we were heading south on the Outer Drive, the street lights were just flickering on. We turned into the north parking lot of the museum. Directly ahead loomed our Leviathan! To our amazement, Mike started hiking away. He waved back at us saying, “See you guys on Monday. Don’t wait up for me.” With that he did a little dance and proceeded to trot away toward Fifty-Seventh Street. Temporarily distracted by the deserter, our eyes turned back to the looming hulk before us. Having only experienced such vast ships in any detail in our bathtubs, we were awed by the sudden realization of the true size of the thing. At that point I think each of us might have wanted to back out if one of us had the courage to say forget it.
    We crossed the parking lot to the base of the sub. A good fifty feet over our heads loomed scaffolding leading to the conning tower and the main hatch. A ladder attached to the scaffolding was tempting us upward. Charles said in a mock British accent, “You lads wait here. I’ll have a go of it.” He had only gotten a few feet off the ground when a squad car on patrol swung by the drive surrounding the museum. Charles jumped off his rung and the three of us ran up the nearby museum steps. We were hoping we hadn’t been spotted. The Greek Revival facade facing the sub had four fluted Ionic Order columns. We each hid behind our own column. Moments passed. We were afraid to peek. Suddenly a spot lit the back wall of the portico and louder than the light barked, “All right, boys. I know you’re up there. Come on out.”
    There was no escape. Rats at the end of a maze and unceremoniously at the end of our great adventure, we shamefully filed out from behind our columns. “What are you little fuckers trying to do? Reenact the War?” We were shocked. Not by the “fuck.” Everybody used it. I just hadn’t heard any of our cops in Naperville use it “officially.” The voice became more routine when he saw we were just three dumb kids from the suburbs. Our lone car in the parking lot was what had first attracted his attention. “Listen. Let me tell you something for your own—” His voice was interrupted by the dispatch radio. “Shots fired. State and Garfield. Club De Lisa. All cars. Repeat. All cars.” Without a word, he set the car in gear and tore away without even a fare thee well. George jumped out of the way just in time.

On Tuesday, Charles saw Mike and got his story. At first he told Charles, “I had to see a man about a dog.” But sensing Charles’ displeasure, he added, “Well, it was more like I had to see a lady about a Hog.” He gestured over to a cherry red Harley resting on its kickstand near the curb. We were mortified to find we pawns were just his free ride into the city to pick up his indubitably ill-gotten wheels.
    That was the last we saw of Mike Magliano.
    Four years later to the day, I was in the Chicago Greyhound bus station on my way to classes at Wabash College in Indiana when a raggedy, rough fellow approached me for a loan. In spite of a fading blue bruise above his left eye, his stubble beard, and stumble-bum appearance, I recognized Mike. He didn’t seem to remember me – or he was reluctant to remember. I gave him a five, watched him absent-mindedly crumple the bill like a used Kleenex into his soiled coat and shuffle away into the hustling, bustling crowd, out onto Clark Street and out of my life forever.

Copyright © 2019 by Bob Boldt