American Dreams (21 page)

'You'll have to fire me first,' Couzens,snorted. 'Cash flow's thin enough now.'

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Striving

'I'll think on it,' Ford promised. Carl thought the idea of a moving line was interesting, but he too doubted its workability.

Jesse Shiner worked at Clymer Foundry No. 1 on Detroit's east side. The foundry cast engine blocks for Maxwell, Reo, and some other local car manufacturers. It was nasty, dangerous work. Clouds of soot filled the air.

The melting furnaces were so hot, five minutes into his shift Jesse's clothes were glued to him and stayed that way all day. If a ladle tipped at the wrong moment, he could be roasted alive.

A few white men, Polish immigrants with little or no English, worked alongside the blacks. It amused Jesse to see soot and grease darken them till they were all but indistinguishable from those of his race. The white men had one advantage, though. If they could find better jobs, they wouldn't be turned down because of color. Jesse and the other blacks had no place to go, unless it was into the poisonous atmosphere of an auto paint shop. Or you could always be a janitor.

Jesse Shiner was the son of a South Carolina slave who had worked cotton and tobacco fields until he jumped on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War and took the long, perilous journey to Canada. He settled in Chatham, Ontario, and there married a light-skinned woman
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who'd traveled the same freedom path from the South. The Shiners had two sons, Jesse and Lester. After their parents died, the brothers split a $300 inheritance, and Jesse emigrated to Detroit, lured by the possibility of a better life in the growing industrial city.

Jesse endured the heat and grime of Clymer No. 1, and the occasional abuse of white foremen who had one name to cover all their black workers

- 'Hey, nigger' -- because his weekly pay envelope let him live his life outside the foundry with some regularity and order. When he was thirty he bought a frame cottage on Columbia, two blocks below the lodging house where Carl settled. He furnished the cottage from secondhand stores, a piece at a time. He whitewashed it and planted flowers. He joined a black Masonic lodge and Ebenezer A.M.E. Church on Calhoun Street. There he met a handsome young black woman named Grace, the only woman he ever truly loved. They courted for a while, but she saw a better future with a young black dentist. She left Detroit as the dentist's bride and broke Jesse's heart.

Jesse stood foursquare for the rights of laboring men of whatever color.

In a wave of strikes that swept the Detroit metal industry in 1907, mostly Jesse and Carl 127

to promote closed union shops, Jesse picketed with his mates outside Clymer No. 1. In return for that show of courage, he got his head beaten and his shoulder dislocated by the clubs of strike breakers sent by the Labor Bureau. The Bureau was a city-wide recruiting station for thugs.

Owners of businesses funded it. The Bureau kept records on forty thousand men in the work force, identifying known troublemakers to prospective employers.

The strike fizzled out; there would be no union shop at Clymer No. 1.

The irony was, the bosses had to rehire many of the strikers, including Jesse, because the inexperienced scabs quit after a few days in the hellish heat.

Jesse was self-educated and never stopped learning. A white friend in the scheduling department drew books for him from the public library; it wasn't prudent for a black man to show up there. He'd taught himself about gasoline engines by reading trade magazines and hanging around auto races on Sunday, usually doing some dirty job like sweeping, throwing out oil cans, or lugging tires to the pits in return for the privilege of watching the white mechanics. He met Carl Crown that way.

In a small shed he built on the alley behind his house, he installed an elaborate arrangement of drawers and bins for storing miscellaneous auto parts, everything from bolts and washers to fan blades and patched tires, an inventory that he built up gradually over several years. The shed had a dirt floor but was otherwise a model of cleanliness. Working by the light of several
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coal oil lanterns, Jesse did repairs for local garages facing an overload.

Sometimes he worked until three and four a.m. to make his extra money.

Of an evening Carl helped out. He tended to blunder about clumsily sometimes, spill things or knock them over. Once he dropped a "whole drawer of nuts and washers, upsetting Jesse so much he swore at his friend. Oddly, though, when Carl climbed into a race car, he was different.

He was alert, careful, precise. When he turned a screwdriver to repair a carburetor or an old chain-drive transmission, he never broke anything, never scratched anything.

One cool Monday night when Carl came over, Jesse noticed a change in his friend. Carl had a distracted, dreamy air. Jesse knew it was the girl, Clymer's daughter, said to be a fine young woman, though highly independent.

