Homeland

by John Jakes

  Next morning, when Dolph Hix returned to the office, Joe sent him to the Canadian Gardens. In an hour, Hix telephoned to say he had the sign, but the tap handles were gone. Toronto Bob professed to know nothing about it. “He probably destroyed them in retaliation for pulling our beer out.”

  Red-faced, Joe said, “Then just bring back the sign, no more delays.” He slammed the earpiece on the hook.

  At half past ten he was at work with his door closed. He tore up a third sheet of Crown Brewery stationery, threw it into the basket and pulled a fresh one from the desk drawer. He was struggling to write a note of apology to Ilsa, to accompany two dozen yellow roses he’d ordered from Eitel the florist, for delivery before the end of the day.

  He inked his pen in the well. My dear Ilsa—

  That was as far as he got. There was a loud knock; Stefan Zwick bounded into the office before Joe could say anything.

  “Sir, I am very sorry to—”

  “I told you, no interruptions!”

  “I know, sir, but I felt I had to report a situation occurring outside.”

  Joe noticed a sheet of yellow foolscap in Zwick’s hand. A sheet with names written on it.

  “Tell me.”

  Stefan Zwick coughed and shifted from foot to foot in front of the desk. “Sir, we have—uh, a labor demonstration. A work stoppage.”

  “A what?”

  “Stoppage, sir. Eleven men have walked off the job for one hour, in sympathy with the Pullman boycott. Schultheiss from the cooperage. Chester Amunnsen from—”

  Joe’s fist struck the desk. A pile of papers slipped off the edge, falling like limp white birds. “And Strauss? I’ll wager he’s at the head of it.”

  “Yes, sir, he does seem to be in charge. He’s taken three other teamsters out with him. I have the complete list here.” Zwick offered the yellow sheet.

  “When they come back, give them notice.”

  “Sir, they haven’t left the premises. They’re gathered at the front gate.”

  Joe rushed to the window. He swore in German when he saw Benno and the others lounging around the fountain. The men were laughing and joshing as if on holiday. Each wore a white ribbon on his sleeve. Schultheiss the cooper struck a sulphur match on the buskin of King Gambrinus to light a cigar.

  “The God damned effrontery. They’re picketing on my property.”

  He dashed for the door. Benno Strauss had at last stepped over the line on which he’d scraped his toe insultingly for months. Joe stormed down the stairs and out through the Bierstube.

  Mickelmeyer the headwaiter veered to intercept him in the open-air garden. Mickelmeyer looked boiled in his black swallowtail coat, cravat, white apron. A couple of the strikers saw Joe and stopped their chatter. Benno was seated on the street side of the fountain. He swished a hand in the water and continued to talk cheerily.

  “I am glad you came down, Mr. Crown,” Mickelmeyer whispered. “Those men will be a terrible interference with our noontime trade.”

  “Oh, no.” Joe strode to the gate. “All of you get off the fountain!” He grabbed the nearest man, little Wenzel from the malthouse. He flung him sideways so violently, Wenzel almost struck his head on the brick wall flanking the gate.

  Benno looked around. A slow smile; then he stood up, rubbing his palms on the legs of his coveralls. Joe looked for bulges that might reveal a hidden pistol. He saw none.

  “Explain yourselves,” he demanded. “Why did you walk off the job?”

  Still with that infuriating smirk, Benno said, “I guess you got a pretty good idea, Mr. Crown. Some of the other trades, they’re going out too. The bakers, a few butchers—all good Germans,” he added, relishing the thrust.

  A painful pressure was building in Joe’s head. He heard men coming up behind him through the Biergarten. On the roof he saw workmen watching. He thought he recognized Joe Junior among them.

  Wenzel made a great show of dusting and arranging his shabby coveralls. For a small man, he was courageously defiant. “We’re putting you on notice, Mr. Crown. We’re in full support of the railwaymen, and we’ll stay out for one hour every day till King George Pullman surrenders.”

  “You are telling me this is a union action, then?”

  Benno shook his head. “The United Brewery Workmen got no part in this. We organized it amongst ourselves.”

  “You organized it? It’s damned anarchy,” Joe said, rising on his toes. Even so, he was shorter than Benno, always at a disadvantage. “Get back to work or you’re finished at Crown’s, all of you.”

