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.

Chapter 2

~~ The day before the accident ~~

SOMETIMES brothers weren't exactly brothers.

It was a dry, light snow, nearly two inches deep, fluffy and vulnerable to the whim of the wind, but with enough substance for feet to leave tracks.

"Screw you, Willie."

Johnny followed behind Willie, making a single trail of footprints, pretending they were in a John Wayne western--two men climbing high into the woods at the base of the Rockies, the wind hollowing behind them like a pack of hungry wolves, with a band of renegade Apaches hot on their trail.

"Stick it to you too, Johnny."

Their footsteps squished in unison as the snow compressed beneath their feet.

"They're going to wise up." Willie looked back to check their pathway, each footprint almost a replica of the other. He scowled. Johnny Diamondis: smug, with that ever-present smile, a cockiness yearning to be wiped away with a quick handful of compact snow.

"Almost perfect," Johnny's smirk widened as he placed each foot carefully to correspond to the footprint in front of him.

"Aleki Bisniki has the hots for Johnny Diamondis," Willie Christoff hummed the words over and over through his coat collar he'd pulled-up to deflect the wind blowing straight in his face. Horace Mann High School loomed ahead, a collection of bleak wood and redbrick buildings that could pass for a state prison without the barbwire perimeter. Nonetheless, it was destined to be a good day; Willie felt it beneath the chill of his skin.

In four and a-half months--precisely one hundred and thirty-two days--they would be high school graduates and ready to begin a new era of indecision.

Willie slowed, allowing Johnny to leave the trail of footprints and step to his side. They joined and locked arms, each looking about, making certain that no one saw them linked together.

"How do you know?"

"Know what?"

"You know ... that she has the hots for me."

"I just know, don't ask for details. A fellow knows when a girl has it for another guy. You can see it in the way she sways her hips when she knows he's watching." Willie pulled his coat collar higher and squeezed a sly smile from thinning lips.

Johnny paused a moment as if there was an afterthought brewing. He blurted, "I'm still a virgin."

"Me, too," Willie answered without hesitation.

Once again they linked arms and turned into the wind, leaning like the prow of a ship coursing through stormy, uncharted waters.

Aleki brushed her dark brown hair into a tight bun, securing it with a comb. She pressed her lips together; a hint of pink bloomed as they parted. Not too much makeup, she thought to herself as she looked into her dresser mirror. Her father would not approve. He was strict that way.

Perhaps on this day Johnny Diamondis would take notice, maybe stop and talk to her between classes, or better yet, walk with her after school.

"I hear you, Momma. I'll be down in a minute," she shouted through the open doorway of her second floor bedroom. The room glowed bright with the morning sun, enhancing the hint-of-pink wall color and flowery curtains hanging neatly at the window. The room suited a Greek princess.

She took one last look in the mirror and liked what she saw. Though not at all vain, she knew she was attractive. She smiled and hurried downstairs.

"Good morning, Momma and Papa," she whispered as she joined them at the breakfast table. She poured herself a small bowl of Cornflakes. Milk and a hint of sugar followed.

"You eat like a bird," her momma said.

"A girl has to watch her figure," she replied, thinning her lips so the pink gloss was less apparent.

"You're going to be late for school again," her father scolded.

"Oh, Papa, you worry too much."

Her father's chest swelled with pride. She had seen that look often and heard him say that she was the spitting image of her grandmother, Caliopi, although she felt he overdid the comparison. Instead, she preferred to be compared with her second cousin, Cleo, on her mother's side.

"Are you coming home right after school or are you going to give us one of those made-up excuses again?" Her mother smiled.

"Excuses?" Her eyelids fluttered like wings of a bird fighting a strong wind. She smiled and pushed her bowl of half-finished Cornflakes aside. "Well, now that you've brought it up, I do have a ... a meeting after school. Future Teacher's of America."

"Why of America?" her mother asked. "Why not future teachers of Gary, Indiana."

"That's silly, Momma. They call it of 'America' just in case..."

Aleki glanced at the clock on the back panel of the stove, the second hand strutted with each passing second. "Have to go or I'll be late. A future teacher of America can't be late for school." She blew them a kiss, scooted out the front door, down the steps to the walkway, and slid into two inches of soft fluffy snow.

She took oversized steps toward the curb, her arms held out from her sides like airplane wings. The thin layer of ice beneath the wet snow was an icy lubricant: a blessing for the young with sleds, a curse for the elderly. She glanced to her left--her timing was perfect. Johnny Diamondis and Willie Christoff were less than a block away. She slowed and measured her steps in anticipation of a collision course.

