Lonely Crusade (53 page)

“Listen, this is what I want to say to you: that matter is not a a static substance, but the infinity of change. And communism but the present reflection of a movement of this change. Make no mistake about this, Lee. Time, and the profound progression of materialistic change, will make all men communists—and then make them more. Within this movement, a tiny part of it, more symbolic than representative, more indicative than causative, is the socialist state of Russia and the small communistic movements throughout the world.

“It is not so much that communism is ideal as inevitable in this historical pivot of change. So what if it seems too rigid for the human factors of existence? It will be—and then something more. The profound proof is that progress has taken place and the people have not been able to escape it.

“Luther was a murderer, yes, but he was a Communist, too. Maud is an anarchist, but she is a Communist, too. Harry, a boy I know, is an anti-semitic, Negro-hating Southern gentile, but he is a Communist, too. It is of no special significance that now among the Communist Party are great hordes of rats and heels, but that they be people of revolutionary zeal. For at this pivot of change they are the people who reflect the change, and are now more important historically than all your Morgans and Rockefellers and Vanderbilts.

“That’s why you are important, Lee. You are a Negro of revolutionary potential.”

Rosie paused to get his breath and Lee lay admiring him.

“Rosie, I like to listen to you. You have the ability to make me feel important in the world. But frankly, my potential points more toward execution than revolution. I didn’t tell you everything, but I am still on the spot.” His position had been turning over in his mind as he listened to Rosie and now he brought it out for reassurance. “You’ve been reading of the rally?”

“How could I miss it with the smears all over everywhere?”

“Well, if we don’t win the election, the union is going to withdraw its support from me.”

“Why? I don’t understand? Are you being held responsible for the whole campaign?”

“It’s not that.” Lee took a breath. “You see, I sold the union out.”

“No! I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true, though. At least I tried to sell them out.”

“And they discovered it?”

“I told them. I had to. When I was—well, explaining about the murder.”

“I see. And you are afraid that Smitty means this?”

“I don’t blame him. I think Smitty is truly my friend. But I am certain that he means it.”

“I do not want to know any more than you want to tell me. But can you be convicted for this murder?”

“Rosie, I don’t know. That’s what worries me. Without union support I don’t have any defense. It depends on how far Foster pushes it.”

Rosie was so long in replying that Lee was forced to ask: “What do you think?”

“Are you asking for the truth, Lee—for what I really think? Or do you want comfort?”

“I want the truth of what you think. I’ll take another drink, too.”

“I am an old hand at this business of rallies and elections,” Rosie said, pouring him another drink. “If the rally is successful and the union wins the election, Foster is not apt to do anything. There will be no point—that is, unless they have concrete evidence against you. But if the rally is a failure and the union loses the election, he might make trouble, because your conviction would insure the company against the union for some little time.”

“Maybe I’d better not go out there tomorrow.”

“No, you can’t dodge Foster by staying away. You have to see it through.”

“Foster is a vindictive man. If he saw me in that parade he’d never forget it.”

“Yes, Foster—he exerts great influence on the workers, doesn’t he?”

“Tremendous.”

“But he will pass. Men such as Foster are passing now. Just as the rugged individualist of the last generation has passed, the capitalist maneuverer of human destiny under the guise of political liberalism will also pass. As far as men may determine their own destiny, it will soon go back to the people.”

“That won’t help me tomorrow morning.”

“No, Lee, nothing will help you tomorrow morning. If you were with Luther when Dixon was murdered, you will feel Foster’s power.”

“What if nothing can be proved connecting me with the murder?”

“Then you will not be prosecuted. But as a Negro you will be persecuted. As a Negro you will face your darkest days in the near future. When the war is over, reaction will set in. There will be no peace, for those who can establish even a temporary peace do not expect or want peace. There will be only the beginning of another war. And minorities will be crushed. For it will be capital’s last stand and it will be a bloody bitter stand. But the handwriting is already on the wall. This is change, Lee, and out of the rivers of blood will come a different world.”

“Rosie, I have a great respect for your historical interpretations. But as one individual Negro afraid of being framed for a murder rap, they do not encourage me.”

