Selected Shorts; At the Anarchists' Convention; Part 1; The Plan; Girl

We had our troubles, Heisei Brickman and I, but always I knew his heart was in the right place. Applause, tears and I sit down. It's a sentimental moment. Of course it isn't true. This is Selected Shorts, a celebration of the short story, a series of classic and contemporary pieces of short fiction read by some of the finest artists of the American theater. I'm Isaiah Sheffer, artistic director of Symphony Space in New York City, where these readings were staged and recorded for broadcast. The programs were produced for radio by WNYC New York Public Radio.

In the next hour, you'll hear stories by John Sayles, Edna O'Brien and Jamaica Kincaid, read by Jerry Stiller, Kate Nelligan and Harry Winston. Who selects the selections at Selected Shorts? Here's a story selected by our audience in a survey we were surprised to find many votes for a story by John Sayles, whom we knew as a filmmaker. He is, of course, the maker of such films as Brother from Another Planet, Return of the Secaucus Seven, and most recently made one. But his story at the Anarchist Convention was selected by our audience and is read by Jerry Stiller, who's been on Broadway recently, and David Rabe. Hurlyburly, as well as in the film, sees the day Hot Pursuit and Nadene Jerry Stiller reads John Sayles at the Anarchist Convention. Sophie calls to ask, am I going to the anarchist convention this year,

the year before last, I'm missing because Brickman, may he rest in peace, was on the committee and we were feuding, I think about the Soviet dissidents, but there was always something so hard to say. Then last year he was just calling in the grave and it would have looked bad. There's Leo Gold. They would have said come to gloat over Breckman. So I tell Sophie maybe depending on my hip. Rainy days, it's torture. There isn't a position. It doesn't up rainy days and election nights. But Sophie won't here know she still got the iron. Sophie knows I won't be caught dead on the senior shuttle, so she arranges a cab and says, But Leo, don't you want to see me? Been using that one for 50 years. Still works. We used to have it at the New York hotel before the Korean and as Jesus children moved in.

You see them on the streets peddling flowers, big smiles, cheeks glowing like Hitler Youth, high on the opiate of the people used to be The New Yorker had its doper's, its musicians that said sex and marginal types. We felt at home that. So this year, the committee books us with the change that our religious friends from Utah own their showpiece. They're on Central Park South, which kicks off the annual difficulty's. That's the bunch that killed Joe Hill, comes the cry, not to mention that monkey business with Howard Hughes and as well. And what about that stand on the blacks and the Indians? Personally, I think we should have it where we did the year the doormen were on strike should rent the union hall in Brooklyn. But who listens to me? So right off the bat, there's pink staff working up a petition and Weiss organizing account. The committee always with the factions and splinter

groups. Those do whatever drove the man to split the atom is the engine that rules their lives, not divide and conquer, but divide and subdivide. First thing in the lobby, we got whites passing a hand out on Brigham Young and the Mountain Meadows massacre, Leo Gold, I thought you were dead. It's a matter of days. You never learn to smile twice what spelling I point to the hand. Who's this Norman Norman hierarchy? Norman Elders. All this capitalization, it's cheap theatrics wise has to put on his glasses. That's not spelling, he says. That's typing, spelling. I'm fine. But these new machines. My granddaughter bought an electric. It's nice she lets you use it.

She doesn't know I sneak when she's at school. Next, there's the placard in the lobby. Welcome. Anarchists and the caricature of Bakunin, complete with sizzling bomb in hand. That Gross can still hold a pen is such a miracle. We have to indulge his alleged sense of humor every year. A malicious man gross. Like all cartoonists, grinning, watching the hotel lackies still in their little brown uniforms, wondering, is it a joke or not? Personally, I think it's in bad taste, the bomb throwing. But it's the enemy's job to ridicule, not ours. But who asks me? They set us loose in something called the Elizabethan rule. And it's a sorry sight, I have 400 old crackpots tiptoeing across the carpet, wondering how they got past the velvet ropes and into

the exhibit, that old fascination with the enemy's lair. They fit like fresh kishka on a silk sheet. Some woman I don't know is pinning everyone with name tags immediately, the ashtrays are full of them, pins bent by palsied fingers, nametags at the anarchist convention. Pearl is here and Bill Kinney in a fog and low, Randolph and Pink staff and Fine and Diamond tottering around, flashing his new storyboards that everyone personally wearing dentures. I would try to keep my mouth shut, but then I always did, Leo. We thought we lost you. They say not a word. It's two years. But you went just after Breckman rest his soul.

