American Dreams (20 page)

'Have a nice evening with himself, did you? I guess he needs 'em to keep people fooled.'

'Fooled? How?'

'He doesn't go with women. He's queer as they come.'

'What do you mean?'

Mutt folded his arms. 'You're not that naive, are you? Manchester's a sissy. Probably wears pink underwear with ribbons. One of the other boys warned me about him.'

She stammered. 'I've heard of that, but 1 never met1-- I've never believed--' She couldn't find words; she didn't know what she was talking about. Vague references to men who loved men, heard in oblique conversations as far back, as her Mortmain days, had largely passed over her because she didn't understand the basic premise Mutt enjoyed her shock and confusion. 'Now you know, sis. He'd only squire a girl like you for a beard. A cover.' He walked off laughing.

Fritzi rushed to Eustacia's dressing room, shut the door, blurted out what Mutt had told her. 'Is it true?'

Mrs. Van Sant sighed. 'Yes.' Day by day her hair had changed color, from the Irish red of her first appearance to a more suitable dark henna.

She'd taken off the gown Manchester had allowed her to wear for the early
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part of the play, royal blue velvet with white ermine trim. In her black stockings and black satin corset with pendant garters she was, to say the least, an astonishing sight.

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Fritzi slumped against the door. 'Then he used me, just the way Mutt said?'

'It's necessary, dear. Men of his persuasion live in constant fear of discovery.

People in the theater genuinely like Hobart, so no one's eager to unmask him. In the outside world people aren't so charitable. They crucified poor Oscar Wide. Hobart and I had a long talk about it years ago, when I appeared with him in the West End. A wardrobe girl pointed out a young railroad navvy who showed up after curtain every night. That's how I found out. Hobart discovered his nature when he was nineteen. For years he believed he was one of the very few men, if not the only one, whose temperament led him down a different path. He's met others since, but it doesn't make him any less terrified of being found out, or caught in an open scandal. If he was caught that way, even the most tolerant managers would ostracize him. It may be unjust, but that's how things are. So you mustn't be too hard on him. Under his bombast he's a kind and decent person.'

'I still can't believe there is -- sexual activity between men. I never heard a whisper of it as a girl.'

'There was no mention of it in my household either. It's old as the Greeks, but it's largely a forbidden subject.'

'When two men -- you know, when they're together--' Fritzi was red.

'What do they do?'

Mrs. Van Sant reached into a wooden box with a feathered Indian chief decorating the lid. 'Oh, I expect you'll catch on if you think about it. Live and let live's a trite motto, but useful. In the theater it's an absolute necessity.'

Fritzi did think about it overnight. Next morning she asked Manchester to step down the street with her, to a coffee shop, at noon.

i can't, I've no time.'

She looked at him squarely. 'I know why you took me to supper. It wasn't Fritzi Crown you wanted for company, it was a woman. Any woman.'

'Oh, dear heaven.' Pale and trembling, he said, 'In front of the theater.

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Twelve sharp.'

At the coffee house, she chose a rear table with no customers near. 'I feel used,' she said when the waiter left.

'I am deeply ashamed. Who gossiped? Was it that harpy Van Sant?'

Tess

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'Oh, no. How I heard isn't important. I can't tell you how angry I felt.

I did discuss it with Eustacia later. I wanted us to have this minute away from the others so I could tell you I'm not angry any longer. You've been kind to me. I want to return that kindness. Your private life doesn't matter.'

He collected himself, took a deep breath. 'Fritzi, to cleanse my soul I must reveal another act of duplicity. I hired you not solely for your talent but because I could pay you less than I am paying the other witches. If you throw that coffee in my face I'll not blame you. But if you can possibly forgive me I'll raise you at once to sixt-- fifteen dollars. I have used you ill, but I'll never do it again if you'll remain my friend. God knows I have few enough.'

She squeezed his hand. 'Forgiven on all counts. I meant what I said.'

He gulped and blew on his cooling coffee. 'Well. I feel ever so much better. I hated to deceive you. Poverty and necessity are cruel masters. But the masks are off. It's your turn-to answer a question candidly. How do you feel about the play?'

'I'm feeling fine about it. I believe we'll have a great success on Monday night.'

