Rules of '48

by Jack Cady

  White or colored, the cops could pretty much do as they wished. If a colored man, or certain brands of white men, proved inconvenient, they could be shot without causing a whole of a lot of flak. Men could get arrested for dancing on the sidewalk, which somewhat later one man did; and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The court proved it liked the First Amendment more than it liked Louisville cops; who, in fairness, were sometimes moderate. And, even the worst of them were not quite as loathsome as their opposite numbers in Chicago or Detroit-City.

  The first thing Wade knew was that an embarrassed and intimidated Lester got shoved in front of him ten minutes before the auction started. The cop was pug-nose Irish, with hair as red as the antique dealer, Gloria's; also present; and present also, Daniels. And Fudd, the scummy junk dealer. And country-boy dealers from downstate. And Lucky. And standing beside Lucky, dusky-skinned Howard, slight of build. Plus, a gathering auction crowd.

  " . . .boy says he works here. Pissin' in the street. Indecent exposure." The cop had the build of a man who missed his calling, being the perfect shape for a beer truck driver.

  "I got a sale starting," Wade told the cop. "I need that man."

  "Behind the truck door." Lester could only whisper. His Africa-black skin was not brighter, but somehow dull. He looked like a little boy being called down by a school teacher.

  "I got a problem," Wade told the cop, and said it jovial, like a preacher about to address a luncheon of the Royal Order of Moose. "I got this crazy woman . . . ." He looked at Gloria, winked, and Gloria started to swell and puff up, all ready to surround the cop. Since no bog Irishman is worth a sniff in the face of a tough Irish woman, the crowd's interest shifted.

  "Known this man for years," Lucky whispered to the cop. "Let's step over here a minute."

  And, in that way, both Wade and Lester once more became beholden to Lucky. Lucky had paid off so many cops his skill was unquestioned. Five bucks settled matters. The cop left. Lester dropped into silence, and when the auction started it took him the better part of an hour to get up and rolling. Still, as it turned out, humiliation kept working on Lester. Humiliation was at the root of a nasty fracas, but that didn't happen until late afternoon. First, the auction.

  * * *

  In a warehouse a different style of selling is wanted. Charlie Weaver had never been particularly good at the style, and Wade had to work like a Missouri mule to pull it off. That was because the ceiling rises higher than a barn, the concrete floors stretch endless, so auctioneer and crowd are dwarfed like parishioners in an economic cathedral.

  When in his auction house, with lower ceilings and brighter lights, Wade can roll his thunder. In the warehouse, his voice disappears into the far reaches of space. Wade sells to an expanding and contracting circle of people instead of a sweating and tight-packed crowd. People cluster, then drift away to buy a sandwich at the portable lunch stand run by the caterer Mr. Evans, a colored gentleman.

  And there's always at least one main tragedy just waiting to bust the auction. Somewhere in that crowd stands a pathetic creature; usually an overweight lady with flowered housedress and thinning hair, or a geriatric gentleman who leans on a cane. These are people who have come to see their stored households sold to strangers. They have almost no money, and are intent on buying "Aunt Minnie's picture . . . ." (already taken to the dump), or "The bed me and Emma made our kids in . . . ."

  One's heart goes out to them. These people really are pathetic figures in the saddest sense of the word. The auctioneer, could he know who wanted what, would gladly rifle the entire dump to reclaim Aunt Minnie's picture; and he would gladly give away a bed, be it worth three dollars or a hundred. All it takes is one set of old man's tears, or one obese lady's blubbering, and natural human sympathy busts the auction.

  It's easy to see, then, why Wade values Lester. An experienced man can estimate the crowd even as the auctioneer sells. Wade's wife can't do it because she's making invoices. Since Wade sells fast (occasionally as many as seventy numbers—items—in an hour) the clerk is too busy. Wade's kid, Jim, hasn't enough experience. Wade's daughter is back on Bardstown Road minding the store. All of the weight is on Lester.

  Lester rises to the occasion. He watches. He connects.

