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Hack Writing & Other Stories
Hack Writing & Other Stories
Hack Writing & Other Stories
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Hack Writing & Other Stories

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These 17 stories first appeared in the Chicago Reader.

From the Back Cover:

The center of attention is a young man with at least twenty stab wounds in his chest. He looks scared all right, but even more than that he looks poor. Dressed in the clothes they died in, they all look poor . . . After they are wheeled into the hallway and their clothes cut off it's easier to look at them. Then they are just dead bodies and it's possible to imagine them as once being alive. Thrown together in the freezer they could never be anything but what they are: a group portrait of death on the city's streets.
---from The Cook County Death Trip

"The only question the police asked me was: 'Are you the cabdriver?' I said: 'Yes,' and that was the one word I spoke. The next thing, I was frisked, put in the police car and wasn't told what I was charged with or nothing. Every time I opened my mouth, I was told to shut up. They didn't tell me a doggoned thing except 'Hey, that's Dan Rather. You're in big trouble.' So they printed me, mugged me and put me in a cell." ---from Hack Writing

This is such a typical Chicago scene they should use it on the city Christmas cards: a snowplow sitting near a doughnut shop or a convenience store waiting for snow that seldom comes. The drivers must get bored. The city should find something useful for them to do to pass the time. Maybe they could knit mittens for the meter maids, or answer nonemergency phone calls, or wash and wax Resident Only parking signs. --- from The Bus Stops Everywhere

But sometimes late on a quiet night, in the lull between the songs, you can almost feel the past trying to speak. Maybe that's the mysterious allure of the place. The ghosts of all those drinkers--some for a single shot, some for 20 years--fusing with the booze and the music, the talk and laughter, old stories and new, until finally those larger-than-life figures come down from the wall. Some nights you can almost see them at the bar in that misty amber light. ---from Obituary for a Saloon

The race angle in the city's long-running feud with the taxi industry is just a smoke screen. The mayor can pretend to be on the side of the poor and look like he's fighting discrimination, but behind the scenes the skids are greased for developers and real estate speculators, who've been getting rich pushing the poor and lower middle class from one neighborhood to another for decades. The real tragedy of Humboldt Park is not its current lack of taxis. It's the glut of cabs that will soon arrive as the trendy lakefront expands farther west, pushing the poor and the lower middle class out of yet another neighborhood. ---from Newspaper Boxes, Taxicab Myths

Once a month, a Social Security check is dropped in my mailbox. I add it to a stack on the bookcase. There are 30 checks to date . . . made out to my friend Sam Sarac. His picture is on a photocopy of an immigration document that I keep on the same shelf. The document is from 1964. I assume the photo is from that same year, when Sam was granted permanent resident status after entering the U.S. in 1961... Every check is like another nail in Sam's coffin, and I've got $11,000 worth of checks so far. He must be dead, I keep telling myself. It's undoubtedly the most money he's ever had to his name.
--- from Lost Cities

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 20, 2016
ISBN9781477614624
Hack Writing & Other Stories
Author

Jack Clark

Jack Clark was the winner of the Page One Award from the Chicago Newspaper Guild for feature writing. His novel “Westerfield’s Chain,” was a finalist for the Shamus Award. The Chicago Tribune called that book “The best mystery of the month,” and said there was a memorable moment “on virtually every page.” His novel “Nobody’s Angel,” earned him an appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air. The book was called “A gem,” by the Washington Post and “Just about perfect.” He is also the co-author of “On the Home Front,” a collection of his mother’s stories about her younger days in Chicago. Besides writing, Jack has also worked as a long haul furniture mover/truck driver for Allied Van Lines and as a Chicago cabdriver.

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    Hack Writing & Other Stories - Jack Clark

    The Cook County Death Trip

    ––––––––

    They come from hospitals and nursing homes, off the streets and out of furnished rooms and jails. They are the city's litter, unwanted and unloved. The county hauls them away.

    Whenever thirty are ready, usually every three weeks, the morgue calls and a date is set. George is a city fireman and he tries to arrange each trip so it follows a shift at the firehouse.

    This had been his part-time job for twelve years and was his brother's for fourteen years before him. He is paid by one of Chicago's oldest moving and storage companies. This is not their only county contract—but it is the only one where they don't use their own truck.