Because Jesse knew what kind of man his friend was, he wondered if Carl understood the possible consequences of his obsession. If he did, fine. If he didn't - well, maybe someone should set him straight, as an act of friendship.

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Striving

Carl and Jesse sat in the shed with a single large growler of beer between them and a fire burning in the small wood stove in the corner; the evening was cool. Carl was patching a balloon tire inner tube. Jesse scratched his chin.

'See Miss Tess again yesterday, did you?'

Carl nodded as he roughed the tube surface with a little tin gadget in preparation for applying the cement.

'Pretty serious about her, are you?'

Carl looked up. 'I guess I am, yes.'

'Speak out plain. You in love with her?'

Carl looked up. 'Since you ask, Mrs. Nosy, yes.'

'She feel the same way?'

'I think so.'

'She want to marry up with you?'

'What the hell is this, a police investigation?' He shook his head.

'Someone already called the plant today, asking where I live.'

Jesse frowned. 'Who was it?'

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'Some phantom from the Employers' Association. Wouldn't say why he wanted to know. Ford's doesn't give out that kind of information without a reason. Let's get back to the subject. Why are you asking all these questions?'

'Just

having a friendly talk. You listen to me a minute.'

Carl's eyes narrowed down. He took up the growler, drank some of the warm beer, passed the can to Jesse, and waited.

'You marry that girl, for the rest of your natural life you'll be marrying one of those time clocks you hate so much. That is, if you want to do right by her.'

'Would I do anything else? Don't make me sound like a damn criminal.'

'Trying to tell the truth, that's all.'

Carl scratched the palms of his hands. Jesse was pushing him to face an issue he'd consciously run away from. His voice dropped. 'And?'

'I just want to know, Carl. You got it in you to be a steady husband, with a steady job? I'm not against folks marrying. I wanted to marry Grace Williams like I never wanted anything, but she wouldn't have me. So I'm not against folks marrying, no sir, but I'm against them marrying and then making each other miserable. Life's mean enough the way it is. You're my friend. Maybe the best friend I ever had. White men at the foundry, they don't bother to spit on this nigger 'less they want something. Want me to speed up work, mostly. You've got a lot of Rehearsal for a Tragedy

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good stuff, Carl. So be careful. Don't leap too quick. There's lots of other white girls who--'

Carl's brown eyes flashed. 'Shut up. There aren't any like Tess.'

Jesse sighed. 'Figured you might say something like that. Wasted my breath, did I?'

'Yes.'.

But he'd planted a seed.

24 Rehearsal for a Tragedy

iT~) laces!' Simkins clapped as he crossed from the prompt side to the
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_L o.p., opposite prompt, side like a fussy mother. 'Clear the stage, ladies and gentlemen. Places for act one. Dress rehearsal is already an hour behind schedule. Mutt?'

A trap dropped open behind the witches' cauldron set center stage.

Above, lights tinted by colored gels dimmed to the proper levels. The prompter, Mr. Entwistle, fussily arranged himself at his table behind the proscenium opening stage right. Hobart marched up to Fritzi. He rubbed his thumb under her right eye.

'You're a highland enchantress, not a Red Indian. Try a number four stick, even a three. Let Miss Whittemeyer help you. Please don't come on looking so florid.'

Hobart's costume was stained with simulated mud and blood. He sweated fiercely under his powder and grease paint as he inspected one actor after another. In the wings Simkins shouted, 'Where's Mutt?'

'Not down here,' yelled the scene shifter in the trap. He lit his smoke pots and turned on the electric fan that blew smoke upward behind the cauldron.

Fritzi thought the effect cheap and pathetic. She adjusted her straggly wig.

Ida Whittemeyer fanned herself. 'Sally had better get up here or Manchester will flay her.' She had arrived late, puffy-eyed. Fritzi looked stage left, to the stairs leading down to the dressing rooms.

At that moment Sally screamed:

'Stop him, someone, stop him. Thief!'

A man bolted up the stairs, ran toward the artists' entrance. The actors milling on stage were agog. Fritzi gasped. 'Mutt!'

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Striving

Sally kept screaming. Mutt reversed himself suddenly. Pop Foy appeared behind him with a fire ax, blocking Mutt's retreat. Mutt ran on stage. Sally came up the stairs. 'He stole my money!'

