“I want to tell you. Remember when Mr. Pelzer offered me a part and I said no? I turned him down because of Sis in that godawful state hospital. I pay for better care than she’d get as a charity patient. Those people are locked away in a wing that’s a hellhole. Bedrooms like cells. Food no better than hog slops. For a certain amount every month, Sis gets a window. Better food. Her hair washed once in a while.” His voice went low, hoarse with pain.
“I wouldn’t want my face on picture screens in Texas. If somebody should recognize me, the authorities would know where to track me down. If I’m locked up, I can’t send any more money for Sis’s care. Her poor mind just crumbled away after a man took advantage of her by force, him and two friends. They had her I don’t know how many times, three or four hours of it. The man I killed was the one talked them into it.”
Fritzi held his hand tightly. After a longer silence he went on.
“For about a year after they found Clara in her cottage with her dress in rags and her legs all bloody, she lived off in some dream world. I had to sign papers to put her away. Every time I visited the hospital, I asked her who did the deed—I thought there was only one. She wouldn’t say anything, just stared through me like I was a windowpane. As she got a little better, spoke a few words once in a while, I kept begging for the name. I figured she’d tell me in her own good time, and she did. She told me there were three. Told me how they kept at it, having her different ways. I can’t say to you all that they did. Afterward she told me she felt bad. Said she could have revealed the name long before, but she was afraid I’d do something and it would be foolish; the ringleader couldn’t be touched, he was above the law. He was the law.”
“A Texas Ranger, you said.”
“Member of the state police force, sworn to uphold the law, protect innocent people. His name was Captain Mercer Page. Sis was right, he couldn’t be touched, not by me anyway. Didn’t matter, I went to see him.”
The rain drummed. Fritzi held her breath. “Merce lived by himself, little cabin out in the country. I told him I knew he was the one who egged his friends into raping Clara when they came on her picking strawberries one afternoon when I was off in Waco. Captain Merce Page, the son of a bitch, didn’t deny it. Brazen as you please, he said he and his pards had a jug of pop-skull that fired them up, and when they came on Clara—well, he took pleasure in telling me some of the things they did. He said he went first so he could have her more than once.”
“Oh, Loy, that’s terrible.”
“He laughed pretty hard over it. Merce was one rotten apple. He said he didn’t mind telling me ’cause he’d never liked me much and what could I do about it since Clara had gone crazy and wouldn’t be a credible witness in court? If it ever got to court. Merce had friends all the way to Austin, brother officers to lie for him, alibi him. About then I lost my head, went loco. I remember yelling I didn’t need a warrant or evidence or a trial judge. I pulled my pistol, and before he could grab his off the table, I killed him. He deserved killing, but it doesn’t change the fact I committed murder. That was my last day in Bailey County. I rode my dapple gray half the night and most of the next day. Near rode him to death before I hopped a freight train in Lubbock. I’d already sold the ranch and was living in town, so that wasn’t any problem. I went to New Mexico and hid out. I swung up north to Idaho a while, then drifted down to California. Like I told you, I expect there’s a wanted circular tacked up in every two-bit jail from Muleshoe to the Rio Grande. If they found me, they’d lock me up or hang me, depending on the jury. Dead or in jail, I couldn’t earn any more money, and they’d put Sis back in that hellhole section that smells like vomit and pig shit and fifty other things to turn your stomach.”
He leaned on his elbows, brought his hand up to cradle her chin. “That’s why I stay just so long in one place. It’ll always be that way. I don’t want you to think it could ever be different.”
She pressed her mouth to his. “Even having you a little while is wonderful.”
The rain fell, softer now, almost like a sigh. She heard but didn’t see it; his headlights had gone out, the acetylene gas exhausted.
“I wasn’t sure I had the nerve to tell you. I thought on it quite a while. I figured we were friends and you might understand. I haven’t told many. Windy knows, and a foreman I trusted up in Idaho. Not many.”
She squeezed his hand, rubbed her forearms and felt gooseflesh. “I think I’d better put some clothes on.”
