Memories of Another Day

by Harold Robbins

  Murray glanced at him. “What are your plans?”

  “I don’ rightly know,” Daniel said. “Amble aroun’ the country. Fin’ a job.”

  “How would you like a job with the UMW?”

  “Doin’ what?”

  “Going to school for the first two years. Getting yourself some education and knowledge that will help you approach the problems that confront labor in a more intelligent manner.”

  “What kin’ o’ school?”

  “College in New York. The New School for Social Research. Even wind up getting yourself a diploma. We pay for everything.”

  “What’s the hitch?”

  “There isn’t any,” Murray said. “You have a job with us when you come out. If you don’t like the job, you can always quit.”

  Daniel thought for a moment. “I never had much formal schoolin’. Do you think I kin handle somethin’ like that?”

  “I think so. You just have one lesson to learn before you begin.”

  “What’s that?” Daniel asked.

  “The important thing about what we do is try to benefit the workingmen who entrust their representation to us. We can’t afford to indulge in the personal luxury of taking revenge on people who may or may not have injured us or made themselves our enemies. The people we represent don’t deserve that.”

  Daniel was silent for a moment. “You mean—like what I did?”

  Murray’s voice was direct. “Yes. There can be no more of that.”

  “But in spite of it, yer still willin’ to take a chance on me. Why?”

  Murray cast a sidewise glance at him, then looked back at the road. “Because I’ve got a hunch. More than that, I think you have the right instincts. Without knowing why, you’ve been hitting every nail on the head. I have the feeling that someday you’ll be an important man in the labor movement. In some ways you remind me of John L. when I first met him. All guts and instinctive knowledge.”

  “He’s a great man,” Daniel said respectfully. “I don’ think I kin ever be like him.”

  “Nobody knows,” Murray said. “But then, you don’t have to be like him. Maybe if you’re just yourself you might turn out greater than any of us.”

  “I’m not twenty yet.”

  “I know that,” Murray said. “You’ll be twenty-two when you get out of school. That’s just the right age to start.”

  “You mean it?” Daniel asked.

  “I wouldn’t have made the offer if I didn’t,” Murray replied.

  “I’ll do it,” Daniel said, holding out his hand. “I hope I won’ be a disappointment to you.”

  Murray took his hand, holding on to the wheel with the other. “You won’t be.”

  “Thank you,” Daniel said.

  “Don’t thank me,” Murray said. “Just do good.” He took his hand back and placed it on the wheel. “Damn! It’s beginning to rain.”

  ***

  That had been a long time ago. Like seventeen years ago. And now Daniel sat in a hot tub in a California motel, smoking a cigar, sipping from a bottle of whiskey on the chair next to the tub and waiting for Tess to come back from the market with two steaks. And back East, it was starting all over again. A strike at the steel mills. But this time it was different. Lewis had signed Big Steel just the year before. Now Phil Murray was going to take on Little Steel. And the only thing that bothered Daniel was the feeling that Murray was walking into the same kind of disaster that Foster had walked into seventeen years before.

  Chapter 10

  “We’ve been here almost three months,” she said, putting the last of the dinner dishes away. “I think it’s time we found ourselves an apartment.”

  Daniel put down the evening paper. “What for? I’m perfectly happy here.”

  “Fer the money we’re payin’ in this hotel we could have a real nice place of our own.”

  He picked up the paper and began to read again without answering.

  She sat down opposite him and turned on the radio. Fibber McGee and Molly was just coming on the air. She listened for a few minutes, then turned the dial impatiently. Nothing seemed to interest her, and she turned it off in disgust. “Daniel,” she said.

  He lowered the paper and looked at her over the top.

  “Aren’t you going to get a job?” she asked.

  “I got a job,” he said.

  “I mean one you go out to work at,” she said. She knew that the check from back East came every week.

  “I work at it,” he said. “I had three meetings this week with different unions.”

  “That’s not work,” she said.

  He folded the paper and put it on the table next to his chair. He was silent.

  “Other men go out to work every morning and come home at night. You don’t do that. Instead, I go out every morning and come home every night. And each day it’s the same thing. I leave you sittin’ in that chair readin’ the mornin’ paper and when I come back you’re sittin’ in the same chair readin’ the evenin’ paper. It’s not normal.”

  He reached for the bottle of whiskey and poured himself a drink. He swallowed it and poured another.

  “That’s another thing,” she said. “You drink a bottle of whiskey a day.”

  “You ever see me drunk?” he asked.

  “That’s not the point. That much whiskey ain’t doin’ your guts any good.”

  “I feel fine,” he said.

  “Someday it’ll get to you,” she said. “I seen that happen.”

  He swallowed the second drink and stared at her for a few seconds, then finally spoke. “Okay. Out with it. What’s troubling you?”

  She began to cry. Several times she tried to speak, but each time the sobbing became stronger, until the tears began flooding down her cheeks. He reached across and literally lifted her out of her chair and put her on his lap.

  He turned her face against his shoulder and stroked her hair gently. “Take it easy, baby,” he said softly. “Ain’t nothin’ can be that bad.”

