Big Man, A Fast Man

by Appel, Benjamin

  You’ve mentioned a girl called Annabelle?

  Look, you’ve got enough. Olga and Barbara, my boyhood sweeties. Use your imagination. Make it like Romeo and Julio. I mean Juliet.

  You forget we both agreed to do your story without sugar-coating it.

  Sugarworkers of the world. Somebody ought to organize them, too. To get back to Tiajuana. That’s important. Me and Shafer drove off without Art. He was in conference, as Shafer said. Having himself a Mexican bang. When we got to the house it was quiet. Only a lamp in the living room. A little lamp, and with all those religious paintings it was like a church, sort of. Shafer fixed us two nightcaps and right away he said, “You don’t like me, Billy, do you?” I said, “Because I was silent in the car. That dame near killed me.” But I couldn’t kid him. He said he’d observed men all his life and he could sense who liked him and who didn’t. He asked me what I knew about him. I knew everything. Jim’d told me the works. This Shafer had started as a poor boy in Lawrence, Mass. Worked his way through law school. Got a job with a New Deal agency, then he worked for the National Labor Relations Board. He was another depression-time lawyer until he made the right connections in the war time. This labor relations firm of his, as you’ve read, is one of the big ones. M. and L. Consultants. Only there should be an S. in front of the L. for screw labor.

  I couldn’t lie to a weasel like that so I said, “I know you’re Art’s chief adviser. He needs you, in my opinion. The union needs a friend with connections on the Hill.” It wasn’t the whole truth but neither was it a lie. You can’t doubletalk with weasels. Doubletalk’s for the jerks. He looked me over and then he oiled up his mouthpiece and got going on the postwar. How teamwork between management and labor was here to stay. One team with two quarterbacks, was what he said. I could see what he was driving at and I beat him to it. I said, “Art’s probably told you all about me. I began in the labor movement when the CIO was a fighting word.” Those days were gone, I said. He smiled and said, “The CIO’s as respectable as the House of Morgan.” He covered the history of the USTW from its early tough days and said the picket line’d soon be as useless as the appendix. And I thought of what Harry Holmgren’d told me long ago. About the time of the bookkeepers. The desk men, the smooth talkers. Then Shafer asked me about my friendship with Jim Tooker. I said Jim was a great man but his trouble was he was always looking over his shoulder. I said, “He’s a relic of the nineteen thirties when labor was fighting for its place in the sun.” All this makes me sound like a louse. But I was protecting Jim the only way I could protect him. It was important for me to be in Washington, as even Jim realized. “Do you feel that place has been won?” this fink Shafer asked me, and I laughed in his face. “Leo,” I said, “let’s not kid each other. Look at the size of this union or the steel union or auto or the teamsters. What you have today is big labor and big management. Two powerhouses.” He brought up Jim Tooker again and his plan to force a showdown on the South at the convention. And I just about snowed him under. After all who but me had thought up the idea to first build the Far West federation before hitting the South. Shafer liked that. He said, “I’m for a completely unionized South, Billy, if you want to know. I’m a New Englander after all. But I believe in evolution, not revolution. The South isn’t ready yet.” — “Damn right it isn’t,” I said. He eased up then. He said he hoped Jim Tooker would see the logic of first things first. I said he would. And on that we said good night. But when I got up out of my chair I felt weak in the pins. That whole night and the liquor, and those paintings on the walls. All those saints, bleeding and crucified. It made me wonder who’d been talking. And who was putting over a fast one on who. Me or this Shafer? This Lawrence, Mass., boy, this ex-New Dealer. It made me wonder like he was the devil himself.

  To get on. Roy McHarnish and Harry Holmgren both liked my idea, too. That left Jim. I went to see him in New York and said I was nobody but Art’s spokesman. He listened quiet and when I was finished he said, “You want me to build up Roy and give him a bigger treasury to loot — no, thank you.” I said, “Jim, don’t bite my head off. I’m just a spokesman. Isn’t it always a good idea to build where you’re weak before hitting a prize headache like the South?” He said, “It depends upon what you’re building, Billy. In the South we can build something clean and that’s why they don’t want it.” He was right. I started figuring out another angle. It didn’t come easy.

