Lonely Crusade (36 page)

“But above all things,” Bart concluded, “we must consider the effect of any act in our relation with the union. Our objective now is control of the union, and all things must work toward this end. ‘Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.’ Marx wrote in his
Communist Manifesto
, and we must keep it so.”

The committee supported this tactic unanimously, for the decision had been Bart’s from the first and theirs had been only the duty of substantiation. One of the women workers on the assembly line, Jane Weaver, was selected to make the denunciation.

At the union meeting the following night Jane gained the floor and loosed a tirade against Jackie, reading a long list of charges. She accused Jackie of accepting a bribe of five hundred dollars from Foster for reporting union secrets; of having union members transferred to unpleasant jobs; of discriminatory practices against Negro workers. At the end she recited with parrotlike rapidity, the inflection of her voice having no relation to the meaning of the words, a conclusion written by a party strategist: “Now that the traitor is discovered and pointed out, we must be vigilant to preserve and strengthen the unity of our union, and equip ourselves to more effectively perform our vanguard role in the great economic and political struggles which lie ahead. In this way we will strengthen our union ideologically, politically, and organizationally.”

The Communists in the audience identified themselves by their applause. But the others maintained a shocked, stony silence.

Finally Smitty rose to his feet, his face bearing a stricken look. “To my knowledge, sister Forks has been a sincere, loyal, conscientious worker for the union,” he said in a hollow voice, “and we can not allow her to be maligned by any such unsubstantiated charges as these.”

“I have proof!” Jane cried, jumping to her feet again. “I have a statement here from her own roommate who saw her with the money—five one-hundred-dollar bills. She told Kathy—that’s her roommate—that Foster had given her the money to keep him informed about what we do in the union, and offered Kathy fifty dollars to keep her mouth shut. And I got statements from other workers in the office who have heard her talking to Foster about union members and suggesting how he could segregate Negro workers in the plant.”

“Let me see them,” Smitty demanded.

“I’ll read them aloud,” Jane retorted.

“That’s not necessary.”

“Everybody’s got a right to hear,” she argued. “This is a matter for the rank and file.”

“Read them! Read them!” the Communists shouted.

Smitty turned to Joe Ptak. “Do something to stop her, Joe, you’re the organizer.”

“Let her read ‘em!” Joe said, the rocklike set of his expression unchanged.

Sitting, listening to the damning affidavits of Jackie’s guilt, knowing they were false, seeing the fine hand of the party behind them as clearly as if the words had issued from Bart’s own lips, Lee went sick at heart. In his lifetime he had seen many persons, mostly Negroes, victimized with cold-blooded premeditation. He, Lee Gordon, had been so victimized, not once or twice, but many times. Always it roused in him a deep sense of protest. But this was the first time he had seen a person lynched, and his reason found it intolerable and his heart, unbearable. Not because she was Jackie Forks—a white girl whom he had once held in his arms—for he had sworn to himself with a sense of satisfaction that he was through with Jackie Forks, but because she was another human being.

When Jane sat down again, Smitty slowly said: “I do not believe it.”

And in the following silence, Lee Gordon rose—knowing that he was being a fool, knowing that the sensible thing for him to do was keep quiet, and knowing also that his first word would forge the link of suspicion against himself. But he could not help it. For deep inside of him was a sense of justice that could not accept the rotten deal.

“Union members! Men and women!” he cried for their attention. “This whole thing is a frame-up on the girl by the Communist Party. I know the person who is guilty of betraying the union. That person is Luther McGregor—”

“No, Lee!” Smitty shouted. “Let’s not have any more of these insane accusations!”

Lee turned on him and cried: “Smitty, you know that this is a dirty frame-up and I’m going—”

He was shouted down by the Communists in the audience.

“Maybe he’s in on it too!” one cried.

“She’s his little girl friend!”

“He’s been accusing Brother McGregor for too long now. I move that we give Brother McGregor a vote of confidence. Brother McGregor’s a true, tried worker for the masses.”

“McGregor isn’t a member of the union,” Smitty pointed out.

“He’s a better organizer than the one you got.”

