by John Jakes
A blued revolver with a white ribbon tied around the barrel.
They looked at each other. Benno shot a glance at the door. Men were coming. He snatched the revolver and jammed it under his shirt. He buttoned the three lower buttons and pulled up the straps of his overalls. He walked over to Paul. He was no longer smiling.
Benno laid a huge fist on Paul’s shoulder.
“You seem like a nice boy, Pauli. Smart. So I’ll go easy, just a warning.” But he didn’t go easy. He closed his fingers on Paul’s shoulder until there was pain. In the hall the voices, the weary laughs and complaints of day’s end were louder.
“You didn’t see nothing in here. You say otherwise, to your uncle or anybody, you won’t have no job for a long time. Maybe you won’t have no arms and legs, either, versteh?”
“Yes,” Paul said, as calmly as he could manage. He didn’t want to cower in front of Benno Strauss. On the other hand, there was no reason to be stupid and antagonize someone so big and determined.
“Good. Smart,” Benno said.
The outer door banged open. Half a dozen men trooped in. Benno was instantly transformed. He gave Paul a huge grin and a slap on the shoulder, as if they’d been bantering. Then he greeted the others. Paul quickly changed his shirt and left.
Warning or no, there was one person he had to tell. After supper he drew Cousin Joe into the garden. Above the trimmed shrubbery, the sky of the summer night glowed red. In a few words, Paul described the encounter with Benno. His cousin surprised him by saying:
“Yeah, I saw it too. He showed it to me. There are four others in the brewery carrying hideout pistols. Four that I know about.”
“He showed you?”
“Right. He took me aside in the wagon yard day before yesterday. He said, ‘You’re a good soldier, ain’t you? We can count on you, can’t we?’ ”
“Count on you for what?”
“I don’t know, he didn’t explain, just looked at me and then walked off.” Joe Junior stared at his hands. “I’m on Benno’s side but I never thought there’d be guns inside the brewery after Pop threw them out.”
“Benno gave me a warning, Joe. He didn’t say it exactly, but I know what he meant. That he would hurt me or kill me if I—what is the word you use sometimes?”
“Ratted?”
“Yes. Ratted.”
Joe Junior nodded. “He warned me too.”
Paul shivered. “He had an ugly face. The strike is getting ugly. You were right about—” He couldn’t seem to think of the English. “Gewalt.”
“Violence?”
“Yes.”
Joe Junior looked at him under the ruddy sky. They heard distant firecracker sounds which might have been gunfire. They heard a police wagon careen past the front of the house, horses galloping, gong ringing.
“Joe.”
“What?”
“Can Benno count on you?”
His cousin’s vivid blue eyes picked up reflections from the lighted windows of the mansion. “I don’t know,” he said again. “I think Pop’s on the wrong side, Pullman’s side, the side of the plutocrats. But I don’t want to kill anybody.”
“I don’t either.”
They sat on the stone bench in front of the praying peace angel. Their shoulders touched. Neither moved. The silence lengthened, betokening a shared fear.
43
Rosie
ON THE SUNDAY NIGHT before Judge Grosscup issued his injunction against Debs, Rosie’s beau had left Pullman about half past eight, after eating supper with Rosie and Maritza. Tabor wasn’t there. Another of his Sunday disappearances. To a saloon, Rosie assumed.
It had been a frustrating day. No time to be alone with Joey, nothing but some kissing and groping his crotch and going half crazy because she was all hot and wanting him more than usual.
Supper was the familiar poor fare. Bread four days old when her mother bought it, and a miserable thin stew made of beans, a couple of boiled potatoes, and a few chunks of lamb with a faint odor of spoilage. The stew, the hot airless rooms of their little house, the anxiety hanging like a fog in Pullman, put her in short temper, thinking of how, and how soon, she could escape from this God damned trap.
She needed singing lessons to train her voice. She had to find a man to pay for those. She needed a ticket to New York City. From the same man, or maybe another. After she met Joey Crown, she’d harbored some silly dreams of marrying him. They didn’t last long. He didn’t have money to pay for music lessons or a train ticket. He could barely afford a little bar of rose-scented soap.