Johnny took an abrupt left as if in the military.

"What the hell are you doing, Johnny?"

"I'm practicing."

Willie's face pruned as if he had bitten into a sour apple. "Get that crappy thought out of your brain. I ain't going into any army."

"Who asked you to?"

"I know the way you think, Johnny Diamondis. That's not for me. Papa says he can get me into the administrative office at Number One Works; he has connections with the supervisor. And if I take a few night courses at the university extension, I can work myself up to supervisor in just a few years."

"Ever hear of the draft, Willie?"

An instant frown followed. The draft. Guys at school whispered about it like it was a dirty word. "Yeah, I've heard of it, who hasn't."

"Well, when you're eighteen, you have to sign up for the draft, that means both you and me."

Willie's chin lifted, as if catching a scent. "It's her. She's walking toward us." His eyes focused on a small figure shuffling along about a block away. "It's Aleki."

Johnny tried not to look, but the temptation was too great. Even from this distance, he recognized her features: olive-toned skin, the classic Grecian nose, the large dark eyes that stood apart from an oversized scarf wrapped around her neck. There was a definite attraction he couldn't deny. She was a Greek princess.

As planned, the collision course worked to perfection. Aleki increased the length of her stride, approaching them almost in a slow trot as Johnny Diamondis and Willie Christoff closed at a right angle.

"Hi, Johnny," she fluted as they came within an arm's length of one another. She fluttered her eyelashes and pouted her lips.

She had almost made up her mind; Johnny was probably the one for her. After all, he was a shinning knight in armor, or more precisely, a handsome Greek gladiator. But, a girl should have options, just in case...

Chapter 3

~~ much later the same day ~~

"There was a bad accident at the Coke Plant loading dock," Michael Bisniki said as he took a sip of coffee. He drew in his cheeks and clicked the spoon nervously against the cup's edge. Lowering his head dejectedly, he stared at the steamy cloud rising, not certain if he should go on. It was a few minutes past midnight. He'd returned home after second-shift at the plant, drained of all energy. His eyes were misty, his voice gravely. "It was real bad."

"You mean dead bad," Theresa whispered so as not to awaken Aristotle and Aleki, who were asleep upstairs. She, too, had heard the factory whistle in the late afternoon as it shrieked above the row houses, making the window panes quiver and bringing worrying, womanly eyes peering out into the street. News of the tragedy had spread quickly, as it aways did following a tragedy.

"Stephano Kravas was a good boy," she added. "Just the other day, I visited with George and Martha at the grocery store and told them Stephano was a levende, a son any mother and father would be proud of. Maria hugged and thanked me, and politely asked how our Aleki was."

"It was an accident," he repeated. "Stephano was careless, a deadly mix of inexperience and youth."

Theresa busied her hands, cleaning the table of leftovers. "George and Maria wanted Aleki as a bride, you know."

"What the hell are you talking about, woman. They wanted Aleki? We're in America now, not back in Greece. Our daughter isn't for sale; those days of giving a preka we left far behind." His fist thundered onto the table, expressing his outrage. The coffee cup rattled, spilling the contents onto the saucer.

"Don't you talk to me that way!" she snapped back. She would not back down this time. "Sometimes I wish I had never left Kalymnos. It was a simpler life. I could have married a successful sponge diver with his own boat and a hired crew, you know. There was more than one levende who was interested in me." She sighed and lifted her chin, making certain her husband heard and saw her playacting.

"Instead, I fell in love with someone with good looks, but a restless spirit. And here I am in this God forsaken place they call Gary, Indiana, married to a steelworker, and waiting for the factory whistle to blow so I can wonder if he is the next one who won't be coming home."

Michael Bisniki shook his head. He wouldn't bother replying to those biting words he had heard so many times, for he knew it was no use. Theresa was headstrong, with set opinions. He trudged up the stairs to make certain Aristotle and Aleki were asleep before falling into a restless slumber.

Then, as a person of habit, he arose early the next morning, sat at the kitchen table facing the backyard, read last evening's Gary Tribune, drank black coffee, and chatted briefly with Aristole and Aleki before they left for school. He purposely failed to elaborate on Stephano's death, although he sensed concern in their eyes.

