Story of Lola Gregg

by Howard Fast

  She opened her eyes, and the unbreakable man was kissing a woman. She walked down the main side-aisle, about half-way. She thought so, but she was not sure, and she said to herself that it could not be so simple, hardly so simple with the agents prowling all over the place and finding nothing. But the man who might be Gregg was closer to the other side-aisle, and she walked back and around and found him again, and then she no longer had any doubts. There was an empty seat one away from him, and she slid in past the people and said to a small, elderly man, “Please, could you move over one? My husband.” The small, elderly man first looked at her in surprise, then nodded and shifted himself away from Gregg.

  Gregg was staring at her. Even amid the shadows, his face said all that possibly could be said, and then she slid into the seat next to him and took his hand. For the first long moment they just held hands and sat there while the unbreakable hero displayed human weakness by beginning the process of getting drunk. Then Gregg whispered:

  “How are the kids?”

  “All right.” She was trembling violently and he felt that. She was on the verge of tears, but fought with all her strength not to cry; she knew she had to be calm, straightforward and convincing.

  “Had a rough time, didn’t you?” Gregg said.

  She nodded.

  “The worst is over. We take it easier now.”

  “Don’t, you want to know how I found you here, Gregg?”

  “I can guess,” he smiled. “They got every exit covered, haven’t they?”

  “That’s right, Gregg. The ticket girl recognized you.”

  He squeezed her hand again, and continued to smile, and he looked at her with great hunger and longing. “By God, you’re so beautiful, Lola,” he whispered. “All day long, I’ve been trying to remember, exactly.”

  “The light here is flattering,” she managed to smile.

  “It seems you never remember exactly how anyone looks. I love you, Lola.”

  “I know.”

  “More than I’ve ever been able to tell you.”

  “I know that, too.”

  The people around them shushed, and they put their heads together, Gregg’s arm around her shoulders. “I wondered about that—the way she looked at me. I mean the girl in the ticket office, Lola. At that point I didn’t care much. Then there are too many people walking the aisles. How did you find me when they couldn’t?”

  “Maybe they were willing to wait. I know you, that’s how I found you, Gregg.”

  “Just like that. Did they know you were coming in?”

  “A mouse couldn’t go in or out without them knowing it, Gregg. They think you’re armed, and Sam Feldberger was afraid they might start shooting. I talked them into letting me look for you—so you’d have half a chance, at least.”

  “More than half a chance, baby. It’s going to be a long, hard fight from here on, but it’ll be all right.”

  “I want to think so, Gregg.”

  “And Sam’s outside?”

  She nodded, and he said, “Just sit next to me for a minute—like it was a long time ago and we had a date at the movies.” She nodded again, and they sat there for a little while, holding hands and savouring the minutes that were left. Then Gregg said softly:

  “Did Sam think you ought to come in?”

  “Yes.”

  “They really think I’m armed?”

  “I know you’re not, Gregg, but that’s what they think.”

  “Funny the way they think. Suppose I go out with you, baby, and they decide to use their guns, anyway?”

  “Gregg—they won’t.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I can’t be sure, hut I feel it, Gregg. It would be too raw now, too rotten, too dirty. Sam is out there, and they know Sam is there. They might have killed you, but they won’t dare to kill me, too.”

  “You must love me a lot to believe that, kid.”

  “I love you a lot, Gregg.” So much that she wondered now why it was only when one had to stake love on everything, or everything and life itself on love, that one found out. It was true that no one could live like this for very long, but why couldn’t people learn how to love and give without this?

  “Enough to die with me,” he barely breathed. “That wouldn’t make sense.”

  “It makes sense because we’re not going to die, Gregg.” She added after a moment, “There’s no other way out of this.”

  “One other way. To go out alone, or stay here and send you out.”

  “No. If you go, I go. If you stay, I stay. They made an agreement with me, but it lasts only forty-five minutes. They’ll keep their agreement.”

