Onyx

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “Some confession for an organizer,” he said, beaming down at her.

  “Well, I didn’t come to see the sights. We have matters to discuss, Hutchinson, and I gave my word to be back at seven.”

  “You’ll have to work fast then, Prof,” somebody called. There was more laughter.

  Elisse’s face went brick red, but she managed a pert smile.

  The strikers reserved the superintendent’s office for committee conferences, and Justin led her to the dingy room with its metal desk, sagging couch, and wall blackboards. Closing the glass-inset door, he gripped her hands, postponing the moment when the knife-edge of reason must separate him from visceral delight.

  She touched his cheek. “How come no beard?”

  “I run a tight shop. We shave every day.” Razors and blades had been stacked above cartons of canned peaches.

  “What an incredible place this is. The buildings go on and on forever. I’d never have tracked you down without a diagram.” She held up one of the yellow maps that Employment handed out. Her expression sobered. “Are you aware,” she asked, “that your dearly beloved leader has closed down permanently?”

  “We found a radio.”

  “Those newscasters get cute, don’t they?” Her voice deepened into the ripely lubricated tones of broadcast. “‘We now have a new lazy man’s way of striking, sitting down in a closed factory.’ Justin, it’s monstrous how biased the press is! They never report that Security has a regular Maginot Line, guns and all, to keep us away from you.”

  “But you’re here,” he said. “How?”

  “Thanks to Caryll.”

  “Caryll?”

  She sighed. “Chicken Little was right, Justin. The sky has fallen in. It’s been a doozy out there, especially for the tire shop families. After months on the double work week, a real doozy. Most of them were counting on their envelopes to pay for the food they ate a month ago. Welfare’s broke and our treasury’s stony. Daddy scrounged from the studio orchestra and the B’nai B’rith—with the proceeds I’ve been running a kind of soup kitchen with the Ladies’ Auxiliary, but now that money’s gone too.” She sighed. “They’re starving us out—what a rotten way to break a strike.”

  “Tom’s not bluffing,” Justin said. “When did you call Caryll?” She had told him about that chance meeting in Hudson’s toy department, and the friendship that had sprung up over pastry and coffee.

  “Are you kidding? The AAW surrender? Never! He came to the house last night. Justin, the poor man’s on the brink of a nervous breakdown. He’s constantly bombarded to reopen. Which he’s dying to do. And which of course he cannot do.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That his father, noble and generous employer that he is, has always kept our interests close to his heart. Acting in haste, he’s repenting at leisure—and, I might add, comfort. You’ve heard he’s doing a Garbo at the Farm?”

  “On every news program.”

  “Well, Caryll’s cooked up a little scheme. It’ll give the big cheese the excuse he needs to convince himself to open up if you write.”

  Justin’s lips tensed. “Caryll knows about Tom and Mother?” he asked hoarsely. “Caryll knows about me?”

  “No, no, of course not,” she soothed. “Darling, as far as I’m concerned, the idea’s absurd. If Tom Bridger felt anything for you, he could have picked up the phone at any time in nine years.”

  “I’ve wanted to do that, terribly much, and couldn’t.”

  “Sometimes you are too fair-minded.”

  “He has a short fuse. I lit it.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake! Tom Bridger starves hundreds of thousands of people and you beat your chest and cry mea culpa!”

  “What have we got to lose if I contact him?”

  “Your pride.”

  “That’s not providing many jobs, is it?”

  “You’re going to write, Justin, so write.”

  Justin went to the desk, extricating a long pad of departmental discharge forms, tearing off the top sheet, turning it over, staring intently at the blue paper before dipping his pen in gummy ink. His hand raced.

  Finishing, he read then blotted and creased it twice. He handed her the folded page, watching as she stowed it carefully in her purse.

  Her cheeks still glowed from the cold, early morning walk, and under his scrutiny her lashes went down to cast shadows on the rosy flush. The soft full upper lip folded in a gentle arabesque on the lower. Without her faintly challenging expression she was a myth of femininity in this dead, indifferent place where until two weeks ago men had willingly sweated out their lives, she was comfort in this desert of dread, she raised him from his abysmal loneliness. Slowly, eyes still fixed on hers, his hands traced the curve of her breasts, and when she quivered, he dropped to his knees, burrowing his bristly cheeks in the softness. He could feel the deep, irregular reverberations of her heart. “How I’ve missed you,” he muttered into her pink sweater.

