Mostly they’ll tell you about Madonna. They’ll tell you how when the metal crisis was literally tearing Detroit apart in 2018, she came home to Bay City and they gave her the Key to the City. They’ll tell you how she decided to stay and how everybody from Jack White to Barack Obama to Tom Hanks would come and visit. They’ll tell you how she turned the old General Motors engine plant into the finest concert hall in Michigan and how people would come from all over the world to visit the art galleries and the nightclubs and the Madonna museums, and how so many of them got to meet her and her family.
People won’t tell you about how the old UAWs lost their health care and got mean, but they’ll tell you how Madonna sweet-talked the governor and the power company into building the biggest nuclear power plant in America right here in Bay City. And the power plant brought in new jobs and an educated workforce and fancy subdivisions that they could build without anybody stealing the copper or the aluminum or the steel.
I don’t think Madonna or anybody else thinks about the old coal plant – dirty coal, the last and greatest of its kind – that still churns out its towers of black smoke down the bay where the water turns gray as the sky and the black muck still clings to the shore and the moss grows up out of all the cracks in the road. Part of town we call Smokey. The coal plant is a place nobody’s too proud to work anymore, but it’s also a place where a no-good scrapper from Detroit could earn a paycheck and maybe a second chance.
Follow one of those potholed streets or cracked sidewalks a couple blocks up from the power plant, and there’s a bar called the Body Shop. Not all fancy like Vogue or Material over in Madgetown – hell, it used to be a real body shop. The bar owners just hung some neon beer signs on the corrugated metal walls and set up some long tables and a dance floor and a small stage on top of the concrete that still showed some spots from paint overspray. Us boys on the day shift at the coal plant never had much use for the dance floor, we just came on Wednesdays to enjoy $3 cans of Stroh’s and $6 burgers as we waited out the Rascals after work.
You gotta watch your step in Smokey, because it’s all Rascal turf. The oldsters get done with dinner around 5 p.m. and head home around 8, but in that window the streets belong to Walleye MacDougal and his gang. You work the day shift, and your after-work options are to go straight home or hole up in a bar until the seniors pack it in for the night.
It was October, and you’d think people would be talking about the Lions. But they had just come off a nasty loss in Los Angeles, and it was looking like they wouldn’t come close to repeating their 2025 Super Bowl win. Sports was the only thing about Detroit that I ever cared to talk about, but that loss was a sore subject for most. So this Wednesday night in particular, the dayside loading crew was telling stories.
Big Jim, the shift supervisor, had his foot up on the bench and his pant leg hiked. He was pointing at three little scars near his shin. Nail gun, he said. Big Jim had a wife and two kids and two years ago he said he forgot to bring home McDonald’s for dinner. His wife sent him back out, and he got his food in the drive-up before the Rascals cut him off. Old lady pulled her scooter right in front of his truck, and she wasn’t gonna move. Big Jim got out to yell, but all she did was ask if he was a doctor. They shake down the doctors for prescription pads and drug samples, and as soon as Big Jim said he wasn’t, he caught the first nail in his leg from a man he hadn’t even seen. Caught the second when he made a move for the truck and the third when he started running with the bag of food. All 350 pounds of him ran the two miles home with three nails in his leg, two of them in the bone. Thought he heard more shots but none of them hit. Best damn Big Mac he ever had.
When he got back to the car after two hours in the emergency room, they had only taken his stereo and his phone.
Somebody asked was Walleye MacDougal there. A couple of guys carry nail guns, Big Jim Said, but not MacDougal. Mean old bastard just carries a cane for when he feels like walking, but he can swing it hard enough to break bones. Big Jim knew he never would have made it home if MacDougal had been close.
I looked down at my Stroh’s with my elbows on the table and both hands around the can. Why they call him Walleye anyway?
The crew had a good laugh. Shovel don’t know nothing, does he? How long you lived in Bay City now boy? Where the hell you from? I had heard it all before. You don’t get a name like Shovel by asking smart questions. You get it when your cousin gets you a job loading coal in Smokey and you start and everybody finds out you thought your job was shoveling.
Wiry little Stump came to my defense. Maybe because he had a worse nickname – the kind you get when you lose a finger in the pulverizer. MacDougal loved ice fishing when he was younger, Stump explained, and he’d go later in the season until one year his house broke free and floated on a chunk of ice into the bay. Nobody knew he was out there, so they didn’t rescue him for two whole days. By the time they brought him in, he had gained five pounds from all the walleye he at raw out there.
Ten pounds, Miller corrected. I always heard 15, Big Jim said. Raw? I asked. Think about it, Shovel. Try to cook that fish you’re gonna melt the ice you’re floating on. Maybe they should call him Sushi MacDougal, I said. Yeah, you just try that next time you see ‘im.
I looked at Miller. So you seen him? Hell no, Miller said. None of us ever got as bad as Big Jim. Big Jim laughed. That’s ‘cause none of you have a wife who’d rather kill you than miss dinner!
But my brother did, Miller said. His brother was a family practice doctor in Madgetown, but he still lived near his parents in Smokey. A real workaholic and one day he stayed at the office a little too late. A Rascal snuck up from an alley and slashed his tire while he was at a red light. That kind of blade is an easy mod for one of those scooters, Miller said. Anybody could do it.