So you haven't quit yet. Leo, I tell them it's a matter of hours. And I look for Sophie. She's by Baker, the committee chairman this year, always the committee chairman. He's the only one with such a streak of masochism, Sophies by Baker. And there's no sign of her. Mr. Gillis. Oh, there's another one that makes the hip act up two or three times. I've seen the man since he set up housekeeping with Sophie. And every time I'm in pain, like an allergy only bone deep. It's not just his sepi from the word go. We all had our fling with the party and they have their point of view. But Gillis is the sort that didn't hop off of Joe Stalin's bandwagon till after it nosedived into the sewer. The deal with Berlin wasn't enough for Gillis or the purges? No, nor any of the other tidbits that started coming out from Reliable Sources. Not till the party announced officially that Joe was off the sainted list that Gillis catch a whiff and him with Sophie.

Now, maybe he's a good cook. She lights up when she sees me that smile after all these years, that smile and my knees a water. She hasn't gone the Mother Jones route, Sophie. No shawls and spectacles. She's nobody's granny on a candy box. She's thin, a strong, thin, not like diamonds and their eyes. They still stop your breath from across the room. Always there was such a crowd, such a crowd around Sophie. And always she made each one think he was at the head of the line. We. Leo, you came, I was afraid you'd be shy again, she hugs me and tells Becca that I'm like a brother, Sophie, who always rallied us after a beating, who bound our wounds or built our pride back up after shambles never faltered. A step the iron she had in Portland there shaving her head, but no wig for Sophie. She wore it like a badge and the fight

toe to toe with a fat Biloxi deputy head to head with a Hoboken wharf boss starting a near riot from a soapbox in Columbus Circle. But shaping it, turning it, stampeding all that anger and energy in the right direction. Still the iron and still the fire. And still, it's Leo. You're like a brother. Baker is smiling, his little pained smile, looking for someone to apologize to. Bloom is telling jokes. Vic Lewis has an aluminum walker after his stroke, and old Mrs. Axelrod, who knew Emma Goldman from the garment workers, is dozing in her chair. Somebody must be in charge of bringing the old woman with a mind the way it is because she never misses. She's a museum piece are linked to the past. Not that the rest of us qualify for the new left. But Odem is in one corner trying to work up a singalong 15 years younger than most here, a celebrity still with the denim open at the chest and the Greek sailor

cap. The voice is shot, though, with Harriott Foot and old Labor joining. They sound like the look for the union label. Folks on television determined but slightly off key. The younger kids aren't so big on board anymore, and the hootenanny generation has grown with other fish to fry kids. The room is full, crawling with little and girls in that tape recorders pestering people for oral history. A PR campaign by Mrs. Axelrod clicking on whenever she starts awake and modest, some Yiddish Sophi, who speaks, says she's raving about the Highness's breaking and shackles bouncing on the floors. Some shirt factory tangled in her mind gems. They think they're getting oral history gems. They are starting to be Rebekah's again, a little Bonnot girls and Sarah's ancestors after decades of Carol, Sally and Debbie.

The one who tapes me is a resolute, which was my mother's name. We're trying to preserve it, she says with a smile for an old man. What Yiddish? I don't speak. No, she says. Anarchism, the memories of anarchism now that it's served its dialectical purpose. You're a determinist she gives me a look. I think we never open the book. I don't tell her I've written a few. It would wouldn't make an impression. If it isn't on tape or film, it doesn't register. Put my name in the computer, you'll draw a blank Razorlight. I say, that's a pretty name. I learned it from an exchange student. I used to be Jodie. Dinner is called and there's confusion, there's just like everyone

wants near the platform, the ears aren't what they used to be. There is a seating plan with place cards set out, but nobody looks place cards at the anarchist convention. I managed to squeeze in next to Sophie, first on the agenda is fruit cup, then speeches, then dinner, then more speeches. Common Marcovicci wants us to go get our own fruit cups. It makes her uneasy, she says, being waited on people want they should go get up and get it themselves. A couple of minutes of mumble grumbled and someone points out that we'd be putting the two hotel lackeys in charge of the meal out of a job. It's agreed Belser. You could always reason with common, then Harriet Foot questions the grapes in the fruit cup. The boycott is over, we tell her grapes are fine,

in fact, grapes were always fine. It was the labor situation that was no good, not the fruit. Well, I'm not eating mine. She says blood pressure climbing toward the danger point, it would be this loyal, the wrath of the people. That's what Brickman used to call it in his articles and his harangues in his three hour walking diatribes. Harriet's still has it common and Weiss and Sophie and Bill on his clear days and Brickman had it to the very end. It's a wonderful quality, but when you're over 70 and haven't eaten since breakfast, it has its drawbacks. Baker speaks first, apologizing for the site and the hour and the weather and the Hundred Years War. He he congratulates the long travelers hold from L.A.

