Glorious (5 page)

The two plants stood on adjacent lots near the river, Mr. Douglass explained. Together, they employed nearly three hundred workers, who would all benefit from the new ownership. But he had a concern: a half-dozen privately owned shops operated directly across the street from the main factory entrances—a boot maker, a milliner, a pharmacy, two groceries, and a dry goods store. After receiving their weekly pay packets on Fridays, the employees promptly spent most of their wages at these very convenient stores. McLendon's new assignment was to befriend the shop owners and convince them to sell their businesses to Mr. Douglass.

“I pay the workers' salaries, so they should spend the money in stores that I own,” he said between puffs on one of his fine cigars. “You see the rightness of that, I'm certain. Win the trust of these shop owners, then identify yourself as my agent and help them understand it's in their own best interests that they do as I wish. Make it politely but definitely clear that if they don't, I'll build rival shops on the factory grounds and undersell them right out of business. That's extra trouble and expense I prefer to avoid, of course. And I'm really doing these people a favor. I'll pay them a fair price, so if they wish to try again, they'll have a stake to do so somewhere else.”

Over the next four months, McLendon made friends with all of the shop owners. It wasn't hard. He began by dropping in on a regular basis, buying small items, and chatting companionably. Then he began to talk of the business opportunities in other parts of St. Louis, away from the airborne grit and choking smoke of the factory district. When, eventually, McLendon revealed that he worked for Mr. Rupert
Douglass, and that Mr. Douglass was prepared to make very generous offers for their shops, five of the six shop owners soon agreed. New signs proclaimed
DOUGLASS BOOTS
,
DOUGLASS MILLINERY
,
DOUGLASS PHARMACY
, and
DOUGLASS MARKET
; the two small groceries were merged into one.

But Salvatore Tirrito, owner of the dry goods store, refused to sell. He and his nineteen-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, told McLendon that there was no reason to discuss it further.

“Perhaps you misunderstand,” McLendon said. “Mr. Douglass is prepared to be quite generous. This is an excellent opportunity for you.”

“We're not interested in your so-called opportunity,” Gabrielle said. She spoke on her father's behalf because, thirty years after immigrating to America, he still had a limited grasp of English. “We're happy with what we already have, and with where we are.”

“Be reasonable,” McLendon said. “You're in business to make money. This sale will bring you a considerable amount, so much that you can go somewhere else and open a bigger, better shop that will bring you better profits than you can make at this location.”

“For some people, though I suppose not for you and Mr. Douglass, there are other things more important than money,” Gabrielle said. “My father and mother and uncle and aunt come from Naples. Papa worked on the docks here by day and patched sails for extra money at night. He and my mother saved every cent for almost twenty-five years to start their own business. When they did, it was the proudest moment of their lives. They spent more than they could afford for that carved ‘Tirrito Dry Goods' sign hanging over the door. Mamma died of a fever right afterward. We honor her memory with every day that this store is in business. It doesn't matter how much Mr. Douglass offers. We're not going to sell.”

“Mr. Douglass is a proud man, and won't react well to a negative response,” McLendon cautioned. “Once he's chosen a course of action, he never gives up. He'll very likely open a better dry goods store than yours right across the street on the grounds of the factories, and sell products cheaper than you ever could. Then you'll have no business at all, nor the wherewithal to start another.”

“We'll take our chances, Mr. McLendon. I'm sorry if we offend Mr. Douglass's precious pride, but my father and I are proud too.”

Mr. Douglass took the news better than McLendon anticipated. He said that five out of six wasn't a bad beginning. McLendon should keep talking to the Italian and his daughter when he had a spare moment. They'd eventually come around. Meanwhile, St. Louis was booming and Mr. Douglass felt that the time was right to get into the construction business. McLendon was instructed to identify the best companies currently in local operation so that Mr. Douglass could acquire them. That took up much of McLendon's attention, but he didn't forget Salvatore and Gabrielle Tirrito. Three weeks after their refusal to sell, he dropped back by their shop. Gabrielle stood behind the counter, chatting animatedly in Italian with an older woman, who hugged her and left the store.

