Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

“I’ve got a couple of nice box seats for tomorrow’s game,” Doyle said. “First pitch is at five past one.”

“And I’ve got tomorrow off. I’ve got a paper due Monday, but I guess I’ll just have to finish it after the game. My father taught me never to pass up a ticket to a Tigers game.”

“A paper?”

“Yeah, on how the Cubists influenced Mexican mural painters.”

“You’re still in school?”

“Grad school — at Wayne State. I’m working toward a master’s in art history so I can get a minimum-wage job as an assistant curator at the Institute of Arts. Then I’ll work my way up from there.” She waved at the liquor bottles and the beer taps. “This is just paying my tuition and rent. I tried to make it as an artist, but. .”

“But what?”

“But nothing. I went to New York and studied at Pratt. I wanted to paint cityscapes and portraits — not soup cans. I couldn’t get a gallery to show my work, so I came home and went back to school. And I love it.”

This was a pleasant surprise. Detroit had never had much use for the arts or artistic types. Artists in this city didn’t wear paint-spattered jeans or suffer gorgeously in grimy lofts. They wore smocks over their business suits — they were almost always men — and they worked in vast, well lit studios at places like the G.M. Tech Center, dreaming and sketching and building life-size clay models of next year’s Tempest or Corvette. They did some glorious work, to Doyle’s way of thinking, but there wasn’t an Abstract Expressionist or Pop artist among them. As for the women in Detroit, most of them carried themselves as though their greatest ambition in life was to become a professional bowler. Doyle was about to tell Cecelia how much he loved to hate the Diego Rivera murals at the Institute of Arts when she said, “How bout I fix us a late breakfast at my place before the game? Say, eleven-thirty?”

“Sounds good.”

She drew him a map on a cocktail napkin. She lived in one of those new twin high-rise apartment buildings on East Lafayette, not far from here, twenty-story slabs of glass and concrete. He’d always assumed they were put there for the benefit of swinging singles, dope dealers and the mistresses of rich auto executives. So bartending art students were allowed to live there too. He tucked the napkin in his pocket and promised to show up at her door at eleven-thirty sharp.

On his way across the parking lot he considered swinging by the Larrow Arms, but his stomach was empty and he’d gotten a surprising buzz off the three beers. He didn’t want to do something stupid that might ruin the day’s good luck. So he headed east on Jefferson toward the big rickety frame house where he grew up, where he still lived, and where he expected to die. The house was pale green and in bad need of a coat of paint and a new roof, but since he couldn’t afford to pay someone to do the work and couldn’t afford to take time off to do it himself, the house was going to stay pale green and it was going to continue to leak. He lived alone there with the ghosts of his dead parents. His mother’s spirit resided mainly in the kitchen and in the vegetable garden out back, the places where she’d passed her love of cooking and gardening down to him. The old man could usually be found on the front porch, where Doyle had installed some ratty furniture from the parlor. He liked to sit out there at night and smoke a cigar and tell his father about his day. He would have plenty for the old man tonight.

So Mrs. Charlotte Armstrong could wait. Doyle wanted to be at the top of his game when he sat down and asked her what she saw and heard the night Helen Hull died.

THERE WAS A LATE LUNCH RUSH IN THE MEN’S GRILL AT OAKLAND Hills Country Club that Sunday afternoon when members came pouring in off the golf course to watch the climax of the Masters golf tournament on television. Willie was the only busboy working the room, and his Uncle Bob and Edgar Hudson were the only waiters. Hudson, as always, was useless. He stood around kibitzing on gin rummy games and laughing way too hard at the members’ jokes, slapping a napkin on his thigh, skinning ’em back for all he was worth. Once in a while he’d saunter over to the bar to get an order of drinks from Chi Chi.

Willie didn’t mind having to hustle, especially with his uncle. It made the clock move and it put money in his pocket. He was sure Uncle Bob was the only waiter on the staff who gave busboys the full ten percent of his tips they were entitled to. Besides, Willie had no interest in kibitzing on gin rummy games or watching golf on television. The only black people on the TV screen were the ones carrying the golf bags and raking the sand traps.

All afternoon Willie kept one eye on the door where the men came in off the golf course. Finally, a little after four o’clock, Chick Murphy walked in with a transistor radio pressed to his right ear. He sat down and kicked off his golf spikes and ordered a Michelob from Hudson. He was looking at the television set but Willie could tell he was paying closer attention to what was on the radio. When he saw Willie, he waved him over.

“Yes, Mr. Murphy?”

“Just picked up the Tigers’ game. Bottom of the twelfth, tied 5–5. McAuliffe’s on third and Gates is coming in to pinch hit.” The other men at the table, pink with sunburn and dressed in sherbet-colored clothes, ignored him.

“Gates Brown?” Willie whispered, moving closer.

“Yup. Ball one.”

“How many outs?”

Chick Murphy held up two of the three fingers on his left hand. Willie could hear the fuzzy roar of the Tiger Stadium crowd, and he wondered if Louis and Clyde were in the bleachers. One of the men said to Chick Murphy, “Turn that shit down, would you please? Goalby’s getting ready to putt on eighteen.”

“He can’t hear this, numbnuts,” Chick Murphy said. “Ball two.”

No sound came out of the television set, and the room was as quiet as a tomb. Willie tried to imagine a game where all the spectators had to be utterly silent and still. He thought of those gyms in Alabama where he’d played basketball, raucous cauldrons of sweat and noise, cheering and chanting, the fans dancing to saxophones, bongo drums, tambourines, syncopated clapping. On the TV screen now a lantern-jawed guy leaned over a putt for a long time, then drilled it into the hole. There were sighs of relief, palms slapping tables, a few soft whistles.

“Swing and a miss,” Chick Murphy said. “Two balls and a strike.” Willie was the only person listening to him. “Here’s the pitch. . he hit it up the middle. . it’s going. . it’s a single! McAuliffe scores from third! Ballgame!”

Chick Murphy sprang from his chair and wrapped an arm around Willie’s shoulder, gave him a crusher squeeze. One of the men cocked an eyebrow and said, “You don’t knock it off, Murphy, I’m gonna tell the wife.”

Willie went back to work. Later a cry went up from the crowd when the announcer reported that the Masters had not ended in a tie, as everyone believed. A guy named Roberto De Vicenzo had signed his scorecard with a 66 instead of the 65 he shot, and the rules required him to accept the higher score. It cost him a tie. There were hoots of disbelief throughout the room, and Willie watched as Bob Goalby slipped into a green sport coat, grinning like a hyena. Win a major golf tournament and you get an ugly jacket.

“Say, Billy. .” Chick Murphy, in plaid pants and stocking feet, was on his way to the locker room. There were bright-green grass shavings stuck to his lemon-yellow socks.

“It’s Willie , sir. Willie Bledsoe.”

“Right. Sorry. Your Uncle Bob tells me you might be in the market for a new car. Here.” He handed Willie a business card. “Give me a call — or just drop by the lot. I’m always there.”