  That brought uneasy looks from some of them. Benno’s expression grew grave.

  “Threats ain’t going to work this time, Mr. Crown.”

  “Don’t mess with him, sir,” someone else exclaimed. Sam Traub, the tax agent, was standing immediately behind Joe, with Fred Schildkraut. “Call the black maria. Picketing’s a prison offense, the injunction says so.”

  “Fuck you, scab,” Benno said. “We ain’t picketing, just resting.”

  He sat down again.

  The fountain splashed. Aloof, King Gambrinus gazed at white thunderheads gathering in the east. Benno crossed his ankles and folded his arms. Joe’s face was by now scarlet.

  “You’re through, Strauss. I carried you too long. All of you are through. Discharged, immediately.”

  “If that’s the way it’s gonna be, you owe us wages for—”

  “I owe you nothing. Get off my property.”

  At that moment a hack clattered up North Larrabee Street from the direction of downtown. Two businessmen stepped out. While one paid, the other eyed the scene of confrontation. The strikers had spread themselves on either side of the fountain, barring entrance to the beer garden.

  “Stefan?” Joe said without looking around.

  “Here, sir.”

  “You’d better telephone the precinct.”

  At the gate, Mickelmeyer said, “I refuse to wait that long.” While Zwick ran into the brewery, the headwaiter strode forward and took hold of the nearest striker.

  “Get out of the way of our patrons.”

  “Take your fucking hands off him,” Benno shouted. The man Mickelmeyer was holding kicked him in the shins. Mickelmeyer roundhouse-punched him, spilling him into the fountain. Benno reached behind him, under his shirttail. A blued pistol glinted. A pistol with a soiled white ribbon tied to the barrel …

  Joe went for the gun, clamping both hands on Benno’s wrist. Benno smelled of rank sweat. His clenched teeth were inches from Joe’s eyes. Benno was powerful as a maddened gorilla, but Joe had his own strength, pumped up by tenacity. Benno jerked his gun arm one way, then the other. Joe held on, though Benno was nearly wrenching his shoulders out of their sockets.

  The worker in the fountain floundered and spat water. Traub pushed him back in and held his head under till Mickelmeyer dragged the tax agent away. The businessmen jumped back in the hack and waved the driver on. Through all this, Benno kept trying to free himself. When he couldn’t, he kicked Joe’s leg with his steel-toed work shoe. Joe swore, stumbled backward and fell.

  Streams of sweat ran down Benno’s bald skull. His nostrils were huge, his eyes dehumanized by wrath. He flung out his gun hand, aiming at Joe, who was flat on his rear on the brick walk. Joe stared into the black muzzle, visions of Mississippi flashing in his head …

  Dizzy, breathless, Joe scrambled to his feet.

  “Give it to me, Benno. You don’t want murder added to your crimes.”

  “Uh-uh, Mr. Crown, you don’t get this piece. And you better keep your distance, or God damn me, I’m gonna—”

  He didn’t finish, because Joe launched a looping right-hand punch into Benno’s midsection, which was hard as a washboard. Benno swayed and yelled, “Dirty cocksucker!” Fred Schildkraut ran in with a bung starter which he whipped down on Benno’s gun wrist. The gun fell into the fountain with a splash.

  The workman named Schultheiss rushed to Benno’s aid. Mickelmeyer knocked him back with one punch, p
ounded him to the sidewalk with a second. Wenzel and another striker leaped on Sam Traub and tore his coat. Joe felt drunk, wildly out of control; he threw another punch at the middle of Benno’s face. Benno’s nose wasn’t as tough as his gut. It spouted blood, all over the snowy front of Joe’s shirt.

  Cupping both hands under the drip of blood and snot, Benno cursed him steadily and savagely while men on the roof clapped and cheered, for which side no one could tell.

  Sam Traub opened a clasp knife and tried to slash another striker. “Sam, stop it,” Joe shouted. A whistle pierced the noon heat. O’Doul, the foot policeman who patrolled the area, came lumbering down Larrabee as fast as his corpulence would allow. Though almost sixty, O’Doul was still tough and fairly agile in a fight. He drove two of the strikers off with whacks of his hickory club.

