Homeland

by John Jakes

  Paul said, “We met the first time at Rooney’s Temple of Photography.”

  “Right you are. New field for you two, huh? Pictures that jump around all over the place. I love this modern stuff. Put ’er there.” They all shook hands.

  Following Shadow’s direction, Paul set up the Luxograph to film the alderman striding back and forth in front of the stone wall of the Armory. There was constant interference as wagons arrived and stevedores unloaded cases of beer and wine. “Ain’t it grand?” the Bath said with a theatrical wave at the wagons. “Democracy at its best, right, boys?”

  “Keep walking, Alderman, please,” Shadow called through a small megaphone, which Paul had never seen before today. He thought it ostentatious, but that was Shadow. For this occasion the colonel had put on his finest white sombrero, frock coat, and flowing tie.

  The Bath smiled and bowed to the lens, one hand over his paunch, one hand in back. Paul cranked until the film ran out.

  “Boys, this was a pleasure.” Once again the alderman shook hands all around. “I’ll be in the front row at Pflaum’s first time you project it. Here’s a ticket to the Ball for each of you. Some tickets for free drinks also.”

  Paul shook his head. “Thank you, but I’m tired, sir. I don’t think I’ll attend.”

  “Yes you will, the Ball is something to see,” Shadow said, waving his megaphone. He was expansive after several sips from the flask Coughlin had cheerfully shared. “You’ll have a hell of a good time and remember it fondly. Assuming you don’t catch the clap.”

  Shadow was right, the Ball was something to see.

  By half past seven o’clock, several thousand people packed the Armory. By ten, when Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink led the grand march around the floor, the revelry was well advanced. Paul had run back to his room; he’d put on his best clothes and slicked his hair lightly with Macassar oil. He stood now with a stein of beer, bemused by the spectacle.

  Pimps had turned out in everything from tails to garish suits. Young whores wore costumes of every kind: wooden shoes and yellow braids, American Indian tunics and warbonnets, ball gowns and wedding gowns. A geisha with white face gave him a long wet kiss and whispered that tonight she did it for free. He patted her inky black hair, piled high with pearl pins. “Thank you. Later.”

  Waiters fairly ran with trays of beer steins and whiskey glasses. Dancers whirled around the floor, throwing themselves into the waltz and the schottische and the polka. Every hour a new musical aggregation took its turn on the stand. The object was volume, not a sensitive performance. Bernhard’s German Band came on at midnight. By then Paul had drunk a lot of beer. He went to the gent’s downstairs. To reach it he passed through a dim area beyond the brewers’ booths, and came upon a couple copulating standing up.

  Returning upstairs, he ran into a little blonde tart named Tippy, whom he knew from his laundry days. They hugged and greeted each other warmly.

  Tippy had a certain winsomeness he’d always liked. They held hands, and he stole a few kisses after he refilled their beer steins.

  When Bernhard’s group struck up a polka, Tippy clapped her hands. “Paul, do you know how?”

  “Yes, my aunt taught me at Berlin beer gardens, years ago. But I am not very good.”

  “Never mind, come on.”

  Jimmy, wearing a cheap plaid suit, happened to be strolling by with a Levee girl named Fat Marie, who lived up to her name. He heard the exchange. With his eye on Paul, he said, “Hell, Marie, I been a polka champion since I was knee-high. Let’s show ’em.”

  “Oh Lord, Jim, not a contest,” Paul said, trying to laugh him out of it.

  “What’s wrong, afraid you’ll look like a chump?”

  Paul flared. “Hell no, I am not afraid.” He swept an arm around Tippy. “Let’s go.”

  “First one to drop’s a dirty dog,” Jimmy said. He rushed his dazed partner to the waxed floor and swung her into the rhythm of the oom-pah band.

  Paul and Tippy followed them quickly. The little blonde laughed in a giddy way, gripping Paul’s hand and waist tightly. Couples flew by, one of them Jimmy and his partner. Fat Marie was sweating, dark red from forehead to jowls.

  Paul danced Tippy around and around, faster and faster. It felt like riding on a great wind gust. Tippy hung on delightedly. They whirled and dipped, whirled and dipped …

  Suddenly, behind them, Jimmy shouted, “Oh, Christ!”

  Tippy gasped. “He fell.”

