A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [15]
Sorry, that’s my phone. “Yes?”
“We’ve hit up everybody, Mr. President, but we can’t find out what the hell’s going on with O’Connell.”
Tomtree mumbled “Shit” under his breath. “It’s two A.M. here, what’s that mean in, what the hell you call it, Mountain Time?”
“I think I’d want to keep some people here to cover the monitors and phones and the rest of us pack it in,” Darnell said. “The instant O’Connell calls for a news conference, we assemble top staff, watch the conference together, and immediately whack out a counterattack.”
“No inkling of what the Democrats are up to?”
“None.”
“Right,” the President said, disappointed. “Darnell, bunk in tonight here at the White House. I, uh, need you to be close by.”
Chapter 5
PAWTUCKET, RHODE ISLAND
LATE 1950s TO LATE 1960s
Henry Tomtree’s junkyard occupied a full block in a semi-derelict industrial zone. Long past its heyday. Stacks of crushed autos and chopped-up tires mingled with the new pop harvests of soft drink and beer bottles, broken glass bins, plastic, and the junk dealer’s mainstay—baled-up old newspapers and magazines.
“A cacophony of smells,” Henry would note, breathing in the fumes from the fuel trucks, smoke from a nearby landfill, and oil from the grease pits. Every night the garbage truck fleet parked in a nearby lot, the sky maddened with the mean wings and frenzied yowls of seagulls.
When Henry discovered Mo’s true worth, the two entered a life-long relationship which was to be carried on by their sons, Thornton Tomtree and Darnell Jefferson.
Moses and his family lived in Pawtucket, a very decent lower-middle-class city. It had a little less of everything, except for the Pawtucket Red Sox.
Henry Tomtree lived a few blocks from Mo in Providence, which was considered to be middlemiddle. Providence was a good-sized little city, lovely to look at as it rippled up and down the hills to the sea. Houses seemed newly painted, and the town was filled with educational facilities and boasted a strong cultural life, so as to be a kitchen community for both New York and Boston.
Twenty miles down the bay preened Newport, which ranged from tourist all the way to upperupper. Setting aside the beach town aspects, and other summer garnishments, Newport was a worldclass port of yacht racing. Here, the main thoroughfare was named America’s Cup Way after the trophy won by Yankee sailors for over a century.
Moses Jefferson’s American ancestry went back further than Henry’s and even further than many of the mansion owners of Newport.
Mo’s family originally came from a Portuguese colony in the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. They were never completely slaves but made their livelihood servicing the hundreds of ships plying the Atlantic routes. Mo’s wife, Ruby, continued to clean houses for a few years after he began to work for Tomtree. Oftentimes, she had to leave little Darnell with his daddy at the yard.
Thornton Tomtree was a shy lad. Hanging out at the yard was his main form of recreation. As Darnell grew to waddle around on his own, Henry was in an endless checkers war with Mo. No one knows the exact number of boards they went through until Ruby gave her husband a wooden one for his birthday.
Throughout grammar school Thornton’s attraction to the yard increased. He’d pillage everything before it went to the crusher or was shipped out: instrument panels, washing machine motors, boat props, lawn mowers, and more used fan belts than GM would need in a year.
In the inner-inner area of the yard stood a warehouse where the good stuff was stored: stained-glass windows from derelict mansions, statuary, copper hardware, scrolled woods, once gleaming banister rails.
Inch by inch Thornton and his little helper, Darnell, pushed things around in this warehouse, so he was able to establish a work bench.
When Thornton was eleven and Darnell merely nine, Moses and Henry put up a basketball hoop. In the beginning the two daddies had a notion they were more skilled than their sons. The notion was