  Now, I ought to break in and say that Edy Kincell had been in on my meetings with Art. He wanted her to see how a troubleshooter operated. Well, when I figured out the angle, she was there in Art’s office. “Art,” I began, “I haven’t been a howling success with Jim, as you know.” Art got all hot and cursed Jim for a bastard. Then he apologized to Edy. “There’s no bastard like those so-called idealists,” he said. “The man’s a God damn pinko, maybe a commy.” Well, when he eased up I sprang it on him. How the only sure way to keep Jim from bringing up the South at the convention was to meet him halfway. Art cursed under his breath and said, what did I mean halfway? I said, “Give him two or three hundred thousand bucks out of the international treasury to go into the South.” — “Never,” Art hollered but I kept at him. How it was only token money, which was all Jim cared about. The principle. It was the truth. This way it would be the international going into the South and not a rebel federation. “Art,” I said, “it don’t have to be official. Officially the international goes all out for a big campaign on the west coast. Under the table we take care of him.” I said, “Even if it leaks we can always say he’s on his own.” That was the out for Leo Shafer and the conservative faction in the union. It was a perfect package any way you took it, and it put me one jump ahead of Shafer.

  Art wouldn’t listen for a long time. He cursed and shouted but Edy backed me up. He shouted who was asking her but she didn’t back down. She said she was in his office at his invitation. She said there was no other alternative unless he wanted Tooker rallying the discontents and turning the convention into a shambles. “I want Tooker dead,” he said. His exact words. He meant just that, as it developed. Me and Edy left his office together and I thanked her for her support. I said, “Kid, I could kiss you.” I was that grateful. Nothing sexy in it.

  The convention in Los Angeles was a victory for harmony. The money we slipped Jim under the table did it. I had a tough time convincing him. Sure, I said, it wasn’t aboveboard. But what did he want from a character like Kincell? Another emancipation proclamation or something. The main thing, it was a start. It was international money. A precedent. Jim, when he was convinced, made only one condition. And that was for me to run the campaign down South.

  Out in L.A. it was harmony with me everybody’s friend. Roy, he said he’d never forget the man who started the western campaign rolling. And Art, he’d found out once more how he needed me. And Jim and Harry, they’d always been friends. Only Leo Shafer was left out in the cold and he didn’t know it. I felt good. And why not? I’d been as true to my principles as Jim himself. The fast ones I’d pulled, the whole damn conniving that had me chewing aspirins like candy, was for what he believed in. And so did I.

  It was the first time I’d made the front seats up on the platform at a national convention. I felt great. All those delegates down below looking up at me. Well, not at me. At Art Kincell. The big four. But I was up there with them. The USTW was booming and me with it. So when I sang “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” I really sang it. And in the late hours when some of us were having a good time, strictly private, and sang the old union songs like “Solidarity,” I really sang it. Christ, they were all my friends. One night I went out with Harry Holmgren and a couple others. We had us some call girls, paid for out of the international’s Miscellaneous Fund or what I called, “The Miss Hell-raising Fund.” I was, you could say, the life of the party. And Harry was with me one hundred percent. He was the same old Harry. “I’m wearing out,” he said, “but with all those miracle drugs I figure I got ten thousand good jumps in me bef
ore I’m done.” Harry figured the USTW ought to hit a million members.

  That’s what a convention is. Big talk. Big hopes. At least when you’re on the march, and the USTW was sure marching. Art delivered the big speech. It was written by Edy and a couple other ghosts. Pure corn, but not bad. How a new empire of labor was being created in the West where the empires of agriculture, movies, oil, had all flourished. And blah blah blah. What could you expect from the president of a union? And it was his great honor to announce an organizing campaign that’d put the Far West federation up into the two hundred thousand members bracket. The delegates jumped to their feet, snake-dancing down the aisles, waving their placards, shouting Organize, Unionize, Americanize. Hollering to beat the band. I was about the happiest fellow in the whole world. For every God damn bit of it was my baby.

