Clarkton (25 page)

“I do recall, however, one of my flock who came to me—no, I will not embarrass him by speaking his name; that is a matter for him and his God—he came to me and said of one who had passed on, How will he be raised, Reverend? As a child, as a youth, as a man worn and thin with sickness, naked or clothed? No, it was not a sincere question, but it deserves an answer. How cheap and how childish is such cynicism, and how typical of the worst elements of this modern age! A simple child would understand and accept the fact that He who created us out of dust and water can take from the dust again those who have faith. It is faith that makes a sacrifice and it is faith that redeems a sacrifice. When the planes, of the yellow hordes came over Pearl Harbor, it was faith that saved mankind. And it was faith …”

Lowell had stopped listening. If you had asked him suddenly, he would have been able to repeat the last ten words, but it would have taken longer for him to reassemble their meaning. Sitting at the end of the pew, his eyes cast down, he watched the clever play and interplay of his fingers as he moved them, noticing how the stretched tendons raised the veins.

5.
H
e awoke to reality and the world he lived
in to find Tom Wilson pushing into the pew next to him, a red-faced, breathless Wilson, who whispered hoarsely:

“George, there's trouble. We had a blowup at the plant.”

“Plant?”

“I got to talk to you outside, George.”

“When it's over,” Lowell said. “Don't be a damn fool!”

There was shushing, a rustle in the row ahead and the row behind. “George,” Lois pleaded.

“I have to talk to you,” Wilson whispered.

“It can wait.”

“It can't wait. I tell you, there's hell to pay, George.”

“I can't leave now. Don't be such a damn fool, Wilson. Can't you understand that I can't just get up and walk out of here now?”

“George, I tell you this is a life-and-death thing. Would I come into church like this?” Wilson pleaded. “I'm a church-going man myself. Would I come into church like this?” Wilson took out a handkerchief and wiped his red, perspiring face. He still wore his coat, and he kept kneading the crown of his hat, pushing it gradually out of shape, attacking it with all the fierce nervous energy he could not express in speech. And meanwhile, the sermon went on, the deep, rising, falling cadence of sound. Lowell looked helplessly at his wife, then rose abruptly, pressing Wilson ahead of him, following the plant manager down the nave, through the big oak door, and then down a flight of steps to the men's room. There, in the spotless white-tile purity, which Lowell himself had installed through a princely gift of ten thousand dollars for fund and repairs and improvements, his anger burst forth:

“Of all the stupid damn things, Tom, this tops everything!”

“Please—please, George. Please listen to me, George.”

“I'm listening. Go ahead.”

“We had trouble up at the plant. Two people are dead.”

“What!”

“That's right, George,” Wilson nodded miserably, leaning his heavy bulk against a sink. “That's right, George,” he repeated.

“How? What happened? Who's dead—can't you talk?”

Wilson shook his head plaintively. “I haven't stopped, George. I been up half the night, and I just haven't stopped.”

“Who's dead?”

“A fellow by the name of Jack Lamar—works at the plant, and the lawyer, Max Goldstein.”

“And this happened at the plant? How, in God's name—”

“That's right. It happened at the plant, George. George, I got to take a leak. You got to forgive me, George, I got to take a leak. I can't help it, George.…” He shuffled over to the urinal and stood there, while Lowell's world turned over and over.

“What happened?” Lowell demanded. “Just tell me what happened.”

“There was nothing you could do about it, George, it just happened. They got together about two thousand of the workers and people from town and they marched up to the meadow. We knew they were going to do it, and Gelb had our men and Curzon's men there waiting. Gelb told them to stop short of the trespass signs, but they just kept on coming and pushing back our men, and then about halfway across the meadow some damn fool shoots off his gun and hell breaks loose and the guards went crazy, I guess. Two of Curzon's men were beat pretty badly and about twenty of the crowd were cut up and shot and—well, two of them died.”

“What was Goldstein doing there?”

“He was one of the commies,” Wilson said, his voice strengthening as he turned around and buttoned his fly. “He had no damn business there, George. That fat fool had no damn business there at all, George.”