Which was an outright lie.

'You're sincere?'

'Oh, a hundred percent.'

Which was another. By now Fritzi had almost been seduced by the spell of the Scottish play. Bright as any display in the white-light district, an electric sign in her imagination kept flashing a single word.

Disaster.

22Tess

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The weekend forecast promised unusually fine weatB^er. Carl got the information from Jesse, who read one or more pape^rs every day. He picked them up after white workers had discarded them - at the foundry During his Saturday lunch period Carl telephoned (the Clymer residence on Piety I lill, a stretch of Woodward Avenue noted for churches and posh mansions. He waited nervously while a servant su jnmoned Tess to the phone.

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Striving

i thought you'd gone to China, or forgotten me.'

He laughed. 'I'm a working man. Last Sunday I had a race down in Monroe, which I lost. It'll be a fine day tomorrow. Would you like to go out to Belle Isle?'

'Yes.'

She met him at the Third Street docks. He bought two round trips, a total of twenty cents. It was a spectacular late summer afternoon, windless and fair. The one-fifteen ferry was packed with families carrying picnic hampers to the city's favorite playground.

Though it was Sunday, traffic on the Detroit River was heavy.

Paddlewheel ferries plowed back and forth between Windsor and Detroit.

Great iron-hulled lake boats loaded with ore or wheat passed steamers inbound from Cleveland, outbound to Buffalo. A freighter named Alpena Beauty maneuvered toward the piers with huge stacks of cordwood on fore and aft decks. Carl and Tess leaned on the railing, Tess clutching her flat crowned straw hat.

Instead of the lush green of May and June, Belle Isle wore a patchwork coat of parched yellow and dull brown, the mark of a scorching summer.

The family groups dispersed to picnic tables. Carl and Tess followed the path to the canoe concession. He rented a canoe and handed her into it, grinning like a fool when she squeezed his hand and gave him a deep look with her beautiful blue eyes. He was so flustered he nearly missed the canoe as he stepped in.

Pushing off, he noticed a sudden pallor on her cheeks. She put a hand to her lips.

'What's wrong?'

'Nothing, nothing. Just a little dizzy spell. My, isn't it a gorgeous day?'

He paddled from one lagoon into another. Bare willow branches touched the water beside the banks. In an open area high school boys
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played a rowdy game of baseball. Carl said, 'Seen anything of Wayne lately?'

'No. Why should you care about him?'

'You said he's keen on you.'

'Oh well, yes, but it's hopeless. Unfortunately, he and my father don't know it.'

'What's hopeless?'

'The prospect of my marrying Wayne. Father brings it up often. Wayne proposed last year. He nearly burst a blood vessel when I turned him down. I wouldn't marry him if we were the only two people on earth.'

Tess

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'You're an independent sort. Where did that come from?'

'Not Piety Hill or Grosse Pointe, I assure you.' She unpinned her hat, laid it in her lap, drew the combs out of her hair, and shook it free in the sunshine, a glittering golden fall. 'It was my mother. She taught fourth grade in the public schools. When Father began to make money, climb up the social ladder as he'd always wanted, he asked her to stop teaching. She wouldn't. She said she still had important missionary work among the heathen.'

'Heathen? In the schools?'

'It was just her expression. She meant young children who would be condemned to lowly jobs and sordid lives if they didn't finish a basic education

- assuming they had the opportunity. She taught in a white school, where there's a twelve-year program. She wanted the colored schools to offer just as much. Black children got only six years of schooling -- still do.

Mama made herself unpopular over that, but she never gave up the fight.

She believed that whoever you were, you couldn't be strong in this world, couldn't survive, if you were stupid. She said it took brains to defy conformity and find your own path. I took it to heart long before she died.'

Carl beached the canoe. They strolled along a secluded path to the island's Canadian side, isolated from the picnic crowds and baseball games. In a patch of shade, Carl took her hands in his. 'I've got to tell you something. Like your friend Wayne, I'm keen for you.'

She looked at him steadily. 'I like you too, Carl. A lot. But you don't strike me as a man who'd want a permanent attachment with a girl. Any girl'

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'I would--' He swallowed to clear a great lump in his windpipe. 'I would if I fell in love with her.'

