“Right! You can go to the head of the class!”
“Please don’t joke, Ebbely—you cannot imagine how I hate not knowing things I should know—that others know already. I wish I could go to school here—not Mr. Ford’s—but a real one and learn everything. I thought when I came—but now …”
“You are just a dutiful wife and mother. So now you’re blue?”
“Yes, I think I must be—but that’s not right, is it?”
“Dissatisfaction with the mundane is never wrong.”
Again Jane had trouble understanding the words and his meaning. Too shy to keep on showing her ignorance, she sat quietly in her chair and listened as Rumpelstiltskin played ragtime, which confused her even further.
16
Already her third winter as mistress of her own home, everyday life was becoming routine. The washing, mending, ironing, cleaning, cooking—interrupted by sequenced child caring—all had their allotted time, their necessary depletion of energy. As Jane had promised—she did it well, without complaint. Her marriage too had become set in its ways—a union based on conformity, a connubial friendship if not a sexual one; it sufficed. If this young mountain stranger ever needed raw emotion, her work as one of Hannah’s Watchers at times supplied her a forfeit of it. Each time she left the stifling slums it resulted in reaffirming her gratitude to the man who provided for her and their children. Those nights when he took her—that persistent disappointment for what she herself could not identify the origin of—never compared with what John gave her in daily tangibles.
John was also unemotionally content. Never having loved a woman as wife and mother, the less complicated she made it—the more natural the result seemed. If he had been a modern man and therefore obligated by contemplative fashion to question his feelings, he might have become confused by the intricacy of being so comfortable within what had every right to be an uncomfortable union. But he was a man of his time, his expected duty, to provide, protect those in his keeping, once assigned, this difficult task accomplished, his male duty done, no one—least of all he—expected of himself further effort.
This early twentieth-century male knew exactly what society demanded of him. His lack of needing to continually search for inner confirmation bred a male confidence that at its best was utterly captivating to his women—at its worst could be indescribably cruel. Like most men of those times, he felt that being dependent on a man was preordained as a woman’s destiny—except for a few mavericks who challenged it or those who obliged it only to survive.
But for Jane, freedom had been her sought-after lover and as with most romantic needs, what exactly the achievement of her dream would entail had been made opaque by the sheer desperate wanting of it. Now no longer a dissatisfied girl—simply a dissatisfied woman whose acquired responsibilities she handled better than her uncertainties, at the age of nearly twenty-one Jane was ready for love and didn’t know it. If she had, she wouldn’t have known what that required either. That the possibility existed that she could fall in love with the man who had married her for their mutual convenience was quite beyond her emotional capabilities. Yet he stood in the doorway of her future’s maturity—and she, forever distrustful of what she needed most—saw only the provider not the man.
January was ending when Imperial Germany notified the United States that the forced, selective moratorium decreed by Woodrow Wilson on its submarine warfare was null and void. Therefore, on February 1 its U-boat wolf packs would resume their hunt, sink any and all Atlantic shipping regardless of nationality. Adding, as a magnanimous gesture, that neutral America would be permitted safe passage of one ship a week if it identified itself by displaying a designated ensign of red and white zebra stripes or if its hull was painted in a similar pattern. Left with no further diplomatic maneuvers or choice, President Wilson severed diplomatic ties and asked Congress for a declaration of war.
While the nation waited, Henry Ford announced to the press, “I cannot believe that war will come, but in the event of a declaration of war, I will place our factory at the disposal of the United States government and will operate without one cent of profit.” And the Ford Motor Company increased the speed of its assembly lines.
Even before John could read of it in his Italian-American newspaper or Carl and Peter in their Polish ones, Fritz heard from his Russians that their czar had abdicated, and starving peasants rioting for bread had been shot down by the dreaded Cossacks. Mother Russia was in the grip of a fledgling revolution.
Finally on April 6, the United States entered the Great War as combatant—its president rechristening it the “war to end all wars,” America’s mission “to make the world safe for democracy.” And overnight Fritz and Hannah became Huns. The zealot’s cry “The only good Hun is a dead Hun” frightening them.
Within days, the Ford Motor Company stopped all civilian production, dedicated its workforce to the execution of government war contracts. As with the Five-Dollar-Day, once again Detroit and its Ford Motor Company became the beckoning pot of gold for desperate men. This time instead of an influx of mostly immigrants, now migrants from out of the deep South turned parts of the inner city and some of the surrounding outskirts into shantytowns.
“My friends, we are fast becoming a classless society,” Zoltan settled in his chair.
John had invited his friends home after work to discuss the latest news and was about to answer him when Ebbely interrupted him. “That’s a load of … how can I put this politely? Will crap do?”
“Ebbely, you actually don’t believe that?”
“No, John.”
“Well, from Stan I would have expected it, but from you, why? You’re not a radical.”
“What is a radical?”
“A troublemaker. A unionist …”
Stan was ready to challenge that, when Carl changed the subject. “The darkies are overrunning the city. One of my men told me in the rooming houses they now sleep in shifts. Three shifts, so, three men to one cot.”
“What happens on Sundays?”
“The last Saturday shift man gets the cot and the others sleep on the floor.”
“All single men?” asked Ebbely.
“Yes. Those that brought families are huddled in slapped up lean-tos.”
“Well, that should supply our busy inspectors with righteous fodder!”
“Stan, why are you so dead set against … ?”
Johann interrupted, “He’s not the only one, John. Have you seen that little black book they carry around with them?”
“No.”
“Well, my friend, let me open your eyes …”
“Yes, John,” Ebbely’s voice held censure, “you really should investigate these goings-on before …”
“And what’s so terrible in helping these people to a decent life? We’ve been doing it with the others for years!”
“Ah, that magic word help.”
“Now even a word is wrong?”