Homeland

by John Jakes

  When Wex finished looking into his five machines, he returned to the counter. “Sir, I’m in the photographic profession myself. I’d like to see inside one of those machines.” The owner balked. Wex argued and finally pressed a half dollar on him.

  “Well, all right, I suppose Mr. Edison can’t spy on me from New Jersey.”

  As soon as the other customers left, marveling at what they’d seen, the man moved one of the cabinets, unscrewed the back and removed it. Wex knelt, enraptured. Paul peered over his shoulder at a loop of film that appeared to feed continuously over geared rollers.

  After several minutes Wex stood up. “Thank you, sir, most enlightening.” He tipped his cap and they went out. The snowfall had stopped. “Despite the incredibly dull subjects, that box is the miracle of the age. Temporarily.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the picture is too small. Because only one person at a time can view it. What’s needed is a machine to project the picture. Throw the image onto a wall, or a special screen, for an audience. A large, paying audience. Those journals that come into the shop say inventors are working frantically on projector designs, and that includes Edison—though he makes no secret of having little faith in the worth of the process. I say just wait a few years, everything will change. No more dingy rooms like that one, there’ll be special theaters. And crowds to fill them. Something so wonderful can’t possibly fail to catch on.” Wex’s spectacles flashed under a street lamp; he was almost dancing in the slush.

  “Still, Mr. Edison’s not only a mechanical genius, he’s a true promoter. He’s taking advantage of the novelty and selling Kinetoscope exhibition rights for entire states, nothing less. Owners of the rights can then lease the machines to other individuals, or open parlors of their own. It takes a deal of cash, I hear.”

  “How new is this parlor?”

  “Opened in May, last year. Damn poor timing. It got lost in the hullabaloo of the Pullman trouble. For months hardly anyone knew it was here.”

  “I wonder if the owner is making money on his investment.”

  “I should hope so. Say, that’s a fine English word, ‘investment.’ You’re learning a deal of them, aren’t you?”

  “Trying. I study my grammar and dictionary every spare minute. And I don’t think in German anymore. Well, almost never.”

  “All the better for you when you become a citizen.”

  That night Paul had a dream about the Kinetoscope pictures. In slow, dreamy images, the great Sandow, tall as a house, flexed arms as thick as oak trees to show biceps bigger than boulders. At his feet, thousands of pygmy spectators applauded. In the morning Paul awoke with a new excitement and enthusiasm.

  Those are the pictures I want to make. If Wex is right, one day they’ll be popular with millions. If I were a camera operator who took such pictures, I could afford to be a husband, and it would be fine work, too. Why, I might go all over the world! …

  An unhappy thought stole away his excitement. If he did what he was imagining, he’d have to abandon the man who’d taken him in and taught him. That wouldn’t be easy—if he could do it at all. It was a problem he didn’t want to think about.

  At last, on a raw windy day in late March, he found a good job. Driver of a delivery wagon for the Illinois Steam Laundry Company.

  The laundry was owned and run by one Albert Grace. Mr. Grace had a round jowly face, dressed well, and had the air of a man who sold religious goods or something equally proper. During his interview, Paul was asked a few short questions. The rest of the time Albert Grace talked.

  “I run a necessary business,” Grace said. “Provide an important service. I have dozens of accounts, and this laundry is the favorite of every one of them. If you take this job, you are on the front line for the Illinois Steam Laundry Company. When you deliver and pick up, you are the embodiment of Albert Grace. That’s a very high responsibility.”

  At the end of twenty minutes of monologue Mr. Grace shook Paul’s hand and said he was mightily impressed by Paul’s grasp of English. Considering Mr. Grace’s lofty pronouncements, Paul was astonished to learn the truth about the Illinois Steam Laundry Company when he began work. To be sure, the laundry supplied dining-room and bed linens to a few of the lesser downtown hotels. But the bulk of its business came from a long list of customers in the First Ward. The Illinois Steam Laundry Company handled the linens of whorehouses.

