Homeland

by John Jakes

  “Sure.”

  “Then bring him. Come out about eleven. Catch the train that leaves the Illinois Central depot at six past the hour.”

  “Bring me where?” Paul said.

  “Indiana,” Joe Junior said. “The dunes.”

  “We’ll show you the revolution ain’t all talk, little boy.”

  Gray sky swept down to meet gray water churned to whitecaps. The bitter wind reddened Paul’s cheeks and put a flat unpleasant taste in his mouth. During the relatively short train trip Cousin Joe had told Paul that the men they would meet weren’t socialists, they were avowed anarchists.

  They got off the I.C. at a small rural station, then trudged two miles north to this desolate stretch of lake shore. They found Benno with five friends, none of whom Paul recognized from Crown’s.

  Benno was the only imposing one in the group. The others resembled schoolmasters who never went outdoors, or weak-eyed clerks grown round-shouldered from their toil. Two of the men had spectacles; one had a lens painted black. Another’s uncombed yellow beard reached below his waist. All were shabbily dressed, two in suits and derbies, two in odd combinations of patched pants, jeans coats, cheap wool caps. The poorest of the five wore castoff army clothing: a caped overcoat, dark blue, and soiled light blue trousers with a yellow stripe. Hardly a heroic lot, Paul thought. It renewed a suspicion that Benno Strauss was a fraud.

  Shivering, he and his cousin stood with Benno, slightly apart from the others. Joe Junior stamped his feet. “Christ, I’m freezing. Wish they’d hurry it up.”

  “Shut up, we got to get it just right,” Benno said. A stocking cap covered his bald head. Its frowsy pompom shook in the wind. “They’re pretty near done.”

  Benno’s five associates were hammering unpainted siding and squares of roof tarpaper onto a small shanty which they’d knocked together on the first dune, in sight of the breaking waves. The purpose of erecting such a structure in this deserted place eluded Paul.

  He blew on his hands and stamped his feet as his cousin was doing. “When did you start putting up the shanty?”

  “This morning. We come out on the six o’clock train.”

  “Do you come here often?” There was evidence to suggest it. Pieces of charred wood lay in three different hollows on the sheltered side of the dunes.

  “Once a month, sometimes more.” Benno pulled a small paper notebook from his coveralls, then a pencil stub. He wet the pencil lead on his tongue and wrote.

  In front of the shanty, which had neither a door nor windows, the man in the old army greatcoat waved to Benno. His shout got lost in the wind. Benno waved back, then said, “In case Joey ain’t told you yet, what we’re doing out here is training. Sharpening the tools we’ll use to drive the plutocrats down. Get what we want.”

  The men began scattering from the vicinity of the shanty, all except the one with the black spectacle lens. Crouching over an old valise, he took something from it and pushed it through a small hole left open in the side of the shanty. Then he dropped to his knees, and Paul saw a spurt of smoke near the hole. The man leaped up and ran after the others, as though the Devil was behind him. Benno swept a big arm around each of the boys.

  “Down, quick!”

  They threw themselves forward, and just as Paul’s cheek hit the sand a detonation blew the shanty apart.

  The echo of the blast seemed to last a long time. Gradually the sounds of wind and surf replaced it. The last bits of the shanty tumbled down from the sky. A smoking section of tarpaper skated away over the dunes like a drunken bat. Paul was horrified.

  “Have a look,” Benno shouted as he ran forward through the sand with a speed and grace surprising for a man of his age and bulk. Paul and Joe Junior followed. “God, I didn’t expect this,” Joe Junior panted. “Last time they had just a few sticks of dynamite, they lit them and threw them—”

  Everyone crowded around the shanty site. The anarchists were laughing and congratulating themselves.

  “That crater is three feet deep,” Paul said.

  “Look again, it’s four or five,” a man said. Another German; his English was so wretched, Paul barely understood him.

  Benno scribbled in his little notebook, excited. “We don’t do this for sport,” he said to the visitors. “We study the damage, the way dynamite blows things apart. Propaganda of the deed, it’s a lot more than words.”