A sudden joy sprang into her eyes, and perhaps a tear; in the muted shade it was hard to be sure. She gripped his hand fiercely, then kissed him, a long, ardent kiss.

He threw his arm around her, plunged his face into her sun-warmed hair. He felt her whole body, her billowy breasts, her hips and legs, tight against him. 'Oh, God,' he whispered. 'I'm shaky.'

The too.'

'How did this happen?'

'I don't know, it just did.'

'What do we do?' What he wanted to do was carry her into some hidden glade and make love. His body was reacting to hers; surely she felt it.

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'For now, nothing. Just let it take its course.'

He held her tightly, bringing his right hand up to caress her hair. They heard voices coming near - broke apart, saw two youngsters, a boy and a girl, playing tag. They stepped away from each other. Both were red faced.

For the rest of the afternoon they avoided the subject of their newly confessed feelings. Each seemed to understand that there was a degree of impossibility, impracticality, in a permanent relationship. Yet Carl had a strange conviction that he was already in the middle of one, excitingly but perhaps dangerously entrapped.

On the ferry back to the city, Tess grew faint again. She had to sit down in the main cabin. Carl sat beside her, anxious.

'Tess, tell me, what is it?'

'Something we can't talk about.'

'I never heard of an ache or a fever people couldn't talk about.'

'This is neither. It's a female matter. One that even women don't discuss, unless they use code words. It isn't serious, just maddening because it comes regularly.' She took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes, gave him
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a regretful look. 'What must you think of me? 1 almost wrote you a treatise, didn't I?'

'I apologize for asking. I embarrassed you.'

She squeezed his hand again, managed to laugh. 'If it was anyone but you I wouldn't stand for it. Now you know for certain that I'm not a proper girl, don't you?'

'That's what 1 like. That's why I took to you. How many young ladies would sit on a fence to watch a bunch of idiots kill themselves in automobiles?'

23

Jesse and Carl

Smiles were plentiful on Piquette Avenue. Orders were pouring in for the new little car that was noisy, and homely, but pleased people with its price, especially farmers who'd never had such a cheap and comfortable Jesse and Carl 125

way to get to town. A pattern of strong orders from Ford agencies in rural areas quickly developed. So did jokes about the Model T. Employees passed them around like medals of heroism. If Mr. Ford hadn't won the class war in the auto business, he'd won a major engagement. Carl discussed it with Tess when he next saw her. Tess said the instantaneous acceptance of the Model T made her father 'livid.'

Success created problems at Ford, the biggest being the company's inability to produce cars in greater volume. Late one Saturday Carl rode up to the third floor to bring down the last car of the day, and came upon a curious scene. A chassis without axles, wheels, or an engine stood on a large wooden pallet in the main aisle. A young fellow named Charlie Sorensen was talking earnestly to Mr. Ford, Jim Couzens, and a few other bosses. Sorensen came from the department that made wooden patterns.

He was a Dane, blond and handsome as a matinee idol. A tow rope tied to the pallet hung over his right shoulder.

'It's a pretty simple idea, Henry. We do most if not all of the assembly in a single pass. We speed up the work by assembling the car while it's moving. No more stopping to attach parts: We do everything on one floor.'

One of the bosses, a perennial skeptic, said, 'And where we do put everything, Charlie? If we stockpile engines and axles up here, what happens
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to the smaller parts? We don't have room.'

'We move the smaller parts out of here. We build things like the radiator and hose assembly elsewhere, and store them. We figure out how many subassemblies we need on a given day and have those brought up exactly on schedule. Every hour, every two hours - we'll figure it out. But the line never stops. Watch.'

Ford stood with arms folded as Sorensen and a foreman named Ed Martin picked up the rope and pulled, slowly moving the pallet while gangs of men rushed in to lift the chassis and mount front and rear axles, then wheels.

'Hank, it'll never work,' the skeptic said to the boss.

Ford ran a finger up and down his chin. 'I don't know, boys. In the new plant it might. Let me think about it a while. I appreciate your worrying about this, Charlie. We're already backlogged till next January. If we add a shift, our unit cost goes up. But if we don't go faster, we'll have to cut off dealer orders.'