"Sit my ass down. Me and more than five hundred of my fellow retail workers will sit our asses down."
"Really?" I said. "Why?"
"Have you not been listening to anything I've been telling you about 1937?"
"No," I said.
"You know," Nick said, "you tell me you go to college now, Mikey, but you're still one of the stupidest goddamn guys at the mall."
SATURDAY—FIFTEEN MINUTES before four o'clock, on a cold, drizzly October afternoon—I met Ella and her son, Rusty, at the fountain in front of JC Penney's. Ella was beautiful. She wore a gray skirt, black boots, and black V-neck sweater. Unlike the rest of the employees at the Book Nook, she was always well-dressed and professional. I knew she was hoping to become the manager if Eddie Jones ever left, and, since regional managers often dropped in unannounced, Ella made it a point to work hard and look good every day. Only out on the loading dock, during the occasional cynical rant on her cigarette breaks, could you ever guess how much she hated her job.
She looked so good that I didn't even see her kid until she said, "Michael, this is my wonderful son, Rusty."
I put my hand out and Rusty slapped it. I couldn't tell if he was offering a high five or rejecting my handshake. He was a cagey little kid, all knees and elbows, and he was dressed in blue sweatpants and a red Spider-Man sweatshirt and Spider-Man tennis shoes. He had white-blond hair, pale skin, and giant blue eyes. He didn't look a thing like Ella.
"Rusty, this is my friend Michael. He's going to take you to the movies and take you out for pizza, and then maybe a trip to the toy store. After that, the two of you will pick up Mommy at work, and we'll go home, okay?"
"Why?" Rusty said.
"Remember, we talked all about it this morning."
In that moment, seeing Ella squat down so she could look her son in the eye, I considered taking back my offer. Ella could stay with Rusty, and I would go to work for her, then give her all the money I made on the shift. But it didn't seem like she would accept charity, or would ever be interested in me if I blew off an outing with her son.
I squatted down next to them, so both of us were there at Rusty's eye level. I looked over at Ella and she smiled. The dimples in her cheeks made me want to jump on her right there in the mall. Instead, still looking at her, I said, "Rusty, if you want to see Mommy at any time, we'll just go over to the bookstore and watch her work."
This seemed to make Rusty relax a little.
"Should we go see that movie?" I said. Rusty nodded and grabbed onto my hand. His mother gave him a squeeze and a loud smack on the forehead, and then she patted my arm, thanked me, and trotted past the Foot Locker toward the Book Nook.
Rusty held my hand but did very little talking. I bought him a small soda and popcorn and we found seats near the back, which he said was where he liked to sit. The Land Before Time was pretty good, but midway through the movie, Rusty had to pee so I took him to the bathroom. He dropped his pants right in front of the lowest urinal and wizzed, getting some urine on the wall in the process. Then he pulled his pants back up, and I lifted him so he could wash his hands. We missed a good chunk of the movie, but he didn't seem to care.
After the movie, we checked in with Ella at the Book Nook. Rusty launched into a vivid description of the film's ending and Ella seemed relieved, but Eddie Jones was working the register by himself, so we didn't stay long. We went over to Pizza Pizzazz.
"What kind of slice do you want?" I asked. "Pepperoni?"
"No," he said. "Veggie Delight."
"Yuck," I said. "That's not what kids like."
"It has broccoli on it," he said. "I like broccoli."
"Rusty, your mom isn't here today," I said. "Get whatever you want. Wouldn't you like pepperoni, or ham? Sausage? Five-Cheese Fiesta?"
"No, the Veggie Delight is great," he said. "I have it all the time."
I ordered a Veggie Delight for him, and two pepperoni slices for myself. I'd spent less than three hours with the kid, and had already dropped almost thirty bucks on dinner and a movie. Not that I really minded. I thought he was polite and cute. I was starting to feel crazy in love with his mother.
Tom Slowinski came over to our table. I introduced him to Rusty. Tom nodded politely and then made a whipping sound effect behind my back.