“Do you embrace all of your customers?” McLendon asked.

“Only if they shop here regularly,” Gabrielle said.

McLendon thought she was a pretty girl. Gabrielle's complexion was olive, and her eyes and hair were dark and lustrous. “Then you're assured of my constant business.”

“Well, you're not assured of ever being hugged. Anyway, that was my aunt Lidia, who lives next door with Uncle Mario, my father's brother. Not that it's any of your business. Can I help you with something?”

“You and your father could sell this store to Mr. Douglass. That would help me.”

Gabrielle laughed, and McLendon found the sound delightful. “Sorry, no.”

To prolong the conversation, he asked her to show him their selection of scissors: “I want to trim my beard.”

Gabrielle showed him several pairs and suggested one in particular “because the blades are strong and suited for cutting thick tangles. Beards look best when they're close-trimmed and not bushy.”

“Do you think mine is bushy?”

“I don't think about your beard at all. Do you want the scissors? They're fifty cents.”

McLendon put the coins in her hand. “Perhaps, when I've trimmed my beard, I'll return to see if it meets with your approval.”

Gabrielle raised her eyebrows in mock astonishment. “Come back anytime you like, so long as you don't pester us about selling our shop.”

He began dropping by the store once a week, then every few days. He was careful not to mention Mr. Douglass or his offer. Instead, he and Gabrielle chatted and often sparred verbally on topics ranging from politics to the best brand of tooth powder. She was a young woman of firm opinions. McLendon wasn't a man of any particular convictions, but he liked pretending to be against whatever Gabrielle was for, just to engage in witty give-and-take. He'd never realized that talking for pleasure could be so enjoyable. McLendon began occasionally visiting in the evening, on his way back to his boardinghouse. One night Gabrielle invited him to have dinner with her and her father. Salvatore went to bed early, but McLendon stayed late and the talk between him and Gabrielle bubbled on until nearly midnight.

The next week Gabrielle suggested that McLendon accompany her to a free concert in a city park. The band played a selection of popular tunes. McLendon enjoyed the music, and when he took Gabrielle home he was astounded when she sat down at a small piano and played some of the same songs. “Sing with me,” she urged as she began to play “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” When he did, his horribly off-key warbling reduced them both to teary-eyed laughter. The piano was the centerpiece of the Tirritos' social life. Every Sunday they hosted relatives and friends for a boisterous dinner prepared by Gabrielle and her aunt Lidia, and afterward everyone gathered around the piano and sang while Gabrielle played. McLendon came and enjoyed the sense of warm camaraderie that was so different from the false relationships that were part of his working life.

On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, Gabrielle was never home. For a while she wouldn't tell him why. He suspected she was seeing another man, and felt jealous. One Tuesday night he waited across the street from the dry goods store and, when she left, followed her at a distance. Gabrielle walked a dozen blocks to the Catholic church that she and her father attended on Sundays. She entered the church through a side door. McLendon stood outside for a while. Then, overcome by curiosity, he went inside and found Gabrielle sitting on the floor surrounded by children. She looked up at McLendon and said, “I'm helping my small friends here learn to read. Come be my assistant.” He excused himself because he didn't want to admit that he was illiterate. The next day she told him that she'd been giving lessons for years: “Reading opens up whole new worlds for poor children, who otherwise have difficult lives and little or no schooling. Most of their parents work in factories and have very little money to buy their children food, let alone books.” Gabrielle used a small blackboard to display letters of the alphabet. Her late mother, Tina, had used the
chalkboard as an aid in teaching her to read, Gabrielle said. “I'm doing this in part to honor her memory.” But reading materials were necessary, too, so Gabrielle bought used copies of McGuffey's
First Eclectic Reader for Young Children
for a few pennies apiece. Because her funds were limited, she could afford only a few at a time, and her students had to share.

“How much do their parents pay you to teach them?” McLendon asked. “Couldn't you use some of that money for the books?”

