It was years before Sammy realized that he had dodged a Shirley-shaped bullet, and that the next soldier in line took the hit, but even then, even when he knew better, the heartbreak stayed with him. The next soldier, which was Johnny McElhenny, indeed shipped off to the Pacific and eighteen months later was significantly blown up on some godforsaken lump of birdshit-capped coral. Sammy didn’t know how Shirley took this, because by that time he had left town, over the protests of his folks and his sister, who had helped him learn to walk again and had given him much rah-rah support and it is not your fault talk. With his life and shame packed in a leather suitcase, Sammy headed for the West Coast, where no one knew him, no one knew about the accident, no one thought that he was a dirty coward, and no recruiter was going to call his old employer to find out why he’d left work in the winter of ’41, but was only getting around to signing up for service in the spring of ’43.
His foot healed. There was no arch to speak of, and Frankenstein scars ran back and forth across it like a railroad map, but it healed. He had to buy shoes a size bigger than he’d worn before, but dammit, it would pass. His head, on the other hand, hadn’t healed quite as well, and he got himself into a number of fights and spent a number of nights in jail while trying to prove that he wasn’t a coward, when, in fact, nobody in San Francisco but him really cared.
“Son,” said the navy doc, “there’s no way I can send you off with your foot like that. What are you going to do the first time there’s a twenty-mile hike?”
“That’s why I signed up for the navy,” Sammy said. “How much marching can there be? Across the boat?”
“That’s not how it works, son. You want to get yourself killed, that’s your own business, but once you’re in the service, you got the lives of other sailors in your hands. There are minimum standards, son, and you don’t meet them.”
“Why? I can put in a full day’s work, and I can run five miles if I need to. I’ve done it.”
He had done it, and the next day he had spent in bed with a quart of Old Tennis Shoes, trying to put out the fire in his foot, but the navy didn’t need to know that.
“Look, there are plenty of ways to serve your country without shipping out. They need workers in the shipyards. Smart kid like you should be able to nail down a great job, maybe something where you won’t have to be on your feet all day. Drive a forklift or something.”
“Yeah,” said Sammy. “Or something.” He snatched his 4-F papers out of the doctor’s hand and stormed out of the examining room.
Two days later, his savings running low, Sammy took the bus out to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, filled out some papers, and found himself standing in front of a mug who looked like he was born wearing suspenders and never grew out of his baby-shaped body, although now he was fifty-something, needed a shave, and chewed a cigar. His office door read max utley, hiring foreman.
“So, do you know how to do anything?” asked the foreman, looking over Sammy’s application.
“It’s all there,” said Sammy, nodding at the paper.
“I can see what’s here. What I can’t see is anything I need. You got a 4-F deferment. What’s the deal?”
“Forklift crushed my foot.”
“So you’re not fit for service. What do you think you’re fit for?”
“I suppose I’d do all right sittin’ on my fat ass in an office, chewing on a cigar and giving guys shit for wanting to work for a living.”
Of the many skills the foreman was looking for, knowing when to keep your yap shut was not among them, so he said, “I may have just the spot for you, kid. When can you start?”
Sammy was somewhat nonplussed, expecting to be thrown out rather than offered a job, but he managed to recover enough to say, “Anytime. Right now, if you can use me.”
“Oh, I can use you, kid. I’m going to put you on the crew with the presidents. Come with me.”
Sammy followed Max Utley, who set him up with some goggles and a leather apron and gloves. As Sammy followed the portly foreman down a very long concrete walk past what looked like warehouses, he thought perhaps he should have mentioned that he did not know how to do anything that required heavy leather gloves, except perhaps building a snowman.
They climbed up a series of scaffolding ten stories tall, until they were at the deck of a ship that was being built in dry dock. Another ten stories of the hull rested in a deep cradle below the water level of the bay. Fountains of sparks cascaded down the hull. Air hammers and drills, grinders and torches, clanged and sizzled and whirred, while great diesel-powered cranes lifted and shifted sheets of steel as thick as a layer cake and as wide as a handball court. From the ship’s deck—steel plate waiting to be bound with hardwood—Sammy could see the loading cranes across the bay in Oakland, and railroad cars loaded with raw materials lined into the distance to the south until they disappeared in the mist.
