Homeland

by John Jakes

  Mary actually blushed. Jimmy snickered. Paul had grown used to the blue language and he laughed too.

  Leaving Paul and Jimmy to wash and dry the dishes, Shadow and Mary went into their bedroom and closed the door. Soon the springs were squeaking. On Monday night Mary put on her best hat and went to night school.

  April came. Again Spain refused to heed United States demands for independence for Cuba. President McKinley was increasingly pressured to take a strong stand and intervene. He remained reluctant. The yellow press hammered at him. Members of his administration openly criticized him. Little by little he gave way. On April 11 he sent a message to Congress, saying in part, I ask the Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the government of Spain and the people of Cuba … and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary.

  Congress responded with a joint resolution demanding freedom for Cuba, and instructing the President, as commander in chief, to employ appropriate military force to carry it out.

  On April 20 McKinley signed the resolution into law. A state of war existed between America and Spain.

  In addition to all his other duties, Shadow was again rushing to the cellar to perfect the new camera with improved capacity. He’d been talking about it excitedly for months, but hadn’t pushed to finish the work. Now the swift, almost dizzying expansion of the American National Luxograph Company drove him to it. They still had to film new subjects regularly, and the new camera could be a significant help.

  Gus Wennersten came over from the other facility and solved a couple of small but vexing design problems. Jubilant, Shadow gave Gus a twenty-dollar bonus and proudly announced to his little family that the camera was ready.

  It would hold four hundred feet of cellulose nitrate film negative in a separate lightproof magazine mounted on top of the main body of the camera. After exposure, the film was fed to a take-up reel in a second lighttight magazine, this one attached to the camera back. Above and slightly behind the crank was a footage meter of Shadow’s own design. A meter was necessary because several subjects could now be filmed with a single magazine.

  On the evening after the war declaration hit the papers, Paul asked the colonel if he could spare a few minutes to discuss an important matter.

  “For you, Dutch—anytime; Let’s take a stroll.” Shadow fired up a long cigar. They walked in the direction of Freiberg’s, where the professor was hammering “Animal Fair” so loudly the music could be heard for blocks. Electric signs painted Twenty-second Street with gaudy colors.

  “What’s on your mind, kid? I can’t raise your pay. God knows you deserve it, but I’m pressed to the absolute fucking limit at the moment.”

  “No, it is not about wages.” Paul stopped on the curb, raised his chin, and looked the colonel in the eye.

  “I would like you to give me the new camera.”

  “Got an idea for a longer picture, have you?”

  “In a way. I would like to take the camera to Cuba.”

  “Cuba? Oh sure, why not? Hell, let’s take it to the moon while we’re at it. Did Mary scramble your brains for breakfast?”

  “Colonel, please hear me out. I want to follow the American soldiers for our picture company. If they go into battle with the Spaniards, there will be opportunities to film scenes that are completely new and amazing.”

  “Dutch, that is the God damn craziest, most risky idea I have ever—”

  “American Mutoscope is sending a man.”

  Shadow jerked the cigar from his mouth. “What did you say?”

  “American Mutoscope has planned for weeks to send a cameraman from New York. I read it yesterday in one of the journals. Vitascope may go as well. We’re an important, growing company, just like those others. We can’t be left out.”

  “Do you know what you’re asking?”

  “I am asking for the new camera.”

  “Crap on the new camera, I’m talking about you.”

  “Yes, I know there might be dangers. I am willing to chance them. I go back once more to the night you hired me. You spoke long and with feeling about the living pictures. What they can do and should do. Show the wonders of the world. The drama. Now’s the time, there’s no drama bigger than war. You said that too.”

  “I know, but I don’t remember! Listen, Dutch. I like you. I don’t want to send you off and see you come back on a stretcher, full of greaser lead. Isn’t necessary. We did all right with the two pictures we made on the roof.”

  “Not the real thing, sir. Cameras can bring back the truth. It’s our—our duty.”

  “That’s the line I’ve been hearing from you ever since we faked the prizefight in the country. Where’d you pick up these big noble ideas?”

  Paul was red-faced. “Mostly from Mr. Rooney. He said a camera could lie but it must not.”