  The laundry’s principal territory, the Levee, ran from Eighteenth Street down to Twenty-second, between Wabash Avenue on the east and Clark Street on the west. Originally confined to a couple of blocks on State and considered a subsection of Satan’s Mile—Van Buren to Twenty-second—the Levee had lately grown and now eclipsed all the other vice districts: Little Cheyenne, Little Hell, the Bad Lands, Coon Hollow, and the formerly pre-eminent Custom House Place. Albert Grace’s laundry occupied a three-story building on Wabash near Twenty-fourth Street. This was convenient to the place considered the social heart of the Levee, Freiberg’s Dance Hall on Twenty-second.

  Picking up and delivering with the laundry wagon began another dramatic education for Paul. Although Uncle Joe had often railed against the vice thriving in Chicago, Paul had never guessed the staggering size of the trade. He was astounded at the number of individual cribs, fancy bordellos, concert saloons, dance parlors with women available in upstairs “wine rooms.” Their names teased the imagination. The Chinese Delight. The Dark Secret. Mother Maude’s. The “Why Not?” Many of them ran day as well as night shifts. The depression continuing to grip the country seemed to have little effect on the demand for illicit sex. Every morning, after just a few stops on his assigned route, Paul’s wagon was so stuffed with linen, he had to throw his full weight against the rear doors to latch them. He loaded and unloaded the wagon four, sometimes five times between seven in the morning and six at night. At first he simply couldn’t believe there could be so much rutting going on in so many places.

  A Niagara of spirits flowed through the vice dens. Thousands of barrels of beer were served, but not one came from Crown’s. Organized thievery was an important sideline in many of the places. Gambling thrived in neighboring pool halls, handbooks, craps and faro rooms. Everything contributed to the Levee’s booming prosperity, but sex was the engine. Scores of legitimate businesses such as newsstands and delicatessens, dry cleaners and breweries, furniture stores and carpet dealers—and laundries—used black ink, or red, according to the rhythms of the whorehouse trade.

  Paul quickly learned that the trade had connections to City Hall, police headquarters, the local precinct house. It was no secret; people talked and boasted of it openly. There were even links to swank residential sections miles away. Mr. Grace, his wife and seven children had recently relocated to one of these, Evanston. From a fine home in that totally dry enclave, the Graces donated to all the significant German charities in the city, always making sure their generosity was mentioned in the papers. Mr. Grace had been born Albrecht Gerstmeier, in Silesia, a fact undetectable from Grace’s precise English. It made Paul laugh to think of the thousands of stained sheets and pillowslips on which the respectability of the Grace family rested.

  During his first weeks he met hundreds of girls. He ran into them, warm and sleepy and waking up with a champagne cocktail, at noon or later. He chatted with them while they ate steak and eggs for breakfast at three or four. The Levee was a rainbow of girls: immigrant girls from Bohemia and runaway girls from farms downstate; Polish girls and Irish girls; shiny black girls from Alabama and tawny brown girls from the faraway isle of Jamaica; even some Chinese girls and red Indian girls. There were girls in purple tights and girls in red harem pants; girls in little-girl shifts trimmed with blue lace and girls who showed everything in Mother Hubbards of black fishnet; girls in corsets with garters and pink stockings and girls in high-collared velvet gowns suitable for attending church. He met girls who’d been to college and girls who couldn’t read; girls who were Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, Afri
can Methodists—or agnostics or atheists after a childhood of hell-roaring exhortations against sin.

  A few of the whores were almost grannies, but most were shamefully young—lured in by the ropers and controlled by cadets, the Levee’s name for pimps. Some of the whores were thick-witted and crude, as ugly inside as out. Others were merely adrift, or frankly in the trade to put something aside for old age. A few entertained hopes of some rich customer’s falling in love with them. A sad and vain hope, Paul thought.

  Paul was young, energetic, and almost always cheerful. He had rough good looks and a convivial disposition, and his color improved now that he was out in the weather all day. Most of the whores and madams liked him, so he got acquainted with a lot of the stock quickly.

  One of his favorites hailed from a farm near Ottumwa, Iowa. She weighed over two hundred fifty pounds and was therefore called Slim. Paul enjoyed talking with her over a cup of afternoon coffee, and her employer, Madam Elaine, didn’t seem to object. Madam Elaine was graying and regal, with the face of a choir singer and the vocabulary of a drayman. “Drink all my coffee you want,” she told Paul. “But if you waste Slim’s time when she has a customer, or try to fuck her for nothing—then, my little lad, I’ll cut off your cock with a dull cleaver.”