In the afternoon he planned to walk to Pete's Coffeehouse on 6th and Jefferson, where he would talk with Pete and Father Ted about the tragedy, briefly express his view as to the state of affairs, and afterwards catch the yellow transit to the factory in time for the start of the second-shift.

Chapter 4

He was a stranger, as out of place in Pete's Coffeehouse as would be a man wearing a suit and tie and shoveling zinc pellets into Number One open-hearth. His skin was pale white and his hair, golden blond, more in keeping with a Nordic skier than a Greek man sitting at the front table in Pete's Greek Coffeehouse. Even though the temperature hovered below freezing, with the wind gusting briskly off the lake, he wore a cut-off T-shirt beneath a light jacket that he had taken off and placed on the back of the chair. It brought attention to his muscular arms and especially to a prominent tattoo. His scruffy blond beard was in need of trimming.

Pete walked over and pretended to wipe the table clean with a damp cloth. "What can I do for you?"

"Hot chocolate."

Pete's shaggy eyebrows lifted and his brow furrowed. "Hot chocolate, is that what you said?" he asked with indignation.

"Yes, hot chocolate."

"This is a coffeehouse! I only serve coffee, Greek coffee. What is it that you really want?"

The white-skinned man looked about as if what he was about to say was not for everyone's ears. "I'm looking for a girl, Aleki Blonsli; I've been told that she works here."

"Aleki ... Aleki Blonsli ... never heard of her. But what do you want of this Aleki Bronsk?"

"Aleki Blonsli, not Bronsk. She's an acquaintance."

Pete sat down heavily across from him, pulling the chair tight up against the table, and tugged at his chin. "Acquaintance? What business would you want with a Greek girl?"

"Who said she is Greek," he replied, "and who is to say I'm not."

Pete was no fool; the blond man was up to no good. He felt it in his Greek bones. This was not a person who worked in the steel mill, who sweated blood. His hands were too clean; there was no grime beneath his fingernails. His hair was so clean it floated as if suspended by fingers of the wind. But on the other hand, his arms were muscular; he was not a person who sat at a desk and typed out reports or sold refrigerators and gas ranges at the Goldblatt appliance store at the intersection of 5th and Broadway.

They exchanged frozen stares. Pete brought his hand up to his chin and rubbed his overnight stubble. Something was going on; a Greek knew when something didn't quite fit.

Father Ted, absently sipped his coffee and wiped his brow with the edge of his shirtsleeve. It was times such as this that he questioned why he became a priest. It was an easy and routine matter for a priest to recite the liturgy on a Sunday morning, to perform the sacraments of marriage and baptism, even to perform the rites of burial on the old ... on those who had lived a long and fruitful life and had left a legacy. But to bury a young man not yet in the prime of life was a different matter. He foresaw Maria Kravas wailing, George thumping his fists against his chest like an enraged gorilla. It would test his faith.

He glanced across the room of the coffeehouse ... and focused on a table near the front. Pete was sitting across from a young man, a stranger Father Ted had not seen before. He observed a one-sided animated conversation with Pete's arms whirling in wide arcs as he often did when caught up in controversy. In contrast, the young man's hands were folded in his lap; he sat calmly.

"More coffee please, Pete," Father Ted shouted from across the room.

Pete looked up to acknowledge. Father Ted wasn't interested in a second cup--the coffee on the counter was now strong and bitter from steeping too long--rather he was interested in what was going on. He took note of the priest's prayer rope wrapped tightly around his wrist, almost as tight as a tourniquet. The edge of his mouth twitched.

"Be right there, Father," Pete shouted back.

Pete looked squarely at the young man. "I'll be right back with hot, black Greek coffee. I don't serve hot chocolate, not even hot tea; those things are for sissies. Then we'll talk."

With a dozen strides Pete reached the back of the coffeehouse, pulled up a chair, and quickly sat across from Father Ted.

"He's asking about Aleki Bisniki, Michael Bisniki's daughter," Pete whispered across the table.

"Are you sure?" Father Ted whispered back.

"Am I sure? Was I born yesterday?"

"What would a man like that want with a good Greek girl?" Father Ted asked.

"What all men want," Pete snapped.

Father Ted's brows met in a frown. Sex was a topic rarely discussed in the coffeehouse. Politics. Religion. Money. Vietnam. But sex?

"You mean...?"

"That's exactly what I mean, Father."

Father Ted responded with the sign of the cross, then glanced across the room to reaffirm that all of this was real.

"What should we do, Pete?"

"What any good Greek man would do," Pete replied. "Find out as much as we can."