  “And you’re not scared to pack up and pole off to Cuba? They’re going to be shooting real bullets down there.”

  “I am scared, certainly. But I am excited too. I felt exactly this way on the pier at Hamburg, waiting for my ship to America. People on the pier warned me I might die during the crossing. I knew it was possible but it didn’t matter, I had to board that ship. I had to cross the ocean to this country to look for a home. There was never any other choice for me.”

  “Dutch, you’re a funny kid. You have ambition, but that isn’t all. Something else pushes you, I can’t figure out what.” Shadow scratched his long jaw. “Cuba, huh? War footage.”

  “Never before seen in all the world, Colonel.”

  Shadow stared beyond the Levee lights to some large and shining hill of gold, a sizable part of which he might bank if scenes of real battles were exhibited at Pflaum’s and his other licensed theaters and store shows …

  “You’d need help. Jimmy would have to go with you.”

  “He won’t like that.”

  “If I order him, he’ll go.”

  “Or quit.”

  “Maybe, but my guess is he won’t. He’s still chasing Fail’s daughter. She still thinks his work is so thrilling.” He fluttered his eyes. “I don’t think she’s allowed him to peek at her little treasure just yet. He wants that so bad it hurts. Marching off to war would impress Miss Fail. It might get her to drop her bloomers when he comes home safe. Hell, maybe even before he leaves. If I had ten silver dollars this very minute, I’d bet it all that Jimmy’ll go.”

  “Then you will give me the camera?”

  “If you’re willing to risk your ass, I’ll risk the new camera, film stock, your expenses—the works. Let’s go in here to Freiberg’s. I’ll buy you a beer and a steak. Lord, think of it. American National Luxograph goes to war! Did I really have that big idea when I was drunk?”

  “Absolutely. That’s why I wanted to work for you.”

  “I decided when I met you that you had the stuff. Damn if I wasn’t dead right.”

  He put his arm around Paul in a way that was almost fatherly, and they passed into the smoky blaze of the dance hall. “What do you say I print up some calling cards? Paul Crown, Operator—no, wait, we’ll use your nickname too, Paul ‘Dutch’ Crown—I like that. Sounds”—his hand cut a slashing figure in the air—“adventurous. Plenty of grit. Real American, too. Dutch Crown, Chief Operator, American National Luxograph Company. That’s big, I like it.”

  85

  Joe Crown

  “I WISH YOU WOULDN’T go,” Ilsa said. “How can the brewery get along without you?”

  “Easily. Stefan and my brewmaster, Sam Ziegler, can handle everything between them, at least for a limited time.”

  Joe dipped the paddle and the canoe glided across the Lincoln Park lagoon known as Swan Lake. After church and another of Pastor Wunder’s excruciatingly long sermons, Ilsa had insisted they make this little excursion. Canoeing had never been one of her passions, so it puzzled him. Until now.

  “But Joe, I still feel—”

>   “Ilsa, we’re officially at war. I have served before, I can serve again. It’s my patriotic duty.”

  He rested the paddle on the knees of his gray worsted trousers—too heavy for the unexpected heat of this April afternoon. His face gleaming with sweat, he tilted his straw boater forward to shade his eyes. Ilsa had given him the hat for Christmas. He told her it was wonderful. Secretly he thought it foolish for a man his age.

  She dabbed her upper lip with a lace handkerchief. “There may be an element of patriotism in it. But I think you’re doing it chiefly because you’re so unhappy at home. Unhappy with me.”

  “Now wait, I deny—”

  “Be so kind as to let me finish this time. At a certain age, men rebel. That is well known. I know my personal objections to spirits and beer have angered you, and I’m deeply sorry. I wish I could say to you that I renounce what I believe in order to make your life happier. I can’t do that. Maybe twenty years ago, yes, but not now. I am the person I have become, for good or ill.”

  “A marvelous wife, I’ve always said it and I stand by it.”

  “Thank you, but I know you take exception to the way I feel about this war.”

  “You and your friends.”

  “Yes, Miss Addams is likewise adamantly opposed to it. But that plays no part here. Or it shouldn’t. Truly, I’m thinking of you. And the business.” He looked at her skeptically. “You have made an enormous success, Joe. You are expanding as never before. Six new agencies this year alone.”

