The Dollmaker

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  “Yes, she does,” the tool-and-die man said. “A man oughtn’t to have to pay dues an belong to a union to get a decent wage—but th way things are he’s gotta.”

  The young one, who seemed to be recovering from his stupefaction, nodded. “I know. Pop’s told me things—an when I was little I used to see things like—well, like my mother crying. Pop quit telling her things, but he’d tell me; he saw a man die on th ’sembly right by him—speed-up—August—no fans.”

  Clovis for the first time looked at the young one and seemed to understand that he had been hurt more than any of them. “Gert, git some cawfee. Tony there, he’ll be wanten to go home.” He made a brave show of sitting up, but dizziness overtook him again, and he let his shoulders sag against the wall.

  “Yeah, you’d better be gitten home,” Whit said, and he too was kind, as he added, “You’re lucky like the rest uv us not a—” He stopped suddenly, his glance fixed on the young one’s neck, “Say, ain’t that blood?” He added quickly when the other began a frightened fumbling: “It’s off a Clovis most like. Nobody got in a good lick at you. One turned an might ha swung when you come runnen up, but I got him frum behind—he kinda grabbed atcha when he went down; yu could be scratched a little.”

  Whit’s voice had grown more and more reassuring, while the other’s fingers reddened with blood as they hunted under his shirt collar. Suddenly, the fright growing in his eyes, he jerked off his jacket, and then his shirt, so impatiently that a button popped off. His hand searched frantically over his undershirt as he craned his head to see his shirt. “It’s gone,” he cried. “My Christopher medal, they got it. All through th war I wore it—on Wake Island, in a hospital. I’m home, and—” He turned blindly about as if to run, but the washing machine by the passage into the kitchen barred his way. He flopped down into a chair at the end of the kitchen table, buried his face on his outflung arms, and fell into a hopeless, homesick weeping, the sobs like hands jerking him to pieces.

  Gertie started toward him, stopped. She had never heard a man cry—soundless tears and sniffles at funerals, tears in church when men wept for their sins—but not like this. She wanted to touch him, to smooth his hair, but he was a man, a soldier. And if he cried for this, what would he do when real bad luck hit one of his own?

  The men, too, were silent, embarrassed, looking first at the boy, and then at each other, and lastly at Gertie, as if she, being a woman, must act like a woman and stop the man’s crying. “Don’t wake their kids,” Whit whispered, and then to Clovis: “His medal would ha been on a little chain. That un I hit grabbed at th kid—s’funny all that feller wanted soon’s I got in that first good lick was somethen to grab holt on—an then he hadda git th kid’s medal.”

  “He oughtn’t to ha come, a kid like that,” Clovis whispered.

  “Nothing else would do him,” the tool-and-die man said. “His dad was all set to help us—fool-like he told th kid—so th kid took it on hisself to come. ‘My dad’s too old for this,’ he said.” He turned again and looked at the weeping one, disgust on his face.

  Whit’s eyes sparkled. “Wouldn’t it ha been something now if old Luigi hadda come?”

  “You’re enough,” the tool-and-die man said. “If Luigi hadda come an done like you, th ones left couldn’t a dragged th other two away; police find a dead man by Bender’s back door that strike vote woulda been defeated for true.”

  “He wouldn’t ha had no union card, an anyhow we could a dragged—” Like the others, Whit had turned to look at the living-room door, for behind it there was a low but insistent tapping. “Th cops?” he asked in a moment, losing something of his look of pleasure.

  “Cops don’t knock thataway,” the tool-and-die man whispered, studying the door.

  The tapping came again. Gertie lifted the blind, and saw Sophronie, crouching, only her face in the light with the lips moving, commanding, “Lemme in.”

  She slipped swiftly in, the rain-dampened housecoat pulled tightly about her. She pushed the door softly shut with her back, and just as softly reached behind her and tested the catch, all the while her eyes searching over Whit, his head, his face, his body. Satisfied with him, her frightened glance considered Clovis, then went on to the crying boy in the kitchen. “You uns outta be ashamed,” she said, all her anger coming out in a whispered hiss, “letten a kid like that mess around in this.” And then her hopeless weary whisper: “I’ve bagged yu an bagged yu tu quit messen around. Yu’ll git in more trouble, an be losen another job.”

  Whit smiled. “I was hunten a job when I got back in at old man Flint’s. I figger th union’s worth a little trouble.”

  “Trouble,” she said, “yu hunt it,” and she looked at the tool-and-die man.

  “Aw, Sophronie,” Whit said, flushing as her angry, accusing eyes swept the other, “yu gotta have a little—little faith. Recollect, yu quit believen they’d ever be a union at Flint’s.”