The foreman led him down narrow staircases for several decks, then down ladders until daylight disappeared and the only light came from bare bulbs in cages. Sammy had some trouble wrestling the leather apron down the ladders and was thinking that maybe he had judged the fat fuck of a foreman too harshly, since these ladders were no easy going.
“Put on your goggles,” said the foreman. “Don’t ever look directly into the arc of a welder. You’ll burn your retinas and end up going through life blind and stupid.”
“Huh?” said Sammy. But he fitted the goggles on his eyes just like the foreman did his own pair and nearly missed the next ladder because he couldn’t see shit until they entered a room that was alive with the hiss and zap of arc welders—the smell of burnt rust and ozone, and men doing dirty, sweaty work. He looked around and saw five guys: four working in teams, one operating the welding torch, another feeding him cord and hose and supplies, the extra man running a grinder on the edges to be welded. They were like flashing ghosts through the dark goggles. Sammy felt like the whole chamber was closing in on him, even though he had no idea how big the room was—the artificial darkness obscured the edges.
“Take a break!” barked Utley. Arc welders made a few last pops, sparks settled, the men all stood and turned. When the welding ceased, the grinder spooled down, and the men were just shadows through Sammy’s goggles. “I call this crew the dead presidents!” shouted the foreman. He called off their names and each man nodded. “Jefferson, Jackson, Washington, Lincoln, and Jackson Two, no relation. Men, this useless piece of shit is Tiffin.”
“Pleased to meet you all,” said Sammy.
“Take off your goddamn goggles, Tiffin,” said the foreman.
Sammy pulled his goggles up on his head and noticed at once that all of the men were black, and none of them looked pleased to see him.
“And Jones,” came a voice from a hatch below.
“Jones wasn’t a president, dummy,” said one of the men, a tall, dark-skinned man of about forty, muscles in his arms like ropes, gray shadow of a beard peppering his cheeks.
“Was too,” said the voice from below. A big voice. “President John Paul Jones.”
“John Paul Jones wasn’t no president, dummy!”
“That’s Jones,” explained Jackson Two—forty to forty-five, shortest of them, powerful shoulders and arms, slick with sweat, a pink scar dividing one eyebrow. “He a dummy. His mama drop him on his head when he a baby. Landlord throw’d them out for denting the floor.”
They all laughed.
“Don’t talk about my mama,” said the big voice. “I will whip yo’ ass.”
They all laughed together, slapping each other on the arms and snickering until they sounded like they were sharing an asthma attack, but they didn’t say anything more to Jones below.
“Washington,” said the foreman. “Tiffin doesn’t know his ass from a hot rock. Teach him enough to keep him from killing himself or somebody else.”
Washington, thirties, maybe forties, wore a leather apron but no shirt, as lean as a greyhound, a face as angular as flaked obsidian. “Uh-huh,
so y’all gonna give us another dummy? Jones already like having two dummies, now we got a white boy don’t know nothin’ too? Shee-it.” Two sadly sung syllables of disappointment in that one word.
“Teach him,” said Utley. To Sammy he said, “Do what Washington tells you to do, and don’t give him any guff. He’s crew chief. Come by after the shift and finish your paperwork.”
“Uh, thanks,” said Sammy, watching Utley drag his fat ass back up the ladder.
Washington said, “Well, you must have fucked up extra good to end up down here in the dark with the black folks.”
“You sho’-nuff fucked up big-time, white boy,” said Jackson Two.
“I have a brother named Second Samuel,” said Sammy, thinking Jackson Two might see some common ground.
Jackson Two rolled his eyes. “Well yo’ mama must be a dummy too, then.”
“Don’t talk about a man’s mama,” warned the big Jones voice.
“Shut up, dummy,” said Washington. “Work yo’ grinder.”
“So we got a white boy on the crew?” said Jones. “I hope he stay. He be good.”
