Big Man, A Fast Man

by Appel, Benjamin

  To: G.D.

  From: P.

  The pieces are coming together. Career in USTW/ southern campaign/ Edith Kincell/ girls he wanted to marry. (Annabelle still missing.) Ambition/ principles/ power/ love. All the pieces in a man’s life. The labyrinth with its facts and half facts/ the rationalizations and ambiguities. Judas/ Christ.

  I feel as if I’m approaching the man in the labyrinth/ the masked man. Hero of labor/ the flawed hero? I am sure that he never dreamed back then at dinner with Edy Kincell of becoming president of the USTW. A more modest dream/ the lady’s hero.

  THE TAPES: 6

  I pulled into Baltimore with a half-dozen of Jim Tooker’s best organizers. First I met with the leaders of the electrical workers, the teamsters and a lot of other unions down there. “Respect my picket lines,” I said. We got that straight. Then I sent my organizers out. I had an Italian for the Italians around Pratt Street. A Pole for the Polish around St. Stanislaus Kostka Church. A colored for the colored along Pennsylvania Avenue. Baltimore’s half North anyway and we did pretty good there. The local we had doubled its membership. I went on to Atlanta. Rented an office near Peachtree Street in the downtown district, and there I talked a different line. Those terminal workers are native-born and the idea was to prove unions weren’t foreign to this country. I ran off a leaflet in which I said workingmen were organizing in Atlanta back in 1870. How Coca-Cola, it started in Atlanta, and the word union was as much an American word as Coca-Cola. When I got the ball rolling, I left an Atlanta man to run things. This Cadweller wasn’t a bad union man but he hated the colored. He believed in separate locals for white and black which the USTW constitution don’t allow. I left one of Jim Tooker’s boys to work on him and hopped the train for Birmingham.

  That’s where I hit trouble. The furniture workers down there had a company union with some rough characters. I was beat up bad. This isn’t for publication. What I did was import some mugs from a certain agency that deals in mugs. They beat up the bastards who’d sent me to the hospital. Then I bought off one of the company union stooges. He came out for us. He spoke at our first meeting and said he’d made a mistake thinking Billy Lloyd was another Yankee troublemaker. Hell, that wasn’t the only name I was called. In Mobile I was a nigger lover and a red agitator. Mobile gave me trouble, too. That’s a war-boom town. Textile mills, naval stores, shipbuilding. I printed the names they called me and alongside I printed what they were covering up with their dirty names. Better wages, shorter hours, job security. I printed ten thousand leaflets.

  To cut this short, I guess I should’ve seen what would happen but I had no time for guessing. I had to steal time to talk with my boys in Baltimore. In Atlanta, in Birmingham. The two hundred thousand bucks I had was going like water. I had salaries to pay. Rent for offices. Printing bills. And there was still New Orleans and Houston. It was in New Orleans that Edy Kincell showed up. I was living in a little rear house behind this Dumont’s house. This Felix Dumont was president of the local we had down there. A good man with a good sense of humor. He called the cockroaches friends of the house who kept the floors clean. “We’ll organize ‘em into the street cleaners union,” I said. Aw, I’m stalling. It hurts even now. Edy showed up and what she brought was a knife in the ribs from her old man. Art wanted me to turn the campaign over to the southern boys, and for me and Jim’s boys to pull out. I listened to her. I could see she was with me. On my side. She felt bad. I said I’d go back to Washington but I couldn’t pull off Jim’s boys. She said I had to. Her father wanted one hundred percent southern leadership. “Edy,” I said, “why did he send you down with the news?”

