The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 2 January 2013.
Arthur was more like his mother.
His dad died when Arthur was very young so he barely knew him, but even still, everyone loved Will for being like his dad and everyone loved Arthur for being like his mother. While Will was out roughnecking it, Arthur followed his mother around town. They went to mass every day, then went around making Hamtramck a beautiful place. They planted flowers, took meals to shut ins, brought neighbors cookies, babysat for free or slipped money to people who were down on their luck and helped them find work. The boys in the neighborhood flocked to Will; the girls flocked to Arthur. When their pets were sick, Arthur would pray over the animals and lay hands on them and they would be all better. They loved to hear him tell stories of The Sweet World...a garden of delights he could go to in his mind where a beautiful woman taught him songs, played games with him, prayed with him, and showed him her baby. Arthur got the nickname "Saint Arthur."
Arthur had a very happy early childhood, but things got bad for him in middle school. The sixties were rough times for Detroit and, in the years following Stan's death, people forgot all the good things the Witkowskis had done for the community and started to resent their comfort. Stan's brother-in-law Anthony didn't have the same touch with the workers as Stan had, and Will frequently found himself having to straighten out conflicts in the company. A round of lay-offs followed the '67 riots as businesses pulled out of the area, and, even though Anthony and Will managed not to let anybody go, people blamed Witkowski and Sons for not hiring during a time of such high unemployment. Stan, they said, would have hired them. A lot of the community resentment fell on Saint Arthur: as his classmates' parents complained about the Witkowskis at the dinner table, his classmates felt justified in avenging their parents' misfortunes by going after Arthur. He was an easy target: he was the only kid in Catholic school who not only enjoyed going to daily mass, but cried during it. The Sweet World stories were fine when Arthur was a kid, but what business did a fourteen-year-old have telling them? They beat Arthur mercilessly.
Will beat up anybody who came after Arthur, but since he was in high school and Arthur was in middle school, and since he spent so much time working, he couldn't do much to protect Arthur. He tried to teach Arthur to fight, but even though Arthur wasn't weak, he just had no instincts to even defend himself, much less hurt another person. After a particularly bad beating, Will sat Arthur down and told him that if he would have to stop being such an easy target with all the talk of the Sweet World, the tears during mass, the mama's boy routine, the whole "Saint Arthur" thing. Arthur didn't want to let go of the Sweet World, but he trusted Will. Lena knew that Arthur couldn't just stop being Arthur and blamed herself for being such a feminine influence on Arthur and she asked Will to let Arthur play in Will's band, The Five Wits. Even though Will was a little nervous about making his band uncool, he saw the wisdom in his mother's thinking. Plus, he knew his brother could sing and play organ well, and even if he couldn't, Will wasn't one to back down from any fights that might pop up over family.
The experiment went really, really well.
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