by Troy Soos
This boy was explaining the Sedition Act that had recently been passed by Congress in an effort to curtail those exercises of free speech that the Espionage Act didn’t already prohibit. According to the new law, any “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the war, the U. S. government, the flag, the draft, Liberty Bonds, or a dozen other sacred things would result in a twenty year prison term and a $10,000 fine. The broadest possible interpretation of the sedition law was encouraged. From what I gathered, simply muttering “this damn war” would and should land somebody in jail.
As far as “What You Can Do,” the Four-Minute boy urged us to spy on neighbors, coworkers, and relatives and to report any “unpatriotic” language to the authorities.
Ending his talk within the allotted time, the kid finished to rousing applause from the audience. The noise of the clapping and cheering drowned me out as I muttered, “This damn war.”
Edna Chapman was the only one who heard. Her head twitched a warning look in my direction.
This was the first time Edna and I had attended a motion picture show since Willie had been killed, and it was four days later than I had promised her. I’d called her after my dinner with Karl Landfors and apologized profusely, feeling truly awful about having forgotten her. She’d graciously deemed Landfors’s unexpected return from the war to be a satisfactory excuse but then claimed to have unspecified “other plans” that prevented her from accepting a rain check until now, early Wednesday evening.
When the Four-Minute Man stepped off the stage, the red curtains drew away from the movie screen and the house lights dimmed. We still had to endure a few more reminders that this was wartime. First, the newsreels, purportedly shot at the front lines. They showed rousing scenes of Allied soldiers marching cheerfully off to battle—always as they were going off to fight, never as they returned. Not once was the aftermath of battle revealed on the screen. Then there was a publicity reel from Mutual Films showing their star actress Margarita Fischer as she changed her last name, which was written on a huge blackboard: with a thick piece of white chalk, she crossed out the “c” to make it a less Germanic-looking “Fisher.” Another patriot doing her bit for America.
“Stupid,” I muttered.
“Ssshhh,” urged Edna.
Next was a short film encouraging the purchase of Liberty Bonds. In the uniform of a doughboy, Douglas Fairbanks boxed with another actor, who was made up as a villainous Kaiser Wilhelm. A tall, gaunt actor dressed like the Uncle Sam of the recruiting posters cheered Fairbanks on as he pummeled the “Kaiser.” The actor playing Uncle Sam used to be Gustav von Seyfertitz until his name changed to G. Butler Clonebaugh, a moniker that might be more acceptable politically but that I didn’t find to be all that much of an improvement.
Finally, the main feature began with an opening title card that announced TARZAN OF THE APES. Edna visibly relaxed and her lips softened into a small smile.
The last time I’d talked to her at length—if any conversation with Edna could be considered “at length”—was on her front steps when she’d said something about Willie having secrets.
Later tonight I was going to the Patriotic Knights of Liberty meeting that Curly Neeman had invited me to. Tomorrow the Cubs were traveling to Philadelphia for a road series. Since I was pressed for time, I decided to ask Edna a few more questions during the movie. We’d seen the picture often enough to have it memorized anyway.
The introductory scenes flashed on the screen: Lord and Lady Greystoke set sail from England; mutineers took over the ship and abandoned the couple on the edge of the African jungle; there, Lady Grey gave birth to a son. The noise in the theater grew as scores of moviegoers read the explanatory title cards aloud in a dozen accents. Some people were trying to learn English on their own; others were reading and translating for those who understood no English at all. This multilingual buzz was one of the things I found appealing about nickelodeons when I’d first started going to them; no matter what town I was in, I always felt I had company at the picture show.
I knew I’d better talk to Edna while Tarzan was still a boy. Once beefy Elmo Lincoln appeared in his leopard skin loincloth as Tarzan the man, Edna tended to become absorbed in what was happening on the screen.
As the words And Kala, the Ape, nursed the son of an English nobleman were haltingly read by the crowd, I said to Edna, “I was hoping you could tell me some more about Willie.”
