Sometimes a Great Notion (68 page)

At all the tables grouped about the table where Evenwrite was holding forth, the conversation followed essentially the same lines, starting with they’d never thought it of Hank Stamper, double-crossing his neighbors like he’s done—“Old Henry, maybe, but Hank’s always been a pretty good ol’ boy himself ”—on to “What the devil? You can’t expect to get a peach offn a thorn-apple bush, can you? Just because Hank ain’t all the time juiced out tellin’ about how you got to have a armor-plated hide to make a go of this business, like the old man all the time is, don’t mean he ain’t blood of blood and flesh of flesh.” And eventually on to “There’s no two ways about it that I can see: Hank Stamper’s indicated where he stands and he’s just got to be showed the error of his ways.”

Evenwrite led the charge in this last maneuver. “And I for one say,” he shouted, jumping to his feet, momentarily enlisting the room’s attention with eyes glazed and red as hard candy and a nose plugged near to bursting, “say that a bunj of us go out there and put Mister Hank Stamper
straighd!
” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and added, “Right by god
gnow!
”

There was a brief flurry of agreement, “Yeah, straight . . . right now . . .” but Teddy knew the bar was too comfortably warm and bright and the night outside too miserably cold and wet for this flurry to flare into action. It would take a lot more talk and drink before Evenwrite could lead any sort of mob out into the rain. Still, the ways things were going, he did wish—

The door opened and, like an answer to Teddy’s unfinished wish, Draeger entered. Hardly anyone but Teddy noticed, the others devoting attention to Evenwrite’s bloodshot eyes and plugnosed speech. Draeger removed his overcoat and hat and hung them by the door, then seated himself at a small empty table close to the oil heater. He held up a finger and said, “One,” silently to Teddy, then turned to watch Evenwrite’s neck heave and swell in his plea for action.

“We been beatin’ too long around the bush with them, tryna be
legal
, and
fair
. . . well, I ask you, they been fair with us? They treated
us
ride?”

There was more yelling and some scraping of chairs. But Teddy, carrying whisky and water, peeked from beneath his lashes at Draeger’s pleasant, understanding face and saw that Draeger was no more worried about being trampled in a riot than he was.
If anybody here is going to whip up a riot, it is not
going to be Floyd Evenwrite.
He placed the glasses on the table; Draeger tasted the liquor and smiled up at Teddy.

“My old
man
,” Evenwrite was shouting, “always said that if the workingman
wants
something in this world then the workingman has to
get
it. . . .
Ride?
Goddab ride . . .”

Draeger swallowed the rest of his drink, then sat, studying the facets of colored light in the shot glass while Evenwrite banged about the tables, cursing and taunting the men, red-faced with diluted liquor and imagined power.

“So whadya say? Who says we get with it? Huh? Huh?” Most of them said yeah, get with it, but none of them moved. “Whadya say! Whadya say! Ride on out there and we’ll—” He blinked, concentrating fiercely, damn it all, he
had
for a shake there had his finger on it. “And we will just the whole bunch of us we’ll—”

“Swim across the river like a pack of beavers?” The heads turned from Evenwrite to Draeger. “Stand on the bank and throw rocks? Floyd, you sound like you caught a cold somewhere.”

Evenwrite refused to turn to the voice. He wanted to ignore it now, just as he had been expecting it all evening. He snatched up his empty glass and glared at it as though the calm, deep words were issuing from its crystal mouth.

“Use your head, Floyd,” Draeger continued. “You can’t stir up these people into running out to that house like a bunch of fools out of a cowboy movie, even if we
could
find a legal way, because in the first place—”

“Legal again!” Evenwrite shouted at the glass. “What the shit’s legal got to do?”

“—because,” Draeger went on, “in the first place we couldn’t get across the river as a group. Unless you think Mr. Stamper would ferry us across two or three at a time. Now, I don’t really know the man”—he smiled about at the room—“but from all I’ve heard I don’t think I’d care to go across as an emissary and request that he bring enough of us across to make up a mob. Of course, Floyd may be so inclined. I hear he’s more skilled at this sort of thing than I am.”

The men laughed uncertainly, puzzled by the calm tact of this man. They waited, watching him at his solitary table toying with his glass. But when he didn’t go on, the crowd turned its attention back to Evenwrite, who still stood clutching his empty glass. Evenwrite felt the attention burn at his back: balls. He’d been going good before that bastard had showed up; real good. But some way Draeger had made him the fool again, though damned if he could see how. He tried to study the fact for a moment, then gave up and vented his frustration on Teddy by demanding a free glass on account of dammit for all the juice he’d throwed down in there tonight if it’d been
real
stuff he’d be drunk on his ear, now ain’t that so? Without comment, Teddy refilled the glass. Evenwrite drank it with a gulp, not even closing his eyes, then smacked his lips thoughtfully. “Pigeon piss,” he decided and spat in the direction of the spittoon. There was a little wave of laughter, still uncertain. The men looked back and forth from their president to their representative, waiting for the next move. Draeger seemed unaware of the silence that had risen up after his entrance; he peered through the little glass he twisted in his fingers, his eyes patient as his smile. Evenwrite leaned against the bar. He knew he was on the spot. Draeger had made it his move. He rubbed his neck and finally broke the quiet by throwing the glass at the brass pot wired to the corner of the bar and shouting “Pigeon piss” again. “That ain’t whisky, that’s pure hundred-fifty-proof pigeon piss.” There was more laughter and he turned then toward Draeger, confident again. He was leaning slightly, eyes very bright. “Okay, Jonathan Bailey Draeger, since
you’re
so fuckin’ smart let’s hear what you say we should do. You called this walkout the first place. Ain’t that so? Since
you’re
so smart, okay let’s hear what you’re gonna do to get us outa this mess. I’m jus’ a dumb-ass sawyer! I mean, nobody
pays
us dumb-asses to think. Since
you’re
so smart—”