“I move we expel Sister Forks from the union and fire Gordon at the same time!” a Mexican woman screamed. “He’s just as guilty as she is.”

“Gordon’s not mixed up in this business at all!” Smitty shouted. “Keep his name out of it.”

“Who says he isn’t mixed up in it?” the same woman contended. “How do we know?”

“We don’t know any of it,” Smitty said, trying to reason with them. “This business has no place on the floor. It should be taken up in executive meeting.”

“No! No! No!” the agitators shouted in unison. And then a voice above the others shrieked: “I move we vote to expel Jackie Forks from the union right here and now.”

“Someone make a motion for adjournment,” Smitty pleaded.

“No, let ‘em vote,” Joe said.

“Joe, you don’t believe that the girl is guilty of all this, do you?” Smitty asked him.

“Let ‘em vote! Let ‘em vote!”

“All in favor of expelling sister Forks from the union let it be known—” Marvin Todd chanted like an auctioneer.

And when she had been expelled from the union by a show of hands, Lee Gordon turned to Smitty and said: “Here’s where I’m quitting.”

“Lee, for heaven’s sake,” he cried, “we need you more than ever now.”

“But you could have stopped that,” Lee accused.

“Lee, before God, I—” He broke off to turn on Joe. “Joe, what the hell has come over you?”

“They wanted a victim,” Joe said in the same hard, uncompromising voice. “Now they got a victim. Now maybe, goddamnit, we can get some organizing done!”

“Well—yes,” Lee Gordon said and walked away.

But at the door leading out into the street, he turned and went back. Because he could not let it go like that—he just couldn’t do it, that was all. Smitty and Joe were still in the assembly room, arguing heatedly.

“Joe, I’m going to see Foster,” Lee announced, breaking in on them. “I’m going to get a sworn affidavit from him stating that he did not give Jackie the money but gave it to Luther instead.”

“Lee, you say Luther’s guilty?” Joe asked.

“I know he’s guilty.”

“So what? Lee, brother, get some goddamn sense. I know the black bastard’s guilty too—”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Smitty interposed.

“I would!” Joe declared. “But that hasn’t got anything to do with this.”

“Why the hell hasn’t it!” Lee argued. “They’re sacrificing Jackie just to clear him.”

“That’s them! What do I care what the Communists do—so long as it doesn’t hurt the union?”

“You don’t think this will hurt the union?”

“Lee, listen. They framed one goddamn Communist to clear another one. All right. Who the hell cares? It’ll stop those stories about some bastard selling out and we’ll be able to get something done.”

“But, Joe, the girl is innocent!”

“Well, she’s innocent then. She’s a Communist. She oughta known what she was getting into before she joined their stinking party.”

“We haven’t got anything to do with that,” Smitty argued.

“It was the Communists who framed her—her own goddamn bedmates! Let her fight it out with them.”

“But it’s the union that expelled her,” Lee said.

“Look, Lee! The Communists have done us a favor. If they want to cut the throats of their own members, let ‘em! But let us take the favor and say no more about it. I want to get this plant organized and get the hell out of this screwy town.”

“I agree with Lee,” Smitty said.

“What’s done is done!” Joe said. “And I’m through talking about it. I’ll see you out at the plant tomorrow, Lee.”

But Lee Gordon could not let it go like that.

He went down to the telephone booth and called the Communist Party headquarters. Receiving no reply, he thought of Rosie but decided against calling him because Rosie had already done all he could. Then he looked up the telephone number of Bart’s home, but before calling he realized that Bart might not talk to him over the phone. He decided to ride out to Bart’s home and call on him in person.

An hour later he arrived at the little white stucco house in Watts where Bart lived, and saw a gathering of people through the living-room window. Bart answered his ring and stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind him.

“Well, Gordon, what brings you here at this late hour?”

“You know why I’m here, Bart,” Lee said.

“I can’t imagine,” Bart said blandly.

“You folks are framing Jackie Forks and I just wanted you to know that I’m going to fight it. I’m going to Foster first.”