  She put her hands on either side of his face. “I’ve missed you the same way, darling.” Her voice was faintly surprised, throaty.

  Lust shook through him, a spontaneous surge of uncontrollable lust such as he had experienced only once before, on that morning he had nearly drowned in the strong Pacific current. His Elisse was miraculously returned to him, the long hunger of sexual frustration was over, the surcease for his brooding fears at hand. He went to the door, glancing through the wired glass to where the mail was being sorted, a magnet for the crowd. Jamming a chair against the lockless door, he sprang to Elisse, curving and straining her to him. She feverishly caressed his neck, his hair, as he pulled up her skirt. Raising her body against the wall blackboard, he pressed kisses on her throat, lowering her onto his tumescence. She gasped aloud, either in pain or ecstasy, he could not tell.

  To Elisse there had been no proper sequence of events. One minute she was triumphantly repeating Caryll’s message while gazing at Justin, her joy veined with guilt—wasn’t she feasting herself on the sight of her husband while other wives of the sit-downers starved? And then Justin’s eyes were on her in that old, meaningfully intense way, and she felt once again that dampening, that deep, delicious ache, that fierce, chaotic tumble of urges to unite with him, to be part of him, to complete herself by joining with him. Inexplicable, this return of her dead desire, but she did not question it. She forgot the cold, destroying war that capital and labor were waging, forgot the furious, didactic arguments. For Elisse there never would be any other truth beyond the small, personal truth of love. She clutched at Justin, feverishly impatient, caressing him, shoving down her underwear, curling her legs around him when he lifted her. Though she gave a whimper, she scarcely felt the pain, passion carried her, lifted her, and his ragged breath in her ear was whispering obscene endearments and she moved with him in the great, engulfing tide of life and love.

  “Sweet, sweet …” His whisper filled the universe.

  Oh now, she thought, now, now.

  They clung together several minutes, and when they moved apart, she gave him a shy, mischievous smile. “Fast work, Prof,” she said as she retrieved her step-ins.

  “I don’t exist without you,” he said.

  She kissed him lightly, tenderly. “Don’t worry. You’re stuck with me.”

  Decorously apart, they walked on scrubbed floors to the main entry. “I’ll go partway with you,” he said, opening the metal door.

  “It’s easier to say good-bye here.”

  Outside, he watched her make her light, swift way, a small figure dwarfed between immensely long walls, turning at the end of the tire shop so he could no longer see her. He looked up at the wheeling gulls. Their craa, craa, craa was the mournful, grieving sound of loss.

  V

  Closing Onyx, though not the reflex of Tom’s temper that he regretted most—he had the ruined desolation of his heart to prove that—was the most iniquitously far-reaching. A headache constricted his skull just above his eyes, his disjointed sleep was nightma
re-wracked, he felt constant quivers of shamed disbelief at what he had done. He wanted to back down. He could not back down. He isolated himself as if he suffered from the Black Death, keeping to his rooms except at mealtime or when Caryll dropped over to visit.

  Together the two of them would silently follow the pine-needle-carpeted trails through the Farm’s primeval acreage. That freezing, overcast morning of December 16 they took the pond trail.

  A stag burst from the undergrowth, bounding in front of them, his white tail erect, his hind legs raising up together. Caryll jumped. “Jesus,” he muttered shakily as the animal crashed away.

  Tom turned, seeing Caryll’s white lips and twitchy eye muscles. “A deer, that’s all,” he said.

  “I know, I know.”

  “We frightened him more than he frightened you.” He was still examining his son. His eyebrow went up. “It’s not the buck, is it? You’re sweating because of me. Christ, Caryll. Me?”

  Caryll exhaled sharply, his breath a visible cloud. He reached into his overcoat pocket for a folded blue paper that Tom recognized as a departmental discharge form. “If you w-won’t read it, I’ll read it to you.”