  “No?” She looked at him with tear-blurred eyes. “It’s bad enough. I’m pregnant.”

  His voice was even and without surprise. “How far gone are you?”

  “The doctor says between ten or twelve weeks,” she answered. “He can’t be more exact until the next examination.”

  He was silent for a moment, his hand still absently stroking her head. “If he’s right, then you’re too far along to get an abortion?” It was more a statement than a question.

  “That’s the first thing I asked him. He said he wouldn’t take the chance. He also told me there’s some doctors in Tijuana who would do it, but he didn’t recommend it.”

  He looked down at her. “How come you didn’t notice anything earlier?”

  She met his eyes. “I’ve always been irregular. Sometimes two months before I came aroun’. ’Specially when I’ve been fuckin’ a lot.”

  “We’ve been fucking a lot,” he agreed.

  She got to her feet and went to the kitchenette and came back with a glass. She held it out to him. “I think I need a drink.”

  He looked up at her. “I read somewhere that drinking isn’t good for the baby.”

  “A small one won’t hurt,” she said.

  He poured less than a finger of whiskey into her glass and filled his own. He raised his glass and clinked it against hers. “Here’s to Daniel Boone Huggins, Junior.”

  She had the glass already to her lips before the import of what he had said reached her. The glass froze in her hand. “You mean that?”

  He nodded.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “I’m not blamin’ you. It’s my fault.”

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” he said. “I’d been thinking about it even before you told me about this.”

  “Honest?” Her voice was incredulous.

  “Honest. You’re a good woman. My kind of people. We’ll do good together.”

  She sank to her knees in front of him and put her head in his lap, the tears welling
into her eyes again. “I was so frightened, Daniel. I love you so much.”

  He turned her face up to him. “There was nothing to be frightened about. I love you too,” he said, and kissed her.

  They were married the next morning before a justice of the peace in Santa Monica.

  ***

  It was a small house on a side street just off San Vicente, north of Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. Two bedrooms connected by a bathroom, a living room and a large kitchen with a dining alcove. A small driveway leading to a carport attached to the side of the house separated it from its neighbor. Both the front and back yards seemed to be about the same size: thirty feet across the width of the house and about twenty-five feet deep.

  The real estate agent discreetly left them in the living room to let them discuss it. “What do you think?” Daniel asked.

  “I like it,” she said. “’Specially with the room on the other side of the bathroom. We kin fix it up real nice fer the baby. An’ I kin make new covers fer the rest of the furniture, and with a little paint it could look real good. On’y thing is the cost. Fourteen hundred dollars is a lot of money.”

  “They’re throwing in everything. Furniture, kitchen stove, refrigerator.”

  “We kin rent a place like this fer about twenty-five a month,” she said.

  “But then you spend three hundred a year and at the end of it you’ve got nothing. This way we have an equity. It’s like an insurance policy.”

  “How much mortgage will the bank give us?”

  “No bank will give me a mortgage,” he said. “They don’t particularly like union men.”

  She looked at him. “I have that money I got from sellin’ my house back East,” she said. “Four hundred. That should he’p.”

  He smiled. “I don’t need your money. I can manage it. That is, if you like it.”

  “I like it,” she said.

  “Okay, then let me make him an offer,” he said, calling the agent back into the room.

  They closed the deal at one thousand two hundred and seventy-five dollars and moved into the house at the end of the month. It took them a little more than a month after that to do everything to the house that they wanted to do. Daniel repainted the house and the furniture; she made new curtains and draperies with an old sewing machine that one of the former owners had left in the attic.

  ***

  He was sitting in the living room reading the evening paper as usual when she came in from work. He put down the paper and looked at her. She was in her fifth month and was beginning to get large. Her face looked drawn and tired.

  “I was stuck late,” she said. “We was busy an’ the boss wouldn’t let me out. I’ll get right on dinner.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “You get yourself a nice bath and rest a bit. I’ll take you out for dinner. We’ll have some Chinks.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “I don’t min’ makin’ dinner.”

  But he could see that she liked the idea. “You do what I said.”

  Later, over dinner, while they were spooning into their chicken chow mein, he said very casually, “I think it’s about time you quit your job. It isn’t fair to Junior that you should be on your feet all day like that.”

  “The money comes in real handy,” she said. “Twelve, fourteen dollars a week covers a lot of the house bills.”

  “I spend more’n that on whiskey and cigars,” he said.

  She was silent.

  “Besides, I’m figuring on going back to work. If I do, we’ll have a lot more than that comin’ in.”

  She stared at him. “What are you gonna do?”

  “The same as I’ve always done,” he said. “Organizing.”

  “I didn’t know you kin git a job like that out here.”

  “It’s not out here,” he said. “It’s back East. Phil Murray himself called me. He wants me to head up the Steelworkers Organizing Committee in Chicago. They’ll pay me fifty-five dollars a week and expenses.”

  Dismay came into her voice. “That means we’ll have to move back there jest after we settled in here.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s nothing permanent. The whole job shouldn’t last more than a few months at the most. Then I’ll be back.”

  “I’ll be alone,” she said. “What if you’re still there when my time comes?”