  “I wanted to come,” she said, “to cushion the blow.” I was still controlling myself. What I did was phone Art in Washington. It was a waste of time. When I hung up I looked at her. I felt as if I’d lost my head. Chopped off like a chicken on the block. Her lips were working. She was that sorry for me. “Edy,” I said, “these southern guys need Jim’s boys to keep pushing them.” I don’t know what else I said. Rehashing the whole damn situation. About Cadweller in Atlanta and the company stooge in Birmingham. I must’ve raved like a maniac. Just letting off steam. Art had been plain enough on the phone. If I didn’t obey orders I could look for a job with my friend Jim Tooker. That’s what the fat bastard said. I started cursing him. I called him a stooge of Shafer’s. A labor racketeer. Her eyes got full of tears. She said, “Stop, Billy, stop.” But I couldn’t stop. That God damn campaign was in my blood. All those cities where I’d sweated blood. She began to cry like a baby and when I wouldn’t stop she headed for the door. I caught her and I hollered, “You’ll listen to me, Edy. That stooge you call your father wants you to learn about unionism. I’ll learn you.” God only knows what I told her. He was her father after all. She went white in the face but I wouldn’t let her go. “I’m quitting,” I said, “and if you’ve got any principles you’ll quit, too.” I only let up when she began to cry all over again. Crying her heart out, and Christ, the cat was out of me. I didn’t have a peep in me any more. I just stood there thinking how big I talked when all along I knew I wasn’t quitting. And I began to cry like a God damn woman, and don’t ask me how or why, she was sorry for me. I needed her, that girl. I needed somebody in that sell-out town New Orleans.

  I need a drink. Nothing like good rye whiskey. Nothing like it, I say. Before the year was up, the campaign was limping along. Limping along on one white foot, the black one strapped. The worst of it was convincing Jim but I convinced him. I should’ve been a mouthpiece like Shafer. I convinced him on this South to organize the South. “We’ve cracked the ice,” I told him, “now it’s their turn.” In a way, it was true. Why should I low-rate myself? You can’t have things perfect. I’d done my best. I’d made a dent in that nigger-hating country. After a big push, you’ve got to consolidate. What hurt was that we never got going on a second campaign. That’s what I promised Jim. Hell, promised myself. But whose fault was that? The times weren’t ripe what with the Korean War and the commy investigations. War and fear, they’re the original Gold Dust twins. People forget now. In another couple years, half this country won’t know there was a guy called McCarthy. Who remembers Huey Long? People forget. History just isn’t an American dish.

  That McCarthy. Puts on the feathers of the American eagle, war and fear to puff him up. Nothing but a scarecrow. But looks like an eagle what with the headlines to puff him up. Screaming red night and day. Reds in the government, in the army, in Hollywood, in labor. The unions scared shitless. Cleaning out their reds and nailing down the windows. A scarecrow, but he looked like an eagle, and getting bigger all the time. Even when Stalin died and McCarthy with him, two of a kind those boys, the screaming went on. Hell, it was no time to organize down South where they called you a red at the drop of a hat. Even Jim had to admit we could do nothing but sit it out down South. That’s what we done. You can’t buck the times. My conscience is clear. I’d done the best I could. Billy Lloyd is one man who never let down the rank and file. Take this suit I got on. It’s a little detail. It’s got the Amalgamated Union label in it. A little detail. But little or big I’ve been true to my principles.

  When did you marry Edith Kincell?

  About six months after she came to New Orleans.

  Please continue.

  What’s there to continue? You see a girl around and you get to know her. I know what you’re thinking. A lot of wise guys figured I married her because she was Art’s daughter. Not Jim though. When I first brought Edy to his house, he and his wife Laura both liked her. Why not? She was smart and idealistic, like I’ve said. Anyway I was too busy to bother with the latrine gossip. The time just flew. Sometimes I didn’t see my office for a month at a time. Edy traveled with me. She worked with me five, six years before she quit to stay home. She wanted kids but she had two miscarriages. Yep, the time just went. Don’t ask me where. That’s a question for the philosophers. They’re paid to be eggheads, not me. I was out in the field. Hanging m
y hat in this local and that local. You see, Art turned all the union business over to me. He was too busy with his mortgages and investments, and nothing wrong with that. We were rich. We had millions in welfare and pension funds that had to be invested. The USTW, Inc. Big business, that’s what we were. With Art Kincell, chairman of the board. The big dummy. He would’ve been alive now. So I’m the president of the USTW. Sometimes I can’t believe it. Strange the way the cards fall. Art’s trouble was sticky fingers. Sticky fingers turned loose in a bank. And speaking of banks, the Amalgamated operate their own banks. John L. Lewis before he retired from the miners was a director in the biggest bank in Washington, D.C. Art’s trouble was money. Not that I blame him. Takes a big man to fight off the old money fever. It was a different time with Roosevelt dead. I mean the postwar. The country booming and everybody grabbing at the flying buck. Just too much postwar money. Have all that money you’re bound to have scandals. It can be defense contracts or Congress or TV or any damn thing. Payola, that’s what. What’s corruption but too much money? Too much temptation? Labor’s no exception. All those crocodile tears when they put the longshore president in jail. Then the teamster president. If I was president of the United States. Not a two-bit union president. I’d investigate not only the president of every union but the president of every corporation.

