Prologue

In Jersey City on September 21st, defending world middleweight champion Anthony Florian Zaleski, known as Tony Zale, the "Man of Steel," slumped onto the corner stool. Blood and sweat covered his face, tendrils of weary muscles mimicked legs. It was the end of round eleven of the world championship fight, 1948. By round twelve, he had succumbed to the sum of too many fists by the European champion, Marcel Cerdan. He fell to the canvas, his eyes glazed a steel-gray like his hometown of Gary, Indiana. He was no longer the middleweight champion of the world.

The Man of Steel never fought again following his defeat. A year later Cerdan was killed when his plane crashed on its journey to the United States for a championship match with the American champion, Jake LaMotta. Meanwhile, Tony Zale continued to live in Gary, Indiana, volunteering as a boxing instructor at the local YMCA, frequently mingling with and giving advice to the youth.

In Vietnam on May 7, 1954, the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu fell, and the French withdrew their troops south. It was the eighth year of a futile war, and two months later a formal ceasefire between the French and Viet Minh was negotiated at Geneva. Seventy-five thousand Frenchmen would never see their homeland again, and those who returned remained scared for life.

A few years later, the United States sent military advisors and the escalation began. Steel Town, Gary, Indiana, became a boomtown as ingots of steel were turned into the machinery of war, and the lakefront shimmered a fiery red, both day and night. Perpetual dark smoke, pluming from the factory smokestacks, joined the clouds.

Pete's Greek Coffeehouse in downtown Gary was just that--for Greeks. It was a place to sit and pass the time at small, square tables covered with just-wiped-clean checkered oilcloths. There, the men drank thick, dark coffee--coffee with a splash of ouzo added. They spoke in boisterous voices and pounded their fists against tabletops even though there were no arguments, for it was the Greek custom, the Greek way of expression.

In broken English they discussed serious things--what was happening in the world--praising past heroes, President Harry Truman, Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower and honoring President John F. Kennedy and the American flag. They drank ouzo without coffee and ate powdery kourambiethes that crumbled from their lips into pastry snowflakes as they talked of their sons and daughters and how the world was going to hell.

The talk of late focused on the impending steel strike, a lengthy strike that would test the will of the union and the mettle of immigrant steelworkers. This strike would extinguish the red glow of the lakeshore like a blown-out candle. When the inevitable occurred, Pete's Coffeehouse would become an even greater hub of social life, a place for idle steelworkers to pass the time and to reminisce.

Chapter 1

The city bordering Lake Michigan grew, a place where molten metal became the lava of mechanical volcanoes. It was a city born of necessity, vital to feed the machinery of both peace and war. Gary, Indiana in a few short years had become a mountain range of factories that spewed fire, creating eternal day. It was where Bessemer converters and the open-hearths glowed red with superheat, refining iron into steel. The steel ingots were sent to the Gary Works to be transformed into slabs and coils, then placed on rail flatbeds and eighteen-wheelers to be transported to distant places. Eventually, steel was shaped into beams for skyscrapers and bridges, plates for the hulls of super-fast destroyers knifing through the Sea of Saigon, and into M2 tanks that spit bullets of death.

Immigrants came eagerly to serve the factories. Serbs from small mountainous villages that nearly touched the clouds, Albanians from the rocky shores of the Adriatic, Italians from the toe of Italy, and Greek Islanders from Chios, Rhodes, Santorini, and Cyprus--men of steely conviction who immigrated for the promise of a better life.

Some were from the island of Kalymnos--former fishermen and divers, men who had explored the sandy bottom of the Aegean in search of sponges, individuals with strong legs and lungs. Now, they were men who no longer felt shifting sands beneath their feet, but rather the hard, non-yielding concrete of the factories.

Michael Bisniki was such a person, a shift-worker at Number Two Coke Plant, a man who spoke half-English, half-Greek at work but only Greek in his house. He was strong of will and very opinionated, as were most immigrants. A family man. Husband of Theresa and father to daughter, Aleki, and son, Aristotle. A man who attended church every Sunday and lit an extra candle in memory of his parents. He kissed the hand of Father Ted when he received holy bread and made it a point on weekends to drink Greek coffee and play gin rummy at Pete's Greek Coffeehouse, sometimes on weekdays as well. He was a man who listened rather than talked, but a man of vision, nevertheless.

It was in Pete's Coffeehouse that he sat, drank Greek coffee, and listened. He often shook his head at what he believed to be gossip, but nodded if he believed. He played cards with new and old friends, not for money, but to be sociable. The penalty to the loser: buying a round of coffee and a dish of Greek delicacies. Some pastries were so fragile and powdery that they crumbled at the slightest touch, while others were firm with walnuts and pecans sprinkled on top, all dutifully bound by a generous layer of honey.

The coffeehouse was the social center of the Greek immigrant world. A special place, a sanctuary where only men were permitted.

Father Ted sat to the back of the room, running his fingers through his prayer rope, twisting the woven dark fibers into a tight knot around his index finger like a cloth ring. As always, he was tense, his face twisting in an occasional grimace by an unpredictable tic that curled the corner of his mouth. On this Thursday afternoon, the second cup of mud-thick Greek coffee didn't help.

"Yasou, Father Ted," Pete, the owner the coffeehouse, shouted from behind the counter. His voice resonated with a deep melodic familiarity as he dunked shot glasses into lukewarm dishwater, lifted them out with his thumb and index finger, wiped them dry with a not-so-clean cloth, and placed them in a tidy row on the counter.

It was still early in the afternoon--almost, but not quite three. The first-shift steelworkers would be trickling in within the hour, but for the time being Pete's Coffeehouse was virtually empty except for Father Ted and Alexander Christakis, a crusty, eighty-year-old ex-steelworker with pewter gray eyes that needed thick lenses to read The Greek Orthodox Observer.

Mr. Alex, as most people called him, read aloud, his voice deep and gravely like broken pavement. Carefully turning the pages of the newspaper with his knobby fingers, he occasionally paused to offer a comment, sometimes pointing at Father Ted as if it were he who could cure the ills of the world.

Pete went about his business of sorting glasses, poured a cup of coffee for his own pleasure, and payed little attention to the old man, for the old man's mumblings were merely a sweet background of words, a sort of ancient Greek muse that was as much a part of the coffeehouse as the shroud of grayish cigarette smoke that hung like a cloud.

In an hour, factory whistles would blow from the Number One and Number Two open-hearths to signal a shift change--first-shift steelworkers replaced by the second-shift. Pete's Coffeehouse would fill to capacity as steelworkers sought a brief and needed respite, with Pete's register ringing a happy tune.

But on this day, the whistle blew early, a sound loud and penetrating that rattled a person's bones and brought a chill even to the most hardened of men. Pete lifted his eyes, pushed aside a pyramid of whiskey glasses, and looked at Father Ted. It was only fifteen past three; both knew what it meant. The prayer rope around Father Ted's finger unraveled. He pulled at it nervously and pursed his lips in prayer.

"It sounds like it's coming from Number One," Pete stated matter-of-factly. But it was anything but matter-of-fact. The last time the whistle blew, three good immigrant men died.