Joe Hill (26 page)

–What number were you?

–Jesus. just like an apartment entrance with a row of mailboxes.

–Was she tattooed anywhere else?

–Where’d you learn all this story, respectable old bookkeeper like you?

–He got it out of the Algiers papers.

–It ain’t practical. Would you put out a cigarette on Bernice, Doyle?

–The name is Beatrice. And I’d put out more’n a cigarette on her.

–I still think it’s a foolish thing to do. It don’t give you any chance to change your mind.

–How about having a union button tattooed on you? I heard of a guy in Spokane that had “One Big Union” in red across his chest.

–Gives you away to the town clowns too easy. These days, you’d spend your life working off vag raps on the bullgang.

–Even politically, it is sometimes a mistake. (It is the little Frenchman again.) Remember Bernadotte, Napoleon’s general, who had “Death to All Kings” tattooed on his arm? When he becomes
King of Sweden later, this must be as embarrassing to him as the courtesan’s names.

–What do you mean by that? (Now there is a slight, puzzled pause. The talk suspends itself while the little Frenchman squirms for having suggested that faith in the One Big Union may be as impermanent as a general’s convictions or a whore’s affections. By a kind of subsidence they let him off, and someone picks up the thread of talk again.)

–Well, I wouldn’t have a button tattooed on me. I’ll wear one, any old time or place, town clowns or no town clowns, but no tattoo. It disfigures a man. There ain’t anything beautiful about an anchor on a guy’s arm, or a bleeding heart with a dame’s name under it. You think you’re beautiful, with all that crap inked into your hide, Doyle?

–The ladies like me.

–It’s just a way for punks to brag they been to Singapore or somewheres.

–Singapore, shit. Some skid road, you man. You can get tattooed ten places in this town.

–But they’ll always tell you they got it in Burma.

–Yeah, and you can get a hell of a lot more’n pretty pictures, too. My old man told me once about a guy name of Kelly, went through the country tattooing dancing girls on guys. He was pretty good, my old man said. He could make a man look like a walking art gallery. But this Kelly bastard has syph, see? His mouth is full of sores. And every time he dots some color into a sucker, he wets the needle or the color with his tongue. My old man says they finally caught up with him after he’d give about two hundred guys a dose of Old Joe. That’s the kind of crap this tattooing can get you into.

–How about it, Doyle, you got syph?

–He walks kind of funny, ever notice it?

–I seen him pickin’ a scab the other mornin’.

–Peace on you, fellow workers.

–
DOYLE, WHEN THE HELL IS GRUB
?

–Don’t get your ass in an uproar.

–Maybe one little motto or picture or some’m, that’s all right, but my God the stuff some guys get themselves done up with! It’s a bunch of whorehouse crap. You ever see a guy had had the
snake job done on him? I knew a kind of fruity bird back in Chicago that used to travel with a sideshow, only by God if he showed all he had to show it was some sideshow. He had snakes all over him, around his arms and legs, around his neck, two great big goddam snakes on his chest with his tits for eyes, and the way his hair grew it looked like they both had a big bushy head of hair like a Fuzzy-wuzzy. Scare the hell out of you. And down in his belly button he had a little tiny blue snake all coiled up like it was crawlin’ out, and on his ass two big red ones that was all ready to start
in
. But that ain’t all he had …

–Don’t tell it, I can’t bear it.

–How did
you
find this out? Peekin’ again.

–Right around his tallywhacker, by God, coiled round and round and lookin’ out big as life. You could damn near see it squirm.

–I sh’d think that’d kind of fix his wagon. He’d scare off any woman in ten miles.

–Some women I bet’d go for a thing like that, damn if I don’t think so.

–You better go get yourself prettied up.

–I get along all right the way I am. I don’t need any needles down there. Holy Christ.

–A lot of guys have spurs tattooed on their peckers.

–A lot of guys? What the hell you talkin’ about?

–This is a fine uplifting conversation.

–Yes, a lot of guys. I’ve seen two-three myself. Great big boot with a spur on it.

–What’s the significance of that kind of a thing?

–Shows he’s a rough rider, maybe. I don’t know.
I
ain’t got any spurs. I’m just tellin’ you about interesting sights I’ve seen.

–I can imagine.

–There was another famous piece of tattooing in Algiers …

–Here we go again.

–The filthy French.

–Another high-priced piece, or was this one cheaper?

–This was a man, a zouave, a soldier of the Foreign Legion, which your probably know is full of rough specimens. This man, so I heard …

–So you heard.

–was killed in a fight, and the undertaker who embalmed him told at his club about the tattooing, so that it was spread around. He said that on this man’s buttocks, one on each side …

–
That’s
normal, anyway.

–on each side was a soldier with his bayoneted rifle held out so that the bayonets crossed in the middle, as at a gate, and up above he had a sign, like a road sign, saying
on n’entre pas
.

–Onnontray pa?

–No one enters.

–Jesus, the filthy French.

–Shows you what kind of people get tattooed, eh Doyle?

(Doyle does a realistic imitation of spitting in the stew. He looks apologetic and puts the lid back on with his crabwise pocket hold.) God damn sores in my mouth keep me spittin’ all the time.

–I don’t see anything wrong with havin’ a union button tattooed on you, though. It ain’t the same as havin’ some dame that you forgot before you even sobered up. I’ve heard of outfits back in India or somewhere that had secret tattoo marks they could recognize each other by. That wouldn’t be such a bad idea, with so many god damn stoolies and spies …

(What has briefly formed is beginning to disintegrate again. Restlessness for food breaks up the group. One goes to the window, another picks up a copy of the
Industrial Worker
. Two or three, reluctant to leave a good topic, carry it on.)