  His eye fell on Paul. “I ain’t trying to scare you, but you better believe this. If your uncle don’t give us what we want without blood, then blood is what we’ll give him. Him and all the rest.”

  Joe Junior stared at Benno with a strange, pained look. Surely he couldn’t hate his own father enough to want to do him harm, Paul thought. Surely he still loved him a little …

  “Exactly what did you use to blow it up?” Paul asked.

  “Regular commercial dynamite. Anybody can buy it. You could. You know what they say about dynamite. Very democratic, it makes everybody equal.”

  His friends whooped and clapped. Benno relished the reaction. Then, abruptly, he grabbed Paul’s arm and twisted it.

  “Get this straight, too. You better never say a word about what you saw. Not to nobody. Huh, Joey?”

  “That’s right,” Cousin Joe said.

  “You don’t have to be with us,” Benno said. “Don’t even have to like us. But if you talk about us, it’ll go hard.” Benno shook him. “Verstanden?”

  “Yes, I understand. I won’t talk.” Benno released him.

  A blackened shrub at the edge of the blast pit sent off a curl of bitter smoke, quickly blown away. Paul was genuinely frightened. He believed Benno’s threats now; every one of them.

  On the return train ride they said almost nothing to each other. Joe Junior rested his cheek against the dirty window, lost in a reverie. And not a happy one, Paul was sure. On the way out he’d acted cocky about introducing Paul to his dangerous friends. Now he seemed genuinely shaken by the demonstration. He’d seen what Benno could do to Uncle Joe.

  Back at Michigan Avenue, they went straight to their rooms with only a murmured goodbye. They didn’t discuss what they’d seen, that night or afterward.

  On October 28, the day before the Exposition closed, Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr., answered a knock at the front door of his mansion on Ashland Avenue. A gregarious and popular man, Harrison frequently found well-wishers and job seekers on his doorstep.

  It was no well-wisher this time, but an unemployed man named Prendergast, who believed Harrison had schemed to bar him from a municipal job. Prendergast fired a pistol three times. The mayor bled to death in fifteen minutes.

  “Madness,” Uncle Joe said next evening. “There are wild men in the streets. The socialists and anarchists foment this sort of outrage.”

  Joe Junior’s response was a sullen stare. For his part, Paul thought Uncle Joe might be right.

  Autumn’s vivid hues, the glowing skies and flaming trees, gave way to the monochrome of impending winter. The sun was a faint lemon-colored disk behind racing dark clouds, and then one day it was hidden altogether.

  It couldn’t turn cold fast enough for Paul. Maybe there would be snow and ice by Thanksgiving Day, a holiday unknown in Germany. The great President Lincoln had established it in 1863, to celebrate the survival of the Union and the victories of its soldiers.

  North wind stripped leaves from the trees on the Crown property. When Paul had time, he helped Carl gather and burn them on the curb at Nineteenth Street. The smell of smoldering leaf piles was a new one, sweet and sad and unforgettable.

  Joe Junior never helped with such chores. He called Paul a fool; didn’t he already work like a mule at the brewery? Hoping h? wasn’t completely serious, Paul stood up for himself:

  “I don’t mind. I still have many kindnesses to repay in this house.” Although he felt a little less warmly toward Uncle Joe than he had when he arrived, he meant it. Joe Junior just shook his head in that superior way of his, and walked off. Except for occasional ragging
s from his cousin, however, Paul’s speaking his mind didn’t seem to have any adverse effect on their growing friendship. For that Paul was thankful.

  When the Exposition closed, Benno’s prediction came true. Thousands more were laid off. They roamed the streets in gangs. Benno and his friends at Crown’s railed at the plight of the unemployed, but Paul thought they were secretly pleased. As though all the suffering would help the cause and hasten the outbreak of class violence. In his pocket dictionary Paul found a word to describe Benno and his friends. He’d first seen the word in a newspaper. The word was “cynical.” They were cynical men.

  But he no longer held the foolish belief that they were harmless.

  31

  Joe Crown

  IN NOVEMBER 1893, JOE Crown had a welcome visitor from New York. An old friend he’d met through the Republican Party, in which they were both active.