'Simkins, call the bobbies,' Hobart bellowed. He pulled his prop claymore from its scabbard, whirled it over his head with two hands. 'Hold right there, sir.'

Mutt cursed and charged him. Hobart swung the prop sword sideways and down. Mutt leaped in the air, and the painted blade passed under his boots. The momentum of Hobart's swing, though, whirled him like a top.

Mutt slammed both hands into Hobart's back, dashed up the ramp to the stage left rostrum. Mr. Gertz and Mr. Seldon chased him. Mutt jumped from the rostrum, a leap that landed him on stage a foot from Fritzi. He
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grabbed her, spun her, choked her with his elbow. He pushed her toward Hobart. 'Chop her, you fat fraud.'

Mutt dodged between the actors like a football runner. He overturned the prompt table, and Mr. Entwistle. He vanished in the wings but reappeared chased by Simkins, now armed with a short two-by four.

Mutt grabbed the proscenium, pivoted around it, and jumped into the orchestra pit without looking. He vaulted over the rail and ran up the aisle and disappeared.

Fritzi took deep breaths, rubbing her throat. Eustacia Van Sant pulled Hobart against her bosom. 'Bravely done, Manchester.'

'Athletic bugger,' Hobart panted. 'Fritzi my girl? You all right?'

'Yes.'

The cast and crew swarmed up both aisles and out the glass doors to Forty-eighth. The street shone with reflections; rain blew under the marquee.

The thief was gone.

In the foyer, Sally broke down, huddled in Fritzi's arms. 'I walked in on him. He'd pulled my purse out of the drawer and was counting the money.

When I told him to stop, he threw a chair at my head. Then he hit me, here.' She rubbed her breast. Tears made her eyeliner melt and run.

'How much did he take?' Ida asked.

'All that was left of this week's salary, twelve dollars. I can't believe he'd steal from me. I was with him last night - all night, in his room. The bastard.'

It took an hour to calm Sally and get her into her costume, ready for the dress rehearsal. During that time the police arrived. Three officers searched the theater and nearby streets and alleys, without result.

Rehearsal for a Tragedy

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At a quarter of ten in the evening, Simkins again called places. The witches found their marks behind the cauldron. Fritzi straightened her wig again. Mr. Entwistle flipped to the first page of his prompt book.

Simkins called cues into a speaking tube. Red and amber gels went on above the cauldron. The cheap fan whirred in the trap. A flood in the wings spilled green light on the witches. Smoke rose. Fritzi crossed her fingers.

The

curtain puller worked his rope, and they began.

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Fritzi agreed with Mrs. Van Sant that the rehearsal was draggy, not to say dreadful. Of course, one rather lost one's perspective in a dark theater at half past one in the morning, listening to notes from a director as weary and nervous as his actors. How could one expect better of Hobart, or any of them, after the shattering excitement of a robbery?

Hobart said, "I hat concludes notes. Let me say in summary, it was a damn poor show. So take heart. We all know that a botched dress rehearsal means a flawless opening night. Please rest yourselves and come in refreshed. You are dismissed.'

'Line rehearsal tomorrow at three,' Simkins reminded them. 'The evening call is thirty-five minutes before curtain. Five before seven.'

Conclusion of the ordeal had a remarkable restorative effect on Fritzi and the others. Mrs. Van Sant and the witches agreed that they needed a bowl of oyster stew and a libation. Fritzi fairly flew through the cold creaming of her face, and the four ladies hurried along largely empty streets to an oyster palace on Forty-third, near the Grand Central terminal.

By twos and threes the company drifted in, excepting Manchester, Launcelot Buford, and his repellent mother, and the other boy actor. The oyster house had hours until four, but patrons were scarce in the early morning -just a straggle of drinkers at the long mahogany bar. The manager turned on lights in a private dining room which had a piano.

Lethargic waiters served oyster stew with little yellow globules of butter floating in it, bowls of crackers, steins of beer, and cups of coffee. Fritzi ordered coffee. Eustacia drank two gins in short order. 'Eases the torture of the corset stays, don't you know?'

Old Mr. Allardyce, wide awake despite his age, rolled up his sleeves and played a succession of popular numbers. Members of the cast, singly or in impromptu pairs and trios, rose to warble the lyrics and receive tipsy applause. Soon everyone was having a fine time, roistering in a way that 132