There were new words, new ideas, striking on the consciousness of people. The words themselves bothered Red. “Communism, socialism, the bourgeoisie, capitalism, Karl Marx.” The bitter, long struggle that had to come... the war... that was what it would be... between those who had and those who couldn’t get... was making for itself new words. Words were flying into America from Europe, from Russia. There would be all sorts of queer new alignments of people in life... new alignments made, having to be made. In the end every man and every woman, even the children, would have to line themselves up on the one side or the other.
“I won’t. I’ll stay standing here to one side. I’ll watch, look and listen.”
“Ha! You will, will you? Well, you can’t.”
“The communists are the only people who realize that war is war,” Red thought sometimes. “They’ll gain by that. Anyway, they’ll gain in determination. They’ll be the real leaders. It’s a soft age. Men must quit being soft.” With Red Oliver... he was like thousands of young Americans... he had got just enough of communism, its philosophy, to make him afraid. He was afraid and at the same time fascinated. He might at any moment surrender, become a communist. He knew that. His going from the strike at Langdon to the strike at Birchfield was like a moth going toward a flame. He wanted to go. He didn’t want to go.
He could see it all as pure brutal cruelty... a communist leader at Birchfield, for example, sending the singing woman out into the streets of Birchfield, knowing how the town felt, at a time when the town was excited — worked up.... People were bound to be most cruel when they were most frightened. Cruelty in man had its roots in that — in fear.
To send the singing women from the strikers’ camp out in the town knowing... as the communist leaders did know... that they might be killed... was it brutal, useless cruelty? One of the women was killed, the song-maker. The bleary-eyed young man Red saw in the tramps’ jungle, to whom he stood listening, was telling about it.
The truck loaded with the singing women had driven out of the strikers’ camp into the town. It was at the noon hour when the streets were full of people. There had been a riot in the town on the day before. Strikers had tried to parade and a crowd of deputy sheriffs had tried to stop them.
Some of the strikers — ex-mountain men — had been armed. There was shooting. The bleary-eyed man said that two or three deputy sheriffs tried to stop the truck loaded with the singing women. Besides their own ballads they were singing another song the communists had taught them. There couldn’t have been a chance on earth that the women on the truck knew for themselves what communism was, what communism demanded, what the communists were fighting for. “It might be the great curative philosophy,” Red Oliver thought sometimes. He had begun thinking that. He didn’t know. He was puzzled and uncertain.
Two or three deputy sheriffs running out into a crowded street to try to stop a truck loaded with singing work women. They had been taught by the communists a new song.
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation,
Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation.
A better world’s in birth.
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us.
Arise, ye slaves, no more enthralled.
The world shall rise on new foundations.
Ye have been naught, ye shall be all.
It could not have been that the women singers understood the import of the song they had been taught to sing. There were words in the song they had never heard before— “condemnation”— “traditions”— “tradition’s chains”— “enthralled”— “no more enthralled” — but there is something more than exact meaning in words. Words have a life of their own. They have relations to each other. Words are building stones with which dreams may be built. There was dignity in the song the workers sang in the truck. Voices rang out with new courage. They rang through the crowded streets of a North Carolina industrial town. Smell of gasoline — rattle of truck wheels — auto horns — the hurrying, strangely impotent, modern American crowd.
The truck was in the middle of a block, proceeding on its way. The crowd in the streets stared. Lawyers, doctors, merchants, beggarmen, thieves stood silently in the streets with mouths a little open. A deputy sheriff ran out into the street, accompanied by two other deputy sheriffs. A hand went up.
“Stop.”
Another deputy sheriff came running.
“Stop.”
The man driver of the truck — the mill worker driver of the truck — did not stop. Words flew back and forth. “Go to hell.” The truck driver was inspired by a song. He was just a cotton mill worker. The truck was in the middle of a block. Other automobiles and trucks were going forward. “I am an American citizen.” It was like St. Paul saying, “I am a Roman.” What right had he, the deputy sheriff, the big fathead, to stop an American? “For justice thunders condemnation,” the women went on singing.
Some one shot. Afterwards the newspapers said there was a riot. It may have been that a deputy sheriff merely wanted to scare the truck driver. Shot heard around the world. Well, not quite. The leader of the women singers, the ballad-making woman among them, fell down dead in the truck.
Twicet a day.
Milky Way.
Twicet a day.
Rest in the water closet.
Rest in the water closet.
The tramp Red Oliver heard talking in the tramps’ jungle was blue with wrath. It may be that, after all, such shots heard here and there, at factory gates, at mine entrances, on picket lines before factories — deputy sheriffs — the law — protection of property... it may be they do echo and reëcho.
The tramp did not, after that, take a job at Birchfield. He said he saw the killing. He might have been lying. He said he had been standing in the street, had seen the killing and that it was cold-blooded and deliberate. In him it had produced a sudden hunger for new and more profane words — ugly words that came sputtering through blue, unshaven lips.