  Carl Schurz was twelve years older than Joe. He was also, indisputably, the most famous American of German ancestry. Born near Cologne, he had plunged into the rebellion of ’48 while a student at the University of Bonn. He’d emigrated to America in the 1850s, settled in Wisconsin, and there involved himself in the new and idealistic Republican Party.

  Already a practicing attorney by the time war loomed, he helped secure Lincoln’s nomination for President, briefly held the post of Minister to Spain, and returned to his new homeland in 1862 to lead Union troops. He fought at Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and mustered out with the rank of major general.

  He turned to journalism and was owner-editor of the St. Louis Westliche Post when he was chosen to be a senator from Missouri, the first German-born citizen ever to hold office in that high chamber Now he was a journalist again: chief editorial writer for Harper’s Weekly, and traveling through Chicago on one of his fact-finding trips.

  Schurz was a lanky, scholarly man with a great ruff of graying hair sticking up from his head. His alert darting eyes seemed magnified by the small round spectacles he wore. He was well loved by the Crowns, and Ilsa welcomed him warmly to the house on Michigan Avenue. All the children were dutifully presented once again; Schurz had a favorable comment about each, and was especially attentive to young Carl, who had been named in his honor. Fritzi giggled and flirted shamelessly, then offered to do an imitation of the guest. Schurz was amused but Ilsa immediately said no. Throughout all this, Joe Junior was polite but silent. His father didn’t fail to notice.

  When Paul was introduced, Schurz said, “I applaud your choice of America as a homeland. I made that choice, as did your uncle. Three wise men, eh?” Ilsa laughed too loudly, and Schurz beamed; he had a sense of his own importance.

  The family and the visitor consumed a huge meal at one in the afternoon. Then Schurz and Joe retired to the study, and over drinks—Heimat dark beer for Joe, schnapps for Carl—they discussed the state of the nation and the world. Being Republicans didn’t mean they always agreed. Joe had been one of hundreds of thousands of Union veterans unswervingly loyal to President Grant despite accusations of malfeasance and incompetence that tarred him in the last years of his presidency. Schurz had led the anti-Grant faction.

  Other issues embroiled them in friendly argument as well. Reform of the spoils system was one. Schurz was an advocate of civil service, but Joe saw it as just more government interference. Another issue was Cuba. The island ninety miles off the Floridas had excited the interest and aroused the anxiety of Americans for years.

  Joe and Schurz didn’t disagree that Spain had a bad record of repression and misrule in its island colony. They agreed that the Cuban effort to throw off the yoke of Madrid was right and proper. The struggle had begun in the early 1870s, when a strong band of exiles, the Cuban Junta, operated out of a boardinghouse in Manhattan, raising funds for filibustering expeditions.

  The so-called Ten Years’ War between Spain and her rebellious colonists sputtered on until the dismal Treaty of Zanjón in 1878. But freedom was a potent idea. There remained in New York a powerful cadre of refugees formally organized as the Cuban Revolutionary Party. The rebels worked from a storefront near the New York piers. The leaders were an old soldier, General Máximo Gómez, and a young journalist and ideologue, José Martí, who’d been sent to a Cuban rock quarry at fifteen, punishment for revolutionary activity.

  It was Martí who had lately led the campaign for Cuba libre. Now, in the autumn of 1893, the campaign was stalled again. The depression had closed many of the East Coast cigar factories and sweatshops. Unemployed Cuban cigar workers had no money to give to the revolutionists.

  “And a good thing, too,” Schurz said in Joe’s study. “If Martí’s invasion plans can’t be funded, perhaps they’ll wither away.”

  “You oppose the overthrow of a tyrannical regime? You’re against liberty?”

  “I am against imperialism which wraps itself in the flag, Joseph. There is a strong faction in this country which delights in doing that. It is a faction growing more vocal and influential all the time. A faction, I fear, that secretly craves expansion not of American liberties, but of commercial markets for American goods.”

  Joe said, “Bosh,” and tossed off the rest of his beer. “This country should do everything in its power to free Cuba. If necessary, we should provide armed assistance.”

  “How can you argue that way? What if the fatherland chose to export its style of government, with the army willing to fight to guarantee success of any such venture overseas? Don’t laugh, the military clique in Berlin is strong. Ideas like that are afloat in the Chancellery.”

