Onyx

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  At the word bastard a peculiar sneer formed on Hugh’s still handsome profile. After a few paces he asked, “What about Shapiro? What do the men think of him?”

  “He’s just part of the package. Without Hutchinson we’d have pulled the plug on the whole damn local.”

  “That’s your job.”

  “Then give me a shot at it.” Dickson Keeley obeyed Hugh because if Hugh ever told the boss about his dirty tricks, including the sexual ones, it would mean the end of him. But he was no subservient tool. “You tie my hands and then tell me I’m not doing my job. Mr. Bridger, why not let me at Hutchinson?”

  Hugh quickened his step. The path turned to show an enclosed field. A vagrant breeze off Lake St. Clair rippled across the wild oats, darkening the color from cream to amber. Hugh sat on a shaded marble bench, touching a folded handkerchief to the right side of his face—the scar tissue did not sweat. A luxuriously maned lion padded toward them. This was Aries, the larger male.

  “Where’s the others?” Keeley inquired.

  Hugh pointed. Three recumbent lions were camouflaged by the long grasses. “Still feeding,” he said. “You’ll have to keep working around Hutchinson. Remember, you’re dealing with my nephew’s brother-in-law.”

  “It’s not as if the two are buddy-buddy nowadays. Is it because she’s a kike? Is that why nobody gives them the time of day?”

  “The Bridger family’s not your concern.”

  “The hell it isn’t. What’s their opinion of Hutchinson’s wife and kids?”

  Aries stretched out near the fencing, and Hugh stared at the redness on the whiskers. It took a far less subtle mind than his to recognize that Tom would stand for no harm to his and Antonia’s grandchildren. “You certainly aren’t considering any games with the children?”

  “Nothing to hurt them. But why not let him sweat a bit?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Listen, I’d prefer to go at him direct, you know that.” Keeley sat on the bench. “How about her? He’d go back to L.A. at her say-so.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Everybody knows how nuts he is about her.”

  Hugh rose, moving to the fence, tapping on a thick steel strand. Aries, with a low rumble in his tawny chest, looked up, and Hugh gazed into inhuman bronze eyes. “None of us would want a public brouhaha.”

  “I figured that.”

  “Then you understand the ground rules.”

  “Steer clear of him and the kids, no stories in the papers, don’t do anything the Boss might hear about, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But she’s …” The educated drawl faded.

  Hugh mentally translated the silence. Fair game. The swing of his overbrimming avuncular love onto its dark, lunar side was irrevocable, and as once he had planned vengeance on Major Stuart for his deformity, so now he was not averse to paying off Elisse. letting her be fair game. After all, how disastrous could a little private, nonmutilating browbeating be? Not turning from the lion, he said, “Use your own judgment.”

  “They’re as good as on the way back to L.A.”

  “Nobody’s to know Security convinced them.”

  “I understand,” Dickson Keeley said.

  III

  The temperature that July remained in the nineties, and the thin boards of the Hutchinsons’ rented house clutched the steamy heat. That Thursday evening—the last Thursday in July—the warm, gluey atmosphere resounded with Alfred Wallenstein’s Sinfonietta, which was tuned loud enough to drown out the repetitive squeals of Ben’s violin.

  Ben did not question why his parents had brought him to Detroit; however, he had developed a means of making it acceptable to himself. He punished them by practicing more vigorously, by antagonizing his teacher and schoolmates, by scorning the neighborhood gang, by keeping his love for his parents a yet more flamboyant secret: this intensification of himself had become a creative thing. Justin understood what was going on. Elisse did not. Wearing a hair shirt of guilts, she spent the occasional penny she had to spare on Fleer Dubble Bubble gum that he cracked belligerently, and she ignored his misdemeanors—it was she who had tuned up the radio.

  Justin rested his socked feet on one of the cartons that crowded the narrow living room. He held the Detroit Free Press, but he was watching his wife as she sat at the desk frowning over a ledger. In her pink cotton dress, ankle socks, saddle shoes, her intent face smudged under the eyes, she looked like a tired co-ed burning the midnight oil.

  Since June, when the double work week had begun, she had been setting the alarm for four thirty so she could clean and do the ironing before dawn. The rest of her hours were consumed by AAW.