    1A - Sam Bradford, 57. Boarded with friends on South Prairie Avenue. He'd had one leg amputated many years ago. In January he went to Michael Reese Hospital to have the other leg amputated. There he suffered a massive stroke and died. January 30.

    1B - Isadore Sanchez, 76. Found dead on the toilet in a nursing home on Hamlin Avenue across from Garfield Park. Poorly nourished. February 17. Heart disease.

    2A - Carl Turnquist, 76. Lived in the 1600 block of North Ada Street. Brought to St. Mary of Nazareth's emergency room February 24 and died two days later.  Uremia.

    2B - Nicholas Pentino, 56, Found confused and dehydrated in his hotel room in the 600 block of South Wabash. Taken to Cook County Hospital, February 15; never regained consciousness. Died February 25. Pneumonia complicated by uncontrolled diabetes.

    3A - John Frazier, 45, lived in the 4600 block of North Magnolia. On February 8 he was taken by ambulance to Cuneo Hospital. He died the next day. Intestinal bleeding.

    3B - Betty Ford, 38. Her boyfriend was trying to help her to the bathroom in her apartment in the 4600 block of North Magnolia when she collapsed. Dead on arrival at Weiss Hospital, January 20. Cirrhosis of the liver.

    The truck rental agency is near George's house and they know him well. He comes through the door a few minutes after they open at 7:00 a.m. Five minutes later, after a bit of small talk, he drives the truck out of the yard and heads towards the expressway a few blocks away.

    It's early rush hour but inbound traffic is still moving smoothly. I've been getting the truck from them for a lotta year, he says after settling in the second lane. They always take care of us.

    He laughs in answer to an obvious question, "No, they don't.

    When my brother did this he used to get the truck from another place. He got it a little dirty a few times and they found out what we used it for. They followed him once and that was it. No more trucks from that company.

    It had been a rough night at the firehouse and it's still on George's mind. He points down the expressway, towards the Loop. That's all my crap down there, he says. "Downtown. The Hancock, we go there. Sears Tower, that's all our area. A real pain in the ass. It's not like going into a two-flat. You gotta take elevators and then they don't work. You walk ten, fifteen stories.

    "We get that damn Hancock, I'll bet, three times a week. You get all those people in there, one of them screws up someplace. They'll go out and leave a roast in the oven. Stupid things. Somebody'll come home tanked-up and go to sleep with a cigarette. Someone smells the smoke and then we go sniff it out.

    I don't know if you remember when that woman... Well, they said she committed suicide. It was a front-page death in Chicago. The woman fell ninety floors from a Hancock Center apartment. The coroner's jury ruled suicide, and many people cite that ruling in arguing that there's one law for the rich and well connected, and another for everyone else. George doesn't argue anything. He lets his pauses stand.

    We had to pick her up, he says and pauses again. "She was like a grape.

    "We get a lot of that stuff down here. We get the suicides. We hold the nets for the ones who are gonna jump. We drag 'em out of the river or the lake. They jump under the trains in the subway and we go underneath there and dig 'em out. They all go out to the morgue. Then, if no one claims them, they go on this truck.

    On the Fire Department it's a continuous change of situations. They're all different. That's what makes the job interesting. I couldn't stand to work in an office or drive a truck all day.

    The morgue is behind Cook County Hospital. The loading dock is low, built for hearses, ambulances and paddy-wagons. George backs in, then enters the morgue from a door on the dock. It's a short walk across the main floor to the elevator that only goes to the basement.

    The elevator opens into a small hallway opposite a door. The viewing window is in the top half of the door, and in this hallway is where relatives and friends stand. The body is wheeled to the other side of the window, the sheet pulled back, and it either is or it isn't. Sometimes though, they're not sure.

    For some, nobody comes at all. Except George. He takes the ones nobody else wants.

    On the other side of the door it's quiet. The pathologists haven't started yet. The relatives won't be coming for a while. George's shipment is stacked six-high in a walk-in freezer. Five stacks. Thirty clean pine boxes. Some trips there are boxes filled with babies or scraps but today they all hold adults. Thirty adults. Twenty-eight men and two women. Seven blacks and twenty-three whites. The name tags that were once looped around their toes now stapled to the wood. The numbered brass tags once chained around their necks now nailed into the pine.