She admired Joey in a lot of ways. He was brainy; read books she couldn’t understand if she tried her hardest. Under her tutelage he’d become a skillful lover, ardent, but tender if the moment or her feelings required it; he never hurt her. Unfortunately some of his ideas were stupid. Who but Joey would turn down a chance to run a brewery, be rich and never worry about the next dime, or anything?
Tabor came in noisily, his cheeks sweaty and pink with heat. He was excited, which wasn’t typical of him. Whatever had happened, he didn’t look the same. He was almost the handsome father she remembered and worshiped from childhood. The father who took her rowing on the lake in a rented boat. Brought her corn-husk dolls or paper sacks of hard candy when he should have spent the money for a new cap to keep warm in the howling winds and blizzards of the savage Illinois winters. The father who’d always been eager to play games. Checkers, jacks, rummy, skat, with Mama joining in.
“Guess what, guess what! I got a job!”
Maritza rushed in from the parlor. “What did I hear? What are you saying? You already have a job, Tabor, you’re just waiting to be called back.”
“This is a special job, extra. Two dollars fifty cents a day. Look, it’s okay. Before I took it I ran over to Castleberry’s house.”
Maritza put fists on her hips. “And what did your foreman say about it?”
“Why, he said it was just fine, the company would like it, it would look good on my record when I came back.”
“What kind of job is it, Pop?” Rosie already had an ominous suspicion, based on things she’d heard around Pullman.
He patted the left pocket of his shirt. “Special deputy. I get my badge and gun tomorrow.”
“You’re scabbing?”
Tabor looked hurt. “Rosie honey, that’s a nasty word. I’m going to help guard railroad property. Break this strike that’s ruining things for all of us.”
Rosie’s mother twisted a soiled gray handkerchief in her raw-knuckled hands. “Tabor, you don’t know anything about guns, you mustn’t do it.”
“Listen, it’s a big honor.”
“Papa, Papa—two dollars and fifty cents a day and a chance to get killed is no honor. Don’t do it, don’t make us all mad at you.”
“Girl, mind your tongue.”
“Listen to her,” Maritza said. “Listen to me. I beg you, don’t do this crazy thing.”
“What the hell’s wrong with all of you? We’ll get some money in the house and it’ll go good on my record, Castleberry said so.”
“Pop, please listen. You know what I think—people should do whatever earns a dollar and to hell with anything else—”
“Roza!” her mother exclaimed.
“—but this time the money don’t matter. Turn it down. Tell them no, it isn’t worth the risk. This strike don’t matter either. Who wins, who loses—it’s all a game of marbles. You got to look out for yourself. Always. I don’t want you hurt even a little, Papa.”
“That’s good of you, Rosie, you’re a good and loving daughter, I appreciate it.” Tabor’s eyes had a shiny look, moist like a spaniel’s.
“Then tell them no.”
“Yes, Tabor, please,” Maritza pleaded.
With a guilty look at his wife, then Rosie, Tabor said, “Can’t. I signed the paper.”
“Oh, Pop.”
What a weak, wrongheaded man he was. She hated herself for loving him so completely, faults and all. Th
ank God a person had only one father in a lifetime.
44
Paul
SMOKE THICKENED IN THE skies over Chicago. Paul smelled it through the open windows of his room. He smelled it in the cars riding to and from work. Sometimes he even smelled it inside the brewery. At night he had trouble falling asleep because of the stench. It reminded him of Benno and his gun.
He would avoid trouble by obeying Benno’s warning; keeping quiet. Cousin Joe’s situation was more dangerous. He’d been marked as a confederate if Benno needed him. For Cousin Joe to defy his father with words and looks was one thing. An overt act was altogether different. His cousin understood this. He was tense, withdrawn; he no longer smiled or bantered with Paul.
Fifteen rail lines coming into Chicago were partially or wholly shut down. Stalls in the Water Street produce market had been empty for nearly two weeks. Lines of boxcars waited outside the city, their cargoes of grain and vegetables softening and putrefying. In the stockyards, carloads of meat stood on sidings. The meat turned gray and bred maggots and dripped a foul water from the boxcar doors. The rotten smell blew from the yards and mingled with the pervasive smoke.
