Homeland

by John Jakes

  His superiors commended him and brevetted him to captain, officially replacing Frank Ehrlich. He returned to duty with his left arm wrapped in a sling. A year later he was brevetted to major, and then, in Georgia, six months before the war ended, to full colonel.

  In some mystical way still not fully understood, the wound he took, the flowing blood, washed out the deepest part of his Germanness. The Civil War to save the Union baptized him an American, forever. …

  The war affected his life in another way. It transformed his liking for order into a passion that ruled him. Ordnung. His soul-deep need to impose rational patterns on his life through his control of it, and whatever touched it. He had thought about this many times before, but never with such a burst of insight, perfect understanding, as came to him now on the darkening battlefield. Ordnung was his cause, and his creed; the forces of order, reason, civilization, against the ever-present, constantly threatening forces of chance, anarchy, chaos.

  Ordnung was the reason for his battle with Benno Strauss. It was the source of his struggle at home. Joe Junior was drifting willfully or accidentally into confusion. He saw this with a clarity never experienced before. Perhaps he could carry on the battle more effectively now that he understood it more fully. Thank heaven his nephew wasn’t like his boy. Joe doubted his ability to wage war on two fronts at the same time.

  He roused himself from the reverie and realized the lateness of the hour. He shook the reins lightly over the back of the old buggy nag. The leather springs creaked and the rear axle squeaked as he left the somber shadows of the battlefield. On the way back to his inn he passed the little Shiloh Meeting House, whitewashed logs all pale and innocent in the gloaming. To have a church of God give its name to a great slaughtering field … wasn’t that remarkable?

  Weeds grew up around the meeting house. The wind stirred them, a rustling whispering sound, like fallen men sighing goodbye. Joe Crown hurried the buggy up the rutted road as the night came down. He did not look back.

  Some mornings later, he walked out the door of the State Hotel in Columbia, South Carolina. It was a fine June day, the twenty-seventh. A black youngster sold him a paper. Joe stepped to the curbstone and scanned the headlines.

  Yesterday the stock market had hit the bottom of its month-long sell-off. Everyone in the saloon bar, the prosperous gentry of Columbia, had been discussing it last night. The word used in the paper was “crash.” How much worse could it possibly get?

  Very much worse. He spotted a smaller story, out of Springfield, Illinois.

  ALTGELD SIGNS PARDON

  Three Haymarket Conspirators

  to Be Released at Once

  “A Grievous Wrong Is Righted,”

  Illinois Governor Declares.

  Joe’s oath made the newsboy jump. “Sir? You say somethin’?”

  “I said damn it. I said damn it to hell, and back again.” He threw the paper in the gutter.

  There was even more in store. When he finished his day’s business and returned to the hotel, the clerk reached into a pigeonhole and handed him a telegraph message.

  His eye flew first to the signature. Ilsa had sent the wire, which was short.

  PLEASE COME HOME. PAULI EXPELLED.

  24

  Paul

  UNCLE JOE WALKED INTO the house at half past five on Thursday, the twenty-ninth of June. He handed his grip to Manfred and struggled out of his bedraggled coat as he climbed the stairs without speaking. “He’s having a bath,” Aunt Ilsa advised Paul in the kitchen a few minutes later. “You are to come to the study at a quarter after six.”

  Paul nervously watched the grandfather’s clock in the hall and knocked the instant the clock hand moved. When Uncle Joe summoned him in, he was surprised and relieved to see Aunt Ilsa seated next to the open window, by the end of the desk. A light breeze was blowing the curtains.

  Three walls of the room had shelves filled with handsomely bound books from floor to ceiling. Over half the volumes were in German. Uncle Joe had put on a fresh shirt without a cravat. He pointed to the empty chair in front of him.

  “Take a seat. Tell your story.”

  Paul did so, neither minimizing his actions nor embellishing Mrs. Petigru’s cruelty. He never once glanced away from his uncle’s eyes during the brief recitation. His heart was pounding, his stomach hurt, but outwardly he was composed. A gargantuan effort.

