In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A few days later, William Fox summoned me to his office for a scolding. He was angry because a cameraman from the features department had gone out to the Ford Motor Company in Michigan to get footage of an assembly line. I secured the permissions for that shoot, a mistake given Mr. Fox’s feelings about Henry Ford, who published anti-Semitic diatribes in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. There was overt anti-Semitism everywhere in America. We took for granted that some hotels wouldn’t let us in, some neighborhoods wouldn’t sell us a house, some clubs wouldn’t let us join, most colleges would accept only a few of us, many law firms would never hire us. Bigotry was all over the place, but we just got around it as best we could and set up our own clubs, colleges and banks.
Sitting behind his desk hunched over ledger books, Mr. Fox didn’t look up. Shades drawn, he wrote by the light of a gooseneck lamp and chewed on the stump of a cigar. I stood uncomfortably before him in air thick with smoke. Siddown.” Then he continued doing his paperwork as if I was not there. When he lifted his hooded eyes, he shone them into mine. Explain yourself,” he said.
“It was a mistake, sir.” I sat there with my eyes on my shoes thinking any minute this torture would end. All I had to do was not say anything, just wait it out, but it went on and on, until I began to wonder if he’d gone back to his ledger books, so I looked up. His eye caught mine. “The Fox Film Corporation is my company. I have built it block by block from the workings of my imagination. If you put together all the executives who work for William Fox and ask them what to do next, they could not begin to fathom the depth of what is necessary to succeed. I am accused of running a one-man operation. This is true. I do. Now you send Fox News to Henry Ford’s place of business to commemorate a product that brings in the money that allows him to say mean and dirty things against an entire race of human beings. He took his eyes away, re-lit his cigar stump and kept it in his mouth as he spoke. “Henry Ford is waging an anti-Semitic campaign through the pages of the Dearborn Independent. He is telling farmers that there is a conspiracy of Jewish bankers who wish to take away their farms.”
 I understand your feelings, I said, and regret sending our cameraman there.”
“Our? My cameramen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Understand the difference. I am Fox. The trucks that were at his car factory said ‘Fox.’ I was at his factory.”
      A knock on the door and Faye poked her head in. Your grandson is here, Mr. Fox. A pudgy boy of seven or eight ran through the door dressed as a miniature military cadet but stopped short, seeing that his grandfather had company. Under the brim of a cadets cap was a clouded face. Mr. Fox held his good arm out to the boy as if happy to see him but that gesture was too late because annoyance had swept over his face when the boy came in. The boy walked reluctantly to him. Mr. Fox said, Grandma didnt tell me you were going to visit.
    “It smells in here.”
     To Faye, Get the trains.” Mr. Fox drummed his fingers. The boy looked at me with a mixture of interest and resentment.
    Faye returned quickly with a carton and said, Mrs. Fox said she will pick him up in an hour. She set the box down on the conference table. The child ran in a klutzy way to the table, climbed on the chair and sat on his knees taking out pieces of track, a locomotive and freight cars. He set up a train depot while whispering the dialogue of his play.
Mr. Fox said, “Ford is circulating pamphlets entitled The International Jew. His intention is to set the whole word against us. He sees there is straw in every country, and he wants to drop the match. All the words in the world will not put out that conflagration.
It is my intention, Mr. Fox, I said, to scrap all the permissions. But I dont know how well undo the impression that Fox News supports Fords activities. His employees saw our trucks and cameras.
We heard choo choo choo and the childs whispered voice, the tinkle of a miniature bell and the clack of a miniature gate.
“Here is what I did, Mr. Fox said, raising his eyebrows in a flick of self-congratulation. When I learned that Fox News trucks were on the Ford premises…” The intercom on his desk buzzed and Fayes staticky voice announced, Telephone call from the Coast. He picked up his telephone: “Go on, Sol. He listened, chewing his cigar, his chair swiveled away from me. I have a complete understanding of what you want. He listened more. I have made changes to the story. We build up the man to a big height of power and influence so that when he does fall, his fall will be a direct contrast, and a tremendous lesson will be taught by the story. Mr. Fox listened for a while and said, I will decide on the salaries to be paid. He hung up. 
Grandpa, the little boy said, wheres the caboose?
The phone call had put Mr. Fox into a reverie, so it took a moment for the boy’s words to penetrate. Its in there.