Larger and angrier mobs were abroad every night. More soldiers were being called from Michigan and Iowa, Colorado and California, even though the governor had wired President Cleveland twice to demand withdrawal of federal troops. Altgeld asserted that only he had the authority to ask for soldiers, and he hadn’t exercised it.
The President’s reply to the governor was silence, an insulting rebuff; an assertion of national over state power.
More soldiers arrived. More deputy marshals took to the streets and rode the few trains still operating. Workers at the brewery talked uneasily of a phrase going around among soldiers and deputies. “Shoot at the dirty white ribbons.”
Firemen and switchmen, telegraphers and engineers joined the strike without authorization of their brotherhoods. The G.M.A. announced that effective Saturday, July 7, armed militia would ride every mail train leaving the Union and Dearborn Street depots, and the depots of the I.C., Rock Island, and Northwestern lines. Every soldier would carry a hundred rounds of ammunition, to repel persons attempting to interfere with commerce.
Shoot at the dirty white ribbons …
On Friday afternoon before the latest G.M.A. decree was to take effect, Paul was called from the bottling house to his uncle’s office. Uncle Joe was barricaded behind his usual pile of unfinished work. He looked small and tired. He was reading something on a ragged piece of heavy brown paper, a scowl on his face. He folded the paper and shoved it into a drawer. His smile of greeting was little more than a twitch of his lips.
“Paul, I have an errand for you. It really falls into Dolph Hix’s department, but he isn’t here, and neither are the other two sales agents. The task requires a touch of diplomacy.”
“Sir?”
“Diplomatie.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
“You can show me how you handle jobs that call for something more than a strong back. Office jobs, for instance.”
Oh no, I am not going to replace Cousin Joe. He had to tell his uncle where his true interest lay. He’d done it once and Uncle Joe had dismissed it. He must try again. But not now.
“I assume you know what’s meant by a red light district,” his uncle said.
“Ein Bordellviertel? I do. There were many in Berlin.”
“There are many here. I just learned that one of my accounts, the Canadian Gardens, has added a wine room upstairs. The words ‘wine room’ are code. A signal that customers may purchase not only beer but—well, you understand. I managed to get the owner of the Gardens on the telephone. He calls himself Toronto Bob. Every cheap crook and whoremaster in Chicago gives himself some sort of flashy name. When I accused Bob, he laughed and didn’t deny anything. I told him I was suspending deliveries. I won’t sell Crown’s beer to an establishment that traffics in women. But I want my ornamental tap handles back.”
He reached behind him to find one. Paul had seen them in taverns, and in the Stube downstairs. Lovely and tapering, they were turned from solid walnut, painted with the Crown symbol, and lacquered. A ring of solid brass trimmed the end that attached to the tap.
“These are expensive. Three dollars twenty cents apiece. For that you can get three excellent pairs of shoes, with change left over. I want the tap handles from the Gardens, and I also want the sign outside. It’s metal, but not so big that you can’t carry it.” Many breweries distributed signs without cost. Most were cut in the shape of a stein, brightly painted and lettered with the brewery’s name.
“Here is the address. It’s south of Van Buren on Clark Street, in Little Cheyenne. That’s a disreputable area. Not as bad as the Bad Lands, south of Taylor, or, God forbid, the Levee. In those districts the police patrol in pairs. But Little Cheyenne is bad enough. I want you to be careful.”
“I will, sir. But I roamed the bad sections of Berlin many times.” And the west side of Chicago, where the gang had chased the cousins. “I can look after myself, Uncle.”
Uncle Joe tilted back in his chair, giving him a long look.
“I believe that. I want to test my judgment.”
As Paul went out, Uncle Joe opened a drawer, unfolded the note written on brown paper, and smoothed it on the desk blotter. The scowl was back on his face.
Uncle Joe hadn’t exaggerated about Little Cheyenne, a section named for a wide-open railroad town in the West. A shadow seemed to lie on it; a shadow of poverty, and dirt, and dissolution.
Paul hurried along the plank sidewalk on Clark Street, among loitering bums and a few heavily painted women. The music of a melodeon dinned from a concert saloon. Nearly every establishment had something to do with selling spirits, unless it was a pawnshop.
