Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

Willie drank a couple, three glasses, didn’t blow his cool. As the reception was winding down and the guests were heading up the broad curving staircase to the banquet room, he loaded up one last tray and made a pass through the hangers-on who weren’t eager to have solid food interfere with their mid-afternoon buzz.

“I’ll take a couple of those, son.”

Willie bristled. Son — it was half a notch above boy. He turned and faced a barrel-chested man with bright yellow hair. The guy stubbed his cigarette in an ashtray and lifted two glasses off Willie’s tray. “Last call for alcohol,” he said, laughing moistly. “Thanks a million.”

“Yes sir.” The man was standing off by himself pounding down a couple of final jolts. His skin was pitted and flushed, his necktie loose. Willie smelled loneliness coming off him, and started to move away.

“Tell me something, son,” the man said.

Willie turned back toward him. “Sir?”

“I’ve never seen you before. Are you new here?”

“Yes sir. I started about a month ago.”

“I’m Chick Murphy. I’d shake your hand but—” He lifted the two glasses and sipped from one, then the other.

“And I’m Willie Bledsoe, sir. Pleasure to meet you.” Again he started to move away, and again the man drew him back.

“You from Detroit, Willie?”

“No sir, I’m from Alabama originally.”

“No shit. Got a mechanic working for me who’s from Alabama — Tuscaloosa, I believe it is. Name’s Gaylord Banks. Ever hear of him?”

“No sir, can’t say that I have.” What was it with white people up here? They all seemed to think that every black person in Alabama knew every other black person, like it was one big happy jungle village.

“Best damn mechanic ever worked for me,” Chick Murphy went on. His words were a little slushy, his eyes a little hot, but Willie could tell the man knew how to hold his booze. He drained both glasses, returned them to the tray, and took one more.

Willie noticed then that something was wrong with the man’s left hand. He looked closer, trying not to stare, and realized the pinkie was missing. Chick Murphy said, “So what brings you way up here, Willie?”

“I’ve got some family here. Bob Brewer’s my uncle and—”

“Bob’s your uncle! He’s the best damn waiter we’ve ever had here! Pure class!”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll be honest with you.” He leaned close, close enough for Willie to smell nicotine and sour wine and breath mints. “Some of the guys on the staff here aren’t worth two shits. But Bob Brewer — he’s class all the way.” He drank, then glanced out the tall windows at the golf course. “Christ, I hate weddings,” he muttered. “I had box seats for the Tigers game today, and here I sit because one of my best customers is marrying off his daughter. You been to a game yet?”

“Went to my first one on Opening Day, as a matter of fact.”

“What’d you think?”

“I loved it, especially the park. Only trouble was, they got beat.”

“They’re gonna be okay.” The change of subject seemed to revive him. His hot eyes were dancing now. “If their pitching holds up, I don’t see how anybody’s gonna be able to stay with them this year. They’ve got too much firepower. Plus they owe the fans one for blowing the pennant on the last day of last season.”

“I saw Earl Wilson hit a home run — and he’s a pitcher.”

“Wait’ll you see Kaline and Horton and Cash get loose. Those guys can murder the ball.”

Willie noticed Dick Kowalski, the club manager, standing by the doorway to the lounge drawing a finger across his throat, the signal that the bar was closed and it was time to start picking up all empty glasses and dirty ashtrays.

“Well, Mr. Murphy, it’s been nice meeting you. We’ve got to clean up now. Would you care for another before I go?”

“I’m good, thanks.” He drained the glass he was holding and set it on the tray. “Say, I was just thinking. . I’ve got a couple of tickets to tomorrow’s Tigers game, but I’ve got to play golf. Any chance you could use them?”

“Afraid I’ve got to work a double shift again tomorrow. But thanks anyhow.”

“Well, maybe next time.”

As Willie started picking up empty glasses he watched Chick Murphy stride toward the men’s room. The man had to be high as a Georgia pine, yet he was able to walk in a straight line. These Detroit guys, their livers must’ve been made of cast iron.

When the ballroom was cleaned up, Willie decided to head down to the Quarters, the impromptu bunkhouse in the basement where the black waiters and busboys took breaks and sometimes spent the night if they got stuck working late and didn’t want to drive all the way back into the city. The champagne was wearing off, and he could feel the first faint throb of a headache. A nap might be just the thing to get him ready for the dinner shift.

When he entered the Quarters, Hudson and Wiggins were locked in one of their epic poker games. They’d taken off their ocher jackets and white shirts and clip-on bow ties and were playing in their T-shirts, suspenders dangling from the sides of their tuxedo pants. They both wore alligator loafers over thick ’n’ thins — sheer silk socks with black stripes. They wore gaudy pinkie rings, too, touches that announced to the world that no uniform could bleach the blackness out of them. Just to make sure the message hit home, Wiggins wore his hair in a greasy conk and Hudson shaved his skull.

There was a mountain of dollar bills on the table, and neither man looked up when Willie hung his white jacket and dress shirt on a hanger and hopped up onto one of the top bunks and opened his book. But he was too sleepy to read. The Tigers game was on the radio, and as he drifted off he heard a roar and the voice of Ernie Harwell, the turtle guy: “Going. . going. . long gone! Willie Horton just hit one clean out of the park! That thing might never come down!”

Willie was smiling when he fell asleep.

Laughter woke him. Then Hudson’s bullfrog voice: “You still see Luvel Broadnax round?”

“Luvel?” Wiggins said. “Shit. That nigger been sleepin underground prit near three years now.”

“What happened?”

“Got shot during a craps game in the parking lot outside Olympia after a boxing match. Shot through the chest. Never did catch the nigger who did it. Cat from Toledo, way I heard it.”

“So what you got?”

“You really wanna see what I got?”

“Lay you damn cards down.”

Willie heard the snap of cards. Then a moment of silence. Then Hudson roaring, “A motherfuckin flush !” And he was banging his fist on the table and hurling his cards at the wall.

Still groggy, Willie looked down at them. Wiggins was cackling and scooping a pile of bills off the table. Couple of old-fashioned, slavery-time handkerchief heads, Willie thought, as lazy as the day is long and ready to blame everything on The Man, acting like brothers shooting brothers during a craps game was business as usual, so thoroughly trapped they didn’t even realize there was a trap. Willie thought of them as Sambo and Quimbo, Simon Legree’s two brutal slaves in Uncle Tom’s Cabin , who proved that no one makes better tyrants than the tyrannized. He supposed Chick Murphy had guys like Hudson and Wiggins in mind when he’d confided that some of the waiters in this place weren’t worth two shits. In addition to their shared love of drinking and gambling, they both had quick tempers and mean streaks and they stole anything that wasn’t bolted down.

Hudson stood up from the card table, stretched, yawned. He had liver lips and rhinoceros ears. His gleaming skull was dented in several places, and Willie had often wondered what had caused those dents. Wrenches? Bottles? Cops’ nightsticks? Maybe they were just badges of a childhood spent in Paradise Valley, the inevitable marks left on the son of an autoworker who, according to Hudson, liked nothing better than to get drunk and beat on people, especially his wife and children. As often as he’d puzzled over those dents on Hudson’s skull, Willie wasn’t about to ask how they got there.