  “It took a war,” she said. “All that fighten an passen out literature an paraden with our faces covered—that didn’t do no good. An atter all people like us has done, them sitdown strikes an all—” She drew a deep breath, then spoke all in a rush: “You know what they’re sayen, I heared plenty ’fore I got laid off, th ones that done nothen er hardly nothen, never had to dirty their hands, why they’re sayen them that pulled th rough stuff is red—commies an—”

  “Sh-sh,” Whit hissed, nodding toward the bowed head, and then more loudly: “You’ve jist been hearen a little fussen in th union. We’ve got a union, we’ll keep it.”

  Sophronie sighed. “In th end it’ll jist be somethen else to mind, like—” She had for the last moment or so been watching the boy, still lost to the world in his weeping, his hand hunting again over his bare chest. “He bad hurt?”

  Whit cleared his throat, looked at Sophronie, and then away. “He kinda got hurt.”

  “Mostly he’s broke up; he lost his medal—saint something,” Gertie said.

  “Medal? Saint?” Sophronie asked, and her eyes grew still more frightened. She stood an instant, terrified, staring at the back of his head as if it had been a rattlesnake, coiled and ready to spring. She turned suddenly to Whit, begging, “Git him out; git him away.”

  Whit looked at Gertie. Gertie looked at the boy, hesitated, then walked resolutely up to him and put her hand on his shoulder. “You’d better git home son; an keep out a sich. Fighten around, taken sides—in this—it ain’t no good an—” She choked; maybe he didn’t want to be a rabbit, either.

  Her touch on his shoulder and her words in no way checked his crying, but did loosen his tongue. He moaned, his face still buried on his arm: “Somebody’s gotta take sides. Allatime I was inu army, I stuck up fer th union. Lotsa mu buddies hated th unions on account a they’d read th papers from back home; th papers give um th notion that union men and women never done nothing but strike, and that every factory worker just worked at his job to keep outa th army—an why have they gotta make us hate each other so? An now this,” and he dissolved again into incoherent weeping.

  The tool-and-die man came to Gertie’s help. “Look, kid,” he said, bending over the boy, “it wasn’t a union man tried to kill you.” And when the boy did not answer, but only sobbed, he added impatiently: “Don’t take it so personal; yu gotta remember them men was getting paid to beat up Bender; you got in their way; they hadn’t anything against you—or Bender either. They was hired; it’s like hating th gun that—”

  The boy lifted his head, and his voice after all the whispering was loud. “That’s it. I had nothing personal against the Japs. See? Somebody told um to try an kill me. Somebody give me a gun and told me to try to kill them. Now, I’m home—peace. An it’s allasame.”

  His voice had risen so that all around were the troubled, whispered shushings. Sophronie nudged Whit. “Git him out.” Then, in a louder whisper: “You’d better tiptoe around an turn our kitchen light on—you ginerally have it on way ’fore this. Somebody’ull be suspicionen. Anybody see yer car?
”

  Whit shook his head. “Th kid drove his’n,” and he nodded toward the tool-and-die man, now helping Tony into his jacket. “Th rest a us rode ahead, like we’ve been a doen, a little piece behind Bender in his’n,” and he nodded toward Clovis.

  Sophronie was silent as she snapped out the light, opened the door for the three men to go through, then closed it again, softly, her shivering sigh of relief that the boy was gone loud in the dark. “Old man Flint’s dead—but they’s still people around a watchen, a listenen, a runnen with tales tu make a man lose his job—or git hit on th head. That Catholic kid, he’ll be runnen to his priest an th police an—oh, Lord—I figger th union, it mebbe watches an listens too. They’re agin rough stuff—now.”

  “Mebbe everything’ull be all right,” Clovis said, but he sounded troubled, his whisper low as Sophronie’s.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  GERTIE STOOD, THE SWEATY slip of paper in one hand, the sweaty nickel in the other, and stared at the telephone. If this were the kind like back home where a body asked for a number and didn’t have to dial—she began to read the directions slowly, seeing with difficulty in the dim light, increasingly aware of the growing impatience of the people behind her; she ought to have come sooner than Clovis said, for already she had waited in line. She wished the thing were in a little boxed-off place like one she’d seen one Sunday when Clovis had taken them into a drugstore for ice-cream cones—such a waste of money. Why had she let him waste money so? It was after they’d paid for Cassie’s marker, and she’d felt rich somehow.

