The Carpetbaggers (76 page)

He turned swiftly. "I'd rather see her a whore of her own free choice," he snapped, "than driven to sainthood."

He looked down at Jennie, his voice soft again. "Do you want to become a nurse, Jennie Bear?"

She looked up at him with her clear gray eyes. "I think so, Papa."

"If it's what you want, Jennie Bear," he said quietly, "then I’ll be content with it."

Her mother looked at him, a quiet triumph in her eyes. "When will ye learn ye cannot fight the Lord, Thomas Denton?"

He started to answer, then shut his lips tightly and strode from the apartment.

* * *

Sister Cyril knocked at the heavy oaken door of the study. "Come in," called a strong, clear voice. She opened the door and gestured to Jennie.

Jennie walked into the room hesitantly, Sister Cyril behind her. "This is Jennie Denton, Reverend Mother."

The middle-aged woman in the black garb of the Sisterhood looked up from her desk. There was a half-finished cup of tea by her hand. She studied the girl with curiously bright, questioning eyes. After a moment, she smiled, revealing white, even teeth. "So you're Jennie Denton," she said, holding out her hand.

Jennie curtsied quickly and kissed the ring on the finger of the Reverend Mother. "Yes, Reverend Mother." She straightened up and stood in front of the desk stiffly.

Mother M. Ernest smiled again, a hint of merriment coming into her eyes. "You can relax, child," she said. "I'm not going to eat you."

Jennie smiled awkwardly.

The Reverend Mother raised a questioning eyebrow. "Perhaps you'd like a cup of tea?" she asked. "A cup of tea always makes me feel better."

"That would be very nice," Jennie said stiffly.

The Reverend Mother looked up and nodded at Sister Cyril. "I’ll get it, Reverend Mother," the nun said quickly.

"And another cup for me, please?" Mother M. Ernest turned back to Jennie. "I do love a good cup of tea." She smiled. "And they do have that here. None of those weak tea balls they use in the hospitals; real tea, brewed in a pot the way tea should be. Won't you sit down, child?"

The last came so fast that Jennie wasn't quite sure she'd heard it. "What, ma'am?" she stammered.

"Won't you sit down, child? You don't have to be nervous with me. I want to be your friend."

"Yes, ma'am," Jennie said and sat down, even more nervous than before.

The Reverend Mother looked at her for a few moments. "So you've decided to become a nurse, have you?"

"Yes, Reverend Mother."

Now the Reverend Mother's curiously bright eyes were upon her. "Why?" she asked suddenly.

"Why?" Jennie was surprised at the question. Her eyes fell before the Reverend Mother's gaze. "Why?" She looked up again, her eyes meeting the Reverend Mother's. "I don't know. I guess I never really thought about it."

"How old are you, child?" the Reverend Mother asked.

"I’ll be seventeen next month, the week before graduation."

"It was always your ambition to be a nurse and help the sick, ever since you were a little child, wasn't it?"

Jennie shook her head. "No," she answered candidly. "I never thought about it much until now."

"Becoming a nurse is very hard work. You'll have very little time to yourself at St. Mary's. You'll work and study all day; at night, you'll live at the school. You'll have only one day off each month to visit your family." The Reverend Mother turned the handle of her cup delicately so that it pointed away from her. "Your boy friend might not like that."

"But I haven't got a boy friend," Jennie said.

"But you came to the junior and senior proms with Michael Halloran," the Reverend Mother said. "And you play tennis with him every Saturday. Isn't he your boy friend?"

Jennie laughed. "No, Reverend Mother. He's not my boy friend, not that way." She laughed again, this time to herself, as she thought of the lanky, gangling youth whose only romantic thoughts were about his backhand. "He's just the best tennis player around, that's all." Then she added, "And someday I'm going to beat him."

"You were captain of the girl's tennis team last year?"

Jennie nodded.

"You won't have time to play tennis at St. Mary's," the Reverend Mother said.

Jennie didn't answer.

"Is there anything you'd rather be than a nurse?"

Jennie thought for a moment. Then she looked up at the Reverend Mother. "I’d like to beat Helen Wills for the U.S. tennis championship."