  “All right,” Gregg shrugged. “My judgment hasn’t been much good today. Let’s go.”

  “First kiss me, Gregg.”

  He kissed her, and the people around shook their heads disapprovingly. The shadows on the screen kissed and no one disapproved. Together they moved out to the aisle, and Gregg said, ruefully:

  “I was wondering how the picture would end. Maybe we’ll come back some day and see it over.”

  “Maybe, Gregg.”

  “Let me kiss you again,” he said, when they were in the aisle. He kissed her and looked at her and smiled rather wanly. “Well, here we go,” he nodded. “How did the kids take it? Was Roger disturbed?”

  “A little. I had a set-to with his teacher this morning. Funny, it seems years ago.”

  “This morning was years ago,” Gregg agreed.

  “I’m not afraid now, Gregg, really. I guess it’s the first time today I haven’t been afraid. Before, I was in a nightmare—I saw myself searching madly through the theatre, and not finding you, never finding you. But then I just asked myself where you would sit, and you were there. Were you glad to see me?”

  “I was glad, Lola. I was trying to decide whether to stay or go. I knew something was wrong, and it became six of one, half a dozen of the other. This afternoon, I heard a radio in a cigar store explain how I was armed. Don’t you think I was afraid, Lola?”

  “You’re never afraid, Gregg.” He stopped and stared at her incredulously; then he put his arm around her and bit his lip and looked at her from his great height. “I almost forgot,” she cried. “You go out with your hands on your lapels, darling, one hand on each lapel. We walk on to ten feet from the ticket booth and then stand there. We’re not afraid, either of us now. All right, Gregg?”

  “All right, Lola.”

  He put his hands up to grip his lapels, and together they began to walk. As they emerged into the lobby, men appeared and closed in. Lola nerved herself and walked as close to Gregg as she could, her body pressed to his. Half a dozen men were around them now; they seized Gregg’s arms and thrust her away from him, twisted his arms behind him, locked handcuffs over his wrists, ran their hands up and down his body. Lola saw Cann, just outside the crush of men, exercising his calm, executive role, giving orders quietly. People in the lobby were first beginning to realize that something out of the ordinary was taking place, but before they could gather and form the crowd that was a part of their existence in terms of any excitement, Gregg was outside of the lobby and being put into a large black sedan that had just drawn up at the kerb.

  Lola tried to follow him, but Mr. Cann was in her way, facing her with his small, controlled smile. “No—you’ve done nobly, Mrs. Gregg, and I shall let bygones be bygones. But you can’t go with him now.”

  “Let me say good-bye to him——”

  “No.”

  Feldberger was at her shoulder, and he said to Cann, “Let her say good-bye to him. What harm is it going to do?”

  It was the first time in that long day that Lola had seen Mr. Cann show his teeth; He snarled at Feldberger, “Keep your god-damned nose out of this. I’m sick to my stomach of you, Feldberger.”

  “Maybe I’m sick to my stomach of you, Cann,” the lawyer said quietly. “Why don’t you stop being a two-bit hero? You got your man. It’s her husband. Let her say good-bye to him!” />
  “You miserable——”

  “Say it,” Feldberger smiled. “Say it, little man. Or haven’t you got the guts to?”

  A crowd was beginning to gather. Cann swung into the car and closed the door hard behind him, and Feldberger called, “Take it easy, Gregg I We’ll see you tomorrow and set bail!”

  The car pulled away, and Feldberger steered Lola through the crowd and up the avenue. When they were clear, she stopped, turned to the lawyer, and began to giggle. “Stop it!” he said sharply, and Lola said, shaking her head, “I’m not getting hysterical, Sam—believe me. I’m very happy. Only if I don’t sit down, I’m going to fall into one hundred pieces.”

  “How about a drink?”

  “One drink, yes. I need it. Then I have to get home. I ran out, just poured the kids on to a good neighbour and ran out. Am I trembling, Sam?”

  “A little.”

  “All right—one drink.”