  He laughed. “I’ll be back long before that,” he said confidently.

  “Wouldn’t you be better off takin’ a job here?”

  “You know what the jobs out here pay. There’s nothing that pays even half that much. And with a baby on the way, the more we make now, the better off we are. With them paying my expenses, we can sock the whole salary into the bank.”

  She met his eyes. “That’s what you want to do, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  She took a deep breath. “Okay. But I’ll miss you.”

  He smiled and reached across the table, touching her cheek. “I’ll miss you too,” he said. “But I’ll be back before you know it.”

  She reached up, pressing his hand to her cheek. She wanted to believe him, but in her heart she knew it would be longer than he thought.

  “Is it dangerous?” she asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “No more than any of the other jobs.”

  “I don’t want nothin’ to happen to you.”

  He patted his jacket under the shoulder where the gun rested comfortably. “Don’t worry about that. What happened before is never going to happen again. I’ve got a friend.”

  She looked into his eyes. “That’s okay. But jes’ don’t you fergit one thing. You got a wife too.”

  Chapter 11

  Two days later he stood on the platform preparing to board the train back east. He turned to Tess. “You take care of yourself. Do what the doctor says and stay on the diet. I’ll be back in six weeks.”

  She put her arms around his neck. “You be careful. I don’t want anything happenin’ to you like when the time we met.”

  “Nothing like that will happen,” he said. He kissed her. “Just take care.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you too,” he said, and boarded the train. He stood on the steps and waved to her as the train began to move. She blew him a kiss just as the train began to curve away from the platform and was gone from sight. He mounted the steps and picked up his valise just as a porter came from the car.

  “Let me he’p you, sah,” the porter said, his white teeth shining in a big smile. He took the bag from Daniel’s hand. “Your ticket, sah.”

  Daniel gave him the ticket. The porter looked down at it and nodded. “Follow me, sah.”

  Daniel followed him down the aisle, swaying slightly as the train began to pick up speed. The porter checked the ticket again and stopped at a seat near the center of the car. He gestured to the seat and carefully placed the valise in an overhead rack. “You kin have both seats, sah,” he said. “We’re not busy, an’ Ah’ll make sure that nobody sits next to you. That way you kin stretch out at night.”

  “Thank you,” Daniel said, giving him a half-dollar coin.

  “Thank you, sah,” the porter said enthusiastically. “Anythin’ you want, jes’ you call me. George is my name.”

  Daniel looked at him. “Is the bar open?”

  “Yes, sah. The smoker is three cars back, jes’ behind the sleepin’ cars.” The porter began to leave. “Enjoy youah trip, sah.”

  He saw the girl as he walked through the second sleeping car. A porter was just coming out of one of the private compartments. Automatically he looked in through the open door. She was standing there, her hand on the top button of her blouse. She glanced up. For a moment their eyes met; then she half-smiled and with the other hand pushed the door shut. He went on to the smoking car.

  The bar was already crowded. There was one small table left against the window, with two chairs. He sat down. The waiter came up to him. “Yes, sah.”

  “How much
is a bottle of bourbon?” Daniel asked.

  “One fifty a pint, two sixty a fifth, sah.”

  “I’ll take a fifth.”

  “Yes, sah. Ice and ginger, sah?”

  “Just water, thank you.”

  He was on his second drink when she came into the car. Her eyes searched the car looking for a table. There was none. For a moment she seemed to hesitate, as if she were going to turn back; then she saw the empty seat at his table and came toward him.

  “Do you mind if I sit here?” She had a soft, educated voice.

  He rose to his feet. “It would be my pleasure, ma’am.”

  She sat down as the waiter came up. “What are you drinking?”

  “Bourbon and water,” he said. “Shall I get another glass?”

  She shook her head. “A very dry martini,” she told the waiter. She turned back to him. “I didn’t fancy the idea of drinking alone in the compartment.”

  Daniel smiled.

  She held out her hand. “I’m Christina Girdler.”

  The waiter brought her martini. She raised the glass. “To a pleasant journey.”

  He tossed the shot of bourbon down his throat. “A pleasant journey, Miss Girdler.”

  “My friends call me Chris,” she said.

  “Daniel.”

  “I’m going to Chicago,” she said. “I was just visiting some friends on the Coast.”

  “I’m changing trains in Chicago and going on to Pittsburgh, but I’ll be back in Chicago in about two, three weeks,” he said.

  “What line of work are you in, Daniel?”

  “I’m a labor organizer. Right now I’m on a special job for the Steelworkers Organizing Committee, CIO.”

  “The SWOC?”

  “You heard about us?” His surprise showed in his voice. Usually people in her society knew nothing about unions.

  She giggled. “My Uncle Tom would have a fit if he knew I was sitting here talking to you. Mention SWOC to him and he explodes.”

  Girdler. The name fell into place. President of Republic Steel. At the spearhead of Little Steel’s antiunion drive. “That Girdler?”

  She laughed again. “That Girdler. Do you want me to leave the table now?”

  He chuckled. “Not at all.”

  “Even if I told you that I work in the public relations division of his company and I’m one of those people who send out all the antiunion information?”