    Two morgue attendants are wheeling bodies out of another freezer and lining them in a hallway for the day's autopsies. Before they are covered with a plastic sheet, their clothes are cut off and thrown in a garbage can. The first, his clothes already off, is a young man with a bullet wound in his back. Behind him is an older man, probably fished out of the river or the lake, still wearing sand covered clothes.

    Hey, George, one of the attendants call, how you doing? Come here, George, he says, take a look at this one. There are ten or twelve uncovered bodies in the freezer, each on its own cart. Their heads are turned this way and that, male and female, black and white. He looks scared, don't he? They lie on their backs, their stomachs, their sides; blood here and there, on some almost everywhere. The center of attention is a young man with at least twenty stab wounds in his chest. He looks scared all right, but even more than that he looks poor. Dressed in the clothes they died in, they all look poor; blood stained and torn; some without shirts; some without pants. Some have shoes and no socks, others socks but no shoes.

    After they are wheeled into the hallway and their clothes cut off it's easier to look at them. Then they are just dead bodies and it's possible to imagine them as once being alive.

    Thrown together in the freezer they could never be anything but what they are: a group portrait of death on the city's streets.

    If you die on the streets of Chicago or Cook County, in an emergency room, at home, anywhere, if you are not under a doctor's care, you will come through these doors.

    I was down here loading up one day, George says. And I see this guy and, Holy Christ, it was a friend's father. He'd had a heart attack while driving. They found him at the curb, behind the wheel.

    The loading goes smoothly. Usually a few other bodies will be moved in or out, but today George has exclusive use of the elevator that runs to the loading dock. The boxes are loaded two-high on carts, then two carts pushed onto the elevator. There are plenty of spare carts, most stained with dried blood, waiting for bodies to come in. George uses fifteen of them, getting all of the boxes onto the dock before he opens the door of the truck and starts to load. Before they put this elevator in, he says, we used to push 'em up a ramp. That was rough work.

    While George is pushing the carts the first autopsy begins. The young man with the bullet wound in his back has been on the table for a while when one of the attendants crosses to the x-ray room. He shakes his head as he goes by. A moment later on his way back, he stops by the elevator. Can't find the damn bullet, he says. The organs have already been removed and checked, the only thing to do now is x-ray. This involves moving the open body from the autopsy table and loading it onto a cart. The cart is wheeled to the x-ray room and the body is taken off. After the x-rays are taken, it's loaded back on the cart for the return trip.

    Gimme a light, George, the attendant says. George hands him matches and he lights a cigar stub before returning to the table.

    He's there only a minute when he calls, George, you know where that goddamn bullet was. Come here, he says. Look here, just sitting on his shoulder. The bullet is just under the skin and the attendant looks happier.

    I couldn't do that job, George says on the loading dock. "Some of these guys are brutal. I've seen 'em break arms to get 'em in a box, stuff like that. A dead body's like a piece of meat to them. These guys cut 'em open all day long. It's like you working at a punch press, hitting the metal.

    You should have seen this place before they remodeled. It used to be all crude shit. No air conditioning. Blood all over the floors. It's a lot better than it used to be.

    Loading the truck is more work. The lift gate is broken so there's more lifting than usual. Watch this one, he says, it's a little heavy.

    Thirty clean pine boxes. Some light. Some heavy. It's hard to believe they are anything but freight. Something rattles in one when it's lifted, another leaks.

    Only part of the loading dock is blocked by the truck, and some of the people on the sidewalk look up as they walk by. There's a quick look, and then sometimes something more—as if there were something distasteful, even evil—as if it weren't a job that had to be done.

    The boxes are stacked four-high and four across in the front of the truck. In the back two stacks are three-high, the other two four-high.

    With the lift-gate broken the work is harder but it actually goes faster. The truck is loaded a few minutes after 9:00, but the preacher still hasn't arrived. He usually comes while the truck is being loaded, then waits until all the boxes are on board before he says his words. I'll give him ten minutes, George says and lights a cigarette.

    4A - Claude Johnson, 79, lived alone for 30 years in an apartment in the 2300 block of North California Avenue. The landlord, who bought the building five years after Johnson moved there, called an  ambulance for him on February 1. At St. Elizabeth's Hospital, he was operated on for ulcers and his stomach was removed. He was operated on again later in the month. He died the next day, February 27. Heart disease.

