You Were There Before My Eyes

by Maria Riva

  “Yes—John.”

  “Well said, Ninnie, well said.”

  Rudy changed the subject by announcing that what he really wanted was to fly and maybe if the war lasted he might get the chance. He had applied for a position in a fledgling aircraft company and had been accepted. After so many years he would once again be an apprentice—but that mattered little in comparison to being in daily contact with his beloved flying machines.

  “Just what you need, my boy,” Zoltan commented.

  Fritz agreed, “Yes—nothing like interesting hard work to keep you from brooding over the past.”

  Zoltan cleared his throat.

  “You actually want to fly one of those contraptions, Rudy? That’s much too dangerous. I hear those things are put together with glue and sewing thread!” On hearing “sewing thread,” Jane picked up her ears.

  That evening, the talk of the parlor revolved around man’s freedom of the sky, not the open road. Heated discussion of how effective such glued-together crates could be, where men shot pistols at each other amongst the clouds.

  “No, no …” Rudy animated by newly acquired knowledge stimulated the room, “they no longer have to lean out of the cockpit to shoot at each other—a French flyer has invented a way to mount a machine gun that shoots straight ahead.”

  “Where is it mounted?” asked Zoltan.

  “Directly in front on the top of the forward fuselage.”

  “Interesting …” Forever the automobile man, John seemed amused at the new terminology Rudy used with such ease. “… but it would seem that bullets traveling at their accelerated speed—towards the blades of a propeller, spinning at its accelerated speed—would surely strike the propeller blades, ricochet back thereby killing the pilot. Possible, don’t you think, Rudy?”

  Fritz and Carl tried not to laugh—Zoltan gave them both a warning look, Stan snickered. Jane, captured, looked to Rudy for an illuminating answer.

  “Aha—now I’ve got you. Well, John, my clever, all-so-knowing friend—it’s right smack in your territory! You said it long ago—with our moving assembly line—you were the one who said it!”

  “What for God’s sake?”

  “Timing, my friend, timing.”

  Stan was getting impatient. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “The gun and the propeller—their actions are synchronized! Speed, John, it’s just a matter of timing—the speed!”

  Fritz shook his head in awe.

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “Well, you better—because that’s exactly how they’re now doing it over there. Now all sides are shooting each other’s tails off instead of having to lean down out of the cockpit to kill each other with lucky potshots.”

  Zoltan cleared his throat, “Falling from the sky—what a death that must be.”

  “Ja—can you imagine?” Fritz sighed.

  “I wonder how the Huns first got so good at it,” mused Ebbely.

  Johann put down his paper.”Well, I heard that years ago when one of the Wright Brothers was on vacation in Germany, he took their crown prince up for a spin. Who knows—maybe that impressed the future kaiser to take the future of flying machines seriously.”

  “I have said it often—and I’ll say it again,” Stan knocked out his pipe, “Americans can be so damn gullible—like children we give, give, give and think the whole world will love us for it. I’ve got to go—we’ve got trouble at the yard.”

  “Stan,” John stopped him at the parlor door. “You’ve made up your mind? You’re still leaving?”

  “Who told you?”

  “Never mind, are you?”

  “Yes.” His friends murmured disbelief. “Well, I was going to tell you all in my own way—but I guess now is as good a time as any.”

  “Come back—sit.” Fritz patted the vacant chair next to him.

  “No, I haven’t got time—but try to understand, it isn’t just because of the family business … it’s other things much more important—I just have no other choice. Got to go. … Good night.”

  Their thoughts channeled, the men smoked.

  Zoltan broke the silence. “I am worried, John.”

  “Yes, so am I.”

  “Me, too,” chorused Fritz and Carl.

  Ebbely seemed confused. “Why? Because Stan’s leaving Ford after so many years?”

  “That’s not what’s worrying us.”

  “Then what, Fritz?”

  “Let John tell it—he’s better and knows more, told me.”

