Into the Whirlwind (4 page)

“Is something amiss?” Louis Hartman stood in the doorway, his glittering wife beside him. Zack could feel his mother cringe,
embarrassed by her homespun clothing in light of Josephine’s elegance. There was no need for her embarrassment. The Hartmans were fully aware of Zack’s gritty roots.

Zack straightened. “My father has need of me back home,” he hedged.

Mr. Hartman drew on his cigar, the tip glowing in the gathering darkness. “Not trouble on the docks, is it? Is he still working after all these years?”

Zack nodded. “Still working. I can clear this up in short order.”

He didn’t have any secrets from Louis Hartman, but he didn’t want his mother exposed to any more embarrassment in front of Josephine Hartman. He would never forget the day both Hartmans had paid a call to their grubby tenement overlooking the docks sixteen years earlier. In those days, Zack had been working as a longshoreman, hauling huge crates of imported merchandise out of ships and into the warehouses owned by Louis Hartman. It was Zack’s suggestions for streamlining the operations that first brought him praise, but it wasn’t until the incident with the fish that Louis Hartman decided to pay him a visit.

In addition to the department store, Hartman’s operated the best restaurants in Chicago. Zack had gotten wind that one of Hartman’s merchants was substituting cheap trout for genuine white perch, and Zack was incensed. Zack barged into the merchant’s genteel office, grimy and sweaty from the docks, hauling a huge basket of trout over one shoulder. Dumping a hundred pounds of dead fish onto the merchant’s hand-carved desk, he made his position clear.

“That’s what cheap trout looks like. Don’t mistake it again.” He dropped the dripping basket on the silk rug and returned to the docks.

Zack was only a twenty-year-old longshoreman, but a clever one who had already saved Hartman considerable sums by negotiating deals with the Irish labor unions who shipped their goods. Hartman prized loyalty above all else, and when word of the fish incident reached him, he saw long-term potential in the brash longshoreman. Louis Hartman offered to sponsor Zack to attend college, then bring him into management of the Hartman empire. He needed a lawyer whose allegiance was unquestioned but had the raw, aggressive spirit to tackle the burgeoning industrial world of Chicago.

Growing up, Zack lived with two other Polish families in a tenement apartment amidst the network of warehouses and stockyards that lined the docks. Louis came to the tenement to meet Zack’s parents and assure them he would not only pay Zack’s expenses at Yale, but also would provide a small stipend to the Kazmareks to compensate for the loss of Zack’s wages. His parents had been too proud to accept the stipend, but Zack pounced on the chance to attend college. After college, it was understood Zack would return to Chicago and work for Hartman.

With his new wealth, Zack was able to buy a fine townhouse where he invited his parents to live with him. They accepted his offer, even though his father refused to quit working on the docks.

“Can I loan you a carriage?” Louis asked. “It might be difficult to get a streetcar this late in the evening.”

It was true. They could probably still catch the last of the streetcars to the jail, but by the time Zack had secured his father’s release, they would be facing a long walk home. “I would appreciate that,” Zack said.

3

M
ollie lived in a three-room apartment above a greengrocer. It was a cozy home with two bedrooms, a parlor, and a sticky alcove window overlooking the city she loved. There was a pump in the main room to bring up fresh water, but no kitchen. Who needed a kitchen in a city where every street corner had vendors selling piping hot sausage rolls, fresh pretzels, and sauerkraut just as good as that made in Berlin? Anytime Mollie was hungry for fresh food, she could sprint downstairs and buy something from the greengrocer on the first floor.

It had been three years since her father had passed away, and his bedroom remained untouched. All his clothing, his papers, everything was exactly as it had been on that terrible morning she discovered him dead in his bed. Her valiant, brave father who’d founded a company, employed hundreds of men over the decades, and fought in the Civil War had died quietly in his sleep.

On the evening of Mr. Kazmarek’s stunning offer, Mollie entered her father’s untouched bedroom and began hauling out boxes of old papers, receipts, and records from over thirty years of the watch business. Frank lived in an apartment across the hall, but he joined her at the small parlor table while Mollie sorted through the paper work, reading aloud the first few
sentences of each document. Frank set up a system for organizing the papers into financial accounts, records of sale, and original cost basis.

“Do you think we can trust them?” Mollie asked. For a blind man, Frank had an astounding knack for reading people. Maybe it was his ability to sense tension in a voice, or maybe, as a man in his sixties, he had simply been on the planet long enough to understand the ways of the world better than she. Frank was a father, an advisor, and a friend all in one man.

“I don’t know them well enough to answer that,” he said. “You have a valuable company, and their price indicates they recognize that.”

“Do you think I should sell?”

Frank’s smile was sad. “I can’t tell you what to do, Mollie. This is your company, and you have a head for business as good as any man I have ever met. I think the price is fair, if that is what you are asking.” He shifted in his seat. “I am exhausted. What time is it?”

Mollie lifted the heavy gold watch from her skirt pocket. “Almost eight o’clock.” Mollie’s thumb caressed the dent in the watch’s cover before closing it. It had been her father’s watch; now it was her most precious keepsake. The dent in the cover was from flying shrapnel during those terrible days her father had been pinned against the side of that cliff with the rest of the 57th. Despite its dented cover and battered appearance, it still kept perfect time.

“I know that selling is the financially responsible thing to do,” she said, her thumb pressing into the dent in the watch cover. “But I worry about losing control. I worry they’ll tell me how to make my watches. Or make them cheaper. But my worst fear is they won’t like a one-armed enameler. Or a metal polisher with shaky hands.”

“Or a blind attorney.” Frank said the words without flinching, his head held high.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I worry about that most of all.”