Lowell felt sick, tired and weak and outside of the pale of logic. He sat down on a white enamel stool, supporting his head with his hands, trying to understand what happened to him, to his wife, family, possessions, hopes, past and future and dreams when something like this took place. He asked Wilson weakly:

“Did you see Burton? What does he think? What is the legal side of this?”

“The first thing I did was to call Burton,” Wilson nodded, gaining assurance from Lowell's collapse. “I talked to Burton myself on the phone. He says not to worry. He says there isn't a court in the country that would decide against us. I knew you'd be worried about that, and I pressed him. He said he'll stake his reputation on it. He said he was going to get through to the governor immediately and let him have the facts firsthand.”

“I don't understand about Goldstein—”

“It happens,” Wilson said. “You got to get a grip on yourself, George. Either we take the offensive and see this thing through, or it's going to backfire.”

“This other man?”

“Lamar's a k'nuck, worked in the shipping loft. A dirty-tongue troublemaker—”

“Are any of the others … badly …?”

“No, no, not at all,” Wilson assured him.

“Was it Gelb that—?”

“You can't blame Gelb,” Wilson said. “So help me, George, I saw the whole thing. Gelb wanted to handle it clean and neat, but those crazy bastards Curzon's got working for him, they just went crazy.”

“What do we do now?” Lowell asked dully.

“Get it in hand. The way Gelb feels, now is the time to get it in hand and pull the loose ends together. That's one thing you don't want with something like this—loose ends.”

“I can't talk to reporters,” Lowell said hopelessly. “Tom, I want you to see to that. I didn't even see the thing. I didn't know. My God, Tom, how in hell could you and Gelb let a thing like that happen? How in God's name?”

6.
E
lliott Abbott had forgotten violence; the
nature of violence, like pain, is that transitory, the human system throwing it out of the memory. He had forgotten how it feels to work on one person, with the knifelike and impatient schedule of another and still another prodding him, urging on his fingers. He had forgotten how efficient and quick and anticipatory his wife Ruth could be, moving always one step ahead of his direction, so that if he were to think, forceps, they would be in his hand before the word was fully out, or if he were to mutter, sponge, it was after he had it in his hand and in the wound. In all his life, he had never operated without fear, without the necessity of overcoming fear, yet he had never recognized a companion to that feeling in his wife.

This time, it was like the first time in Spain, in 1937. The particular thing he had worked out then was the idea of the truck, a big, moving-van type of White truck, fitted out with an operating table, batteries, lights, sterilizing equipment, and all the rest, a rolling, fantastic conglomeration of stuff. He drove it up to the front himself, Ruth sitting next to him and checking a list of supplies, both of them obsessed by the idea that they had forgotten something of essential importance, but he himself aware of a growing fear, a fear that culminated when he began to operate with shells dropping all around the truck. He always felt afterward that only a decent self-respect for what his wife would think of him had carried him through that day, a sensation he had now. But at least he could work and not think and not mourn Max Goldstein, whom he had known all his life, just as he had known Lowell all his life in these quiet and peaceful foothills that had bred them and given them sustenance.

The most seriously injured, they had put in the union hall, where Abbott did for them until Noska's fight for the ambulance, which shared the police garage with Curzon's car, had been won, and they could be transferred to the Clarkton Dispensary. Brady, another of the town's medical men, finally turned up, but that was not until most of the immediate necessity had been handled. The union hall was bedlam and madness, packed with workers, spectators, newspaper people, hysterical members of the families of the injured, and only Ryan and Renoir and big Sam Saropoles and a handful of others to fight for order and a sense of organization. Ryan and Tony Antonini and a huge Swede called Jorgensson blocked off the main meeting hall and made beds out of the planked picnic tables. Mike Sawyer had driven back in Ryan's little Ford for supplies, and somehow he had turned up Bitterman, the pharmacist, so that there was no shortage of bandages or drugs. So by the time Brady arrived, almost an hour after the thing happened, Abbott had the worst wounds dressed and those who were in pain made comfortable, and a little while later Noska pushed through, followed by the stretcher-bearers from the ambulance, and they took out Lance Fragetti, who was shot in the groin, and Martha Bruckman, who had a bad compound fracture of the arm.