He stayed in the car until another scooter pulled around the driver side and smashed the window with a cane. Thick glasses and a bushy silver beard, that’s MacDougal. Wears a thick flannel coat with a hood. Asked if Miller’s brother was a doctor. They always ask that.
Miller’s brother hesitated, and MacDougal got up – he got up! – and pulled the man through the car window. Another swing of the cane, and he had shattered the doctor’s hip. They took his keys and his tablet and his access cards, and by 10 p.m. the seniors had looted the whole office for drugs and supplies. Once he could walk again, Miller’s brother moved to Florida where the old people are nicer.
I had to know: Why don’t the cops do anything? Cops are more concerned with the tourists and the Madonna fans, Stump said. Plus all the cops are union, Big Jim added, and they’re as mad as anybody that those engine workers got such a raw deal.
Miller nodded. Even if they wanted to, nobody could find MacDougal. The Rascals incapacitate everybody they attack. They always take phones first. And they got high-torque motors in those scooters, so they can zip away as fast as a car to wherever it is they go.
Right then the waitress brought our burgers and said they could start karaoke early if us boys wanted to sing. She maybe had a thing for Miller, and Miller sure had a thing for singing. Fool flashed his big movie-star smile and sat up real straight and said, I could maybe be persuaded to sing if you have a request.
Big Jim sent the waitress off to order him a second burger, then he looked at me. So what do you say, Shovel? Run into any gangs like that in Detroit? Yeah, I said, the surviving members of the 2008 Lions ride around in wheelchairs and try to steal everybody’s wins. Never catch anybody, though.
Shovel don’t like to talk about Detroit, Stump said. What were ya, Shovel, a scrapper?
Everybody knew about the scrappers in Detroit. Easiest way to get any kind of money during the metal crisis was to steal whatever you could and sell it to dealers. Government finally shut down the dealers after scrappers forced some high-profile solar company to abandon construction on their main factory and relocate to California. But it was too late. Nobody was going to save Detroit. Not the Lions. Not even Madonna.
It was more than just big corporations got hurt, too. I know about at least one sick old lady who would have gotten better if some punks hadn't stolen the copper from a phone switch in her neighborhood.
Who's a scrapper? asked the waitress as she came back with a fresh Stroh's for Miller. I know about some metal right nearby. Some kids left a beer keg out by the abandoned Speedway. Saw it sitting there on my drive in.
Ho ho, Big Jim laughed, you gonna go steal that keg from Walleye, Shovel? Finally pay that cousin of yours some rent?
Go by the plant and scrap the goddamn pulverizer while you're at it, Stump said.
Bastards. I knew I could get an easy 70 bucks out of that keg back in the day. And there were still some dealers, even in Bay City. And my cousin's kid's birthday was coming up and a paycheck was still a week and a half off and I knew exactly which video game he wanted.
I walked back to the bathroom as Stump and Big Jim were laughing it up and Miller was strutting over to the stage. Stared at myself in the mirror above the tarnished steel sink. Beneath the dusty white Consumers Coal uniform was a tall, hungry-looking kid with a close fade. Tattoos of old auto-supplier logos peeked out from under my collar – your stereotypical Detroit scrapper.
When the Lions won the Super Bowl, everybody on TV talked about bringing hope to America's most destitute city. But the Lions didn't even play in Detroit proper – they had moved to Farmington Hills years before. Detroit didn't have any hope because bastards like me stole it and somebody else melted it down and shipped it off to build nice, new cities in China. How could I even think about doing that again?
And then I heard Like a Prayer coming through the bathroom wall. I stormed out of the bathroom, threw a little cash on the table and ran out the Body Shop door before Big Jim or Stump or that damn waitress could say anything. I figured I'd rather take my chances with Walleye MacDougal than listen to Miller's God-awful singing. Madonna seemed like a nice enough lady. She deserved better.
I didn't make it ten feet before I heard the grinding whir of a circular saw maybe a block behind me. I started running for the side lot where my truck was parked, but a Rascal scooter pulled around the corner of the building and sparkled blue in the streetlight. Sitting on top was a man the size of a bear, with a long gray beard and empty silver eyes glinting through a thick pair of glasses beneath the brim of a faded Tigers beanie. He carried a long maple cane across his armrests.
I could hear the sawblade getting closer behind me, but I didn't dare look away from Walleye MacDougal. He raised a massive finger, and the buzzing stopped. The old man just looked at me for a minute, and if he could see anything out of those ghostly eyes, he could tell I wasn’t a doctor.
I just stared back at him, too scared to say a damn thing. All I could think is how sorry I was for all of it – for everything I stole and for even thinking about that keg and for stepping out on Walleye MacDougal’s street when I knew the rules. I was sorry those old engine workers got such a lousy deal and sorry not even Madonna could help them out.
Walleye MacDougal shook his head. Then he pressed forward on his little joystick and rolled right by me. I spotted two blades on the side of his chair, but he didn’t use them.
After that, I never left the bar early. I made damn sure Walleye MacDougal never saw me again. The loading crew never believed me – maybe I saw a different guy, they would say, nobody sees MacDougal and walks away.
I tell the boys MacDougal was afraid, but everybody knows it’s bullshit. My guess is he just saw a no-good scrapper and figured I wasn’t worth the effort or maybe I said all those things out loud and he forgave me. I guess Madonna had it right all along. Life is a mystery.
.jpg)
The Bay City Rascals by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.
No comments:
Post a Comment