    4B - Mike McCarthy, 34, worked as a clerk and also lived in a hotel in the 400 block of South Clark. He was found in his room on January 7. Tuberculosis.

    5A - Sam Ono, 65. The police were called to his room in a boarding house near Clark and Ohio on February 4. He was removed to Henrotin Hospital and died the next day. Congestive heart failure.

    5B - Thomas Nateikus, 40-45. Address unknown. Found in an alley behind the 1500 block of North Milwaukee Avenue February 17. Dead on arrival at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. He was from the area and had been living on the streets since his father died three months before. Cardiovascular Disease.

    6A - Raymond Cortez, about 50. The police were called to investigate a disturbance in an abandoned house in the 800 block of North Paulina. Two men were found, apparently living in the house with no heat. They were taken to Cook County Hospital. Cortez died the next day, February 10. The friend was treated and released. A neighbor said, The building is used by many winos in the area as a place of shelter. The house has since been torn down. Exposure, temperatures in the teens.

    6B - Mack Brown, 62. Lived in the 300 block of South Throop Street. Arrested in the 1100 block of West Madison Street on January 15, charged with drunkenness and taken to the 12th District lockup. When the cell was checked at 4:00 a.m. he was sitting on the toilet. At 8:00 a.m. he was on the floor mat in front of the toilet. Dead on arrival at Cook County Hospital. Heart attack.

    When George finishes his cigarette the preacher still hasn't arrived. Well, this won't be the first time he's missed, he says. I don't know, maybe he comes a few hours late. If he figures we're gonna hold up a truck... He closes the back door and steps off the dock.

    He drives south to the Stevenson Expressway and then heads west, out of the city.

    You'd be surprised the people that ask me about that damn place, he says. "They want to come and then they don't want to come. They're afraid of what they might see.

    "I brought a friend down once. I took him into that decomposing room and he lasted about two seconds before he went to the garbage can. You come walking off the street and you've never seen something like that before, boom, it hits you.

    "My first time on the Fire Department there was a four year old boy that got burned up, my very first fire. I got sicker than a dog. We'd try to pick him up and his skin would just slide away. I couldn't take it, I was gonna quit. I thought, and these guys do this every day..

    "That's what gets me about this job, I've already buried a seven year old boy. His parents didn't care. He died and they fled the city. Can you imagine that? He died in the hospital for some reason and they never claimed him. They left him to be buried by the county.

    "I don't know if you saw that kid that was stabbed down there. He must have had twenty-five holes in him. Now they know what killed him. He was stabbed, right? But they gotta cut him open and see what vital organs were hit. With an overdose they take out the stomach. They have to find out exactly what it was. I've watched them do some stuff.

    "I was there loading up one day and they had a thirty or forty year old gal on the table. She'd died of an overdose. All of a sudden this pathologist yells, `Holy Christ, look at this.'

    "We go to see what the hell's happened. They had cut her all the way down and from inside he pulls out a plastic vial. There was a string hanging from it and they thought it was a Tampax. They thought she'd had her period. A hundred and seventy-three dollars was in that thing.

    "That's the way she hid her money. If she wanted a couple of bucks she'd go to the bathroom and pull the string.

    Another time one of the guys says, 'George, I want you to look at this.' On the table's this beautiful redhead. Oh man, she was gorgeous. Long red hair. Beautiful features. I said, `Oh, what a fucken shame. What a waste.' He pulled that sheet back and here's this big schwantz. It's a guy. I said, 'You son-of-a-bitch.' But you gotta have a weird sense of humor to work there. They see stuff everyday that the average man never sees in his lifetime.

    The cemetery is across the street from a forest preserve, a few miles inside the county line. The office paperwork takes about five minutes, then George follows old tire tracks past individual graves into a back corner. A new suburban subdivision sits just on the other side of a fence.

    Today's trip has been postponed twice. First because the morgue attendants had been too busy to load the boxes, and a second time because a heavy rainfall had made the cemetery too muddy.

    The ground is still wet and large puddles of water are here and there. The tire tracks form a large circle and before they get to where the cemetery workers wait, they pass the grave that holds George's last shipment: a narrow mound of dirt, fifteen boxes long.