Frank drew a heavy breath. “Mollie, the day I was blinded, I laid in the dirt not knowing if I was going to survive another hour. Once I knew I would make it, my greatest fear was that I would no longer have a purpose in this world. It is the fear of all crippled men, but your father did a great thing by making room for us at his company. He never pitied us, never lowered the bar. He expected an honest day of work from every man, and we gave it to him.” Frank leaned forward, his sightless eyes staring her straight in the face.

“Mollie! Don’t lower the bar for us. If you coddle us, we lose our manhood. We lose our pride, and that is the most precious thing any man can have. Pride is the builder of bridges. It is the architect of dreams and the tamer of storms. It makes us want to rise out of bed so we can find dragons to slay and damsels to rescue. As long as we have pride, we have the spark that will illuminate our lives for a thousand days.”

Mollie crossed to the window, gazing down at the streetlamps casting a warm glow through the avenue. Such brave words, but Frank was a strong man who could always rise to the challenges thrown in his path. Others weren’t as courageous, and it was her job to protect them. If she sold the company, Mr. Kazmarek might show up in his faultlessly tailored suit one morning and fire every veteran of the 57th, and she would be helpless to stop him. But if she didn’t sell, she would lose the Hartman contract and the entire company might go under.

Why couldn’t she keep operating the company as she always had? Right now, everything was perfect. They made spectacular watches, and their profits were healthy. If she had a magic wand, she would freeze the world exactly as it was at this very moment.
She had a home she loved and a company she adored. She lived in the most vibrant city in America, burgeoning with wealth, ambition, and the best of cultures from all over the world. This offer from Mr. Kazmarek threatened everything she held dear.

For above all else, Mollie feared anything that would bring change into her carefully crafted, perfect life.

Planning for the next season’s watches was one of Mollie’s favorite activities. On Thursday evening, when Alice and Ulysses suggested a visit to the Krause Biergarten to talk about upcoming designs, Mollie quickly agreed.

The workers of the 57th had been coming to the famous outdoor gathering spot ever since Mollie had been a child riding on her father’s shoulders. With dozens of long tables beneath the spreading branches of chestnut trees, throngs of working-class people gathered to listen to music, play chess, and savor the freshly made German sauerkraut and bratwurst. From the neighboring tables, Mollie heard people speaking German, Polish, and Italian, with plenty of Irish accents in the mix. Chicago was a melting pot with fresh waves of immigrants flooding in daily, and none more plentiful than the Germans who had brought the tradition of the outdoor Bavarian biergarten to America.

“The four hundredth birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus is coming up,” Ulysses said. “What do you say we design a commemorative watch celebrating the solar system, with a ruby in the middle of the watch cover to represent the sun, and gemstones surrounding it to represent the planets?”

Mollie’s brow wrinkled. For the most part, their commemorative watches sold well, but if gemstones were involved, the price soared, and they needed to be careful. “It sounds odd to me, but what do you think?” she asked Alice.

“I can make it beautiful,” she said, “although do you really think people care about Nicolaus Copernicus?”

Frank leaned forward. “Shh!” he said with a grin. “I hear a bunch of Poles at the table behind us. They are liable to go on a rampage if you insult their patron saint.”

Ulysses glanced over his shoulder at the group of Polish immigrants who were paying them no mind as they moved checkers across a game board, but Ulysses was never one to miss an opportunity. “Nicolaus Copernicus was a lion of a man,” he proclaimed in a full voice. “A Polish warrior who conquered the night sky armed with nothing but a telescope and the awesome power of his mind.” Bracing his crutch beneath his shoulder, Ulysses raised himself up on his one leg and raised his voice to echo over the crowd. “Like Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, Copernicus captured knowledge of the heavenly bodies and brought it down to mankind. The Copernican revolution will echo through the ages. He deserves to be commemorated in ruby, sapphire, and diamond.”

By now he had attracted the attention of the Polish men at the neighboring table, who raised their glasses and stamped their feet in praise. One of the Poles summoned a serving woman and whispered a few words. Moments later, the waitress wended her way through the tables to deliver pints of cider.

“From the gentlemen playing checkers,” the woman said as she set a mug before Ulysses, who grinned as he raised the pint to the group of Poles before taking a deep draught.

Mollie looked at Alice. “Draw up some designs, and I’ll do the cost estimates,” she said. “I’ll need a 30 percent return on investment to even consider it. I dread a repetition of my father’s disaster with the Queen Victoria watch.” No one needed a reminder of Silas Knox’s reckless venture to make a watch surrounded with twenty-five diamonds to celebrate the Queen’s
twenty-fifth jubilee. Mollie tried to stop him, saying no one in America would buy such an extravagant watch for a foreign monarch, and she had been correct. They had had to disassemble those watches and sell the diamonds back to the jeweler at a loss.

Her father was an atrocious businessman, but Mollie could usually rein in his more extravagant impulses. While other girls her age were being courted and finding husbands, Mollie trained wounded veterans in the art of watchmaking and devised ways to keep the company afloat. Not that she resented the work—she loved making watches and felt called to help these brave men find a new purpose in life. The entire company now rested on her shoulders. It was a precarious balancing act, and she dreaded any change or surprise that would jolt her out of the well-worn path she had created.

A gust of wind rustled through the trees, sending a cascade of autumn leaves swirling through the air. Normally it was chilly by October, but it had been unusually hot and dry all summer, which had extended into autumn. She was glad for the warm weather, which meant she could linger in the torch-lit garden with her friends. The only thing waiting for Mollie at home was isolation, worry, and doubt.

She couldn’t keep news of Hartman’s offer a secret from the Adairs. And once Ulysses and Alice had learned of the proposed sale, it had only taken a few hours before everyone knew of the offer from Hartman’s to buy the company.