  Arching her back wearily, she lifted her brown curls to cool the nape of her neck, then became aware of Justin’s scrutiny.

  “Hey, mister,” she said. “Weren’t you holding a meeting tonight?”

  “I don’t have to leave for a bit. What’s wrong there?”

  “The treasury’s overdrawn. Thank God your quarterly check came today. I barely restrained myself from committing forgery and making the deposit.”

  Justin scratched thoughtfully at his instep. “I’m holding back two fifty for our account.”

  “That’s the Brotherhood’s money!” she cried indignantly.

  “I bring home half a paycheck.”

  “We agreed, Justin, remember? We agreed that the entire payment’d go in. The treasury’s broke, I tell you.”

  “What’s happened to all the initiation fees and dues?”

  “Rent on 2415 Miller Road. Utilities at same address. Telephone,” she said, jabbing down the page. “Paper for leaflets. New roller for mimeograph machine. Two used Remington typewriters. Hot plate and radio for headquarters. Fifty used folding chairs. Coffee, donuts, milk. Assorted groceries for Ladies’ Auxiliary.” The three hundred and eleven members, eager and pleased to be part of the Brotherhood, saw the twice-weekly lunch as an act of solidarity and hope—besides, many of them needed the baked beans or spaghetti. Elisse rustled pages. “Here,” she said. “Loan to Pete Ogoczy, loan to Armand Choix, loan to Johnny Coleman. Thirty or so dittoes. At least half made by you.”

  “I’ll have to watch it,” he said, reddening. “Union officials get paid. We pay Mitch. You work full time too.”

  “Two fifty a quarter is eighty-three thirty a month. Isn’t that a mite plush for the secretary?”

  “You’ve lost weight.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Justin! On purpose, on purpose.”

  “You dab a bit on your plate and give us the rest.”

  “You want me fat as Kate Smith?”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  Ben’s violin had ceased. The radio orchestra was playing the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, and she hummed a bar. “I love that opera. Daddy does too—did I ever tell you he was all set to call me Tatiana?”

  “He told me,” Justin said. “You’re overdoing it, sweet.”

  “That calm persistence can be irritating as hell,” she said. “Justin, I didn’t come here to shut myself in a glass case. Stop worrying, you have a strong, immortal, purposeful wife.”

  “Sometimes I feel as if we’re part of a stupid charade. Where’s this getting us?”

  “Eleven hundred and thirty-seven members,” she said, triumphant.

  “All in the tire shop.”

  She closed one eye, squinting at him. Justin’s size and general air of solid certainty no longer fooled her; she knew he was prey to the deep, mean blues: these self-abrasive questionings of his past and present had begun around the time he discovered his illegitimacy. She bore across the hot, crowded little room.

  “Oh, so you don’t think the Brothers’re going places, is that right?” she asked, parrying curved fingertips at his underarms. Justin was violently ticklish. Laughing and helpless, he tried to fend her off. She pushed her attack, laughing as much as he. Not until they were both gasping and wet-eyed did she desist.

  Chuckling
still, he pulled her into his lap, and she rested her cheek against his perspiration-moist hair. “How come,” she inquired, “you’re gray up here and not other places?”

  “That’s privileged information.”

  They both smiled.

  “Justin, I’m fine. Hunky-dory. But if it’ll make you feel better, put fifty into our account.”

  “Fifty’s not enough for three months.”

  “I can’t bear to cut the loans, or the Ladies’ lunches.”

  “Elisse—”

  “Oh, come on, darling. Ain’t we got fun?” Her voice went husky.

  Their smiles faded. The radio with its glowing emerald light spread the next selection, the cool, dreamy notes of Rachmaninoff, and she inhaled sharply, suspended in the pleasure of his touch. She loved the deliberation of his hands, loved that he never fumbled or got rough and frantic, and as he rubbed slowly on the cotton above her nipples she was strung on exquisite cords that reached deep within her vagina. They were both breathing irregularly, and she thought, How fine it is that we’re both still besotted enough to go at it here and now.

  The toilet flushed upstairs. They pulled apart.

  “Later.” Justin’s voice was a low rumble.