“No, Lee, you must face it, friend. You may die for the murder of Paul Dixon. But once you resolve your indecision toward life and embrace your own reality, you will not be afraid to die.”

“I think I have done that, Rosie.”

“Then you will not be afraid. All people die—that is a little thing.”

“I am still afraid, Rosie.”

“You will not be when the time comes. Death will be but another change in the infinity of change. You will return from the reflection of matter to the matter you reflect. But the movement of which you have become a part in your resolution will go on. Lee, it is not that you are with the labor movement, but that you are a part of it; not that you support a cause, but that you are the cause. That is what makes you important, Lee.”

“Thank you, Rosie. But now I am a little drunk.”

“Yes. Then I must say good night. You have my address and my telephone number?”

“Somewhere.”

“I will leave a card.”

When Rosie stood, Lee could see the lines of fatigue in his face, and he knew suddenly that Rosie had been working to save something in him in much the same manner as a minister works to save a condemned man’s immortal soul. He felt suddenly grateful to this grotesque little man.

“Thank you for calling, Rosie. Thank you.”

“You will be all right, Lee,” Rosie said as he opened the door. “You are a brave man.”

Chapter 32

T
HE ROOM WAS
filled with sunrise when Lee Gordon awoke. The moment he opened his eyes he saw a different life. His cold was cured without hangover and his mind felt clean without doubt. Gone was the depressing sense of failure, the bitter thoughts of yesterday—and in its place, an inner excitement, a keenness of the spirit and a zest for things to come. He tingled with that gladness in a perfect day. This was the way he’d always wanted to feel, and never had before—because this was the way that life could be wonderful.

Throwing back the covers, he let the sunshine warm his blood. And then he went down the hall to the bath. The sharp, cold needles of the shower filled him with an eagerness to face the day, and now he reviewed the prospects of the rally with confidence. Anything seemed possible on a day like this. Suddenly he had the feeling that they were going to win. Never before in all his life had he felt that he would win at anything. It was like a breaking-through, a getting-there—like arriving at a wholeness.

Without warning, song broke from his lips, that great inspirational battle hymn of the Christians…“Oh when the saints…go marching onnnnn…Lord I want to beeeee in that numbahhhhh…” From what religious recesses of his past this came, he did not know, but it filled him with a poignant sense of laughter.

Now as he shaved he noticed the age in his face and discovered his first gray hair. And he was glad to realize that he had safely passed his youth. “…in that numbahhhh,” kept running through his mind.

For such a day as this he chose a jaunty slack suit and left his head bare to the sun. Hunger paid an early visit as in many years gone by. But now asking for credit at the greasy beanery where he ate was an easy thing to do. The ham and eggs tasted better than ham and eggs had ever tasted and the sour-faced Greek served him a second cup of coffee on the house—and with a smile.

“So you wun-na the sweepstakes, eh?”

“The sweepstakes, they wun-na me.”

As he stood outside waiting for the streetcar, images moved before his vision in startling clarity. Sounds came into his ears with clean fidelity. He saw the dirty facades of the buildings and the filthy tatters of the bums, and heard the foul obscenities of decayed minds. He saw the ravages of dissipation in the faces of the winos and the reeking ruins of syphilis in the bodies of the whores. Yet everything he saw was with compassion and all he heard was with a prayer. And the odor of garbage from the uncleaned gutters gave place to a fragrance of friendliness in this living world. Just life itself was pretty wonderful—a thing the dead would know. It was a strange and shocking thought, but it did not affect him so because he felt so untouchable, so buoyant, so light, so living up on high.

The streetcar came and with the mob he pushed aboard. His race made him one with the sullen-faced Negro workers from the South Side who filled the car from door to door, but his spirit rejected them. How could people be so sullen on a day like this ? So of them all he only saw a lovely dark girl with a proud red mouth and eyes like purple muscadines. He smiled across at her and her replying smile lit up the faces of all others.