“You ain’t even seen him?”
“But he can be the dummy so I don’t have to.”
“Shut the fuck up, Lone. You always gonna be the dummy.” To Sammy, Washington said, “You the white dummy. Put yo’ goggles down and come over here. Don’t need you to be the blind, white dummy, too.”
“Don’t let him talk about yo’ mama, white dummy,” said Jones from below. “Whup his ass.”
Sammy had never been in the company of black guys before, as Boise had a distinctly unblack population, so he was only guessing when he figured that these guys were probably going to murder him.
* * *
At mid-shift, the whistle blew and the crew made their way up the ladders and out onto the deck of the unfinished ship to sit in the sun while they ate and Sammy got his first look at Thelonius Jones, the guy who was previously working with a grinder on the deck below. Jones crawled into the daylight like a bear coming out of hibernation, squinting against the sunlight, rolling his shoulders like he needed the whole open sky to stretch in. The dead presidents sat together, eating, drinking coffee from thermos bottles, laughing, smoking, talking jive. Jones sat a few yards away and dug into a .30-caliber-ammo box that he was using as a lunch bucket. Sammy sat on his own where he could watch them all. Jones was digging in the box for his third sandwich, the first two having disappeared into the dark giant as slick as cards up a crooked dealer’s sleeve, when he gave Sammy the once-over.
“Where yo’ lunchbox?”
“Don’t have one,” said Sammy. “Didn’t know I was going to have a job when I came out here.”
“You gots to have a lunchbox. They’s a cafeteria, but you can’t get there and back before the whistle.”
“Tomorrow.”
Jones looked at his third sandwich, wrapped lovingly in wax paper by hands more delicate than the big man’s paws. Sad, like he was surrendering a friend, he held the sandwich out to Sammy. “Here you go.”
“Don’t do it, Lone,” called Washington.
“You can’t feed ’em,” said Jefferson. “You feed him you won’t never get rid of him.”
“Egg salad,” said Lone. “My mama put pickles in it. I likes pickles in my egg salad.”
“I’ll get by.” Sammy waved it off.
“My mama made it,” said Lone, which Sammy saw was the end of the issue.
Sammy got up, went to the big man, took the sandwich, sat down across from Lone, and leaned back against a great metal flange that would someday anchor a cannon. “Thanks.”
“You welcome,” said Lone.
“You done did it now, dummy,” said Washington. “Didn’t yo’ mama teach you never feed a stray? He won’t never go away now. He yours.”
“Don’t talk about my mama, Wash. I’ll whup yo’ ass.” Statement of fact.
“Whatever you say, dummy,” said Washington, but he and the others calmed their laughter and started to turn attention to other, less dangerous pursuits.
Sammy unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. It was good. He smiled.
“You like?” asked the big man. He waited for an answer and Sammy thought that it was in his best interest for it to be the right answer.
“Best I ever ate,” said Sammy around some egg salad.
Lone let loose with a grin that broke his face like a toothy crescent moon. “I ain’t got ’nother cool drink, but they’s water coolers on every deck. They got to give us water ’cause some of them boys dried up and died back when.”
“Good to know,” said Sammy. “Thanks.”
“I ain’t never had my own white boy before,” said Lone Jones.
* * *
Sammy took three buses back to his hotel in the Mission in the evening, and three more back to Hunters Point in the morning, a sandwich in one coat pocket, a bottle of Coca-Cola in the other. He limped past the employment office, the only way he knew into the shipyard, fifteen minutes after the shift whistle blew. Foreman Utley was standing on the steps, actually twirling a cigar under a wooden match. Up till now, Sammy thought Utley was one of those mugs who had a cigar stub installed in their kisser at birth and nursed the same charcoal-tipped turd their entire stinking life, but no, he was actually starting a new one.
“You’re late, Tiffin.”
“Yeah, the first two buses were full.”
“You’re living in a hotel, right?”
“Yes, sir.” Sammy knew he was in the doghouse, and with his savings about down to pocket lint, he couldn’t afford to lose the job, even if his crew would probably murder him.