County, from Montana, Papis from Chicago, Mrs. Axelrod all the way from Yonkers. He apologizes that our next speaker, Mickey Dolan, won't be with us. He apologizes for not having time to prepare a eulogy. But it was so sudden, more mumble, grumble, this being the first we've heard about Mickey Sophia's crying, but she's not the sort you offer your shoulder to a reach for the Kleenex. If Steel had tears, Brigman used to say that their battle, spirit and Sophie, those two years together, 37 or 38, neither of them known as a compromise, both with healthy throwing arms once a month as a knocking at Sophie come to borrow more plates. I work for money at the movie house. I always had plates. The worst was when you wouldn't see either of them for a week. Phil Braff, who was living below them then, and you see him in Washington Square eight o'clock in the morning. Phil, who sleeps through the revolution itself, if it came before noon, I can't take it.

He'd say they're at it already in the morning. In the noon time at night, at least when they're fighting, the plaster doesn't fall less than two years. It lasted. But all of them of all of them, before and after it was Brickman left his mark on her. That hurts. But Odom is up next. His Wisconsin accent creeping toward Oklahoma, twanging on about good red blooded American men and women. And I get a terrible feeling he's going to break into the Ballad of Bob La Follette when war breaks out at the far end of the table. In the initial shuffle, Ali ZATZ was sitting down next to Fritz Grow. And it's fifteen minutes before the shock of recognition. Ali has lost all his hair from the X-ray treatments, and Fritz never had any more than ever. They look like twins, you, says Ali. You from the dockworkers and you're from that yellow rag. They haven't put you away from civilized people. They let you in here. You're an anarchist in the fullest definition of the word, which you wouldn't know.

What was the coloring book you wrote while at the tops of their voices in the manner of old lefties? What all in the manner we've always had them. The decibels full speed ahead. Baker would apologize, but he's not near enough to the microphone and Buduburam is just laughing. There's still something genuine about the boy, even if he does get all weepy. When you mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt, who let this crank in here, we've been infiltrated. Point of order. Point of order. What Ali is thinking about with point of order, I don't know. But the lady from the name tags gets them separated, gives each a Barnard girl to record their spellings about the others, something Fred said in a meeting, something Ali wrote about it centuries ago. We don't forget. Bud gets going again, and it seems that last year they weren't prepared with Brinkman's eulogy. So Bud will do the honors now. I feel I swiveling a little mudded chorus of Leo. Leo, Leo goes through the room.

Sophie? No, of course. And conned me into what she thought would be good for me once again. First, Bud goes into what a fighter Brickman was tells how he took on Union City, New Jersey single-handed about the time he organized an entire truckload of scabs with one speech turning them right around under the company's nose. He can still rouse an audience. But even with the pipes gone and soon they're popping up around the table with memories. Little Papis, we never thought would survive the beating. He took one May Day scuffle, little one eye, broken nose. Papis stands and tells of Brinkman's saving the mimeograph machine when they burned our office on 27 Street and Sam Kahn's ghost pale like the years in prison bleached. Even his blood is standing shaky with the word on Brinkman's last days, tubes running out of them, fluids dripping into him. Still, Breckman agitates with the hospital orderlies organizes

the cleaning staff. Then Sophie takes the floor talking about Spirit, how Brickman had it, how Brickman was it spirit of our cause, more spirit sometimes than judgment. And again, I feel the eyes here, the Leo, Leo, Leo. And there I am on my feet. We had our troubles. I say Brickman and I, but always I knew his heart was in the right place. Applause, tears and I sit down. It's a sentimental moment.

Of course it isn't true. If Brickman had a heart, it was a well-kept secret, he was a machine and express train flying the black flag, but it's a sentimental moment. The words come out, everybody's making nice. Then the old friendly juices flowing and Baker has to bring up business, a master of tact, a genius of timing of votes. Do we elect next year's committee before dinner or after? Why spoil dinner is one camp. Nobody would be left the way KAFTA says they are. Let's get it out of the way. They always started small. The report's a title, a phrase, a point of procedure. The Chicago fire began with a Spok. It pulls the scab off the old animosities.

The bickering has come back to the surface. One whole section of the table splits off into violent debate over the merits of syndicalism. Another form's affection for elections during dinner. Weiss wrestles Baker for the microphone and Sophie shakes her head sadly, why, why, why? Always they argue, she says. Always they fight. I could answer. I devoted half of one of my studies to it. But who asks? While the argument heats, another little girl comes over with. Used to be Jodi, she says, your LionGold. I confess the little gold. There's another. I read anarchism in the will to love. My one Turkey, and she's redit.