A man like that — after a life all ugly and dirty — had he got hold at last of a real feeling? “The bastards, dirty sons-of-bitches,” he cried. “Before I’d work for them! The stinking horseflies!”
The tramp in the jungle was even yet, when Red heard him talking, half insanely furious. It might be that you couldn’t trust such a man — wrath in such a man. It might be that he only hungered, with a deep, trembling hunger, for liquor or for dope.
2
THE WOMAN WITH the cow on the hill in the wood in North Carolina on a Sunday evening in November had accepted Red Oliver. He wasn’t what “the law,” that had just driven up to the house below, had said he was — a dangerous madman, running about the country, wanting to kill people. That afternoon — it was growing dark rapidly on the hill — she took him for what he said he was. He had said he was a communist. It was a lie. She didn’t know that. A communist had come to mean a definite thing to her. When the strike had come at Birchfield, there the communists were. They had suddenly appeared. There were two young men from somewhere in the North and a young woman. People in Birchfield said, the newspaper in Birchfield said, that one of them, the young woman among them, was a Jew and that the others were foreigners and Yanks. They weren’t foreigners, anyway. The two young men at least were Americans. They had come to Birchfield immediately after the strike had broken out and had at once taken charge.
They knew how. That was something. They had organized the disorganized workers, had taught them to sing songs, had found out the leaders among them, the song-makers, the courageous ones. They had taught them to march shoulder to shoulder. When the strikers had been driven from the houses in the mill village near the mill, the young communist leaders had managed in some way to get permission to set up a camp on a vacant piece of ground near by. The ground belonged to an old man in Birchfield who knew nothing about communism. He was an obstinate old man. People in Birchfield went and threatened him. He grew more obstinate. Going out of Birchfield toward the west you came down a half h
ill past the mill and then you had to follow the highway across the bridge over the river and there you were at the camp. From the camp, also situated on rising ground, you could see everything going on about the mill and in the mill yard. The young communist leaders had managed in some way to get a few small tents shipped in, and provisions also appeared. Many poor small farmers from the hills about Birchfield, not understanding about communism, came into the camp at night with provisions. They brought beans and pork. They divided what they had. The young communist leaders had managed to organize the strikers into a little army.
There was something else. Many of the workers of the Birchfield mill had been in strikes before. They had belonged to unions organized in the mills. The union grew suddenly strong. A strike broke out and there was an exalted moment. It might last two or three weeks. Then the strike and the union faded away. The workers knew about the old unions. They had talked and the woman Red Oliver had met on the hill on Sunday evening — her name was Molly Seabright — had heard the talk.
It was always the same thing — talk of being sold out. A worker went up and down before a group of other workers. He held his hand behind him with the open palm upward and waved it back and forth. His lips curled unpleasantly. “Unions, unions,” he cried, laughing bitterly. That’s the way it was. The workers in a mill found life pressing down and down on them. In good times they managed to get along, but then, always, after a few years of good times, the bad times came.
There was a sudden slackening of work in the mills and the workers went about shaking their heads. A worker went home at night to his house. He called his wife aside.
He whispered. “It’s coming,” he said. What made good times and bad times? Molly Seabright didn’t know. Workers in the mill began to be laid off. The less strong and alert ones lost their jobs.
There were cuts in wages and those on piece-work were speeded up. They were told “hard times had come.”
You might have been able to stand that. Most of the workers in the mill at Birchfield knew about hard times. They had been born poor. “Hard times,” an old woman said to Molly Seabright, “when’d we ever know any good times?”
You saw men and women in the mill laid off. You knew what it meant to them. Many of the women workers had children. A new cruelty seemed to come into the foreman and into the superintendent. They might be trying to protect themselves. They had to be cruel. They began speaking to you in a new way. You were ordered here and there, gruffly, abruptly. Your work was changed. You weren’t consulted when you were given new work to do. Just a few months before, when there were good times, you and all the other workers had been treated differently. Bosses were even more considerate. There was a different quality in the voices that addressed you. “Well, we need you. There is money to be made from your labor now.” There were many little things that Molly Seabright, although she was but twenty-five and had been in the mill for ten years, had noticed. People of the town of Birchfield, where she went with the other girls sometimes at night, to the movies and sometimes just to look at the shop windows, thought that she and the other girls like her were stupid, but she wasn’t as stupid as they thought. She had feelings, too, and the feelings got into her brain. The men in charge of the rooms at the mill, the foremen — often they were young men who had risen out of the ranks of the workers — even bothered to find out a workwoman’s name in good times. “Miss Molly,” they said. “Miss Molly do this — or Miss Molly do that.” She, being a good worker, a rapid, efficient worker, was even, at times — in good times — when workers were scarce — she was even “Miss Seabright.” The young foremen smiled when they spoke to her.
There was a story about Miss Molly Seabright, too. Red Oliver never knew her story. Once when she was a young woman of eighteen... she was a tall slender well-developed young woman then... once one of the young foremen in the mill...