  Paul stopped abruptly and led Tippy to the side of the floor. Jimmy had gotten up and was leaning on Fat Marie. Then he limped to the nearest box and leaned against that, resting his right ankle on his left knee and rubbing it. Fat Marie touched his arm sympathetically. Jimmy yelled at her. Paul couldn’t hear the words in the din. He didn’t need to hear them. Jimmy’s eyes said everything.

  “Shall we quit?” Tippy asked.

  Good sense prompted a yes. But he was feeling the Dutch courage of the beer, and resentment of Jimmy. “No. We dance.”

  He awoke the next morning in Tippy’s bed, a dreadful taste furring his mouth. Immediately there flashed into his head a memory of Jimmy’s eyes when Paul and Tippy were finishing the polka. Jimmy’s angry eyes.

  That night in their room, Jimmy said, “I’m not going to forget how you showed me up in front of everybody. Then you went right around the floor to celebrate.”

  “Jim, I want to offer an apology. I had drunk a lot of beer—”

  “Fuck you, I don’t need your apologies. From now on we do the work but we ain’t friends and never will be. Got it?”

  He rolled over and pounded his pillow. Paul lay back, glumly thinking, As if we ever had a chance of being friends …

  Paul wrote several letters to Wexford Rooney in care of general delivery, Charleston, West Virginia. Early in 1897 he finally got a reply. It contained some news.

  In certain respects life is treating me less harshly than before. Notably, I have found a room at the boardinghouse of a Mrs. Lucille Suggsworth. She is a person of intelligence, fine culinary skills which most of her cloddish guests fail to appreciate, and a warm caring disposition. Lucille was widowed last year. We are close companions, if you get my drift.

  The letter contained some complaints.

  My servitude at the Nu-Age Photography Salon of Charleston is, as I feared, a dreadful experience. I seem to have inherited all the screaming, puling, vile-tempered tots whose idiot parents want them immortalized for posterity. Yesterday one of the little wretches—a mere four years old—sank her tiny choppers into my wrist as I attempted to adjust her pose. God save me from the rabies!!

  To make it worse, I am then required to finish the printed portraits of these midget monsters by color-tinting their precious little lips and cheeks. I’d sooner black their eyes and shade out a few teeth—the uglier the result, the more true to life!

  I lack adequate words for my general surroundings, save to say this place is a cultural Sahara. The chief intellectual subjects discussed in Charleston include the secret tippling of the pastor and the characteristics of family pets and farm animals. Pray for my sanity.

  The letter contained the inevitable admonitions.

  In all that you do in your newfound career in living pictures, remember above all one watchword. Honesty. Honesty!!

  I hope sincerely that you will soon declare your intent to become a citizen. This is a great land—nay, unequaled—and I say that in full knowledge of all the moral, legal, and general shortcomings of us Americans and our system. I say that knowing the Red Man is raped of his land, the Black Man is rapidly being deprived of all of his hard-won rights—even the White Man is often made to feel a pariah if he hails from the wrong part of the globe and speaks with a queer accent.

  Still, there is unrivaled opportunity, and a matchless idea behind America, which, while far from perfectly implemented as yet—if it ever will be!—still beckons us on. Surely you will heed me when you realize these words come from one who was never able to capitali
ze upon that opportunity for himself. Yet I believe in it. So do not shun or discard the idea of becoming a citizen, even though some aspects of life here have been bitterly disappointing.

  Yours ever,

  W. Rooney

  Paul laid the letter aside. Wex might be disappointed too. Paul would stay in America while learning as much as he could of his new craft. But citizenship? No; since he’d lost Julie, that was something in which he no longer had any interest. What the baker of Wuppertal said about America seemed ever more truthful.

  In February 1897, the world’s champion heavyweight fighter, James J. Corbett, went into training for his title defense against Bob Fitzsimmons. Gentleman Jim would meet the challenger on March 17 in Carson City, Nevada. For weeks, everyone with a drop of sporting blood had been talking of little else.

  “It’s a shame we can’t buy a train ticket, go out there and film it,” Paul said one evening at supper.

  Shadow said, “We weren’t privileged to be invited. We didn’t present the right credentials.” He rubbed his fingers together, feeling invisible money. “Enoch Rector’s Veriscope company got an exclusive license to film the fight.” He wrapped a string of Mary’s overdone spaghetti on his fork and sucked it into his mouth with an audible snap. “But don’t worry, we’ll do it too.”