  “Well?” Ebbely turned towards John.

  “We think Stan has joined the Socialist Party and must leave the company before he is discovered. That’s only one worry and one that some of us have expected for some time.”

  “What is even more,” Fritz interrupted, “is that this liquor business of the father-in-law is now maybe shady business over the border, and that can get Stan into very big trouble.”

  “Stan’s a bootlegger?!” Rudy was shocked.

  “Shush! Not so loud. Hannah will hear and if she ever suspects I don’t want her to get involved!”

  “Involved? What do you mean involved?” Now even John sounded surprised.

  “Oh, come on—you think I didn’t know about her Watchers and the risks those women first took to go against the company’s inspectors?”

  “Watchers? Women? What are you rambling on about?”

  Suddenly made aware that John knew nothing of Hannah’s Watchers or Jane’s involvement with them, Fritz tried to cover up his mistake. “Oh, you know Hannah—how she watches everything and how the women talk and they gossip all the time about the Boss and everything … hey, I hear we may be building a forty-pound tank on top of our chassis—is that right?”

  “Experimenting, Fritz, only experimenting,” John corrected. “It’s the balance … it keeps toppling over. “

  “Never in my life did I think I would see one day a flivver tank …” Fritz was laughing.

  “Well, Rudy?” Ebbely extinguished his cigarette. “I must say I admire your decision. Up, up into the blue on gossamer wings—sounds like a title for a song.”

  “I’m not flying yet, Ebbely.”

  “But you will, my boy. I’m convinced that you will and be good at it. It takes spunk—and that you’ve got. Gentlemen, I’m off to welcome Morpheus. You all know how a good meal always exhausts me.”

  Later, rolling down her sleeves, making ready to walk home, Jane stopped Rudy as he was going up to bed.

  “Rudy—may I ask you something?”

  “Of course—what is it?”

  “Well—remember you spoke of how flying machines needed gluing and their wings—the material of their wings, sewn?” He nodded. She rushed on so as not to detain him—but really not to lose courage. “Well—sewing is something I can do really well—and I was wondering—once you are working—do you think you could find out if there might be a position open for a sewer of wings?”

  Jane never did get the chance to sew wings. In later years she often wished she had, for by then glue had given way to rivets, and gossamer magic to expedient transportation.

  Instructing Gloria to hold the jam jar ready and not to allow his brother to snatch it from her, Michael was concentrating on finding worms. Hannah tending her vegetable patch grumbled that this year nature wasn’t doing what nature was supposed to do.

  “Ninnie, you tink it’s dis light ting wit de playing around daytime?” Jane laughed. “Well, Miss-Know-It-All, you see snap beans like dis puny, maybe ever?” Hannah pointed with disgust towards her deserted string trellis that did look rather woebegone.

  “Give them time, it’s only the end of May. It’s early yet.” Jane nibbled on a twig of parsley loving its spicy taste. “Oh, I read in John’s evening paper that many more troops have arrived in France, but they called them �
��doughboys.’ Is that what they’re called now? What happened to the ‘Sammies’?”

  “I don’t know. How dey spell it?”

  “D-o-u-g-h, then boys.”

  “Dat’s silly—dey gonna bake dem before dey go to fight? I ask Fritz—maybe he knows. You see what I say—everyting is changing—every day again someting new, someting not de way it was before, not de way it should be.” Hannah pulled wisps of grass off her carrot patch.

  “I found one!” Michael, jubilant, called from beneath the daisy bush.

  “Fine,” Hannah called back. “Let me see.”

  “No, I’m looking for another one—so he won’t get so a-lonely.” His voice trailed off.

  “Hannah?”

  “Yes, Ninnie?”

  “That Miss Evangeline, the one who is now Missus Dahlinger …”

  “Un-huh.”

  “Well, now that she is married and everything I don’t suppose she’s dynamite anymore—right?”

  “Why you ask?”

  “Oh, just curiosity, nothing important.”