  At the end, Uncle Joe removed his spectacles and dangled them over the side of the chair. Aunt Ilsa pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her upper lip and forehead.

  “I believe you, Paul,” his uncle said. “Your words have the ring of truth. Also, what you say doesn’t fundamentally contradict the events described in the principal’s letter.” He tapped the letter on the desk behind him; Paul hadn’t noticed it before.

  “He acknowledges Mrs. Petigru punished you more harshly than was merited. Let me see your hands.”

  Paul held them out. Faded purple bruises marked his fingers and the backs, to his wrists. She’d beaten his hands so hard, he hadn’t been able to bend his fingers without severe pain for three days afterward.

  “Can you move your fingers freely?”

  “Oh, yes.” He flexed them. “I’m fine now.” He darted a warm look at Aunt Ilsa. She had telephoned Dr. Plattweiler for a liniment prescription, which had helped.

  “Good. Regrettably, the principal concludes his letter by saying he must stand behind the authority of his teachers. You can’t continue in that school. You warned me you weren’t suited for study, and it seems you were right. Perhaps plunging you so quickly into an American system was unfair. In any case, your aunt and I have discussed and agreed on the next step. I will discharge Mr. Mars tomorrow, with a month’s extra salary, and on Monday you will start work at the brewery.”

  Paul was speechless. Uncle Joe said, “Ilsa, if you will leave us, I will discuss the particulars with Paul.”

  She acquiesced with a little nod and kissed her fingertips to Paul as she walked past. The doors rolled back, rolled shut. Paul’s heart was still beating fast. A few weeks after his arrival, the prospect of working in the brewery had been attractive. Now something more fascinating was luring him. How to tell his uncle?

  “Now that your aunt is gone, I can speak more frankly.” Uncle Joe picked up the principal’s letter. “This truly saddens me. Not the charge of bringing obscene material to class, that sounds frivolous in the light of your description of the drawings, where they came from, a salesman’s bag. It’s admirable that you tried to shield your friend. But I find nothing else admirable in what you did. I had great hope for you, Paul. Great hope. For weeks, for months, I discover, you have been failing. You never spoke up. You said everything was fine.”

  “I did not want to disappoint you, Uncle.”

  “What do you think you have done here?” He threw the letter on the desk. “I can’t understand how you could get such poor marks. Germans are good thinkers. At least you could have passed your mathematics, Germans are always good with figures—”

  His voice was shaky, something uncharacteristic of him. Paul recognized that his uncle was in a high temper. He waited tensely while his uncle cleaned his spectacles with a pocket handkerchief. That seemed to calm him; his color returned to normal.

  “The brewery—” he began.

  “Sir, may I please interrupt?”

  “What is it?” His uncle didn’t like it.

  “At the Exposition, I saw something marvelous. A machine showing pictures that appear to move.” He described the dancing elephant.

  “Exactly when was this?”

  “Saturday last. I went by myself. Oh, but Aunt Ilsa gave me permission—”

  “I’ve heard of this machine but I haven’t seen it. Continue.”

  “At the—ah—Marktbude—”

  “Booth.”

  “Yes, thank you, there I met a gentleman who operates a studio of photography. He knows how the moving pictures are made. His name is Mr. Rooney.�
� From his shirt pocket Paul took the precious card. His uncle examined it with an unreadable expression. “I said I was interested, I would like to learn to make such pictures. He invited me to visit. He said he would teach me. Could I not ask him for a job? One day—” Paul’s face glowed. “One day, I might learn to make pictures for the machine I saw.”

  Uncle Joe thrust the card back. “I believe in welcoming and adopting worthy inventions, but I see no useful purpose in the one you describe. Of what earthly good are pictures of an elephant dancing? I haven’t bothered to see that machine because it’s a toy. A novelty. Make a career of it? I’m sorry to say I find that proposition slightly ridiculous.”

  Trying to suppress his anger, Paul pressed his fists on the knees of his knickerbockers till the knuckle joints were white. “All right, Uncle, I won’t talk any more about the machine. But Mr. Rooney’s studio is a regular business. I suppose he makes all kinds of photographs.”