  When all the shouting was over, when everybody went home, I stayed on with Art’s faction. Roy entertained us in his house in Beverly Hills and for a final farewell he arranged a Hollywood party. Since you think you’ve got to know about me and Edy — here goes. We drove out to that party in two cars. Me and Edy up front with the chauffeur, Roy in the rear with Art and Harry. I’d had some Martinis at Roy’s house but what got me was something else. No, not Edy like you’re thinking. This isn’t a soap opera. She did nothing to my blood pressure in that car. What did it was that I was with three of the union’s big four. I admit it. Who doesn’t like that old success feeling?

  The house where the party was, was all lit up like a Christmas tree. There were white lights, blue lights. All kinds of colored lights strung on wires in the trees. All the windows were shining, and when we got close you could hear the music. The wildest brassiest music I ever heard. A servant met us at the door and we met the guy throwing the party. This producer. This B.N. Tragis whom Roy had done a favor for in some jurisdictional strike in the studios. He wasn’t much to see. He wore a red sweater and white flannels. He needed a shave and he was bleary-eyed. He looked like his servant’s servant only he was worth a couple million bucks. This B.N. Tragis said he couldn’t begin to introduce everybody. To just step inside. Roy, like the big piece of ham he was, said, “Meet the stars, folks.” They were there alright. The stars. All the big names, the important names. Plus a mob of people, brownnosing, important enough to be in the same room with important people. Me and Edy went off. Out to the lawn behind the house where the music was coming from. It was lit up like daylight, the flowers blooming even though it was October. They looked like cutouts but they were real enough. I tested them by picking a rose for Edy. I said, “Compliments of B.N. to go with your dress.” She laughed and said she didn’t have a pin. And that’s when I first got a feeling for her, don’t ask me why. It was a yellow rose I’d picked to match her yellow dress. And in that crowd of big shots and half-ass big shots, the music over by the swimming pool, and the convention under my belt, and Shafer outsmarted, I was high. Brother, I mean high. I looked at her in that yellow dress and I saw a spot for that yellow rose. Right between her breasts. I know you can’t print that but it’s the truth. That’s what’s behind all this God damn romance crap. A fine pair of breasts.

  She put the rose in her hair and we walked over to the pool. The spotlights moving up and down so it was red one minute, and blue and green. There were two bands, on opposite sides. One had their coats buttoned on backwards, their pants rolled up over their legs. The other band had let themselves alone. When they stopped playing, the crowd moved around. Laughing and talking and drinking. There were all kinds of trays of drinks carried by the servants. I killed a couple more Martinis and I began looking Edy over. Looking her over as a woman. There’s a big difference. Before this, she was just another face down the office. I’d heard a lot of stories about her. The usual office gossip. How she hadn’t gotten married because she had ice in her veins. A career woman. The heir to the throne, as Collins said. Collins, he’s the editor of the union newspaper. There were stories that Art’d broken up a romance in her senior year at college because the guy wasn’t much of anything, and Art wanted her to marry somebody big. What I’m driving at is this. I wasn’t falling for her. But I was seeing her as a woman for the first time.