“I had nothing to do with the expulsion of the Forks woman from the union,” Bart said in his high, precise voice. “In fact, I have just learned of it. But I understand that proof of her guilt was presented before the membership and her expulsion was voted by the rank and file.”

“Listen, Bart, I’m not as big a fool as you seem to think. I have been around you Communists for some time and I know what you have done. Just the other night you were trying to get me to denounce Lester McKinley when he quit and you had to change your plans. And now you get some woman to do the same to the Forks girl. If I didn’t know she was innocent—”

“How do you know?” Bart interrupted. “As I understand it, overwhelming proof of her guilt was presented—”

“Lies made up by you dirty Communists—”

“You are at my house, Gordon—”

“To hell with your house!” Lee cried as he turned away. “But I’m warning you—remember that! I’m warning you!”

Now as he walked rapidly down the dimly lit street of Watts he felt that sick sense of frustration again. Wasn’t there anything he could do—nothing? Did he have to see a person lynched and know that she was lynched and be able to do nothing about it? Now the old sense of his inadequacy began riding him again.

While he was returning on the interurban train, the impulse came to him to go in search of Luther and force him to write a confession at the point of a gun. But he did not have a gun. And at that hour of night he did not know where he could find one. So engrossed was he in thoughts of striking back, that the slightly humorous idiocy of this idea did not dawn on him. And as there was nothing more he could do that night, he went home.

Ruth was waiting in the darkened window when he turned into the walk, but hastened into the bedroom to pretend to be asleep. And again that light-headed feeling of relief flooded her with an almost sexual warmth. She suffered a faint aversion to her own emotion and for a moment disliked herself intensely for experiencing it. But she had no control over herself.

Since the assault on him by the deputies, she had suffered this stiflingly intense trepidation every moment he was out of her sight. She could not concentrate on her work; she was nervous and irritable, uncertain and absent-minded. All that day she had been contemplating resigning, thinking that if she quit now and left it up to Lee to sink or swim, it would resolve their unhappiness one way or another. Then she could be done with this terrible uncertainty. And if he failed and she had to return to work, it would not be difficult for her to find a job, for she would be alone. But at the last moment it was the fear that he would not be able to make it without her that kept her on the job—that any day he might quit his job and they would be dependent on hers again.

And now as he began cursing out the Communists as soon as he turned on the lights, she thought with a sudden aching apprehension that he had already done so, and felt betrayed by her love for him.

“What gets me down,” he went on, “is they’re not bound by even ordinary decency. There’s no way to appeal to them.”

“Now what did they do, Lee?” she asked, coming into the living-room to join him.

As he related how they had framed Jackie Forks to cover Luther’s guilt, a slow resentment grew within her. At first it was simply because he had taken the part of another working woman when he had never taken hers. If Jackie had been a man, she would have admired Lee for it.

“It serves her right for spying on the company,” she said acidly.

“But she was spying for us—for the union too,” he said.

“She was spying just the same. And you’ve said yourself that you hate a sneak.”

“But this was different—”

“What’s the difference between a Communist spy and a company spy? They’re both spies—low, degraded people.”

“But the dirty part of it was for the Communists to use her, then frame her like this to cover for Luther.”

“Maybe she did what they said she did. They would be in a position to know.”

“But I know that she didn’t!”

“How do you know?” she asked sharply, as the voice of intuition began whispering to her heart. “Were you there?”

“Oh, Ruth, don’t always argue just for the sake of being opposite. Everybody knows it was just a trumped-up charge to cover Luther.”

“But you just said they had proof.” And now she argued only to quiet the silent whisper.

“You know how the Communists can manufacture proof; you’ve been around them enough to have learned that, I know.”

“If everyone knew it wasn’t true, I don’t see how they could put her out of the union.”

“You know how the Communists do things, Ruth. Hell! They got the floor and railroaded it before anybody had a chance to think.”

“Weren’t the organizers there—Joe and Smitty?”

“Smitty did try to stop it but Joe wouldn’t do anything at all. If anything, he encouraged it.”

“Well, if they don’t want to do anything, why should you? It’s more their union than yours.”