  Billy, let me interrupt. I agree with you about the American public. The public doesn’t care very much for history. Suppose we get back to Alaska and Jim Tooker. Let’s drop the postwar. What happened between you and Jim after your return from Alaska?

  Poor old Jim. It’s a circle, ain’t it? A God damn circle, the God damn South. He’d be alive today if he’d agreed to a new campaign. Aw, that’s the way it is. What happened was this. We flew back to Seattle from Twin Island and hopped a plane to New York. When we pulled into New York I phoned Edy to come up and be sure not to tell Art she was coming to see me. Yes, sir, it had to be a secret. The reason you’ll see. We had dinner and then we went to my hotel room and I gave her the situation. How we were being investigated in September with Jim the star witness. It was all news to her. Art hadn’t told her a thing or me. We didn’t want to upset her. She got all excited but I made her shut up. I said, “Edy, don’t say a word until I finish.” I gave her the whole story, beginning with Miami where me and Art and Shafer’d agreed something had to be done to keep Jim from testifying. That little something being the South. A new campaign. She couldn’t believe Jim’d turned me down cold. How could she? Who really understands what makes a fanatic tick? A bug he was, a religious bug ready to kill us all because of this thing he called his conscience. Poor Edy. She was dizzy. She’d never gotten what she wanted. Children and a family. Just a big empty house in Georgetown full of Swedish furniture and who the hell cared? And she wasn’t young any more. In her thirties when a woman begins to dye her hair, especially without children in the house. Poor Edy, she just looked at me. Her lips twisting like human lips should never twist. Jail. I told her what her father was up against and maybe me. She said she could talk to Jim’s wife Laura. I’ve got to give her credit. She kept her self-control. “Edy,” I told her, “it won’t do no good. That’s a guy who only talks to God.” — “You and Dad in jail,” she said like it was beginning to sink in. I said, “That’s right, Edy. He promised not to hurt me but what does that mean when the lawyers start firing questions?”

  That’s the truth. Guilt by association. That I was a straight shooter would cut no ice, for like I’ve said I’d pulled my share of fast ones. I admit it. Edy, she said, “What will you do, Billy?” — “That’s why I sent for you, Edy. Coming back on the plane I put a dent in Jim. This concerns you more than anybody else. There’s an out but only if Art resigns as president.” That was the reason I’d sent for Edy on the Q.T. Jim, he agreed he wouldn’t testify if Art resigned. It took talking before I convinced him. He listened to me with an odd smile on his lips. Christ walking the waters, walking his damn conscience or something. Christ, I need a drink, I need a drink bad. Edy, she was a good wife to me. She loved me, and look what I was asking her. Asking her to get Art to resign. She listened to me. She heard me. It registered. She kind of sank in her chair. Then she stood up, her eyes full of tears. “Billy,” she said, “you forget the union’s Dad’s whole life.” — “It’s jail for your dad and for me if Jim goes ahead,” I said. She was shaking like a leaf. I took her in my arms. I said that we didn’t have much choice. I made her sit down like she was a little girl. I poured her a drink and made her drink it. “Edy, I don’t know if his resignation’ll budge Jim. I don’t know a damn thing. It’s all a gamble. But you’ve got to help me, Edy.” She let out a groan, the self-control out of her. “No, no, no,” she kept crying.

  I said, “There’s something else you ought to know, Edy.” And I told her how Art before the Alaska trip wanted me to kill Jim up there. The hunting accident. “That’s what your father wanted,” I said. “Me, a guy who never killed nobody, not even in the war. A dirty thing like that.” She didn’t believe me at first. She couldn’t believe it about her father. But I kept at her. I told her how crazy I’d been up there in Alaska myself. With murder on my mind. “Edy,” I said, “God knows what Art’ll do when I tell him Jim’s going ahead. Do you think he’ll take it sitting? He’s crazy enough to talk to some of these gangsters we’ve been doing business with. They’ll give him all the hoods he wants. Hoods’re a dime a dozen.” She didn’t answer. She even stopped her crying. Shrunk up in that chair like a rag doll, her face full of suffering. “Say something,” I yelled at her. “I know how you feel but do you want Jim’s death on your conscience? How’ll you ever face his wife and his kids?”