  Unfortunately Slim saw more in Paul than an occasional social visitor, and she began to leave boxes of candy on the hall table, marked with his name, if she was busy. One day he found the candy in a heart-shaped box, with a note. Slim said she’d risk the wrath of Madam Elaine and meet Paul somewhere if he wanted to make love to her. For nearly a week he agonized over the best way to tell Slim that he appreciated her generous offer but could not accept.

  He was spared when he came in one morning to find that a customer had slashed her with a razor after an argument. She’d been taken to the emergency hospital, where she died. Her body was shipped to Iowa in a special large coffin paid for by Madam Elaine. Madam Elaine was shaken by great racking sobs the evening Paul accompanied her to buy the coffin. “She was such a God damn good girl. The crazy fucker who cut her is a dope fiend. He’s going to suffer for what he did, I’ve put the word out. He’ll get what he deserves, a new mouth under his chin and a swim in Lake Michigan, may his shriveled rotten soul burn and stink in hell forever.”

  The ice in Lake Michigan began to melt and crack apart, piling up in huge blocks on shore. Sleet storms gave way to rain. Paul smelled spring behind the eternal Chicago miasma of stockyard offal and horse manure.

  Driving morning and afternoon and sometimes into the night for the laundry, darting in and out of houses and dens with his canvas hamper of linens overflowing, he had plenty of offers to sample the stock. He always declined politely, with an improvised excuse. He didn’t fancy himself morally superior. He just wanted to be loyal to Julie, and he didn’t want clap. So he didn’t whore around. Nor did he drink, except for one or two daily lagers. Going out of his way to find a place that served Crown’s was a small gesture of loyalty to the family.

  One evening after work, in a hard rain, he stood outside the mansion for a quarter of an hour. The windows shone with warm electric light. Familiar figures moved back and forth: Helga Blenkers; Fritzi, hopping and spinning with her arms flung wide in another of her theatrical fantasies.

  He watched Uncle Joe’s landau return from the brewery. For an instant he wanted to dash across the rain-lashed street. Catch the carriage. Pound on the side. “See here, I’m part of this family. Can’t we patch this up?”

  Instead, he walked away, with bitter thoughts of his uncle’s turning him out. He’d make his way without the family’s help, counsel, money, or affection. He’d find affection of his own. Affection, and a true home. With Julie.

  That spring he was a street boy again.

  He was no longer an innocent. Berlin had taught him much at a young age, and he saw the dirty, dangerous side of the Levee. But the district had an undeniable excitement and energy, and he wasn’t intimidated by the residents. Cautious but friendly, he never judged anyone’s morals too severely. He acquired a tougher look but didn’t strut or consciously attempt an air of bravado. He didn’t cock a cigarette in his mouth for effect; he tried Dukes and Caporals a few times and coughed too much. But he carried himself with quiet authority. The panhandlers steered away from him and never directly solicited a handout, though he sometimes gave them a penny or two. His favorite was a spindly, dignified old gentleman with the poorest of clothes but the finest of manners and diction. His name was Shakespeare. The first time Paul handed him a coin, he clasped it tight in his fist, struck a pose and declaimed: “A kind overflow of kindness! Measure for Measure, act the fourth. For your kindness I owe you a good turn! Much Ado, act the first.” Paul enjoyed the old man so much, he began to search for him in order to give him something. On one occasion he watched a patron come out of a saloon and ignore the genteel panhandler’s appeal. Shakespeare shouted after him, “I am not in a giving mood today! Richard Third, act the fourth. Fuck you, brother.”

  The grifters with their three-card monte stands never bothered Paul because they never mistook him for a rube, and the cadets working the sidewalks never solicited him.

  Then there were the pickpockets, some as young as eight or nine. One afternoon on Twenty-second Street, he felt something lightly brush his left pants pocket. He whipped his hand down and caught a wrist the color of dark honey.