  “It isn’t the same thing, not at all.”

  Schurz stretched his long legs toward the bright fire in the hearth. “If you say so. I’ll not drive a good host to the point of anger.” He raised his small glass of schnapps. “Prosit.”

  Joe said, “This Cuban situation won’t go away, you know. Martí and his men have wide support. Some of the biggest newspapers in New York are backing them. Sam Gompers, the only union man who isn’t half mad with power and red ideas—”

  “I know, I know.” Schurz raised a placating hand. “Let’s not try to resolve the question here. I’d like to take a walk.”

  From the window Joe said, “It’s very cold. The sky’s threatening.”

  “I need the air.”

  So, bundled in heavy overcoats and bowler hats, mufflers, and gloves, they walked in the bitter gray afternoon to the dark, whitecapped lake.

  “How is your business, Joseph?”

  “It has come back satisfactorily.” He described the problem caused by Hexhammer’s editorial. “In bad times people want their beer more than ever. He didn’t reckon on that.”

  Joe led the way along a path beside huge blocks of granite abandoned after some unsuccessful construction job. The waves struck the other side, showering icy water on their hats.

  “The labor situation, however—that’s another matter. Pressures are building up in the brewery. I can feel them even though I seldom see evidence. That damned Eugene Debs and his new union are part of the cause.” Joe referred to the giant American Railway Union, created during the summer from many smaller railway brotherhoods, largely through the effort of a labor leader from downstate Indiana.

  Schurz said, “I’ve not met Debs yet. They say he’s a good man—even a saintly man.” Joe snorted.

  “Does he have a large following in Chicago?”

  “Not among my friends. He’s a socialist, and makes no secret of it.”

  Joe stepped up on a block of granite in which someone had chiseled a ledge. He looked out at the lake, vast, cold, forbidding.

  “I have a more personal problem at the brewery. There’s a radical faction, and my older boy, Joe, hangs out with them.”

  Schurz’s cheeks gleamed pink from the wind. The two friends stood side by side on the ledge, gloved hands in pockets. “Joseph, lest you forget—I was one of those radicals in ’48.”

  As if he hadn’t heard what Schurz said, Joe continued. “I’d disci
pline Joe—take him out of the brewery at once—except that I fear it would push him into their camp. He’s a smart boy in many ways, but in others, stupid. I hope to heaven he’ll come to his senses as he matures. Sometimes, quite frankly, I almost don’t recognize him as my own child.”

  He turned, confronting the dark skyline of the city. They had walked quite far; he could see above the granite blocks the ten-story Auditorium Hotel at Congress Street and, immediately north, the fine Studebaker Building.

  “It’s twenty years since I came to Chicago—thirty-six years since I arrived in this country—and I hardly recognize either one. I don’t know what to make of the world today. Electric lights. Telephones. Pictures that come like magic from Eastman’s little black box. Everyone madly wheeling on cycles—why, they’re even talking about buggies driven by engines, not pulled by horses; can you imagine? They’re writing articles about contraptions to fly in the sky!

  “Look at the city, what do you see? Workingmen, fairly paid, decently treated, spitting in the faces of their employers. Settlement houses where those who would destroy society are made welcome—allowed to spout their vile ideas from public platforms—and applauded for it! There are clubs and colleges for women—women who belong in the kitchen, and the nursery—Carl, what’s happening?”

  “Age, I think. Advancing age is happening, to you, and to me.”

  Joe Crown swore. It was an infrequent occurrence, but when he did it, he did it well, in blistering, jaw-bending, polysyllabic German.

  Schurz maintained a sympathetic silence. Some men grew archly conservative as age claimed them, and undoubtedly his friend was one such. It could never diminish Schurz’s affection. Joe Crown was a fine man. He was honest in the conduct of his business; he was a caring father and a devoted husband. Schurz didn’t have to approve of his friend’s political or social views in order to understand the pain he was suffering because of them.

  Joe’s wrath abated. He looked sad, even baffled. Gently, the visitor said, “These fears you have about the brewery—do you honestly think you will have trouble?”