  “Well, you just keep it dat way!” Hannah busied herself fussing around her turnips.

  “Did she marry someone special?”

  “What, you still at it wit de snoopy questions?”

  “Sorry, Hannah …”

  “Okay, you want to know—I tell …”

  “I really don’t have to …”

  “Now you don’t, before you did—I’ve got work to do.” Hannah stalling for inspiration picked at the parsley.

  “I didn’t mean to make you angry—I only …”

  “Enough already! Vell … okay, dat-oh-so-smart-I-got-de-world-in-de-palm-of-my-little-hand Miss Evangeline is now de Missus of Once-I-

  carried-all-de-money-for-de-Boss-chaffeur-now-I-got-it-am-convenient-husband Mr. Dahlinger—so der, now you know!”

  Jane utterly confused by all the innuendoes of what she had no knowledge of thought it better to keep her mouth shut until another time was more propitious for the satisfaction of one’s curiosity.

  “Mama!” the outraged wail of her firstborn split the air. “John is squeezing my worm to dead!” ended any further conversation and not too soon where Hannah was concerned, who, stomping earth off her shoes, walked into her kitchen carrying two scrawny carrots as if they offended her.

  In June war as an American reality swept the nation in a tidal wave of jubilant patriotism. At a place called Belleau Wood, an untried division of US Marines not only repulsed a German attack but drove the enemy back without the aid or participation of the more seasoned forces of their allies. At last brave American boys had proven their superior worth and the nation could be proud of its fighting men and of itself. There was even talk that now that America was finally in the war, it could be over by July.

  What this victory might have cost in actual lives understandably was hidden within its incredible achievement. The country’s morale was now too high and useful to deflate with unproductive truths. What had started out as a benevolent war, one based on ideology rather than actual need—now that America’s youth was facing possible bloodshed, the hatred of Germans flared anew, this time encompassing all immigrant communities, be they friend or foe, aided and abetted by political utterances and gathering wartime hysteria.

  Everyday hatreds never far from society’s perimeter, now ran rampant—their destructive power legitimized by the addition to the Espionage Act, passed by Congress when the country was still neutral, of the new Seditions Act. A sweeping law that could and did imprison anyone for simply objecting to the war in any form and for any reason. As political utterances and gathering wartime frenzy accelerated, witch hunts materialized using the Seditions Act as legal justification. In a country mostly populated by immigrants whose origins were not yet completely distilled through generations, the very configuration of faces, customs, religions, accents, even attitudes were noted, judged solely on the basis of mostly unsubstantiated suspicion of friend and foe alike.

  The process that was responsible for the grandeur of this enviable country of immigrants was being insidiously used to erode its still young and vulnerable structure. Those still without citizenship having the potential of being the enemy within the magnanimous country that had welcomed them, given them sanctuary, were particularly singled out.

  A country settled, populated, its laudable stature gained though immigration was experiencing a self-erosion not seen since its Civil War. Only the fact that it was enmeshed in a war that was to end all wars, for all time, establish the freedom of its democracy across the world, kept most of the country’s patriotism pure.

  John, Zoltan, and Ebbely—perhaps the three most politically astute within their group—were appalled. On those evenings when voices were raised, private opinions aired, Jane managed to find acceptable reasons to be present in her parlor in order to listen. She who had by now devoured the writings of Elizabeth Seaton, followed the exploits and persecution of Margaret Sanger, Jane was no longer the starry-eyed young girl content with the crumbs of male enthusiasm for an automobile no matter how enchanting. First with her duties as Watcher, then with her own perceptive sympathy of what she had seen—she had educated herself sufficiently by now to be equal to the men’s intelligence without seeming to be so, having added the new luxury of decision as to what to accept and what to discard from the process.

  “This is utterly astounding—listen to this …” Ebbely began to read, “‘… Enemy aliens’—this man’s referring to Detroit’s German Americans—‘are not entitled to the slightest degree of respect from humanity. The sooner we perfect plans for the total extermination of such monstrosities in human form the sooner will this country and the world find itself again at peace.’”

