Albright laughed for the second time that night.
Then he let me go and said goodbye.
0ur 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 of 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 working men 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.
