Unto the Sons by Gay Talese Page A

vibrating at top speed, the men would sometimes wilt and faint from prostration; and no doubt they sometimes wondered if the military life for which they had been found physically unfit could have been as taxing as their labors behind these enervating hulks of metal.
    There was one young man, however, who was more than a match for the machines. He was a tall, sinewy black man with an agile, bony face and lively eyes, and a shiny mass of wiry black bronze-tinted peroxided hair that he combed dramatically over his head back to the gaudy shoulders of the tropical shirts he always wore. He was called “Jet,” and he had come up from the South as a saxophone player with a jazz band before thewar; but he had been forced to quit after developing a tuberculous lung—which he claimed he was now slowly curing through the inhalation of steam and the snorting of white powder that he carried in a tiny bag in his shirt pocket.
    Although Jet was afflicted as well with severely infected feet—his toes were gnarled with carbuncles and corns that popped out under his socks through the leather straps of the sandals he even wore in winter—he was by far the most vigorous and productive employee in the store, pressing clothes faster and better than anybody else; and when his machine blew a gasket or otherwise fizzled out, he played with its valves and keys as with a musical instrument, and soon he and his steam machine were back in harmonious rhythm.
    Bedazzled by Jet and totally dependent on him, my father never complained about his loud radio that was tuned all day to a jazz station, and he pretended not to notice when Jet appeared at eight-thirty each morning, a half-hour late, or left an hour or two early, because Jet’s speed could always compensate for any temporary slowdown in the flow of the load of pressing.
    But on those days when Jet did not show up even by nine a.m. (as he was now doing with increased frequency), my worried father would put on his hat and coat, leave the shop through the back door, and begin his cautious stroll in the direction of the black ghetto, which was a largely dilapidated row of white shanties and small frame structures two blocks beyond the rear of the store, built along a stretch of railroad tracks within view of the bay.
    If it was a Saturday, the one day I worked full-time at the store, my father would insist that I accompany him, reasoning perhaps that the presence of a young boy would make his surveillance in a black area seem less officious, less foreboding or punitive. Since my father was never certain of Jet’s exact address, the latter constantly shifting from one rental space to another, we would begin arbitrarily at one of the places where Jet was known to have dwelled in the past, hoping that some tenant would provide a lead that would help my father locate his truant presser.
    But we often arrived so early in the neighborhood on Saturdays that we woke people up and irritated them so much that they told us nothing. One morning as my father stood on the loose boards of a rotting porch, tapping on the slats of a torn screen door and calling to Jet by name, an elderly woman wearing a bathrobe leaned out of an upstairs window and hurled down a metal pot at my father. Although it missed him, it causedsuch a clatter as it bounced off the sidewalk that the dogs barked in the house next door, and children began to cry, and a large black man from across the street abruptly opened his front door and glared.
    “Hey,” he said, after a pause, “what the hell you want?”
    “I’m looking for Jet,” my father replied.
    “Jet who? ” the man asked, challengingly.
    Surprised, confused, my father did not respond. Momentarily he held his breath. It had apparently occurred to him for the first time that he did not know Jet’s last name. The man across the street, his heavy arms folded, stood waiting; and I feared that he might leave his porch and come over to us. But as my father remained silent and