In Dubious Battle (30 page)

“Th’ hell with you,” Sam cried. “Stand there and take the lousy crap that big baloney hands you!”

London stiffened suddenly. His big fist lashed out and cracked into Sam’s face, and Sam went down. London stood looking at him. Mac laughed hysterically. “A striker just threw himself into a fist,” he said.

Sam sat up on the ground. “O.K., London. You win. I won’t make no more fuss, but you wasn’t in ’Frisco on Bloody Thursday.”

Bolter stood where he was. “I hoped you would listen to reason,” he said. “We have information that you’re being influenced by radicals, sent here by red organizations. They are misleading you, telling you lies. They only want to stir up trouble. They’re professional trouble-makers, paid to cause strikes.”

Mac stood up from his haunches. “Well, the dirty rats,” he said. “Misleadin’ American workin’ men, are they? Prob’ly gettin’ paid by Russia, don’t you think, Mr. Bolter?”

The man looked back at him for a long time, and the healthy red was gone from his cheeks. “You’re going to make us fight, I guess,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wanted peace. We know who the radicals are, and we’ll have to take action against them.” He turned imploringly to London. “Don’t let them mislead you. Come back to work. We only want peace.”

London was scowling. “I had enough o’ this,” he said. “You want peace. Well, what we done? Marched in two parades. An’ what you done? Shot three of our men,
burned a truck and a lunch wagon and shut off our food supply. I’m sick o’ your God damned lies, mister. I’ll see you get out without Sam gets his hands on you, but don’t send nobody else again till you’re ready to talk straight.”

Bolter shook his head sadly. “We don’t want to fight you men,” he said. “We want you to come back to work. But if we do have to fight, we have weapons. The health authorities are pretty upset about this camp. And the government doesn’t like uninspected meat moving in this county. The citizens are pretty tired of all this riot. And of course we may have to call troops, if we need them.”

Mac got up and went to the tent-flaps and looked out. Already the evening was coming. The camp was quiet, for the men stood watching London’s tent. All the faces, white in the gathering evening, were turned in toward the tent. Mac yelled, “All right, boys. We ain’t goin’ to sell you out.” He turned back into the tent. “Light the lamp, London. I want to tell this friend of man a few things.”

London set a match to the tin lantern and hung it on the tent pole, where it cast a pale, steady light. Mac took up a position in front of Bolter, and his muscled face broke into a derisive grin. “All right, Sonny Boy,” he said. “You been talkin’ big, but I know you been wettin’ your pants the whole time. I admit you can do all the things you say you can, but look what happens after. Your health service burned the tents in Washington. And that was one of the reasons that Hoover lost the labor vote. You called out guardsmen in ’Frisco, and damn near the whole city went over to the strikers. Y’ had to have the cops stop food from comin’ in to turn public opinion against the strike. I’m not talkin’ right an’ wrong now, mister. I’m
tellin’ you what happens.” Mac stepped back a pace. “Where do you think we’re gettin’ food and blankets an’ medicine an’ money? You know damn well where we’re gettin’ ’em. Your valley’s lousy with sympathizers. Your ‘outraged citizens’ are a little bit outraged at you babies, and you know it. And you know, if you get too tough, the unions ’ll go out. Truck drivers and restaurant men and field hands, everybody. And just because you do know it, you try to throw a bluff. Well, it don’t work. This camp’s cleaner’n the lousy bunk houses you keep for us on your ranches. You come here to try to scare us, an’ it don’t work.”

Bolter was very pale. He turned away from Mac and faced London. “I’ve tried to make peace,” he said. “Do you know that this man was sent out by red headquarters to start this strike? Watch out that when he goes to jail you don’t go too. We have a right to protect our property, and we’ll do it. I’ve tried to deal man to man with you, and you won’t deal. From now on the roads are closed. An ordinance will go through tonight forbidding any parading on the county roads, or any gathering. The sheriff will deputize a thousand men, if he needs them.”

London glanced quickly at Mac, and Mac winked at him. London said, “Jesus, mister, I hope we can get you out of here safe. When the guys out there hear what you just said, why they’ll want to take you to pieces.”

Bolter’s jaw tightened and his eyelids drooped. He straightened his shoulders. “Don’t get the idea you can scare me,” he said. “I’ll protect my home and my children with my life if I have to. And if you lay a hand on me we’ll wipe out your strike before morning.”

