III
We progressed to lines of pennies on the tracks, even a nickel once in a while, but that was a waste because you could buy a whole pack of baseball cards with a nickel. Then stones, little pebbles, and larger rocks to see what was left after the big steel train wheels pulverized them. But the thrill vanished in a blink one afternoon just after we had arrayed our stones in a neat line and waited for the 4:30 to do its magic.
The freighter came down the rails slower than usual, and Doolan was the first to notice a couple of men running along the side of the cars, right toward us.
"The dicks, the railroad dicks!" he yelled. The railroad men apparently had jumped from the caboose and were coming to get us, but in a flash we shambled up the embankment and sprinted off in different directions. That pretty well put an end to our days of hanging around the train tracks. At least we had survived, without getting sucked under.
Doolan had another idea. The old factory.
The brick building, four stories high, was spread over the size of a football field. In its heyday in the late 1800s it had been a factory for G.G. Green’s patent medicines. Once concocted, they were crated, loaded on train cars that backed onto a siding that led to the plant, and shipped all over the country to patients hoping for miracle cures for a variety of ailments.
The medicine business made G.G. a rich man, an industrialist of the age. He built a stone mansion down the road from his factory, and nearby was his fine stone carriage house and servants’ quarters. Downtown, he built a grand edifice that housed department stores, shops and offices, giving new life to the old colonial community’s business center. By the 1880s, his patent medicine business was so successful that Green built a glassworks enterprise in the city to supply vials for his products. But with the decline of the patent medicine industry, the factory was sold, and through the years passed through the hands of a succession of business owners.
By now, the 1960s, it was long shuttered, the first-floor windows and doors boarded tight and most of the windows on the upper floors broken by stones flung by schoolboys passing by. The old mansion had become a Catholic school and the carriage house a convent.
The factory was visible though a scrubby woods from the schoolyard.
"Lookit," Doolan told me one day at recess. "Down the bottom, lookit, by the middle window." He pointed to the side of the decrepit building. A cellar door had rotted and caved in, allowing a narrow opening. "Let’s go see what’s inside after school."
Now, I was in no hurry for math to get over and even offered to clap the erasers for the nun after school because I was a little nervous about going into the old factory. I could see Doolan was waiting by the edge of the woods waiting for me and couldn’t turn chicken, so I walked over. I was a little nervous and reached into my pocket for my lucky coin, the droopy-winged eagle I had found near the dead cat. I turned it over and brushed it with my thumb. A swirling groove like the letter S seemed to be etched in the gray metal, and I rubbed some more.
"Yo!" Doolan called from the edge of the woods. "Yo. C’mon. Let’s see what’s inside."
I sprinted to the woods and soon Doolan was right beside me. We leapt across a little stream and up to the side of the old factory. My buddy wasted no time before he was creeping through the rotted opening in the cellar door, disappearing into blackness. I rubbed my lucky coin in my pocket and Doolan called in a hushed voice, "C’mon. We can get in."
Wasting no time thinking, I was soon following Doolan into the inky basement of the building.
"Doolan! Where are you? Doolan!"
The place smelled musty and the floorboards were soft and squishy. I shuffled my feet one way and then another, afraid I might trip or stumble into a hole. "Doolan!"
I heard a scratching and skittering sound as I stumbled through the darkness, then felt a brushing sensation across the tops of my feet. A rat, I’m thinking. My heart pounded faster and I looked for light so I could crawl back out, but looking around I could see I had stumbled my way into a total sea of black. I thought that if this is the end, the last thing I’m going to think is how much I hate that Doolan.
A light flickered several feet away. Then Doolan held the match up to his face, casting eerie shadows that made his eyes look like big dark holes.
"Thought you chickened out," he said as he lit another match. "C’mon and watch your step."
My hate turned to gratefulness as Doolan became my guide, but I rubbed my lucky coin just for good measure as we moved along. Doolan had found a stairwell and looking up I could see a faint glow of light upstairs. I followed close behind, step-for-step up the long, creaky flight. I was feeling a little braver as we got close to the top, but just as I was about there one of the rotten treads gave way, sending my foot through almost to the knee. As if in slow motion, I pitched toward the railing and thrust my hand toward it. But with my foot caught in the broken tread I lost my balance and missed the railing. I knew I was going down, way down. Doolan, I hate you.
But there he was again, grabbing onto my shirt, yanking until it was almost around my ears. I grabbed the rail and, hearing it creak like it was going to give way, quickly pulled my foot out of the trap it was in. Doolan acted cool, like nothing had happened, and told me to follow.
Slits between the boards over the filthy windows upstairs let in shards of dim, gray light, but enough to see plumes of dust billowing slowly, aimlessly, about the expanse of what once had been a busy factory. We turned from the stairs and explored, but found very little of interest other than rat tracks in the thick dust on the floor.