  “Wagon’s coming,” Sam Traub cried. Joe heard the racing horses several blocks off, then the clattering bell. Benno didn’t have to warn his comrades. They ran in both directions along Larrabee.

  Benno lingered.

  Joe grasped the rim of the fountain and leaned over, head down. His mussed hair dangled in front of his sweating forehead. His heart beat too fast.

  “Crown.” Angrier than Joe had ever seen him, Benno shook a bloodied finger. “You ain’t heard the end of this, you capitalist shit.”

  He ran south, flicks of blood flying from his nose and speckling the sidewalk.

  Joe reached into the fountain, grabbed the pistol and flung it. The gun sailed in an arc, landing in the street, shiny with diamond droplets of water. If Benno saw it at all, he didn’t come back for it.

  “Who belongs to that piece?” O’Doul demanded.

  “Strauss,” someone said.

  “I’ll be needing it for evidence.” O’Doul stepped into the street and pocketed the pistol.

  Joe pushed graying hair off his forehead. Straightened his necktie. Leaned over the fountain a second time, cupped both hands and dashed water on his face. Listening to the rising clangor of the bell, he stared at his distorted reflection. He despised the man he saw; the man responsible for the violence. Benno Strauss was anarchist trash, and Joe had allowed him to control matters until reason was abandoned, order destroyed. That the situation had required desperate measures didn’t change his feelings. He felt defeated.

  Defeated … by events that seemingly were out of control.

  A wurst on black pumpernickel and a stein of cold Crown lager at his personal table under the linden tree calmed him a little. The police wagon picked up three of the fleeing strikers. “Sorry to say Strauss wasn’t among ’em,” O’Doul reported.

  Joe thanked O’Doul and promised he’d be at the precinct house shortly to file charges. When the patrolman left, Joe asked Mickelmeyer to summon his clerk.

  “Stefan, sit down.” Zwick took a chair in the dappled shade of the linden. A lake breeze stirred the leaves and changed the shadow patterns on his face. His employer said, “We have a bad situation here. I’m sure Benno and the others will feel vindictive. I hope they realize reprisals will only bring them more grief. But we mustn’t count on it. If we err, it must be on the side of caution. Change all the locks in the brewery.”

  “All, sir?”

  “Every single one.”

  Zwick made a note on the little pocket pad he carried. He asked no further questions. Benno owned a full set of keys to the loading dock and connecting doors into the brewhouse and refrigerated storerooms. Joe Crown always trusted his men.

  Zwick tapped his pad with the point of his pencil. “We should be able to accomplish this by Friday, sir.”

  “By six o’clock tonight, Stefan. Pay whatever it costs. But get it done. Get it done.”

  Two wagons from Lorenz Brothers, Locksmiths, arrived at half past one. What seemed like a regiment of rude and noisy men swarmed through Crown’s, cutting new chain, snapping new padlocks, setting new bolts, testing new keys. A major part of the racket seemed concentrated outside Joe’s office.

  In the middle of the afternoon, the yellow roses arrived. Joe finally finished his note to Ilsa. Too short, and poorly phrased; the right words simply weren’t there. After Zwick sent off the roses and the note with a teamster who’d stayed on the job, Joe called his clerk in again.

  “I’ve had another thought. Tell George Hoch to buy a pistol of some sort. Tell him the company will pay for it.”

  George Hoch was the brewery’s night watchman. He’d held the job for twelve years. He was thorough, attentive to his rounds, but he was, as Joe recalled, sixty-seven years old. In his entire career George had never dealt with any intruder more menacing than a rat or a youthful prankster. If there was trouble of a serious nature, Joe realized, he couldn’t and shouldn’t rely solely on George. He would have to hire an agency such as Pinkerton’s. They could send a younger, tougher man to guard the premises at night. If necessary, more than one.

  Shortly before the day shift went off duty, Joe asked Stefan Zwick to find his son and his nephew. In ten minutes they were standing before his desk. Both of them looked hot, tired, apprehensive.

  “By now everyone knows what happened this morning. It was an unpleasant incident, but it’s over. I am not asking for your opinions of the illegal walkout, I expect I already know them. I am asking each of you to give me a pledge. A pledge that you’ll say nothing to Ilsa, or Carl and Fritzi. There is no need for them to worry, I want their feelings spared. You shouldn’t have any trouble agreeing to that, either of you.”

