Devil in a Blue Dress

Chapter 9

Our team worked in a large hangar on the south side of the Santa Monica plant. I got there early, about 6 A.M., before the day shift began. I wanted to get to Benny, Benito Giacomo, before they started working.

Once Champion designed a new aircraft, either for the air force or for one of the airlines, they had a few teams build them for a while to get out the kinks in construction. Benito’s team would, for instance, put together the left wing and move it on to another group in charge of assembly for the entire aircraft. But instead of assembling the plane, a group of experts would go over our work with a magnifying glass to make sure that the procedures they set up for production were good.

It was an important job and all the men were proud to be on it, but Benito was so high-strung that whenever we had a new project he’d turn sour.

That’s really why he fired me.

I was coming off a hard shift, we had two men out with the flu, and I was tired. Benny wanted us to stay longer just to check out our work but I didn’t want any of it. I was tired and I knew that anything I looked at would have gotten a passing grade, so I said that we should wait until morning. The men listened to me. I wasn’t a team leader but Benny relied on me to set an example for others because I was such a good worker. But that was just a bad day. I needed sleep to do the job right and Benny didn’t trust me enough to hear that.

He told me that I had to work hard if I wanted to get the promotion we’d talked about; a promotion that would put me just a grade below Dupree.

I told him that I worked hard every day.

A job in a factory is an awful lot like working on a plantation in the South. The bosses see all the workers like they’re children, and everyone knows how lazy children are. So Benny thought he’d teach me a little something about responsibility because he was the boss and I was the child.

The white workers didn’t have a problem with that kind of treatment because they didn’t come from a place where men were always called boys. The white worker would have just said, “Sure, Benny, you called it right, but damn if I can see straight right now.” And Benny would have understood that. He would have laughed and realized how pushy he was being and offered to take Mr. Davenport, or whoever, out to drink a beer. But the Negro workers didn’t drink with Benny. We didn’t go to the same bars, we didn’t wink at the same girls.

What I should have done, if I wanted my job, was to stay, like he asked, and then come back early the next day to recheck the work. If I had told Benny I couldn’t see straight he would have told me to buy glasses.

So there i was at the mouth of the man-made cave of an airplane hangar. The sun wasn’t really up but everything was light. The large cement floor was empty except for a couple of trucks and a large tarp over the wing assembly. It felt good and familiar to be back there. No jazzy photographs of white girls anywhere, no strange white men with dead blue eyes. I was in a place of family men and workingmen who went home to their own houses at night and read the newspaper and watched Milton Berle.

“Easy!”

Dupree’s shout always sounded the same whether he was happy to see you or he was about to pull out his small-barreled pistol.

“Hey, Dupree!” I shouted.

“What you say to Coretta, man?” he asked as he came up to me.

“Nuthin’, nuthin’ at all. What you mean?”

“Well, either you said sumpin’ or I got bad breath because she tore out yesterday mornin’ an’ I ain’t seen’er since.”

“What?”

“Yeah! She fixed me some breakfast an’ then said she had some business so she’d see me fo’ dinner and that’s the last I seen of’er.”

“She din’t come home?”

“Nope. You know I come in an’ burnt some pork chops to make up for the night before but she din’t come in.”

Dupree had a couple of inches on me and he was built like Joppy when Joppy was still a boxer. He was hovering over me and I could feel the violence come off of him in waves.

“No, man, I didn’t say a thing. We put you in the bed, then she gave me a drink and I went home. That’s all.”

“Then where is she?” he demanded.

“How you expect me t’know? You know Coretta. She likes to keep her secrets. Maybe she’s with her auntie out in Compton. She could be in Reno.”

Dupree relaxed a little and laughed. “You prob’ly right, Easy. Coretta hear them slot machines goin’ an’ she leave her own momma.”

He slapped me on the back and laughed again.

I swore to myself that I’d never look at another man’s woman. I’ve taken that pledge many times since then.

“Rawlins,” came a voice from the small office at the back of the hangar.

“There you go,” Dupree said.

I walked toward the man who had called me. The office he stood before was a prefabricated green shell, more like a tent than a room. Benny kept his desk in there and only went in himself to meet with the bosses or to fire one of the men. He called me in there four days before to tell me that Champion couldn’t use men that didn’t give “a little extra.”

“Mr. Giacomo,” I said. We shook but there was no friendliness in it.

Benny was shorter than I but he had broad shoulders and big hands. His salt-and-pepper hair had once been jet black and his skin color was darker than many mulattos I’d known. But Benny was a white man and I was a Negro. He wanted me to work hard for him and he needed me to be grateful that he allowed me to work at all. His eyes were close-set so he looked intent. His shoulders were slightly hunched, which made him seem like an advancing boxer.

“Easy,” he said.

We went into the shell and he pointed at a chair. He took a seat behind the desk, kicked his foot up on it, and lit a cigarette.

“Dupree says that you want back on the job, Easy.”

I was thinking that Benny probably had a bottle of rye in the bottom drawer of his desk.

“Sure, Mr. Giacomo, you know I need this job to eat.” I concentrated on keeping my head erect. I wasn’t going to bow down to him.

“Well, you know that when you fire somebody you have to stick to your guns. The men might get to thinkin’ that I’m weak if I take you back.”

“So what am I doin’ here?” I said to his face.

He leaned farther back in his chair and hunched his large shoulders. “You tell me.”

“Dupree said that you would give me my job back.”

“I don’t know who gave him the authority to say that. All I said was that I’d be glad to talk to you if you had something to say. Do you have something to say?”

I tried to think about what Benny wanted. I tried to think of how I could save face and still kiss his ass. But all I could really think about was that other office and that other white man. DeWitt Albright had his bottle and his gun right out there in plain view. When he asked me what I had to say I told him; I might have been a little nervous, but I told him anyway. Benny didn’t care about what I had to say. He needed all his children to kneel down and let him be the boss. He wasn’t a businessman, he was a plantation boss; a slaver.

“Well, Easy?”

“I want my job back, Mr. Giacomo. I need to work and I do a good job.”

“Is that all?”

“No, that’s not all. I need money so that I can pay my mortgage and eat. I need a house to live in and a place to raise children. I need to buy clothes so I can go to the pool hall and to church…”

Benny put his feet down and made to rise. “I have to get back to my job, Easy…”

“That’s Mr. Rawlins!” I said as I rose to meet him. “You don’t’ have to give me my job back but you have got to treat me with respect.”

“Excuse me,” he said. He made to go past me but I was blocking his way.

“I said, you have got to treat me with respect. Now I call you Mr. Giacomo because that’s your name. You’re no friend to me and I got no reason to be disrespectful and call you by your first name.” I pointed at my chest. “My name is Mr. Rawlins.”

He balled his fists and looked down at my chest the way a fighter does. But I think he heard the quaver in my voice. He knew that one or two of us would be broken up if he tried to go through me. And who knows? Maybe he realized that he was in the wrong.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rawlins.” He smiled at me. “But there are no openings right now. Maybe you could come back in a few months, when production on the new fighter line begins.”

With that he motioned for me to leave his office. I went without another word.

I looked around for Dupree but he was nowhere to be seen, not even at his station. That surprised me but I was too happy to worry about him. My chest was heaving and I felt as if I wanted to laugh out loud. My bills were paid and it felt good to have stood up for myself. I had a notion of freedom when I walked out to my car.