She herself hardly knew how it happened. She was working on the night shift in the mill. There was something strange, a bit queer about working on the night shift. You worked as many hours as those of the day shift. You grew more tired and nervous. Molly could never have told any one very clearly about what had happened to her.
She had never had a man, a lover. She didn’t know why. There was something in her manner, a kind of reserve, a good deal of quiet dignity. There had been two or three young men in the mill and back in the hills where her father and mother lived who had begun looking at her. They wanted to and didn’t dare. Even then, as a young woman just coming out of girlhood, she had felt her responsibility to her father and mother.
There had been a young mountain man, a rough fellow, a fighter, who had been attracted to her. For a time she was herself attracted. He was one of a big family of boys, living in a mountain cabin a mile from her own home, a tall rawboned strong young man with a long jaw.
He didn’t like to work much and he got drunk. She knew about that. He also made and sold liquor. Most of the young mountain men did. He was a great hunter and could kill more squirrels and rabbits in a day than any other young man in the hills. He caught woodchuck with his hands. The woodchuck was a coarse-haired fierce little creature as big as a young dog. Woodchucks were eaten by the mountain people. They were looked upon as a delicacy. If you knew how to take out a certain gland in the woodchuck, a gland that, if left in, gave the meat a bitter taste, the meat became sweet. The young mountain man brought such delicacies to Molly Seabright’s mother. He killed young coons and rabbits and brought them to her. He always brought them late in the week when he knew Molly would be coming home from the mill.
He hung about, talking to Molly’s father, who didn’t like him. The father was afraid of the man. Once on a Sunday night Molly went with him to church and on the way home, suddenly, in the dark road, in a dark stretch of road where there were no houses near... he had been drinking mountain moonshine... he hadn’t gone into the mountain church with her but had stayed on the outside with the other young men... on the way home in the lonely place in the road he had suddenly attacked her.
There hadn’t been any preliminary love making. Perhaps he thought that she... he was a great young fellow for animals, both domestic and tame animals... he might have thought she was just a little animal too. He had tried to throw her to the ground but he had taken too many drinks. He was strong enough but wasn’t quick enough. The drinks confused him. If he hadn’t been a little drunk... they were walking along the road in silence... he wasn’t one who could talk much... when suddenly he stopped and said to her gruffly, “I’m going to,” he said... “come on now, I am going to.”
He sprang at her, got one of his hands on her shoulder. He tore her dress. He tried to throw her to the ground.
Perhaps he thought she was just another little animal. Molly understood dimly. If he had been a man she cared for enough — if he had gone slowly with her.
He could break a young colt almost by his own strength. He was the best man in the hills for breaking wild young colts. People said, “In a week he can make the wildest colt in the hill follow him like a kitten.” Molly had seen his face pressed down close to her own for a moment, the queer determined terrible look in his eyes.
She had managed to get away. She got over a low fence. If he hadn’t been a little drunk... When he was getting over the fence he fell. She had to run through a field and through a creek with her best shoes on, with her best Sunday dress on. She couldn’t afford it. She had run through bushes — through a strip of wood. She didn’t know how she escaped. She never knew she could run so fast. He was there close behind her. He never said a word. He followed her to the very door of her father’s house, but she managed to get through the door and into the house and get the door closed again ahead of him.
She told a lie. Her father and mother were in bed. “What is it?” Molly’s mother asked that night, sitting up in bed. In the little mountain cabin there was but the one large room downstairs and a little loft upstairs. Molly slept up there. She had to go up a ladder to get to
her bed. Her bed was by a little window under the roof. Her father and mother slept in a bed in a corner of the big room downstairs where they all ate and where they sat during the day. Her father also woke up.
“It’s nothing, Ma,” she said to her mother that night. Her mother was already almost an old woman. The father and mother were both old people who had both been married before, away off somewhere in another mountain community, and they had both lost their first mates. They didn’t get married until they were quite old and then they moved to the little cabin and the farm where Molly was born. She had never seen any of their other children. Her father liked to make a joke. He said to people— “my wife has four children and I have five children and together we have ten children. Solve that riddle if you can,” he said.
“It’s nothing, Ma,” Molly Seabright said to her mother that night she was attacked by the young mountain man. “I got scared,” she said. “Something in the yard scared me.
I guess it was a strange dog.” That was her way. She didn’t tell about things that happened to her. She climbed upstairs to her own little half room, her body trembling, and through the window she saw the young man who had tried to attack her standing in the yard. He was standing near her father’s bee gums in the yard and looking up at the window of her room. The moon had come out and she could see his face. There was an angry baffled look in his eyes that increased her fright. She might just have imagined that. How could she see his eyes down there? She couldn’t understand why she had ever let him walk with her, why she had gone off to church with him. She had wanted to show the other girls in the mountain community that she also could get a man. That must have been why she did it. She would have had trouble with him later — she knew that. Just a week after that happened he got into a fist fight with another young mountain man, a quarrel over the ownership of a mountain still, and he shot the man and had to light out. He couldn’t come back, didn’t dare. She never saw him again.
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 167