And now he thought of Ruth without hopelessness or remorse. He was surprised to find that he could think of her like this—as the queen of the kingdom of his heart and the mother of their children yet unborn. A flood of poignant yearnings rolled back the tearful yesterdays, and he saw tomorrow as the resurrection of a dream. With this song in his heart to serenade, and this newly born life to place at her feet, with the enchantment of a California spring on his side, how could he help but win her back ? And when he had, they would set out yellow roses down the borders of their lawn for constancy. And in the cool, dark evenings they would lie together in each other’s arms and talk of the future. Because now he knew that when all of this was done and past, it was going to be wonderful again—so much better this time because of what they’d both been through. Maybe it would be like it should be, like it could be if they tried. Maybe she’d see in him what she’d been looking for, maybe this was what kept singing on a laughing note. And suddenly he was laughing again.

Now he saw the city that he had never seen, though it had been ten thousand times within his eyes—the pleasant little shops on Fifth Street toward the Square, sunlight on the buildings—delicate pastel tracings against the blue—and two wedding gowns in a shop window like petals of eternal hope; and the faces of the people of the race—the human race—each with its story of the crusade.

And he thought of Rosie’s words and wondered, was this but the reflection of the immemorial movement of matter within the living brain ? Was this ceaseless human struggle but facets of continuous change ? His heart cried out against it—God made hope to spring eternal from the human heart—Those were the words that were beautiful. And who could say what words were right and what were wrong—Or that they both were not the same, as long as mankind made the struggle ?

Changing to the bus at Pershing Square, he was enclosed by the stream of early-morning workers. But he did not feel lost or black or unimportant, but a part of it, contained by it, as a ripple in the river of humanity. And this was how it should be, Lee Gordon thought—and how at last it had finally come to be.

But as they bumped and rolled through the city in the sun, the days came back to charge him with the cost—that afternoon, a lifetime ago, when news of his employment by the union had put him briefly in the stars, and this morning when now at last he felt alive in the living world. But in between there were the fear and bitterness and hurt, not only to himself but to Ruth, to everyone and every thing that he had touched. The face of the earth had changed for him during those fifty days. Values had taken new meanings and people new forms. But had he spent too much of other people ? Had he spent too much of Ruth ? Had he paid too great a price in human suffering for the change that he had bought? Only the future knew, and it was to the future that he looked.

Now again, as at the very first, he watched the rolling expanse of gray-green meadowland assume angles and take shape and reveal itself as the sprawling assembly of camouflaged buildings that were Comstock. But now he felt the wonder of his native land, its might and power and its parenthood : “…our nation an improving nation, and the best nation of them all…”

He hitched up his trousers and hurried toward the union shack. Approaching from the rear, it seemed empty and deserted. He changed direction and headed toward the plant. As he came out into the side street across from the parking lot, he looked up and saw a line of deputy sheriffs, blocking off the street, the brightness of the day, blocking off hope and happiness and his future in the sun. Spaced evenly apart, they were numberless it seemed, a row of white helmets running down the slope of diminishing infinity—not the workers on parade, but power, the wages of wealth. So this was the company’s answer, Lee Gordon thought, the voice of Foster! It broke unions, but did it make men ? And he was suddenly raving mad.

Squaring his shoulders and tensing his muscles, he walked toward the line to pass. But a heavy hand reached out and stopped him.

“Your badge, boy. Let’s see your badge.”

“I have no badge.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I am a citizen and this is a public street.”

“No more. This is a military zone and you can’t pass without a badge.”

He stared at the adamant face, seeing its each minor detail in his helpless fury. “I say it’s the street.”

“You can be hurt, boy. Get on.”

He turned abruptly. But as he stalked down the street his rage ran out. What could he, one lone Negro man, do against this army ? Better see Smitty first and work with the union. But as he neared the union shack, he saw Benny Stone detach himself from two policemen and saunter toward him. He started to speak, then noticed Benny brushing off a sleeve. He jerked another glance to the two policemen, past them to the deserted shack, then back to the two policemen. Sight hung there, and thought and conjecture and memory, and even the day itself hung there, on the blunt, red faces of policemen, so suddenly discovered. Policemen !