While he devoured his meal for the day, his mind turned to the landlord and the unpaid bills. Until now, he’d managed to keep him happy with the promise to return the money owed with interest, but if, like his father said, Kowalski had tenants ready to pay up front, it wouldn’t be long before he took action.
Jack despaired. The odd shift unloading goods wouldn’t remedy the situation. He needed money, and fast. For a good while he pondered what he might do. Finally, he rummaged through his wallet until he found his last five-dollar bill. It was all he had, enough to feed himself for three weeks, but nothing like what he needed to save him and his father from being turned out onto the street. He crumpled it up in his fist in anger, then stepped into the nearest grocery store and asked if they had a telephone. The storekeeper wiped his hands on his apron, assessed Jack’s appearance, and shook his head, until he noticed the bill in the young man’s hand. Without a word he took it, opened the cash register, and gave Jack change. Then he gestured at the device that stood on a corner of the counter. Jack eyed it. He wondered whether to make the call. Finally, he picked up the receiver and dialed a number he knew from memory. When the conversation was over, he prayed that his idea would work.
He had time to spare, so he went to the entrance of the American Sugar Refining Company thirty minutes early.
Built on the East River docks, ASR continued to process more than half of the sugar the country consumed, and it employed hundreds of workers to stow, handle, and transport its product. Jack knew that securing a job there was a difficult task, but if anyone could help him do so, undoubtedly it was his friend Walter.
It was beginning to rain, and the American Sugar watchman had been out a couple of times to tell him to move away from the entrance. Jack muttered something but grudgingly obeyed. He waited impatiently in the rain for his friend to appear.
Though they’d once been best friends, he hadn’t seen Walter Scott for some time. For years they had shared a desk at the Brooklyn Technical High School, and they had been inseparable. He recalled those days. Though feeble and sickly, Walter always seemed to be in a good mood; he enjoyed hunting lizards, and his laughter was infectious. His comedic gifts were matched only by his ability to get himself into trouble, forcing Jack to stick up for him against whoever lashed out at him. At the time, Jack’s physique was beginning to make him conspicuous among his classmates, since he now stood almost a full head taller than the rest of them. His arms were strong and his hands skilled, earning him the boys’ respect and the girls’ admiration. Sometimes Walter envied him, but Jack always pointed out that, despite his strength, his grades in lettered subjects were not as good as Walter’s. Fortunately, Jack found a way around his limitations when he began to study mechanical engineering. He interpreted designs, analyzed mechanisms, and fixed faults as if they were a child’s puzzle. As he learned, his fascination with any contraption that he could dismantle, figure out, and repair grew. A bicycle, a cash register, a lock, a gramophone . . . He didn’t care what it was or where it came from. The more complicated it was, the sharper he became, and the greater his satisfaction when he managed to bring it back to life. Walter, on the other hand, took an interest in politics. At sixteen, he spent his spare time reading books on the violent events transforming Europe. Sometimes he asked Jack for his father’s opinion on the Russian Revolution, but Solomon never spoke of such matters.
Despite their differences, their friendship grew as solid as a redwood. Together they enjoyed their first cigarettes and went to their first prom. They fell in love with the same girls, and when those girls rebuffed them, the disappointment lasted no longer than an old umbrella on a windy day. Over six long years, they forged a bond that they swore would never break. But on graduation day, an incident marred their friendship forever. Jack had just turned eighteen, and his whole family was on the top floor of the Hotel Bossert to celebrate the occasion. The partygoers included his uncle Gabriel and his cousin Aaron, whom he rarely saw because they lived in a wealthy neighborhood on Manhattan Island—and because Solomon disapproved of the way they made a living.
After their arrival in America, the two brothers had gone their separate ways. While Solomon persevered as a shoemaker, Gabriel worked in a pawnshop of dubious reputation before establishing his own loan office.
However, given the occasion of the graduation, Irina had persuaded Solomon to invite Gabriel to bring the family together for the benefit of their son. Jack had also convinced his father to accommodate Walter, whose parents did not have the means to pay for their child to attend the ceremony.
Perhaps that was why Walter ate like a man possessed and drank the punch as if he’d just crossed a desert. When the alcohol began to take effect, he became bolder, and when he learned that Jack’s cousin drove his own car and had a liveried servant, he started in on him, calling him a filthy capitalist.
That was the first mistake leading to the life-changing tragedy. The second was Jack’s: trying to separate them, he inadvertently caused Walter to send Aaron falling down a flight of stairs. When his uncle Gabriel found his son motionless, he cursed Jack as if the accident were his fault. Aaron never walked again, and Gabriel Beilis broke the weak bond that still tied him to his brother, Solomon. As punishment, Jack’s father barred him from any contact with his friend Walter.
The incident forever tainted Jack’s relationship with his father. For years, Solomon had imagined that one day his son would inherit his little workshop and carry on the family trade, but though Jack worked hard from dawn to dusk, his interest in footwear ended as soon as his father pulled down the shutters at the end of the day. So when Brooklyn Technical High School’s head teacher, Theodorus Rupert, offered Jack the opportunity to secure a position at the gigantic factory that the Ford Motor Company had built in Dearborn, Michigan, he jumped at the chance.
The idea of losing his only assistant angered Solomon, but Jack was determined. In Dearborn, not only would he receive a salary four times what his father paid him as a shoemaker, but he could also advance by earning promotions. Jack promised that he would send his parents half his earnings every month, but Solomon continued to refuse until his wife intervened. Irina insisted that neither Solomon’s nor the shoe store’s interests would be put before those of her son. After all, she reminded him, in their youth they had also left their parents in Russia to immigrate to America in search of a better future.