Draeger brought the glass down on the cocktail napkin on the Formica table top; there was a muffled yet resonant click, sounding at once distant and very near, like a click heard under water. “If you’ll just sit down and take it easy, Floyd—”

“Ho
ho.
Don’t you Floyd old boy
me
, Jonathan Bailey Draeger. Legal? All right, if you want to be legal then,
you
know and
I
know what we gotta do. Maybe we beat our gums here the rest the night but we
know!
An’ me hollering to go out there after Stamper was a dumb-ass thing, sure . . .
but not no more dumb-ass than you suckin’ us into this strike none of us wanted!
”

“Floyd, to hear you tell it last August you boys were all starving to death.”

“Last August you told us we’d settle without a walkout!”

“Are you scared to gut it out, Floyd? Scared you might miss a couple of paychecks?”

Draeger still spoke so softly that it was difficult to tell if the voice came from him or not. Evenwrite’s voice grew louder to overpower the silence that Draeger had brought down on the room. “
No
, I ain’t scared to miss a couple of paychecks! I done it before. All of us have. We’ve struck before and we’ve gutted it out. We’ve gutted it out since the days before the Wobs came to back us up. And we’ll do it again, won’t we, boys?” He looked about at the men, nodding. The men nodded with him, watching Draeger. “You’re damn right. We ain’t scared to gut it or miss a couple paychecks, but we ain’t scared to back off when we’re dead whipped, neither!”

“Floyd, if you’ll—”

“And legally, if you want to be that way about it, we are
whipped!
Whipped comin’ an’ goin’.” He stopped speaking to Draeger and turned toward the men again, wiping his nose. “I been wantin’ to cash it a long time now. It was the wrong time of year to walk out; we all knew that—hell, middle of winter, not a whole lot in the strike fund—but Draeger figured if he could just swing this one he was on his way to him a big spot, make a goddam
king
or something of hisself . . . so he got us—”

“Floyd . . .”

“Draeger, if
you’re
so fuckin’ smart—”

“Floyd.”

Click.
Again that light, restrained touch of the glass against the table, as light as a hammer cocking. The heads swung back to Draeger.
I see now; now I understand.
. . . From behind his bar Teddy marveled at the man’s power and timing. . . .
You know how to wait. As soon as you started speaking . . . watch these idiots draw in toward you without leaving their places
,
straining without motion toward your voice as metal particles strain in toward a magnet
. . .

“Floyd . . . doesn’t the foreman from the Stamper mill, Orland Stamper, live right next door to you?”

“And Sitkins, you and your brother, I heard you both have children in the same class as some of the Stamper children. It seems I recall hearing that. Those kids are just kids, aren’t they, just like your kids?”

“And the Stamper wives, aren’t they just women? Worried just like any women about how their house looks for company? What the new hairdo is?—and, boy oh boy, have you men
seen
some of those styles?—just like any woman, the Stamper wives?”

“Men . . . Floyd . . . there are one or two things to keep in mind: that it doesn’t make any difference
what
their name is—they want the same things from life that you want, the same things you men fought for when we put this union together, the same things you want now . . . because it’s
natural.
”

“I take my stand behind the human heart, not alongside violence . . .”

“So here is what I’ve been doing the last four days, over in Eugene—toward the benefit of
all
, with no violence, no bloodshed . . . I’ve been appropriating funds from the union treasury . . .”

“What are you driving at, Draeger?” Evenwrite asked, feeling suddenly tired again.

“Not quite all we need, perhaps,” Draeger continued as though he hadn’t heard Evenwrite, “but I am sure some local businessman with a little capital and a shrewd investment eye can raise the rest of the money. . . .”

“Muddy for what, Draeger?”

Draeger smiled sadly at Floyd. “You’ve got a dilly of one, haven’t you, Floyd? Too bad; especially since we have to take us another little joyride up the river and have another talk with Mr. Stamper.”

“Now just a goddam
minute!
I know this man, he’s less likely now than he was a week ago to change his—” Evenwrite squinted at Draeger. “Money for
what?
I asked.”

“We are going to buy the Stamper Enterprises, Floyd, lock, stock and barrel, kit and kaboo—”

“He won’t sell,” Evenwrite said, a little desperately. “Hank Stamper? Never . . .”

“I think he will. I talked to him on the phone. I quoted some figures that he would be a fool to pass up—”

“He said
yes?
Hank
Stamper?
”

“Not absolutely, no, but I don’t see what would stop him. He’ll never get a better offer.” Draeger turned back to the others, shrugging. “The price will be a little stiff, men, but he had us by the short hairs, as Floyd puts it. It will still work out to our advantage: the business will be owned locally, in conjunction with the union; the investors will share in the profits; the Wakonda Pacific will be over a barrel. . . .”

Teddy listened through his thoughts to the muffled, distant voice and fell in love from behind his barricade of rainbows.

Evenwrite leaned against the bar, stunned completely sober. He didn’t listen to the rest of the excited questions, or Draeger’s optimistic plans. For a while, the prospect of another river trip almost jolted him out of his stupor, but when he raised his head to protest he saw all the other men so enthusiastic that he couldn’t bring himself to speak. And when Draeger left in the direction of Mama Olson’s he put on his coat and docilely followed along.