“I don't charge for these lessons,” Gabrielle said. “Haven't you heard the saying that good deeds are their own reward?” He had, but considered it a foolish notion. She suggested again that McLendon help with the classes, and when he declined, she insisted. So he came, ostensibly to remind the children to listen to their instructor, and found himself listening too. As a naturally quick learner, McLendon soon recognized letters of the alphabet and then printed words. When Gabrielle began lending him books and encouraging him to read them, he thought she must have guessed that he was unlettered but was considerate enough not to say so. Instead, she'd made him her helper, and in doing so taught him to read too. That Christmas she gave him
The Last of the Mohicans
, by James Fenimore Cooper, the first book that he'd ever owned. He read it over and over; she was so pleased that she continued to give him books—other novels by Cooper,
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and collections of verse by the oddly named poets Longfellow and Tennyson. He gave her sheet music, more songs that she could play on her beloved piano, the single luxury in the Tirrito household. She told him that she loved him giving her sheet music because it showed that he understood her heart.

Free reading classes for poor children struck McLendon as such a good idea that he mentioned them to Rupert Douglass. He suggested
that they be arranged for the offspring of Douglass factory workers; he knew someone very capable who would be glad to help get them organized. The cost would be negligible compared to the goodwill gained with employees. But Douglass refused.

“If too many of the lower classes learn to read, it will give them ideas above their station,” he said. “My businesses need workers who are grateful for steady employment and have no ambition to be more than they already are.”

For the first time McLendon dared to disagree with his patron. “Even working people need hope of opportunity, sir, or at least the belief that their children's lives may prove better than their own.”

Douglass snorted. “The reality of the world is that most are born into the working lives that they deserve, which is servitude to their betters. There are infrequent exceptions, you're one of them. But don't go softheaded on me. I raised you out of the gutter and could return you there anytime. I'll hear no more about these reading classes.”

McLendon never mentioned them to Mr. Douglass again. But he quietly arranged for some of the children of Douglass factory workers to attend Gabrielle's Tuesday and Thursday night classes, and he used his own money to purchase additional McGuffey readers. He knew that Mr. Douglass would be angry if he found out, but the pleasure he took in watching the little ones learn made it seem worth the risk. Besides, he was already tempting fate by his ongoing, evolving relationship with Gabrielle.

They understood themselves now to be a couple, and sometimes discussed a future together. On Sundays, Aunt Lidia took every opportunity to hint to McLendon that her niece would make a wonderful wife. Salvatore Tirrito warmed sufficiently to McLendon to offer him occasional glasses of homemade wine, which he'd previously shared only with blood relations. Gabrielle knew, of course, that
McLendon worked for Rupert Douglass in a capacity he never clearly described for fear of disgusting her so much that she would have nothing more to do with him. Based on her own first encounter with McLendon, she was still able to guess the nature if not the extent of his questionable activities. Gabrielle began mentioning the satisfaction he might find in helping to operate a dry goods store. McLendon felt sure, though he didn't say so to her, that if he ever left Rupert Douglass for Tirrito Dry Goods, his former boss would stop at nothing to put his smaller competitor out of business, just to teach his former employee a lesson. Besides, for all his certainty that he loved Gabrielle, McLendon still couldn't help relishing the sense of power, of importance, that he felt working for Mr. Douglass. So he tried as best he could to live in both worlds.

•   •   •

O
NE FALL NIGHT,
Mr. Douglass summoned McLendon. They met in the book-lined study, and this time Mr. Douglass insisted that McLendon take some brandy.

“You've worked for me almost six years,” Mr. Douglass said. “I've gotten a good sense of your talent, and I mean to make fuller use of it.”

McLendon had been his eyes and ears in the factory district of St. Louis. Now, Mr. Douglass said, it was time for him to become something more. There were other aspects to conducting successful business. It was critical to pick out the important elected officials and the key power brokers and gain their support, through campaign contributions and gifts to their favored charities and occasionally with what the unenlightened termed “bribes.” Mr. Douglass preferred the term “considerations,” which sounded more civilized.