  The sufferer in this case does have a flowered housedress, but is thin and sad and tired; with drawn face and stringy hair like half of the women in coal-mining-Eastern-Kentucky. Her whole life is in her face: poverty, sick kids, day-labor husband, stump-preacher religion that only promises additional hell. She's in worse shape than women on Jackson St. because at least their preachers promise hope of Glory.

  And, because she's experienced when it comes to enduring ("I must carry on.") she isn't going to weep; only stand silent, a symbol of tears, as did women of ancient times who stood before conquerors.

  "Find what she needs," Lester whispers to Gloria. "It'll pay."

  And Gloria, tough as well-worked old leather, heads for the woman and leads her aside. Gloria treats for a small bottle of milk and a sandwich at Mr. Evans' catering table. The two women stand, one in faded flowery housedress, one in new flowery housedress. They talk. The tired woman tries to laugh, looks grateful. Gloria pats her hand.

  "Old rocking chair got her," Gloria tells Lester. "Goddamn rocking chair belonged to her momma."

  "Where 'tis?"

  "Two lots over."

  "You'll tell me?

  Wade, despite being in the middle of performance, picks up. Three items later, a colonial cherry chest worth anyway a hundred, comes on the block. "Sold," Wade says, "Gloria, ten semoleons. Let's keep moving. Move along."

  This, whilst Daniels and Lucky shake their heads in admiration. Lucky leans over, whispering to Howard, filling Howard in on what just happened; and Howard clearly enjoys the inside track. He is fascinated.

  "Auctioneers take care of their dealers," Lucky explains. "They depend on dealers, because the general public may come to a sale, or not. The public comes for fun, but it also goes to horse races, ball games, elections, church picnics."

  Two lots later Gloria buys the chair for cheap, and Jim checks it out ahead of time. The tired lady leaves with her chair, almost happy. A small victory for everyone.

  * * *

  Matters got plague-y during check-out. Wade took a break, gulped water, considered his work and was pleased. A man who has just knocked off four hundred numbers in a bit under six hours has a right to be proud. Goods moved out of the warehouse. Trucks filled.

  Wade yawned, looked around, saw his kid, then looked for Lester just in time to see Lester round-house a country boy. Black fist, white face.

  Like in the moving pictures. The country boy, all blue overalls and chambray shirt, went sprawling, butt-over-brisket. He rolled slow-motion, over once, then lay on his back blinking at the ceiling high above. Lester stood waiting, or maybe trying to decide if he should run. The country boy stood up, his blue overalls dark-spotted with blood from a busted lip. His spikey hair stood above a face that had turned more animal than human. When he reached in his pocket for a knife, Lester decked him again. This time the country boy did not get up so fast.

  "Fornicating hell," Wade said. By the time Wade arrived on the scene two other country boys were about to chip in. They looked Wade over, saw his size, and decided to observe.

  "What?" Wade stood beside Lester, and Wade was sincerely baffled. No colored man hit a white man and expected to live. At least, not where Wade came from, and not where the country boy came from.

  "He niggered me one time too many," Lester muttered. Then, aloud, he said, "A man's got a right to defend himself."

  "That's God's truth," Gloria told everybody. She arrived, panting, having trotted halfway across the warehouse. "Self defense. I saw everything." What a liar.

  The country boy collected himself. It was the same country boy who had caused trouble the week before. "Gents," he said to the growing crowd, "you are looking at one dead nigger."

  "I doubt it." T
he voice was gentle. Lucky, with Howard in tow, stepped from the edge of the crowd. "Leave the man alone and I promise he'll leave you alone."

  "Who are you, Jew-bait?"

  "A man with friends at city jail," Lucky said quietly. "You seriously don't want to go there."

  "I'll make a guess," Daniels told the country boy. "I'm guessing you're one of them hard-asses from Corbin, down by the Tennessee line." He looked toward Gloria. "That sign 'nigger don't let the sun set on you in this town', that's Corbin."

  And Wade, who was big, but basically noncombatant, reached down inside himself somewhere and found a speck of courage. "I need you," he told the country boy, "like a preacher needs a dose of clap. We'll get you loaded. Then you drive your tail to Corbin. Don't come back."