  Paul jerked the thief in front of him; he was a tan boy, part white, part Negro, with delicate features and filthy clothes that were falling apart. The boy looked starved. He was, at the most, ten.

  The feral boy tugged and wrenched to get free. Paul’s grip was too strong. “Listen, I work around here, why the devil are you trying to rob me?”

  “He don’t give a hang where you work,” said an unseen speaker behind him. “He’s one of Dummy’s boys.” The voice belonged to a colored bootblack in neatly pressed pants and a vest. Much darker skin than the pickpocket’s. He was standing tensely at the corner.

  Remembering a word Joe Junior had taught him, Paul said to the pickpocket, “I don’t like being marked for a sucker. Do you hear?” The boy flung his head back and spit on him.

  “Mean little son of a bitch, ain’t he?” said the bootblack. “Millard Fillmore’s his name, can you feature it? I s’pose he didn’t have any name at all when some slut whelped him. He’ll kill you for a dime.”

  Paul figured the pickpocket expected a few blows, or worse. Give him a surprise, then. With his free hand he reached into his pocket. “A dime, is that all it takes? Here are two. Buy a glass of milk and some sausages. Use the rest for a bathhouse and a haircut. You’ll feel a lot better.”

  And with that he let go.

  The stupefied pickpocket stared back and forth from Paul to the coins. Then he grinned; half his teeth were a diseased dark brown. He tossed the coins up and caught them.

  “Thanks, Dutchie.” He dropped the coins in his pocket and produced a long clasp knife. He opened it with a snap and flourished the blade, six or seven inches long.

  “Go on, do as you’re told, Mr. President Fillmore,” Paul said. “And stop trying to frighten your elders.”

  Fillmore grinned wider and snapped the knife shut. “You got some balls, Dutchie. See you later.”

  “My Lord, you took a chance,” said the bootblack, fanning himself with his hand. “Dummy’s boys are killers.”

  “Dummy?”

  “Dummy Steinbaum. He trains and runs the gang. Starts ’em at seven years. Uses a dressmaker’s dummy with a coat or dress on it, an’ little bells that tinkle if the boy’s careless.”

  Paul climbed to the seat of his wagon and drove away. That was his only direct encounter with the pickpocket gang of Dummy Steinbaum, an organization that numbered between thirty and forty members. On his rounds a few days later he heard that Millard Fillmore had told his mates he’d personally cut up any of them who dared to steal a penny from the German laundryman.

  Every week Paul put a lit
tle money into a bank savings account. By mail, from the great thick pulp paper catalog of Sears, Roebuck & Company of Chicago, he began to buy items for a new wardrobe. He shopped by mail because all the whores said that unless you could afford luxury goods, you could do no better. The catalog masthead claimed as much with its boldly printed slogan: CHEAPEST SUPPLY HOUSE ON EARTH.

  Sears sold through its enormous office and warehouse on North Division Street. Paul bought a sack suit of good French corduroy, gray; the bottom of the coat had the popular round cut. Price, $7.95. He bought a fancy duck vest, single-breasted, with polka dots; $1.05. He bought a pair of gents’ high-top front-laced balmorals, commonly called bals, in calfskin, with needle-point toes; $3.75. He bought a shirt, detachable celluloid wing collar and celluloid cuffs and a striped cravat. He topped it off with a dressy young man’s derby; $1.50.

  “Quite the sport, aren’t you?” Wex said, amused, when Paul showed him the clothes from the large carton delivered by the express company. “You’ll be trigged out just right for the track.”

  “What track?”

  “The racetrack. Washington Park. Hawthorne. Heard of them, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re probably not interested, either.” Wex sniffed the warm wind blowing through the propped-open skylight. “They’ll be operating soon, thank God.”

  Frowning, Paul remembered searching for Wex the first time. He recalled a puzzling remark about Wex’s being fond of “ponies.” If Wex was betting on horse races, that might explain the perpetual poverty of the temple of the photographic art.

  Wex noticed Paul’s frown. “I know, I know, gambling’s a terrible habit. Told you I had demons.” The next seemed torn out of him. “The horses cost me Alice, my studio, everything. Because they cost me the life of my boy.”