Power (41 page)

“The market's rotten. You know that.”

“I also know that he can undersell Pennsylvania and Illinois soft coal.”

“But maybe you didn't know that Kentucky's underselling him?” Macintosh smiled.

“No?”

“Sure as God. They're paying one dollar, twenty cents a day down in Kentucky. Oswick pays low wages, but not like that. One-eighty a day is rock bottom for him. He's a pillar of the community—big church man, gifts to the university—and he moves in fancy circles. He and his wife have all kinds of social ambitions, and he just can't afford to be tagged as a slave operator.”

“Well, what do you know,” Ben muttered thoughtfully. He swallowed the rest of his roll and said, “How does it go, Mac—great fleas have little fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and little fleas have littler fleas, and so ad infinitum—something like that? Funny, the things you remember. Did you get the band?”

“Well, sort of. I got some kind of brass combination of four pieces. High school kids. They're coming over from Beckley. This is West Virginia, Ben, and it's 1933. Everything is not easy.”

“Good enough,” Ben grinned. “We still have an hour and a half before I get arrested. Let's get the banner up.”

The banner was four feet high, and it stretched all the way across Main Street. One end of it was anchored to the window of my room in the Traveler's Mountainside Hotel and the other end was fastened to the window of Max Macintosh's office. In three-foot-high letters of red, the banner screamed:
THE PRESIDENT SAYS: JOIN YOUR UNION! THE LAW SAYS: IT IS YOUR SACRED, CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT!
A row of blue stars bound it top and bottom, and when it was drawn tight, stretching full across the street, it could be seen the whole length of the town. It had been made for us in Pomax, and if it quoted the President a little less than accurately, the President was in no position to issue a disclaimer. The fact that it was Ben's gamble and had anticipated the passage of the law by at least three weeks did not lessen its effectiveness or Ben's reputation for political prognostication. The banner had been purchased on credit, the same credit that brought us a million leaflets and throwaways bearing identical slogans, and even now being read wherever coal was mined in America.

While we were raising the banner and putting up a flag-draped stand on the street, Sheriff Cavanaugh came by and expressed his indignation. Macintosh convinced him that it would do no harm to wait until ten-thirty. If the banner had to come down, it might as well be at the same time Ben was marched off to jail.

 

16

At half past ten, Ben and I were waiting with Macintosh in the lawyer's office. We were talking about the old days, when Macintosh was mayor and Jim Flecker was sheriff and about the great gunfight in the streets of Clinton, and how different it was, the way it had happened, from the gunfights we saw in Western films. Macintosh and I kept the talk far off and down the lane of the years because we did not want to contemplate the fact that Ben would be arrested in a few minutes, but Ben was not unduly disturbed. He sat loosely and comfortably in a chair, the way large, heavy men do, and occasionally he would glance at the clock on the wall of Macintosh's office. At twenty to eleven, Ben said,

“Now isn't this the damndest thing—to keep a man sitting here, waiting to be picked up! You know, Mac, this will make eleven times I've been arrested.” He took out a cigar. “You don't mind if I smoke?”

“Go ahead. By golly, you still smoke those rotten weeds, don't you? Tell me, Ben, did you ever do any time with those arrests?”

“Five times overnight. Once, thirty days in the Iron City jail. That's a rough place.”

“I just bet it is,” Macintosh nodded. “Funny thing, Ben, we got us a little jailhouse behind the sheriff's office, but there's practically no crime in a town like this. Killings—yes. People fill up to the brim and burst, and then they go crazy and kill someone, but that's not crime. I mean it's different from city crime. No one steals anything here—true, there ain't a hell of a lot to steal—” He was interrupted by a discordant blare of horns and drums. “The band's here. What do you know!”

I went to the window and leaned out. Four scrawny kids were on the hastily erected platform, one with traps, two with cornets, and a fourth with a French horn; and they were trying to get together on a single version of a Sousa march. From all over, people were drifting toward the bandstand, attracted by the music and the big, garish banner overhead. Then a long black car pulled up next to our building, and two men got out. Fulton Oswick was one of them, and I seemed to recognize the other. It turned out that he was Captain Sedge of the state police.

“The company's here,” I told Ben.

