Stress (8 page)

Postwar prosperity was especially kind to Detroit and those companies that had transformed it into the Arsenal of Democracy. Rolling fat on government allocations, the automobile industry re-geared its factories for a generation of returning veterans and their families. On the occasion of their son’s twenty-first birthday in 1947, Cornelia petitioned Harlan to place Abner on the board of directors. The old man demurred. In his middle seventies, gaunt, blind, and absentminded, Harlan held that a man like Brennan who had grown up with the industry was better qualified to direct the company than a son who lacked both experience and the Crownover blood. Further argument only strengthened his resolve. Since he had learned from Abner II’s mistake, controlling interest—and the decision as to who would mind the store—remained with him. Months would pass, and a suit pressed by Cornelia to have Harlan declared mentally incompetent to direct his business affairs, before he relented. Henry Ford was dead. The patriarchal system of commerce Harlan’s grandfather had created nearly a century earlier was defunct, its place taken by a corporate ant heap with its swarms of faceless cyphers in gray suits. He had neither the strength nor the will to fight it any longer. In his spidery, old-fashioned hand he signed his name to a document releasing his proxy to Cornelia. Brennan resigned the next morning, and on the morning after that Abner Crownover IV, displaying the black armband he would wear to his father’s funeral that afternoon, took his place behind the president’s desk.

The irony was, the old man was right. Snapped up by General Motors, Frank Brennan took over the Buick Division, which quickly outsold the corporation’s other four divisions combined. Abner, following a brief and desultory period of indoctrination, began to spend most of his time in his box at Briggs Stadium, cheering on the Tigers, of whom he became a part owner in 1961. Eager young executives soon learned that an investment of fifteen minutes with the box scores in the
Free Press
sports section each morning paid off better in encounters with their employer than two hours with Dow Jones. Older colleagues called him “L’il Abner” behind his back and updated their resumes.

This weakness at the top did not pass unnoticed outside the company: One who took note was Roger Gashawk. Preferring to be addressed as Sir Roger—despite the confiscation of the family baronetcy by the British monarchy—this sixty-year-old owner of a Chelsea perfumery came to the United States in 1952 with his two grown sons and a stupendous claim: He was the great-grandson of Abner Crownover I and Abner’s English wife. At a press conference on the steps of Detroit City Hall, Gashawk announced that because his mother’s grandfather had failed to obtain a divorce before taking a new mate, the American marriage had no basis in law, rendering all of Abner’s U.S. descendants illegitimate; therefore, on behalf of himself and his sons, Sir Roger had filed suit in Probate Court to secure majority ownership of Crownover Coaches and all personal properties currently in the possession of the Crownover family.

This was a serious threat. When an army of genealogists retained by the Crownovers’ private counsel were unable to discredit Gashawk’s assertions, a distraught Abner IV turned for advice to his mother. But that old lady declined, wishing only to be left to her duties as caretaker of the mansion in Grosse Pointe: In that role she would approach her centenary, donning a powder-blue dress and frothy jabot to conduct the local television audience on a tour of the last stately home associated with Detroit’s auto-pioneering past.

Rescue came from an unexpected source. Abner’s sister Caryn, best known in area society for her patronage of the arts, arranged a meeting with Gashawk at the Book-Cadillac Hotel, where after some argument she persuaded the attorneys to leave the room and emerged ninety minutes later to announce a compromise: In return for abandoning a litigation guaranteed to run many years and exhaust the war chests of both camps, Sir Roger and his sons would sit-on the board of directors and accept joint ownership of a block of shares in Crownover Coaches equal to Abner’s. This kept control of the company in the American branch of the family while dividing the responsibility of operation between the indifferent U.S. heir and the more attentive Gashawks, who had bought a bankrupt English perfume distillery and made it a player in the cutthroat European market. Both sides benefited.

