Chapter 411: Chapter 191: Go East, to the Promised Land
The Detroit winter was bone-chillingly cold.
Jack Mercer tossed the last log into the fireplace.
Flames licked at the dry wood, crackling, but they did little to raise the temperature in the room.
The cold wind whistling through the cracks in the window cut at their skin like a razor blade.
He sat on the floor, clutching a pink notice in his hand.
It was the landlord’s final ultimatum.
Three days.
If he couldn’t pay the back rent in three days, he, his wife Susan, and their six-year-old son, Timmy, would be thrown out onto the street.
Jack was a machinist.
He had worked at a Ford parts factory for fifteen years.
He thought he would be like his father, working on the assembly line until he retired, then taking his pension and going fishing in Florida.
But six months ago, the factory shut down.
The boss said it was an "industrial upgrade." He was moving the production line to Mexico.
Jack and two hundred of his brothers-in-arms collected their meager severance pay and were politely escorted out the gates by security.
From that day on, Detroit became a living hell.
Jack had been to the employment center, to the temporary labor market.
They were crammed with people just like him.
Men built like oxen were beating each other bloody over a single porter job paying eight US Dollars an hour.
Susan found two part-time jobs, standing sixteen hours a day. She came home with her feet swollen like lumps of dough, but the money she earned was only enough to buy bread and milk.
Their money ran out. Their savings were gone.
So was their dignity.
Jack stared at the dying embers in the fireplace.
He was a man, yet he couldn’t even provide a warm roof over his wife and child’s heads.
"Jack."
Susan came over and draped an old overcoat over his shoulders.
She was holding her phone, the one with a crack in the corner of the screen.
"Look at this."
Jack took the phone. A video was playing on the screen.
It was an ad.
The footage was grainy, like it had been shot by an amateur.
The background was a massive, bustling construction site. Countless cranes were at work amidst flying sparks and the roar of machinery.
A young man stood before the camera, wearing a dust-covered work jacket with the sleeves rolled up.
"I’m Leo Wallace, the Mayor of Pittsburgh."
The man’s voice was powerful, brimming with confidence.
"I don’t know where you are. Maybe Detroit, maybe Cleveland. You’ve got a pair of hardworking hands, you’ve got skills, you want to work, but your city has abandoned you."
"Come to Pittsburgh."
The camera cut to shots of brand-new workers’ apartments, factory gates with ’Now Hiring’ signs, and a long list of figures on a pay stub.
"We’re short on people here. We need welders, we need machinists, we need drivers. We need everyone who wants to change their fate with their own two hands."
"We have housing, we have heating, we have top-tier blue-collar wages."
"We have a powerful Union. No one will dare fire you without cause."
"As long as you come here, as long as you’re willing to work, Pittsburgh is your home."
The video ended with a prominent URL and a line of large text.
THE LAST BASTION FOR THE WORKING MAN.
Jack stared at the screen, watching it three times over.
"This has to be a scam, right?" Jack’s voice was hoarse. "Who offers that kind of deal these days? They even give you a place to live?"
"It’s real," Susan said urgently. "Old Tom from next door took his whole family and left last week. He sent back photos yesterday. He’s already started his new job, operating an excavator. Twelve hundred a week, and he gets paid in cash."
Jack’s hand trembled.
Twelve hundred a week.
In Detroit right now, that was an astronomical figure.
"But... we don’t even have money for gas," Jack said, looking around the empty room.
Susan pulled a cloth bundle from her pocket and unwrapped it layer by layer.
Inside was a pair of golden earrings.
It was the gift Jack had given her for their tenth wedding anniversary.
"Pawn them," Susan said, a fierce resolve in her eyes. "With the half tank of gas left in the pickup, it’ll be enough to get us to Pittsburgh."
Jack looked at his wife.
He saw a light in her eyes.
It was a spark he hadn’t seen throughout their six months of despair.
"Okay."
Jack stood up, crumpled the pink eviction notice into a ball, and tossed it into the fireplace.
"Pack your things. We’re leaving."
...
Their ten-year-old Ford F-150 pickup wheezed heavily as it drove down the interstate.
The truck bed was packed with all their worldly possessions: two boxes of clothes, a few chairs, and Timmy’s toy box.
They drove east.
They crossed the state line into Pennsylvania.
As they got closer to Pittsburgh, the traffic on the road began to thicken.
Jack was surprised to see that he wasn’t alone. All around them, old cars with license plates from Ohio, Michigan, and even Indiana were all heading in the same direction.
Most of the cars were battered and worn, packed to the brim with belongings, and carrying families who looked exhausted but had an eager light in their eyes.
It was a migration.
An exodus for the sake of survival.
When the old Ford pickup entered the Pittsburgh tunnel, the cabin was instantly bathed in a dim, yellow light.
"Dad, are we there yet?" Timmy asked from the back seat, rubbing his sleepy eyes.
"Almost, kiddo."
Jack gripped the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the circular patch of light at the end of the tunnel, which grew larger and larger.
The tunnel was long, like a time portal to an unknown future.
WHOOSH—
The light exploded around them.
The pickup shot out of the other side of the tunnel.
In that instant, the entire Pittsburgh skyline slammed into their field of vision with an almost violent force.
Comments