So you're the one. I didn't realize you were still alive. It's a matter of seconds. I'm feeling low, Bane's standing out in temples, old huts, straining this temper epidemic and the sound familiar, but with a new futa ledge, I've never been detached enough to recognize the sound so exactly before. It's a roar throated sound, a grating, insistent sound, a sound borne out of all the insults swallowed, the battle's lost out of all the smother dreams and desires. 3000 collective years of frustration in one room, turning inward a cancer of frustration. It's the sound of parents brawling with each other because they can't feed their kids, the sound of prisoners preying on each other because the gods are out of reach.

The sound of a terribly deep despair. No quiet desperation for us now while we have a voice left over one hour, it lasts the sniping, the shouting, the accusations that count, the charges. I want to eat. I want to go home. I want to cry. And then the hotel manager walks in a brown blazer, twenty dollar haircut and a smile. From here to the Odessa steps, a huddle at the platform. Baker and Mr. Manager bowing and scraping at each other. But Odom looking grim. Weiss turning colors. Sophie and I go up, followed by half the congregation. Nobody trusts to hear it second hand. I can sense the sweat breaking under that blazer when he sees us coming. Toothless now suspicious by habit ringing around

him. The Anarchists Convention a terrible mistake, useless. Oh my fault, he says. I'm awfully sorry, he says, but you'll have to move. Seems the Rotary Club, the Rotary Club from Sioux Falls had booked this room before us. Someone misread the calendar. They're out in the lobby eyeballing Bakunin, impatient, full of gin and boosterism. We have a nice room, a smaller room, cause the manager, we can set you up there in a jiffy, much less drafty than this room. I'm sure the older folks would feel more comfortable. I think it stinks, says Rosenthal. Every year, the committee treasurer, we paid cash. The room is ours. Rosenthal doesn't believe in checks. The less the Wall Street boys handle the money, he says, the cleaner it is. Who better to be a treasurer than a man who thinks gold is filth? That must be it, says Sölvi to the manager, you got your cash from us, you got the

money in the bank, you don't have to worry. The Rotary can cancel a check. So you're scared and maybe there's a little extra on the side. They give you a little folding green to clean out the riff raff. Sophie has in blushing, but he's going to the wire anyhow. Like Frick in the Homestead strike, shot, stomped and stabbed by Alexander Bachman, they patch him up and he finishes his day at the office. A gold star from Carnegie Capitalism's Finest Hour. You'll have to move, says the manager, dreams of corporate glory in his eyes, the smile hanging on to his face by its fingernails. It's the only way never, says Weiss. Out of the question, says Sophi, says Papis. Pappas saw his father lynched, Papis did three hard ones in Leavenworth, Papis lost his eye along in his profile to a mob in Chicago. He says it with conviction.

Pardon? A note of warning from Mr. Manager, he said, says Fritz Grobe, you heard him, echoes Ice. If you people won't cooperate, Huff's the manager condescending, rolling down like a thick mist. I'll have to call in the police. It sings through the room like that, twinge of a single nerve. Police, they're sending the police CHRISPIN staff go limp, krayzelburg Lewis knuckles white with excitement on his walka they can drag us out, mind the shovels, mind the shuttles grise old Mrs. Axelrod in Yiddish, sitting straight up in a chair. Ali Zaitz is on the phone to a newspaper friend.

The Bonnot girls are taping everything inside. Sophie is organizing us into squads and only Beike holding Weisse bodily allows Mr. Manager to escape the room in one piece where the anarchist convention nobody because nobody stalls or debates or splinters. We manage to turn the long table around by the door as a kind of a barricade. Stack the chairs together in a single line of defense. And create Mrs. Axelrod back out of harm's way. I stay close by Sophie, and once lugging the table, she turns and gives me that smile like a shot of adrenaline. I feel 50 again. Sophie, Sophie, it was always so good just to be at your side, and when the manager returns with his to be street cops to find us standing together

arm's length. Molaim held up out of their wheelchairs. The death joining from memory as martyrdom leaves us and we shall not be moved by hand in Sophie's sweaty palm, that a touch like the old days, I look at him in his brown blazer and think, Breckman, I think, my God, if Brickman was here, we'd show this bastard the right of the people. That was Jerry Stiller reading John Sayles story at the Anarchist Convention. You are listening to Selected Shorts, a celebration of the short story read and recorded

live in New York City.