The Reverend Mother began to laugh. She was still laughing when Sister Cyril came in with the tea. She looked across the desk at the girl. "You'll do," she said. "And I have a feeling you’ll make a very good nurse, too."

Tom Denton knew there was something wrong the moment he came up to the window for his pay envelope. Usually, the paymaster was ready with a wisecrack, like did he want him to hold the envelope for his wife so that the Saturday-night beer parlors wouldn't get it? But there was no wisecrack this time, no friendly raillery, which had been a part of their weekly meeting for almost fifteen years. Instead, the paymaster pushed the envelope under the slotted steel bars quickly, his eyes averted and downcast.

Tom stared at him for a moment. He glanced quickly at some of the faces on the line behind him. They knew, too. He could see it from the way they were looking at him. An odd feeling of shame came over him. This couldn't be happening to him. Not after fifteen years. His eyes fell and he walked away from the window, the envelope in his hand.

Nobody had to tell him times were bad. This was 1931 and the evidence was all around him. The families on relief, the bread lines, the endless gray, tired faces of the men who boarded his car every morning.

He was almost out of the barn now. Suddenly, he couldn't wait any longer and he ducked into a dark corner to open the pay envelope. He tore at it with trembling fingers. The first thing that came to his hand was the dreaded green slip.

He stared at it unbelievingly. It must be a mistake. They couldn't mean him. He wasn't a one-year or two-year man, not even a five-year man. He had seniority. Fifteen years. They weren't laying off fifteen-year men. Not yet.

But they were. He squinted at the paper in the dim light. Laid off. What a bitter irony. That was the reason given for all the pay cuts — to prevent layoffs. Even the union had told them that.

He shoved the envelope into his pocket, trying to fight the sudden sick feeling of fear that crawled around in his stomach. What was he to do now? All he knew was the cars. He'd forgotten all about everything else he'd ever done. The only other thing he remembered was working as a hod-carrier when he was young.

He came out of the dark barn, blinking his eyes at the daylight. A group of men were standing there on the sidewalk, their worn blue uniforms purplish in the light. One of them called to him. "You got it, too, Denton?"

Tom looked at him. He nodded. "Yes."

"We did, too," another said. "They're letting out the senior men because we're getting a higher rate. All the new men are being kept on."

"Have you been to the union yet?" Tom asked.

"We've been there and back. The hall is closed. The watchman there says come back on Monday."

"Anybody call Riordan?"

"His phone home don't answer."

"Somebody must know where Riordan is," Tom said. "Let's go to the hall and make the watchman let us in. After all, what do we pay dues for if we can't meet there?"

"That's a good idea, Tom. We can't just let them replace us with fifty-five-centers, no matter what they say."

They began to walk to the union hall, about two blocks from the car barn. Tom strode along silently. In a way, he still couldn't believe it. Ten cents an hour couldn't mean that much to the company. Why, he'd have taken even another cut if they'd asked him. It wasn't right, the way they were doing it. They had to find Riordan. He'd know the answers. He was the union man.

The union hall was dark when they got there and they banged on the door until the old night watchman opened it. "I tol' you fellers Riordan ain't here," he said in an aged, irritated voice.

"Where is Riordan?"

"I don't know," the watchman answered, starting to close the door. "You fellers go home."

Tom put his foot in the door and pushed. The old man went flying backward, stumbling, almost falling. The men surged into the building behind Tom.

"You fellers stay outa here," the old man cried in his querulous voice.

They ignored him and pushed their way into the meeting hall, which was a large room at the end of the corridor. By now, the crowd had swelled to close to thirty men. Once they were in, they stood there uncertainly, not knowing what to do next. They milled around, looking at each other. "Let's go into Riordan's office," Tom suggested. "Maybe we can find out where he is in there."

Riordan's office was a glass-enclosed partition at the end of the meeting hall. They pushed down there but only a few of them were able to squeeze into the tiny cubbyhole. Tom looked down at the organizer's desk. There was a calendar, a green blotter and some pencils on it. He pulled open a drawer, then, one after another, all of them. The only thing he could find were more pencils, and dues blanks and receipts.

The watchman appeared at the back of the hall. "If you fellers don't get outa here," he shouted, "I'm gonna call the cops."