  “Some choice.”

  “Dad?”

  Tom took the paper from his son’s gloved fingers, shaking it open. Unprepared for the blow of seeing the familiar writing, his wrist went hot as if he had broken it. He leaned against a tree trunk, turning away from Caryll. Squiggles floated in front of the words and he blinked fiercely.

  Dear Tom,

  Too much time has elapsed and too many deeds to make this easy to write. My sincere hope is that you retain a little of the regard you once bore me, as I retain all of my admiration and affection for you.

  Uppermost in my mind are the men who worked for you at Onyx. I cannot believe that you would put a final end to your life’s work any more than I can believe that you would refuse to hear their honest grievances. This strike is not a weapon aimed at you.

  Tom, is it unreasonable that the men should wish to discuss with their employer the ways this Depression has affected them? I am president of the Amalgamated Automobile Workers, but if that distresses you, I will gladly step down. I beg you, though, meet with a negotiator. This catastrophic situation must end.

  Yours as always,

  Justin

  The slight formality was typical of Justin, and so was the resolute wording, only the beg was out of character. Tom stared at the blue sheet, seeing the form printing on the other side. There were no oblique referrals to that final devastating argument, not a hint of tangled bloodlines, and this, Tom decided, relief expanding through his chest, meant that Justin no longer believed them father and son.

  These long, dry years he had been parched for such a letter, the excuse to see his son without any incriminatory exposures; this letter was nearly analogous to the cherished though impossible dream, holding his Antonia again. Tom blinked away the tears. Leaning against a sycamore to regain his composure, he stared at the magnificent beige and fawn patterns of the bark. “How did you come by this?”

  “Elisse Hutchinson.”

  “Looked at it?”

  Caryll shook his head. “But I can guess what he says. He wants you to reopen. Everybody does.”

  “Including you?”

  “If I didn’t think you should,” Caryll said with a pretense at humorous intonation, “would I have played postman?”

  Tom gave his short, barking laugh. They were opposites, his sons, yet they shared one trait. Decency. Once again, thank God, they had joined forces, they were pushing him where he longed to be. On the paths of righteousness.

  Caryll misunderstood the laughter, hearing it as denial of the letter and of himself. “Dad, there’s been enormous pressure,” he said earnestly. “It’s a mess out there. Monty’s cabled he’s coming over. He shouldn’t be traveling yet. I hear from President Roosevelt nearly every day. And Mayor Murphy twice a day—the city’s in a worse panic than ’33 when the banks closed.”

  Carefully Tom refolded the paper in its creases, slipping it in his coat pocket. “Tell Justin’s wife I’ll talk to him.”

  “You will? You mean that, Dad?”

  “Did I ever bullshit you?”

  “You’ll negotiate with the union?”

  “I’ll negotiate with Justin.” The few sere remnants of leaves danced above his excited, shining face. “I’ll talk with Justin.”

  VI

  Contrary to the devoutly sincere beliefs within the large, oil-heated homes of Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills, no trail of dynamite led from Communist headquarters in New York to the factory complex in Detroit. Elisse and Mitch had firmly refused telephone offers to send Party strike advisers, Elisse because of Justin’s antipathy to what he called “the Soviet experiment,” and Mitch—a lukewarm comrade at best—because he had dedicated the years of his life to building industrial unions powerful enough to protect their own membership.

  The AAW ran this incendiary new form of strike on its own. Therefore, no matter what later would be said and written, it was without any political motivation whatsoever that the six men the AAW had elected as their strike board made their decision that noon.

  Downstairs, the Hutchinsons’ little house was crowded with strikers and their families lunching on sandwiches of thinly smeared peanut butter dribbled with Karo syrup (the stale bread was donated by the bakers’ union), so the meeting was held upstairs in the slant-roofed bedroom. Elisse, the secretary, waited quietly at her maple vanity, notepad in front of her, while jubilant men perched gingerly on her chenille spread or sat crossing and recrossing their long legs on her rag rug as they talked in loud, excited voices about Tom Bridger’s thunderbolt offer.

  “We done it!”

  “Glory hallelujah!”