  “I tell you, my friends—I’m worried—where will all this end?”

  “I think it has only begun.” John lit his cheroot.

  “What do you mean only begun—left and right people are being hauled off to jail for no more reasons than expressing their right, the right they came here for—the freedom to speak without fear of reprisal.”

  “That’s just it, Zoltan—I don’t think this will stop even if and when the war ends.”

  Knowing what John was getting at, Ebbely looked at Stan, wondering at his silence.

  “Ja,” Fritz shook his head, “I heard even the post office of the United States doesn’t allow now any mailing of newspapers that say anything against the war.”

  “The Michigan Socialist is already barred from using the US mail,” added Stan.

  “You see! And on the line everyone is suspected—no matter who they are or where they come from—even the Negroes …” Stan’s gaze swept the room. “That, my friends, is not the America I left my homeland for, nor, if you are honest with yourselves, did you.”

  The room was silenced. For some to agree with him would have seemed disloyal.

  John flicked ash from his cheroot. “What worries me is that this Seditions Act is being used as a convenient tool to flush and imprison more Socialists than traitors.”

  “Well, well, John—what an interesting conclusion coming from you. You as a sudden sympathizer of Socialism?”

  “No, Stan—freedom is a man’s right, his greatest treasure. When that is threatened—by any organization regardless of ideology—”

  “Don’t preach, John,” Zoltan cautioned.

  “I’m not. Free to think, free to do—free to be—brought me to this country. Come on—as Stan said, brought all of us, and if that is ever lost—so are we.”

  “Well put, John,” Zoltan acknowledged.

  “As you so often remind me—as the only true American amongst you—do all of you support this war?” Ebbely looked about the room. Jane held her breath.

  “Yes—if by that you mean to stop it.”

  “Ja, the killing must be stopped,” Fritz agreed.
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  “By even more killing?” asked Ebbely making Stan smile.

  “If that will do it, yes!”

  “Yes, Fritz is right. It must be stopped and if we can do it thank God for America!”

  “Amen.”

  “Mr. Ford says it’s the bankers who started the war,” Peter interjected.

  “I thought he claims it’s the fault of the Jews,” countered Stan.

  “Well, all bankers are, aren’t they?”

  Ignoring Peter, Stan looked around the room. “My friends, all of you must begin to realize that Highland Park is no longer your world nor Henry Ford your Messiah, there is a darker side to our dream and I for one …”

  “And so you will join those that terrorize their own?” John challenged.

  “Terrorize, John? Don’t believe all you hear—the illiterate, superstitious paisanne of your country’s South look to us for protection … they need us. You know the Irish control all law enforcement—well now they have even organized what they call an Italian Squad for the sole purpose of keeping an eye on the dagos and what has terror got to do with it?”

  Zoltan stifled a sneeze. “Stan, you a Rumanian taking up the cause—the plight of the uneducated Sicilians—very interesting.”

  Having arrived to pick up her husband, Serafina heard Zoltan’s remark as she entered the parlor. Ignoring the others’ greeting—she stood before him annunciating his name as though the very forming of it was distasteful.

  “Zoltan?”

  “Yes?”

  “My father’s organization offers our people the services without which they would remain the shunned scum they are treated as. I am proud of Stan. He will be a fine soldier in our war!”

  “So the Black Hand thinks of itself as justified benevolence?”

  Serafina whirled in John’s direction.

  “How do you know its name?”

  “My dear Serafina, such an organization cannot maintain its anonymity.”

  “Certainly not in these days.” Ebbely enjoying Serafina’s obvious discomfort, smiled in agreement.

  Without another word, Serafina flounced out of the room—Stan, murmuring good-bye, followed her.

  Zoltan squirmed. “There, my friends, lies a danger far more immediate than even a righteous union meeting.”