  “Date,” she murmured, kissing his forehead.

  He laced his shoes, combed his hair, reknotted his tie, and drove off to a Hamtramck boardinghouse where in a bedroom crowded with sweating, frightened men with Polish surnames, he would enumerate the reasons that automotive workers should form an industrial union.

  IV

  An hour or so later Elisse was holding up a pair of boy’s brown knickers. With a half-pay envelope the AAW families had no cash for luxuries like clothes, so she had written letters to all the Kaplans’ friends, requesting castoffs, which the Ladies’ Auxiliary darned and patched. The worn flannel exuded an odor of urine, one knee was gone, and so were the buttons. Reluctantly she shoved the garment into the box red-crayoned RAGMAN.

  The bell buzzed.

  Elisse looked up. Both Justin and Mitch had impressed on her that she must never open the door when she was alone—batterings were one facet of Security’s crusade of discouraging the Brothers: as a cautionary object lesson, Mitch had twice been jumped and knocked senseless as he returned to his boardinghouse. These warnings, however, eluded her, for on these hot nights Mrs. Milacek often carried over a pitcher of iced coffee and some harmless chatter.

  “Be right there,” Elisse called, running to answer.

  On the dark porch stood a wide-shouldered man wearing a straw hat. His silhouette was all she could discern: Detroit, unable to pay for electricity, had discontinued lighting the streets of many suburbs, including Woodland Park.

  “Mrs. Hutchinson?” he asked.

  “Hutchins,” she retorted, fear prickling the fine hair on the back of her neck as she pushed at the door.

  He propped it open with his shoulder. “Elisse with two s’s, Kaplan, Hutchinson. Mrs. Justin.”

  Her pupils had adjusted and she made out two shadowy specters at the bottom of the steps. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m with Onyx. Perhaps you’ve heard my name.” The tone was pleasant, a patrician Eastern drawl. “Dickson Keeley.”

  Himself, she thought. It’s bad, very. “Mr. Keeley, my husband is out.” Thank God.

  “It’s you we want to talk to,” he said. The forms ceased to be ghosts, becoming two large, sweat-odored men as they clomped up the wooden stoop. The three jarred by her into the narrow, stuffy hall. “This is Smith.” Dickson Keeley indicated the tall, pudgy-hipped man in a seersucker suit

  Smith took off his panama, inclining his shining pink pate.

  “And meet Potter.” The name fitted not at all. Swarthy and sharp-featured, displaying his muscular body in a tight double-breasted suit, Potter was most people’s idea of a recently immigrated Sicilian.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Potter said in a liquid, unplaceable accent.

  “My husband’ll be back any minute,” she said. How could she be lying this smoothly when her legs were cold to the knees with fear? How was she able to stand? “He’s bringing back some friends.”

  “He’s in Hamtramck haranguing three of our men and four from Chrysler’s Jefferson plant.” Dickson Keeley glanced at his minions, who positioned themselves as though to cut off escape routes, fat Smith lounging against the front door as he took out an emery board to file the nails of his soft-looking hands while the swarthy Potter settled on the staircase, hands on upthrust knees, taut as if on the ready for an Olympic sprint. Keeley stepped into the living room.

  “What’s all this? A rummage sale?” Pushing aside the RAGMAN’S carton, he slung his straw hat neatly to the coffee table. “I must say you’re quite a surprise. Even in those old clothes you’re a knockout. Real class. Your school pictures don’t do you justice.”

  “Is that how spend your free minutes, poring over old U of C annuals?” The pounding of her heart rang loudly in her ears, but Elisse had learned the ability to project a tart breeziness, cover-up for her treacly interior. She sounded normal.

  “Spunk, too. I like spunk. Tell me something. Why does a peach like you waste time stirring up a bunch of Polacks, Hunkies, hillbillies, and dinges? What’s with Justin anyway? Depression or no, a lawyer with a British accent can rake in the berries. If you were my heatless cooker, I’d wrap you in sables.”

  Elisse’s chilled thighs were about to give way, but sensing it a tactical error to sit, she moved to the window, where leaning against the ledge would appear casual rather than necessary.

