are a thousand stories of Charley Beck, worn smooth as river stones from the telling. Legendary is the time that he, working down in the cellar to coax a flywheel back into operation, finds himself stumped by its unwillingness to function. But what seems like reluctance on the part of the flywheel reveals itself to be pure meanness when, on finally unclenching, it bites the end off Charley’s little finger, right up to the joint. Not one to hold a grudge, Charley admires the ragged wreckage of bone, skin, and blood, opens the grate to the furnace, kisses the fingertip and tosses it into the flame, saying, “So long, you son of a bitch, you’re no good to me now!”
When he retires from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in 1935, Charley receives a small corked ceramic bottle containing 52 shiny new pennies, one for each year of his employment. On more than one occasion thereafter, he remarks with a chuckle that he is surprised and touched by this outpouring of generosity by the U. S. Government. In contrast, the Voith children are always able to count on Charley Beck’s largesse. He is forever a soft touch when one of them needs a penny, a nickel, even—if the situation demands it—a quarter, and he is never without change in his pocket. Any time he misplaces his pocketknife, there is twenty-five cents in it for the lucky finder. When Charley Boy once asks how he seemingly has an endless supply of change, he winks. “Why, at the end of the workday, I just sweep up the leavings,” which causes him a good laugh at his own joke, since, of course, the Bureau doesn’t mint coins. The youngest ones are stumped when he teases, “Got a hot date?” as he reaches into his pocket, but he often succeeds in making the older ones blush as they head out to the movies or the soda fountain.
Deaf as a block later in life, he mortifies the teenage boys when they go with him to Mass: as he marches up the center aisle between the seated parishioners, heading for the front while they hang back, he hollers, “Get on up here! No use dawdling!” Charley, of course, has no idea he is shouting in church. Nor does he understand that a comfortable volume for him on the big console radio next to his favorite chair means that neighbors three doors down are treated to Eddie Cantor or Ed Wynn whenever the windows are open. As they grow, and his deafness deepens, the kids adapt, standing close and bellowing to get his attention, keeping a hand against the closer ear when studying or reading in the parlor during Charley Beck’s favorite programs.
Charley adapts too. Having raised only one child himself, he is bemused to find himself now surrounded by nine grandchildren, to the point that it is a puzzle to figure on where to put them all. He leaves that challenge to the women. Charley is one of a large brood himself, the product of another three-generation household, but those eons ago, he was one of the ones causing the bedlam, not ministering to it. The twenty-some years he and Emma spend in the big house with just Mary Miller, Lillie, and a nurse or maid effectively wash away the memory of what it means to pack that many bodies into what feels like a shrinking space. But these children have snuck into the house gradually over the years, so that Charley finds it something of a surprise when he considers the total numbers, though it’s a hard thing by now to remember what the house was like without them. He finds it convenient that his deafness increases along with the family population: the chaos of the household typically reaches him as a low hum, a sort of pleasant background music, though admittedly punctuated every so often by a crash or a shriek.
Watching from behind the newspaper, he often wonders at Lillie’s abilities as a mother to so many, herself an only child. From the beginning, it seems the most natural thing in the world to her, as though she has been practicing her whole life. She has an innate grace and cheerfulness that she’s never lost, but that belie the strength and steadfastness that allow her to keep the machinery of the household running, and to keep the children from turning feral. He imagines that she has inherited the cheerfulness from him, the iron will from her mother.
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It’s mid-winter of 1893 when he first sees her in Rock Creek Park, that huge green swath of paths, gardens, parkland, and wilderness that runs like a backbone down the center of Washington City. He loves exploring different parts of the park during his free time away from Engraving. Even if he walks the same path every day, there is always something new to see. This particular Saturday afternoon, enjoying the unseasonably mild February weather that has coaxed early narcissus to poke up through the leaf litter, he finds himself near the stables. Here are some other folks taking in the lovely day. A party of five or six people appear to be readying for a trail ride, men in boots and jodhpurs, women in long black skirts and riding hats. Charley folds his arms on the top of the rail fence to watch as the men joke among themselves and the women fuss about in preparation for mounting.
Then he notices one other woman, who holds herself separate from the others. While the rest of the party has clearly left the dirty work of preparation to the stable hands, this woman is doing her own final checks of the saddle, bridle, and stirrups. He smiles to himself when he sees that she knows the trick the horses like to play on an unsuspecting rider, of taking in air as he buckles the saddle strap, then exhaling after the rider mounts to loosen the saddle. Charley has seen novices slide completely underneath their horses after falling for that trick. This woman knows to wait until the very end of her preparation, after the horse has relaxed, to do a final quick cinch on the strap, catching the horse unawares.
It is not until the larger party is finally mounted and sauntering out of the fenced barn area that he’s sure she isn’t with them. Though she has done her own tack work, he senses that she is somehow of a higher social status and breeding than the rest of the riders, as though she has been raised to know the intrinsic value of doing some things for herself, a trait he sometimes observes in people who come from old money. She carries herself with a self-assuredness that gives her movements both grace and focus, but with a firm and unsmiling expression that makes her fully unapproachable. Finally, in one smooth motion, she fixes her foot in the stirrup and swings herself up unassisted and arranges her sidesaddle position. Without any noticeable signal on her part, the horse takes two or three steps and then breaks into a slow trot out of the yard. He watches as the horse and rider gain speed across the grassy field, break into a full gallop, and disappear into the woods.
It is not even a week later, taking a stroll after work toward the park at Judiciary Square, that he is brought up so short that the man behind him treads on his heel. A quick apology, forefinger to cap, and he turns to look again. It is the unique bearing that has caught his eye, the patrician way that she holds herself without any self-consciousness. Now she is wearing a starched white blouse with a rounded collar, a long tie, and a full gray skirt. It makes her look like an office worker, which thoroughly befuddles him. She is emerging from the Eighth Street side of the General Post Office building when he sees her. Another woman is beside her, and Charley can see that the woman is talking, apparently without pause, in that utterly self-absorbed way unique to the sex. She is oblivious that her companion is not listening. At the curb, his horsewoman stops, and he notices the way she seems to be looking over, or even through, the things around her—not in a haughty way, but as though she is absorbing the surroundings through more than her eyes. Finally, the other woman pauses for air, long enough to realize that this is where they are to part company. Disappointed to be losing her audience, she nonetheless takes her leave with a wave and a giggle, eliciting a brief nod in return. Charley waits to see which way his lady turns and briefly considers following. He dismisses this as intrusive. Instead, he simply glances at his pocket watch and heads toward home.
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A few times a week, he makes a point of lounging outside the building entrance at the time his horsewoman leaves from work. She rotates among three very similar outfits, and sometimes mixes elements of each. The only adornments she ever wears are a mother-of-pearl comb to hold up her hair, and, depending on the outfit, a cameo at her throat. He is glad for her that she is not always accompanied by the nattering woman. Often she is by herself, always with the same upright bearing and smooth carriage, the same distant look that appears to take in everything while giving nothing away. He has never once seen her smile.
One exceptionally warm day at the beginning of March, one that makes pedestrians roll their eyes at each other in speculating what this means for another suffocating Washington City summer, he stands upstream from her path out of the building. Today his horsewoman is walking out of the building with a man; the body language alone communicates that he is merely an acquaintance, probably a co-worker