Utley nodded, admired the coal on his stogie, waved out the match. “We got housing for our workers. Come by after shift, I’ll set you up with a place. Five-minute walk to work.”
“That would be great!”
Sammy was feeling pretty chipper. A whole day’s work and not murdered by his welding crew, a job without much walking, and the prospect for a place to hang his hat. It wasn’t going over the top for God, Freedom, and Uncle Sam, but it beat waking up bruised and hungover in jail, which had sort of been his pattern since arriving in San Francisco. He didn’t notice Utley’s snicker as the foreman headed back into the cinder-block employment building; otherwise he would have put his guard up when he came back at the end of shift.
It was December and the sun had already bubbled into the sea on the far side of the Golden Gate. Utley met him on the steps of the employment building with a key and a half a brown-toothed grin trailing off his cigar like the tail of a rotting comet.
“Look at this, kid.” Utley dangled the key like it was a necklace pulled out of a pirate treasure. “Your very own place.”
Sammy took the key. There was a number stamped in the brass like a hotel key: FF-27.
“Go past those cranes, head right toward the hills beyond, you’ll see barracks. You’ll have your own room, but you share a bathroom and shower with eight other men. Rent comes out of your pay, but it’s just enough to keep the heat and water on, since you men are performing a vital service for the war effort. It’s a lot less than you’re paying for that fleabag in the Mission.
“There’s a cafeteria open first and second shift, and three canteens where you can buy food and razor blades and stuff. Show them your key. They’ll give you credit until you get paid. There’s even a pool hall and a couple of gin joints at the edge of the yard. The guys in your crew will show you. Got it?”
“I guess.”
“Good. God bless America. Get the hell out of here.”
Sammy looked at Utley like he was trying to pull a fast one—raised that eyebrow like he did, which was a gesture that never won him friends, he would soon realize.
“Head toward the goddamn hill, nitwit,” said Utley. “It works by alphabet and numbers. You can say your ABCs and count to a hundred, can’t you?”
A hundred smart-ass replies rocketed through Sammy’s head but he pushed them down
and said, “Thanks, boss,” and looked at his feet because he needed the job and punching this jamoke in the beezer was not going to get him anywhere but the gray-bar hotel.
“Get out of here.” Utley snickered and ambled back to his office.
All the lights were shaded, windows in the fabrication buildings were blacked out, there were even tarpaulins stretched over where guys were welding topside, to keep the Japs from spotting them from the sky. Sammy navigated by moonlight, by the pop and sizzle of arc welders echoing off the corrugated steel buildings, the screech of grinders, machines of industry pounding out machines of war. It was a longer walk than he figured, but as he got to the rows of barracks a half-mile away he was glad. The noise had faded to where he thought he might actually be able to catch forty winks. Once he found his room he could take the late bus into town, grab his suitcase, settle up with the hotel, and get back to his new digs, maybe get some supper.
He saw figures moving in the moonlight, heard people talking, a woman’s voice, a kid’s laugh. A kid? People brought their kids here? Go figure. On the ends of the clapboard barracks he saw big white letters stenciled: A, B, C, D. He walked an alphabet of buildings, some with a single entrance on the end, others with little porches, each barracks building divided into eight homes. Kids on the porches. Men outside, smoking, talking to their neighbors, sharing a beer. Cooking smells.
He just moved in the dark and no one gave him a second look. This was a small city, and no one here knew him or knew why he wasn’t fighting overseas. Felt like the shame should fall away. AA, BB, CC, he moved on, noticing something now as he turned down the lane that ran between buildings EE and FF. Everyone he passed since the letters doubled had Southern accents. All of them were black. Building FF, marked 1 through 10. Building FF, 20 through 40.
Outside of his new home a group of men were playing dice by candlelight—laughing, cursing, invoking Jesus and the devil to bring up the right number. Sammy moved across the lane, thinking he’d slip by and double back to the entrance of building FF 20-40.
“I think you in the wrong place, snowflake,” came a deep voice from across the lane.