"You are seriously p-whipped, my man," he said. "Maybe we'll see you at Wednesday's later. Or maybe not?"
"Later, Tom," I said.
After Tom had walked away, Rusty looked at me and said, "Why do you want to hang around with a little kid anyway?"
"Because it's fun," I said.
"Are you just trying to be nice to my mom?"
"Well, that's part of it," I said, "But I also like doing things with you."
"I don't believe you," Rusty said.
"Do you like toys?" I said. Rusty nodded. We kept walking through the mall. I saw a lot of mothers walking around with their kids, but not a lot of fathers. I could imagine a lot of the dads at home, in their recliners, watching college football. Or maybe they were away on fishing trips, or maybe they were out of the picture altogether. I tried to imagine what it would be like if Rusty was really my kid. Would I want to be here in the mall with him on a weekend, watching cartoons and eating pizza? Or would I see him as a burden, one of the many things in life I had to take care of, and would I just want his mother to take him to the mall and give me a little bit of peace and quiet?
Rusty and I made one last stop, at the toy store. It was the best part of the day for me. I ended up dropping sixty bucks on things I thought Rusty should have. I wasn't even sure he wanted them, but I hadn't been in a toy store since Kolya was little. I was amazed by all the cool things you could get for a kid now.
When we met Ella in front of the Book Nook, she looked a little horrified by the huge plastic shopping bag that Rusty was holding with both hands. Still, she smiled and gave me a hug.
"You can't buy a kid's love," she whispered against my neck. "But, hey—go ahead and try."
"I will," I said.
She pulled away from me.
"Thanks so much," she said. "You're a lifesaver."
I asked her if I could take her and Rusty for ice cream somewhere. Rusty seemed excited to go, but it was past his bedtime, Ella insisted. And it was past hers too.
"A rain check?" I offered.
"Sure," she said. "We'll see."
I WALKED ELLA AND Rusty to their car, and then drove myself over to Happy Wednesday's. It was almost ten o'clock. After the dinner rush, the place was pretty much empty except for mall workers trying to drink their last shift away and not think about the next one. As usual, Nick had most people's attention, and I slipped quietly into the bar, ordered a Mega-Mug, sat in an empty chair next to Tom, and listened. More than two dozen mall workers were gathered around a block of tables near Nick. It was Nick's biggest crowd yet.
He was talking about 1937—the year of the sit-down strikes. In Flint, on December 30, 1936, hundreds of United Auto Workers members refused to work or leave the factories at GM's Fisher body plant. They gathered in the factory with banjos and mandolins and mouth harps and sang pro-labor songs while seated on pallets and crates. Some men carried in jugs of wine, which helped the time go by more quickly. Women and children, forming the Women's Emergency Brigade, brought food, water, and blankets to the workers, hoisting the supplies up to the plant's windows. The strike went on into the desolate and gray chill of February, but the strikers stayed in the factory.
"Did they know what they were starting?" Nick said. "Did they feel themselves marching to the great drum of justice, changing the course of history?"
"Drum of justice?" I said.
"He's good," Tom whispered back to me.
In Detroit, there were more walkouts. Members of the UAW left their posts at GM's Clark Street Cadillac plant in the middle of a cold, flat January day, in support of the Flint sit-down. They carried signs that read MAKE DETROIT A UNION TOWN.
The next month, the National Guard a
ttacked striking autoworkers at the Flint Chevrolet plant #4. They fired tear gas into the factory. Outside, sympathizing UAW members carrying two-by-fours and baseball bats swarmed the factory and shattered every reachable window, hoping to get fresh air to their brethren inside the building.
"Solidarity," Nick said, "is the most powerful weapon against power and wealth."
The National Guard poured into Flint. They surrounded the Fisher plant while the workers stayed inside, doing their best to continue the singing and chanting. GM had turned off the heat and water inside the plant. Around the nation, GM factories, unable to get the parts they needed from Flint, lay idle.
Finally, bowing to undeniable economic and social pressure, GM officials ratified a one-page contract recognizing the power and authority of the UAW.