  The country boy put his hand back in his pocket. "Let's look at it this way," Wade told him. "We're standing in the middle of a bunch of nice people, but you and me, we're different. You're a sonovabitch looking at another sonovabitch."

  The country boy checked the crowd, saw that odds were something worse than zero. "This ain't finished."

  Wade grinned, like almost friendly. "You got a gun under your truck seat. I got a shotgun under mine." It was a reasonable assumption. Most everybody had guns under their truck seats. Wade lied, but a nice bluff.

  And then Wade said something that bound Lester to him, maybe more even than Lester had been bound to Charlie Weaver. "This man works with me," Wade said, "and he's worth a dozen of you." Wade seemed mildly shocked at his own words. Stunned, actually. He turned to Lester. "I'll check this one," he whispered. "You take somebody else."

  "You wanta top off your load, let's take a drive to my place." The junk dealer Fudd saw an opportunity to off-load some of his trash on the country boy. Fudd didn't mean to, but his sad salesmanship shifted and sealed the contest; and the situation ran out of gas.

  And later, after the country boy left while swearing vengeance, Wade said to Lester, "You reckon he's a back-shooter?"

  "He don't know where I live," Lester said, "and Lucky got him told. Like as not it'll be all right."

  "Try not to do that again . . . tell the truth, you scared me to ten inches under my gizzard."

  "Boss," Lester told him, "I did the same damn thing to myself."

  August 18th to September 1st

  Vacation

  To the conservative Jew, which Rachel (Mrs. Lucky) was, late July or sometimes August produced a day of sadness on the Jewish calendar; a day roughly equal to the observant Christian's Good Friday. The Ninth of 'Av remembers the Christian destruction of the temples and the expulsion of Jews from 15th century Spain. Good Friday recalls the Roman lynching of a Jew named Jesus.

  To the reformed Jew, which Lucky almost was, the Ninth of 'Av might be no more than a nip at memory. In Lucky's case it just made the sore spot in his soul a bit more raw. The comfort of Law, tradition, ritual, and fast were of no more use to Lucky than Martin Luther's teaching were to Wade. But, like Wade, Lucky followed his wife's directions and walked through it.

  Rachel and Lucky were a strangely happy, if seemingly mismatched, couple; and they shared a sorrow. Their union produced no children. Like the Hannah of scripture, who had experienced the same childless problem and worse, Rachel did her share of weeping as she appealed her sorrows to the Lord. Unlike the scriptural Hannah, nothing came of it.

  Adoption seemed first an issue, then a possibility, then an impossibility. The courts would not place a gentile child with a Jewish family. No court in the south would place a colored kid with a white family. Even lawyers could not imagine that. Jewish orphans were scarce, because when a Jewish parent died an aunt or uncle stepped in.

  Yet, on a world scale, there were more than enough kids to go around. Orphans in Europe were dying of starvation. Displaced persons were herded back and forth across national frontiers in hundreds of thousands, and U. S. immigration remained almost the same as closed. The State Department exercised control of immigration, and the Department was run by men who avowedly and sincerely hated Jews. Those men were proudly on record with their detestation.

  In response, Rachel worked in promoting Zionism and the work of Hadassah. Lucky endorsed her efforts, although like many Jews before the coming of Hitler he had despised Zionism. The main beef with Zionism came because Lucky knew himself as an American, and America his homeland. Zionism claimed that such was not the case.

  The war had changed everything. Hitler managed to make Lucky into a reluctant Zionist.

  If Lucky took an interest in matters beyond business, his interest did not come solely because he lived beside social snideness. He was a relativist. If asked about intentions and beliefs, Lucky would probably say intentions changed with each day's newspaper.

  Belief was another matter. When young, he had resolutely faced the problems of a rational brain confronted with the mysteries of faith. He decided that since he had to live in a world of both rationality and faith, he would honor each without buying into either.

  He also tried to deal with that sore spot in his soul. Since he was a practical man as well as a theorist, he came to understand that the world-screw was actually comprehensive. The screw was historical, having waited until the 10th century to start against Jews; but it could turn against anyone or any group at any time.

  The root of the problem was not money, but the power that money bequeathed as it denied intellect. It was the cheapest and most tawdry kind of power, yet men and religions and governments scrambled for it.