  She rubbed her arm hard across her forehead, then suddenly stepped aside, flushing, ashamed, hardly able to look at the woman next in line. “You go ahead,” she said. “Seems like I’m kinda mixed up.”

  “Butcha gotta git used to th things sometime,” the woman said. “Me, I never seen nothing but that other kind till I moved here.” She glanced at Gertie’s slip. “Yu just gotta make a sick call?”

  Gertie nodded, cleared her throat. “My man, he’s got th—flu,” she said, her eyes narrowed a little, watching the other’s face.

  “Ain’t it awful?” the woman said, reaching for the receiver. She listened a moment, took Gertie’s nickel, dropped it in, and after listening again, held the phone to Gertie’s ear. “It’s sounding awright, so’s yu gotta begin.” She looked at the slip, and with her eyes on it she dialed the two letters, the five numbers, slowly, repeating each to Gertie like one teaching a child its numbers. “Now,” she whispered finished, “when somebody answers yu say this,” and she pointed to the next number, “Line 37I.”

  A voice, flat, like a machine speaking, said in her ear, “Flint Manufacturing Plant Number Ten.”

  And Gertie repeated the line number very slowly and so loudly one of the project office girls looked in her direction. Another voice was in her ear, and flustered now by the strangeness, she said, “My man, Clovis Nevels, he’s sick.”

  The woman behind her was whispering, “Nah, not thataway; not his name.”

  The voice in her ear said, “His division, please.”

  She read the next number. Sophronie, familiar with such things, had written it down; she answered more questions with other numbers, finishing at last with the one on his badge. The numbers must have answered all the questions; the voice never asked for the name or was Nevels spelled with one l or two, but after the questions said only, “Call each morning at this time when he is ill.”

  Something clicked; the phone was still; and the woman behind her, whom she had forgotten, was saying, reaching for the receiver, “Yu done good fudda first time.”

  She hurried home, but once there, tried to walk slowly and unconcernedly up her steps, remembering not to look around and betray any concern as to whether the neighbors watched or no. Clovis seemed asleep when she stuck her head through the bedroom door. His eye was black and swollen shut from the wound above it, and his whole face was misshapen from the bruised and swollen jaw, but sleeping so he looked more peaceful, more like himself than last night. She turned to tiptoe away, and he roused, started to turn in bed, struck his sore jaw on the pillow, and came wide awake, remembering, anger brightening his good eye. He saw her troubled face, and asked thickly, for he had more difficulty in talking now than he had had last night: “What’sa matter? Sick call okay?”

  She nodded, looking at him—all the millions and millions of other numbers; they were men, too, and—“It was easy,” she said, wanting to ease the worry in his face. “You was jist numbers—to them.”

  Her words angered him, for he spoke, lifting his head a little in spite of the pain: “If it wasn’t fer th union, I wouldn’t be nothen but a sick man, wonderen if I hada job.” He forgot his anger with her in the bigger one brought back by the pain. He twisted his head from side to side like one in unbearable agony, whispering through his clenched teeth: “I’ll find him, Gert. I’ll find him if it takes a million years.”

  She stood, her mind, as always, stumbling around, picking up words, laying them down. Not personal, the tool-and-die man had said, but that was all a lie; everybody was a person. Judas was a person; he fulfilled the prophecies made hundreds of years before he was born, and in so doing he sinned, and like any other man he suffered for his sins—and Clovis would most likely suffer for his; only, they were all together, he, she, and the children.

  She timidly went up to him and felt his forehead; it was hot, and some of her fear of the future dimmed in the face of her immediate concern for him. She tried again, as she had tried earlier in the morning, to persuade him to let Whit take him to a doctor, but now as then he was angry at the suggestion. A doctor might get suspicious, and call the cops, he said. It hurt him so to talk, she came away. Maybe Whit was pretty certain he had killed a man.

  She washed the dishes, made the beds, quickly, briskly, to drown her thoughts; then she whittled a new boat for Amos to keep him in the bathroom, since the day was cold, with a mist of rain, and he could not go outside to play. She warned him again of the dangers of catching the flu if he went into his father’s bedroom. The bed was against the wall, with the low foot facing the door; and it was she who had thought to have Clovis lie with his head by the footboard so that if Amos chanced to look in he would see his feet more quickly than his face. Clytie and Enoch she had told—a little. She had made a floundering tale of union fighting and drunks, or started to, but it had suddenly seemed to her that they had known more about the business than she. Maybe last night they’d been awakened; maybe Enoch had learned things from Gilbert Meanwell.