London’s arms doubled, and he stepped forward, but
Mac jumped in his way. “The guy’s right, London. He don’t scare. Plenty do, but he don’t.” He turned around. “Mister Bolter, we’ll see you get out of the camp. We understand each other now. We know what to expect from you. And we know how careful you have to be when you use force. Don’t forget the thousands of people that are sending us food and money. They’ll do other things, if they have to. We been good, Mr. Bolter, but if you start any funny business, we’ll show you a riot you’ll remember.”

Bolter said coldly, “That seems to be all. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to report that you won’t meet us halfway.”

“Halfway?” Mac cried. “There ain’t any halfway to nowhere.” His voice dropped to softness. “London you get on one side of him, and Sam on the other, and see that he gets away all right. Then I guess you’d better tell the guys what he said. But don’t let ’em get out of hand. Tell ’em to tighten up the squads for trouble.”

They surrounded Bolter and took him through the press of silent men, saw him into his coupe and watched him drive away down the road. When he was gone London raised his voice. “If you guys want to come over to the stand, I’ll get up on it and tell you what the son-of-a-bitch said, and what we answered him back.” He flailed his way through, and the men followed, excitedly. The cooks left the stoves where they were boiling beans and chunks of beef. The women crawled like rodents from the tents and followed. When London climbed up on the stand it was ringed closely with men, standing in the dusk looking up at him.

During the talk with Bolter Doc Burton had effaced himself, had been so quiet that he seemed to have disappeared,
but when the group went out, leaving only Jim and Lisa sitting on the mattress, he came out of his corner and sat down on the edge of the mattress beside them. His face was worried. “It’s going to be a mean one,” he said.

“That’s what we want, Doc,” Jim told him. “The worse it is, the more effect it’ll have.”

Burton looked at him with sad eyes. “You see a way through,” he said. “I wish I did. It all seems meaningless to me, brutal and meaningless.”

“It has to go on,” Jim insisted. “It can only stop when the men rule themselves and get the profits of their labor.”

“Seems simple enough,” Burton sighed. “I wish I thought it were so simple.” He turned smiling to the girl. “What’s your solution, Lisa?”

She started. “Huh?”

“I mean, what would you like to have to make you happy.”

She looked self-consciously down at the baby. “I like to have a cow,” she said. “I like to have butter an’ cheese like you can make.”

“Want to exploit a cow?”

“Huh?”

“I’m being silly. Did you ever have a cow, Lisa?”

“When I was a little kid we had one,” she said. “Went out an’ drunk it warm. Old man used to milk it into a cup-like, to drink. Tasted warm. That’s what I like. Bet it would be good for the baby.” Burton turned slowly away from her. She insisted, “Cow used to eat grass, an’ sometimes hay. Not ever’body can milk ’em, neither. They kick.”

Burton asked, “Did you ever have a cow, Jim?”

“No.”

Burton said, “I never thought of cows as counter-revolutionary animals.”

Jim asked, “What are you talking about, Doc, anyway?”

“Nothing. I’m kind of unhappy, I guess. I was in the army in the war. Just out of school. They’d bring in one of our men with his chest shot away, and they’d bring in a big-eyed German with his legs splintered off. I worked on ’em just as though they were wood. But sometimes, after it was all over, when I wasn’t working, it made me unhappy, like this. It made me lonely.”

Jim said, “Y’ought to think only of the end, Doc. Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile.”

“Jim, I wish I knew it. But in my little experience the end is never very different in its nature from the means. Damn it, Jim, you can only build a violent thing with violence.”

“I don’t believe that,” Jim said. “All great things have violent beginnings.”

“There aren’t any beginnings,” Burton said. “Nor any ends. It seems to me that man has engaged in a blind and fearful struggle out of a past he can’t remember, into a future he can’t forsee nor understand. And man has met and defeated every obstacle, every enemy except one. He cannot win over himself. How mankind hates itself.”

Jim said, “We don’t hate ourselves, we hate the invested capital that keeps us down.”

“The other side is made of men, Jim, men like you. Man hates himself. Psychologists say a man’s self-love is
balanced neatly with self-hate. Mankind must be the same. We fight ourselves and we can only win by killing every man. I’m lonely, Jim. I have nothing to hate. What are you going to get out of it, Jim?”

Jim looked startled. “You mean me?” He pointed a finger at his breast.

“Yes, you. What will you get out of all the mess?”

“I don’t know; I don’t care.”