After they dressed she saw him down to the door. She turned on lights in the parlor so the Hongs would think everything was normal when they returned. The rain was over. Water dripped. A sedan went by, four people, laughing and hooting. One of them threw a bottle. It landed in a puddle with a splash.
On the porch he hugged her, kissed her quickly, and went down the walk whistling. No formal goodbye. No promise of another meeting, nor even a mention of one. It wasn’t even half a loaf, it was a crumb, and if he ever snatched it away from her—well, she couldn’t stand to think of that.
At the curb he raised his tall hat and waved. She blew a kiss. She sat in the porch swing until his car chugged away, without lights. She feared for his safety. He couldn’t see what was ahead.
As the car vanished in the dark, she realized she couldn’t either.
74. Detroit Again
Single room, sir?”
“The best you have. I’m only here for a couple of nights.”
The haughty clerk scrutinized Carl’s watch cap, cheap pea coat, the tattered scarf around his neck, his worn Gladstone waiting by the bell stand. “We prefer to settle the room charges in advance.”
Carl shoved paper money across the marble counter and signed the register. There was satisfaction in returning to the Wayne Hotel as a paying guest, though it was an extravagance, perhaps the only one he’d be able to afford on his journey.
The Detroit weather was gray and dismal, with occasional rain. The boat horns on the foggy river seemed to mourn the coming of winter. After a hot bath and a breakfast of half a dozen eggs, fried potatoes, and a sirloin steak, Carl wrapped the scarf around his neck and set out for Highland Park.
He was overwhelmed by the size of the Ford plant that had been building when he left the city. It was an incredible structure, four stories high, seemingly a mile from end to end, though that was probably an illusion. What overwhelmed him was not only the size, but the vast number of windows. In a Chamber of Commerce pamphlet picked up downtown, the plant was called “Detroit’s Own Crystal Palace.”
Mr. Ford’s architect, Albert Kahn, had designed the unique building, and in it Ford had refined and implemented the idea of creating the world’s first moving assembly line. Carl heard it clanking and clanging its song through all of the windows, which stood open despite the rain and wintry air.
A guard wearing a Ford employee’s badge on his slicker and swinging a billy sauntered through the gate.
“They aren’t hiring.”
“I’m not looking for a job. How many work here now?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I worked here once myself. Well, not here, Piquette Avenue.”
That softened the man slightly. “About twelve thousand five hundred on the payroll. Last year we rolled out better’n three hundred thousand automobiles. Should do a lot better this year, demand keeps growing.”
“Mr. Ford’s some kind of genius. I hear people are talking of him for senator.”
“Or president. What did you say your name was?”
“Carl Crown. Mr. Ford wouldn’t remember.”
“I expect that’s right, he’s a real bigwig now. Captain of industry.”
Carl nodded, smiled, walked away with feelings of awe, and a certain nostalgia, as the rain turned to sleet.
A black family lived in Jesse Shiner’s cottage on Columbia. The woman, scrawny and stoop-shouldered with an infant in her arms, told him she didn’t know where Jesse lived now, but he worked at Sport’s, on the east side.
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“That’s a barber shop. For the colored,” the woman added, to be sure he understood. With the rain changing to sleet, Carl trudged away.
Sport’s Tonsorial was a neat little establishment, four chairs. A stout, authoritative man, blue-black and bald, stepped away from a customer he was shaving in the first chair.
“I think you got the wrong shop, brother.”
From the rear, the last chair, someone said, “No, Sport. I know him.”
“Jesse!” Carl tromped to the rear, leaving a trail of water on the linoleum, which Sport eyed with disapproval. The shop was comfortingly warm, fragrant with talc and hair oil and pomades. Jesse was little changed, spare as ever, though some age spots marked his coffee-and-cream face now. When he hoisted himself out of his chair, he listed as he walked. It brought back that terrible night when the hoodlum had sunk the gaff hook in Jesse’s leg.
“How are you, Jess?”
“Surviving. Used to joke about being in this trade, and look at me. Never expected you to show up again. Where you bound?”
Carl explained, then said, “I want to see Tess. Do you know anything about her?”
“Come on to the storeroom, let’s talk.”