  “The strike’s not over,” Mitch pointed out. “We haven’t won a single concession yet.”

  “Old Tom agreeing to talk to us, ain’t that a victory?”

  “I’ve seen a lot of strikes lost because our side’s too eager.” Mitch’s broad, welterweight face was somber.

  Zawitsky nodded. “We’re so hot to get back to work we forget the issues.”

  Elisse gazed into her oval maple mirror, watching the reflection of the suddenly bleak faces. Everybody in this crowded bedroom understood too well the effect of crying, hungry children in a heatless house with an eviction notice nailed to the front door, they knew how most of the AAW’s tenuously loyal membership would react to Woodland’s reopening. Solidarity would shatter, and as individuals they would storm Employment at Gate Four, begging for any job at any condition and any wage. Only by holding together now could they move forward, not backward.

  “We gotta do something to show we’re on second base.”

  “Yeah, but what?”

  They hashed over ideas that would encourage the desperate strikers to hang on.

  “How about if when Prof comes out, old Tom’s there to shake his hand?”

  One by one the men nodded their home-barbered heads.

  “Yeah.”

  “That should prove we’re getting there.”

  “What about making it on an overpass, so everyone can see ’em?”

  It was a brilliant yet simple way of showing the strikers the power of their side in the struggle.

  The AAW strike board’s first resolution, voted unanimously, was that the negotiating sessions commence on the Archibald Avenue overpass with a public meeting of their president and Tom Bridger.

  Elisse began to write.

  VII

  Caryll read the list of demands to Tom, who stared through a window at the dusk-lapped terrace. His head was bent, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. Caryll saw this as a pose of defeat, and his throat ached for his proud, intractable father. That he must obey rules laid down by his own workers!

  Finishing, Caryll wet his lips nervously. “Dad, I don’t think you should agree to that meeting on the overpass.”

  “Weren’t you panting to get thi
s settled?”

  “There’ll be a mob, a huge one.”

  Tom did not turn. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Everybody knows there’s packs of Communists in town. Their tactic is to provoke incidents.”

  “Pour yourself a drink.”

  “What?”

  “A little Scotch’ll calm your nerves.”

  “I never dreamed they’d make demands.”

  “An idealist,” Tom said dryly. “Are they waiting for my answer?”

  “I’m supposed to call Elisse.”

  “What’s the number?”

  “You shouldn’t go out there. Hold firm. They’ll back down, there’s no other choice for them.”

  “Give me the number.”

  “Dad, you mustn’t expose yourself that way. It’s humiliating, it could be danger—”

  “The number, Caryll.”

  “She’s expecting me to call.”

  “To repeat my words? Who are you, Charlie McCarthy?” Tom turned.

  To Caryll’s amazement his father was smiling without a trace of cynicism, an oddly vulnerable eagerness lifting his upper lip; Caryll decided this must be how he had looked as a boy.

  “Dad, remember that hunger march on the Rouge a couple of years ago? People were killed.”

  “Get that drink. It’ll cheer you up.” Tom held out his hand, wiggling the long fingers. “Give.”

  Caryll fished out his little black alligator book. To him the sound of his father dialing was preternaturally loud.

  “Is this Mrs. Hutchinson? … Tom Bridger here.… Yes, I know you were expecting him, but things are rough all over. You’ll have to settle for me.” There was a lilt to the flat voice. “I’ll be on the Archibald overpass at noon tomorrow if Ju—if your husband should be passing by. Maybe I’ll talk him into introducing us. Until then, so long.”

  Caryll snatched the telephone. “Elisse, Dad’ll have three men with him.”

  He did not realize that she had already hung up.

  VIII

  The family roundly cheered Tom’s decision to reopen. Later in the day, though, when they heard of the intended meeting, they raised figurative fists. To meet with Justin—that Bolshie renegade!—was to display weakness. Why crawfish now? Who among the automotive manufacturers would not simply open their employment offices? To deal with labor was unthinkable. There was a glut. Now was the time to teach the sit-downers that these outside agitators brought only hunger and lower wages. Among themselves they denounced Tom’s unpredictable behavior.