She hesitated. “You knew him.”
“Not like a sister would. And only for the last year.” And, as I’d recently been discovering, not very well at all.
She nodded. When the screen flashed Happy with Kerchak’s tribe, Tarzan did not dream he was different from the apes and others around us starting reading it aloud, Edna said, “What do you want to know?”
A chorus recited, Until one day in the mysterious depths of the pool he glimpsed a vision that set his little English brain to wondering. “Did he really want to be a soldier?” I asked. “Was it because of his father? Did he think he had to fight to be an American? What was it?”
Like me, she timed her response to coincide with the next title card. The chatter of people reading enabled us to speak in virtual privacy. “His father died in the Philippines,” she said. “Of malaria. There wasn’t anything glorious about it. Willie knew that. He never wanted to be a soldier.”
“Malaria? But what about those medals on the wall. They give medals for malaria?”
“Those are campaign medals. Everybody got them. My father got one for the Mexican campaign.”
Mrs. Chapman must have remarried soon after her first husband’s death. “What about your father?” I asked. “When did your mother meet him?”
She let a few title cards go by before getting synchronized with them again. “She’d known him since she was a girl. Both their families were from Slovakia. I think they were sweethearts before she met Willie’s father. They married just a year after Otto Kaiser died.”
“Your father was a soldier, too?”
She nodded. “He joined the Army when I was ten. Couldn’t find any other work. It shouldn’t have been dangerous. There wasn’t any war on.”
“What happened?”
“He was with General Pershing on the expedition in Mexico, going after Pancho Villa.” She paused. “He was shot and killed two years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
We watched the sad scene of the boy Tarzan discovering the jungle hut in which he was born and his parents died. Then I started again. “What did—”
Edna suddenly moved her arm to my side of the armrest and lightly slid her hand under mine. She wanted a date, not an interrogation. Her fingers were loose. I was supposed to take hold of her hand, interlock fingers, give her hand a squeeze—something to show I was receptive. I wanted to but couldn’t. Our hands just lay there, limp. There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t feel what I didn’t feel.
“Uh, I know Willie used to play ball for the Union Stockyards,” I said rapidly. “How long did he work there?”
Edna bit her lip and took a deep breath before answering in a strained voice. “Nineteen-fifteen he started. First in a packing house, then Hans Fohl got him a job in the tannery.”
“Was he close to Fohl?”
She shook her head no.
“Was there trouble between them?”
Another negative shake.
“Did—”
“Could you pass the popcorn please?” Her voice was barely audible.
“Of course.” I picked up the box at my feet and passed it to her.
She took the box with both hands. “Thank you.” After slipping a single kernel in her mouth, she handed it back to me then folded her hands in her lap.
The “graceful disengagement.” I’d used it myself more than once when a date didn’t respond to my overtures. It can be a risky thing to offer one’s hand sometimes.
Edna knew now that there was never going to be anything between us. I felt
bad, but that’s all I felt. I had no romantic intentions toward her and couldn’t force myself to pretend that I did.
We continued to watch the movie in silence.
I still had a couple of questions to ask, and asking them sure wasn’t going to make things any worse than they already were. During the scene of Tarzan burning down a native village, I leaned toward Edna and it seemed I had to lean far to bridge the chasm between us. “Did Willie say anything about his night job at the chemical plant?”
A head shake.
“Did he ever say anything about the Patriotic Knights of Liberty?”
An even fainter shake. I wasn’t going to be getting any more words from her.
So it came as a surprise when the movie ended, the lights came up, and Edna turned to face me with red eyes. “Willie was a wonderful brother to me,” she said. “I will do anything to get the man who killed him.”
Frank Timmons spoke with greater intensity and more elaborate gestures than had the Four-Minute Man earlier in the evening.
The meeting hall, an abandoned ramshackle garage really, just over the Cicero border on Twenty-Second Street, was filled with men paying rapt attention to his every hysterical word.