–You ever hear that “French Tattooed Lady” song?

–I don’t know. How’s it go?

–Hasn’t got much of a tune. Let’s see—(he begins to sing)

–
GOD DAMN, DOYLE, WHEN ARE THEM BISCUITS GONNA BE DONE?

–was my home in Tennessee …

–Come and get it then, you damn wolves.

They have all but finished, and pipes are going. Somebody has suggested that somebody else go out for a Sunday paper. Then the outside door opens, and those in the inner room lean a little to see who has come in. Two or three stand up.

–Joe! How the hell are you?

–Just in time for grub. Grab a plate.

He stands before them, shaking their hands formally around; taller than most of them, slim as an adolescent, his hair a little lank, his smile diffident. His eyes are wide, gray-blue, and have a kind of stare in them, as if he is always looking beyond you. But when they level into yours there is a shock in them like ice water. Strange eyes. If it weren’t for them he would look like any other stiff.

Without doing anything, without more than a bare word of greeting as he shakes hands, he has taken over the room. The moment you see his face and eyes clearly, and feel the leashed intensity, the indescribable cold eagerness of his face, you find yourself watching him. Even the ones who do not know him are watching him now. His face is scarred as if it has been whittled on with a broken bottle; the lines from the corner of his mouth to his nose are accented on the right side by a white welt of scar. His voice is neither loud nor soft, but even, rather toneless, with the merest suggestion of a Swede singsong, and there is in it something of the reined-in quality of his face, an effect of controlled impatience. He looks like a man who would blow straight up if he were crossed.

Almost the first thing he says is a challenge.

–What about the boys at Oatfield?

–They killed Art Manderich.

–I know that. But what about him? Where’d they bury him? What about the others? I’ve been out in the sticks, I haven’t heard a thing.

–Llewellyn and three others are up for murder.

(His mouth twists and his eyes change subtly. For a moment
he looks blind.) What other three? Virtanen and the Kirkham boys?

–I thought you hadn’t heard anything.

–I heard a little. Where’d they bury old Art? Some ditch?

–Not on your life. The boys from Sacramento gave him a bang-up funeral, marchers for five or six blocks. It’s in the
Worker
, around here someplace. We got a lot of public support. The deputies got too god damn gay for once, and then pinching four of
us
on this phony murder charge. Probably they planned the whole thing. The pickers was gettin’ pretty sore and Llewellyn had them all organized for a showdown when the bosses get scared and send down these gunmen to break it up …

–What are we doing about it? Got a defense committee?

–They organized one right away in Sacramento, soon as the boys were hauled in. We’re just gettin’ goin’ down here.

(His eyes are restless around the room, on the walls where One Big Union pennants are tacked, the glass-fronted bookcase full of songbooks, pamphlets, books. His eyes stop momentarily at the row of pictures of May Day picnics, with men and women sitting and standing, some of them holding banners spread before them, their faces full of smiles and pride and zeal. Joe Hill’s own face is lean as an axe blade.)

–We ought to have a poster up here to keep the boys reminded.

–I was gonna see Sanson about that in the next day or so. He’s the only guy that can do anything like that.

–I’ll do it, you won’t have to see Sanson. (The sudden eyes, the leashed and baffled look.) You on the committee?

–I guess I’m chairman of it.

–Made any collections yet? They got lawyers hired up there in Sacramento? They’ll need money.

–They got lawyers, sure. So far all we did was beat it up at a street meeting last night. Picked up eight-fifty.

–Eight-fifty! (His eyes are incredulous, his hard mouth twists.) How far will eight-fifty go to save four men’s lives? What’s the matter with you down here? You ought to be able to raise that much from every man in the local.

–I don’t know. Things are tight. We been havin’ trouble payin’ the hall rent even. We’re a month behind on that.

(The scorn in his face troubles the men in the room. They shift under his glare, and sit sullenly like children being scolded. The toneless voice does not rise, but there is a whip in it.)

–Twenty-two bucks a month. We could pay that with what any three of you spend for beer.

(They continue to sit quietly, waiting for some other one to speak. Through the window, across the Sunday quiet of the town, comes the snorting of a switch engine in the yards. Joe Hill’s hand goes into his pocket and comes out with a roll of bills. The rubber band breaks as he takes it off, and flips across the floor. One of the men stoops quickly and retrieves it. The eyes are on Joe’s hands. He smooths off bills one by one—a twenty, four tens, two fives, two ones. Seventy-two dollars. The roll is reduced to a flat little wad, only four or five bills in it. Joe’s eyes change again, fill for a moment with the blind blue cataract look.)

–There’s a month’s hall rent, and fifty dollars for the defense fund.

–Jesus, Joe, that’s nearly your whole stake …

–Don’t waste your time worrying about me. Start thinking about those boys in Sacramento.

(They watch him closely but not too openly. He has come in upon them as something hard, alien, and compulsive, so that they cannot recapture the relaxed kidding tone of their conversation. The whole Sunday atmosphere of slow inconsequential talk, food, digestion, rumination, has been fractured by Joe Hill’s coming. In the next few minutes several men sheepishly shell out fifty cents or a dollar for the defense fund. Others, broke, look pushed around and a little rebellious. They phrase their rebellion in their minds, arranging how they will tell it to other boys who may drift in during the afternoon. They find the words and the ideas for it as a couple of cribbage games and a game of cooncan start up. Seventy-two bucks, just like that, they put it to themselves. Just peels it off his roll. Where does a working stiff get that kind of dough?)

(But it was something to see, they admit. He gave away more than he kept. If the whole working class was in the One Big Union the way Joe Hill was in it, those instruments of production would be taken over already, and the workers would be beating up their chains into plowshares.)