  Thus, if a man was on the edge of society, in a city where bigotry was common, money had charms. It meant that if push came to grunt a man could afford to get out of town.

  Over the years he developed into a secret socialist and New Dealer; a businessman living around Republican businessmen who believed that Roosevelt had been, at best, the forked barb on Old Nick's tail. Then, during the war Lucky's belief in Roosevelt, and justice, and socialism, took a licking; although he remained a New Dealer. He almost understood the idea of 'faith' as he joined with every Jewish son and daughter in the world. World Jewry had to deal with the killing going on in Europe.

  Mostly, everyone felt helpless. Mostly, everyone clustered in congregations. They knew they were not safe. Mostly, everyone mourned. The depth of mourning for some was so deep, and so profound, that even the best Rabbi could scarcely find words.

  That rabbi could find to his disgust, though, that in the midst of sorrow a lot of people were having a party. The majority of Jews in America were just emerging from poverty. In the affluence of war they threw money around in shovelfuls. As a matter of conscience they threw a lot of it at the Joint Distribution Committee which was a main Jewish organization. Its mission was rescue, education, and lobbying Congress.

  During the war Lucky tried to mourn and he wasted no time on parties. He answered with anger, largely at himself; and the reason he was angry was because he couldn't get past feelings of surrealism. He knew Hitler was real. He knew probably millions were dying. He just couldn't connect emotionally in ways he felt that he ought. Helplessness made him furious.

  He also acted with scorn while making more than his share of money. He invested in a shirt-making company with Army contracts. He also bankrolled a newsreel theater off 4th St. The newsreels were loud and obnoxious, but they sometimes contradicted government propaganda.

  If he made more than his share of money it was not as much as he could have made. Had he located his store toward the center of town, up by the railroad station, he could have amassed a young fortune. G.I.s came through headed for Fort Knox. Army guys caught passes into town. Ladies of the night operated in broad daylight. Chaos. Money flowing.

  Instead, he stayed on Jackson St. It was penance, but it was also missionary. Since he was helpless to aid Hebrews, and even helpless to feel the weight from a million deaths, he could help somebody. Jackson St. amounted to economic flagellation, although it offered a fair living.

  After the war he read the newspapers and watche
d the same old evil, the killing evil, begin to crawl from the seats of power. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee began its grandstanding. And, in spite of Harry Truman's reputation as a man who aided Israel, the President remained a question mark.

  So what was a man to do? Rachel fasted during the Ninth of 'Av, then turned her serious but very pretty face toward Rosh Hashanah. Lucky read the newspapers and felt the coldness of history creeping toward his soul. He knew he should weep, or rage, but could do neither. He knew it was time to take a breather.

  When he talked to Rachel about vacation his mind felt clouded. "Go to Miami? Catch a fish?" He really didn't care.

  "You caught one last time," she said, and was amused. When she smiled, it never failed to persuade him. "Last time you caught a fish that was too big to eat, and too little to stuff. Let's go visiting. New York. We can see a show and shop."

  August 18th to August 31st

  Jim and Howard

  On Education and Becoming a Communist

  During the height of August heat, Louisville slowed. Even traffic ran with less force. Heat radiated in waves from the colorful hoods of cars, and leaves of huge trees drooped bug-chewed and tired. Dust accumulated in wind pockets of buildings and along gutters. Sometimes a thunderstorm came through with promise of relief while washing the gutters. The promise always proved false. Humidity rose to 100 percent, and walking in the aftermath of storm was approximately the same as a steam bath. Extreme heat slowed everyone including Jim and Howard. Perhaps because they were slowed they forgot to be kids and actually started listening to each other. It was during August that Jim and Howard tied together: the Jim-and-Howard Club, like they were twin questions, almost answered.

  Before Lucky left on vacation Jim had boarded the bus two afternoons a week. Walking to the bus stop along sidewalks where discarded chewing gum actually sizzled, he always looked at the house of Mrs. Mildred Samuels. Nothing moved in or around the house. He figured the police must have returned and taken the boards down. The house stood dead, lightless, lifeless.