  “That is a very low trade in my estimation. In these times very chancy, too. People out of work won’t waste money on photographs. But they’ll buy a few glasses of beer—it makes them feel better.”

  “Uncle, please, I beg you, at least let me call on this gentleman and ask whether he might employ me.”

  “No.”

  “Ich protestiere!”

  “You protest? You are in no position to protest, young man. You have shamed this family. You will go to work at Crown’s next Monday. Your hours will be six in the morning until four-thirty, six days a week. No Sunday work. I pay a very good starting wage. Ten dollars and a quarter per week. That’s as much as a dollar more than my competitors offer. Certain men in my employ choose to ignore the fact, but it’s true. Further, I don’t pay good wages because someone forced me, I do it because it encourages hard work and loyalty. Since you live with us, you won’t have to spend anything for rent or food, you can save everything you earn. A great advantage.”

  With that pronouncement, Uncle Joe leaned back in his chair. Paul seethed. He felt rebuffed. Pushed away like an annoying child who knew nothing.

  “Monday, six sharp. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some bills and correspondence that require attention before supper.”

  He had turned back to the desk before Paul reached the sliding doors.

  25

  Joe Crown

  ON THE FIRST DAY he returned to the brewery, Joe saw large numbers of men loitering in the streets. Gaunt-faced men, gathered on corners that had been empty before the panic struck.

  He turned from the carriage window and rapidly scanned several newspapers. The pardon was still a major issue, and much of the nation felt as he did about the freeing of Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab. A New Jersey minister proclaimed from his pulpit, “Illinois stands discredited for the three A’s—Altgeld, aliens, and anarchists.” Only the liberal fringe of the press praised the governor’s decision.

  Altgeld was finished politically, that was certain. It was fit punishment for someone who would free convicted terrorists.

  A more important issue than the pardon was the state of business. Share prices hadn’t rebounded even slightly. Scores of solid firms were closing. The papers were filled with rumors of giant railroads, the nation’s bellwethers, going into receivership.

  In the wake of the collapse, the issue of bimetallism, unlimited coinage of silver as well as gold, was polarizing the nation. For twenty years the Western silver producers had argued and lobbied for a bigger market for their product; a market guaranteed by the government. Western farmers wanted a greater supply of dollars for loans, more dollars than were available with the recent decline in the world’s gold production. The U.S. Treasury’s supply of gold was dwindling.

  Overseas investors had lately expressed great uneasiness about the possibility that debts owed to them would be repaid with silver. They wanted gold to guarantee all debts. On the day the market crashed, the government of India had abruptly suspended its coinage of silver, sending a message, and a shock wave, to United States financial centers. Despite the air of crisis, Joe remained a gold-standard man. He considered the Western silver crowd a pack of selfish primitives out to wreck the economy.

  As soon as he arrived at his office, Stefan Zwick asked to see him.

  “Sir, I hate to bear bad news. Deliveries and shipments were down last week by eight percent, as against the week before.”

  “Figures, please.”

  “Yes, I’ve just gotten them together.” Zwick handed Joe several inked ledger sheets. He quoted their contents from memory. “Last week, ten thousand, six hundred and forty barrels, as against eleven thousand, five hundred eighty-three the week before. A drop of nine hundred forty-three barrels, reflected in a corresponding drop in sales and reorders by certain accounts.”

  “Any explanation?”

  “I’m afraid it’s Oskar Hexhammer. He wrote a scathing editorial in the Deutsche Zeitung.”

  “You know I never read that rag. What was in the editorial?”

  “Mostly a lot of German jingoism. But Hexhammer cited you by name, as a native German unwilling to support the new Turnverein, or German culture generally.”

  “What a fatuous lie.”

  “Nevertheless, I believe it hurt us.”

  “Is there any pattern to the losses to support that statement?”

  “Very much so. The losses are concentrated entirely in Chicago. They occurred at family establishments. The beer gardens in the German neighborhoods. Sales to accounts in other areas are steady.”