  “Seven. Last week I bought a piece of property in Omaha.”

  “Nebraska now! Aren’t you proud?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You have everything a man could want.”

  “Oh yes. Everything.” He threw the paddle on the thwart in front of him. “I have a son at private school whom I seldom see. I have a daughter foolishly determined to enter a profession whose members are considered riffraff, at best. I have another son who might have dropped off the earth—”

  “No! Remember all those little things he’s sent. The orange candies from California—”

  “They were addressed to you, not to me. Then there is our nephew, totally lost to us—”

  “Pauli didn’t choose to leave our house, you banished him. I must constantly remind you of that.”

  He ignored her flare of anger. “Well, if this is what I’ve worked for—if I am a man with everything—I pray to God I’m never forced to experience having nothing.”

  He snatched off his boater and dragged his sleeve across his dripping forehead. “It’s too damned hot out here, we’re going back.”

  The following Tuesday night, April 26, Joe left for Washington on the Baltimore & Ohio. He’d bought a Pullman berth but when the porter asked if he wanted it made up, he shook his head. He sat up all night, staring out the window with his seat lamp extinguished. The vast American night streaming past was as dark and unfathomable as his own life in this, his fifty-sixth year.

  Rain was falling when he arrived in the capital. He checked into his room at the Willard Hotel, a haven for generals and politicians and lobbyists since before Lincoln’s time. From there he telephoned Joe Cannon’s office on Capitol Hill. He’d previously telegraphed him to announce his visit. They met for a noon meal of bean soup, soda bread, and beer in the dark and smoky Old Ebbitt Grill on H Street. Uncle Joe looked more like a hayseed than ever. As he noisily spooned up soup, Joe asked how he’d been.

  “Busy.” Uncle Joe scratched his scraggly beard without dislodging several bread crumbs. “This chairmanship of Appropriations, it’s a damn important job these days. Right after old Bill asked for four million for the Navy and I helped him get it, he called me in again. On a Sunday! ‘Uncle Joe,’ he said, ‘I’ve decided I need another fifty million right away, in case we really do go to war.’ I’m a good Republican, he’s a good Republican, so I said, ‘Mr. President, consider it done.’ I got the bill written up right away and he got his money.”

  “Yes, but I read that you didn’t consult all the members of your committee, and some of them were furious.”

  “So what? I don’t just sit on my ass, I run my committee. If the other boys don’t like the way I do it, they can go to hell and go home.”

  Before they parted with a strong handshake, Uncle Joe whispered, “I know why you’re in town. I put in a word with old Bill.”

  Joe’s appointment at the Executive Mansion wasn’t until eight o’clock. Late in the afternoon, as a spring shower started, he dodged through the fast traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue to call on young Roosevelt. Thirty days ago, Joe had sent a tender-of-service letter to Secretary of War Russell Alger. He had then written Roosevelt, Uncle Joe, and Carl Schurz, asking each for a letter of endorsement and support. One of Alger’s clerks returned a polite note saying two letters had been received—Uncle Joe hadn’t bothered—and Joe’s offer was being given careful consideration; he would be interviewed. The clerk enclosed a White House appointment card with the time inked on it.

  Just as he’d done with Cannon, Joe had telegraphed ahead to invite Roosevelt to supper. The assistant secretary of the Navy kept him waiting only ten minutes. The shower had turned to a rumbling storm; rain beat the office windows. Electric lights were on. They flashed on Roosevelt’s eyeglasses as he bounded from his desk.

  “Joe my friend. Welcome to Washington.” They shook hands. “You’re seeing President McKinley?”

  “Yes, tonight.”

  “Then we should pop along for supper soon. Please have a seat while I clean up one or two matters.” Roosevelt yanked a pen from a heavy inkstand and attacked a pile of memoranda, scowling over some, muttering comments over others.

  Joe glanced around the office. One wall held a map of Asia with a large red Maltese cross marking Hong Kong. A red circle ringed Manila in the Philippine Islands, another Spanish possession. In December Commodore George Dewey had steamed out of San Francisco to go on station with the Navy’s Asiatic Squadron. Dewey was thought to be under orders to attack Manila in the event of war, and it was expected the Filipinos would welcome such an attack. They had their own burgeoning liberation movement.