Sheriff Cavanaugh and his deputy must have been waiting in the hallway downstairs, and a few moments later, the four of them entered the room, Cavanaugh tall, stringy, sourvisaged, his deputy a boy in his twenties. Oswick's hair had whitened and he had put on weight; I don't think I would have recognized him. With Captain Sedge, the uniform told the story. I had no clear memory of the man.

We were introduced, but there was no handshaking. Ben didn't rise. He sat sprawled in his chair, puffing slowly and comfortably on his foul-smelling cigar, and he regarded the four men with almost detached interest and a certain amount of sympathy. “I can understand why they're here, Mr. Oswick,” he said, pointing at the law officers, “but I don't know why you're here. I do feel honored by your presence, however.” His voice was so gentle and ingratiating that it took them aback. Macintosh watched Ben sharply.

“I'll tell you why I'm here, Holt—I'm a deeply interested party.”

“That makes sense,” Ben nodded.

“I'm a coal man. I want to dig coal, break it, and ship it. That's all I want, and I don't want either interference or trouble. When you came here ten years ago, all hell broke loose. We remember that, and we don't want it to happen again.”

“I don't want it to happen again,” Ben said seriously.

“Then we see eye to eye, Holt. Sheriff Cavanaugh here has a warrant for your arrest. I don't want him to execute it, but if he must he will.”

“I don't want him to execute it, either,” Ben smiled. “This is the last moment in the world I want to be in jail. We've just started the biggest organizational drive in the history of this industry. A year from now, we'll have half a million miners in our union. Wouldn't I look like a damn fool if I sat in jail while others did the work?”

“You don't impress me, Holt. We're giving you a fair choice. Take your men and pack up and get out of the state on the next train, or you go to jail. One or the other.”

“Did you see our banner, Mr. Oswick?” Ben asked.

“I think you got one hell of a nerve,” Captain Sedge put in. “Do you really think you can come in here and pull something as raw as this?”

Ben took Mark's telegram out of his pocket and handed it to Oswick. Sedge read it over Oswick's shoulder. “It was waiting for me this morning,” Ben said mildly. “I didn't fake it. My word, would I fake something like that? All you have to do is pick up the phone and verify it.”

Oswick dropped the telegram to Macintosh's desk. “It changes nothing, Holt. You still have the same choice.”

“Would you let me see the warrant, Sheriff?” Ben asked Cavanaugh. “I think I have that right. Do I, Mac?” Macintosh nodded, and Cavanaugh, interested and puzzled by what was going on, handed the warrant to Ben. At that moment, Stevenson, the mayor, entered. He owned the gas station at the end of Main Street, and he and Macintosh were old friends. There were introductions and a summary of the situation while Ben studied the warrant. Then Ben handed the warrant to Macintosh.

“Incitement to riot,” Ben said. “Can anyone else execute this except Sheriff Cavanaugh?”

Macintosh shook his head slowly. “Only the sheriff.”

“The sheriff's enough,” Oswick said.

Ben picked the telegram off the desk and handed it to Cavanaugh. “Read this, Sheriff—you too, Mayor. It's the truth. There's no legal power in this state that can prevent us from organizing the miners here. You may delay it, but you can't prevent it. Put me in jail, and you'll still have a union town in thirty days. But what about you? Comes the next election—Sedge and Oswick don't vote in Clinton. You can vote for each other, but that's about as far as it goes.”

“I'll be damned if I'll listen to any more of this—” Sedge began, but Ben continued, as if Sedge were not present at all.

“Hell, I'm no stranger here, Sheriff.” His voice deepened, hardened. “There isn't a miner in West Virginia or Kentucky doesn't know the name Ben Holt. We're not playing games. We're in here to organize this state, and so help me God, no force on earth is going to stop us! So if you want to arrest me, Sheriff, go ahead and get to it!”

“Cavanaugh, execute that warrant!” Sedge snapped.

“Just take it easy, Captain Sedge,” Cavanaugh drawled. “Just one small pea-picking moment, and let me think about this.”

“I told you to execute that warrant!”

“You told me?” Cavanaugh's brows went up. “And since when have I been working for the state police, mister? You're not telling me anything, just don't you ever forget that!” Stevenson nodded his agreement.

“Captain Sedge,” Oswick burst out, “is that true—what Macintosh said? You can't arrest Holt?”