  “Huh?” For once he had Jimmy’s attention. “You just said—”

  “What we are going to film, boys, is what I call a counterpart. I’ve already rented a site. A farm out near Wheaton. I’ve been to the Chicago River piers scouting potential look-alikes. I’ve located our Corbett but not our Fitzsimmons. I’ll find him, I still have three weeks.”

  “You mean we’re going to fake a picture?” Paul said.

  Shadow seemed affronted by his tone. “Who sets policy around here, you or me? Don’t think our American National Luxograph is the only one doing it. I had a letter from Sig Lubin in Philadelphia. He’s planning the same thing. Rector’s pictures will be shown exclusively at one Chicago theater. What’s Iz Pflaum supposed to do, sit by and weep? He’s a steady customer—he deserves a fight picture too. We’ll make our version accurate and truthful, one hundred percent.” Shadow banged the table.

  Leaving Paul speechless and Jimmy amused.

  In April, twenty days after the fight and a week before the scheduled premiere of Rector’s authentic version, they traveled to Wheaton with a wagonload of equipment and lumber. They built a shaky prize ring in a field. Late the next day, while Jimmy, Paul, and the colonel were stringing the ropes, the two stevedores showed up. One seemed slow-witted; the other smelled like a wine cask when he exhaled.

  The following morning, in the farmer’s barn where they’d all slept, the stevedores donned tights and gloves. The men bore only a slight resemblance to engraved portraits of Corbett and Fitzsimmons, though the man chosen to represent the challenger was, at least, partially bald.

  The camera was lifted to a platform on stilts beside the ring. Shadow fussed and yelled as if this were the actual fight, with the outcome unknown. Under an elm tree not yet budded, Mary patiently guarded the hamper of cold beef sandwiches and bottled Apolinaris water bought to keep the combatants refreshed.

  This time Shadow personally manned the crank. Paul sat on a stool at the front corner of the camera platform, a copy of the Tribune in hand. He’d read the long Carson City dispatch half a dozen times and marked it for emphasis. Jimmy stood by in a striped shirt and cloth cap. A silver referee’s whistle hung from a lanyard around his neck. The farmer and his son were playing handlers of the two fighters; Shadow had coached them on the use of water buckets and sponges between rounds.

  Shadow began to crank. “Action. Start reading, Dutch.”

  “Round one. Gentleman Jim danced lightly from his corner, while the Cornishman seemed to lurch and shamble into the fray. Fitzsimmons swung a punch, which missed. Corbett stung him with a left jab.” The stevedore, whose hair had been blacked for the Corbett part, dutifully jabbed. The bogus Fitzsimmons staggered. Paul thought of Wex’s charge about honesty. His conscience writhed.

  “Another futile blow caught the air and nothing more. Then the champion replied with still one more rapierlike jab …”

  So it went, round by round, with pauses to reload the camera and rest the actors.

  In the actual fight, during the fourteenth of fifteen scheduled rounds, Jim Corbett had carelessly dropped his guard, and the battered Cornishman had slammed a left hook into his gut. The punch, ever after called a solar plexus blow, flung Corbett on his back for a full ten count, costing him the championship. They finished filming the counterpart of the knockout at ten past one in the afternoon. They congratulated each other and celebrated with a gallon jug of low-grade whiskey.

  American National Luxograph’s “exclusive” pictures of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight (“A Dramatic Representation”) opened at Pflaum’s in late April. Although the official Rector pictures were also showing, Shadow’s eighteen-minute highlight version did fine business, more than satisfying Iz Pflaum.

  And further disillusioning Paul:

  “Doesn’t the public know the difference?”

  “Sure they know the difference,” the colonel said. “You miss the point, kid. They don’t care. Any picture is still a hell of a novelty to most people.”

  “Well, as you reminded me when I first spoke out of turn, this is your business. But I must say what’s on my mind. I don’t think we should do such representations. We should go where something is happening and bring back the real event, not an imitation.”

  Mary had finished eating and was buffing her fingernails. Jimmy speared three more pork sausages on his fork. With heavy sarcasm, Shadow said, “Do you happen to recall that we weren’t invited to Nevada?” He repeated his money-feeling gesture.

