American Dreams (12 page)

'Jess, you crazy high-yellow bastard, are you all right?'

'Tell you later, when all my bones knit up again.' Giddy in the wake of fear, they threw their arms around each other and slapped each other on the back. Both men stank of sweat, and oil, and neither gave a damn.

Hoot Edmunds strolled up, twirling his cane.

'Boys, are you in one piece?' Hoot liked to call them boys even though he was three years younger than Carl, twenty-two. Hoot was the only son of Magnus Edmunds, a man who'd made a fortune, as some other Detroiters had, manufacturing marine engines for Great Lakes steamers and freighters. The heir to Magnus Marine Motors (Triple M') hated his baptismal name, Elwood, so he'd looked around for something sportier.

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'Think so, Hoot,' Carl said. 'Those goddamn tires don't last long enough. Firestone and his pals should be hung out to dry till they come up with better ones.'

Hoot took off his straw hat, revealing a head of brown ringlets above a bland pink face. He wiped his perspiring brow and agreed.

'That was a fine bit of driving at the last moment,' he said.

'Only thing to do.' Carl's legs shook from the up-and-down pedal pressure.

He waved toward the great sycamore that had nearly guillotined him. 'Need to sit down.'

He sat with his spine against the bark. The vultures were all over the Special, cutting away, carving out pieces of the tires with pocket knives, working the windscreen back and forth to free it. My God, that man even brought his own tin snips.

'I'm sorry 1 wrecked the car, Hoot.'

'Don't worry, there's plenty of money to manufacture another.' like a lot of young heirs to Detroit's factories and machine shops, Hoot Edmunds had little to occupy his time, and had adopted autos because of their speed, and sportiness, and aura of luxury.

'Why were those fools squatting on the rail?' Jesse complained. 'Why didn't the stewards drive 'em off?'

'They tried,' someone standing behind Hoot said in a sweet, light voice.

'We refused to leave. It's such an excellent vantage point.' The speech was overlapped by a man in the ditch who said loudly, 'Say, look at that, Jack, his mechanic's a nigger.1

Jesse rolled his eyes and turned away with a weary expression. Carl shot a look at the loud-mouthed man. The person behind Hoot stepped to one side, so as to be visible. Sycamore leaves threw a lovely shadow pattern onto the full bosom of her bright white shirtwaist.

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Platform Artists, had gotten a copy of his book and written to say he could arrange some lucrative auditorium appearances on Paul's next trip.

Nervously, Paul agreed to try it. Lord Yorke didn't object, in fact thought the exposure might help open doors for his star cameraman.

'I'll see the family in Chicago, I hope,' Paul went on. 'Aunt Fritzi in New York, perhaps, but Uncle Carl definitely. I'm going to Detroit.'

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'Where's that?'

'In the state of Michigan. A man named Henry Ford is going to introduce an automobile that's said to be remarkable, because it's both strong and cheap.' He shifted the position of the pillow at the small of his back. Thirty years old and aching like Methuselah, he thought with considerable disgust. Julie was continually urging him to hire an assistant. Even Michael said he was an idiot to operate without one. Julie teased Paul about wanting to do everything himself - which wasn't far from the truth.

Paul's study had been converted from a front bedroom. There was not much to be done with the rather feminine stained-glass flowers in the upper sections of the bay windows, but Julie had decorated the room itself to suit a man's taste: striped wallpaper, dark furniture, two Chippendale style bookcases, electric table and floor lamps with fringed shades of vivid red silk, a rolltop desk opposite the small fireplace.

Edwardian fashion dictated less clutter than in the preceding age, but Paul remained an unconscious Victorian: he filled up every inch of space with books, papers, metal cans holding film reels, or souvenirs of his travels: beer coasters; matchboxes; picture postcards; a tin-plate Eiffel Tower; a Malay kriss with cruelly serrated blade; a Japanese folding screen; a spiked helmet from Germany that Shad loved to wear with a wooden rifle on his shoulder; a small Chinese gong struck at mealtime and, occasionally, to annoy parents; a raffish Indian floor mat that covered a fine Persian carpet. Paul sorely missed the room when he was away.