Caryn, wed recently to a successful young investment counselor named Ted Ogden, had as a child quickly mastered the rudiments of
Swan Lake
and the Steinway in the conservatory at The Oaks while eavesdropping on her brother’s business management lessons in the library across the hall. What she learned, combined with a gift for strategy, had proven valuable to her husband during late-night conversations in the master bedroom of their large airy house on Lake St. Clair, and impressed shrewd old Sir Roger at the Book-Cadillac. Mutual acquaintances of Caryn and her brother thought it a cruel trick of gender that Abner should have inherited the orb and scepter while her talents were squandered on hundred-dollar-a-plate dinners to support the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

She, however, was sanguine. When late in the 1960s her shrink—a pinch-faced woman several years Caryn’s junior with the look of a bra-burner about her—suggested she drank heavily to compensate for being forced to stifle her natural abilities, she considered the explanation; but the truth was she had been adopted into a family of imbibers. Her father had fueled himself on boilermakers from his days on the loading dock until he died of a cerebral hemorrhage thirty minutes after signing over his proxy to her mother, and no small amount of the champagne that flowed so freely all through Prohibition at the huge white elephant of a house down the street had found its way into Cornelia’s long-stemmed glass. No, Caryn’s habit was strictly recreational. She had experienced no withdrawal symptoms during her pregnancy, when her obstetricians had placed the Fear of Deformity in her regarding the evils of alcohol in gestation. And she envied no man. Little Opal, a surprise gift at age thirty-nine to a woman whose husband’s sperm count had been pronounced borderline hopeless, was compensation enough for anyone. Abner had his baseball team, Cornelia her mausoleum, Robin and Cedric Gashawk their late father’s legacy. Caryn had her daughter. And she didn’t have to worry about the Japanese.

It had been a comfort that Opal had missed the shootings New Year’s Eve. Sobered instantly, her mother had flown to the child’s bedroom as soon as things cleared and wept grateful tears to find her sleeping quietly with both arms wrapped around her big Snoopy doll. A new security system involving intercoms and invisible lasers had gone in the next day, and hang double time for the holiday labor. She’d hoped all that “Murder City” horror stopped at Eight Mile Road. Now she was contemplating taking Opal to the house in Palm Beach two weeks early. Ted could join them there after his January meetings were finished.

Caryn was seated in the bay window looking out on the frozen lake, nursing her first highball of the afternoon, when the governess came in holding Opal’s hand. The six-year-old was wearing the emerald dress Caryn had chosen to go with her red hair. Her large eyes and small sharp face had come from Ted, but she owed that bright copper top to her mother. Caryn kissed her and trilled over how pretty she looked and checked her platinum watch and declared they were late for their visit with Grandmama—not that time meant anything to the ancient woman wandering among her lacquered chests and two-hundred-year-old stopped clocks—and helped the governess get her into her little white suede coat and fur hat and boots. Looking at the result, Caryn wondered why any woman would choose a lifetime of work over five minutes of motherhood. She finished her drink, called down for the Lincoln, and fixed another while she was waiting.

As the gunmetal stretch swept out of the cul-de-sac with the snowy-haired chauffeur at the wheel, Wolf swung down his sun visor, obscuring his face. He had parked the blue Duster behind a delivery van by the curb and slid into the passenger’s seat, where anyone who saw him would assume he was waiting for the driver to return and waste no time on him. In a black felt coat with his long hair gathered inside a Giants cap he looked older, and more Italian than Indian. He had gotten only a brief glimpse of the little girl before her mother bundled her into the limo’s back seat and climbed in after, but he was pretty sure he would recognize the red haired tyke when he saw her again.

Before starting the motor, he read his rubberized scuba diver’s watch and noted the time in the pad beside him on the seat. When he flipped it shut, the Indian in full feathered headdress on the cover scowled at him. Big Chief tablet. Wilson’s little joke.

H
ALF ASLEEP,
C
HARLIE
B
ATTLE GROPED UNDER HIS
grandmother’s silk counterpane, found one of Thea’s breasts, and grazed the nipple with the ball of his thumb until it became as firm as a rubber eraser. She mewed and slid a hand down his stomach to his genitals, where her fingers seemed to wake up and apply themselves. Soon he was on top of her and sliding inside.

Suddenly she caught her breath. Battle opened his eyes and saw his wife’s pupils glittering in the moonlight reflecting off the snow outside the window. He stopped moving. “Charlie, I think your uncle’s up.”