No, it isnt.
No one has taken your caboose. Look harder.
I did look harder.
Go ask the secretary. The boy got down from the chair and went out. Mr. Fox ignored me and began to write something. I didn’t know whether to get up and go out or just sit there and wait. The door opened, and his grandson came back. “Grandpa, she doesnt have it. He walked across the Oriental carpet and stood next to Mr. Fox in his cadet uniform and cap—a soft, pallid little boy, more like a lapdog than a soldier.
Play without it.
I dont want to play without it.
What do you want me to do about it? I dont have it.
But I need it.
Mr. Fox got up from his chair. He took the boys hand and led him back to the conference table. Make a game without the caboose. Put this car next to the silver car. Pretend this is a train without a caboose.”

The child was making choo choo sounds again as Mr. Fox sat down across from me at his desk. He ground his cigar stump into an ashtray in a fastidious way so not one speck of ash got on the desk, took another cigar from the humidor on his desk, clipped the ends, lit it and stared at the edge of my face. “When I learned that Fox News trucks were on the Ford premises, I personally phoned Henry Ford and spoke to Henry Ford on the telephone. Here is what Mr. William Fox said to Mr. Henry Ford. I said if Mr. Ford does not stop his attacks against the Jewish people, I will include in my biweekly newsreels the results of every accident involving a Ford car.     
A loud thud washed his face with alarm, and I turned to see the child on the floor twitching, his legs in the air. His eyes were pinched, his whole body jerked as if electrocuted, and he moaned as if some invisible demon was saying intolerable things to him. Mr. Fox hurried across the room and stood above the boy looking down. Nothing helps, he said, seeing that I was about to run for help. Just plays itself out.
Wont he swallow his tongue, sir?

No, he said. The seizure propelled the little body a few inches across the floor, and his legs lowered. The sounds that came from the child were heartbreaking. He was a closed system, a locked vault, teeth clenched, everything held impossibly tight. It was a shock to see urine come out and leave a puddle on the carpet the size of a saucer. He loses his bladder, Mr. Fox said. I was sickened and fascinated. At last, the dybbuk released the boy, and he opened his eyes and looked around as if just waking up from a nap, groggy. He focused on his military hat and said, Grandpa, I need my hat. They get mad when I forget my hat.
Mr. Fox called, Faye! She came to the door and looked in. Clean this up.
Faye held her hand out to the boy, led him to Mr. Foxs private bathroom at the other end of the office, closed the door, and we heard water from the faucet. Faye came out, closed the door quickly to preserve the childs privacy, went to a credenza on one side of the room, opened a drawer, took out some small clothes and carried them into the bathroom.
     Well, sir, I said, I think its time for me...
Siddown, he said and walked in a painfully erect way back to his desk. Anti-Semitism,” he said when we were seated opposite each other, “is rampant throughout the country. It behooves every man, woman and child who has the blood of a Jew running through their veins to stand firmly together.” But the heart had gone out of his diatribe. He stood up, paralyzed hand in his pocket, walked to the window, pulled the shade back and gazed down on Tenth Avenue.
The little boy came out of the bathroom in clean trousers that did not match his military school jacket and went back to the table to continue playing with his trains. Faye carried the soiled clothes out of the office and closed the door, not in a gentle way that would have said something about the sympathy she felt, not in an angry way that would have said something about her idea of the proper parameters of her job, but in a perfunctory way as if nothing had happened. Mr. Fox continued to stare out the window. The sight of the child convulsing had sickened, frightened and confused me. Everyone at the office knew that Mr. Fox had a grandson he sent to military school to fool a kidnapper who had threatened the child. Kidnapping was on everybody’s mind because Charles Lindbergh’s son had been kidnapped and murdered. Mr. Fox bragged that he was clever to think of putting his grandson into a uniform so he’d be indistinguishable from the other cadets and the kidnapper wouldn’t know which boy to snatch.  But I never imagined the boy to be so young and afflicted. I wanted to say, Take him home, Mr. Fox. Don’t abandon him among strangers. When I glanced back, Mr. Fox was still staring out the window.  He had shut himself away from me thoroughly. He was not a man who asked for help or received comfort from others. I couldn’t help but compare him there, holding still like some bird with camouflage feathers who doesn’t even know you’re looking at it, with Louie who would have talked to almost everyone about an afflicted grandson if he had one. It would comfort Louie to sorrow out loud and turn the problem into something dramatic that he could act out. Before I opened the office door to go quietly out, I peeked at the child, a little pudge just about the same age I was when I’d been yanked from everything I knew. I wanted to tell him things would get better and he’d be okay. But I didn’t say anything. I just opened the office door and went out, leaving the little wreck by the side of the road.