That spring in Detroit, sit-down strikes flourished. Workers from hotels and bakeries and cigar factories joined autoworkers in sitting down on the job. Workers at Dodge Main made Chrysler recognize their union; women who worked at Woolworth held an eight-day strike. The female workforce at Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company squared off against the Detroit police, who stormed the gates of the factory in the rain and pounded through doors with clubs in hand.
Even children joined the movement. One famous photo depicts schoolchildren picketing the home of a woman who took their baseball and refused to return it.
Those were the days that Nick wanted to resurrect. He imagined workers at malls across the country walking out during the busy holiday retail season, tanking the American economy until the minimum wage was raised to a living wage. He said he would risk having his face bashed in like Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen in the Battle of the Overpass outside Ford Rouge in May of 1937. Henry Ford's private security force had tried to stop the labor movement with brute force and wealth, but eventually even they had to cave.
"Do you think the mall's rent-a-cops will be as tough as the goons of Henry Ford?" Nick said. He had been telling stories of 1937 for more than an hour.
Everybody started laughing. I guess we were all pretty drunk.
A few of the guys Nick, Tom, and I went to high school with were there that night—Walker Van Dyke, Kyle Hartley, Mike Pappas. The others dressed like us, looked like us, laughed at the same jokes. It was as if even the strangers in that group had lived a life that paralleled mine. Nick had officially dubbed this crowd the Knights of Labor. Their mission was to spread the word of the sit-down strike to every mall employee who could be trusted. They were not to tell any owners or managers. To be honest, I had spent the previous weeks only half amused by Nick's quixotic campaign. I thought it was immature and ill advised. I thought it would fade away when he discovered a new obsession—the blues or Hitchcock films or German literature. But that night, I could see bright eyes shining in the smoky air, reflecting the lights of the beer signs over the bar as they looked up at Nick. And as Nick stood there in his leather jacket, his head shaved, his well-muscled shoulders and neck upright, his dark goatee framing his white smile, he looked a little like a revolutionary might look in the early days of a campaign—idealistic, fearless, strong. I realized then that these people were looking to Nick for leadership; he could take them on any path he chose. It was glorious and dangerous all at once. I realized then that I was willing to follow him anywhere, too. I, like everybody else in the bar that night, had nowhere else to go.
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up and went to St. John's, the old Ukrainian church on Clippert Avenue in Detroit. I saw a few old ladies I recognized, and made polite small talk with them in my fading Ukrainian. My mother had stopped going to St. John's after she married Father Mack and moved to Northville, and very few of my friends went there anymore either. The neighborhood was getting worse. The drugstores and the credit unions and the burger joints were giving way to strip clubs and porn shops and check-cashing stands, and there were newer Ukrainian churches in the suburbs. St. John's had recently installed a wrought-iron fence around the perimeter of the church to cut down on graffiti and vandalism. I stood in the back of the church during Mass, the traditional place for single young men to stand in a Ukrainian church, and ducked out during Communion. The church seemed full of ghosts—some of them in the process of dying, some already dead. I could sense my father and his friends there, could almost hear them murmuring the responses and grunting as they kneeled for prayers.
Afterward, I drove to Northville and had dinner with Mom and Mack and Kolya. I told them a little about church, about my recent raise—twenty cents an hour—at the bookstore. Mack told me he had developed a genuine liking for real estate development, and Kolya gave me the rundown on how his math teacher was out to get him. My mother mostly folded her hands and stared at me and refilled my plate with chicken and potatoes the minute it was close to empty.
"Do you have anybody special in your life?" she finally asked. "Not to be nosy, but I am curious."
"Honey," Mack said, "go easy on him or he'll stop coming to visit."
"There's somebody," I said. "But it's not too serious yet."
"Oh? Somebody from school?" she said.
"Work," I said.
"Is she hot?" Kolya said. I wanted to say that she had just won the Hump Day Honey contest, but I knew that would give everybody the wrong idea.
"She's very pretty and smart," I said. "She has a really neat kid."
"A kid?" Mom said.
"Kolya," Mack said, "help your mom with dessert. I want to show Michael something in the den."
Mack was the ultimate peacemaker. I hadn't really minded my mother's questions; in fact, I realized then that just talking about Ella made me incredibly happy.
"You know how moms can get," Mack said. "I avoided a lot of that by entering the priesthood at twenty."
"It's fine," I said.
Mack poured me a glass of cognac without asking. It wasn't really my thing, but I sipped it to be polite. I knew he was about to make me some sort of offer. He still had an almost unhealthy desire to help me.
"I have a friend who works in radio," Mack said. "And I asked him about the possibility of an internship."
"My job is okay for now," I said. "I don't mind it."
"Okay," Mack said. "I was just offering to make a connection."
"Thanks," I said. "I appreciate the thought. Let's get some of that dessert."
"Sure," he said. "Let's."
I spent the rest of the day watching football with Kolya, who kept trying to reenact exciting plays by tackling me and throwing me into the couch.
When I got home that night I had two messages from Ella. The first was an apology: she had forgotten to give me money for the movie and the pizza. The toys, she said, were my fault and she wasn't going to pay me back for those. Then she called an hour later to see if I wanted to come over and have tacos with her and Rusty.
"Give me a call if you get this message before eight," she said. "Okay?" She paused as if she was wondering if I was at home, screening my calls. I looked at the clock. It was almost nine.
"Okay. Otherwise, I'll see you at work tomorrow morning. Okay? And thanks again—so, so much—for your help yesterday."
I played the messages five or six times. That night, I could hardly sleep. I was so excited to get to work.
ELLA AND I WORKED together on Monday, but Eddie had us in different sections of the store, so we barely spoke. I went to find her when first shift was over and Eddie told me, a little perturbed, that she had asked to leave an hour early to pick up her son from day care. On Tuesday, I had the day off so I could go to class. I'd written another story that my teacher hated. Across the first page, he'd written, Flat and clicked female characters—even for a story about hunting
Wednesday our shifts overlapped for a few hours in the afternoon, but Ella was quiet and depressed. She had slipped a check for twenty-five dollars in my employee mailbox, with a thank-you card Rusty had made. He had signed it Love, Rusty, but Ella had not signed it. However, in the memo line on the check she'd given me, sh
e'd written, Thanks! XOXO.
Ella won the Hump Day Honey contest again that night. It was her fourth straight win. She wore a black bikini this time, and black knee-high boots. She smiled a bit more from the stage, and carried a black belt that she playfully snapped at the men hooting and hollering along the bar. She was starting to pack in the crowds. But as usual, right after she won and collected her $250, she threw on her jeans and sweatshirt and headed for the door as fast as she could.
I followed her out into the parking lot. I caught up with her by her old white Dodge truck. She was fumbling with the lock. "You're becoming quite the champion," I said. It was a cold night and I was shivering.
She didn't answer.
"Over the hump," I said.
"I think it's pathetic that you go here every week."
"Sorry," I said. "At least I keep my clothes on."
"Hey, at least I get paid to be here," she said. "Do you know how much extra money I made last month? A thousand bucks, cash. Do you have any idea how much money that is for somebody like me? That covers rent and utilities. I've actually started a savings account. Do you have anything to say about that?" She put her hands on her hips and stared at me.
"I'm freezing," I said. My hands were in my pockets and my arms were literally trembling. It was hard to talk, my teeth were chattering so much. "Why don't you just swallow your pride and call your daddy and ask him for some fucking money?"
"Don't talk to me about things you know nothing about," she said. "You know, better yet, don't talk to me at all."
She got into her truck and started it, but not before I ran around the front end and hopped in the passenger seat.
"What?" she said.
"Sorry," I said.
"Once I have a little bit more money saved up, I'll quit," she said.
"Good," I said.
"But I'm not going to quit for you," she said. "This has nothing to do with you. The way I see it, if these assholes want me to strut up and down the bar in a bikini for five minutes and pay me two hundred and fifty bucks, they're the creeps, not me."
Please Don't Come Back from the Moon Page 13