    A bulldozer is still digging today's trench and George pulls the truck past where it will end. Little muddy out guys? he says as he comes around the side of the truck and opens the back door.

    There are five workers. The one on the bulldozer keeps digging the trench while the other four unload the truck. Two hand the boxes off the truck and the other two stack them on the ground. George stands off to the side and when the men on the truck read the numbers off the brass tags, he finds the corresponding burial permit. A number is marked there and then the same number marked on the box.

    The first box off the truck is Sam Bradford's. It is marked 1A. Sam will be buried on the bottom at the far end of the trench. Isadore Sanchez, 1B, will be buried on top of Sam. 2A is Carl Turnquist. He will be put on the bottom with 2B, Nicholas Pentino on top. John Frazier is 3A, and Betty Ford, who lived across the street from him, is 3B and will be buried on top of him.

    One on top of the other, from foot to head, to 15B.

    7A - Aurel Falkner, 65. He lived for many years with a woman in the 11000 block of South Artesian Avenue and had never been sick in his life. The woman died in December and the next month on January 10, he died also. Congestive heart failure.

    7B - Tony Olestco, 74. Found lying in the hallway of the hotel where he lived in the 800 block of West Madison Street on February 26. He was retired and had lived there for many years. Dead on arrival. Cardiac arrest.

    8A - Stanley Johnson, 67. Found intoxicated in the alley behind where he lived in the 4900 block of North Kenmore Avenue on February 8. Died in North East Community Hospital on February 16. Heart disease in association with a frost bite of both hands.

    8B - George Brown, 41. Found by police in his room in the 4200 block of North Kenmore Avenue on February 26. Dead on arrival at American Hospital. Acute myocardial infraction.

    9A - Ellis Jones, either 42 or 52. He was arrested for disorderly conduct on February 12. In the House of Corrections he complained that he was having trouble breathing, and was dead on arrival at Cook County Hospital on February 13. He had also been arrested February 10 on the same charges. Bronchopneumonia.

    9B - Herman Wigham, about 34, lived in the 300 block of South Throop, in the same building as Mack Brown, and was last seen alive there January 23. On January 26 he was found dead and decomposed in his room. Information from 12th District Police indicate he was a heavy drinker. Acute cardiac dilatation of unknown causes.

    10A - Forest Green, 65. Slipped on ice cream February 24 in a nursing home on Cermak Road in Cicero. He was taken to Mount Sinai hospital for X-rays and was later returned to the home where he became incoherent and disoriented. He was returned to the hospital and died three days later. Cardiac arrest in association with a lacerated skull.

    10B - Robert Brown, 60. Address unknown. Died February 9 in the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center where he was a patient. Congestive heart failure, due to or as a consequence of hypertension.

    11A - Walker Washington, about 60. Brought to Provident Hospital by ambulance on February 25. Died the next day. Not known at address given to hospital. Pneumonia.

    11B - Margaret Lemons, 64. Lived for many years in the 2900 block of North Hamlin Avenue. Admitted herself to Forkosh Hospital on January 19 and died there on February 15. Hepatocellular carcinoma.

    12A - Harrison Brummett, about 74. Lived in a hotel in the 1100 block of West Wilson Avenue. A clerk there says, He was practically starving to death in his room but he was too proud to ask for anything. The clerks would sometimes bring him up food and coffee but he would only take the coffee. He was finally talked into going to Weiss Hospital on February 17. He died there February 24. Bronchopneumonia.

    12B - Willie James Lee, about 33. Arrested for disorderly conduct February 27 at 100 E. Walton, and died February 28 in the Cermak Memorial Hospital of the Cook County Jail. Chronic Lung Disease. Bronchopneumonia.

    13A - William Blair, 63. Address unknown. Found in an alley near Peoria and Madison Streets on January 25, wearing neither shoes nor stockings. Abrasions over right eye indicate he fell at this location. Identified by brother. Exposure.

    13B - Alfred Mitchell, 60-70. Found in the room where he lived alone in the 6200 block of South Greenwood. Dead on arrival February 11. Heart disease.

    14A - Benjamin Pachuski, 74. Found unconscious in his hotel room on Van Buren Street near Clark. Removed to

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