Carl followed him to a crowded back room piled high with boxes of barber supplies. Jesse snapped on a hanging lightbulb, sat on a bench, offered Carl a cigarette. Carl shook his head.
“Don’t know much about her ’cept what I read now and then. Mrs. Sykes her name is.”
Carl’s face wrenched. “She married that son of a bitch?”
“Yeah, but he was killed a couple of years ago. Out joyriding with two roadhouse girls, all of ’em high. The car turned over. Broke his neck. The chippies were snoozing in back, they got out with scratches. Guess there’s some justice after all.”
“Anything more?”
“Don’t think so. Oh, yeah—she and Sykes, they had a little boy. She’s back in her pa’s old house on Piety Hill. He’s in some kind of old folks’ home. Clymer car company’s gone. Competition got too fierce.” Jesse puffed his cigarette. “From all I can tell, that Tess is a fine woman. I ’spect you were a damn fool to leave her.”
“At the time I couldn’t do anything else. Can I buy you lunch?”
“Sport gives us a half hour. Not till twelve, though.”
“I’ll wait.”
That night, with the sleet abating and a north wind howling out of Canada, Carl shivered in front of the Clymer mansion on Woodward Avenue. It was the same splendid house he remembered, three stories, ablaze with lights. He was surprised and a little hurt that Tess had married Wayne Sykes, the man he’d beaten half to death. But she’d always had pressure from her father, and he supposed the little bastard was a good catch. He couldn’t have expected Tess to be loyal when she assumed he was never coming back to her.
He almost turned away from the iron gate, but he recalled the softness of Tess’s embrace that long-lost day they made love, and the luster of her eyes, dark blue as he imagined the South Seas must be. He had to open the gate and take his chances.
A man in livery answered the bell, reacting to Carl’s wet-dog appearance with predictable disdain.
“Tradesmen at the rear. We do not hand out—”
“I’m a friend of Mrs. Sykes’s.” The man’s expression said that was highly doubtful. “Is she at home?”
“Mrs. Sykes is not receiving anyone this evening.”
“That isn’t what I asked, I asked if she’s home. If she is, tell her Carl would like to see her.”
“Your last name?”
“Just Carl.”
He shut the door. The November wind brought a few snowflakes whirling past the street lamps. He shivered.
The door opened again. Tess stood there, stouter now, wearing reading spectacles. A great electric chandelier in the foyer put glinting lights in her blond hair. For a moment she seemed unsteady; he thought she might swoon.
“I never thought I’d see this moment, Carl.”
Awkwardly: “Well, I didn’t either. I’m passing through. Catching a boat in Montreal, on my way to France.”
“Dear Lord in heaven. Always the wanderer. You must be frozen. Please come in.”
As she closed the door against the wind, he saw the large engagement diamond on her left hand, the slimmer wedding band. He said, “My friend Jesse told me you’d gotten married but lost your husband. I’m awfully sorry to hear that.”
Tess drew a long breath. She was as pleasingly round as he remembered from those aching days of love and loss. “I never loved Wayne. I married him because Father always wanted it, and with you gone—well, no need to bring up the past, is there?”
From the back of the house, a small boy of five or six bounded through a swinging door. He raced up to Carl, looked him over, stuck out his hand. “Hello. You’re the company. What’s your name?”
“Carl,” he said, amused. They shook hands. The boy was sturdily built, with short legs and wide shoulders. He had brown eyes like Carl’s, but Carl saw mostly Tess in his face.
“Henry’s my name,” the boy said with great seriousness.
“My Prince Hal,” Tess said, ruffling his hair affectionately. She patted his bottom. “Bedtime.” Henry ran up the stairs, waving to Carl. “Henry is my father’s middle name,” Tess explained. She took his hand, gently tugged him toward a lighted parlor. “Tell me why you’re off to Europe.”
Tess rang for the manservant, who treated Carl with more deference as he served him a whiskey, and hot tea in a gold-rimmed cup for Tess. Her eyes were soft and warm as she indicated the scarf. “Still fighting the dragons and Saracens?”