“So what? So am I.” He resumed his rhythm.

She placed a palm against his chest. “You’d better check on him. I can hear him moving around.”

He said shit, rolled off her and out from under the spread, found his robe and slippers, and put them on. In the livingroom he snapped on the overhead light and tapped on the door to his uncle’s bedroom. “Anthony, you all right?”

There was no answer from inside, only the sound of a drawer closing and another one opening. He tapped again, then tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He opened it.

The bedside lamp was on. Anthony Battle, big and bulky and naked, the way he’d slept for as long as his nephew could remember, was on his knees in front of the chipped dresser Thea had found at a garage sale on Livernois, rummaging inside the bottom drawer with both hands. He needed a trip to the barber. Charlie noticed for the first time that his uncle’s shaggy hair was almost all white. The skin of his buttocks hung like wrinkled bunting. Charlie asked him what he was looking for.

“Boy, you been playing with my lucky trunks? I’m gonna paddle your ass you done went and lost them. I gots a bout with Leaping Larry Shane today. That white motherfucker can stand right in front of you and kick you in the chin with both feet.”

“Larry Shane’s dead, Unc. He got killed in a car crash ten years ago. We went to his funeral, remember? Anyway, you’re retired now. No more bouts for you. Why don’t you go back to bed?”

“What you talking about, retired? When I retire I’m taking the game with me.”

The room was chilly. Battle walked over and closed the window. The old man insisted on sleeping with it open. It was five degrees outside and the heat was always coming on. Their landlord had threatened to raise their rent, either that or make them pay utilities, which was just as bad. A police officer’s pay, together with what Thea made working part-time for a company that provided temporary office help, barely covered their rent and groceries and automobile maintenance. You couldn’t live in Detroit without a car: That was the whole
point
of the Motor City, for chrissake.

He found Anthony’s robe in the closet and draped it over the old man’s shoulders, helping him to his feet. “That’s just what you did, Unc; took the game with you. When was the last time you were able to find professional wrestling on
any
channel, even those ghosty UHF jobs you have to twist the rabbit ears and hang tinfoil all over them to get? I think when Battling Anthony Battle hung up his trunks they just figured what’s the use and said bring on the game shows. You know, like on
Bonanza
after Hoss died.”

“Hoss ain’t dead. I seen him just today.”

“That was a rerun.” All the time he spoke, Battle was gently turning his uncle and guiding him toward the bed. The portable TV on the cart in front of the Strat-O-Lounger was on, with the sound turned down: George McGovern’s beaten-sheep face wearing earphones, probably rebutting whatever Nixon had had to say about Watergate that evening.

No wonder the old man had decided to withdraw.

Once he had him in bed, Battle covered him to his chin with the top sheet, nylon thermal blanket, and quilted spread. When he leaned down to kiss his uncle good night, Anthony was already snoring. Battle had always admired that ability to drop off instantly; a requirement of the old wrestling circuit with its long rides in broken-down buses, more often than not conducted directly from one arena to the next with no time to stop at whatever fleatrap hotel the Guild had lined up for its precious natural resources that evening. The trick would have come in handy when Battle was studying for his twelfth-week exams at the academy.

When he reached out to turn off the TV set, McGovern was gone. In his place was the brutal chiseled face of Quincy Springfield, chairman of the American Ethiopian Congress. On the wall behind him hung the organization’s colors, a conglomeration of someone’s idea of the flag of Ethiopia and the ebony-fist emblem of the Black Power movement. Battle wondered wearily if America would ever move beyond the sixties.

He flipped off the knob, went out into the living room, and switched on the console set Thea’s parents had given them at their wedding reception, keeping the sound low to avoid disturbing his uncle. The color tubes were unkind to the garish flag and Springfield’s preference for electric-blue suits. The reformed numbers boss’s tailoring had yet to catch up with his raised social conscience.

“…no longer tip our hats and shuffle aside to give the white man the sidewalk,” he was saying. “We
poured
the sidewalk. We
sweep
the sidewalk. Five and one-half years ago, we painted the sidewalk with our blood. We
own
the sidewalk!”