  Joe shook his head. “What do you do with a destructive fool like Hexhammer? Except hope he’ll go away.”

  “I fear his influence among older beer drinkers won’t go away.”

  “Well, don’t concern yourself, it’s my worry. Leave the figures. I’ll have a meeting with Dolph Hix. Try to find some ways to increase our tavern promotion to offset the losses. We’ll survive this. As I tell anyone who will listen, in bad times like these, an inexpensive glass of fine beer is medicine for melancholy.”

  But it was a poor start for the day.

  By midmorning the temperature soared above ninety. Shortly before eleven a pipe broke in the brewhouse, causing a six-hour shutdown and the loss of the entire contents of the huge copper kettles.

  In the afternoon Joe struggled to work in the confusion created by two loutish men prying at his office baseboards and knocking holes in his wall to install a telegraph wire and terminal for faster communication with present and future agencies. The hammering, the plaster dust, the profanity, the incessant complaining of the two who seemed ungrateful to have decent jobs, vexed him greatly. When he went into the brewery later, and ran into Benno, his tongue got away from him.

  “Well, Benno, you got what you wanted. Your martyrs set free.”

  Bare to the waist, Benno was manhandling a keg onto a hand truck. His torso glistened. He held the keg still with his foot.

  “They wasn’t ever guilty, Mr. Crown.”

  A sweat drop fell from the end of Joe’s nose. His shirt felt like some kind of rubber garment, stuck to him. “Then I trust you’re satisfied.”

  “Well, sir—respectfully—not yet. We got to deal with what the union wants from Crown’s, and the other breweries.”

  “What you have at Crown’s at present is all you’ll get. I treat my men well. Better than most are treated.”

  “Sir, I grant you. But we got certain very important demands—”

  “Don’t make them on my time. Get to work.”

  A smile, half rue, half respect, played over Benno’s face. “You are a rock, Mr. Crown. A hard rock. That’s good in a man, I admire it. But we will crack you.”

  “Get out of my way.” Joe pushed him against the brick wall. He stormed off, leaving Benno in a state of astonishment that quickly became anger.

  Ilsa said her prayers on her knees beside the bed. Joe lay rigid, hands nervously tapping his stomach. All windows in the bedroom—not American guillotine windows but the good European kind that ope
ned out—had been flung wide to catch any night breeze. But there was none. The starched lace curtains hung limp. The distant stars simmered in a haze.

  Ilsa climbed into bed, rolled onto her left side to face him. She insisted on wearing her flannel gown to bed despite the heat. A heavy fold touched his hand where it rested between them.

  “You are very quiet tonight, Joe.”

  “A lot on my mind,”

  “How do you expect Pauli will do in the brewery?”

  “It’s Paul. How many times have I said that? He chooses to call himself Paul.”

  “He’ll always be Pauli to me. Pauli is a German name, he is a German boy. I can’t think of him any other way. Little Pauli from Berlin who fainted on my oriental carpet.”

  Joe knew better than to argue the point. “He took it well when I told him, he’s a courageous lad. He’s intelligent, and quick, his school problems take nothing away from that. He should do well if he shuns the troublemakers.” He chewed his lip for a moment.

  “On that subject, I have a confession. This afternoon I lost my temper with Benno Strauss. An argument over the Haymarket pardon. I laid hands on Benno. I pushed him.”

  On Michigan Avenue a carriage went by, a lonely sound in the night. “I knew there must be a reason you were so quiet. I’m very sorry it happened.”

  “No sorrier than I am. I regretted it the moment I did it. Unfortunately that was a moment too late.”

  “Will there be trouble because of it?”

  “Impossible to say. We’re going through terrible times. Stefan told me that down on the Levee, the aldermen are feeding their out-of-work constituents with free lunches at the saloons. Hundreds of them. On the telephone this afternoon, a man I trust told me that George Pullman plans to retrench. Wage cuts, perhaps layoffs. Pullman is a major employer in the city. It will have a huge impact. Hungry men are desperate men. Their unrest can be contagious.”