Shad started to ask another question, but the door opened. Julie peeked in from the hall. 'Oh, my. Smoky as a cave in here.' Shad sprang up to throw his arms around his mother and bury his head against her skirt. A moment later, he slid out the door, grinning.

Julie -- Juliette Vanderhoff when Paul first knew her in Chicago -- was a slightly built woman with delicate fair skin and large, luminous gray eyes.

His heart leaped when he saw how fetching she looked in her afternoon dress, silk chiffon with pleated sleeves, in a becoming shade of dusty rose.

Over the wide neckline she wore the pearls he'd given her last Christmas, and matching earrings.

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Julie was almost completely free of the terrible depressive spells she'd suffered as a young woman, when her crazed and possessive mother hounded her, constantly told her that sickness, weakness, nervous disorders, were a woman's lot. She had been forced into an arranged marriage with an abusive man, a playboy eventually shot to death by his mistress while she looked on, helpless to stop it. It had left scars: a marked fragility, a certain shadow in the eyes at times. Her children, her marriage to a husband who adored her, had made the difference between surrender to the darkness and victory over it.

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She was still soldiering for Mrs. Pankhurst, whom they'd come upon a week ago in Jean Tussaud's museum, immortalized in a new wax statue.

Julie's dressing closet was piled high with packets of WSPU literature. She worked regularly at a desk in a corner of the sewing room, writing letters, petitions, and, just lately, a speech for a rally that was expected to attract thousands to Hyde Park in a few weeks.

Violence on behalf of the cause was escalating. Two women, unauthorized, had thrown rocks through windows at 10 Downing Street. There was talk of a mass invasion of Parliament and of hunger strikes. Prime Minister Asquith insisted the suffrage issue lacked sufficient support to merit legal reform. Every time that was mentioned, Julie fumed.

'What would you like Barbara to prepare for supper?' she asked now.

Paul slipped his arms around her. 'Should be a fine warm evening. Why don't we walk with the children for fish and chips?'

'I'd love that.' Julie spied the book in the window seat. 'I'm so proud of you, Paul.'

'Without you, I wouldn't have had the nerve to try the first paragraph.'

She slipped her arms around his neck. 'Just don't get so famous that hordes of women chase you.'

, 'I only care for one,' he said, drawing her into an ardent kiss. Julie's lips tasted sweet and warm. Her body Strained into his. She rested her chin on his shoulder, sighing. 'I'm losing you to the world again.'

'Only for a few months.'

She kissed his ear, fondled the back of his neck. 'An eternity. At least there's no danger this time.'

A swift ironic smile passed over Paul's face, unseen by his wife as they stood embracing. In seconds a reel of past events played on the screen of memory:

A crazed Bengal tiger charging while he filmed from an elephant howdah. Down on the ground, the mahout stumbled on a vine, and 74

Striving

before the tiger was driven off, the little brown man was fatally clawed. . . .

The rain-soaked soil of an earthen terrace gave way in the Culebra Cut,
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and a giant Bucyrus steam shovel tilted, then fell with a terrible slow majesty, crushing two workers to death on a lower terrace, where Paul had been filming; he ran with his tripod on his shoulder at the last moment.

President Teddy Roosevelt, white suit and flashing smile, had come to inspect the great Panama canal project; not an hour before, he'd boisterously pulled control levels on the very same machine. . . .

A tribesman in Morocco's Atlas Mountains, seeing the camera and fearing it would magically steal his soul, tried to prevent it by firing at Paul with an ancient long-barreled fusil. . . .

No danger? There was always danger if you did the job right. He'd narrowly escaped death in Cuba in '98, in the Boer War, in the Philippine insurrection put down by the U.S. army. He always minimized such incidents to Julie.

'Don't worry, I always look after myself,' he said as he kissed the warm curve of her throat. 'I want to be sure I come home to you and the children.'

'I've

been thinking, Paul. Betsy's at the age when she might like a brother or sister. I spoke to Shad, and he agrees.'

Paul laughed and grabbed a fresh cigar from the cluttered desk.

'Capital! Shall we see about that tonight, in private?'

15 Three Witches and Four Actresses

Days went by -- no jobs. She reduced her expenses to starvation level.