  I must’ve gotten plastered. Even without the Martinis I would’ve been plastered. One of the sax players did a solo. He played off a whole series of laughs. Then he did a series of dirty laughs and that crowd killed itself laughing. And this sax gave them cat meows. He gave them Bronx cheers. You couldn’t talk, you couldn’t think, you could only laugh. I felt great, on top of the world, on that lawn with all those movie actresses, all those beautiful women who should’ve been on a screen but weren’t. I must have forgot myself for Edy said, “You’ll get your face slapped if you don’t stop staring like that.” She sounded irritated so I smiled. “Too many beautiful women here tonight for my blood pressure and that includes Miss Kincell.” She laughed at me then. “I have beautiful hair. All the girls have beautiful hair in this land of shampoos.” Something like that. Just tossing the flattery right back at me. That’s when I thought she reminded me of Olga Vanka. Not their looks. Olga was short and dark, and Edy was tall with a bronze-colored kind of hair. What I mean is — they were both smart in the same kind of way. Quick-tongued, flip. I was relieved when another musician got going. This one was a cornet and he played snake-charming music. He was a fat man and he shimmied as he played. Some woman pulled off her belt and tossed it to him. It fell on the lawn. And one of these showoffs retrieved it and began twisting it like it was a snake while that cornet played it up. Edy laughed and the rose fell out of her hair. I picked it up and what with all the music and excitement I thought I knew the perfect spot for it. But what I did was put my arm around her and kiss her on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said, “but don’t try it again, Billy.” Calm, she was, calm on the surface. But her eyes were angry. She had eyes like her father. That odd greenish color that turns bluish or grayish in different lights. All that office gossip flashed through my head, and I felt like asking her why she hadn’t gotten married. I wanted to ask her all kinds of things. I’d become that interested in that girl. What I said was, “At least we had a personal conversation. They’re the best kind.”

  We went back into the living room where B.N. was lecturing, with Roy McHarnish sitting next to him. There must’ve been twenty or thirty people listening to that mogul. Some of them on the floor within kissing distance of his beat-up sneakers. Art was listening but not Harry Holmgren. I found a place for me and Edy on a couch packed with people. It was so packed there was no place for my arm. Except around her shoulder. I didn’t plan it that way. It was the way it happened and I explained it and she smiled. So it was okay. We’d come into the middle of a big labor debate. With B.N. wishing he was back in the old days when L.A. had no labor movement. Roy, the labor statesman, said you couldn’t go back to the old days when the Chinese and the Mexicans made up the labor supply. Then this mogul, this tycoon, began yacking about the McNamara brothers. And how those two anarchists who’d bombed the Los Angeles Times building were a blessing in disguise for they’d helped rid the town of unionism for years. The one clean spot in the country, the mogul said. It was too much for me to hear him. Roy clucking like a hen with cramps that violence was always bad, and Art Kincell smiling to himself. So I piped up, “Clean spot? Clean for who? Management or the workingman who’s clean out of luck if he hasn’t a union to protect him?” It was like I’d tossed a stinkbomb. Everybody looked at me and Roy got flustered. But I made a hit with Edy although she didn’t say a thing at the time.

  Back in Washington I found out she was what you could call an idealist. At twenty-four or five, why not? She had taken a lot of stuff about labor at college. She knew all about Sam Gompers who started the AFL and John L. Lewis and the CIO. And even guys like Haywood and Debs. When we got to talking I found out she even knew about Johnny Mitchell, too. When I say she was idealistic I don’t mean starry-eyed like the kids were in the thirties. What she was starry-eyed ab
out was courage. That’s what she believed in. Guts. Before I went down to Baltimore on that southern campaign, I took her to dinner and I really opened up. I said here I was everybody’s friend. The harmony kid himself. And how I was slated to be the friend of a bunch of southerners too dumb to join a union. The whites hating the coloreds, the coloreds suspicious of the whites. And it’d serve me right if I was carried off on a stretcher. She listened to me, her eyes shining and I could see I was getting to be a God damn hero to Edy Kincell. Let’s face it. Who doesn’t want to be a hero to a good-looking dame? “Edy,” I said, “I’m going to hit those crackers the way Johnny Mitchell hit the coal fields.”

  Aw, that’s enough for today. On a big heroic note like that we can quit and have a drink. More God damn heroes get lost in a bottle than anywhere else, if you want to know the truth.

  CONFIDENTIAL MEMO 1/9