  “Relax, relax, I’m here as a pal,” Dickson Keeley said. “I’m giving you some advice. Pass it on to Justin. He should head back West.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Detroit’s no town for him. I’d tell him myself, but his sister’s Mrs. Caryll Bridger.” Keeley’s lips pursed, an ambiguous curve that was halfway to a smirk. “Family matters can get complicated, know what I mean? Anyway, the message’ll score harder, coming from you.”

  “This brightens my day.”

  Keeley looked sharply at her.

  “You want us to quit,” she said. “That can mean only one thing. The Brothers are finally getting someplace.”

  “Every day’s sunshine in Los Angeles. Nothing but blue skies all day long. You’ll be happier. And healthier.”

  “Is that a threat?” Her voice was breathy. “You really ought to do better. You sound like the stinker in a B movie.”

  Smith’s emery board rasped.

  “Be a good girl,” Keeley said. “Stop trying to prove how brave you are, cut out the wisecracks. Have you got this straight? You’re telling Justin that you’re ready to pack up and go home.”

  “Oh no I’m not.”

  His pupils shrank, a momentary chaos of pure fury that reminded Elisse that two AAW members had died after Security’s anonymous beatings, yet his voice retained that bantering drawl as he replied, “You’re sharp. Can’t you see this Brotherhood business is a laugh? You really don’t figure the boss is about to deal with a local, do you? Why, he’d just as soon negotiate with a hunk of steel.”

  His brief metamorphosis into a raging creature had sealed Elisse’s terror. She was shivering in the heat; however, she forced herself to speak levelly. “People aren’t hunks of steel. They think, they feel.”

  “I’m paid a fortune to keep out unions, and the other auto companies spend the same amounts. Don’t be a fool, Elisse. There’s no point for you to live in a dump like this, or to work your tail off, no point at all. The auto companies aren’t going to give any union a toehold. And Onyx! You tell me. When has the boss let anyone lay down the law to him? He didn’t listen to the President or Congress, so why would he kowtow to a bunch of nobodies?”

  “Because he’ll have to. Or close down.”

  “Don’t make me laugh. More than half of Detroit’s out of work. Every man in every plant could quit tomorrow, and the day after, they’d be lined up waiting to f
ill the jobs. What do you figure this double work week’s about?”

  “If there were a closed shop—”

  “There won’t be, so stop spinning your wheels.” He leaned his spatulate chin toward her. “Tonight you talk to Justin.”

  “Never,” she said.

  “What good did college do you?” he asked mildly, rising to his feet. “Guys.”

  Smith ceased filing his nails and Potter stood in one swift, articulated movement. Both stepped into the small, stuffy room. Teeth glinted from between lips drawn back into horrifying grimaces that masqueraded as smiles.

  The dingy, mustard-colored wallpaper, the cartons, the shabby, comfortable upholstery shipped from California receded from Elisse’s vision. Unable to move, she panted, a small, paralyzed little creature run to earth. Her stomach froze in a spongy way, as if crushed ice packed her viscera.

  Nobody spoke.

  The fat one, Smith, tugged at his seersucker jacket as he took one long stride toward where she shuddered by the window. Suddenly her hypnotized state turned to frenzy. Unconsciously her fingers curved, her thumbs tensed; she prepared to gouge at his eyes. Before she could lift her arms, he imprisoned her wrists. His speed and agility as well as the strength of those soft-looking freckled hands should have astonished her, but there was no room for surprise in her incandescent panic. To escape his grasp she kicked and twisted. The celadon-green china lamp teetered, toppling quietly onto the couch, not breaking. Smith jerked his arms behind her back, about-facing her so that her heaving rib cage arched toward the other two.

  Nobody spoke.

  Dickson Keeley stepped over a carton to the radio, turning it on full blast so that the crazed scuffle of her saddle shoes and her barking gasps were covered by an actor’s trained voice. You can’t get away with this.

  Smith forced her into the hall, skidding her balky soles across the floorboards. A wire of rationality was strung through her panic, and she bit her lower lip, refusing to cry out lest she awaken her children.

  In the narrow hall a foot chopped hard against the back of her calves. Her shoes shot out from under her. She would have fallen had not Smith been holding her. He let her down onto the gritty linoleum.