A grizzled tout motioned to him from a doorway. “Come on into Candy Molly’s, lad. Fifty cents for a good time, and a free peppermint stick too.”
Paul shook his head, kept walking amid the human flotsam drifting on the sidewalks. No one bothered him. He was big now, sturdy, and he walked with a confident stride. He wasn’t afraid of the inhabitants of Little Cheyenne, he was fascinated. He wished he had a camera to snap a few photographs.
Two blocks below Van Buren, over on the east side of the street, Paul spied the metal sign in front of the Canadian Gardens. Soot had darkened the painted golden beer and snowy foam, the familiar brewery emblem, and the large CROWN’S in bold red script. He crossed, noticing all at once that he was being followed by a boy of nine or ten. A boy with a vulpine face and ragged clothes. Paul took him for a pickpocket and glared at him. The boy sauntered away after making an obscene gesture.
Toronto Bob’s Canadian Gardens was a large ground-floor room with a low ceiling, a long bar lit with trumpet-shaped electric fixtures, and tables scattered about on sawdust. Except for the reek of its spittoons, and the impoverished look of its few customers, it wasn’t too unpleasant. At the rear, a weary-looking girl about Paul’s age was escorting a fat man up a stairway.
Paul stopped at the near end of the bar. The barkeep was a one-eyed bantam of a fellow wearing a black patch. As Paul began explaining his errand, the barkeep interrupted him.
“I knew this was comin’; Bob tole me. You can get up on a ladder an’ take the sign down yourself. As for the tap handles, you can see they’re gone. I don’t know where the hell they are, you’ll have to speak to Bob. He ain’t here.”
“Can you tell me where to find him?”
“Jesus, you don’t want much. Bob left five minutes ago. Said he was dropping his Kodak off at Rooney’s, to see if Rooney could fix it. It jammed or something. You might catch him there.”
Rooney? “Sir, please—where is this Rooney’s?”
“End of the block and turn left. It’s the shop two doors past Wampler’s, the red light hotel.”
The side street was narrower, dirtier, darker. Tenement buildings leaned in from both sides, as if about to fall. Paul looked up at
a strip of sky, bright blue, with summer clouds. Somehow very little of the light penetrated down here.
He stepped over the remains of a dead cat. He felt someone was watching him, but there was no one in sight except a lone tout picking his teeth under a sign for Wampler’s Hotel. Paul hurried by with a glance into the dingy lobby. A stout woman with blacking around her eyes beckoned.
He forgot the seedy surroundings the instant he saw the shop. Over a dusty show window hung a gaudy sign not yet weathered or dirtied. On a cream-colored ground, red circus lettering with a gilt shadow edge proclaimed:
ROONEY’S TEMPLE OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Beyond the flyspecked glass on a wrinkled drape of plum velvet lay several box cameras. One was a duplicate of the ruined Kodak he’d lost over the rail of the Rheinland. A small pedestal displayed four lenses. A placard offered USED CAMERAS, another PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS.
Excited, he looked deeper into the shop. It was dark save for a faint light in back. He went in. A small bell on a spring arm over the door jingled. There was a powerful aroma of chemicals.
“Coming, who is it?” There was a click; a weak electric globe in the ceiling lit up the shop. Paul almost clapped for joy. It was the same little man!
Cracker crumbs hung in his salt-and-pepper mustache His thick lenses shone with reflections of the ceiling fixture. He wore a stained smock.
“Yes, can I help—? Why, stars! I know you, don’t I?”
“You do, sir. We met at the Exposition. You showed me the machine of moving pictures. You explained how it worked.”
“So I did, so I did.” The little man snatched off his spectacles. Even unmagnified, his dark eyes were as penetrating, hypnotic as Paul remembered. “Gave you my card. You said you were interested, but you never came around.”
“I did, sir. The shop was closed, they said you had moved.” For not paying the rent. He recalled a cryptic reference to ponies. He still didn’t understand it.
“Well, yes, I did, that’s right,” Rooney said quickly “Wanted a better location. I have a lot of carriage trade you know.” A better location in Little Cheyenne? Carriage trade? Paul doubted it.