We meandered past what had been a dumbwaiter and then a larger stock elevator toward the rear of the room. Doolan found a closet door and pulled at the handle, but it had been nailed shut. He tried another along the same wall, then another. Giving a huge tug on the third door, it sprang open, letting out an even mustier odor. Doolan reached into the smelly opening and we heard a crash of broken glass. He lit a match and the orange light revealed rows of bottles lined on the closet shelves.
"Medicine bottles from the old days," Doolan said. "Look, corks in the tops."
He told me to light a match so we could see better and handed me the book. I struck one and held it inside the closet. The bottles all had labels, and it looked like they still had some kind of fluid in them. Doolan pulled one off the shelf, and as he pulled the cork out it crumbled between his fingers. He turned the bottle upside down as if to pour the contents out, but nothing came out except for a few flakes of black, sooty stuff. He shoved the bottle in his back pocket and I grabbed two.
"Let’s go," he said. "This time follow close, idiot, so you don’t kill yourself."
"Idiot?" I shoved Doolan and it looked like we might get into another fight. "Idiot? You bastard, you almost killed me." I shoved him again but this time not as hard. He just turned around and said again, "Let’s go."
We made our way out and with one bottle in each back pocket of my jeans, I headed home, swearing to myself I’d never, ever go back to the factory again. I stashed the medicine bottles, stained chocolate-brown up to their rounded shoulders and green at the neck, behind some seeds and flowerpots in the garage.
But Doolan wasn’t done at the factory.
A week or two after our first time there he sauntered up to me. School had just let out for the day.
"Let’s go to the third floor and see what’s --"
"Nothin’ doin’. I thought I was done for the last time. And the rat. I hate rats. Dead cats, OK, rats, I hate ‘em. Nothin’ doin’."
"Older guys go in there, upstairs. And girls too. I think there’s some old Playboys and stuff up there."
"How do you know?"
"Just know. I heard."
"Nothin’ doin’. What else is in there?"
"You like those bottles? We can get more, maybe sell ‘em and make some money."
That kindled a flicker of interest. Doolan could tell and he pounced.
"We get a bag, a box or something and put ’em in. All different kinds, real, old-fashioned medicine bottles, sell ‘em for like 50 cents a piece. 75 cents."
"Maybe."
"Chicken."
"Lemme think about it."
"Sure. Think. But I’m getting some bottles. Maybe all of ’em. I only got one the last time."
"Rats disgust me."
"Don’t worry, they’re scared of people. Probably they’re chipmunks anyway."
A pause.
"Old Playboys?"
"I think I heard that."
Could be a double bonus for me, I thought. Then Doolan surprised me.
"I’m going home. See you tomorrow."
That would be a Friday, and everybody went out after dinner Friday, maybe to the movies, or to friends’ houses, or just went walking around looking for excitement.
I met Doolan behind the school and about the time it got dark we headed through the woods to the old factory. I forgot to bring matches for light but Doolan always carried them anyway. We squeezed through the cellar door opening and into the darkness. I stopped and listened for rats. Doolan lit a match, and the tiny orange glow created nothing but big wiggly shadows against the dusty brick walls. We shuffled a few steps toward the stairs and everything was black again. Doolan lit another match and we crept another couple of feet. The dim glow of the match reflected off something shiny near the floor. I bent over to get a better look. It was a bottle, a little bigger than the old medicine vials we had found before. Maybe this was something special, I thought.
I reached down and wrapped my fingers around it. Doolan’s match flickered out, but I still had grip on the bottle and gave a tug. It didn’t want to come so I pulled harder. The bottle pulled back, and I didn’t know what to think. I gave it a hard tug and in an instant a raspy voice blurted, "Give it back!" Then it almost hissed, "Get out of here and let me be or I’ll ... get ... you. "
"Doolan!" I didn’t wait for an answer. I turned toward where I thought the cellar door was and took a step or two. I heard rustling behind me, then footsteps. In a panic, I dropped the bottle and it shattered, sending a smell of beer or whiskey or wine into the musty air.
"No!" cried the voice. "No!"
I fumbled along the wall desperately feeling for an opening, but felt nothing but brick. I’m trapped, I thought.
A dim light flickered.
"Doolan!"
"Over here," he said. I spotted his shadow.
"Let’s get the hell out of here," I said.
"Over here!" Doolan repeated. "Look , the door!"
I turned and gave the black figure a shove as I hurtled past. He staggered and fell, mumbling something I couldn’t understand as he went down.
Doolan was first out of the opening and I was right behind. I heard shuffling on the floor behind me and felt fingernails of the old man graze the back of my neck as I wiggled through the opening. I could hear Doolan thumping through the brush in the woods.
With adrenaline coursing through me I sprinted like a crazed deer through the woods and away, away, not giving a thought to where Doolan might be. As I ran, I heard the raspy voice call out, "I’ll rip your heads off, both of you!"