“I guess you can say that. I’m going to fly in the French air corps. I’ve been piloting aeroplanes for a few years now.”
“It’s against the law for American citizens to involve themselves in the war, isn’t it?”
Carl shrugged; the fine old bourbon whiskey thawed him a little. “I don’t think Wilson will send detectives to arrest me, or anyone who helps the Allies. My friend Rene—he’s the man who talked me into this—he convinced me we’re wrong to stay neutral in this fight.”
“But how can you join up when it’s forbidden?”
“It isn’t forbidden to join the French Foreign Legion. You sign up with them in Paris, they shuffle papers and reassign you to the air corps. Woodrow’s content, thinking you’re standing guard someplace in the desert.” He gestured with the glass. “I had enough of that old fool when he threw me out of Princeton. Did I ever tell you about that?”
“How he lost his best football lineman? You did.”
“Jesus, we talked a lot, didn’t we?”
“In such a short time,” Tess said with a searching look. “How I wish it could have gone on, and on—” There was a rush of color in her cheeks. She averted her eyes to her teacup.
They reminisced for an hour. Then Carl rose to leave. Tess slipped her arm through his; the touch of her round breast roused old desires, old conflicts, within him.
“You have a fine son,” he said at the front door.
“Yes. I wish you could stay and get to know him.”
“I promised to meet Rene in two days.”
She sighed. “There are always more dragons.”
“But not so many Saracens. The Huns killed them.”
The feeble humor disturbed her. She pressed her cheek fiercely against his chest. “Don’t joke. This war is terrible. We’ll be in it no matter what Wilson says. Millions of boys are dying. Don’t let one of them be you.”
Tears brimmed in her lovely eyes. “Kiss me goodbye for old times’ sake?”
He swept her into his arms. It was all he could do to break the embrace, touch her smooth, soft cheek one last time, and go out into the bitter night.
75. Million-Dollar Carpet
Fritzi worked on her new comedy with such energy that she was ready to swoon from exhaustion every night. Unexpectedly, she liked making Paper Hanger Nell. She added some little tricks of techniq
ue she’d learned by studying Charlie’s tramp comedies. With a raised eyebrow, a sad smile, a lovelorn glance, Charles gave comedy an extra dimension of pathos that made it all the richer.
Fritzi’s picture started with Nell’s father, an impecunious paper hanger, breaking his leg on a sidewalk banana peel just before starting a big job. Nell took over to save the business. She blundered her way through mishaps with dripping paste brushes, leaky buckets, shaky scaffolds, and collapsing ladders. She fell in love with a building inspector but lost him to a shapely blonde. At the end of the second reel Nell was left alone with a big white glob of paste on her nose, like a sad clown. With a little shrug she scraped it off and flicked it out of the frame—into the eye of a passing policeman. Fade-out.
Hobart noticed Fritzi’s manic energy. He had survived Macbeth without causing or being involved in a major accident. For the last day of shooting, on the lot, Hobart was costumed as the Thane of Cawdor in a blue velvet robe, crape hair beard, cardboard crown with paste jewels. He and Fritzi ate onion sandwiches and drank root beer in camp chairs in the sunshine.
“What has come over you, dear child?” Hobart said. “You’re flushed. You chatter at everyone like a Maxim gun.”
“I’m working hard, that’s all.”
“I might suspect a different cause. I am informed you have a friend, some kind of Wild West cowhand. I hear he’s madly attractive.”
She poked his stomach. “Stay away. He’s mine.”
Hobart laughed. “How splendid that you’re happy. I’ll have you know I too am in the same blissful state. Polo and I have become friends. Close friends, if you take my meaning.”
“Love is in the air?”
“You’re such a clever child,” he sighed, adjusting his crown.
She saw Loy every day their schedules allowed, which wasn’t often. He was working again, this time in a Western that substituted autos for hard-to-find horses. The picture starred a second-string actor named Brix, and was shooting on a ranch near Ojai. On a warm autumn Sunday they drove out there in the studio Packard, Fritzi at the wheel. In a secluded stable Loy showed her one of the animals from the picture, a quarter horse named Geronimo.