  They turned into the first bar and Feldberger ordered Scotch for both of them, a double for himself. His own hand was trembling as he lifted his glass and said, “To you, my dear Lola. You are a brave and wonderful woman.”

  “To Gregg, Sam.”

  “Both of you, and life, and a chance to fight!”

  For a moment, Lola could not reply, and she drank and took comfort in the hot flow of the whisky. “All right, kid?” Feldberger asked her.

  “There’s always a chance to fight, isn’t there, Sam?”

  “Sometimes yes—sometimes no.”

  “There is. What happened to me today, Sam?”

  “A lot of things. It was a big day.”

  “You know when I saw Gregg—when I found him——”

  “I want to know how you found him,” Feldberger interrupted her.

  “—it wasn’t hard to find him. I knew where he would be. I can think the way he does, so I knew where he would be. But you know, when I found him, when I sat down next to him, we didn’t say anything I thought we would say. Just a few words—common-place words. I didn’t even ask him where he was all day. It didn’t seem important. Only that he should get out of there alive seemed important. He’s all right, isn’t he, Sam? They won’t do anything to him now?”

  “He’s all right, and they won’t do anything to him. They’ll book him downtown, and then they’ll put him in a cell overnight. We can’t do anything tonight—not anything more now, Lola. Even if I could by some miracle get the Commissioner to hear me now—and I couldn’t—he’s going to set a lot of bail, maybe twenty thousand dollars, maybe higher, because it was hard for them to pick Gregg up. I’ll see if I can talk to Gregg later, and there’s a good possibility that they’ll have to let me, but any way we cut it, it’s going to mean a lot of bail. That’ll take time to raise——”

  “But I’ll see him, won’t I, Sam?”

  “Of course you’ll see him—possibly tomorrow if the hearing on his bail can be set for tomorrow.”

  “But, Sam,” she said worriedly, “you didn’t talk to Gregg. Suppose now——”

  He shook his head and grinned. “No, honey. No—now you relax. Gregg won’t put his foot into anything, and he won’t open his mouth until he’s seen me. I know that. Now it begins, a long, long fight—first to find money for bail, then the court fight, then the appeals, a long time of it, maybe two years. Plenty of time for us to talk and think and plan; we don’t have to do it all tonight. I’m tired, you’re tired. It’s been a long day. How are you fixed for money?”

  “I’ve got enough to get home, Sam—and we’ve got a little in the bank. Enough for a week or two. I’ll work that out. The main thing is that Gregg’s alive.”

  “That’s the main thing,” Feldberger said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE WORKER

  LOLA took the subway uptown, and she sat in the rocking, roaring train with a faint smile on her lips and an expression of childish wonder on her face. Not only did she have that singular and rewarding feeling that comes only after one has carried through a dangerous adventure successfully, she was amazed at herself and pleased with herself. She had just done something she would never have believed herself capable of doing, and because the awful depression of the day had finally lifted, she could feel proud of what she had done. Her whole being responded to that pride; for her husband, her man, her lover and partner was alive, and she had helped to keep him alive.

  There was a time when she could not have believed, not in her worst anger toward Gregg, that she could have any satisfaction or joy in his being in a prison cell, facing a five-year sentence, and herself faced with the complexity of feeding two children, paying rent, raising an incredible amount of bail money, hiring legal help, and looking forward to a future as uneasy as it was unpredictable. Yet, she reflected, values existed only by comparison, and nothing was absolute, and from here on, nothing would ever again be as hard as this day she had just lived through. For one thing, whatever she had been this morning was gone for ever, and now she was something else, different, more malleable but less breakable. She would never be alone again, never totally despairing again; and this was a thought she would recall before the whole day was done.