Sedge took a deep breath, swallowed, and nodded. “He's right. It's a county charge under a county statute. The sheriff or the local constable has to make the arrest. In twenty-four hours, however—”

“Twenty-four hours!” Oswick said disgustedly. “You couldn't anticipate this, Captain—not at all! Believe me, my respect for you is at a low point—a low point, sir, believe me.” He turned to Cavanaugh. “Sheriff, you're building a pile of trouble.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“I'm going to ask you once more to execute that warrant and make the arrest.”

“I said I want to think about it, Mr. Oswick.”

“Then just let me tell you this, Cavanaugh. There have been sheriffs here in the past who played the role of hoodlums. There was a time when Jim Flecker thought he could flout—”

“Now, Mr. Oswick,” Cavanaugh broke in, “I won't have you comparing me with any member of the Flecker family in any particular, I won't! Hell no! I been sheriff here five years and I think I know my job, and I got a record behind me. So just don't you go talking to me about any Jim Flecker.”

“Good heavens, Mr. Oswick,” Ben said amiably, “here I sit listening to an argument about whether I should or shouldn't be arrested, and damned if it doesn't listen like a scene out of
Alice in Wonderland
. You and I may look pretty much the same after almost fifteen years, but the world doesn't. The open-shop colliery down here is finished. That's a plain fact that nothing in the world is going to change. Why don't you face it?”

“Don't tell me what to face, Holt!”

Ben shrugged. “O.K., leave it the way it is. You pay a dollar-eighty a day. Kentucky pays a dollar-twenty. You can't stay in business that way. Six months from now, there'll be a uniform union rate—four dollars a day here, four dollars a day in Kentucky. The dollar-eighty days are over, and you might as well face it. Maybe you won't take out of the pits the kind of money you're taking now, but you'll stay in business, and if this lousy depression ends, you won't have your heart broken with competition from Alabama and Kentucky. Why not think about it?”

“I'll see you in hell first, Holt!” Oswick roared. “Come on, Sedge, we're wasting our time!”

They stormed out. Ben puffed on his cigar. It was out. He lit it again, drew a long breath of smoke, and allowed it to float gently from his mouth.

“What now?” Stevenson asked worriedly.

“No private armies,” Ben said thoughtfully. “No wars, no evictions, no lockouts—no, sir—I don't think so. Things have changed. That's a hard conclusion for reasonable people to accept, and harder for unreasonable people, but it's a fact. Things have changed. Don't you think so, Sheriff?” he asked Cavanaugh.

“I been turning it over in my mind.”

“Four dollars a day should have a nice, comfortable effect in Clinton, considering the times we live in,” Macintosh said.

Cavanaugh stared at the warrant in his hand. “Tell you something, Mac,” he said to the lawyer. “I don't say I changed my mind. I want to think about this. I never liked these incitement charges, and Judge Kingsford, he don't like them no better. So I'll just hang onto this for a little while. I'll have to advise Mr. Holt here that I hold him responsible for his actions and for the actions of them organizers he brought into town. First thing, he's got to have a permit for that platform out on the street.”

“Sheriff,” Ben said gravely, “I wouldn't respect you if you didn't hold me responsible for my actions. And that goes for your deputy, Mr. Tillman.”

Tillman blushed and swelled. All through it, he hadn't been able to take his eyes off Ben. I've seen a good many men try their hand at the role of a hero, but the only one I knew to bring it off every time was Ben Holt.

Then Macintosh reached into a drawer of his desk and brought out a bottle of local corn and six small glasses. We all drank to the President of the United States.

 

17

We held our first outdoor meeting in Clinton that afternoon at five o'clock, while there was still daylight. By this time, the kids who constituted our four-piece brass section were exhausted. They had been playing on and off all day since eleven in the morning. None of that day was wasted. We had hired three cars. Macintosh took one, Ben took the second, and I had the third. Ben and I had local unemployed miners to guide us, and we loaded the cars with as many organizers as we could carry. This was to be the only time we concentrated all our forces in one place; subsequently, we broke up into groups and spread out, but this day we covered almost every pit within ten miles of Clinton. We gave out our leaflets, held short, impromptu meetings, and swept on from place to place in a heady surge of confidence that nothing could dampen, and were back in Clinton in a few hours.