7.
R
yan cornered Bill Noska and said, “As bad
as things are, we ought to get over to Lamar's place. They took him home.”

“I can't leave here. I'd like to go with you, but I can't leave.”

“What are you going to do, Bill?”

“I wish to God we had a lawyer,” Noska said unhappily. “Of all people, it had to be Max Goldstein. Why in hell didn't he stay home?”

“We don't need a lawyer. For Christ's sake, Bill, there's only one thing to do, line them up and push them back to the gate. Myself, I say we're going to win or lose this strike in the next two hours.”

Noska shook his head. It was hard for them to talk and hard for him to listen. Everyone wanted to get at him. They were in his office, but they couldn't keep people out.

“Bill, you got to,” Ryan said, easily and gently. “You got to. There ain't no other way. You get slapped around, and if you don't come back, you're through.”

“They won't do it.”

“Why don't you try? Why don't you take Jorgensson and the Greek and go out there and talk to them?”

“What in hell can I say?”

“Just ask for men for a picket line—that's all.”

They pushed outside, picking up others along the way. Noska climbed onto the porch rail, waited for silence, and then in very few words announced that he was going back to the east gate, and whoever wanted to go along with him would be welcome. He started off with Ryan and Sam Saropoles. About a hundred of the uniformed veterans fell in with them, and more than twice that many girls. The girls did it. The veterans were ashamed and angry, but the girls were filled with a fury that was like nothing they had ever known before. The girls did it, because then the others couldn't stand aside and be afraid, and Noska and Ryan and Saropoles led them slowly along Oak, past the police station, and then on to the meadow. There were some of Curzon's men still there, some of Gelb's men too, and the rubbish of all the signs and banners, but nobody stopped them or made any move to stop them, and they crossed the meadow until the long, ragged line was in front of the gate itself.

Nobody spoke very much or cared to speak and nobody laughed or sang. Ryan stayed for a while, and then he and the Greek walked back to where Renoir's Ford was parked, and they drove over to Lamar's house.

Lamar's family lived in one of the flats in the long row of red-brick company houses that overhung the creek on Fourth Avenue. There was a kitchen, a sitting room, and two bedrooms, but Lamar had four children and that didn't exactly make for comfort, and now the place was full of people and tears. They had laid Lamar out on one of the beds, and his wife and sister and old mother sat in there weeping, and Father O'Malley was there, finishing with the last rites, and other people, friends and relatives, filled the rest of the rooms, trying to keep the children out and comfort them, and some of them talking and some of them just silent. Ryan and Saropoles nodded to various people they knew, said a few words, and then stood in the kitchen until Father O'Malley came out. The Greek picked up one of the little girls, a black-haired three-year-old who looked like an angel, and he cradled her in his arms and managed to halt her tears.

“Hello, Ryan,” the priest said. “It's not the Lord's Day that we wanted, is it?”

“It's a black day,” Ryan said bitterly.

“You wanted trouble and trouble came, didn't it, Ryan?”

“There's no man who isn't sick or dirty who wants trouble,” the Greek said quietly.

The priest looked at him, shook his head, and walked out of the room. Ryan and Saropoles went back to where the family were mourning.

8.
W
ith Frank Norman, fear and panic were
now stronger than the momentary exultation that had led him shouting along with Curzon's men, until he went half crazy with the rout, the mob, and the blood on the ground. When he sat in Tom Wilson's office, two hours later, he presented a picture of dejection, such complete dejection that he made Gelb smile. Gelb had just come into the room, immaculate as ever, as neatly dressed, his mustache trimmed to a nicety, and the long, masculine creases in his cheeks wrapped around his square, handsome chin with direct and forceful determination. He presented that combination of debonair assurance and calm forthrightness that can be so vastly reassuring in almost any situation, and as he lit a cigar, he seemed to be examining the innermost crevices of Frank Norman's soul. For a long moment, he stared appraisingly at Norman; then he struck a match to his cigar, took several deep puffs, and walked over to the window. His back to Norman, he said: