Clarkton (15 page)

Fern came in then, her cheeks flushed with the cold, the excitement of going through the picket line and being in the silent, struck plant still on her. She wore a skirt and jacket of yellow suede, a rough brown sweater, low-heeled shoes, and a long scarf knit of the same wool as the sweater. It was the first time Norman had really seen her, except for the glimpse from the window, and now, dressed as she was, her hair so windblown and casual, he was both excited and pleased with her. He had not dreamed that she would be so pretty, and the thought of knowing her and dating her made his assignment here close to perfect.

“Hello, Tom,” she said to Wilson. “I just had to come down. My heart almost stopped beating when I pulled into the gate. But, you know, they were very nice about it. Who's this?”

“Fern, I want you to meet Frank Norman, one of the industrial consultants your dad sent up from New York. This is Miss Lowell, Frank.”

He said, “I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Lowell. And you bet they were very nice about it. There would be the devil to pay if they weren't.”

Fern walked to the window and looked out. “This tones it down, doesn't it? I can't understand how, if you wanted to open the plant, those few people would prevent you.”

“If we wanted to open, Fern—” Wilson said. “Frank, here are the warrants. Suppose you bring them into Gelb for his okay. Then you can see if Curzon sent over the men.”

“You're not going, are you, Miss Lowell?” Norman asked.

“Why?”

“Well, you might be interested. We're going to back that picket line up from the gate, and there might be some excitement. You'll have a perfect view of it from this window.”

6.
U
sually, an hour or two before noon, Danny
Ryan would walk from the union headquarters on Oak Street over to Concord Way, and then up the main street to Birch, where company property began. Westward, from Birch Street, there were about four hundred yards of weed-grown meadow before you came to the gates of the Lowell Company, and this meadow stretched north to the creek and south to the main line of the railroad, the right-of-way being fenced there with a heavy nine-foot wire. This meadow was put to no better use than an occasional wandering cow or goat might improvise, and it was liberally dotted with half a century's accumulation of junk, metal too rusty even for scrap, rotten shacks, and just plain garbage. At one time, in 1928, the elder Lowell was going to put up a model company development, but the crash cut into that when only the foundations were dug, and a line of these holes still gaped, muddy pits that bred mosquitoes in the summertime. The roads that led to the four plant gates cut through this meadow, and were marked
PRIVATE NO TRESPASSING,
as was the meadow itself, with ancient, rain-dampened signs.

Sometimes, Danny would go up to the plant alone; sometimes with Bill Noska or some other shop official, sometimes with Joey Raye. Today, the big Negro was with him, and the two of them had just turned the corner onto the main street, when they met Father O'Malley, who grinned cheerfully, offered his hand first to Ryan and then to Raye, and then asked them where they were bound for on this fine winter's morning.

“Just thought we'd push over to the gates and look at things,” Ryan said. “Joey here has got his crew building a mobile hot coffee and sinker canteen out of an old Ford suburban the local bought, and he wants to case the gates and see what the old cow should carry.”

“Mind if I walk along a bit?” Father O'Malley asked.

“Not at all,” Raye said. Ryan didn't say anything, and Father O'Malley fell in alongside of him, kneading his ribs with an elbow and saying:

“I get under that thin Irish skin of yours, don't I, Ryan? You're asking yourself, what the devil will people say when they see you walking along with the priest? Is this a sellout, or what is it? That's a thin Irish skin and a misconception, Ryan. I haven't lost my flock to that extent yet.”

“Nothing of the kind,” Ryan answered, “The sidewalk's broad, and it's still free.”

“You don't like me, do you, Ryan?” the priest chuckled.

“It ain't a question of like or dislike. You're on one side.

I'm on the other. That's all.”

“I'm on God's side, Ryan,” Father O'Malley said.

“Well, you got to produce His mutual assistance pact before you declare Him in,” Ryan laughed.

“You don't believe in God, do you, Ryan?”

“When you put it in my hand and I see it, then I believe in it,” Ryan grinned, noticing how many people they met along the street nodded and gave the best of the morning to the priest.

“The difference is that I like you, Ryan. I wouldn't if you believed only in what I could put in your hand.”

“That's the way it is.”

“When you call a man comrade,” the priest said casually, “what do you believe in then?”

“Socialism.”

“Without the brotherhood of man, Ryan? By God, then it's not worth much the way I see it.”

“Sure you see it your way—you're a good man for your organization, Father, but I don't fall for the did-you-stop-beating-your-wife line. You had a monopoly, so as to speak, of the brotherhood of man these past couple of thousand years, and what in hell's name did you make of it! Fifty million dead in the past ten years—if that's brotherhood, keep it!”

“You really broke with the church, didn't you, Ryan?” the priest said, unperturbed. “When an Irishman breaks, he breaks. But how long can you live with even the specter of damnation eternal?”

“I get along.”

“Sure you do. That's what I want to put my finger on. You say you don't believe in God. You say you don't believe in the brotherhood of man. You say you don't believe in salvation through Jesus Christ. Yet you're willing to die for what you believe in.”

“I'd rather live for it.”

“What do you believe in?”

“If that's a straight question,” Ryan said, looking up at the priest, “I'll try a straight answer.”

“It's a straight question.”

“Okay—I believe in a time when man will stop exploiting his fellow man. That sums it up. If you want a book to read about it, I can give you one.”

“I read a little Marxism, Ryan—not a lot. It's pretty tough reading, if you ask me. But I read some. You want me to accept the fact that all evil on earth comes because one man gives a job to another. I can't accept that.”

“You make it awful damned simple,” Ryan said.

“So do you,” the priest smiled. “But when I look at the Soviet Union, it isn't simple, is it? It's mighty complicated, it seems to me. And you still haven't told me what you believe in that makes you willing to die for it.”

“It takes a lot of telling,” Ryan sighed.

“I have time.”

“I haven't—not now.”

“Whenever you have, Ryan, let's sit down and talk about it. I've grappled with bad men and won, so it seems to me I ought to have a fighting chance with a good one.”

“What makes you think I'm a good one?” Ryan grinned.

“The fact that you're willing to die for what you believe in.”

“That's a presumption, Father. And suppose I was—so were the Nazis and they did.”

“They never deluded themselves with the notion that they were making a better world. It was a black day for the church when they came into power.”

“I never noticed the church making any show of stopping them.”

“It's not the duty of the church, Ryan, to take sides with one part of her flock against the other. You never heard me preach a sermon in support of Lowell.”

“No—and did you preach one in support of the strike? Did you ever tell your flock how to raise five kids healthy on beans three times a day?”

“No, I don't know that I did,” Father O'Malley said good-naturedly.

“It's a funny thing,” Ryan told him, “but whenever we get to talking, Father, it gets up in the sky. I don't live there. You want to talk about this earth and these United States—hell, I'll be glad to. We'll talk about the Negroes they're lynching, the fact that a million vets got no place to live, the twenty-three miners who were killed in the last explosion, and the Greeks who are being murdered because they like freedom. There's a hell of a lot for us to talk about.”

“There is that,” Father O'Malley said.

Afterward, when they came to the edge of the meadow, Joey Raye said to Ryan, “That's one smart priest, and don't you kid yourself, Danny. You ain't going to sell him no bill of goods.”

“He won't sell me none either,” Ryan laughed.

7.
O
ne of the maintenance men brought word
to Gelb that Danny Ryan and Joey Raye had arrived at the Birch Street gate, and Gelb, who was in the little office he had been given, turned to Wilson and Norman and said:

“All right, let's go and throw it at them.”

“How about the others?” Wilson asked.

“Ryan and the nigger are enough.” He said to Norman,

“Take their warrants and take a dozen John Does. Let Curzon's men handle it, Frank. You stand back and watch and learn. Jack Curzon is no fool, and he learned under the best.”

“Yes, Sir,” Norman nodded, wishing that he could slip back to Wilson's office and tell Fern that this was the moment and make sure she would be watching.

As they got into the little self-service elevator, Gelb said to the boy, “This is a point to remember, Frank. To go down there and arrest the two reds wouldn't mean a damn thing. Nothing they'd want better and nothing that would be less effective from our point of view. At the same time, it would be worse to have to use the John Does and pull in the whole picket line. This thing hasn't reached either the stage or the psychological moment, for mass arrests.”

Norman shook his head. “I thought that was the point of the warrants—” The elevator came to a stop, and they got out.

“Yes and no. I want to work on Ryan a little; I want to work on that nigger a little. But the main thing is to break that line in front of the gates. Not by force—that would be easy enough, but by putting them in a situation where picketing itself poses a legal problem. An injunction is another way of doing the same thing, but this isn't the kind of a situation; anywhere in the country, where you want to throw an injunction at them. Remember, Frank, the hardest thing in the world, for any human being, is to make a decision—especially when they haven't made this kind of decision in a long time.”

At the entrance of the building, two of Curzon's men were waiting, along with four of the armed maintenance men. Gelb handed the warrants to the officers, spoke a few words to them, and then the whole party started toward the gate. Gelb, Wilson, and Norman dropped behind, Gelb saying to the boy:

“Put them in a position where they must make a decision. It's human nature not to, not to want to. You would be surprised, if you only thought about it, how much of our society is based on that fact, the inability of the average man to make any kind of decision.”

8.
D
anny Ryan was talking to Maurice Renoir
, the picket captain, and Joey Raye was helping two of the girls to stoke a salamander, joshing them in his soft, easygoing way, when they noticed the approach of the little party from the plant. There was something in the even, determined manner of their walk that had its effect on everyone at the gate. The picket line stopped, and from an organized group they became a cluster of apprehensive and wary men and women. Their hearts beat faster; the chill of the winter day crept into them; the quick, formless threat of law drove them back on their heels and left them empty-handed.

Ryan started the picket line again. He said to Renoir, “Let me do the talking, Murray.” He kidded the girls and said, “Here comes the SS. Give them the arm.” “We'll belch in unison,” someone said, and the tension was broken. Renoir began to sing, in his high voice, with a strange French accent, “There once was a union maid, who never was afraid.…” It was forced laughter, but they were able to laugh. Joey Raye whispered to Ryan:

“That's Ham Gelb, there in back. The joker in the sharp gray suit—with the mustache.”

“Joey, you don't lose your temper,” Ryan said. “You keep your mouth shut.”

“He had Sam Brodsky shot through the head in Allentown in 'thirty-seven. He brought his torpedoes in from New York, and one of them just walked up to Sam and asked him his name and then shot him. And Sam was like a brother to me when I was just a big, ignorant black bastard and a cropper—”

“You shut up,” Ryan said quickly. “You open that big mouth of yours, and sure as hell I'll kick the living daylights out of you. You just keep that big mouth shut!”

The officers came through the gate, leaving Norman and Gelb and Wilson inside. One of the city men walked toward the picket line, prodding with his nightstick and telling them to call it a day. Three of the maintenance men followed him, grouped close behind him, backing him. The other officer demanded:

“Which one of you is Ryan?”

Ryan knew the officer who was shouldering the picket line. His name was Fanway, a big blond man who had come in from the outside with Curzon, and Ryan said to him, easily:

“Let's talk about this, Fanway. We don't want no trouble. You don't want no trouble.”

The maintenance men had shouldered their way in now, and the picket line had stopped once again, the workers clumping up uncertainly. Renoir, who had a fiery temper, kept his hands in his pockets and watched Ryan. The girls were frightened, admittedly; the men were also frightened and tried not to show it.

“Are you Ryan?” the second officer demanded.

“That's right. What is this? We're in our rights.”

“You're in company property too,” Fanway said. “Company property starts out there on Birch Street, and you're just about four hundred yards outside the law. In other words, you're going to break up this picket line and pull it back there to the city streets.”