For breakfast she ate two-day-old bakery bread and hot tea. Her main meal was another slice of stale bread and, once a week, oyster stew made on the gas ring in her room. She bought a single oyster from a delicatessen and warmed it in a pan of broth. She veiled her situation in every letter to her mother. 'Everything fine! Prospects good!'

In all the months since she'd left Chicago, she hadn't heard from the General or written to him. She foresaw no change in the situation.

Some of the pain of their estrangement had worn off, leaving a resigned Three Witches and Four Actresses 75

numbness that flared up severely only once in a while.

By late August she had descended to a nadir of discouragement. One particularly difficult Tuesday -- four ads answered, no job -- she presented
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herself at a wicket at the Grand Central Terminal.

'Schedule of passenger trains to Chicago, please.'

Five minutes later she threw the schedule in a street corner rubbish barrel. Ellen Terry scolded her for even thinking of running home.

Footsore and depressed, she trudged downtown as a sultry rain began to fall. She was soaked when she climbed the stairs at Mrs. Perella's.

Wasn't two years in New York enough? She set a deadline. If she couldn't find at least one good part by her birthday, next January 5, she would pack up, go home, admit defeat to her father, and look for something else to do with her life. Perhaps she'd work for a teaching certificate. She could always instruct in German and run a school drama club.

With the thought of this kind of retreat depressing her spirits, Fritzi stoically washed her face and put on her thin robe. Fitful air drove rain and the stinks of the city into her room, which she had begun to hate. She pulled her chair under the gas mantle and opened the New York Clipper, one of the publications that regularly carried theatrical notices. In the midst of ads for trained dogs and tots who could turn cartwheels, she found a notice that made her breathe faster.

CASTING IMMEDIATELY

Witches, for new production of 'The Scottish Tragedy' starring and personally presented by famed English tragedian Hobart Manchester.

Distinguished international company includes Mrs. Van Sant as Lady M. All ages considered. Readings 2:30-5 Weds., Novelty Theater, 48th St. Kindly use artists' entrance immed. West of Cort Theater She experienced a delirious rush of excitement. She had played all three of

-j

the Weird Sisters in wretched Mortmain productions of 'the Scottish Tragedy.' That and 'the Scottish Play' were theatrical euphemisms for the name of the Shakespearean drama actors regarded as a bad-luck vehicle.

A whole web of superstitions surrounded the play -- things you couldn't do or say in rehearsal or performance. Horrible accidents happened to actors who played in Macbeth, it was said.

Fritzi laughed at such drivel. Even the presence of Beelzebub himself, I

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brandishing an invitation to Hell, wouldn't keep her from showing up at the Novelty.

Next day she dressed neatly in her dark blue and tried to defeat most of the tangles in her blond hair. Her stomach ached as she rode the Broadway cable car, choosing to spend the fare so as not to dirty her clothes before reaching her destination. She was almost flung through the window when the grip man swung the car around Dear Man's Curve at Union Square. She hoped nothing worse happened.

She stepped off at Forty-eighth, her shoulder throbbing. Walking east, she approached a garish marquee whose electric bulbs illuminated the name 5

'Sign the sheet and take a seat in the auditorium,' said the old man who kept watch on the stage door. He was busy feeding scraps to the theater cat, an overweight calico. Fritzi picked up the pen, inked it from an open bottle. She blanched. She was looking at a sheet already filled with names.

Horrified, she discovered a second full page underneath. Her elation about this audition, her feeling that her luck was changing, broke like a Christmas ornament in the fist of Sandow the Strongman. By her rough count, forty actresses had already put their names down.

Ye gods, she thought, not the Macbeth curse already?

Her rivals were scattered throughout the orchestra. They eyed Fritzi as if she carried the plague. She took a seat on the aisle near the back, tried to compose herself.

She noticed a hole in the aisle carpet. Paint was peeling from the navel of a cherub in the ceiling fresco. On stage, a work light on an upright pole lit a small table and chair. Sandbagged fly ropes hung down in front of the masonry wall at the rear. Though the Novelty had a reputation as a second-rate house, like all theaters it promised illusions and delights.