  “But there will be places where we can go, and we should. You said so yourself, the night I was hired. I was impressed.”

  “Were you.” Shadow studied his helper with a grudging amusement. “You really believe we should never produce a staged film?”

  “Unless it’s clearly a play or a little story. If that’s foolish, I’m sorry, it’s how I feel.”

  “God, Dutch,” Jimmy said. “You’re always putting on your damn airs.”

  “Wait, let’s follow this,” Shadow said. “Dutch, I’m sure I was sincere when I made that speech, though I frankly don’t remember too much of what I said. I still believe the Luxograph can and should go anyplace. Trouble is, right now we can’t afford to go a hell of a lot farther than the county line. We’re stretched to the limit. Every penny that comes in goes out for raw stock or materials to build another projector. These representations—fakes, you call ’em—they’re income. And I tell you again, everybody’s doing ’em. Smith and Blackton at Vitagraph filmed some hick waterfall in Passaic, New Jersey. They’re showing the picture up and down the East Coast and calling it Niagara Falls. The crowds go wild. From what I read, nobody so far—not one damn person—has shot up a hand and said, ‘Oh, gentlemen, wait, wait, isn’t that Passaic? I’m leaving!’ If people believe a fake’s real, and the fake’s easier, who’s hurt?”

  “Who? I don’t know. But honesty is hurt.”

  “All right, we’ll send you and Jimmy and the camera to real places around the whole damn world, when we can. When we can—those are the words to remember.”

  Paul said nothing. Shadow looked spent; great dark rings showed under his eyes. This was no time to press a philosophy of pictures. Perhaps Shadow did believe in the right one and just couldn’t afford it, as he said.

  Shadow yawned. “Mary, could I have more coffee? I have to get downstairs but first I have to wake up.”

  “What are you doing, working on the new projector?” Mary asked.

  “Yeah, the one with more capacity. Paul, you want to help me again?”

  “Sure.”

  Jimmy’s eyes didn’t conceal his feelings. What was the American expression? Bad blood. Paul couldn’t deny it was there. Bad bloo
d between them.

  Mary brought the colonel’s coffee and resumed her nail-buffing. After a few seconds, she suddenly threw the buffer on the table. “Oh God, Sid, I forgot. Did you look at the afternoon mail?”

  “When have I had time? I’m lucky to find thirty seconds to run to the crapper.”

  “There’s an important letter for you. At least it looks important.”

  “Yeah, who’s it from, Her Majesty Queen Victoria?”

  “It’s from the Edison Manufacturing Company, in New Jersey.”

  Shadow blanched. “My God. What do you suppose they want?”

  “Maybe the great Mr. E. knows about your work, maybe he’s impressed and wants your autograph.”

  “Mary, this isn’t funny.” Paul had never heard Shadow’s voice so hushed or seen him so unnerved. “Where’s the fucking letter?”

  80

  Julie

  ON A JUNE MORNING IN 1897, Julie and her husband took breakfast on the marble terrace of Belle Mer, the summer residence Elstree’s father had built in Southampton Village. It was situated between the intersection of First Neck Lane and Dune Road to the west, and St. Andrew’s Dune Church, where services were held in the summer months.

  Though it was only half past eight, the day was already sultry. The sky was overcast. Throughout the gardens and glades of their five acres, birds sang. Below the sloping lawn, beyond the dune and their private beach posted with NO TRESPASS! signs, the ocean, the wonderful sonorous ocean, rolled in from the other side of the world.

  Julie wore a morning robe of quilted satin, too heavy for the season. Her little dog Rudy nestled in her lap. Elstree had dressed in his own bedroom, appearing in white flannel trousers and his scarlet coat denoting membership in the exclusive Shinnecock Hills Club, where he golfed. This morning he had a ten o’clock bridge game at the Southampton Club, for the usual two cents a point.

  Elstree looked tanned and fit. Julie, on the other hand, was pale, with purple shadows under her eyes. Somehow nothing would erase them, not even sleeping ten to twelve hours a night. Her black hair hung to her waist, combed and brushed and prettily secured at the midpoint by a white ribbon bow. She wore her hair long all the time, except when some social occasion required her to put it up. It seemed a way to make a silent if bitter statement about her life: “I am a rich wife of whom nothing is expected save obedience, social graces, a pleasing appearance, and the delivery of one or more babies, preferably male.”