E. Doctorow - Loon Lake

I looked up at the block-long sign across the tops of two buildings. BENNETT AUTOBODY NUMBER SIX was what it said.

That evening I took Clara to dinner at the Jacksontown Inn, the best restaurant in town. It had tablecloths, candles, black busboys, and the roast beef au jus went for two dollars and a half.

“I see in the paper where every state is covered with snow from here to the Rockies,” I said.

She eyed me warily. The true color of her hair beginning to come through, her hair was fluffier too, she had given up the beauty parlor she believed they would ruin her if she had her hair done in the Midwest.

“Anyway,” I said, “I did a little exploring while you were having a nap. We could be in worse places. There are jobs here, people have money in their pockets, they’re shopping in the stores and going to the movies. They have three movie houses downtown.”

She cut her roast beef.

“And you want to hear something funny? The big employer and why everything is humming is your friend and mine Frankie W. Bennett. His Number Six plant.”

She put down her knife and fork, dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and sat there.

“Oh, Clara,” I said. “I’d be happy if I could just look at you across this table for the rest of my life.”

“That would be a lot of roast beef,” she said.

“You didn’t wear your gold ring!”

“I forgot.”

I ate and drank energetically. “Anyway,” I said, “as long as we’re stuck here — so long — as we’re here awhile — I thought I’d tap into old Frank — build up our cash reserve for the run to California.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, they’re hiring at the Number Six plant.”

“So?”

A sip of water from my cut-glass goblet. “I caught on there this afternoon. Nothing to it. I just gave them my shining innocent face. I mean there were these guys standing around with their toolboxes and employment records all wanting the same dumb unskilled jobs I put in for. No contest.”

“Why?”

“Because it was obvious I didn’t have a union background. They don’t want someone who’s a wiseass. They want the ones who don’t know any better.”

“Why did you do it?” she said.

“I thought I explained,” I said. “I thought I explained that.”

She didn’t say anything, we resumed dining. Occasionally she’d look up and smile sweetly at me, in the silence there at the Jacksontown Inn the unarguable terror of things was driven home to me.

“I don’t see why you should get on your high horse,” I said. “Is it any worse than sleeping in his bed? Is it any worse than stealing his car?”

“I think I’ve got to leave now.” She stood.

“Do you mind if I pay the damn check?”

We walked through the snow back to the room. I grabbed her elbow, she shrugged me off. “Clara, for God’s sake, what is it I’ve done, after all? I got a job! A job! Is it a fucking crime to get a job? There’s no money! We’re here in the real world now, don’t you understand? There’s no money!”

In the room she started to pack. I willed myself to be calm, there were other roomers on the same floor, I didn’t need landlady trouble on top of everything else. “Clara, please don’t be like this. Please listen. All right, this is the worst shithole town in the frozenest fucking country there is. It’s so fucking cold I can’t believe how cold it is. And there’s no reason to stay here. Except that it’s Bennett’s! That’s why, Clara. That is the true reason why. Because I’m gonna work his line without his knowing and walk away from his machine with my wages in my pocket and he’s going to get us to California! That’s why.”

She was still.

“You hear me, Clara? Because it’s living right under his nose. That’s why. Because it’s the riskiest thing! It’s the toughest and most dangerous and the classiest thing. That’s why.”

She sat on the side of the bed. “And what am I supposed to do here all day while you work his line and make your classy wages? Huh, big boy? What am I supposed to do?”

My God, it was laughable, it was heartbreaking but at least she asked the question. Neither of us was twenty! We were children — who were we, what chance did we have? In her question was one half of an instant’s perceiving, dimly appreciated, of only the most obvious possibility of life comprising the history of mankind.

I sat on the side of the bed next to her, whispering in her ear, “You don’t realize what you’ve done to me. Me, the carney kid! You’re making an honest man of him, it’s horrible. I have all these godawful longings to work to support you, to make a life with you, I want us to live together in one place, I don’t care where, I don’t care if it’s the North Pole, I’ll do any fucking thing to keep you in bonbons and French novels, Clara, and it’s all your fault.”

“Oh Jesus, he’s crazy, this boy is crazy.”

But I felt this weird tickle-behind-the-spine unprecedented truth of what I was saying. Before I said it I hadn’t known I felt it: we could change, we could make our lives however we wanted! And the steps Clara had taken to molldom and to the high forest of Loon Lake were dainty steps, steps avoiding the muck of her reality and mine. And this was where we truly belonged, not on the road but stationary, in one place, working it all out in the hard life.

“You got anything better to do?” I said.

She sighed. “That’s the crying shame of it.”

Data comprising life F. W. Bennett undergoing review.

Shown in two instances twenty-five years apart of labor

relations lacking compassion or flexible policy understanding

workers’ needs. His dramatization suggests life devoted almost

entirely to selfish accumulation of wealth and ritual use thereof

according to established patterns of utmost class. It is

alleged he patronizes unsavory elements of society for his

business gain. It is alleged that he is sexually exploitative.

It is suggested he is at least unmoved by the violent death

of another human attributable to his calculated negligence.

Countervailing data re his apparent generosity to

worthless poet scrounge and likely drunkard Warren Penfield.

A hint too of his pride in Lucinda Bailey Bennett’s aviation

achievements. A heart too for spunky

derelict kids.

Your register respectfully advises the need for additional

countervailing data. History suggests of the class of which Mr.

F. W. Bennett is a member no unalloyed spirit of evil the dimes

which John D. Rockefeller senior gave away compulsively to

people in the street became the multimillions of his sons’

philanthropies. Andrew Carnegie’s beneficence well attested,

as well as William Randolph Hearst’s Milk Fund for Babies.

And examination of the general practice of families of

immeasurable wealth in US suggests their generosity cannot

be explained entirely as self-serving public relations but

may be seen as manifesting anthropologically identified

principle of potlatch observed operating in primitive social

systems throughout the world from northern forest aboriginals

to unclad natives of tropical paradises. The principle

regardless of currency of benefaction breadfruit pigs palm

fronds or dollars is that wealth is accumulated so that

it can be given away thus bringing honor to the giver.

I refer to an American landscape from every region of which

rise hospitals universities libraries museums planetaria

parks think-tanks and other institutions for the public weal

all of which are the benefactions of the utmost class.

I cite achievements F. W. Bennett in his lifetime the original