“Well, suppose blood-poisoning sets in in that shoulder, or you die of lockjaw and the strike gets broken? What then?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jim insisted. “I used to think like you, Doc, but it doesn’t matter at all.”

“How do you get that way?” Burton asked. “What’s the process?”

“I don’t know. I used to be lonely, and I’m not any more. If I go out now it won’t matter. The thing won’t stop. I’m just a little part of it. It will grow and grow. This pain in the shoulder is kind of pleasant to me; and I bet before he died Joy was glad for a moment. Just in that moment I bet he was glad.”

They heard a rough, monotonous voice outside, and then a few shouts, and then the angry crowd-roar, a bellow like an animal in fury. “London’s telling them,” said Jim. “They’re mad. Jesus, how a mad crowd can fill the air with madness. You don’t understand it, Doc. My old man used to fight alone. When he got licked, he was licked. I remember how lonely it was. But I’m not lonely any more, and I can’t be licked, because I’m more than myself.”

“Pure religious ecstasy. I can understand that. Partakers of the blood of the Lamb.”

“Religion, hell!” Jim cried. “This is men, not God. This is something you know.”

“Well, can’t a group of men be God, Jim?”

Jim wrenched himself around. “You make too damn many words, Doc. You build a trap of words and then you fall into it. You can’t catch me. Your words don’t mean anything to me. I know what I’m doing. Argument doesn’t have any effect on me.”

“Steady down,” Burton said soothingly. “Don’t get so excited. I wasn’t arguing, I was asking for information. All of you people get angry when you’re asked a question.”

As the dusk turned into night the lantern seemed to grow brighter, to find deeper corners of the tent with its yellow light. Mac came in quietly, as though he crept away from the noise and shouting outside. “They’re wild,” he said. “They’re hungry again. Boiled meat and beans tonight. I knew they’d get cocky on that meat. They’d like to go out and burn houses right now.”

“How does the sky look?” Burton asked. “Any more rain in it?”

“Clear and stars. It’ll be good weather.”

“Well, I want to talk to you, Mac. I’m low in supplies. I need disinfectant. Yes, and I could use some salvarsan. If any kind of epidemic should break out, we’d be out of luck.”

“I know,” Mac said. “I sent word to town how it was. Some of the boys are out trying to get money. They’re trying to get money to bail Dakin out now. I’d just as soon he stayed in jail.”

Burton stood up from his seat on the mattress. “You
can tell London what to do, can’t you. Dakin wouldn’t take everything.”

Mac studied him. “What’s the matter, Doc. Don’t you feel well?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean your temper’s going. You’re tired. What is it, Doc?”

Burton put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know; I’m lonely, I guess. I’m awfully lonely. I’m working all alone, towards nothing. There’s some compensation for you people. I only hear heartbeats through a stethoscope. You hear them in the air.” Suddenly he leaned over and put his hand under Lisa’s chin and raised her head up and looked into her shrinking eyes. Her hand came slowly up and pulled gently at his wrist. He let go and put his hand back in his pocket.

Mac said, “I wish I knew some woman you could go to, Doc, but I don’t. I’m new around here. Dick could steer you, in town. He prob’ly has twenty lined up by now. But you might get caught and jailed, Doc; and if you weren’t taking care of us, they’d bounce us off this land in a minute.”

Burton said, “Sometimes you understand too much, Mac. Sometimes—nothing. I guess I’ll go along and see Al Anderson. I haven’t been there all day.”

“O.K., Doc, if it’ll make you feel any better. I’ll keep Jim under cover tonight.”

Doc looked down at Lisa once more, and then he went out.

The shouting had settled to talk by now, low talk. It made the night alive outside the tent.

“Doc doesn’t eat,” Mac complained. “Nobody’s seen
him sleep. I suppose he’ll break, sooner or later, but he never has before. He needs a woman bad; someone that would like him for a night; you know, really like him. He needs to feel someone—with his skin. So do I. Lisa, you’re a lucky little twirp, you just had a kid. You’d have me in your hair.”

“Huh?”

“I say: How’s the baby?”

“All right.”

Mac nodded gravely at Jim. “I like a girl who doesn’t talk too much.”

Jim asked, “What went on out there? I’m sick of staying in already.”

“Why, London told what Sonny Boy said, and asked for a vote of confidence. He sure as hell got it, too. He’s out there now, talking to the squad leaders about tomorrow.”