Timmons, Grand Knight of the Patriotic Knights of Liberty, had the burly build of a butcher, the clothes sense of an insurance salesman, and the bluster and thunder of a faith-healing evangelist.
In a rich bass voice, Timmons boomed, “I want to make this clear: the good white men of the Patriotic Knights of Liberty are not at odds with the Illinois State Council of Defense. No sir. Not at all. The Council of Defense was set up by the state, and it would be wrong to say anything against it.”
Not to mention seditious, I thought. I also thought it unfortunate that there wasn’t a four-minute time limit on all speeches. Timmons had been speaking for half an hour and appeared to be only warming up.
“There’s some other folks,” he went on, “who might tell you that the Illinois State Council of Defense isn’t being run by a real American. Well, of course, that’s true. Samuel Insull wasn’t born in this country. He’s an Englishman. But you’ll never hear me say anything against him for not being a true-blue American. A lot of other folks might say that they don’t trust him on account of he’s a foreigner, but not me. No sir. The way I see it, we’re over there saving England’s country for them, so it’s only fair that we should have an Englishman here helping us do it.”
Cheers and a burst of applause greeted this statement.
“We support the Council of Defense,” he proclaimed. “But we support it through action. ”
So far there’d been only talk, lots of it, issued solely from the tireless mouth of Frank Timmons. But on the tables behind him, under a large American flag nailed to the wall, was a variety of weapons and ammunition. All for sale at reasonable prices, as Timmons had pointed out several times during his speech.
I was uneasy, and not only because of the firearms. Even though I was with the supposed “good guys” in this place, I felt as much an outsider as I had at the German church. Maybe there’s just something about secret societies of any kind that makes me uncomfortable.
Timmons continued to rant and appeared to come apart as he threw himself into the effort. His baggy gray jacket came off first, then his polka-dot bow tie. He brushed his sweating forehead, and the long lock of light brown hair that had been pasted over the top of his head fell across his eyes. Finally, he detached his collar and flung it on the floor.
He reached to the table behind him, grabbed a newspaper, and held it out for all to see the banner headline on the front page. From my sixth row seat, I could read the bold black type easily: QUENTIN KILLED.
A chorus of angry damns came from the crowd. Everyone knew who Quentin was: Quentin Roosevelt, Lieutenant in the U. S. Army Air Corps, Teddy Roosevelt’s youngest son.
“His plane was shot down behind enemy lines,” Timmons said.
The crowd elaborated their curses to “Damn Germans.”
With the Knights riled by the news, Frank Timmons spoke with renewed vigor. “A year ago, ‘preparedness’ was the word of the day. Then it was ‘mobilization.’ I say we still have to be prepared! Prepared to mobilize!”
More cheers. I wondered if the others understood what Timmons had just said. I sure didn’t.
Timmons waved an arm. “German agents are in this country. They’re in America, on our soil. And they’re putting ground glass in our food.”
Cries of outrage from the audience.
“They’re poisoning Red Cross bandages!”
More angry yells.
“The next thing you know, zeppelins will be sneaking in over our skies and bombing our cities. Are we going to let that happen?”
“No!” the chorus cried.
“Then we better be prepared to stop them, shoot them right out of the sky! Are you prepared for that?”
“Yes!”
“I can’t hear you!”
“Yes!”
“Are you prepared?”
“YES!!” There were also a few amens and hallelujahs.
Timmons ended his speech by encouraging the men to stock up on the arms for sale at the table. He also passed the hat, and everyone, including myself, threw in a dollar. I promised myself that I’d give ten dollars to the Red Cross to make up for it.
Most of the audience broke up, with many of the Knights going to the merchandise tables. Others stood and talked in small groups. Some remained seated in the folding chairs that were arrayed in the center of the garage and spoke to their neighbors in hushed whispers. I was left completely alone. I’d come at Curly Neeman’s invitation, but he’d remained close by Timmons’s side and hadn’t said a word to me all night.