  She was just coming out from giving Clovis another aspirin when someone knocked. She closed the bedroom door swiftly but silently before opening the other. Nancy Miller, holding a loosely wrapped package, came in and closed the door before she said: “Buckandy knowed all about it, all along. Is they anything I can do?”

  Gertie shook her head. “I’m a tryen to git him tu see a doctor.” She heard snorting, muffled sounds from behind the bedroom door, and opened it.

  Clovis was sitting up in bed, calling, “I wanta see Buck.”

  “He’ll drop around a little later; it ud look funny him comen early inu mornen like this,” Nancy said, studying his face, then feeling his forehead. “He feels kinda feverish,” she said to Gertie, “but I wouldn’t worry none. If he gits too bad, I’ll take him to a doctor. I can drive.”

  Clovis made a mumbled sound of disapproval, and she turned back to him. “I’cud throw yu inu car, an go tu a doctor off a piece—he wouldn’t hafta know who we was. I’d tell um I got drunk an beatcha up. Yu gotta lie when yu gotta lie. But,” she turned to Gertie, “from what I heared his insides ain’t hurt none. I know a druggist that’ll sell sulfa pills ’thout a prescription. They’re handy; I keep um allatime fer th kids. Try a few on him, an th aspirin; an if he don’t git better I’ll take um.”

  “I don’t want no doctor,” Clovis was insisting. “Stid a gitten me a doctor, git me th man that done it.”

  “Don’t think Buckandy an a c
ouple a guys he knows ain’t a looken; one’s mu cousin goen back home with us—an he knows a feller that’s comen up pretty soon with a load a—yu know—liquor. That guy knows his way around. He’ll be a looken fer a dago with a bunged-up left eye an a tore-up yer.”

  Mrs. Miller turned back to Gertie. “Don’t look so worried,” she consoled. “But, Lord, don’t I know they’s nothen worse than bein worried crazy over a sick youngen er a sick man? But if he gits real bad I’ll git um to a doctor.” She remembered the package she still held, thrust it quickly into Gertie’s hands in a shy, ashamed sort of way. “It’s a cake,” she said. “I ain’t much uv a cook—an I’m plumb outa practice. Lots a times while I worked, specially on overtime, I didn’t hardly have no time to do any real cooken. I hada use bakery goods, and I hated um—made out a rotten eggs an weeveldy flour, I allus figgered; but ever since I got laid off I been on a baken spree. Buckandy laughed when he seen this. ‘You’re practicen up on a neighbors,’ he says.”

  “Law, you’re mighty nice,” Gertie said, adding as she removed the paper: “An so’s th cake. Ain’t it pretty?” for it was covered with pink frosting.

  “It’s mebbe kinda deceiven, though,” the woman said, looking again at Clovis, then turning toward the door. “He don’t look so bad,” she said to Gertie in the kitchen. “I’ll bet his feelen’s hurt worse’n his head. If I was him I wouldn’t rest easy till I give that foreigner plenty fer what he done tu me—funny talken, like he hadn’t been over long, Whit said. That’s th kind allus a comen over here to run th country. Them Catholic foreigners owns them factories an runs them unions, an they’re all in cahoots together.”

  Gertie remembered the boy’s head on the table. “I don’t think …”

  “Yu ain’t never had tu work with th things, keep still an listen to um throw off on everybody from th South. I hadda keep shut one day while th steward told a joke about a fam’ly come tu Detroit, an they rented um a place an they was supposed to a asked, ‘But where’s th eaten trough?’ A maken out like we don’t so much as have dishes. But you say somethen to one a them, boy, that’s different! A girl inu washroom, she says somethen to me one day, complainen tu me because at th place where she hadda eat an them sandwich wagons they didn’t sell nothen but fish on Friday and Wednesday—it was in Lent. An this other girl, she heared her an she upt an says, ‘Commie, huh, haten Catholics’; an that kid, she’d never heared a commies till she hit this town, no more’n me. I told that girl she’d better keep shut. ‘My people back home,’ I told her, ‘they hated Catholics frum away back—an they ain’t never heared a commies; but boy, if anybody went around a callen my people commies on account a they don’t like Catholics they’d git their heads knocked in, an nobody ud wait to round up bedsheets fer to do th job in—they’d do it onu spot,’ I said, ‘without waiten tu mess around with a lot a KKK’s.’ That’s somethen else,” she went on, apparently talking now to Gertie instead of to the girl, “they’re allus talken about Klan-loven, nigger-haten Southerners, but I’m tellen th truth, they’re more nigger haters an Klan lovers up here than ever I did know about back home; an th Black Legion—Lordy, I just recollected I left Buckandy’s biscuit in the stove,” and she was gone.