  He let the words sink in, then said, “Paul?”

  “I pledge.”

  Joe shifted his gaze to his son. His hand dropped to the boar’s tooth on its chain. A little sharply, he said, “Joseph? Your answer?”

  “I’ll keep quiet.” A second later he blurted, “For Mama’s sake only.”

  “That’s all I ask. Thank you both, you may go.”

  They walked out without looking at each other. When Paul shut the door, Joe propped both elbows on his desk and held his head and thought, What next?

  49

  Joe Junior

  TRUDGING TO UHLICH’S HALL after work, Joe Junior said, “I wish the whole blasted brewery had walked out. I didn’t know about it, I was up on the third floor of the brewhouse, puttying in a new window.”

  Paul shrugged. “Nobody told me either. I guess Benno doesn’t know I’m with the strikers.”

  Joe Junior took his half of the bloody white ribbon from his shirt and tied it in a buttonhole. Paul pinned his with a safety pin. A strolling policeman scowled at them.

  “We should have the courage to wear them all day, Paul.”

  “I know. But Mr. Schildkraut would take them, and report us. We still have to live in your father’s house. I don’t feel good about it, but that’s how it is.”

  Joe Junior was silent awhile. He couldn’t remember feeling so glum.

  The strike wasn’t the only reason. He missed Rosie. To lose her the way he had left a residue of mingled pain and humiliation.

  On the Sunday after Tabor’s death, he’d decided he should pay his condolences to the family. He had cleaned up and prepared himself mentally. He was standing at the car stop when he realized he was really going out to Pullman in hopes of seeing Rosie; hearing her say she hadn’t meant a word.

  But she had, and he knew it.

  When the horsecar was still a block away, the bell had rung twice; the driver had seen him waiting on the corner. That was the moment Joe Junior realized the futility of what he was doing. He turned abruptly and left.

  He’d spent the rest of the afternoon along the lake shore. Even walking briskly, with a clean onshore wind blowing over him, made him feel no better …

  A lumber wagon with creaking axles passed the cousins, then a rattling hansom. Joe Junior said to Paul, “You know, Pop made it worse today. It was only supposed to be a stoppage, for an hour. To show solidarity. He turned it into a mean fight.”

  “You think Benno will hit back?”

  “If he does,
there’ll be a real muss, bet on it.”

  He feared what might happen in the next few days or weeks. Events were rushing on toward some huge, unguessable conclusion. As he’d done many times since that Saturday, he pictured Tabor Jablonec falling, bleeding; he’d never seen a man die before. It was harrowing. He didn’t want to watch anyone else die. He hoped Benno wouldn’t instigate trouble. Wouldn’t ask his question again.

  “Can I count on you?”

  At Uhlich’s Hall, Gene Debs spoke to reporters about the violence.

  “I haven’t changed my position, I never will. A man who commits violence in any form, whether he’s a member of our brotherhood or not, should be promptly arrested and punished and we should be the first to apprehend him. We must act as law-abiding citizens, or not at all.”

  With a weary air, he trudged off to the conference room and shut the door. Shadows of men passed back and forth on the frosted glass window. Joe and his cousin heard contentious voices. Nearer at hand, one of the reporters muttered to a colleague, “He’s done for. The whole strike’s done for. Just a matter of time.”

  The cousins left, dispirited.

  It did seem to grow worse for the strikers. The A.F. of L. executive board refused to express solidarity with “Dictator Debs.” A few more brewers and bakers walked out in sympathy, and then some cigar makers, but massive arrests of strikers on criminal charges rapidly weakened the resistance. Freight tonnage out of Chicago increased every day. Uhlich’s Hall was broken into, desks rifled, papers seized. Gene Debs and three other union officials were arrested on indictments from a special grand jury. His father and Fred Schildkraut and Sam Traub and all those like them were elated.

  At the end of work on the Thursday following Tabor’s death, Joe Junior went to his locker for his cap. He wouldn’t wait for Paul tonight; at noon his cousin had told him he had to stay in the brewhouse until a batch finished at eight o’clock. Joe Junior didn’t care, there was no longer much point in running to Uhlich’s Hall.