Sitting by myself, I started to feel conspicuous and thought it must be obvious to everyone that I didn’t belong. And this group was not one that had a lot of tolerance for any kind of outsiders. Would they think that I’d come to spy on them? What did they do to people they suspected of being spies?
I gave an anxious look about the place. Around the walls of the garage were remnants of the building’s previous incarnation: rusted engine parts, stacks of bald tires, and a variety of body segments from both carriages and automobiles. Standing near a pile of mangled fenders was somebody I knew. Unfortunately, it was Wicket Greene.
Greene was in conversation with another man. It seemed he was listening closely to the man, but it was hard to tell for sure; with his jutting forehead and weak chin, Greene’s head always appeared to be tilted down.
Wicket Greene would have to do, I decided, as I rose from my chair. As much as I detested him, I disliked feeling so alone in this crowd.
I approached him and we exchanged curt nods. Greene had been on pretty good behavior lately, never gloating about Willie’s death, but we were still far from being on friendly terms.
“You know Lefty Rariden?” he asked, indicating his odd-looking companion. The lanky, horse-faced man had a frightening shock of frizzy red hair and wide spooky eyes that might have resulted from seeing his reflection in a mirror. The black sateen shirt he wore made his pale skin seem whiter and his fiery hair brighter.
“No, I—Oh, yes. Yes I do.” Lefty Rariden. A right-handed pitcher who was called “Lefty” because he was as screwy as a left-hander. “How you doing, Lefty?” I greeted him.
As we shook hands he grunted, “I know you?” His eyes dilated even further, and he made a show of scrutinizing my face. It was the look he gave batters when he was on the mound, a goofy look of perpetual surprise that kept hitters off balance trying to figure out what he was up to.
“We played against each other a few times.” I also remembered that Lefty Rariden tried to be colorful; he wasn’t a natural character like Rube Waddell or Casey Stengel.
“Federal League?” Rariden asked.
“Nope. When I was with the Red Sox. You probably don’t remember, but there was a game in Comiskey Park, August of nineteen-twelve, and you were pitchin
g for the White Sox. You threw me a low and away curve that I hit for a triple just inside the right field foul line.”
“Hope I put you on your ass next time you came up.”
“Uh, no. No, you didn’t.”
“Then I owe you one.”
I shot a wary glance at his right hand. A major part of Rariden’s concept of “colorful” was to get into brawls. “I’m sure you would have,” I said, hoping it would console him, “except you got yanked. Eddie Cicotte went in to finish up.”
He smirked. “Then I owe you two.”
Wicket Greene laughed. I was sure he hoped to see it when Rariden administered the payback.
“What are you doing now?” I asked Rariden, trying to keep things civil.
“Dearborn Fuel Company,” he answered with some pride. It was a better job than many former ballplayers were able to get.
Before I could ask if he knew Curly Neeman, Neeman’s insect face was looking up at me. Ignoring Greene and Rariden, he tugged at my sleeve. “You can meet the Grand Knight,” Neeman said. I was clearly supposed to feel honored by the invitation; it was equally clear that I was expected to accept it.
I reluctantly followed Neeman to the front of the room, where Timmons was conducting transactions at the weapons table. Neeman slithered between a couple of Timmons’s customers and with the manner of an agitated puppy tried to get his attention. I looked at the materials spread out on the table: rifles and revolvers of various makes and ages; an equally broad variety of ammunition; and some hand-to-hand killing implements, including bayonets and trench knives, which were basically brass knuckles with short triangular daggers attached. There were also spiked helmets and other German equipment brought back as souvenirs and a number of patriotic pamphlets which went largely ignored. I don’t think Timmons’s clientele did much reading.
When Frank Timmons could no longer ignore Neeman’s demands for attention, he came over to me with a meaty hand extended and a practiced grin on his face. “Mr. Neeman tells me he’s brought us a new recruit,” he said in a voice that was deep and resonant. “Welcome, Mr. Rawlings!”