  On an easel in a corner was a large matted photograph of an iron warship. Roosevelt noticed Joe studying it. “Yes, that’s the Maine. I keep it as a reminder of the indignity done to us by the Spaniards.”

  “Have you reached a final count of lives lost?”

  “Two hundred sixty-eight.” Roosevelt clenched those tiger teeth. “Tragic. So was the loss of the vessel. Sixty-seven hundred tons. Four ten-inch guns in armored turrets fore and aft. Additionally, six-inch guns and four torpedo tubes—and even at that, she was rated a second-class battleship. We have newer, larger ships, but the Maine was a real beauty.”

  “Spain has a lot to account for,” Joe said.

  “Damned if she doesn’t. The commander in chief has finally come around to that view. I don’t refer to him as Wobbly Willie any longer.” Then abruptly he said, “I’m finished here. We can go. But I must stop a moment in the signal room.”

  Joe waited in the office, listening to the melancholy sound of the rain. When Roosevelt returned, he was frowning.

  “Dewey is steaming under secret orders. For days we’ve had no signal from him. Now there’s a report through Madrid of an engagement having been fought in Manila Bay. The report includes the words ‘heavy losses.’ Hearst and some others will be jubilant about that. Not I. I’ll have to come back here as soon as we’ve dined.”

  The rain was stopping, replaced by a mist. Pennsylvania Avenue was still jammed with hack and carriage traffic hurtling along in both directions. Roosevelt took the lead, striding into the street at terrific speed. Joe was in excellent condition but had to push to keep up.

  “We’re forming a volunteer cavalry regiment, have you heard?” Joe hadn’t. “Westerners, mostly. Expert horsemen and marksmen. In fact it was a German who suggested the idea to me. Baron von Sternburg. He came up to Sagamore Hill for some shooting a few
years ago. I’m very excited.”

  “You mean you’ll go with this new unit?”

  Roosevelt grinned. “I’ve been appointed second in command under Leonard Wood. We’ll muster in San Antonio. My boss, Secretary Long, is having pups, but I’ll be blasted if I’ll miss this fight. So much is at stake. Including a much-needed opportunity to shake the stick at the country where you were born.”

  “Germany? Why?”

  “Because Kaiser Bill, whom I like very much personally, is not our friend in the Caribbean. Nor in Asia for that matter.” Joe wanted to ask for amplification, but music caught their attention. Martial music, cranked out by a hurdy-gurdy man coming toward them in front of Willard’s. Roosevelt wagged his stick in the air and hummed a few notes. “Damn catchy, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve heard it a lot, but I don’t know what it is,” Joe said.

  “Sousa. New last year. ‘El Capitán’ was positively my favorite till he wrote this one. ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’ Isn’t that a grand and appropriate name? It sums up the spirit we’re all feeling.”

  With his thumb, Joe rubbed the underside of his wedding ring on his right hand. I’m not so sure I feel it. What if Ilsa’s right? What if I’m only running away from the disaster I seem to create in the family? What if I’m running away from her?

  Over the first course, small cakes of finely chopped and seasoned crab from the waters near Baltimore, Roosevelt explained his concern about Germany.

  The preceding November, in response to the murder of two German missionaries in Shantung province, the Kaiser had dispatched his Asiatic Squadron under Admiral von Diedrichs and landed five thousand men on the China mainland.

  “Then, same month, we had the nasty little incident with Herr Lüders, closer to home. Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Lüders is a German national. Owned a livery stable down there. Got into some sort of muss with the local government and they expelled him. Well, the German minister, von Schwerin—can’t stand him; one of those arrogant sorts—von Schwerin demanded reinstatement of Lüders and a reparations payment to him amounting to twenty thousand dollars. While this was going on, two of the Kaiser’s training ships showed up and anchored in the harbor at Port-au-Prince. I tell you the rest in confidence—with great regret. The Haitian president inquired through channels whether United States naval help was available. He was told it was not. The decision was made over my head. The money was paid, Lüders was allowed to reenter Haiti, and I’m sure Kaiser Bill’s little demonstration of power made him very smug.”