  But the warmth within her, the warmth and satisfaction overlaid everything else; the world she looked at was the way the world used to be for her on a Christmas Eve. She looked at the people riding in the subway car with her, tired people, people who had worked late for the most part and were filled with the weariness and oppressiveness of the day, and she said to herself, It’s strange, but I’m interested in them, and I’ve never looked at them just this way before. Nice people—but she could not think of any other reason why except that they were people; and she admitted to herself that you would have to get to know them. She thought she could, given half a chance, and that too was a strange thought, and it brought back her childhood, and a time she had gone by train to New York with her mother. There was an old man in the train, sitting across the aisle, and Lola had whispered to her mother, “I like old people, don’t you?” Her mother said, yes, she thought she did, and Lola said, “I suppose you like all people.” Her mother didn’t say yes to that, but she told Lola that she thought it would be a good way to be, and she said that strangely and wistfully, looking at Lola just as strangely.

  In spite of her relief, Lola’s feelings were threaded with a certain amount of guilt. It was Gregg who was locked up, not herself; and before it had been Gregg who was free; and now she began to wonder whether it was not the quality of freedom rather than the quantity that mattered—and who was she to judge that Gregg was better off now than before? And what would he have preferred? This, they had not discussed; it would have taken too long for him to answer, for while the question would have been simple, the answer would of necessity have been very complex. But that was not her doing, she reassured herself, and what she felt had not determined matters. The determination had been in the long chance of the woman in the ticket booth recognizing Gregg, and this had happened—and yet he was alive.

  The element was life. She could say to herself, I am alive and Gregg is alive, and there is something I am beginning to understand.

  The train rocked to a stop, and she got out, climbed the stairs to the street and walked home, rehearsing in her mind how she would handle it with Roger. She had seen Gregg, embraced him and kissed him. Now Roger would believe her—or perhaps not; and she decided that the following day she would keep Roger out of school and take both children with her to the bail hearing. She would let them see Gregg, and regardless of the circumstances in which they saw him, it would be better than if they had not seen him. They were going to have a new kind of father and mother, and they might as well know that and accept it as soon as possible.

  As she walked down her street and turned into the entrance of the house, a tall, broad-shouldered Negro, wearing a leather jacket and grey work pants, stepped out of the shadow of the hallway and took off his hat and asked her if she was Mrs. Gregg? There was a note in his voice so gentle that
Lola was hardly startled, and she said, yes, she was Mrs. Gregg.

  “I thought so,” he said. “I been upstairs, but the gentleman there said you was out. I figured to wait down here. I work at the shop with Gregg.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know how you must feel, Mrs. Gregg. You got a lot of trouble—all the trouble anyone can have. So I don’t want to just take up your time.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “You see, we took up a little collection for Gregg, knowing what hard times it was going to be for you and the kids from now on. It ain’t much, but I got it here, and seeing as how I’m the head of the grievance committee, it was felt I was the proper one to bring it up here and give it to you. Here it is.” He handed her an envelope.

  Lola took the envelope and shook her head. “Thank you. I just don’t know what to say. It’s so thoughtful—I don’t know what to say to you——”

  “No need to say anything, Mrs. Gregg, but I would like you to count it, please. There’s two hundred and twelve dollars. I would like you to count it and see that it’s just right.”

  “I don’t have to count it.” Her eyes were wet, and she kept shaking her head. “I don’t have to count it. Tell me, what’s your name?”

  “My name’s Adam Burke. Maybe you heard Gregg talk about me.”

  “Yes—yes.”

  “I don’t go along with him all the way, Mrs. Gregg, but he’s a mighty fine man. Most of us felt that way. To be absolutely truthful, there was some wouldn’t have any part of this. They say as far as a commie is concerned, they don’t want no part of it. Well, maybe Gregg is a commie and maybe he ain’t—a lot of things ain’t just what they seem to be, but he’s a mighty fine man. He’s a sound man, if you know what I mean?”

  “I know.”

  “He knows the right time—don’t have to look at no clock, he knows. Knows what’s right and what’s wrong, and that’s a lot to know, a mighty lot. All of them asked me to express to you their best wishes. It’s an awful lonesome thing for a man to run, but if he’s decided to run, we sure as God hope they never catch up with him.”