"Go take a shit, old man," a blue-coated conductor shouted back at him.

"Yeah," shouted another. "This is our union. We pay the dues and the rent. We can stay here if we want."

The watchman disappeared back into the corridor. Some of the men looked at Tom. "What do we do now?"

"Maybe we better come back Monday," one of them suggested. "We'll see what Riordan has to say then."

"No," Tom said sharply. "By Monday, nobody will be able to do nothing. We got to get this settled today."

"How?" the man asked.

Tom stood there for a moment, thinking. "The union's the only chance we got. We got to make the union do something for us."

"How can we if Riordan ain't here?"

"Riordan isn't the union," Tom said. "We are. If we can't find him, we got to do it without him." He turned to one of the men. "Patrick, you're on the executive board. What does Riordan usually do in a case like this?"

Patrick took off his cap and scratched at his gray hair. "I dunno," he said thoughtfully. "But I reckon the first thing he'd do would be to call a meetin'."

"O.K." Tom nodded. "You take a bunch of the men back to the barns and tell the day shift to come down here to a meeting right away."

The men moved around excitedly and after a few minutes, several of them left to go back to the car barns. The others stood around, waiting. "If we're to have a meetin'," someone said, "we gotta have an agenda. They don't have no meetin's without they have an agenda."

"The agenda is, can the company lay us off like this," Tom said.

They nodded agreement. "We got rights."

"This meetin' business is givin' me a awful thirst," another man said. "All this talkin' has dried out me throat somethin' terrible."

"Let's send out for a barrel of beer," a voice yelled from the back.

There was real enthusiasm in the shout of agreement and a collection was quickly taken up. Two men were dispatched on the errand and when they returned, the keg was mounted on a table at the back of the room.

"Now," said one of them, waving his beer glass in front of him, "now we can get down to business!"

* * *

The meeting hall was a bedlam of noise and confusion as more than a hundred men milled around, talking and shouting. The first keg of beer had run out long ago. Two new ones rested on the table, pouring forth their refreshment.

Tom pounded on the table with the gavel he'd found in Riordan's desk. "The meeting will now come to order!" he shouted, for the fifth time in as many minutes. He kept pounding on the table until he caught the attention of a few men down at the front.

"Quiet!" one of them bellowed. "Le's hear what good ol' Tom has to say."

The noise subsided to a murmur, then all the men were watching him. Tom waited until it was as quiet as he thought it would get, then he cleared his throat nervously. "We called this meetin' because today the company laid off fifty men an' we couldn't find Riordan to tell us why." He fumbled with the gavel for a moment. "The union, which is supposed to give us protection on our jobs, has now got to act, even if we don't know where Riordan is. The men that were laid off today had seniority an' there's no reason why the company shouldn't take them back."

A roar burst from the crowd.

"While you fellers was drinkin' beer," Tom said, "I looked up the rules in the bylaws printed in my union book, an' it says that a meetin' is entitled to call for a strike vote if more than twenty-five members is present. There's more than twenty-five members here an' I say we should vote a strike by Monday, unless the company takes us back right away."

"Strike! Strike!"

"We've all been faithful employees of the company for many years an' always gave them an honest count an' they got no right to kick us out like that."

"Y-aay!"

"Don't let the nickels stick to your fingers, Tom," a man in the back shouted. "There may be a spotter in the crowd."

There was laughter.

"If there is a spotter," Tom said grimly, "let him go back to the company an' tell 'em what we're doin' here. We'll show 'em they can't push us around."

There was a burst of applause.

Tom waved his hand. "Now we'll vote on a strike," he said. "All in favor say aye."

The men were suddenly quiet. They looked at each other nervously. The door at the back of the hall had opened and Riordan was standing in it. "What's all this loose talk about a strike, men?"

They turned in surprise and stared at him. The ruddy-faced, heavy-set union organizer started down through the meeting hall. A buzz came up as they saw him. It was almost a sigh of relief. Riordan was here. He'd tell them what to do. He'd straighten everything out.

"Hello, Tom," Riordan said, walking around the table. He held out his hand. Tom shook hands with him. It was the first time he'd done so.