  I broke her down. I kept hammering at her it was in her father’s best interest to resign before he was subpoenaed. At last she spoke up and when she did, it about killed me. “You want me to sell out my own father.” That’s what she said. It was New Orleans all over again. But this time it was Art getting the dirty end of the stick.

  I couldn’t take it. I went over to the windows. Down below was the roof of the Pennsy Station. The West Side Highway over near the river, the lights of the cars. A thousand yellow lights. Lights on the piers, and over on the Jersey shore. I had the strangest damnedest feeling like I was still airborne. Me and Jim on the plane east from Seattle. Talking, talking, until I convinced him that Art’s resignation would do more for the union than any circus down in Washington. It was the only out. Sell out. They rhyme. Christ, with her in that room it was hell. I’d married Art Kincell’s daughter after all. He’d been good to me, conniver that he was. Aw, that calls for another drink. What a life. Somebody’s always getting sold out.

  Don’t think I was weakening. I’m giving it to you straight what was in my heart. I was sorry for Edy but standing there in that hotel room, all those lights down below — That feeling you can only get in New York when you’re up in some hotel, with the river and New Jersey and the whole damn country out there — Weakening? Not me. I saw the locals we had out there. Coast to coast. And how I was the friend of all parties, in the power seat. Art, he was finished. It was like the books where the mob’s shouting, The King is dead, Long live the King. He was finished, his head in the bucket even if he didn’t know it yet, Jim and Harry and Roy reaching for the crown. The three little Caesars as Harry’d said long ago. And I thought, Why shouldn’t I do a little reaching myself?

  I quieted Edy with a couple of sleeping pills and what I did was go down to the lobby. But I couldn’t sit. I went out to Seventh Avenue and walked uptown. The garment lofts, they were all dark. The sky over by Times Square pink and lit up, like a neon sign. That sky. Promising me the whole world. Make no mistake about it. In this life one man’s tough luck is another man’s good luck. I’m painting myself black only because I’m an honest bastard. Just look at the facts. I was saving Art from jail. Saving a man from jail, especially an old man in his seventies, no crime. I wasn’t selling him out. That was Jim Tooker’s department. Those wer
e the facts. With Art resigning, somebody else was slated to sit in his chair. But who? Roy McHarnish was no great shakes. Harry Holmgren would’ve been a good president. So would Jim, and with all the stink about corruption he was the logical candidate. Little old J. Christ or J. Tooker, as the Senators knew him. But let’s face it. The best man for the job was myself. I’d been acting president practically for years. Trouble was it would go to one of the federation presidents most likely. To Harry or to Jim. Still, I could dream. A man’s only human, isn’t he? I hadn’t looked for the job. But you might say it was pushed on me.

  I dropped into a bar and had a bunch of drinks. More I drank the queerer it got. I mean this business of the South popping up, like some ace of spades or something. With the same players, you might say. Me and Edy, Art Kincell and Jim, and Shafer in the background. I couldn’t figure it. I mean the coincidence, the fate of it. What was the answer I didn’t know. I was so keyed up, that old campaign went through my head. Baltimore, Birmingham, that night in New Orleans with Edy. I thought of her sleeping up in the hotel, knocked out is more accurate, and I felt lousy. I left the bar and next thing I knew I was on Eighth Avenue. Where it’s tough, above Forty-second Street. Where there are all those cheap hotels and bars. I ended up in one of them. I was drunk but not too drunk. What the hell are a bunch of drinks to a lifelong drinker? Anyway, this bar where nobody knew me was what I wanted. I wanted to forget about Edy and her old man and the union politicking. This bar was it. Out-of-towners kicking the gong around. Cheap hoods, if that’s what they were, hoisting glasses and dancing with the bar girls. I found a place at the bar. Next to me was a big man. Bigger than me by half a head who was buying drinks for a fat painted blonde. I ordered a rye and that blonde gave me the eye. Out of habit, that’s all. I might be a prospect for some other night. Anyway, she made me think of poor Edy and I didn’t want to think. I drank that rye fast and sent a followup after it and my head went blank. Blank with that big nothing. And that was what I wanted. There was only that joint. I remember reading the signs over the bar. Thursday Is Poultry Nite. Every Dame Gets a Free Goose. Things like that.